Thor Hansen, Immigrant

Scandinavian spirit, Canadian vision


After the dismal reports I've been posting at Our Changing Landscape (mostly on how immigrants influence the Human Rights Commissions), there were immigrants who were psychologically, culturally and personally invested in Canada. They had some understanding of this complex "landscape" - physical and spiritual - that is Canada, and were able to provide their own lasting legacies.

One such was Danish textile designer, Thor Hansen.

From the Textile Museum of Canada:

Thor Hansen joined the influx of Scandinavian immigrants who spearheaded the craft revival in this country during the first half of the 20th century. Born in a small town outside Copenhagen, his Danish upbringing influenced much of his thinking: folk stories and handicraft were as second nature to him as breathing air. He came to Canada on a whim in 1928 after winning a ticket to Japan, but inspired by Canadian Pacific posters he chose Canada instead.


[H]e believed, "The basement workshop is the greatest blessing of the 20th century." By that he meant, not only is homespun craft good for the soul but it stimulates an appetite for Canadian culture. In 1948, he began a long and fruitful relationship with the newly established Simcoe County Arts and Crafts Association (SCACA), located in Ontario’s Georgian Bay area.


Hansen often remarked that, "Culture is one of the most burning subjects of the day in Canada."


What the Group of Seven did for Canadian painting, Hansen wanted to do for Canadian handicraft. His high regard for the Group of Seven is not surprising given that members of the Group saw parallels between the Canadian and Scandinavian wilderness.


[Hansen] showed a keen eye for repetition and rhythm and favoured a strong art deco style and developed a repertoire of motifs that he would use time and again: silhouettes and profiles of birds in flight, leaping salmon, and horned animals, as well as indigenous wildflowers and plants, especially trillium, lady’s slipper and morning glory.

New Blog Links

The Aussie, the fighter and the housewife

I've added three new links to my list of blogs, Oz Conservative, Ezra Levant blog, and The Thinking Housewife. I don't expect my list to grow into the fifty, sixty, or more blogs that some bloggers like to display. In fact, this is the first time I've updated my list in quite a while - I think that brings the total to fifteen! 

I've been reading Oz Conservative for a while. I found his site originally through google while I was doing my research for my article on the Buz Luhrmann film Australia. He writes mostly on social issues such as race and feminism, and with a traditional conservative stance. His writing is thoughtful with well-researched and referenced articles.

Ezra Levant is on a one-man battle against the Human Rights Commissions. That is not entirely true, since he does have numerous conservative writers and activists helping him out. But, he is certainly holding the torch.

The Thinking Housewife's blog is just that, a thoughtful assessment of society and culture from a housewife's point of view. One funny part was that Laura Wood (who is the author of this blog) had never watched an Oprah show until recently. I think she was left quite impressed. But, I would be cautious with Oprah. There are many things she gets wrong. 

More Purple Flowers

Conversation starters

Photocollage of Redbud trees in High Park

There is a delicate tree which grows right by a concrete high rise building. Its purple/pink flowers bloom for a brief few days, before we are left to wait for it the following year.

This tree (which looks more like a shrub) is equally eye-catching in the woods of the city's High Park, precisely because it looks so delicate and fragile amidst the long and sturdy trunks.

I made a photocollage of this tree in High Park a few years ago, but never knew its name. Whilst I was photographing it the other day in front of the high rise building, I decided to ask a couple approaching me, who looked like they might know something about it, what it was called. Sure enough, the woman said she was a gardener, and spent a little time describing the tree to me.

Photo of a Redbud tree in front of a high rise

It is a Redbud tree, and is indigenous to North America. It has a short life, true to its delicate look. It has no edible qualities to it, and is more ornamental than anything else. Here is more information.

These days, I am making a concerted effort to talk to people, a little randomly. Of course, I have to choose carefully whom I talk to; a city is always a city. But, often, I ask people in the supermarket how to use an ingredient (watercress was the latest I asked about), and now, it is especially interesting to ask about flowers and trees. I am surprised at how much people actually know, and are willing to impart.

The problem with Toronto is that it is becoming a strangely silent city. People don't talk in lines, transactions at cashier's are quiet transfers of money, bank tellers don't make small talk. I don't think that people are unfriendly, but that there are too many foreign (literally) elements which act as obstacles to conversation. I asked a Chinese sushi-maker recently what her sushi ingredients were, and she said, in very broken accented English something like "tona." "Tuna?" I asked. She said yes. When I tried it later, it turned out to be tofu.

So, I think people are afraid to talk to each other. Canadians, who are not the chattiest of people, still have a quiet sense of humor, and enjoy a banter whiling away their time in tedious lines. The other day, an elderly gentleman at the bank was trying so hard to make conversation, to the extent that he was teasingly telling the bank teller how to do her transactions. He wasn't getting very far with his jokes.

This silence has to be broken. Our multicultural city doesn't encourage it. But just because the Chinese sushi-maker and the Indian bank teller can't handle a normal conversation doesn't mean the rest of us have to be struck dumb.

Mrs. Harper's Stand

Not as tough as she seems

Left: Laureen Harper with Ezra Levant
Right: With Senator Pamela Wallin
I don't think we would see Aline Chrétien (or everyone's model
First Lady, Jackie Kennedy) standing or sitting like that. 

Recently, the pugnacious Ezra Levant, the one-man-fighter of the Human Rights Commission, was in Ottawa where he got to attend a soirée at 24 Sussex Drive with a few others as guest to Laureen Harper, Prime Minister Harper’s wife.

We don't hear too much from Laureen Harper. Here is a long and descriptive article on her. She is apparently media shy (or media savvy). She doesn't give too many interviews, and prefers to stay away from the limelight and let her husband do his work.

Laureen Harper trying out a Harley

She ran a successful graphic design company for a while, and was the breadwinner for her family at one time while Harper was honing his political skills. Now, she has become a housewife, although active in her children's school projects. I don't know if it is a rural Alberta thing (she grew up on a ranch), but she apparently owns a dirt bike, and still likes to ride it even as the wife of the Prime Minister.

I am sorry to say that I am a little biased against Mrs. Harper. I didn’t like the stories of her dirt bike hobby, which I thought she would have graciously given up once in Ottawa. Later on, I read that she was instrumental in Harper’s decision to make a formal apology to the Chinese community for the head tax levied on Chinese workers in the late 19th century to prevent (or discourage) them from entering Canada after the Canadian Pacific Railway was built.

In one of his commentaries, which unfortunately I cannot find online, but which I remember distinctly, Harper talks about a “family friend” of his wife’s, an elderly Chinese man, who was imposed this tax. It was an anecdotal, familiar story about one Chinese man, who I am sure was a good and loyal “friend”, although Harper’s description made him out to be more of an employee, who struck a personal chord with the Harper family.

I was of course surprised and disappointed that a conservative Prime Minister would find it necessary to apologize about a decision made by his predecessors whose intention was to preserve Canadian sovereignty and society. Too many Chinese had entered Canada in those early years, taking jobs away from ordinary citizens, and encouraging their family members from China to join them in their new homes. Harper either misunderstood this, or felt it necessary to make this apology in order to maintain votes and support from the Chinese community for his newly formed government. I cynically think it was more likely the latter.

But, his anecdotal story of the good Chinese friend made his decision even harder to take. It is as though he (and his wife) were saying that previous Canadians were heartless and cruel by making life difficult for these Chinese who had contributed so much to the nation’s growth, just like their kind, nice friend here. He was tugging at our hearts to make his case more valid.

I think it was mostly Laureen Harper who encouraged this personalized aspect to the whole unnecessary decision. For all her declaration that she doesn’t involve herself in her husband’s decisions, she sure made an impact with her Chinese friend story.

Dirt bikes aside, she unfortunately is no toughened rancher’s daughter, but the usual liberal sentimentalist who couldn’t see the tradition her ancestors were trying to maintain, and the Canada they were trying to build.

More Lilacs

And more memories to preserve


Lilacs blooming in front of a Cabbagetown house.
Downtown Toronto looking like small town Ontario.


The building on the left became the center drawing, which evolved naturally into the repeat pattern design on the right.


Now, the building is gone, as are the lilacs, replaced by this monstrosity. I discovered about a year after I took the photo and did the drawing, that the original house was being demolished. I must have had a premonition of things to come, to have invested so much time on the original lovely, grey and black building surrounded by the lilac bushes. I blogged about this destruction, and called my post, "preserving memory".

But, it isn't enough to preserve memories.

Americans Don't Vote for the Freaky and the Foreign

Surprising upsets in American Idol and Dancing with the Stars

I was playing around with some of Adam Lambert's performance
photos. I noticed a few weeks ago he has these evil expressions while
he sings. I edited these photos and put a rather cheesy scary laugh to go with them.

I actually like the "Live Leak" logo (Live Leak is a video sharing website). Lambert's demonic soul is leaking out into the public - well that's how I see it anyway.

-------------------------------

I watched this season's American Idol sporadically until I started to realize that one of the singers was singularly strange.

Adam Lambert, who has a charming smile and can be quite soft spoken and "normal", lets out his true self when he starts singing. Besides his ghoulish scream, that he does for almost every song, his eyes lined with black kohl and his fingernails painted in black nail polish give away a little of his true nature. 

I think we underestimate evil, and evil spirits in this modern world. I think that is what Adam is. His lifestyle is apparently of an ambiguous sexuality. But, I don't even think he is as mundane as a worldly homosexual. 

For him, I think anything goes. Anything that makes him feel good. Listen to this really creepy song, and his whole attitude from beginning to end, entitled: "Feeling Good" (he starts around the 4:50 mark). I think he is bigger than a mere earthling who just wants to "express himself" and feel good. I think he is actually possessed by real evil, and his purpose is to project that evil into the world.

Lambert in miniature wings - no, they're not angel wings.

In ancient days (and earlier Christian periods), people understood evil. They didn’t let creatures like Adam near them. Now, we just think he's an artist, or a rock star, and that he's out to entertain us.

Left: Xerxes of Persia who was at war with the Spartans,
as depicted in the movie 300
Right: Adam Lambert in his true costume

No, his mission is bigger than that.

The useless judges of American Idol were his biggest cheer leaders. They were praising him week after week. In fact, it was Danny Gokey who had the real, earthy talent. And the final face-off ended up being between Kris Allen and Adam. Kris is the soft-rock type of guy, pleasant, self-assured and humble at the same time.

Kris won the show.

I later learned that both Kris and Danny are practicing Christians. Kris works in his church, and Danny is a church music director. And both are married, or at least Danny was recently widowed.

It is a relief to see that audiences didn't go for the freaky. And normal, pious Christian men still make the cut in this world. Or at least, ordinary people trust them over weird androgens like Adam.

The  tiny gymnastics Olympian, Shawn Johnson, an all American  girl, won over the overly sexual French small time actor Gilles in Dancing with the Stars. Another score for normality.

Apologies to my Readers

My Spelling Problem



I do think I'm a pretty good speller, and that I have a substantial vocabulary. And I don't think my grammar is that bad. Thus, I do apologize to my readers for my small errors, which I try to correct as I see them. I know "outrageous" is not spelled "outragious" or however I spelled it recently. And that "somethin" needs a "g" at the end. And so on. (Just to make myself feel better, I read somewhere that F. Scott Fitzgerald was a pretty bad speller - but do novelists count?).

I just think I would rather be looking at the composition of a visual image, and I really do dislike editing. If I ever become a famous writer (:-)), I will have to hire an editor right away. It's always been like this. I would rather look at the "shape" of the writing: beginning, middle and ending; how the different parts interrelate; how divergences can be rerouted to fit in with the original idea; and so on. I don't think this is laziness. Partly it is that I post almost immediately whatever I have written. Partly it really is to do with time. I admire people who can look at a sentence and edit it on the spot.

Blogging helps me to work out many ideas. The archive system allows me to file my posts by date, and thus track the evolution of my ideas. I can refer to those ideas and posts, and try to make sense of the world. For example, my twin blog Our Changing Landscape was created after I realized at Camera Lucida that Muslims (and liberals) were exerting huge amounts of influence on our culture. If this were to continue to its logical conclusion, we (or I) would have no art, architecture, design, music, literature, and all those "cultural" things that interest me, to blog about.

So, dear readers, please do have patience. And pay more attention to my overall concepts and ideas, rather than the detailed (but important) things like spelling. I will take more care of that as I continue to blog.

Now, if you see any errors in this post...

Update on Pop Culture Notes: Mousy Models

And their model treatment


Minority Models:

I have written about the type of minorities (Indian, East African, Black Americans) who get big modeling careers. I call them mousy models - I just find their looks nondescripts, and not beautiful. I actually think that the modeling industry is doing them a great service. They get high paying jobs and exciting careers. They get to travel everywhere, be on magazines and television shows, and have a strange adulating following. They, in short, have a great life.

Here is Iman, the Somali model, making outrageous claims about her professional life. She says:

One had the field nigger and the house nigger. There was this notion that I was chosen by white fashion editors to be better than the rest, which I am not. I did not like being thought of as the house nigger.

This is the thanks that the editors, photographers and fashion writers of Vogue, Elle, Glamour, Mademoiselle, and the list is endless since it also includes hundreds of obscure fashion magazines, get. They have put Iman on a pedestal for at least two decades. I am sure some mentioned her as a minority model, but none of them have treated her as a minority. In fact, she was a major pop culture icon.

Of course, I have my reservations about why the fashion industry invested so much time and money on her (and her "off spring" - Halle Berry, Liya Kebede and Padma Lakshmi). By having just the right mix of dark skin and Caucasian features, she appears familiar and exotic at the same time. I don’t know how her countrymen view her, but the Ethiopian model Liya Kebede would not be considered a beauty, let alone appear on fashion magazines. Iman, by Ethiopian standards, even less so. Thus her very presence on those magazines was actually a favor to her.

But, in a way, she is right. She was chosen for the benefit of white readers. She was a “house nigger” so to speak. But, the reality, as I have discussed above, is that she reaped a fantastically rich (monetary and otherwise) life, which she owed to all her white “slave holders”. But then she forgot something. Slaves, house or otherwise, never got paid.

Updates on Pop Culture Notes: Miss America

Conservative hypocrisy



Miss America:

Ann Coulter has an article on the Miss California debacle. I have blogged about my reservations about a young girl, who calls herself Christian, posing semi-nude to enhance her modeling career. Carrie Prejean defended herself by saying that she was:

- Young (seventeen at the time)
- The photographer took advantage of her

But, the reality is that she did it, and she seems to think it is quite acceptable to do these kinds of photo shoots.

Ann Coulter, in her article defending the smear campaign which Carrie has been getting on her stand against homosexual marriage, doesn't once talk about these serious issues which go against the grain of conservatism. Her whole article is her gripe against liberals. But, she is as witty as usual, and somehow manages to tie in burqas with semi-nude photos, as though disallowing (or frowning upon) the latter is a track straight to the former.

Conservatives have standards. And those who purport to be conservatives should aspire to standards, and not spend their days berating their Enemy Number One. By constantly running after liberals, they paradoxically start taking on those very values which they say they abhor. Carrie in semi-nude photos? If the liberals find fault in this then surely it must be OK, and we’ll defend it to death.

The joke is on Coulter. Liberals find nothing wrong with semi-nude photos. Liberals just don’t like semi-nude photos of conservatives. They call this hypocrisy. And this time, they are right.

Lilacs in Spring

Short-lived beauty

Photo of a road-side shrub of lilacs - not for the picking

Lilacs are my favorite flower. I'm not sure why except I love their clusters of small flowers, and the gentle lilacs and violets which make up their colors. There are white ones too, and they blend well with the purple shades.

They often grow in parks and as road-side shrubs, so it is tempting to pick them. But I never do. What if everyone started picking them? There would be nothing left to admire.

This is a repeat of a post I made a couple of years ago, which I titled: "Lilac Temptations".

Pop Culture Notes

Idols, Stars and Queens

Miss California on the spot

American Idol:

Danny is the true talent, the true singer. But he is stodgy and not very good looking.

Kris (with a K) is much cuter, a little like a laid-back rock star. His voice is above average, but I think it is his self-confidence that sets him apart.

Adam is the strange creature, who looks like a vampire on stage. When he sings, I almost get the impression that he will start to uncurl his tongue. He has a sweet smile before he starts singing, but is truly frightening once he sings.

And the fans eliminated...Danny, the true talent. People really do want the unusual and the good looking. Even the clueless judges find Adam the Vampire exceptional. This is how stars are made.

Dancing with the Stars:

This show can really be quite exceptional at times. The Viennese Waltz and the Quickstep are classics, elegant and refined, and the show does them one hundred percent credit. But, ballroom also includes those body-baring and body-shaking "dances": the Salsa, Rumba, Cha Cha and Samba (I don't think I missed any). These are truly embarrassing dances to watch.

But, that is the legacy of pop culture. Overt sexuality is always there, and even shows which could redeem this obvious tarnish revert to it at one point or another.

At times, all I can say is, "Strauss would be turning in his grave right now."

Miss California:

When Miss California's brave answer about defending marriage as between men and women was aired, all I could think was how beautiful she was. More so than the other contestants there. Then, awful photos of her started springing up, showing her half clothed, in quasi-revealing poses.

This of course doesn't sit well with her conservative, Christian (as she says) world view. But, once again, pop culture is so tainted that a young Christian girl feels it is alright to pose semi-nude, and speak of traditional things like marriage in public.

There is an artistic tradition of the female nude. It is imperative in art school to learn to draw the figure, unclothed. But, in drawings and paintings, there isn't that immediate and raw reality one gets from photographs. Paintings defuse the harshness of an exposed body, trying to give it something other than an erotic (or pornographic) effect. Miss California's photos, unfortunately, were not art.

The problem is partly exploitation. Photographers will do all they can to get very young girls (Miss California was 17 when some of these photos were taken) unawares.

But, the bigger question is why is her family letting her do this? And why doesn't she have enough prudence to not have such photos taken?

"Beauty pageants and modeling jobs demand this", is the response. That only means that beautiful girls like Miss California shouldn't be attending pageants and modeling sessions. I would make that clear restriction if I were her parent.

Even the now infamous Sarah Palin defends these photos, and of course the whole beauty pagaent industry. But then, she was the one who exposed her pregnant daughter to the world during the RNC.

Nadya Suleman, Modern-Day Magna Mater

Motherhood with exuberance


This is an article on the controverial Nadya Suleman who had all her fourteen children via IVF. Her last were a set of octuplets, which propelled her into the public's eye.

Nadya Suleman's life-long dream was to have as many children as possible. She married at twenty-one, but her eight years of marriage were fraught with miscarriages and fertility problems, and ended in childless divorce. She eventually saved enough money, about $100,000, to have her fourteen children through IVF. She worked for a number of years in a psychiatric ward, only to leave with back injuries after a patient riot, and received a worker’s compensation award of around $165,000. This additional sum duly went to finance and maintain the growing brood she was having through her IVF treatments. Her octuplets were born on January 2009, and brought the final tally of her children to fourteen. The octuplets catapulted her into the public’s eye.

Technology and the compliance of doctors assisted Nadya in her decision to have children. She used IVF to overcome her past reproductive problems. She found a willing donor to fertilize her eggs. And she went to an anonymous fertility clinic which didn’t ask too many question to perform the embryo implants, including the quasi-dangerous procedure of implanting her remaining six embryos that resulted in the unprecedented eight births (with two sets of twins).

Nadya, dubbed the Octomom, has been receiving constant negative reactions from the media throughout the news of her ocutplets. Newspaper op-eds, pundits and bloggers decried what they called her selfish, narcissistic behavior, some calling her evil and even crazy. The news in general portrayed her as a disorganized, unemployed, child-obsessesed woman who was scamming the government. Some of this information is incorrect, since for many years she lived off her $165,000 worker’s compensation and student loans (which she rationalizes she will pay back). The welfare she receives was just in food stamps and disability checks for three of her children. She has also lived with her mother and has the help of both her parents.

Still, since the outbreak of her octuplet news, enough people have quietly supported her to provide the necessary provisions for her expanded family. It is still not clear how much she receives for her various public appearances on television and her stories in tabloid magazines. Some calculate it to be in the hundreds of thousands. But whether it is raw fascination or some kind of empathetic curiosity, there is no doubt that she has garnered the public’s interest.

Nadia has a profound confidence that the most natural, the most normal, thing a woman could do is to have children. She just wanted lots of them. In her own honest way, she had things properly planned out. All the children are from the same donor (father), and she avoided “killing” her embryos, hence her insistence on having them all implanted during her final IVF. She admits that she made up the name for the babies’ donor father from the Bible, calling him David Solomon, two personalities who themselves are joined together in family. She even tried to change her own last name to Solomon, presumably to legitimize her actions and give her children a united mother and father, albeit in her fertile imagination.

Her social environment provided her with the means to fulfill her plan and she simply convinced many people, including her parents, the IVF doctor, the sperm donor (apparently there are two donors, although one never had the chance to fertilize her eggs), and a crew of hospital staff to follow her requests.

So what is it that repulsed people, or at least those in the media, who continue to denigrate her? It certainly is not the illegitimacy of her children. After all, the unplanned infants of teen mothers, children of single career women from anonymous donors, and even movie stars who expand their families without marriage, are acceptable. Her lack of funds was not at issue with her first six as she has indicated that much of her worker’s compensation provided for several years of upkeep. And as people are belatedly presented with her explanations, they realize that she only expected a manageable one or two from her final IVF, not the eight that resulted. Still, writers and commentators just wouldn’t give her any slack. Where did Nadya go wrong?

Close reading of many articles, shows one thing in common: Fourteen! is the exclamation point. Some (deep in their articles) have referred to the babies as “litter” or “freakish”. One writer described Nadya as a Third World Muslim Jihadist set to out-breed the American population, even though Nadya has indicated that she is a Christian and was born in America . A female writer talks about Nadya as “the maternal equivalent of a cat collector” with an “out-of-control female body”. And an op-ed columnist has called her behaviour “motherhood psycho kind of thing”.

Sarah Palin and her five, and the Duggar family with its eighteen, have received similar, although less vitriolic, reactions. Even ordinary families with more than four children have to deal with the derision of family and friends for having more than the expected two or three. It doesn’t matter if these children come from a single mother, or a happily married couple. It is their numbers that derails the critics.

Movie stars like Angelina Jolie, who has only three of her own, and Mia Farrow who has four, have more than doubled their children by salvaging babies from third world countries or providing homes for disabled children. Their fans find this expansion through “rescuing” (rather than birthing) a worthy and admirable behavior. Nadya’s fourteen, on the other hand, are all hers.

Modern elites, and especially feminist women, are disturbed by large numbers of children and by unabashed displays of motherhood. Life is surely more than just about children. But Nadya doesn't think so. She's not at all shy about hers, something which we don’t see with Jolie and Farrow. Nadya has a voluptuous post-natal body, unlike the scrawny and gaunt Jolie whom many incorrectly say she tries to resemble. In fact, a recent celebrity poll showed that Jolie was not a favorite mother, and lingers around number five on the poll’s results. Nadya is constantly hugging and kissing any one of her six children in abundant motherly love. She sings individualized songs to the eight that are still in hospital. Her quick mind is constantly thinking of her offspring, often coming up with unconventional ways to provide for them. And Nadya says things like, “I believe you expand your love [for each child]”, and “I’m trying to make myself bigger [for all fourteen].”

Nadya is a modest regeneration of Cybele, the Great Mother (of gods and men), the Magna Mater, the fertility goddess, whose story is full of the powers and secrets of womanhood and motherhood. Cybele is flanked by lions and worshiped by castrated men, and reigned over ancient cities. She has a strange resonance with the insouciant Nadya, whose breeziness camouflages a will of steel. Jolie tried to win this role, but her strange, detached demeanor and her lanky body makes her an unlikely candidate.

The avant-garde filmmaker Man Ray even made a surrealist film on Cybele with his L'Étoile de Mer, where he simultaneously showed his fear of her vagina dentata (toothed vagina) and his great admiration of her being, “Si Belle! Cybèle?”. This fear has been attributed by cultural critic Camille Paglia not only to that of castration, but also the fear of returning to the womb, of being engulfed whole by this great mother. André Breton, founder of the surrealist movement, has uncanny references to the modern-day Nadya in his novel Nadja, whom he depicts as some mad woman, which is how the media (incorrectly) has been portraying our current Nadya. He even cites a film The Grip of the Octopus in which film critic P. Adams Sitney says refers to the vagina dentata of Man Ray’s fears, the cloying, emasculating tentacles pulling unsuspecting men towards the all-engulfing female and back into the primordial world of the fetus.

Nadya’s men did indeed symbolically get emasculated by providing their seeds for her progeny without the sexual act. One has even publicly presented himself as her ineffectual benefactor, risking all humiliation to show his adulation, saying that he is the donor and father of her fourteen children (although according to Nadya, he is not). What real man publicly announces that he is a sperm donor? The actual donor keeps his distance, despite being aware of his role as father of fourteen children. One suspects that the overbearing Nadya would be hard to take.

Other mothers, like Angelina Jolie, the sperm-donor conceiving working women, and the five-time-mother Sarah Palin, are behaving a “Cybele-lite”, although it is clear that for them motherhood does not take precedence, unlike the home-bound Nadya. Their men, whether it is those anonymous sperm-donors, trailing partners like Jolie’s Brad Pitt, or even Sarah Palin’s accommodating husband Todd Palin, are forced to dance to their tune, like Cybele’s emasculated, immature men. Todd, despite his macho snowmobile treks, is forced to live around his wife’s political career and act as a babysitter when she’s not around, and Pitt is a partner in the adoption crime fulfilling the occasional donor-giving role to produce his biological children with Jolie. Both men have a strange youthful, adolescent air about them, despite their forty-odd years.

In a twist of media attention, which surprisingly didn’t happen sooner, Nadya, our reluctant Cybele, was asked if she would star in a pornographic film, where she would have eight different partners in eight different scenes. The gripping octopus from André Breton’s novel was coming to life. The focus of these “porn” films, nonetheless, seemed more on conceiving the progeny than on the erotica. Nadya will always be remembered as a mother first. Nadya coyly refused this offer, but one senses that she understood its subliminal and mythic nature.

Ordinary people, not distracted by indignant TV hosts and priggish newspaper columnists, do understand the iconic nature of Nadya the Octomom. One should read the tabloids, not the New York Times, to gauge Nadya’s popularity. Nadya the Octomom, mother of fourteen and Magna Mater, is a force of nature. She even had the intrusive and opportunist Dr. Phil, the TV mega-host and mega-man himself, momentarily ineffectual (a pattern here?) when he beseeched to his audience to support his accusations that “she has done wrong.” Nadya finally said “yes”, she did wrong, but not without telling us first a thousand reasons why she did right. She nonetheless got Dr. Phil on her side, securing his on-TV declaration that he will do all he can to help her children.

Nadya’s dealings with the labyrinthal, heathen, modern world has given her more than she bargained for. Now, it’s time to bring some propriety to her family. Throwing all myth and poetry aside, she should persuade, in her talented way, the Biblically named father of her children David Solomon to do the right thing by marrying her in a proper church manner, perhaps at the one she was filmed attending with her children. She might even convince the public that it’s fine to have more than two or three children – God provides in mysterious ways, as is happening to her. For all her mythic possibilities, I suspect all Nadya ever wanted was a house full of children with the right man to take care of her and them.

Death of the Grown Up

Diana West's book

Diana West with Filip Dewinter
of the Belgian Vlaams Belang in Antwerp. 

I just finished reading Diana West's brilliant book "The Death of the Grown-Up: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization". It is wittily written, and connects many unlikely, but under West's pen, quite convincing, dots.

She attributes this death of the grown up to the "birth of the teenager", which she says occurred around WWII. At this time, teenagers' sudden economic ascendancy gave them financial clout and independence to determined everything from pop music to fashion, and where they would go with their newly bought cars, without their parents’ presence, or even rules.

But I think her rather mildly argued idea that all this might have started during the War, rather than after, more original. Young boys, left behind without the role model of fathers, and with the changing roles of their working mothers, shifted their attitudes about maleness that made the supremacy of the teenager possible. She writes:

Many of these youngsters...had experienced the war as a period of uprootedness: "Shepherded by women, they moved through strange cities and new schools, with only their teenage scenes in which to make sense of the world" [writes Phillih H. Ennis, rock and roll historian].

And who gave them this teenaged centeredness? None other than Elvis Presley, who:

[W]as too young to have seen action in either World War II or Korea. As a result, he gained prominence as a peacetime idol independent of "the adults who guided the nation through the great war." [This gave Presley] a connection with the younger generation of children, kids whose fathers and older brothers had gone to war.

Those future teenagers, guided by rock 'n' roll and an independent capacity to make their own money, which they used for their own enjoyment including buying their own records, no longer needed (or more accurately, allowed) their parents to intervene in their lives.

West's last two chapters deal with our current war against Islam. She attributes our inability to face this war head on to our lost adulthood. So, a cultural abnormality becomes a civilizational disability, which may prevent us from standing up, like true soldiers, to fight this epic battle of our lives.

Ultimately, West gives us hope  that by identifying and recognizing the problem, as she has done so succinctly, we can be lulled out of our false childhood, and return to our normal and necessary maturity.

Catfish and Darwin

Can they really walk? And if not now, then when?

I found this image at Wikipedia

The folks over at the View from the Right, paramount critics of Darwinism, are on a roll. It started off as a semi-serious discussion of a photo of a fish on a highway (watch out for falling bricks, um road crossing jokes), and ended up unravelling some real possibilities about its evolutionary path from swiming to walking (across highways). Humor has its tremendous benefits after all. For one, it allows us to get out of the box, and become creative in our thinking.

Who said that Lawrence Auster has no sense of humor? Mary Jackson of the New English Review for one, who also had some (serious) things to say about Hirsi Ali and feminism. Maybe it is just that feminists have no sense of humor, and thus always seem to get things wrong.

By the way, the Google search tool at VFR is really good. All I had to do was type in "sense of humor" and Mary Jackson's quotes were up there amongst the top three. The top two dealt with Hillary's sense of humor (which, I'll admit I don't think really exists - but then again I may have Mary Jackson-style blinkers on), and relegated to second place is God's sense of humor - and a rueful one at that.

But, in all seriousness, the post on the fish on the highway is worth reading.

Humor and truth - a connection here?

The CBC's Kowtowing Clique

Guaranteed airtime, guaranteed paychecks

Lachance in front of the Chicago Theater

There really is a CBC world out there.

- Recently, failed musician-turned-CBC-host Jian Ghomeshi was interviewing the actor Billy Bob Thornton who came with his band The Boxmasters, and who explicitly asked that Ghomeshi not mention his acting career. It was a reasonable request. Thornton didn't want his acting to upstage his music. But, Ghomeshi, in true passive aggressive CBC style, started off by introducing Thornton as "an Oscar-winning actor." Thornton remained uncooperative throughout the interview, and the following day, cut his concert tour in Canada short. Of course, the blame fell on "those difficult Americans."

- Despite really low ratings, the CBC still heaves on several shows, for purely ideological reasons. One is The Little Mosque on the Prairie, another is George Stroumboulopoulos's The Hour, where he gets to interview, in his skewed leftist way, celebrities, politicians, writers and other contemporary figures of note.

- A former CBC host, Avi Lewis, now hosts an English language program on Al Jazeera.

- Former Editor-in-chief of CBC News, Tony Burman, was appointed managing director of Al Jazeera English last year.

- And the best for last. An enterprising Quebec singer, Bernard Lachance, who sells hundreds of his concert tickets by going on the streets and getting people to listen to him sing on CD (via earphones), put his performance on Youtube, with an invitation for Oprah to come to his concert at the Chicago Theater. He rented the theater for one night to perform his American debut concert using all his savings of $18,000 (Canadian, as he puts it).

Gail, Oprah's assistant, showed up while he was selling tickets in front of the concert hall and said Oprah would like him to be on the show the following week.

CBC news reported this event in a condescending and unimpressed manner. They didn't consider this man’s singular entrepreneurship, and made comments about hoping that his voice is as good as his hype (which it is). Canadian Television (CTV), on the other hand, had an upbeat, cheerful interview with him, and called him "a real inspiration to people."

That's the CBC in nutshell. Collaborators with the ideological left (and abusers of taxpayers' money). Kowtowers to Muslims. Insulters of guests. And never impressed with people who make their own money and their own destiny.

Addicted to taxpayers' money, they have formed their own clique of leftist Canadians who never have to worry about being fired. Now, doesn't that sound like some other place?

Mousy Models on the Cover of Vogue

Not too threatening

L-R: Iman, Halle, Padma and Liya

Liya Kebede, the American model of Ethiopian origin, is on the May 2009 cover of Vogue magazine, and that's supposed to be a good thing. After Michelle Obama and Beyonce, Vogue is apparently on a roll adding her to the roster of "black" faces.

I don't know how Kebede got into the modeling business. By Ethiopian standards, she is not even that good looking. She is too dark, and her features are too mousy. She looks more Somali than Ethiopian. In a normal setting in her homeland, she would be called cute (especially if she also had personality), but not a beauty.

But, in America, what they seem to want in their "ethnic" models is that they either go all the way to the extreme end of the spectrum, like the Sudanese model Alek Wek, or have just enough Caucasian features (small lips, straight nose, high cheekbones without being too strong) and dark skin to figure as an acceptable "black" model. All this without looking too Negroid. This is actually the look of the super model, and mother of them all, the Somali Iman. It is not surprising that Halle Berry, a mousy-featured favorite, is so popular. Another mousy but popular model is the Indian Padma Lakshmi. Liya, Halle, Iman and Padma could actually be sisters.

It is frustrating to look at these women as models of beauty, when all they're really doing is fulfilling some ideological need of putting non-white models, whose looks are not too threatening, on main stream fashion magazines.

Roberto Rossellini

His wide vision

Ingrid Bergman climbing the volcanic Mt. Stromboli
in "Stromboli", also known as "Stromboli, terra di dio"

I've written quite a bit about current movies, and, in my view, how they give us a compass for modern culture and its mores. But, that doesn't mean that I've neglected the classic masterpieces at all. Of course they are harder to find, but the inimitable Cinéclub of the Television Educative et Culturelle de l'Ontario Francais, simply known as TFO, provides periodic mini-festivals of well-known directors. I don't know why the English counterpart, TVO, showcases very few films, focusing instead on British TV dramas. Could it be that this is where the superiority of the French (vis-à-vis the British) is evident, with their advanced understanding of film as an art form?

We've recently had a fantastic cornucopia of Roberto Rossellini films.

It is extraordinary how many styles Rossellini incorporates into his films: from beautiful photographic and cinematic shots to pure documentary techniques; from revelatory psychological dramas to obtuse relationship derailments; and where the human is the prime subject, and yet the geography takes on a character of its own.

Rossellini says that his films take on God's aspect at some point, perhaps to guide the seemingly incongruent and unexpected decisions that his characters finally make to resolve their tensions and frustrations.

Carla Bruni Doesn't Live Up To Expectations

And opts for the irreconcilable causal and chic

She is Italian, but she should be dressing like a French woman by now. I never discussed Carla Bruni's fashion sense when she met up with Michelle Obama during their husbands’ NATO Summit meetings, and when both were being touted as fashion icons, because my focus was on Michelle. But Carla was hardly the Jackie Onassis they're now trying to make her out to be.

She was recently in Spain with Sarkozy during their first state visit to the country, and was upstaged by the Spanish Princess. Shame on France!

But, there is something strange going on. Leading ladies are coming out as dowdy (look at poor Mrs. Brown), overly casual (Michelle) and now Carla, who seems to want to have it both ways - casual and chic.

Left: Carla wearing a blue Dior dress
Right: Princess Letizia in Spanish designer Felipe Varela's dress

But, it doesn't work. Look at this blue dress for example, it is a good, interesting color, but why such flimsy material, which looks like it wasn't quite her size or just wasn't even cut right? It's supposed to be a Dior, but looks like a cheap, off-the-rack version. Then there's her evening gown, where she opts for black. What is it with black? Wasn't that at one time a color for mourning?

Then have a look at the Spanish Princess. Both her evening gown and the dress in which she received Carla are a league above her guest's.

Carla opts for black, while Princess Letizia
wears an aqua/silver gown with silver embroidery

I think the problem with fashion these days is that people don't want to look formal, well dressed and respectable. They want a little of that immature bohemian look, that free look, a little dishevelled and unconstrained, and perhaps in their opinion, young. So, how can you choose an evening gown and look "informal" and young at the same time? You cannot, really. You will just look insignificant, uninteresting and even, surprise, dowdy and old.

Something about well-cut, well-tailored formal clothes actually makes you more interesting, more dynamic, and even more youthful. Look at this lovely outfit, which I commented on here, worn by the Czech President's wife Livia Vaclav Klaus during the Obamas' visit to Prague, who despite her sixty six years looks radiant and lovely.