Illusions Spring Forth

To the men and women campaigning for delegate positions, and to those wishing to serve on Academic Senate, this is my plea to you: be sure of yourselves and the image you will be projecting because both will be preserved in the minds of voters as your true self.

To you all, I have bared witness to your mockery of the electoral process for too long and feel strongly that cheap chicanery, gimmickry, off-colour humour and divergent hackery will get you everywhere, but at the cost of substance and value. You few and proud will be responsible for subverting the tradition of vying for office, soon making complex campaigns and issues simple enough for the public tastes until all that remains is rhetoric pablum.

You will do this because you will insist, as so many have, to insult the process by removing all aspects of platform and the virtue of new ideas. You will emblazon posters with sharp colours and thick-wit catch phrases, perhaps highlighting baseless credentials or promising virtues you will be unable to uphold. Never once will you dignify your future office by stating your opinion or by making clear your strategy for improvement of infrastructure or policy. You will simply ask for your peers' votes in the mere hope that you are recognizable enough for broad appeal. You will not worry about work ethic or job qualification, nor will you be cognizant of issues your peers are facing. You will lack the foresight to peer past convocation. You will insult the intelligence of the electorate by assuming voters are dim and uninformed, with no desire to be greater than they are now. You will simply appear to disappear.

Dear campaigners, head my warning: you will find yourselves celebrating victory in a week's time and though it will feel sweet, its glow ripe and warm with acceptance, the fruits of your labour will be hollow. You will have succeeded without trying to challenge your voters and for that, you will have learned that stagnation is a virtue and that belief is illusory. You will be a fraud whose acclaim is for naught.

I challenge you, in the days remaining before election, to opine about something dear to your heart. I insist you be honest about your intentions about this campaign, that you answer the simple question: what do you want to get out of your role as delegate or senator? If you seek fortune, so be it. If you seek goodwill, be fair enough to state it. If you seek kinship, may you find it. Do not bear false witness, though, or judge your peers unable to decipher sleight of hand for underneath your prestidigitation may lie only stupidity or poor judgment.

And should you bear false witness, and claim yourself to be without merit, you will indeed rise to your own occasion and fail your peers in a most drastic way.

The Futurist

Had someone told me on my graduation day that in just a scant year and change I would return to full-time studies, I might have simply laughed it off, considering it foolish speculation.

I was, after all, resigned to moving onward and upward, my years at Nipissing University more than adequately preparing me for the work world. And for a time, the idea of settling into a career was not only feasible, but comfortable. True to form, I worked for the Canadian Red Cross for a year as a First Aid Coordinator while also maintaining ties to several charitable and campus-oriented organizations. I remained an active member of the university community, spent time with friends and graduates alike and, best of all, was paid for my time.

Unfortunately, even the best laid plans are wont to fail for one reason or another, sometimes because of systemic flaws or external functions, and sometimes because the laid for us never fits just right. After a few months of drudgery, the job became a series of actions done by rote – I was no longer challenged and there was little (if any) room for growth or creativity. At the same time, my friends were engaged at the cerebral and social levels, and though I was happy for their exploits, I was also jealous. I felt fraudulent, as though the expectations put upon me as a graduate – to be a success, and happy – were tangible items I had not the slightest clue of how to attain. Worse, my career was short-lived: I was under contract for the Canadian Red Cross, not a full-time employee and so when I met my one-year mark, I packed my belongings and slogged home. It was just as well though, I suppose; the thrill of First Aid sales and marketing had long lost its spark and it was now clear that training coordination was not a future I wanted.

Home life was, for a week, a welcome change. I would rise at my leisure, read the newspaper, shower for what seemed like an hour and find the day open to my whims. I would often go for walks, finding myself on Main Street peering through glass windows while sipping coffee. Suddenly – and for the first time in years – I had all the time in the world. It’s a dangerous feeling to know structure-less life, though. I became bored and began to apply for jobs of all variations – anything I thought would be suited to my experience and education – I ran the gamut from marketing internships to community organization. That too became an exercise in tedium when application after application was unanswered and even successful interviews profited little. I was in a rut.

The educational system in Ontario, for me and for many others, is based on merit and standardized testing. For my career at Nipissing University, I fared well because of my innovation and intelligence; although I will readily admit that I often had to catch up to others with assignment submissions, I graduated with enough standing to satisfy those around me. Of course, I naturally assumed my life as an alumnus would mean jumping into a white picket fence scenario, complete with a dog, a few kids and a two-car garage. I do not have any of those things. What I do have, though, is experience and the piece of mind to know I am not alone.

Stuff I'm Listening To..

Eloquently Yours

Today, Gen. Colin Powell, former Secretary of State in the Bush Administration, endorsed Senator Barack Obama for President. Powell's rationale is eloquent, beautiful and absolutely assured. Please do me the great favour of watching this video. It's 12:28 you won't waste.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2U63fXBlFo

Thanksglutton

Mark my words: it's all about the perfect pumpkin pie.  

At Thanksgiving each year, as it is with Christmas and to some extent Easter, the main feature is always a freshly baked, perfectly spiced pumpkin pie.  Sure, apple pie has its fans, and I count myself among them.  And yes, the bumbleberry fans might outweigh the lemon meringue pundits, but I find them particularly shallow.  No, Thanksgiving is the cornerstone of the now endless holiday season, and it brings with it turkey, tension and time well spent... with pie.  And excessive overeating.  In fact, so much is made of our ability to detach our jaws in order to swallow roasting birds whole that I shall christen this holiday "Thanksglutton," and smile contentedly.

All over our fair country, from Vancouver to St. John, men 

and women of all shapes and sizes will soon be gorging on turkey, chicken, goose, ham, lamb, stew, roux and perhaps even spaghetti and meatballs. Their bellies will swell, and they will clamour to the couch post-meal claiming to have eaten too much ... until the Running of the Pie is announced. If you've never been to Spain for the Running of the Bulls, pretend that pie is served in the same fashion. And pretend that when prompted for proportions, family and guests alike might bode for "two of three small pieces" instead of one healthy portion because they're watching their wait. Right. If you've seen I Am Legend, think of the ravenous zombie beasts that plague Will Smith and you'll have some idea about what this looks like.  It might just look like this:

President for a Day

I’m a man of lofty dreams. I once divvied up an imaginary $10 Million to friends and family, cutting each of them a piece of the pie from my new-found fortunate. Unsurprisingly, the theoretical inheritance they would receive caused some controversy, and I was frustrated with the limits of the money I didn’t have. Still, it caused me to think of my capacity for making good decisions because, while I do make an excellent armchair critic, I am often wary of my ability to use foresight to my advantage.

In the summer, I talked to Geoff Brown about his concept for advertising Nipissing University through social media marketing and disagreed that it would have any effect at all. Geoff’s idea was to have students blog about their daily lives and be encouraged to share their perspectives about campus news, a concept which I thought would never take off thanks to systemic apathy. However, as we can now attest, the idea worked – albeit fuelled by the promise of prices, I think, more so than the intrinsic value in documenting life’s foibles. Still, I am wary of some new initiatives simply because I strive to nurture the idea of this university as a unique and playful educational institution in Ontario. It’s not as entrenched in hippie ideals as Trent University, nor is it as shiny and new as the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. It is, for better or for worse, the site of close relationships: friendships strengthen with proximity, thesis students cozy up to professors and bawl uncontrollably, advocacy groups work firmly with administration. It’s something worth saving. And yet –

We are expanding in so many ways that I fear for our institution’s heart. The E-Commons Library seems promising, and its stature will do wonders to position Nipissing University as a home for research and academia. Ditto for the science wing, now extending to the edges of our beautiful pond. Still more promising is our athletics expansion, with a new recreation centre and hockey team close enough to make us all salivate. What’s our message? “Yes, it’s true: we don’t huddle next to each other in igloos, and we don’t subsist on beavertails alone, though they are delicious. Pass the moose testicle.” We are sophisticated. Mostly.

We are collectively striving to be seen, reaching our hands out in a vain attempt to be noticed by the rest of Ontario, when it might simply be easier to cash in our surroundings: “Nipissing University: Home of Ravenous Bears.” That’ll attract gawkers, I’m fairly sure. We could make it an annual thing to replace ‘Pie-A-Prof’ with ‘The President Wrestles a Bear.’ Bears could roam the halls, hunting for berries hidden in offices and for trout strewn across the Brown Lounge and across the windy stairs in a vain attempt to replicate salmon hunting.

Nipissing University is famous for straddling the line between 'folksy' and 'technologically advanced' and it's been in evidence since the iTeach program was introduced into the Bachelor of Education program. As our campus expands, so too does the number of students attending university, and the number graduating -- especially true since the required mean grade required to jump from third year to fourth has been reduced to 65%. It's a tough sell because it's essentially selling a lifestyle, and the two ideas are incongruous. We were absolutely poised to become the rebellious liberal arts university with a heart of gold, but technology has a way of distracting from the very things we were founded on: nature, colloquialism, kinship and beer. Nobody ever said it was easy to run a university, or to take the brunt for bad decisions. I'd like to think I could take a crack at the job though.

If I were President for a day, I'd convene a meeting with staff and faculty by Duchesnay Falls so we could all talk about our favourite things about the university while drinking hot chocolate and eating smores. If we lost a few stragglers on the trails to fervent lovemaking and wild cats, well, so be it: we'd form a stronger pack as Darwin would have wanted.

If I were President for a day, I'd sample each and every bit of food from Aramark and the Student Centre has to offer and make strong decisive action to rid the campus of overcooked, bland and bitter food. There would be an all-out war on the kinds of overpriced goods and services students pay each and every day, just because they decide to stay on campus rather than eat at one of North Bay's fine restaurants.

If I were President for a day, I'd thank all the support service staff, including janitorial staff, who are the base of operations for every other person in the building. And I'd give them all Nipissing University paraphernalia.

If I were President for a day, I'd make dancing to class mandatory, and pump out Motown, Blues and old rock tunes.

If I were President for a day, I'd dress in full Value Village regalia.

Lastly, if I were President for a day, I'd make a call to Canadore College and have them meet us out back for a Sharks vs. Jets-like scrap, just like the old days.

Cold Fatigues

It must be a universal truth with colds that the second you try to use both hands to accomplish a task, your nose starts running. And there's never a tissue around. Universal elements, I swear.

If you haven't yet, listen to Matthew Barber's "Easily Bruised" off his latest disc, Ghost Notes.

Cracking The Nut

When I was very young, books and the stories they contained allowed me to visualize worlds I only sometimes visited in my dreams. I saw the characters on the page strung together like code at first, unsure of how to handle the demands of abstraction, but later impressed by my ability to sink into a great story like burrowing myself into bedsheets. Our household had the first-print poetry volume Alligator Pie by Denis Lee and illustrator Frank Newfeld, its pages containing surreal images of fat alleymen, gigantic cakes and sewer alligators in a uniquely warm and Canadian fashion, the literary equivalent of a deep-fried beavertail. Lee's work, much like that of Shel Silverstein, formed a strange vernacular in my head and preceeded any knowledge I had of Dr. Seuss' work; to this day his poem "The Friends" reminds me of cascading sunlight in my front living room, me poring over the book while my parents chatted away in some other room.

My education in literacy continued with Beverly Cleary's tale about a mouse living in an inn, Ralph S. Mouse (1982), itself a follow-up to Clearly's previous entries about the talking rodent The Mouse and the Motorcycle and Runaway Ralph. The world Clearly created was populated by a late 1970s idealism, when schoolyard fights were common and the weary were comforted by the evening news. I would read Ralph S. Mouse under my bed in the hopes of catching my own mouse, though I can't figure what I would have done to fashion his vehicle.

Later came Judy Blume's Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and Jean Little's Little By Little, each detailing struggle; while Blume's book focused primarily on the complex concept of sharing love in a family, Little's book recounted her sometimes-troubled youth as girl losing her sight and her hold on all things intangible. Thanks to those authors, I think I began to think about my place in the world and started to realize I wasn't exactly the centre of attention, though I can't say I've completed voided myself of the habit of being self-centred. Along the way, I also caught books like The Cricket in Times Square, C.S. Lewis' Narnia Chronicles, classics like Ivanhoe and H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man, each time digesting entire nations, customs, lingoes and conundrums whole. It was, I believe, from Danny and the Champion of The World that I learned about the cruel nature of the poorest among us, and of course, how to stoke the ire of game-hunters by quietly making pheasants drunk on rum. Even at this young age, I was precocious enough to wonder if that would work.

Children's books are so often responsible for the way in which we perceive ourselves, and often they are chiefly responsible for elevating our self-concept, bolstering us with confidence, teaching kindness and perhaps to a fault, for imagining the world as though it isn't. Unfiltered, this imagination is a classroom raveled, its manifestation scolded, its lifeblood rehashed in parent-teacher interviews. And this saddens me. Who now extends his arm into the sky looking for Vernicious Knids, or holds tightly to his mother's hands when a game board erupts into violent mayhem? In the most important way, the work of Chris Van Allsburg (The Polar Express), or Mordechai Richler (Jacob Two-Two and the Hooded Fang) is in laying the seeds of chaos for children to keep dormant until adult doldrums reawakens it. Unfortunately, for many of us, these seeds are never in good enough shape to grow, however; we lose the ability to view Beatrix Potter the way we once did and we find ourselves only ironically amused by A.A. Milne. But the real impact these books have, on me and on you (I'm certain) is their ability to make us pare away distraction to make way for our self-reinvention. How do I know this?

It's evident in the language of Robert Munsch. If you chance upon a friend unmoved by Munsch's ode to his stillborn babies, Love You Forever, all may be lost. Let's all chime in...

"I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
as long as I'm living
my baby you'll be."
- Robert Munsch

The Influx

Though I would be hard-pressed to prove it, and though I am without numerical evidence, I have noticed a smattering of new bodies on campus. These students have seemingly made it their mission to fill the void left by our numerous Education students... and then some. It's become a chore to stake out a resting spot for lunch; without proper GPS equipment and maps, the race to claim table space is now an eat-or-be-eaten war. Luckily, I'm good with my elbows.