Humanities 101 lecture – third half

Humanities 101 lecture – third half

I had the opportunity to speak with one of the participants of the Humanities 101 class in which I delivered a lecture last week, and was pleasantly surprised by their observations, comments, suggestions.

There is a moral sensitivity to maintain the anonymity of the reviewer, if you will, for their comfort, and the comfort of their fellow participants.

It was most emphatically noted that no one got up and left in the middle of my talk. No one got up, repeatedly, to go to the washroom. There were no idle conversations amongst participants while I presented – and those that evolved were germane to the material. No one made repeated trips for coffee, or tea, or whatever.

It also appears that everyone who was there the first night, was also there the second night.

I have to admit I’m pretty pleased with the feedback. I wish I could say the same of many of the classes I have taken as an undergraduate, or for that matter, as a graduate student.

But there were a couple suggestions:

My PowerPoint presentation was, essentially, an electronic version of the old ‘overheads’ that I grew up with in school nearly forty years ago. That said, it was suggested that I could present more notes, rather than all images, perhaps speaking to bulleted points. I thought that sounded like a good idea – the one caveat is not literally reading your PowerPoint notes aloud. A terrible fault, and one that too many people suffer from.

The second point was that I might engage people in ‘group’ work a little earlier in the process than I did this time. That one I hedged on a bit. I felt some information had to be provided in order to situate the Jane Jacobs’ readings in ‘time and place.’ I still think so.

And, someone I have the greatest regard for, said this in an e-mail “You were made to stand in front of students–you have teacher written all over you, I mean in a cultural dna sort of way.” And I can’t think of a nicer compliment. Thanks.

Ideas, truth, beauty, and ‘quality’

I started this little blog essentially as a place to work out ideas; we are regarded as somewhat odd if we talk to ourselves in public – but no one knows what we write as we sit there in the café, coffee readily at hand, and a book or two to provide questions, insight, answers, or relief from writing. Ideas need to be worked on. I have never had an idea that was in any way related to the Divine, ergo they are not perfect, and I must labour intensively sometimes to hone the argument that backgrounds the idea proper. And, that’s why this blog is here.

When I go to the coffee shop just a couple minutes walk from where I live I almost always take a book or two. Sometimes that is all I take. Other times I have a sketchpad (though my drawing is in no way ‘art,’ but I learned to draw the things I wanted to make, so they may be crude but workable), a notebook, a camera. Or not.

Lately I have been re-reading two books, both of which I laboured through twenty or thirty years ago, and both of which are rewarding the renewed effort magnificently. Pirsig’s ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ (ZAMM) is one, and J. E. Gordon’s ‘Structures or Why Things Don’t Fall Down’ appear at first glance to be written from vastly different perspectives, with equally different goals. Yet I think these books are arguing for a common audience.

Pirsig is presenting, in the guise of motorcycle maintenance, a treatise on philosophy and life – if there is any difference – and I am not enough of a fan of philosophy in general to argue the matter. I just have a very difficult time with the ‘how do we know it exists’ type of question, in particular with the physical world. If it doesn’t exist, it doesn’t much matter, because we are all sharing much the same illusion that it does exist. But the notion of ‘quality’ is the ever present concern in ‘ZAMM,’ and I believe that the pursuit of ‘quality’ is a worthy one.

I am not, contrary to Phaedrus (Pirsig’s doppelganger perhaps), positive that there is an absolute quality, but rather that there is a good enough variety. This good enough quality is experiential, relative, perhaps fluid would be as good a term as any. To provide an example: two people are building boats, both identical, perhaps from plans. They are experienced at this. They have built other boats, repaired much that was broken, value the time, effort, and rewards of the project. But, in one critical area, they differ.

Their difference, is summed up in this question, asked by one – of the other. “Are you building it for five years, or for five hundred?” At first glance perhaps this seems trite, childish, a sleight of some form.

But Pirsig’s philosophical search for ‘quality’ in built, bought, or even ‘thought’ material goods is vitally important here. We live in a society, virtually worldwide, that has more material goods per person than any other society in history. Granted this absolute distribution is not even, there are some with more stuff or money than some tens of thousands of others. But there are also incredible gains in the amount of stuff that even most poor people have made over earlier generations.

An important caveat to this vast increase in quantity however is the question of quality.

If we build the boat to last 500 years, a figure both arbitrary and convenient, it will be expensive. It will probably bankrupt the builder, who will have the pleasure of leaving it to fifteen or twenty generations to follow. Will the price be worth it? Will those generations want, use, appreciate, maintain this boat in ways that ultimately justify the expense?

What if we build the boat to last five years? Will it be amortized over that period of time? Will the builder have achieved what they intended, something quick, relatively dependable, convenient, and cost effective?

Are either, or both, of these situations reflections of quality?

Gordon’s book, hereon ‘Structures,’ presents a series of arguments for well informed design – primarily in what might be considered ‘mechanical’ fields – those machines both fast and slow. This would include ships and aircraft, but bridges, houses, high-rise offices, bicycles and a range of built structures and mechanisms left to the readers imagination.

There is no need, in Gordon’s view, for mass-produced ‘stuff’ to lack quality. As a first example Gordon draws on the block-making machinery at the Royal Dockyards in England, originally designed by Sir Marc Brunel, and in Gordon’s’ words “not only good-looking but also very effective” having machined hundreds of thousands of blocks for Royal Navy ships during and beyond the Napoleonic Wars.

Granted these machines were built to a higher order, arguably, than a toaster bought at a mass-market retailer. But the toaster has to satisfy an entirely different market, more price sensitive in the immediate present perhaps than the Royal Navy’s long-term need. Does that toaster have Pirsig’s quality? I’m afraid I believe it does.

I’m not arguing here that a better toaster cannot be built. I am arguing that if quality is not fixed, then a less expensive toaster, is a better toaster because it actually exists in the here and now. Ford found this with automobile production: produce more, for less, to increase market size, and reap the benefits.

The boats, built for five years rather than five hundred, have not bankrupted the builder, nor locked generations not yet born into some chattel relationship simply to pay for the thing, nor fixed for generations the only option with respect to what one does, and the way in which one does it.

And, in this way, I hone the ideas in the coffee shop. Are they ‘good enough’ to do the job? Not perfect, no doubt about that, but good enough in the ‘here and now’ to engage the reader, to satisfy both my needs and yours?

Humanities 101 lecture, second half

Last Thursday, the 16th March, was the second half of my inaugural lecture in Humanities 101 – I survived – but not entirely unscathed.

There were issues I wanted to raise with the students, equal participants in the lecture with me, my role in many ways only to facilitate the students’ recognizance of the reading, and their ability to engage with Jane Jacobs’ ideas and position. Broadly speaking I believe I lived up to my role, the students allowing me room to maneuver, and actively engaging with the work and myself.

Thank goodness for small mercies.

While the first evening had a script, which for 15 or 16 minutes gave me a concrete platform on which to stand, the second evening was to be free form all the way. No parachute here.

While there were points of interest I wanted to raise, authors (both broadly supportive and opposed to Jacobs’ views) that I felt should be mentioned, I hoped to have the students’ contributions to the evening define ‘where, what, who, why, when’ might be dealt with.

Well, the changes to the evening’s ‘program’ began even before I got started.

Several students had come across a glossy advertorial magazine, a real-estate sale vehicle, largely focused on the Woodwards re-development in Vancouver.

I have had a very small role to play in the Woodwards redevelpment process, being part of the ‘Community Advisory Committee,’ whose mandate requires working with the City of Vancouver, the developer, the architect of record, and other community, social, and business groups associated in some way with the project.

The magazine showed two, quite different, views of the project. The cover of the magazine imagined the redevelopment as part of the greater cityscape, all glossy and showy in an imaginary sense, while the interior pictures were retouched versions of the architect’s models – which placed the project within a very particular social and economic realm. The two views however can lead to cognitive dissonance if the viewer is familiar with the current state of the community – it will be interesting to see how the intended buyers react.

The students were interested in, I hesitate to say ‘intrigued,’ by my analysis of the differences between the reality and ideological positions referenced in the two illustrations.

The remainder of the evening went well; the students were, for the most part engaged and engaging. Their questions were well thought out, often challenging, and illustrated curiosity and intellectual verve.

By the evening’s end I was exhausted, exhilarated, and thrilled to have had the opportunity to present to them.

I hope the opportunity will present itself again in the future, and that I may learn from my students as well.

My thanks to the students, the volunteer tutors, as well as Brianna, Stephanie, and especially Peter (who conned me into this).

Humanities 101 lecture, first half

I'm not sure that it is appropriate to abdicate responsibility by suggesting that other people have the authority to judge my work by their own standards. It seems unfair that performance is adjudicated relative to an unknown, and perhaps unknowable, set of expectations.

The first lecture of my life is over. My heart rate has settled, my respiration rate is back to normal, and the self-reflexive examination of the perceived stress leading up to the presentation proceeds apace.

That was way easier than I expected.

The students were there on time, more or less. We managed to get the data projector and laptop from AV Services before they closed for the day, by seconds. All the cords, wires, connectors worked as promised. The CD, burned on a Windows machine for me, played on a Windows machine flawlessly. At least it played flawlessly when I figued out (with help) how to get the 'slide show' function to work. My Mac still seems easier and more logically designed and implemented.

After the 'canned' introduction, several pages of text that served as a script, the lecture went 'free form,' hoping to follow students interests relative to the Jacobs' readings on the 'use of sidewalks.'

This entry is to remind myself of the inanity of getting WAY TOO STRESSED ahead of time. But it also reminds me to allow the Humanities 101 students as much leeway as possible, while still allowing me to present the information I want to share.

Thursday night is another lecture, with no script at all, other than what exists in my mind so far. I'll ask the Humanities 101 students, and their undergraduate mentors, to write a short piece on Jacobs (if they are interested) and on their perception of the 'delivery' of the material. I'll comment on their work, and attempt to take the critique positively.

And now, time to go out for coffee in the city.

Published Work

I make a percentage of my income, one that is always marginal at best, by writing. This is one of the pieces I have had published, in this case by subTERRAIN, a Canadian literary magazine. They hold the print rights, I have this.

The work draws on my experiences living, and working an urban (though not urbane) life in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side.

Six-up*

Betty is waiting. Leaning against the wall for support, there is an involuntary tug at her greasy blanket, as she pulls it a little closer around her shoulders.

“Cheap.” Her eyes never move from the sidewalk.

There is a matter-of-fact resignation to this business. There’s no point in getting excited—if I don’t buy, someone else might.

“Anything you want, cheap,” she repeats.

My own eyes are downcast, trying to see what is there for sale.

“How cheap?” I say, motioning.

“Six bucks?”

“Make it five.”

“Okay, five.”

“Yeah,” as I reach into my pocket, “Okay.”

Just like that, the deal is done. Five bucks. Betty can get two pints of cheap beer, or half a rock of crack. Or some smokes.

I amble home five dollars poorer, with my new lamp (needs a cord and probably a bulb) in hand, leaving behind the mismatched set of candlesticks, queen-size cinnamon pantyhose (still in the L’eggs egg), a bright pink bra, and a miscellany of goods that remain on the sidewalk.

Vancouver’s Downtown East Side has far more going on than the drugs and prostitution that have earned the region notoriety across North America. When I stayed at the Wolcott Hotel in New York, I met Albert. While debating the qualities of various grape varietals and vintages, Albert said he had heard of the Downtown East Side. Between pulls on a dark green wine bottle, he told me he saw “something on television about the drugs there, heroin especially,” as the tiniest drop of scarlet trickled into his nicotine-stained whiskers.

The Downtown East Side lives up to its foul reputation every day of the week. But there are other places in this place, other lives and experiences.

Betty is a regular here. Two or three nights a week, she spreads her wares out on the sidewalk, hoping to sell enough to make the day worthwhile before the cops come along and roust everyone. The city obviously feels the street market attracts the wrong class of people; undesirables, that sort.

A few feet away from the bras and pantyhose, Dale is trying desperately to sell his collection of old sneakers.

“Good shoes,” he says, and waves me over to have a look.

“Not my size.”

“How about these ones, Nikes, eh?”

“Yeah, still too small, I need twelves or thirteens.”

“Not many of them around,” Dale tells me. “Hard to find.”

“Well, let me know if you see any.”

I’ve known Dale for a couple years. He is a binner. He leaves home every day of the week around four in the morning, working until eight or nine. We meet occasionally in the Radio Station Café, in the geographic centre of the Downtown East Side. Over coffee we share war stories. Dale tries to sell me a new wardrobe, tries to dress me as nattily as him. I resist. I just don’t have that sense of style.

In Darwinian terms, these people are survivors, and this is not some pseudo-sexual fantasy show on television. Betty and Dale are people living in a different, difficult, world.

I remember Dave, and his rides in my cab to the liquor store. Dave was the one who introduced me to trap lines. Not esoteric frontier trap lines, with a trapper in a snow-bound cabin, but urban trap lines. These urban trap lines target a different quarry: bottles and cans, the discarded and recyclable. Dave and I lived in the same building, and every weekday, Dave left at some ungodly hour of the morning to check his trap line and bring home a few dollars worth of cans and bottles.

“How much do you make, in a month?” I asked Dave one day.

“A couple hundred dollars, maybe more, and I drink every penny of it.”

I thought Dave might be exaggerating just a bit. But Dave knew, and I didn’t, that he was dying. Cancer was eating him alive and drinking was his only comfort. In the end, I bought him a couple bottles myself.

Vancouver’s binners search the entire city for their booty. Like the corsairs of old, they are not quite illegal but not quite legal either. It seems that your garbage, like your castle, is yours to do with as you will. That means that the contents of the garbage bin belong to whoever pays for the bin. It also means that binners, often regarded with the same affection as mating cats outside your window, are legally trespassing while rooting through the contents of the bin.

This legal paradox seems a long way from street-level reality. When you’ve decided to grapple with other people’s garbage rather than grovel for the five hundred dollars a month that welfare pays, the fine points of ownership don’t compare with a flat of empties.

Coming in from the trap-lines, binners with their shopping buggies race down Pender St. They are rattling, clanking dinosaurs, scattering puppies and small children as they flock toward the United We Can recycling depot. The cans get turned into aluminum scrap. Some of the bottles get recycled as, yes, bottles. The labels come off, they get sterilized, re-labeled, refilled, and re-sold. And so on. Other bottles aren’t so lucky. They’re sorted by colour, crushed, and re-used as raw glass. An entire orchestra of Dr. Seuss’s bizarre instruments couldn’t recreate the cacophony inside the depot. People rushing back and forth, counting, bagging, dropping, breaking, heaving, groaning under their loads and all set off by the sound of cash.

One and a half millions of dollars a year are paid out—in loonies, toonies, and small bills—the cash equivalent of thirty million pop cans. Ken Lyotier, who heads United We Can tells me the average cash take is seven dollars a day. Ken still heaves bags of empties on occasion, when he’s not representing United We Can to various audiences. Recently, at Simon Fraser University’s Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue, Ken and filmmaker Benoit Raoulx presented Raoulx’s film Traplines—a day-in-the-life view of several binners. To the largely white, middle-class audience, the film provided a unique, non-patronizing story of human experience. The people of Traplines live in a world parallel to, but far removed from most of the audience, whose lives only intersect with the binners’ at the garbage can, or perhaps the liquor store.

The binners and the can collectors have adapted. They have learned to find a dollar in an economy ever more rewarding to the crème de la crème, and seemingly incapable of any coherent, socially inclusive treatment of citizens. Betty and Dale and thousands of others labour every day, finding their own space in the brave new economy.

* ’six-up’ is an old expression that refers to ‘cops on the beat,’ in this argot, ‘keeping six’ is looking out for the police, ’six-up’ means they are here.

New Opportunities

Many, many years ago, in a dark urban space, terrible things may have happened. And some of those terrible things that may have happened, didn't. And, in a moment of clarity, I made positive decisions whose echoes affect me every day.

This is, in short, a way of saying that important things in my life happened and they happened in distressing circumstances. And, while I admit to the experience, those events are none of your business.

What is your business, as it were, are the results of those experiences. If all that follows an event is contingent on what 'came before,' all that I do now is the outcome of actions taken, decisions made, and the 'theory of unintended consequences.'

This brings me to some observations on an opportunity that has come my way.

No! There is no sales pitch for anything.

As an avid reader I came across an issue of Harpers, an American left-wing monthly, several years ago. In the particular issue were two articles on education – and the articles had widely divergent positions on the value of a liberal education in today's world. One, by Mark Edmundson, was cynical. The basic premise, as I recall, was that for the vast majority of middle-class American youth in university, the experience was essentially 'lite' entertainment. The other article, by Earl Shorris, regarded that same liberal education as 'a weapon in the hands of the restless poor.' And I qualified as both restless and poor.

Two undergraduate students at the University of British Columbia read the article, and with their drive, social convictions, and the help of a few maverick educators, Humanities 101 was born in 1998.

I graduated from that inaugural course in 1998. In September 2000 I, who had stormed out of grade 11 only three days into the school year, started at UBC as a undergraduate. I fulfilled the obligations of a major in Human Geography, and graduated well above the University's 'average' in April 2004.

Those were all opportunities. I grabbed them, ran with them, and did the best I could. Or, at least I did the best I could justify in terms of school/life/commitments all considered relative to the input vs results.

My first year in university was unusual; I was in classes with people young enough (mathematically) to be my grandchildren. And some never realized how old I was; it never crossed their minds that anyone would start university that late in life.

?: "How do you know all this stuff?"
A: "How old are your parents?"
?: "40"
A: "I'm older than your parents"
?: Silence as the questioner ponders the very possibility that anyone is actually older than their parents…

Now, a couple years after graduating, I am going back to Humanities 101. This time, not a student, but as a lecturer on urban 'stuff,' particularly Jane Jacobs' ideas about the uses of sidewalks.

It is a daunting task; I, like many, suffer some degree of stage-fright. I, like many, hate to say in public, that 'I know.' But now I have to fight the stage-fright. I have to assume the mantle of 'authority,' not to be error-free, absolutely correct, but to guide, inform, answer, and illuminate areas of the urban life that I find compelling.

I have to give these students opportunities; I present a situation, a condition, a theory of action – and they can question, probe, accept, deny, suggest alternative views and experiences, they can (and in this academic environment may) suggest I am out of my mind. These are not docile, inexperienced, cowed students grubbing for marks. And I'll love the challenge.

I accepted the opportunity. Wish me luck.

Who I think I am, 2

I live at V6B 8P6, which if Googled tells you (with a bit of work) that I reside in one of Canada's most challenging communities; one rife with disease, despair, poverty, hopelessness. Poverty, drug addiction, HIV-AIDS, and mental illness strike a large percentage of the populace.

What the statistics don't show are the people who are poor, perhaps, but coping with a world beyond their means to challenge. They may (or, indeed, may not) lack education, but many lack any sense of entitlement to anything better. They often lack the language or political skills to successfully prosecute change.

But there are pearls here; there are people who have not only read Socrates, Poe, or Gans, but are prepared to argue as an intellectual need those positions that they support or disagree with. There are people who, counter to every expectation, refuse welfare. They scrounge, they collect beverage containers for the deposit. Some gather scrap metal, one makes sandwiches at home and sells them on the street. A few roll cigarettes – and then sell them in ones and twos – the same as the drug dealers evident on so many corners.

But my community is also facing changes. Directly diagonally across the street from where I live a long-standing building will be demolished, and then rebuilt. And, for the heritage fans, don't panic. Much of the 1906-1908 building (the original, not the 9, 10, or 11 additions) will be rebuilt as subsidized space for non-profit organizations, giving them a space alongside Simon Fraser University's 'School for the Contemporary Arts,' two significant (but un-named as yet) retail anchor tenants, two hundred social housing units, and 4 or 5 hundred market-priced condominiums, as well as some additional retail space.

Is it the transgressor, gentrification? Or is it a renaissance? One and a half blocks from where I sit was once the location of City Hall. The site of the redevelopment, Woodwards, was itself the antithesis of what the area has become. Perhaps this is the phoenix rising again from its ashes.

This is the link to the fancy marketing website (no, I don't get a dime, and couldn't afford a spot anywhere but the basement…) http://www.woodwardsdistrict.com/

And, enough of this image of 'who I am.'

Who I think I am, 1

This is the cycling enthusiast and alternative transport person that lives within my head. The bike is an old English 'butcher's bike,' and the photo originally appeared in an article published in Velovison, about 'alternative' uses of bicycles in Vancouver.

Although I am an ethusiastic cyclist I only average in the range of 3000 – 4000 km/yr, and at an average speed of 22 km/hr, I'm enjoying the scenery.

This is one of several identities that I manifest in recurring fashion. These identities will be remarked upon in the near future, as much to practice posting to the blog, as to inform potential readers about the authorial voice.

first things first

From V6B 8P6

This is the inaugural post on this newly created blog. All comments are the sole responsibility of their author – whether they belong to the registered ‘owner’ of this blog – or to others of unknown provenance.

My primary focus here will be on the complex relationships that exist between individuals living in an urban environment, and the environment itself.

These relations may include, but are not limited to local politics, architecture, public space considerations, recreation and leisure activities within an urban context, and other such theoretical or empirical ideas I wish to explore.

My primary focus will be on Vancouver, and the immediate metropolitan area that surrounds the city proper. There will be reflections on places I have been both within British Columbia, and ‘away.’ New York and Kuching seem an odd pair, but no more unusual than Prince George, BC and Sibu, Sarawak let’s say.

Reader feedback is appreciated – though that suggests that somewhere out there someone will actually read this.

V6B 8P6
March 9, 2006 18:55