Review of 'Something Fierce:Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter' by Carmen Aguirre. Douglas & McIntyre. 277 pp.
Would you expose your child to the terrors of a life given over to revolution? Carmen Aguirre's parents did, and in the end it didn't seem to hurt her. The Aguirre family fled Chile in the l970's after General Pinochet overthrew the left-leaning government of Salvador Allended. But her mother and stepfather returned to Latin America. They joined the left wing underground that tried to overthrowm Pinochet.
"They killed him later because they said he was a terrorist," says a young woman about the famous revolutionary Ernesto 'Che" Guevara. Meanwhile in Latin America, one right wing dictator after another siezed power. They killed thousands of their own people, smashed unions, scrapped social programs, and abolished legislatures.
But 'Something Fierce' not only revolves around revolutionary dreams and counterrevolutionary reality. It also spins out tales of teenage romance, fights and love in the Agiurre family, and journey's into many Latin American lands. It is a very fine story that takes us back from time to time to Vancouver which Aguirre often refers to as 'cold and rainy'.She tells us one side of tghe l970's that has not been mentioned a lot.
Monday 28 May 2012
Saturday 26 May 2012
The Life of Bob Marley
"Marley" Starring Bob Marley and Ziggy.
Directed by Kevin MacDonald.
Like U.S. President Barack Obama, Jamaican-born singer Nestor Robert Marley, had a white parent and a black one. Obama's father was black, Marley's father was white. And like Obama, Marley never really knew his dad.But unlike Barack Obaba, who forged his dreams in the world of politics, Marley's world was the world of music. In his very short life of 36 years, Marley embraced many roles.includins
camoaigning for peace, womanizing, the religion of Rastafarianism, marijuana smoking, but abve all, reggae music. This music turned him into a superstar. By the late 1970,s, Marley was a worldwide icon.
Kevin' MacDonald's documentary shows us the many sides of Bob Marley and not all of them are nice.
"It was not fair to women," said one of Marley's many lovers said about his treatment of female lovers. One of his many daughters-he had 11 children with 7 women-complains about how much little love she got from her father
He was a rough man," says one of his sons, Ziggy Marley.
This fine film, with its scenes of rural and urban Jamaica seems to llack a focus. At times I wish an academic talking head would have popped up on the screen, and given the lowdown on Jamaican society.Still, many of
arley's children, fellow musicians and lovers speak on screen. Director MacDonald, has shown us many of Marley's sides and lots of his music. These make the nearly two-and-a-half hour movie well worth watching.
Directed by Kevin MacDonald.
Like U.S. President Barack Obama, Jamaican-born singer Nestor Robert Marley, had a white parent and a black one. Obama's father was black, Marley's father was white. And like Obama, Marley never really knew his dad.But unlike Barack Obaba, who forged his dreams in the world of politics, Marley's world was the world of music. In his very short life of 36 years, Marley embraced many roles.includins
camoaigning for peace, womanizing, the religion of Rastafarianism, marijuana smoking, but abve all, reggae music. This music turned him into a superstar. By the late 1970,s, Marley was a worldwide icon.
Kevin' MacDonald's documentary shows us the many sides of Bob Marley and not all of them are nice.
"It was not fair to women," said one of Marley's many lovers said about his treatment of female lovers. One of his many daughters-he had 11 children with 7 women-complains about how much little love she got from her father
He was a rough man," says one of his sons, Ziggy Marley.
This fine film, with its scenes of rural and urban Jamaica seems to llack a focus. At times I wish an academic talking head would have popped up on the screen, and given the lowdown on Jamaican society.Still, many of
arley's children, fellow musicians and lovers speak on screen. Director MacDonald, has shown us many of Marley's sides and lots of his music. These make the nearly two-and-a-half hour movie well worth watching.
Saturday 19 May 2012
overpopulation
Can t.v. solve the population problem?
A few months ago, the world,s population topped 7 billion people. A friend of mine, Doreen, has often worried about the soaring number of people on the globe.
"Unless you control the number of people on this planet," Doreen told me several times, "you can't solve many social problems."
Doreen is now mostly confined to her home in Kitsilano, and is now in her 80's. During her lifetime, the world's population has more than doubled. Doreen is right, by the way.
Every social project that takes place in the poor countries of the globe gets trashed by rising numbers of people. Land reform, medical care, stopping hunger, education for everybody, and so on, get defeated by the population bomb. More people means killing hope for people needing help.
The population bomb is a poor people's problem. Population keeps rising in the poor places of the world, not in rich areas. In Canada, most couples I know have two children or less. Single mothers I know have one child. Across the world it's the same. In other rich countries like Great Britain, France, and Germany, young couples are having less children.
But in poor places like India, Africa, parts of the Middle East, and parts of Latin America, many women just churn out one child after another. A Kenyan said on CBC a few years ago, "I live in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya and I have seven children." staggered. I knew nobody who had seven children.
Recently two friends of mine, Rodger and Lilli went off to Mexico City to get a rest from cloudy rainy Victoria. The massive number of people in Mexico City nearly overwhelmed them. When Rodger first went to Mexico City in l973, its population stood at 12 million. This is big number. Today that number has more than doubled to 26 million.
"I would not recommend that you visit Mexico City," Rodger told me on his return. "You would be overwhelmed by the numbers of people there." I told Rodger that I'd seen eight homeless people recently ine one day in Vancouver. By the way I visited Mexico City in 1970. Rodger told me, "I saw a million homeless in Mexico City. Eight homeless people seems like a very small number to me right now."
So can we solve the population problem. Governments have tried to China only allows one child per couple. Other governments have tried too. They've provided free condoms, given classes on birth control and so on. Not much of this seems to work.
But now comes the solution. It's called cable t.v.. For example, there's a billion pople living in India right now. In l948 when India won her freedom from Great Britain, there were 'only' 500 million Indians.For a long time, it had only one government-run t.v. network. But then things changed in the 21st century.
Tens of millions of people in India are now watching private t.v. stations on cable. "The steep fall in price of equipment and distribution," write Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner in their book 'Super Freakonomics', "means great swaths of India have been wired for cable and satellite t.v."
Suddenly due to these new channels, millions of Indian women, who have been terribly treated by men, woke up. They keep their daughters in school which they haven't done before. They stand up to their husband's abuse. And one way or another they forced their husbands to wear condom while making love. Or they started to use the pill. Or they stopped making love on demand. Or whatever.
"Rural Indian families who got cable t.v." say Dubner and Leavitt, "began to have lower birth rates than families without t.v." In the past I cursed Rogers and Shaw as they upped my cable fees. But who knows? Maybe the giant cable companies who squeeze money out of us every month may be great benefactors of humanity.
A few months ago, the world,s population topped 7 billion people. A friend of mine, Doreen, has often worried about the soaring number of people on the globe.
"Unless you control the number of people on this planet," Doreen told me several times, "you can't solve many social problems."
Doreen is now mostly confined to her home in Kitsilano, and is now in her 80's. During her lifetime, the world's population has more than doubled. Doreen is right, by the way.
Every social project that takes place in the poor countries of the globe gets trashed by rising numbers of people. Land reform, medical care, stopping hunger, education for everybody, and so on, get defeated by the population bomb. More people means killing hope for people needing help.
The population bomb is a poor people's problem. Population keeps rising in the poor places of the world, not in rich areas. In Canada, most couples I know have two children or less. Single mothers I know have one child. Across the world it's the same. In other rich countries like Great Britain, France, and Germany, young couples are having less children.
But in poor places like India, Africa, parts of the Middle East, and parts of Latin America, many women just churn out one child after another. A Kenyan said on CBC a few years ago, "I live in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya and I have seven children." staggered. I knew nobody who had seven children.
Recently two friends of mine, Rodger and Lilli went off to Mexico City to get a rest from cloudy rainy Victoria. The massive number of people in Mexico City nearly overwhelmed them. When Rodger first went to Mexico City in l973, its population stood at 12 million. This is big number. Today that number has more than doubled to 26 million.
"I would not recommend that you visit Mexico City," Rodger told me on his return. "You would be overwhelmed by the numbers of people there." I told Rodger that I'd seen eight homeless people recently ine one day in Vancouver. By the way I visited Mexico City in 1970. Rodger told me, "I saw a million homeless in Mexico City. Eight homeless people seems like a very small number to me right now."
So can we solve the population problem. Governments have tried to China only allows one child per couple. Other governments have tried too. They've provided free condoms, given classes on birth control and so on. Not much of this seems to work.
But now comes the solution. It's called cable t.v.. For example, there's a billion pople living in India right now. In l948 when India won her freedom from Great Britain, there were 'only' 500 million Indians.For a long time, it had only one government-run t.v. network. But then things changed in the 21st century.
Tens of millions of people in India are now watching private t.v. stations on cable. "The steep fall in price of equipment and distribution," write Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner in their book 'Super Freakonomics', "means great swaths of India have been wired for cable and satellite t.v."
Suddenly due to these new channels, millions of Indian women, who have been terribly treated by men, woke up. They keep their daughters in school which they haven't done before. They stand up to their husband's abuse. And one way or another they forced their husbands to wear condom while making love. Or they started to use the pill. Or they stopped making love on demand. Or whatever.
"Rural Indian families who got cable t.v." say Dubner and Leavitt, "began to have lower birth rates than families without t.v." In the past I cursed Rogers and Shaw as they upped my cable fees. But who knows? Maybe the giant cable companies who squeeze money out of us every month may be great benefactors of humanity.
Sunday 13 May 2012
Two takes on the l950's
Historians look back on the l950's and often say, "It wasn't a bad time in North America." They're probably right. Inflation and unemplyment remained low. And millions of people left dour inner cities and moved out to booming suburbs.
But not everything was hunky dory. It certainly wasn't for Marcus Messner, the main character in Philip Roth's 2008 novel 'Indignation'. For him the early 1950's was a nightmare. At first, working in his father's kosher butcher shop in Newark, New Jersey was great and Marcus thrived. But then Marcus goes to college, first at a local college, and then to escape his uptight father, to a college in Winesburg, Ohio.
At Winesburg College, Marcus , a Jew, runs afoul of a very Christian administration. Soon, he's on his way to the Korean War to fight the Chinese. Philip Roth's obsessions nearly always revolve around sex and being a Jew. 'Indignation' is no different in both respects. The paranoia in this book overwhelms a little too muc. But the l950's with its incredible anti-communism, and fear of nuclear war was a very paranoid decade.
"I was angered, I was humiliated," Messner recalls during a nightmare interview with the Winesburg dean. "I was resentful." Who wouldn't be resentful after being questioned the way Messner is? He certainly gets a grilling from the dean. 'Indination' is history as a powerful nightmare. At times Roth may be rigid in advancing the plot to a terrible ending. Still, he has written a powerful work.
Now we move north to Canada in the early 1950's. Back then if you said the words "Canadian film" most movie enthusiasts would groan and head for the exits. But this is no longer true. Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan and others have made many fine films.
Now comes 'Edwin Boyd: citizen Gangster', starring Scott Speedman, Kelly Reilly and Kevin Durand. Directed by Nathan Morlando, the film unfolds the career of Edwin Alonzo Boyd, a famous bank holdup robber in early 1950's Toronto. It's a good film but a little too dour.
Boyd is a bus driver who walks away from his job, He wants to be an actor and tries to get into the Lorne Greene Acting School. Greene was a famous Canadian actor back in the 1950's. But Boyd doesn't have the $45 entrance fee.
"He's been lazy all his life," hos father, a former cop, tells Boyd's hard pressed wife, played well by Kelly Reilly. Maybe, but Boyd, played by Scott Speedman is a veteran of world war two. The film suggests he has a social conscience and is outraged at the way some veterans were treated at war's end.
Still, crime desn't always pay and surely not on l950's Toronto. The film travels through a grim surly Toronto that's cold and often blanketed in snow. Unlike a l960's film like 'Bonnie and Clyde', bank robbing is not a glamorous but dangerous activity. 'Edwin Boyd" reminds one more of Robert Altman's l970's flick 'Thieves Like Us'.
The prison escapes can amaze you. But in the end you can't escape the law. Defiance in any form is doomed, which is a very l950's style message., for both Mark Messner and Edwin Boyd.
But not everything was hunky dory. It certainly wasn't for Marcus Messner, the main character in Philip Roth's 2008 novel 'Indignation'. For him the early 1950's was a nightmare. At first, working in his father's kosher butcher shop in Newark, New Jersey was great and Marcus thrived. But then Marcus goes to college, first at a local college, and then to escape his uptight father, to a college in Winesburg, Ohio.
At Winesburg College, Marcus , a Jew, runs afoul of a very Christian administration. Soon, he's on his way to the Korean War to fight the Chinese. Philip Roth's obsessions nearly always revolve around sex and being a Jew. 'Indignation' is no different in both respects. The paranoia in this book overwhelms a little too muc. But the l950's with its incredible anti-communism, and fear of nuclear war was a very paranoid decade.
"I was angered, I was humiliated," Messner recalls during a nightmare interview with the Winesburg dean. "I was resentful." Who wouldn't be resentful after being questioned the way Messner is? He certainly gets a grilling from the dean. 'Indination' is history as a powerful nightmare. At times Roth may be rigid in advancing the plot to a terrible ending. Still, he has written a powerful work.
Now we move north to Canada in the early 1950's. Back then if you said the words "Canadian film" most movie enthusiasts would groan and head for the exits. But this is no longer true. Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan and others have made many fine films.
Now comes 'Edwin Boyd: citizen Gangster', starring Scott Speedman, Kelly Reilly and Kevin Durand. Directed by Nathan Morlando, the film unfolds the career of Edwin Alonzo Boyd, a famous bank holdup robber in early 1950's Toronto. It's a good film but a little too dour.
Boyd is a bus driver who walks away from his job, He wants to be an actor and tries to get into the Lorne Greene Acting School. Greene was a famous Canadian actor back in the 1950's. But Boyd doesn't have the $45 entrance fee.
"He's been lazy all his life," hos father, a former cop, tells Boyd's hard pressed wife, played well by Kelly Reilly. Maybe, but Boyd, played by Scott Speedman is a veteran of world war two. The film suggests he has a social conscience and is outraged at the way some veterans were treated at war's end.
Still, crime desn't always pay and surely not on l950's Toronto. The film travels through a grim surly Toronto that's cold and often blanketed in snow. Unlike a l960's film like 'Bonnie and Clyde', bank robbing is not a glamorous but dangerous activity. 'Edwin Boyd" reminds one more of Robert Altman's l970's flick 'Thieves Like Us'.
The prison escapes can amaze you. But in the end you can't escape the law. Defiance in any form is doomed, which is a very l950's style message., for both Mark Messner and Edwin Boyd.
Sunday 6 May 2012
A Homeless Woman
"I avoided the word 'homeless' ", says brianna karp in this memoir by a homeless Californian woman. Brianna Karp didn't fit the classical profile of a hom,eless person. She slept in a trailer and not in the streets or a shelter. Still, she brings to life her juorneys, sufferings a disappointing love affair and her mother who was an oppressive Jehovah Witness. North America's uncaring conservatism is outlined in spades when Karp's erratic British boyfriend tells her that in his country, "Everybody gets free health care, homeless people go on a waiting list and get a free flat. " The Canadian homeless should be so lucky. Karp takes us into the lives of the U.S. of A.'s underclass and their desperate attempts to survive. Her book provokes not just pity for the homeless but anger over their condition.
"The Girl's Guide to Homelessness by brianna karp: a memoir. Harlequin.
"The Girl's Guide to Homelessness by brianna karp: a memoir. Harlequin.
More travel stories
'Bury Me Standing': The Gypsies and Their Journey' by Isabel Fonseca. Random House, Alfred A. Knopf.
Isabel Fonseca gives us three things in this book. First off it's a travelogue through post-communist Eastern Europe in the 1990's. Then Fonseca tells us a lot about the Gypsy or Roma history. Above all, she visits one Roma enclave, ghetto or community after another. Now that the Nazi Holocaust wiped out the Jews of Eastern Europe, the Roma are the one people left, that many East Europeans love to scapegoat, hate and often kill. Sometimes the book's details of hate and atrocities can depress you. But Fonseca's research and portraits of the Roma, always enlighten and inform.
"The Dharma Bums' by Jack Kerouac. Penguin Books 1976.
Jack Kerouac, the so-called 'King of the Beatniks' was when you look back at him, the ultimate tourist of North America. His books weren't really novels. They were travelogues. "This is typing, not writing" sniffedone of Kerouac's contemporaries, Truman Capote abot Kerouac's novel or book 'On The Road.'But who cares? Kerouac's books take us back into a world of cheap meals, cheap rents, carefree hitchhiking, casual sex and casual drug use.
'The Dharma Bums' that came out in the early 1960's, show Kerouac and his buddy Japhy Ryder, based on the real life poet Gary Snyder, journey through parts of California nd the Pacific Northwest. There's a lot of what can be called Buddhist Babble' here and hints of Kerouac's growing alcoholism, which helped kill him at the relatively young age of 47. Yet this 50 year-old book sometimes transports us into places of joy and criosity. "I exulted," he writes "to see a beautiful dry riverbottom with white sand and just a trickle river in the middle" Kerouac may have sometimes cursed the conformity of America. But he loved its scenic beauties too.'The Dharma Bums' is proof of that.
Isabel Fonseca gives us three things in this book. First off it's a travelogue through post-communist Eastern Europe in the 1990's. Then Fonseca tells us a lot about the Gypsy or Roma history. Above all, she visits one Roma enclave, ghetto or community after another. Now that the Nazi Holocaust wiped out the Jews of Eastern Europe, the Roma are the one people left, that many East Europeans love to scapegoat, hate and often kill. Sometimes the book's details of hate and atrocities can depress you. But Fonseca's research and portraits of the Roma, always enlighten and inform.
"The Dharma Bums' by Jack Kerouac. Penguin Books 1976.
Jack Kerouac, the so-called 'King of the Beatniks' was when you look back at him, the ultimate tourist of North America. His books weren't really novels. They were travelogues. "This is typing, not writing" sniffedone of Kerouac's contemporaries, Truman Capote abot Kerouac's novel or book 'On The Road.'But who cares? Kerouac's books take us back into a world of cheap meals, cheap rents, carefree hitchhiking, casual sex and casual drug use.
'The Dharma Bums' that came out in the early 1960's, show Kerouac and his buddy Japhy Ryder, based on the real life poet Gary Snyder, journey through parts of California nd the Pacific Northwest. There's a lot of what can be called Buddhist Babble' here and hints of Kerouac's growing alcoholism, which helped kill him at the relatively young age of 47. Yet this 50 year-old book sometimes transports us into places of joy and criosity. "I exulted," he writes "to see a beautiful dry riverbottom with white sand and just a trickle river in the middle" Kerouac may have sometimes cursed the conformity of America. But he loved its scenic beauties too.'The Dharma Bums' is proof of that.
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