Ends and Odds: The Ravings Of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Two Cheers For The Hiipies. Part Four by Dave Jaffe.

   Two Cheers For The Hippies. Part Four/




         Many people didn't Like the hippies. Yet business people saw money to be made in this new group. Businessmen produced and sold bright psychedelic posters. Music companies produced rock music by the Doors, Janis Joplin, and Big Brother And The Holding Company. Drug paraphernalia was soon being sold. Meanwhile millions of men and women grew their hair long, practiced what mainstream society called 'free love',and for a time scorned marriage and lived openly with a man or a woman. The changing lifestyles were in some ways a peaceful revolution.
     Then in October 1973 the Oil Producing Exporting Countries threw the Western world a curve ball. In the wake of the Israeli-Arab 1973 OPEC countries raised the price of oil  400 per cent .This price hike set off a worldwide wave of inflation . "In France," wrote economist Robert Heilbroner, "prices rose by 75 per cent in the five years after the OPEC oil shock." In Italy, Heilbroner pointed out, prices rose by 125 per cent, while in Britain prices soared up by 185 per cent.
       "Around the capitalist world production began to fall and unemployment began to rise. In the U.S. the G.N.P. fell 9 per cent  and joblessness rose by 85 per cent." The same trends hit Canada too. The affluence of the 1960's which did exist side by side with large pockets of poverty, seemed to vanish. Now the live and let live ethic of the hippies gave way to a far harsher competitive ethic.
     Fifty years after Jack Newfield wrote his article on the hippies in the 'Village Voice' much has changed. Newfield died many years ago. So has Jerry Rubin. 'The Village Voice' has closed up  shop along with many other countercultural papers, Across the world tyrants and tough rulers like U.S. president Donald Trump. China's Xi Xinping. Russia's Vladimir Putin and other heads of state rule the roost. Yet despite all this, the hippies have left their footprints on the sands of time.
      Casual sex, casual dress, and casual drug use that the hippies pioneered, has been embraced by many people. Marijuana, the drug that hippies openly smoked , is now legal in Canada, Uruguay and many American states. Thousands of young unmarried couples, live together just as hippies did. The hippies that so many people scorned and sometimes even attacked did  help make parts of the world better places to live in.
   "Give flowers to the rebels that failed," said some early 20th century progressives. The hippies also pushed for what they called "Flower Power." They may have failed but they also in part succeeded.
 They should be remembered.

Ends and Odds: The Ravings Of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe: Two Cheers For The Hiippies - Part Three by Dave Jaffe

    Two Cheers For The Hippies by Dave Jaffe: Part Three




       " Peace and Love' may have been the motto of many hippies. Yet there were dangerous moments in the hippie world too. Bikers often visited the hippie world and bullied these young people. Some of the young  people were strung out on amphetamines or crashed after bad acid trips. Free clinics staffed by volunteers sprung up to help the injured and sick people.
     Meanwhile the great rebellions of the late 1960's provoked a reaction from conservatives. Police and National Guard people shot and killed more than 160 people in the riots that erupted after Martin Luther King Junior was killed in 1968. Police attacked demonstrators and others who came to Chicago in 1968 to protest outside the Democratic Convention. Then police raided the headquarters of Black Panthers across America in 1969 and shot and killed Fred Hampton in Chicago.
      In Berkeley California students and street people clashed with police forces in the summer of 1969 as the young people tried to defend "People's Park' from the local government. The National Guard killed four student demonstrators at Kent State University in the spring of 1970  and three students at Jackson State University. These students and tens of thousands of others were protesting the American invasion of Cambodia.
     "Just watch me," Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau told t.v. reporter Tim Ralfe in the fall of 1970 when Ralfe asked the p.m. how far he would go to suppress the terrorism  of the Front de Liberation de Quebec or the F.L.Q. In the wake of two F.L.Q. kidnappings and one murder, Trudeau announced a War Measures Act in October1970 that embraced the whole of Canada. Hundreds of people had their homes searched and many ended up in prison for a few weeks undergoing interrogation by police.
      The cadres of the F.L.Q. like many other hard core left wingers scorned the hippies. Francois Simard a former F.L.Q.'er wrote a book on his political journey into and out of terrorism. In his memoir Simard trashed the hippies. Another man but this time from the richest one per cent  swung to the right in the wake of the rebellions of the 1960's.
   Nelson Rockefeller, the ultra-rich governor of New York State or"Rocky" as Rockefeller was known, had at one time supported single payer medicare  and a woman's right to an abortion. .He had also voted to build a state wide system of hospitals and a number of universities. In Albany which was  the state's capital, massive buildings went up that helped grow support for Rockefeller among the unionized members of the building trade unions. Now prisoners in the state prison at Attica rebelled in 1971 and seized guards as  hostages.
      The prisoners invited journalists and political activists onto prison grounds. "You're doing a great job buddy," Rockefeller told journalist Tom Wicker who phoned the governor and pleaded with him to come to Attica to defuse the rebellion. Instead Rockefeller sent armed forces and police to Attica. The police and others shot and killed three guards and dozens of prisoners. The Attica uprising was the last rebellion of the 1960's and 1970's and it was crushed.
     Then a few years later Rockefeller brought in a sweeping anti-drug law that sent thousands of
   young mostly African-American men to prison. This law was a precursor of President Bill Clinton's 'Three Strikes And You're Out' law that swelled the ranks of prisoners across America in the 1990's and beyond. In any case the era of liberalism that helped fuel the number of hippies and an era of liberalism in the U.S.A. was coming to an end. 

Ends and Odds: The Ravings Of An Old Man. "Two Cheers For The Hippies" .Part Two by Dave Jaffe.

  Two Cheers For The Hippies: Part Two by Dave Jaffe.




        The hippies produced new things to get their views out. So-called 'underground papers' written by hippies surfaced all over the United States and Canada. Singers like the Beatles and Bob Dylan were already popular when the hippies appeared. Then in the mid-1960's, new groups like The Byrds, The Grateful Dead, Mock Duck, The Doors, The Jefferson Airplane, The Mamas And The Papas and Big Brother And The Holding Company popped up to sing and create new music for this new demographic.
    Some of the mainstream media launched attacks on hippies. They headlines and front paged stories on the danger of L.S.D. and also the dirt that hippies lived in. L.S.D. was a dangerous drug. "I never saw anybody get better using L.S.D.," said Tom Clark, a British-born immigrant to Canada in the mid-1960's. "Yet I sure saw some people's lives get worse." Yet at the same time that some papers were demonizing L.S.D. users, over 20,000 Canadians were dying every year from smoking cigarettes. Another 6,000 to 10,000 were facing early death by drinking alcohol.
   While some Canadian papers talked about the dirt that hippies lived in, they said nothing about the terrible living conditions of First Nations people. Hypocrisy ran rampant when some Canadians talked about hippies.
    Books on the hippies rolled out of the publishing houses. Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test" became a best seller. Pierre Berton's "The Smug Minority" and Nicholas Von Hoffman's "We Are The Children Our Parents Warned Us Against' were read by many thousands of people.
       It was in some ways a magical moment. A consumer driven world was being slowly undercut by a group of youngsters who didn't want to join in the rat race. Yet all of this soon ended. Hard core progressives had never liked the hippies. "I had no time for the hippies," said the late Sandy Cameron who was a Vancouver-based activist. Yet police and governments were a far more threat. Police arrested dope smoking hippies and threw many of them into prison after bringing these young people before tough judges. Police often harassed sellers of underground papers and charged them with selling obscene material.
    "I would spend sometimes a whole day in court rooms," the publisher  of Vancouver-based "The Georgia Straight" Dan McLeod said recalling days when he first started publishing the paper.

Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old man by Dave Jaffe. Part One of 'Two Chhers For The Hippies.

    Two Cheers For The Hippies' by Dave Jaffe. Part One.






              In 1967, journalist Jack Newfield wrote a story on the hippies that appeared in 'The Nation' magazine. "Two cheers for the hippies" wrote Newfield, who was a left leaning journalist. Back then he was a regular writer for the alternative New York based paper 'The Village Voice'.
     Newfield liked the lifestyle of the hippies. He was glad that these mostly young people had cast off the trappings of the middle class. Yet he couldn't endorse their contempt for political issues. Back in 1967 in the United States, African Americans struggled for social justice. Young American men were being drafted into the U.S. armed forces and then shipped off to fight, kill and die in Vietnam.
     An American anti-war movement was urging young American men to defy the draft. "Women should say yes to men who say no," said folksinger Joan Baez. The hippies rarely joined political demos. Tens of thousands of young hippies dropped out of suburbia - at least for a time. They swarmed into places like San Francisco's Haight Ashberry district, Yorkville in Toronto, New York City's East Village and the Kitsilano area of  Vancouver. Here they crashed or lived in what they called "pads". They smoked marijuana, and took L.S.D. or Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, which they soon called "acid". They let their hair grow long and dressed in colourful clothes. They scorned the working majority that they called "straights".
      "Tune in, turn on and drop out," said one of the chief advocates of dropping  out and  taking L.S.D., namely Timothy Leary. Jerry Rubin back then, was a young uptight left leaning politico. Rubin was a post graduate student at the university of California in Berkeley. Berkeley sat right across the San Francisco bay from Haight Ashberry. "In the midsixties," Rubin recalled, "came the emergence of the hippies, dropping out of school, getting high on grass and acid, communicating with God and creating a new lifestyle."
    Rubin scorned liberals like Jack Newfield but the hippies impressed him. He joined them at their grand gatherings called 'Be Ins". Rubin then moved to New York City to start a new revolutionary group called "yippies". Yippes fused the hippie life style with revolutionary politics.

Ends and Odds: the Ravings Of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. What Women Said To Me.. Part Two.

   What Women Said to Me by Dave Jaffe. Part Two.




         My blog that you're reading also angered some women and they let me know it. "Stay away from me," one woman in her late 50's told me one day the street not far from where I live. This woman had read one of my blog sentries and it outraged her. She told me that I was anti-American and "full of hate and anger." I said nothing back to her except to tell her that I had no interest in talking to her ever again.
     I put these outbursts by women down to the feminist movement. Now let me make two points about what and why these women said what they did. Most of what they said about me was true. I am an eccentric or "weird" if you want to use that word, I often copy or "appropriate" other people's work as fine art aficianados often say about duplicating  other people's art products. At other times I have been  pompous and overbearing.
      Also the feminist movement is still around and that's good. It has liberated millions of women around the world and opened to them opportunities that never were there  before say, 1975. Yet at the same time many women see the new power of women as an opportunity,as they used to say, "To let it all hang out." They now feel no restraints in saying what they don't like about men's actions.
       "Women are sugar and spice and everything nice," some people used to say in the 1950's. This stereotype along with a whole lot of other stereotypes about women is now buried in the garbage cans of history. This is a definite step forward. Yet now as an old man I stay away from arguing with any woman.  I've taken enough insults in my life. I don't wish for any more of them.
     My treatment of women in my youth has come back to haunt me, and that I believe is only fair.

Ends and Odds: The Ravings Of an Old Man by Dave Jaffe. What Women said To Me . Part One

   What Women Said To Me by Dave Jaffe. Part One.




        Once upon a time I was an abuser. In fact from my mid teens to my early 30's, I abused women. I never raped, abducted, stalked or incested women. Two or three times I touched and kissed women when I shouldn't have.
     Still, no woman then or now was or is any danger from me. Yet I did say some horrible things to women. Then I went into therapy and tried to gag my abusive mouth. And for the most part I did succeed. Still, as the old  saying goes, "What goes around comes around."
      In the early 1970's the second wave of feminism surfaced. I remember when 25,000 women walked out into the streets of New York City in the summer of 1970 to demand equality. I thought that this was a great event which did move me. At first I supported this movement totally.
"Feminism is a great thing," I told quite a few people.
     Yet the I ran into some young feminists who were extremely abusive. I just responded to them the way the treated to me. I was abusive as they were. "You were crazy back then," one of my co-workers in the early 1970's told me years later. He was right. Back then I was a short, quasi-psychotic very muscular man who was both sad and angry and potentially violent.
     Then in 1975 I started years of therapy. I emerged from therapy as a much thinner, quieter person but full of anxiety. Now I met women who may have seen me as a potential verbal punching bag. They said horrible maybe true things to my face and I didn't argue back.
    "Mister," one visual artist said, "all you do is copy. You don't have an original bone in your body." Another woman, a powerful art bureaucrat didn't like me at all. And she let me know it. "You are one of the most pompous and derivative artists I've met," she said.
   Outside the art world I met other women who insulted me. "You are weird," a neighbor of mine in a housing co-op said. "You are the weirdest person I've ever met." Her view of me, she told me, was held by most people in the co-op. She was probably right about me. I'm an eccentric and always have been.
   In the religious world women also took verbal pot shots at me. One woman in her late 40's erupted in a fury when I put down the late American evangelist Billy Graham. "How dare you insult Billy Graham,"  she just about screamed at me. "This man was my idol when I was young. I listened to his sermons and loved them."
   She went on for about ten minutes praising Graham and trashing me. I just smiled all the time as her rant unfolded. A few months later I left the worship house where this woman unloaded her anger on me and never went back. Her outburst played some part in me leaving that religious place.

Ends and Odds: The Problems of Men by Dave Jaffe. Part Two

    The Problems of Men. Part Two by Dave Jaffe




   Here's other reasons why men are dying so quickly and far more often than women.
    Once upon a time I wanted to write a book called 'Why Men Climb Everest and Women Don't'. Yet times changed and to-day some women do climb Everest. Still, far more men risk their lives doing dangerous things than women do. Every year several men die in skiing accidents by skiing in out-of-bounds areas for instance.
    In many countries women volunteer for the armed forces. Yet most armies anywhere are chockfull of men, not women. Men are also far more likely to work at dangerous jobs. They drive trucks, build homes, drill oil wells, dangle dangerously from sky high cranes and glide over cities in helicopters. These are acts that kill many men every year. Of course women nowadays do these things too. Yet far more men take up these tasks than women.
      Men are also far more likely to use opioids than women. So they made up most of the 4,000 opioid users who died in Canada in 2017. "The majority of opioid users are men," one B.C. health care worker said. "That's true in Vancouver and in other places too."
     We must save men from premature death, deadly diseases and criminal activity. I'm no expert so I don't know how to carry out such a task. Yet one thing I know: Saving men is just as important as saving women. All people's lives matter.

Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter One of "The Problems Of Men.

   The Problems of Men by Dave Jaffe. Part One.




      I sometimes worry about men and the problems we face. Yet let's be clear here. I'm not going to launch into anti-feminist rant. In the last 50 years or so, women have pushed themselves into the public conversation. Many women have become lawyers, doctors, ministers of the church, bus drivers, carpenters and top class athletes. And all of this is good.
     I favour #MeToo and #Time'sUp. Yet sometimes men and our fate worry me.
      Men for one thing die at least six to seven years before Canadian women do. Men are far more likely to be killed by other men than women are. In 2015 over 600 Canadians were killed mostly by men. 150 victims of these homicides were women. Yet over 450 were men. Men aren't only three times more likely to be killed than women. They're also far more likely to 'be' killers. Close to 90 per cent of all violent crimes are done by men.
     Most crimes period are done by men. Not only that. Men are far more likely than women to die in car crashes, suffer from physical and mental diseases and kill themselves far more often than women. "Women try to kill themselves more often than men," a mental health worker tells me. "Yet it's  mostly men who do away with themselves. And they don't make any mistakes getting the job done."
   Men are also far more reckless than women wherever they are - off the job or on it. "Women get it," a big construction foreman tells me. "They don't have to be told to take precautions on the job. They always look out for themselves. Men are a totally different story."
    Women may complain about being constantly looked at by men. Yet being under someone's constant gaze has some pluses. Because women from a very early age realize that men are looking at them, they take better care of themselves. In the community centre I go to, the aerobics classes are chockfull of women. You can't find too many men sweating and straining in these crowded places. They're ususally playing pool or bridge. As a result they die as I've said, at a much younger age than men.

Ends And Odds: The Ravings Of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. How Abstract Expressioinsts Help Me Survive Old Age - Part Five.

  How Abstract Expressionists Help Me Survive Old Age.  Part Five by Dave Jaffe.




      There were quite a few male abstract painters in the U.S. in the late 1940's. Of course there were  some women abstract painters too. Yet if you turn to an art history book written and /or published before say 1980 you won't see too many or any women abstract artists in those books.
    Linda Nochlin, the American art historian wanted to find out why women weren't included in most art histories. "Why have there been no great women artists?" Nochlin asked in the title of her 1971 essay. Nochlin reeled off in her essay the very many obstacles women artists have faced for centuries. The obstacles ranged from not being allowed into  on what were called" life drawing classes" or places where there were nude models, to having no rich powerful patrons who would buy the women's paintings. Many men did have these and other advantages.
     Since that groundbreaking essay, many women art historians have re-examined the artistic past and have re-written art history. Women who were totally ignored have been liberated from the silence about women artists. In the late 1940's and into the 1950's, artists like Grace Hartigan, Elaine de Kooning (the wife of Willem De Kooning), Helen Frankenthaler, and Lee Krasner who married Jackson Pollock, were painting and exhibiting their work. Then as Claudia Roth Pierpoint  pointed out in a recent New Yorker story, along came pop art and these women disappeared from the art scene.
      Yet in the early 1970's a second wave of feminism sprung up and many forgotten women artists were re-discovered like those I mentioned above along with  many women.. Nochlin's essay was part of  this re-writing of art history.
       If American women were erased or never mentioned in art history books, so were many others. Most American art history books rarely mention Canadian artists whether male or female. Artists in Canada like Gita Caiserman-Roth, Jean Paul Riopelle, ,Harold Town, and Jack Shadbolt painted abstract paintings yet are rarely if ever written about in most American art histories. Other artists who painted realistically don't even get noticed. "Portraits," Willem de Kooning once said, "are pictures that girls made."
      In any case I draw abstract pictures based on the paintings  that American abstract male artists did many years ago. Soon I may turn to the works of Canadian women abstract painters, and use their works as a take off point for my work. But don't blame me for may male fixated work. I'm just following the art historians of the past. These men and women unfortunately didn't recognize women artists until very recently.  

Ends and Odds: The Ravings Of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. How Abstract Expressionists Help Me Survive Old Age. Part Four

  How Abstract Expressionists Help Me Survive Old Age - Part Four .




     Modern abstract paintings probably emerged in about 1910 or a little later. Artists like Vassily Kandinsky, Sonia Delauney or Gabrielle Minter may have been the first modern abstract painters. Yet whoever was the first of these artists there's always been a problem with abstract art. Many parents look at abstract art and say, "Oh my five year old could do something like that."
       Whether this is true or not, I deal with that objection or comment by doing a line drawing over the abstract work that I first draw. In other words there's two stages to my art work. First, I do an abstract drawing. Then on top of my abstract work I do a line drawing of a landscape or a portrait or whatever. My line drawings show some skill and I don't think any five year old and could draw as well as I do. Yet even here I'm willing to admit that there may be out there some very young artist that could put my work to shame.
      After all, I've met many young teenagers who can do better art work than I can. In any case the American abstract painters who surfaced in the 1940's and later have impressed me. This doesn't mean that they're the only ones that have. The Dutchman Piet Mondrian, the Quebecois painters like Paul Emile Borduas and Jean Paul Riopelle, and French artists like Henri Michaud  were also very good abstract artists..
       Still right now the American abstract expressionists have made my life a lot more fun and also made it easier for me to do art work. They've given me a reason to go on drawing and painting. And I thank them for the work they did many years ago. They've been an inspiration to me as I wander through old age.

Ends and Odds: The Ravings Of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Part Three of 'How Abstact Expressionist Painters Help Me Survive Old Age'

    How Abstract Expressionist Painters Help Me Survive Old Age - Part Three by Dave Jaffe.




     There was a hidden story to the rise of the abstract expressionist painters in the United States that only emerged in the 1980's. The reason for the sudden fame and exposure of these artists to the American public and then to people outside the U.S. was due to the Central Intelligence Agency. In the late 1940's when these painters were creating their work, the U.S. had become the world's greatest power. It was locked in a struggle with the Soviet Union for world supremacy.
       The communist ruled Soviet Union government led by Josef Stalin loathed abstract painting and probably shipped abstract artists to the Gulag. Stalin and his communist comrades preferred a s dull socialist realism. The U.S. government proclaimed itself 'The Leader of the Free World'. Abstract painting was allowed in the U.S. and its existence showed that the U.S.was truly free, unlike the Soviet Union.
     The Central Intelligence Agency used all the media of the day to popularize abstract expressionism. Photo journals, documentary films, newspapers, radio and the now emerging television stations gave space and time to these abstract artists. Yet it was the CIA that enlisted the media to do this job. "In this way," writes art critic John Berger, "a mostly desperate body of art was transformed into an ideological weapon for the defense of individualism and the right to express oneself."
      I knew all this back story when I started drawing and painting over 30 years ago. Yet I found that these abstract painters were really easy to copy and to make paintings and drawings influenced by their work. Also I did try to work out drawings using paintings by other artists who did abstract work. Yet I found out that the paintings by people like Philip Guston, Mark Rothko and Richard Diebenkorn (who came along a little later than the abstract expressionists) were easier to use and made a greater impression on me than any other abstract painters.
      Of course the U.S. painters weren't the first abstract painters. Abstract painting has been around for many years. And the first modern abstract artists came along at around 1910 or a little later.

Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Part Two of "How Abstract Painters Help Me Survive Old Age'.

   How Abstract Painters help Me Survive Old Age - Part Two by Dave Jaffe.




    One talented visual artist summed up my visual art this way. "Mister," she once said, "all you want to do is copy." I can only admit she was right. Nearly every day after I wake up I read for  an hour or so . Then I thumb through a book on modern  art. In this book or a second one I have, I search for an abstract painting by one of the American painters that are grouped under the title of 'Abstract Expressionists'.
   Usually I hone in on paintings done years ago by artists like Philip Guston, Mark Rothko or Franz Kline. Then I paint or draw a variation of one of these artists' paintings. I often  use coloured pencils that I can easily change with an eraser. In the second stage of my art work I look at some of the photographs I've stored away in files, or I browse through books on photography that sit on my bookshelf. I select a photo and then do a line drawing over the abstract image. The drawing is based on the photo I'vec hosen. Yet I also change the photo from the original as I draw or paint it.
      As that visual artist also told me years ago, "You don't have an original bone in your body." Once again this lady hit the nail one the head. Yet how easy it is to do a drawing with my method. Years and years ago when I first started drawing with coloured pencils it would take me hours to complete a poor drawing. I would go to parks on Vancouver's west side and if the sun shone, sit down in the park and try to capture the scene around me.
    I nearly always failed and after a few tries at doing a picture of part of the park,  I was ready to give up drawing with coloured pencils. Then I came across a book on Andy Warhol, the famous painter of Campbell soup cans and many other things. As I read about Warhol's life I realized that most of his paintings were based on other people's photographs. "Uh, I dunno," Warhol once told  a journalist who kept asking Warhol why so many of his paintings and silk screened works dealt with death and destruction.
     I don't know the reason for Warhol's fascination with electric chairs, car crashes, paintings of a grieving Jacqueline Kennedy and the by then dead Marilyn Monroe. Yet I quickly flashed on to the fact that Warhols's  work was based on other people's photos. "Why can't I do the same thing?" I asked myself and quickly concluded that I could. Then I realized that I still needed to find a painting style. A few years ago I came across the paintings of the abstract expressionists, and started to do works based on their styles.
     Then one day a few months ago, I realized what I had to do. As other writers have pointed out, it was the "Aha moment" when it seemed as if a light bulb had gone off in my head. Now I realized that doing drawings based on other people's works was really easy. I've been following this method now for over three months. It usually works out very well.

Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter One of: How Abstract Painters Help Me Survive Old Age.

How Abstract Painters Help Me Survive Old Age . Chapter One




       There were ten of them, or at least I counted ten of them. They were all white males who flourished in the 1940's to the 1970's. They painted abstract paintings that made them famous, and they were called "Abstract Expressionists. "Jackson broke the ice," Willem de Kooning one of the ten said about the most famous of the group, namely Jackson Pollock.
       Pollock was a charismatic brooding figure who was filmed, photographed, and put on at least one national magazine cover. He was called' Jack the Dripper', 'A drooler' and many other insulting things. Yet anyone who appreciates visual arts and looks at paintings by Pollock like 'Lavender Mist' and many other works Pollock did in the late 1940's and the early 1950's, can see that Pollock was a talented artist.
       Pollock later went wild and nearly drank himself to death. "I am nature," he boasted to another fine painter Hans Hofman who came from Germany. Pollock then died in a car crash in 1956. Before Pollock came along the Armenian-born Arshile Gorky had painted some great abstract works and then beset by problems killed himself. It did look like these artists were cursed. After Pollock the Dutch-born Willem de Kooning leaped to the head of the pack and into the public eye. Like Pollock de Kooning was a a massive drinker who tried to stop gulping down alcohol.  For a while de Kooning abstained from the bottle. He didn't stick to painting abstract paintings. He also painted frightening pictures of demonic grinning women.
       De Kooning and Pollock gained the most publicity. Yet I prefer the paintings of three abstract expressionists namely Franz Kline, Philip Guston and Mark Rothko. Rohtko's massive paintings are often used only two colours in which yellow oblongs of paints are framed by deep red stripes. Or Rothko's works are just long red stretches of paint. Rothko who was born in Russia did not escape the curse that may have hung over these painters. He committed suicide after achieving great fame and  making lots of money.
       In the 1950;'s and later Guston painted abstract works with lush paint or a multi-coloured image in the centre  of his works. Later he reverted to more realistic paintings.. I prefer his earlier work. Then there's Franz Kline who big black sweeping images have always attracted me.

Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter 11 of 'Why Feminism Didn't Lead To Socialism"

    Chapter 11 of 'Why Feminism Didn't Lead To Socialism'




     One big reason for the drive of political opinion to the right side of the political spectrum I unfortunately left out. I failed to mention the great economic melt down of 2007 and 2008. When the financial firm of Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2007 it triggered a wave of selling that soon led to what some called 'The Great Recession'.
      Soon millions of people in the western world lost their jobs. Yet the big banks and hedge firms that created the crisis walked away unscathed. The U.S. government spend a total of over $700 billion (U.S.) to re-start its own economy. It also bailed out two of the Big Three U.S. auto firms that faced bankruptcy. It also unloaded t lots of other moneys to stave off a great depression. European governments did the same.
      Yet millions of middle class and working people got little help at all. Many of these people lost their homes, their livelihoods and some even lost their lives. Yet many western governments didn't lift a finger on their citizens' behalf. "I have lost all hope" said one resident of the ultra rich area of Lake Forest on the outskirts of Chicago. "What is our government up to?"
     The financial collapse and the flood tide of immigrants that swept into European countries and the
economic collapse ignited public anger that paved the way for the rise of right wing populism all over the world .Bankers and financiers never went to prison although some of their firms were hit with fines of billions of dollars. This soft gloved treatment of the very rich also swung millions of voters to the right.
     And when the European governments later brought in policies of austerity, it became impossible for any left wing ideas to get a fair hearing. "This situation is just tailor made for right wingers," one political analyst pointed out. If the Great Recession had never happened, a lot of extreme right wing parties would never have attracted so many new voters.

Ends and Odds: The Ravings Of An Old Man. Chapter 10 of "'Why Feminism Didn't Lead To Socialsm' by Dave Jaffe

    Why Feminism Didn't Lead To Socialism. Chapter 10 by Dave Jaffe.
        


     In the last 50 years some groups in North America saw their lives improve. Yet all the changes triggered sometimes violent reactions. In November 1989 Marc Lepine a deranged violent man killed 14 students at the University of Montreal. Lepine of course was mentally unbalanced but he was totally anti-feminist. "The media tried to show him as a lonely mentally ill mad man," one women's rights advocate told this writer in the early 1990's. "Yet his main target was feminists." Lepine killed himself after his rampage. Yet he had compiled a list of prominent Quebec feminists that he also planned to kill.
   In the United States one former policeman killed Harvey Milk an outspoken gay advocate in San Francisco in the late 1970's and also murdered George Moscone the city's mayor. Everywhere where gays, feminists environmentalists and others came forward to protest they were often met with state sanctioned violence. "You always have a backlash," the late Rosemary Brown said in effect
 "whenever people demand their rights." Many activists faced threats of violence from hate filled conservatives. The abortion provider Henry Morgenthaler was nearly stabbed by an enraged right-to-lifer when he opened his  Toronto clinic in the 1980's. Some doctors who provided abortions were killed or had their clinics bombed.
     To-day a resurgent right wing still tries to strip many groups of their rights, And Canada and the U.S. remain profoundly unequal countries. Over 6 million Canadian adults can't afford to go to a dentist while the  head of the Royal Bank of Canada earned over $10 million in 2015. Over 200,000 Canadians sleep on the streets or in shelters every night. Meanwhile in the U.S. one black clergyman vowed to launch a campaign against poverty, He put the number of poor Americans at over 140 million. This means that close to two in every five Americans are poor and are struggling to survive.
     "The answer is blowing in the wind," Bob Dylan sang over 55 years ago. The solutions  to social injustice are still blowing in the wind.

Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter Nine: Why Feminism Didn't Lead to Socialism.

   Why Feminism Didn't Lead To Socialism: chapter Nine by Dave Jaffe.




       In the late 1960"s and early 1970's, the business class and other conservatives zeroed in on the New Left and other progressive groups as the main threat to the capitalist system. Now  50 years later the main threat to democracy is coming from the extreme right wing. In the U.S. the Trump administration seems to have contempt for democracy. In Italy the new right wing coalition seems to have the same feelings for the vast majority though it promises improved social programs for Italian citizens.Yet like Donald Trump it has no love for immigrants from poor countries. And the sane is true of the National Front in France, the Brexit supporters in Britain and many other right wing populists across Europe.
    Yet in the past 50 years the new groups of people who emerged after the great rebellions of the late 1960's had been defeated, did win many victories. Through picketing, mass demonstrations, occupying government offices, leafleting and even sometimes violence, they changed the countries across Western Europe and North America.
      "You dance with the lady that brought you," the conservative leader of the right wing Progressive  Conservative Party Brian Mulroney said in the 1980's. Mulroney was a conservative. Still, he persuaded his own party and U.S, lawmakers to ban sulfur emissions and stop acid rain. Green activists shut down nuclear power plants across the U.S. and in other countries. Environmentalists allied themselves with First Nations people and targeted oil pipelines and Kinder Morgan and the Keystone XL line as dangers to the environment. Green politicians in Europe  ran for office in Europe and in North America. In Germany green politicians even entered government
     Openly gay and lesbian politicians ran for political office and often won. Women became lawyers, doctors, carpenters, bus drivers and many other things. They won the right to abortion and some even impressed tough blue collar male workers. "Women get it," a foreman in Richmond, B.C. said. "They work hard and are very good on safety issues." Women ran for political office and gained power in politics. Kim Campbell, was briefly Prime Minister of Canada. The present Prime Minister of Britain is a woman, namely Teresa May. Other women sit in legislatures all across Europe. In contrast in the late 1960's women had very little power at all.
    Some women though only a few right now lead big businesses like the American Cheryl Sandberg and the Canadian Heather Reisman. Thousands of other women run businesses in many fields. Gay and lesbian people in many countries won the right to get married
     The dreams of the old left and the New Left are now history. Capitalism now rules the roost. Dick the man who believed that capitalism could safely absorb feminism passed away in 2007. He remained a socialist to his dying day.  Jackie was last seen trying to organize Hispanic American workers  in the American South. She remains a socialist although probably a more realistic one now.
     As one progressive said recently, "Socialism is history but the struggle for social justice still goes on." Jackie and Dick would have agreed with that.
     

Ends and Odds: The Ravings Of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter Nine of 'Why Feminism Didn't Leas To Socialsim.

      Chapter Nine of "Why Feminism Didn't Lead To Socialism' by Dave Jaffe.
    




          As U.S. media swung even further to the right in the 1970's, Canadian media went in the same direction. CTV and the Asper-owned media empire kept churning out conservative right wing news. As said  before,Conrad Black took over many papers and turned them into right wing outlets. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was never a progressive media outlet. In the 1980's it endorsed right wing policies. Most Canadian media cheered on massive tax cuts for the rich, the shrinking of social programs, scrapping unions and wars against left wing regimes. In the face of this right wing propaganda, the New Left of the 1970's shrank in support and numbers.
    In the 1970's also two of the greatest union organizers in American history died under mysterious circumstances. Walter Reuther, a pillar of progressive causes died in a plane crash that some said was an assassination. Five years later the former head of the Teamsters union Jimmy Hoffa disappeared after going to an appointment in Detroit. His body was never found.
     Hoffa was tarnished with his links to organized crime. Still, he organized hundreds of thousands of truckers in the 1930's and later. Reuther was one of the few union heads who could have bridged the gaps that lay between the New Left and organized workers. The deaths of these two men left the American unions leaderless in the 1980's.
      One of the first things the newly-elected U.S. President Ronald Reagan did after becoming president was to fire all the members of the air traffic controllers Union. "We voted for that guy," one traffic controller told this writer, "and then this S.O.B. goes and fires us all." Reagan's action set off an anti-union wave that swept across America. Hundreds of thousands of union members lost their jobs as big companies shut down their U.S.-based plants and moved offshore. Public workers lost their jobs as state and city governments privatized their services. State governments hobbled union organizing by passing new restrictive laws.
   When writer-activist Michael Parenti visited parts of the U.S. in the 21st century he complained that unions had vanished in many parts of the U.S. The Reagan and the Bush presidencies shrunk the numbers and power of unionized workers dramatically. In the early 1960's, 30 per cent of American workers belonged to unions. By 2000  that number had shrunk to less than 20 per cent. In Canada the percentage of unionized workers fell from 40 per cent in 1970 to less than 30 per cent to-day.
      This shrinking power of unions tipped things even further to the right and strengthened the power of the rich. Again, this was another defeat for the left wing.

Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe; Chapter Eight of 'Why Feminism Didn't Lead To Socialism'

   Chapter Eight of 'Why Feminism Didn't Lead To Socialism'.


       The power of the media also helped defeat part of the aims of the New Left. It too targeted the protestors. In the early 1970's, the business class in North America and Western Europe launched a massive counterattack against the New Left. One of its weapons was the media.
      It happened this way. Lewis Powell, a rich Republican phoned up U.S. President Richard Nixon one day in 1971. "Mr President," Powell said in effect. "I'm really worried. I've been watching television news."
     On many t.v. news programs, Powell said, he saw one person after another attack the free enterprise system. "If this goes on," Powell is supposed to have said, " the free enterprise system won't survive.We must fight back." Nixon told Powell to write him a memorandum on his topic. Powell did this and later Nixon appointed Powell to the U.S. Supreme Court..
     Some observers doubt this story. Yet soon in the early 1970's, the U.S. media switched sharply to the right. To be fair most media outlets have usually pushed right wing views. Most media in North America and elsewhere are owned by rich powerful families. For instance 'The Montreal Star' way back in 1960 endorsed the very right wing Union Nationale in the 1960 Quebec provincial election. 'The Star' was owned by the  wealthy McConnell family. 'The New York Times' and most other media in the U.S. supported the Vietnam War and the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Most Canadian newspapers and some t.v. stations came out for Conservative leader Stephen Harper in the 2015 Canadian election.
    The social media also seemed to have helped elect right wing governments including the very conservative presidency of Donald Trump. Still, from time to time, parts of the media gave space to left wing activists. In the 1970's this trend vanished. Right wing think tanks sprang up denouncing publicly funded medicare, trade unions and social spending on the poor. Media moguls like the Australian Rupert Murdoch and Canadian Conrad Black gobbled up one newspaper after another and turned the papers into right wing propaganda machines.
     As far as t.v. goes, the conservative critic Robert Fulford said, "Television is the most conservative media of all." In  the 1970's, t.v. just became even more conservative. Giant t.v,. outlets like, ABC, CBS, and NBC. stopped putting out mildly liberal stuff. Soon they idolized conservative presidents like Ronald Reagan and the two Bush presidents.
    "PBS stands for the Petroleum Broadcasting Service," said U.S. activist Ralph Nader. Nader claims that PBS, the so-called public broadcasting service is just another right wing station. Nader is totally correct. PBS programs like 'The McNeill Lehrer News Hour, and the the Jim Lehrer News Hour rarely put on any progressives. The experts it used were right wing thinkers and pundits..

Ends and Odds: The Ravings Of An Old man. Why Feminism Didn't Lead To Socialsim. Part Seven by Dave Jaffe.

  Why feminism Didn't Lead To Socialism. Part Seven by Dave Jaffe.




    Jackie ignored several other facts when she predicted the end of  free enterprise. Capitalism as an economic system has been incredibly flexible. It has survived and prospered in many countries with very different politics. Free enterprisers  set up shop and prospered in the totally racist regime of apartheid-ruled South Africa, and the white racist states of the U.S South. Business people have raked in profits in the right wing dictatorships of Portugal and Spain.
    Business people have also thrived in democratic countries like Canada, France, Italy and above all the segregated era of the United States. After segregation was scrapped in the 1960's businesses kept on making money. Communism on the other hand only survived in countries ruled by  communist parties. Once the communist party vanishes so does communist rule.  This gives the free enterprise people a massive advantage over communism.
     Then there's another big advantage that capitalism has. It generates profit and sometimes on a massive scale. This wealth can be spread around equally or totally unequally. In recent years inequality has thrived. Yet private profit may still be the most efficient way to run an economy.
     Robert Heilbroner was a left leaning economist who at times was willing to listen to communists. "Socialism," said Heilbroner, "is a centrally planned economy in which the government controls all the means of production."  Mao's China, the Soviet Union, Cambodia under Pol Pot, Castro's Cuba and Vietnam after 1975 fit the bill here. Yet as Heilbroner points out, "Socialism was the tragic failure of the 20th century." Tens of millions of people died in one communist country after another trying to build socialism. Yet all of these deaths may have been in vain.
     When Mikhail Gorbachev, the ruler of the Soviet Union tried to peacefully reform communism
the Union splintered into 15 separate parts and communism collapsed. Communism vanished in eastern Europe too where top-down harsh communist governments had held sway. China survived and prospered by deserting socialism. Most other socialisms vanished.
      In democratic countries though, many reforms that socialists had pushed for have survived. Many democratic countries have pensions, medicare, unemployment insurance, minimum wages, trade unions and so on. Yet in former communist-ruled countries, communism is history.
       In the 1970's, the U.S. economy surged ahead of that of the Soviet Union's, when it perfected the tiny computer chip. Under U.S. presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan the U.S. launched a massive military buildup that the Soviet Union couldn't match. Gorbachev threw in the towel and Said, "The Cold War is over." Americans added, "And we won it." Which was true.

Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter Six of 'Why Feminism Didn't Lead To Socialism'.

  Why Feminism Didn't Lead To Socialism' . Chapter Six by Dave Jaffe






        As said before, Jackie told Dick in the early 1970's, "Capitalism can't survive the coming of feminism." Yet back then in the early 1970's, both of these left wing activists may have not known about past Canadian history. If they'd looked back about 25 years, both of them wouldn't have been so optimistic about the future.
    In the 1940's a left wing wave swept the world during and after the Second World War. Communist revolutions erupted in China, Vietnam and Yugoslavia. Support for communism surged in both Italy and France. A hard core communist party  emerged in Greece. Soviet troops smashed the German Nazi army in Eastern Europe and imposed a harsh top down rule in Romania, Czechoslavakia and other Eastern European countries.
    In Britain, a democratic Labour Party won the election of 1945 and nationalized large parts of the economy. "Socialism was on the march,"an old line socialist said years later. Yet capitalism survived and by 1959 was thriving in large parts of the world. For in the late 1940's, the United States led a world wide counterattack against communism and the Soviet Union. The era of the Cold War had begun. In Canada for instance, the ruling Liberal Party and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation ganged up on the communist party and sidelined it. Communists were thrown out of leadership positions of unions they'd helped organize. Communist influence shriveled everywhere in Canada.
      In the United States, Senator Joseph McCarthy waged war against communists. Over 18,000 Americans were fired from their jobs on the grounds that they were communists. The Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. State Department funneled millions of dollars into Western Europe and turned the tide against communism and other left wing ideas.
      "Attitudes of social complacency," wrote social critic Irving Howe, "would dominate the 1950's, the years of Dwight Eisenhower's presidency, spreading even to segments of the liberal community."
In the 1950's the assault on communism and even democratic left wing movements around the world turned back the left wing wave of the 1940's. Capitalism survived and prospered.　 




  

Ends And Odds: The Ravings Of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter 11, Part Five.

      Chapter 11. Why Feminism Didn't Lead To Socialism. by Dave Jaffe.




   "The socialist age was coming to an end," Peter Jenkins wrote about the 1970's. In fact Jenkins jumped the gun here because many left wing governments were in power or elected to office in the 1970's. These governments included those in Australia, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and New Zealand. Also revolutionaries took power in places like Ethiopia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Nicaragua and Vietnam. The revolutions in Iran Cambodia and Ethiopia turned into horror stories. Still, large parts of the world did pivot to the left in the 1970's.
      Yet by the 1980's, right wing governments took power in many places. Aided by business groups and their allies governments took to slashing social programs and doling out big tax cuts to the rich. By the 21st century the conservative forces had shifted the politics of the world massively to the right.. Free trade agreements took many rights away from people. For instance Canada lost 600,000 well paying jobs after it signed free trade agreements with the United States and Mexico. The U.S. in turn saw millions of jobs vanish from its industrial sectors.
    By 2018  observers pointed out that the wages of many blue and white collar workers hadn't really gone up since the 1970's. A new expression, namely 'the precariat' entered social science jargon. Here were the young workers who couldn't find decent jobs, slaved away at two or three jobs just to get by, and often in their late 20's still lived with their parent or parents. Others gave up any hope of joining the middle class.
      "I'm planning to move into my car and live in it," said Peter a 40's something British Columbian who had just completed a training course in technical work to. One of his friends was now parked in a station wagon since he couldn't afford to live in an apartment. "The rents are too high," Peter points out , "and he only works eight months a year."
     Yet one thing stood out amidst the governments' wars against social programs and the poorest half or third of society. Right wing governments were not only elected, they were often re-elected. Many working people voted for harsh right wing governments along with the rich and the middle class. Austerity paid off at the polls.
      When in the 1970's, Jackie told Dick  "Capitalism can't survive feminism," she ignored the incredible power of capitalism. The free enterprise system has shown amazing flexibility. The new left of the 1960's and 1970's did achieve some great victories. In the U.S. it helped overthrow the vicious regime of segregation and with some help from the National Liberation Front of Vietnam, it  ended the military draft. All across the world it shook governments up and paved the way for many liberating changes. Yet in the end, the new left couldn't survive the massive counterattack that powerful business groups and their allies launched against it.
   "The left wins the skirmishes," Dick told Jackie. "But the right wins the battles." To some extent Dick was right.
   

Ends and Odds: The Ravings Of An Old Man. Chapter 11. Part Four. Why Feminism Didn't Lead To Socialism by Dave Jaffe.

   Why Feminism Didn't Lead To Socialism by Dave Jaffe. Part Four.




         As the new groups of the 1970's appeared and protested, a big cultural shift took place too. Many young people turned away from mainstream religion. Like what poet Gary Snyder in the 1950's and painter Mark Tobey had done, they turned toward Buddhism and other eastern religions. Also many young people mimicked the life of the underclass. Casual dress, casual sex and casual drug use were embraced by many youth.
   Yet in the 1970's, the economy started to underperform and show signs of crisis. On the heels of two massive oil price hikes by many oil producing states and U.S. President Richard Nixon's desertion of the by now old Bretton Woods currency agreement, inflation rose as jobless totals did too. This supposedly broke the then reigning Keynesian consensus that as prices went up, jobless totals fell and vice versa. Now inflation took off and many people also lost their jobs.
    In reaction to this new reality, right wing ideas took hold across the western world, especially in English speaking countries. "There is no alternative," the very right wing Conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said in the 1980's. Thatcher became the first female Prime Minister in British history. Yet she also imposed a harsh regime of austerity in Britain. She cut the rights of blue collar workers and smashed unions like coal miners who opposed her in the 1980's. She cut many government benefits to the bone. She sold off dozens of government-owned firms and gave big tax cuts to the rich.
     In the U.S. President Ronald Reagan and the two Bush presidents gave the rich massive tax cuts. Meanwhile they slashed social programs to the poor and launched massive military buildups. When Bill Clinton became the Democratic President from 1992 to 2000, he rarely restored the Republican cuts. . In fact, he abolished one of the oldest welfare programs in the U.S., namely the Aid To Dependent Children program. He also put in place a really tough imprisonment program that soon tripled the number of prisoners in federal penitentiaries.
      In Canada in the mid-1990's, Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his Finance Minister Paul Martine launched a  massive program of government cutbacks. They fired over 45,000 government workers, slashed federal transfer payments to the provinces by a whopping40 per cent, cut unemployment benefits by nearly half and scrapped the Canada Assistance Act that had assured five rights to welfare applicants.
     "I have been for the little guy," Chretien said in effect in 2018. Yet there were few signs of this when he served as Prime Minister. His tough cutbacks came on top of hard right wing provincial cuts by premiers like Mike Harris of Ontario, Bill Bennett of British Columbia, Ralph Klein of Alberta, Brian Peckford of Newfoundland and Frank McKenna of New Brunswick.
     In Australia, the Labour Prime Minister Bob Hawke made few attempts to restore the cuts by the Australian Liberal and Country parties. Austerity for the poor and the poorest half of most western countries became the order of the day.

Ends And Odds: The Ravings Of An Old man:Chapter 11, Part Three: Feminism Didn't Bring On Socialism by Dave Jaffe

  Feminism Didn't Bring On Socialism. Part Three by Dave Jaffe.




    The great rebellions of the late 1960's nearly all failed. "In 1968, hopes more or less underground for years," writes John Berger, " were born in several places in the world. These hopes were categorically defeated." Clive Doucet, a city councilor in Ottawa came to the same conclusion as Berger did. And Rodger Garbutt, a now retired socials teacher said, "All the rebellions couldn't dislodge the old rulers."
     These observers are right. Still, on the ashes of the failed rebellions of the 1960's, a whole host of new groups suddenly appeared. Gays, lesbians, feminists, environmentalists, hippies, black power advocates, Quebec sovereigntists, First Nations and anti-war activists came into the open.
     Now no government in the western world can rule just by force. So in the 1970's and after governments in the western world did listen to the demands of these groups. Anti-war activists in the U.S. and elsewhere forced the U.S. government to give up its war in Indochina. "Peace is at hand," said the U.S. government in 1972. It took another year before the U.S. signed a peace accord with the various Vietnamese groups. Still, in 1975 all U.S. troops vanished from Indochina and communists soon ruled Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
    In 1973 the U.S. Congress abolished the draft. "I came to Canada to get away from the U.S. army," one young American told this writer. He wasn't alone. Over 50,000 young American males fled the United States and came to Canada to evade the draft. Now the draft was history.
     African American revolutionaries were often shot and killed by U.S. government forces. Yet more conservative African American politicians ran for office in many places in the 1970's and were elected. African Americans and other groups of colour ended up in high places in the American bureaucracies.
     Women around the world marched and demonstrated in the 1970's. Soon women entered medical faculties, law departments, and many other places. Women became doctors, lawyers, accountants, carpenters, bus drivers and business leaders. .In the 1950's people used to say, "Women are going to college  to meet future doctors and marry them." Now women went to university to become doctors.
      Women began to run for elected offices and many succeeded. Outside of the U.S., women became presidents and prime ministers Restrictive laws against gays and lesbians were scrapped in many countries. Gay and lesbians often ran for political office and didn't hide their sexual orientation. By 2015 many western countries hade legalized gay marriage.
   Some people objected to these changes. Yet the new groups often had their way. This was the carrot that governments gave to voters in the 1970's and later. And by and large, these changes helped defuse protest. Jackie who I mentioned at the beginning of this piece thought that capitalism couldn't survive feminism. Yet capitalism did survive the rise of feminism and the rise of many other groups. Soon some women were running huge corporations.

Ends and Odds: The Ravings Of An old Man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter 11, Part Two. Feminism Didn't Bring On socialism.

        Feminism Didn't Bring On Socialism. Part Two by Dave Jaffe.




         As mentioned, Jackie, a 1960's activist thought that the rise of feminism would lead to socialism. That of course, didn't happen. In fact the rise of new movements in the world in the 1960's and 1970's, triggered a massive backlash. So that to-day things are far more conservative in some ways than they were forty years ago.
      So how did this happen? Very simply really. "How do you move a donkey?" people used to say. "Just use the carrot and the stick." This is what the business class and its allies did. The stick they brandished was government--backed force. In the year 1968 protests movements and near insurrections erupted all across the globe. Yet they were nearly all crushed.
      In early 1968 a massive attack in Vietnam by National Liberation Front troops and their North Vietnamese allies was launched against the American troops in South Vietnam. Yet the attack was beaten back by massive American force. The U.S. and its allies killed about 100,000 Vietnamese and the terrible war in Vietnam just went on and on. Back in the U.S. assassins murdered Martin Luther King Junior ands then Robert Kennedy. With the death of these two men all hopes of progressive change in the U.S. just vanished. Thousands of African Americans rioted when King was shot dead.. Police forces and military guards shot and killed over 170 African Americans. The political hopes for people of colour and the poor in general were crushed.
      The assassinations in the U.S. didn't stop there. Police forces in the late 1960's and early 1970's shot and killed members of revolutionary groups like the Black Panthers. Still in 1968 revolts spread far outside U.S. borders.
     In that year, French students and many workers occupied schools and factories defying the French government of President Charles de Gaulle.de Gaulle unleashed his police forces against the rebels and then called an election, where he won a massive electoral victory. "It is forbidden to forbid," French students wrote on walls in Paris. Yet their protests couldn't forbid or stop another De Gaulle victory at the polls.
   The mood of rebellion spread  to the other side of the Iron Curtain. In communist-ruled Czechoslavakia, communist leader Alexander Dubcek tried to create what his supporters called "Socialism, with a human face." Yet the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies made short shrift of these hopes. Their armies rolled into Czechoslavakia and crushed Dubcek and swept away his government.
    In Mexico, just before the opening of the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City thousands of young people took to the streets to demand changes from the long ruling government of  the Party of Institutionalized Revolution or the PRI. The PRI rulers brushed off these youthful rebels. Government armed forces killed hundreds of youthful protestors in the Plaza of the Three Cultures in Mexico City just before the opening of the Games. That was the end of the protests in Mexico - at least for a while.
      The brutal face of force and repression rolled on. Police forces gassed and beat protestors in the streets of Chicago in the summer of 1968. The protestors had come to this big American city to protest the Vietnam war outside the Democratic convention held in Chicago.
     The use of brute force didn't end in the 1960's. In the spring of 1970 American forces invaded Cambodia and tens of thousands of anti-war protestors shut down dozens of American college and university campuses. Troops shot and killed protestors at Kent state in Ohio and Jackson State. The protests faded away but the terrible now Indochinese war just went on and on.
      Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau proclaimed a war Measures Act in the fall of 1970 after the revolutionary front de Liberation de Quebec kidnapped  a British diplomat and a prominent French-Canadian politician. "just watch me," Trudeau told reporter Tim Ralfe, who asked the Prime Minster how far he was going to go to crush the F.L.Q.
      Hundreds of Quebecois were rounded up and jailed. Most were released after the so-called 'October Crisis ended. Still, Trudeau had crushed the F.L.Q. and it too vanished into history.
     

Ends and Odds: The Ravings Of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter 11' Part One. Feminism Didn't Bring On Socialism.

   Feminism Didn't Bring On Socialism.. Part One by Dave Jaffe.






       Jackie was a young cheerful revolutionary back in the mid-1970's. She's become an ardent feminist and had high hopes for this new movement. "Capitalism," she told a friend of mine, "will never be able to resist the power of feminism. The feminist movement will lead to socialism." But my friend Dick had a more subtle grasp of history.
      "I'm not sure about that," he said. "Capitalism is very flexible and has absorbed lots of past movements. Don't ever underestimate the power of the capitalist system." On this exchange as on many others he'd been involved in, Dick was right and Jackie was totally wrong. In fact in the past 45 years or so, the capitalist system and its right wing advocates have swept the board.
       In the 1980's right wing governments popped up in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed and splintered into 15 separate republics. All of them ditched socialism. The former eastern European satellites of the Soviet Union won their freedom, or so they thought and quickly moved into NATO and joined the capitalist system. By the mid-1980's the People's Republic of China had ditched hard core Maoism and embraced the profit system. "To get rich is glorious," former hard line Maoists said in China.
   Now the move to the right has hit western European countries. Social democratic parties in France, Italy, Germany and Austria are losing millions of their voters to extreme right wing anti-immigrant parties.  Emmanuel Macron, a former social democrat and now president of France has embraced a rigid anti-immigrant posture. He has also made massive cuts to social programs.
  In the United States, Donald Trump, the incredible demagogic president from New York City heads a government that has trashed most of his country's social programs. He has also put through the country's Senate and House of Representatives a bill that gives him and his rich friends a massive tax cut. Great Britain is wrestling with its dilemma over Brexit.. "No matter how Britain leaves the EU" one friend of mine who worked in antipoverty groups in Britain said, "many British people especially the poor are bound to suffer."
   My friend Dick died many years ago. The last time I heard about Jackie she was working in Texas leading a unionizing drive among women workers in a slaughter house. I wish her well and hopes she succeeds in her organizing. These days I often tell people, "Never underestimate the power of capitalism." Dick is dead but his words are still impressed in my mind. Maybe even she remembers Dick's warnings. Somebody's got to.

Ends and Odds: The Ravings Of An Old man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter Ten, Part Two

   Death's Been On My Mind Lately by Dave Jaffe. Part Two.




     Two things stand out when you think of death. First off, men are far more reckless than women and are much more likely to die than women whether they're young, middle aged or old. Any visit to an old people's home will show you many women but not too many men. The female of the species, any species, usually outlives the male and this includes human beings.
      Women also take better are of themselves than men do. They watch their weight, diet more than men, and exercise more  than males do. So as said before, they live longer than a man does. They don't take the risks that men do. Also, men work in some very dangerous jobs. In the 1960's, more than 60 men died every year working in the woods of British Columbia.
     "I'll never work in the logging industry," a construction foreman once said. "It's just too bloody dangerous." On the other hand, a logger once told me, ""I'd never work in any mine. I'm scared of going underground." In recent years, sawmill closures, and mechanized mining and logging practices have cut the death rate for many industrial jobs. Yet there are still many men working in blue collar jobs and often men die in these jobs. These jobs are still filled mostly be men.
     Anything connected to driving is dangerous. Every year over 2,000 people die in car crashes or traffic accidents in Canada. Over 600 people are murdered every year. In short you're three and a half times more likely to die in a car crash than be murdered. Many people who drive for a living are often victims of car and trucking accidents.
   As you reach yours 50's, your chance of dying goes up and up. One of the fastest ways to die in your 50's, is to smoke tobacco and drink alcohol. My mother was a smoker who died of breast cancer at the age of 51. She never inhaled tobacco into her lungs. Yet one oncologist, a cancer specialist said that cigarette smoke can trigger cancerous tumours anywhere in your body.
    Albert Giacometti was a famous sculptor who was born in Switzerland. In the late 1940's he became famous and rich. "He was almost isolated as a sculptor as his own figures were isolated in space," notes art critic Edward Lucie-Smith. Yet Giacometti wasn't isolated in his smoking habits. He was a chain smoker who rarely was seen without a cigarette in his mouth. He died after two massive heart attacks that were probably brought on by smoking. He was 66 years old. Mordecai Richler the well-known, Montreal-born novelist smoke tobacco and love to drink alcohol. Cancer carried him to the grave of 68.
   Eating habits can speed up death or delay it. Vegans or people who don't eat animal flesh usually live longer than those who eat meat. Money plays a part too in helping you live longer. The rich live longer than the middle classes who in turn live longer than the poor. In any case we all die. Every year about 50 million people pass away. "He not busy being born" sang Bob Dylan, "is busy dying."  Like most Canadians of my age, I'll pass away one of these days. Stroke, cancer or heart attack will kill me.
     As the French say, "On verra," or "We'll see." Yet like billions of people who've lived before me, I'll be gone one of these days.

Ends and Odds: The Ravings of an Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter Ten, Part One..

   Death's Been On My Mind Lately. By Dave Jaffe. Part One.




    There's two ways for an ageing progressive like myself to look at death. First off, death is an incredible equalizer and I'm ausually in favour of equality. No matter who you are you will die. So in that way death is incredibly progressive. On the other hand, death is the final injustice because you can't avoid it
     "Old age is a massacre," American novelist Philip Roth once said, and he was right. So many people I admired like Philip Roth for instance are now dead. So are many of my friends. Two of my favourite writers on the visual arts are now gone, namely John Berger and Linda Nochlin. "Who's next?" I ask myself. And the answer comes back, "Maybe I am." After all I'm 76 years old. I've been in hospital now three times in the past two years. In these operations surgeons scooped cancerous tumours out of my body enabling me to go on living.
     Soon I think I'll be gone, but not right now. Still, I believe I'll be gone in three years time or less. Death by the way can sweep anybody away any time. Ten centuries ago when Canada was a land of aboriginals most people died in Europe before the age of 40. Then came the scientific revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries.  Then came the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries.
     At first, people kept on dying early in life just as they always had. Yet then came new surgical procedures, new drugs and big public health improvements. All of this, lengthened people's lives quite a bit. Cholera, plagues, typhoid fever and other death causing infections vanished. Miracle drugs like streptomycin taken with other medicines vanquished tuberculosis which used to kill so many people. Think D.H. Lawrence and George Orwell. Penicillin got rid of other infections. Whooping cough and scarlet fever vanished. The vaccines of Salk and Sabin erased polio. All of this took place between 1870 and 1960.
     "People were really scared in the summer .That's when polio epidemics would come," One man who'd lived in Montreal recalled in the 1980's. By 1960, polio epidemics were a thing of the past. So were many other diseases. People lived longer than 30 years old, or 40 or often past 70.  Many people, especially women live into their late 80's. Yet death is still around especially in the poor countries of the world.
     In many poor nations thousands of poor children die before the age of five. And many adults in really poor places don't get to the age of 60. Then there's the casualties of adolescence and early adulthood in the rich countries. Rona was a young woman, still a teenager who died in a car crash. Robert was a hiker and a bit of a daredevil. He jumped off a cliff one summer afternoon and died in the waters below. Connor was an illegal drug user though his parents didn't know it. He died from a drug overdose when he was in his early 20's. Paul was a manic depressive. He committed suicide when he was in his late 30's. These are just some of the deaths of relatively young people that I remember. I know there are many others I can't recall.

Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Why Do Men Kill? Chapter Nine. Part Two

   Why Do Men Kill by Dave Jaffe. Part Two.




         So why are some men so much more violent than women and ready to kill, maim and fight?
     "It's a matter of socialization," says Andrea, a philosopher who has researched and taught this subject. "Men are socialized to be violent. Women aren't."
   Andrea points out that women can aggressive with men and with each other. "Women can be very exclusionary and say things that put other women down." Andrea once ran a therapy group with people who'd been sexually abused in their youth. She found out that some men in the group had been sexually abused by their mothers.
     "Women can be aggressive," she says. Statistics also show that women do join armies and can learn to kill. Yet most of the killing that goes on to-day is done by men. Susan Pinker in her book 'The Sexual Paradox' seems to conclude that men are basically more violent than women. In other words, males may be socialized to be more violent than women. Still, males will be more violent whether they are taught to be or not.
     Yet whoever's right or wrong on this issue, men remain the violent sex. So professor Henry Higgins may have known how to teach proper grammatical English. Yet he was wrong on one main point: Men should be more like women when it comes to violence. Then the world would be a much better, less violent place.   
     A lot more people would be alive instead of lying in graveyards at a too early age.
     Finally one last point. Men do most of the killing in Canada. Yet they kill far more men than women. Just about every year over 600 Canadians are killed. Three quarters of these victims are men who are killed by other men. Female victims of homicide account for one in four murdered people.
     In a recent coloumn in 'The Globe and Mail' Elizabeth Renzetti pointed out that many women are killed by men  every year. This is true and no one should dismiss any victim of homicide. Yet the biggest victims of homicide by far in Canada are men, not women.
     
     

Ends and Odds: The Ravingsof An Old man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter Nine, Part One

        Why Men Kill and Women Don't. Part One. by Dave Jaffe.




     "Why can't a woman be more like a man? " sang Rex Harrison, playing Professor Henry Higgins in Lerner and Lowe's 1950's musical 'My Fair Lady'. The musical was based on George Bernard Shaw's drama 'Pygmalion'. In the play and the musical, professor Higgins teaches a cockney lass to speak what some call 'Proper English'.
     Higgins succeeds in his task but then falls in love with his student. Yet his plea for women to be more like men, maybe should be reversed. Perhaps we should be asking instead, "Why can't a man be more like a woman?" The reason for this is simple: Women don't usually kill other human beings. Men do.
    Years ago on Vancouver's Commercial Drive, a feminist of the 1980's told me, "The most dangerous man a woman will meet is an angry former lover." Yet most men who've been rejected by women don't go out and kill women. Yet some do. The recent killer of 10 people in Toronto who also injured 18 people by driving his van into a downtown crowd, did feel rejected by women.
    So that feminist's statement is partly true. Men who hate women do sometimes kill women. Women who hate men rarely kill men. Not only that. Men can be dangerous especially if they're young. More than eight in ten murders every year are done by men. Nearly 90 per cent of rapes, violent robberies and assaults in Canada are committed by males. Women can kill and do commit crimes like.shop lifting and fraud. Yet even here, men's proceeds from these crimes .always outrank money that women get.
    Men drive more dangerously than women, are far more likely to kill themselves, much more willing to shoot up speed and heroin, snort cocaine and  join the armed forces of their country. In Syria right now troops from seven or eight armies are killing, shooting and dying. I'll bet that more than nine out of ten soldiers in these armies are men.
   Take the terrible mass murders erupting so often in the United States these days. The really first wave of these murders started in about 1966. Since then mass murders have struck in many places. Who's the person pulling the trigger or sitting behind the wheel of a car ramming into crowds? It's usually a man. In Canada Marc Lepine a young disturbed man killed 14 female engineering students and injured ten others in Montreal in the 1980's.  Recently Alexandre Bissonnette, went into a mosque in Quebec and killed six Moslems. The latest mass murderer in Toronto,Canada was a man too. If you want to see someone go on a rampage look for a disturbed young male, especially one who's single.
   "Women civilize men," a female therapist once told me. This is true. Young single males, especially sexually frustrated ones can be dangerous.

Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter Eight. Part Two

   An Inspiring Artist: By Dave Jaffe. Part Two.




       In 1914 at the start od the First World War, Vassily Kandinsky fled back to Russia.  There he saw the Russian revolution of October 1917 sweep away the old order. The Russian Revolution led by Lenin, set up communism and abolished tsarist rule and private property. At first Kandinsky sympathized with the revolution although he lost all his property. He worked for the new government and travelled across the country setting up art museums. Yet the political climate soon hardened and Kandinsky realized that he couldn't live under the new communist regime.
     In 1921 Kandinsky moved back to Germany to work at the Bauhaus Institute. Its aim was to merge the work of visual artists, architects and others  to create a new world of social justice in Germany. Here Kandinsky met and worked with modern artists like Josef Albers, Paul Klee and others.  Yet many Germans didn't like the Bauhaus institute. They found it dangerous and too left leaning. Germany was in very bad shape. It had lost the first world war, saw millions of it citizens killed in the combat, and  many of its territories were handed over to other countries. It was also saddled with massive debt that the war's victors like Britain and France forced it to pay as reparations.
    The Bauhaus school was forced to move twice. Then came the Great Depression of 1929. Germany was hit hard by the financial collapse. As the jobless rate soared up to 40 per cent, support for the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler climbed up too. In 1933, Hitler became Germany's chancellor and the Nazis crushed all dissent. They closed down the Bauhaus and Kandinsky fled to France.
   "My roots in Germany are still deep," Kandinsky once said. Yet from the mid-1930's, he lived in France. By now he had split up with Gabrielle Minter and married again. Nina Andrevskaya was a conventional cheerful affectionate woman who loved fashionable clothes and good times. She was much younger than Kandinsky, yet she respected and loved him. In France, most people ignored Kandinsky's art but he kept on painting.
    His bright colours and swirling forms now changed into triangular shapes, diagonals and straight lines. These new paintings didn't match the power of Kandinsky's earlier work. Also the theories that he worked out to support his art may have hurt his creativity. Still, he kept on painting. Yet soon more trouble landed near his doorstep.
    In 1940 the Germans led by Hitler invaded and occupied France. Like the communist ruler Stalin, but for different reasons, Hitler hated abstract art. Many visual artists and other intellectuals fled to the U.S. and Britain. Yet Kandinsky and Nina stayed in a suburb of Paris throughout the Nazi occupation. No Nazis appeared to hunt Kandinsky. He had not been welcomed by most French artists and critics. And he had remained aloof from all the feuds and controversies that were part of the French art world. So the Nazis probably didn't notice Kandinsky and left him alone.
    Kandinsky celebrated his 75th birthday with his wife and some friends.  He died in 1944 at the age of 78. "To-day," the British art critic John Berger wrote in 1965, "there are still pockets of  exemption anywhere." Kandinsky lived in a pocket of exemptions. He survived while living under two of the most ruthless governments in history, namely Stalin's Soviet Union and Hitler's Nazi regime .Both governments despised modern art. Yet Kandinsky painted abstract art and died peacefully in his bed.
      Of course he was lucky. He was born into the richest 1 per cent of Russia. And at each stage of his life he found a woman to love and take care of him. Yet his life illustrates the fact that many people live under terrible governments and yet create beautiful things. In this age of tyranny we should remember this great man and honour him.
    

Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter Eight: An Inspiring Artist.

   An Inspiring Artist by Dave Jaffe. Part One.




    Do you like abstract art? Many people don't and some people say when confronted with this type of painting , "Why my five year old son or daughter could do this sort of thing."  Yet the life of one of the world's first modern abstract painters, Vassily Kandinsky, can teach us lessons about how to survive and create beautiful things in really tough times. Kandinsky's art by the way,could never have been painted by any five year old or most human beings for that matter.
    On one afternoon in Germany in 1911, a tall 45 year-old Russian man came back to his artists's studio. A painting of his leaned against a wall. This painting seemed to Vassily Kandinsky to be the most beautiful painting he'd ever seen. He saw no objects in it. It was totally abstract.
    Then suddenly he realized that it was his painting that he was looking at. He'd painted a picture of some objects. Yet the painting was tilted on its  side and so looked like an abstract painting. Amazed by this experience, Kandinsky became one of the first modern abstract artists. He stopped painting landscapes and other subjects. From then on, he painted nothing but abstract art.
     At this date of 1911, the world was changing more than it ever had before. "All is possible," wrote the French poet Andre Salmon. "Everything is realizable, everywhere and with everything." Pablo Picasso and George Braque were painting cubist pictures, James Joyce was writing his path breaking novel called 'Ulysses' and  musical composers were inventing atonal music. Yet it was technology that was re-arranging the world. The car, the phonograph, film, the radio and the airplane had been invented around 1900 or a little later. Human beings now lived in a technological world.
    Vassily Kandinsky's life was to be chockfull of upheavals due to technology and politics. Yet he survived these shocks and created beautiful art. Kandinsky was born in Russia in 1866. His family belonged to the richest 1 per cent of the population. By the age of 27 he was a professor of law. Then he saw a painting of a haystack by the great French impressionist artist Claude Monet. It was indeed called 'Haystacks' though Kandinsky had never seen a painting of haystacks like this. Suddenly Kandinsky stopped teaching law and became a painter.
    After a few years he moved to Munich in southern Germany. Here he painted, wrote books and left his first wife. He became lovers with the painter, weaver and tapestry maker Gabrielle Munter. "If we were to begin to destroy completely the bonds that ties to nature," Kandinsky said in 1896, "we would create works that would look like a geometric ornament." In the end that's what nearly happened to Kandinsky and his painting. Yet in 1914, world politics erupted into his life. The First World War started. Germany, the Turkish Empire and the empire of Austria Hungary squared off against Britain, France, Russia and their allies. Three years later the United States joined the war on Britain's side. Kandinsky fled Germany which was now an enemy of Russia and moved back to his homeland.

Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter Seven, Part Five.

   My Religious Odyssey. Part Five.




    The Canadian Memorial United Church contrasts strongly with the Quakers worship house. "This church is a magnet church," a worshipper at the United Church says. "It draws people from all across Metro Vancouver." She herself comes from New Westminster. The budget of the Quaker church stands at about $30,000 a year. The Canadian Memorial Church's budget hit $800,000 in 2017. "Running this church costs lots of money," says one of its main ministers.
     I have returned to the Quakers after a three year absence. Yet now when I tire of the Quaker silences and need to hear sermons and a choir, I head off to Canadian Memorial. Here too, I have found happiness and a place to worship.
    My religious journey has now I think come to an end. I have left the Jewish religion and most political involvements. When people now ask me what I did in my adult life I usually reply, "I lived on welfare, did telemarketing and was active in the anti-poverty movement. I've also changed my religion and my life a number of times."
   And I usually add, "It was all good."




        

Ends and Odds: Th Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe: Chapter Seven, Part Four..

     My Religious Odyssey by Dave Jaffe. Part Four.




    Many Quaker services are simply one hour of silence. Still, sometimes worshippers may be inspired to practice what is called "ministry". Someone speaks about some spiritual or contemporary topic. Then after a period of silence someone else will speak. At the end of the hour of worship the congregants greet each other and then may talk during a ten minute session about their private concerns or more public topics.
     When I first came to this worship house I talked often in the usually silent hour. These days I only talk after the hour of silence ends. For me, who often talks far too much, the hour of silence is a profound experience. Also, the religious beliefs of the Quakers are Christian but not heavily so.
    For 13 years I went to the Quakers and most of the time I enjoyed it there. Yet then I tired of the silences and dropped out for a while.
    One spring Sunday morning in 2016 I sat in a west side park where I often went to take the sun and breathe in the spring air. I'd lived in this area briefly in the 1970's and had come to this park since about 2009. In the past 40 years a lot of changes had happened in the neighbourhood. Yet the United Church still sat on the corner of 15th Avenue and Burrard Street. I needed to go to a toilet and wandered into the church while it was in session. Soon I went back to this church again and again. It's called the Canadian Memorial United Church. The church has a wonderful choir and two or three very impressive women ministers. Also a very fine set of stained glass windows that tell contemporary and biblical stories line two walls of the church.
     "This church was founded after the first world war," a church member told me. "The man who started the church came back from the war and wanted to devote his life to peace." The United Church was formed out of three separate Protestant religions. The United Church is often known as a left leaning church. Yet not all United churches lean to the left. One or two others I've been to were quite conservative.
    Still, this Memorial Church was very liberal. "The Anglican Church in England is the Tory Church at prayer," some people used to say about Anglicans. In English Canada, many members of the economic elite in the 1950's and before were Anglican. Yet there were other churches that leaned to the left like the United Church. In Canada, some progressive church ministers helped start the progressive Social Gospel before World War One.
     In the end, left wing ministers like James Shaver Woodsworth vanished from the United Church and helped set up the socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation political party in the 1930's. Yet progressive elements still linger in some United Churches. In any case, Canadian Memorial church preached a progressive faith. It was the first real Christian church I'd ever been to on a regular basis.




   

Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man By Dave Jaffe.. Chapter Seven Part Three. My Religious Odyssey.

   My Religious Odyssey by Dave Jaffe. Part Three.




    When the United States and the British armies invaded Iraq in March 2003 I was going regularly to the Unitarian Church in Vancouver. By this time I'd left the New Democratic Party and no longer called myself a socialist. Still, I remained a progressive and the invasion of Iraq appalled me. Yet in the Unitarian Church the minister didn't mention the invasion at all - or at least didn't say a word about it when I came to church.
     Not only this, many church members supported the invasion. This last fact didn't surprise me. Yet I did expect the minister of the time to say something about the war. "This is far out," I told a woman who taught biology at the University of British Columbia. "Aren't some Unitarians against this war?"
    "Dave," this woman replied, "you may have come to the wrong church. Go 20 blocks down Oak Street. to the Quakers. You'll find a lot of people there who're against this war." So I journeyed 20 blocks south along Oak street and ended up at the Quakers of the Society of Friends as they refer to themselves. Here I made the right move.
    I was now into my third religion. The Quaker worship space is tiny. You sit in a former Baptist church that really looks like a compact living room. All worshippers sit on benches or rows of chairs that are ranged in a square that surrounds a sacred object placed on a low table. The Quakers or Friends' congregation in Vancouver doesn't total more than 100 members . The meeting house in Vancouver never held more than 30 or so worshippers when I went there.
     Unlike all other churches I've been to, there's no hymns, no sermons or any minister in the meeting house. Quakers worship in silence. A service lasts about an hour. " It's like waiting for a dentist's appointment," one observer said about Quaker worship. A young man I met at the worship service liked the silence. "It's cool," he said. "Really cool." In this hour of silence Quakers are worshipping. They're not meditating, though some Buddhists do show up with prayer mats and meditate. Quakers are focusing on God or the divine spirit.
    The founder of the Society of Friends was George Fox who lived in England during the Civil War. in the 17th century. He believed that each person carried the light of God within them. Big churches or churches period were unnecessary, Fox said. To worship God all one needed was a small space and a belief in the divine.

Ends and Odds: THe Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe: Chapter Seven,Part Two.

      My Religious Odyssey. Part Two by Dave Jaffe.




     Although I was raised in a very orthodox Jewish family, my religious education exposed me to other religious trends. In my mid teens, I had classes in Bible studies and came across Jesus's wonderful Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. Parts of it appealed to me in a way that my father's religion never did. Now there were parts of the Sermon that struck me as absurd. For instance the idea that adulterers should be put to death seemed to me then and now as idiotic.
    Yet other sections of the Sermon glowed with a tolerance and a compassion that impressed me no end. In any case I filed the sermon away in my mind and only came back to it thirty years or so later. By that time in the late 1980's I was  a full blown socialist and a member of the New Democratic Party. In fact now looking back at my journey from Judaism to socialism, it all seems logical.
     "Religion when pushed to the extreme generalization," writes Randall Collins, "turns into political ideals. The modern doctrines of conservatism, liberalism and socialism emerge out of the declining belief in religion." These creeds, Collins says continue concerns "in a new form."
     I ditched Judaism in my late teens and replaced it soon after with another religion, namely socialism. Yet in the late 1980's, life threw me some new curve balls. I developed neurofibromas or non-cancerous tumours all over my body. The doctors I went to couldn't find a cure for these tumours and hesitated to cut them out of my body for fear of hurt my breathing and muscle use. In the end, I started to go to the Unitarians Church in Vancouver for spiritual sustenance. Here in this church on Vancouver's west side, I met many fine people and had some good times. Yet I found the church week in the spiritual sense.
     Most Unitarians didn't believe in God. I did. I also found that the political views of many Unitarians  leaned to the right. "People here are socially progressive," Barbara, a long time congregant said. "Yet they're not politically progressive." In other words, Unitarians support same sex marriage, a woman's right to abortion and gay and lesbian worshippers. and ministers.  Yet many Unitarians I met supported a strong Canadian military, weak social programs and low taxes for the rich. "Unitarians say nice things," a former Unitarian told me. "But they don't do nice things."
    The turning point for me came in early 2003 when U.S. president George W. Bush started the second Iraqi war. He launched a U.S. invasion of Iraq along with British and some other troops. By this time I'd left the N.D.P. and my political commitments had tapered off to very little. Yet I still remained a progressive. I thought that the Unitarian minister, who was an American like many other Unitarian ministers at the church, would denounce this invasion. Yet as far as I can recall he said nothing about it.  I also met people in the church who supported the war. This did disturb me.