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Waltzing with Bears

Posted in "Waltzing with Bears", Bruce Byfield, Mythcon, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 22, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Four notes of “Waltzing with Bears,” and I’m there, hearing the song for the first time as it echoes through the middle of the night in the atrium of the Clark Kerr Conference Center at the University at Berkeley, with a couple of dozen people in every costume imaginable singing the chorus as they do their best to waltz.

The occasion was Mythcon XIX. I was in graduate school, with a travel grant to deliver a paper that would eventually become the first chapter of my thesis. Trish and I were staying at Greyhaven, where, Paul Edwin Zimmer had told us, we could stay in the dojo with six witches from Denver. His promise sounded like the start of a dirty joke, but it was true – although he hadn’t mentioned that the witches’ harps would be taking up most of the space.

We were so excited that we could almost have flown south without the aid of Cathay Pacific. About mid-afternoon, we pulled up in a taxi in front of Greyhaven, that famous center for fantasy writers, pagans, poets, Renaissance dancers, the Society for Creative Anachronism hanger-on. “It looks just like the cover,” Trish said of the house, referring to the Greyhaven anthology that had been published a few years back. As the taxi pulled away, I got the anthology out of my bag to confirm the fact.

My first impression was of a house that was semi-dark, piled high with books, and full of people coming and going. Paul, we were told, was not awake yet, being nocturnal, but I soon got lost in the bewildering array of introductions. Somehow, we ended up on the second floor’s porch, talking with Kelson as he build a cardboard boat for a play that would be performed at the conference. When we left, Vancouver had been enduring a hot spell, so we remarked at the pleasant coolness on the porch, although I don’t think Kelson quite believed us.

We felt a little out of depth, since we were meeting many people for the first time. However, Paul rose early to greet us – something that rarely happened – and soon we were off on a conversation that raced back and forth like a terrier out for a walk in the park, and back on familiar ground.

That night, the house held a party. The party marked the opening of Mythcon, but we were made so welcome that it almost felt like a celebration in our honor. Here were all these brilliant people, some of them famous in their own circles, like Vampyre Mike Kassel the poet and Brother Charles (aka The Mad Monk), and we were accepted as belonging to the crowd. It was people-watching on a scale that I had rarely managed before, and I was ready to make the most of it, brachiating from conversation to conversation like an orangutan. I hadn’t been so over-excited since I was a boy.

Mind you, I did worry a bit when an earnest-looking young Unitarian minister and his wife latched on to us, apparently as the most normal-looking people at the party. We weren’t used to thinking of ourselves that way, and the impression made me feel for a moment that our welcome was tentative. But I laughed off the feeling, and the party continued, with more people drunk on words than what was in their glasses.

We spent the next day exploring Telegraph Avenue, and in the evening walked up to the conference center for the official start of Mythcon. It felt like a more subdued version of the previous night, as we worried with Ursula K. Le Guin about our mutual friend Avram Davidson and met Mythies like Sherwood Smith and David Bratman for the first time. We felt so much at home, that somewhere in the evening I found myself volunteering to help with next year’s Mythcon, which was being held in Vancouver.

The next two days were given over to the scholarly papers. I attended some, but what I remember most were the endless conversations and the unofficial events, like the performers doing a dance based on Le Guin’s Always Coming Home, the play based on Diane Paxson’s Westria series in which Kelson and his cardboard boat appeared, and Don Studebaker appearing in his role as Mark Twain in an expensive-looking ice-cream suit and extemporizing answers to questions from the audience.

Most of all, I remember the bardic circles. These were parties where each person took a turn performing or reciting a song or poem, asked someone else to perform, or passed. Presided over by Paul Zimmer in full Scottish regalia, the circles were even more magical than the rest of the conference, going on until three or four in the morning, when we would stagger down the street to Greyhaven and collapse down in the dojo.

I believe it was the second night that the semi-professional singers joined the circle. A man and a woman, they were in High Renaissance costume, each carrying an outsized balalaika. They seemed much more accomplished than the rest of us, and I could see Paul worrying that they might discourage members of the circle who were shy.

Cunningly, Paul started the circle so that the turn of the professionals would come mid-way around, an hour or two into the first round. As they started, I had a momentary fear that would try to dominate, but instead they started playing “Waltzing with Bears,” making waltz-like motions and dipping cautiously as they tried to reconcile dancing with protecting their instruments.

Maybe it was the instruments that got to everyone. Or maybe it was the echoes in the atrium or the contrast between their bright costumes and the dark just beyond the windows, or all these things at once. But whatever the reason, Paul and a few others started dancing to the music as well.

At the end, everyone cheered and applauded, and asked to hear the song again. This time, almost all of us got up, some in suits and ties, others in cutoffs or Medieval or Regency costume. Everyone was laughing. I’m not sure that we didn’t hear the song three times, but before the second performance was halfway through, I doubt anyone was in a condition to count.

After a break, the circle continued another couple of hours. Nothing quite equaled “Waltzing with Bears,” but the members of the circle were mellow after the performance, gradually running out of energy close to sunrise. I think we got three hours of sleep that night, which made the trip home something of a challenge. But the feeling that we had participated in a golden moment lingered for another couple of days, and I have never quite forgotten the moment ever since.

I’ve seen my share of trauma and pain, but my memory of that performance reminds me that the wonderful and the unexpected have happened to me, too. At times, I even look at one of the many Youtube renderings of the song, wondering if it was really written by Dr. Seuss, as sometimes claimed. But after listening to the song, I turn quiet, knowing that the people who made the memory are dispersed or dead, and that I will never have another chance to go waltzing with bears.

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Trying for a glimpse of Edenshaw

Posted in aboriginal art, art, art appreciation, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, Charles Edenshaw, First Nations art, Haida, Haida art, indian art, journalism, Northwest Coast Art, Personal, Vancouver Art Gallery, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on January 15, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Thanks to the Vancouver Art Gallery’s exhibit, I not only have a greater appreciation of Charles Edenshaw as an individual artist, but a greater understanding of his key role on the Renaissance of First Nations Art in the Pacific Northwest. But, increasingly, I wonder about the man behind the art. What was his inner life like?

Glimpses of his life do exist. In During My Time, his daughter Florence Davidson mentions how her father used to say a prayer, then sit himself down on the low chair he preferred and work for the next twelve hours. I believe, too that Davidson tells how he once said that he was tired of art, and wouldn’t do any in his next life; a great nephew who showed no interest in art but died early is suspected to have been his reincarnation. Haida friends also tell me that a lively oral tradition about Edenshaw continues to exist on Haida Gwaii, and from his art, I infer a man with great powers of concentration and attention to detail who took pride in his work.

But such glimpses are tantalizingly few, especially for such a man and such times as he lived in. Almost immediately, the reliable information trails off into surmises. He was said to have been sickly in his youth, and even in his prime, he looks small and fragile in the pictures that have survived, and possibly not too steady on his feet. His early ill-health is often surmised to be the reason he turned to art to make a living – he simply wasn’t rugged enough to earn a living by fishing and logging, like other men of his generation.

Yet what he thought about his life is completely unknown. Did he ever feel resentful at having to live a sedentary life? Or was he quiet man, content to stay close at home and perhaps see more of his family than most of his generation of men? We simply don’t know.

Nor do we know how he felt about the great events happening around him. How did he feel about the epidemics that wiped out most of his generation among the Haida? Was he grateful to survive, or did he sometimes brood at his work bench, wondering how he survived? Was he proud of the titles he accumulated due to the gaps in the successions? Or did he see himself as a caretaker of the titles, assuming them in trust for future generations?

Similarly, I wonder why he accepted baptism in middle age. Did he hope that Christianity might preserve him and his family from other epidemics? Did he see his culture as ending, and Christianity as a way into the future? Or did he see baptism as a way of hedging his bets, an accommodation that allowed him to preserve more of his culture than opposition would? Perhaps as the leader of his people, he converted to maintain his authority over the increasingly Christian Haida clans and houses. Or perhaps he was genuinely drawn to Christianity.

But we do not know any of the reasons for what he did. We do not even know what he thought of the art that such a central feature of his art. I would give a lot to know whether he ever thought of his life’s work as anything other than a way to feed his family. Did he see himself as an individual artist, the way that those from European and American cultures do? Did he hold himself responsible for preserving parts of Haida culture that the epidemics had left abandoned, or was Haida culture just a commodity that he could sell to make a living?

I wonder, too, whether the man who was known in his lifetime as Charlie among English-speakers be proud or embarrassed to be addressed in tones of respect as Charles. I imagine that a man who had taken on so many names as his importance as a chief increased would have taken taken yet another name in his stride. Still, what would he have thought about his influence on the modern art of not only the Haida, but their hereditary enemies the Tsimshian and all the other nations up and down the coast. Did he ever imagine such a role, even for a moment when talking to Franz Boas and the other ethnographers? Or was he too busy going about his life to ever imagine that anyone else would take take such an interest in his work?

At this point, the only answer to all these questions is that at this point we will never know. Fortunately, we do not have to know, because his art is eloquent by itself. But, historically, the man himself remains laconic, and frustratingly close to mute.

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Why “aborigine” is a racist term

Posted in aborigines, Bruce Byfield, connotations, first nations, indians, Personal, racism, racism epithets, Romans, Uncategorized, Virgil, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 11, 2014| Leave a Comment »

I once heard someone claim that “aborigine” was a racist term for First Nations people. By analogy to “abnormal,” he interpreted “aborigine” to mean “not of the same origins,” and refused to believe me when I said it was simply Latin for “from the beginning” – that is people who have always lived in a land. However, after doing a little digging, I believe that he may have been right for the wrong reason.

I had always assumed that “aborigine” was a word coined by the builders of the 19th Century European empires. Recently, however, I found that the word was used by the Romans themselves since at least the start of the common era.

The best known use of the word is by Virgil in the Aeneid to refer to the original inhabitants of Italy. As you may know, the Aeneid gives Rome’s ruling class a heroic ancestry, making them the descendants of the Trojan hero Aeneas, who fled the sack of Troy by the Greeks and lengthy wanderings and adventures, settled in Italy. The Aborigines were the local people Aeneas found there, fought with, and eventually dispossessed.

Besides this myth of origins, “aborigine” also seems to have used outside of literature to refer to the city states and cultures around Rome that were conquered during republican times. Eventually, these cultures would absorb Roman culture and receive full rights as citizens, but as late as the last days of the republic, they were considered not quite as good as those born Roman. For instance, the lawyer and orator Cicero may have been a senator and even served in the highest offices of the government, but he was always known as a New Man, meaning someone not born in Rome, or with any pretense to nobility.

In both these useages, the innocuous-sounding word takes on a more unpleasant connotation. In both Roman literature and history, “aborigine” did not refer only to the first people who lived in a country. More specifically, it was a word applied to those conquered by the Romans.

When the word was revived in the days of European imperialism, anyone with even a few years of education was likely to have studied Latin, so this connotation would hardly have been missed. In using the word, the Europeans were comparing themselves to Rome, and the peoples of North America and Australia to those conquered by the Romans. If any were not conquered, they were eventually destined to be. Such a designation for other people is hardly unusual – after all, “Wales,” the English name for Cymru, originated in the Old English word “wealh,” meaning “slave.”

The word is inaccurate, of course. Especially in British Columbia, the First Nations were never conquered, instead being decimated eight or nine times over by disease until they could no longer resist Europeans settling in their lands. This fact remains a basic premise in dozens of lands claims.

However,even more importantly, the word implies that the First Nations are inferior. At the very least, it suggests that they are unfit to govern themselves, and should be controlled by others. As a racial epithet, it might be slightly better than “nigger,” but only because few people today are familiar with Latin, making the insult less obvious.

Still, the insult exists even if largely unknown. I strongly suggest that people banish “aborigine” from their vocabulary except when explaining the connotations, and use “First Nations,” as most of the people denoted prefer. Describing them as aborigines is no more accurate than calling them Indians – and even more insulting.

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7 problems with free software journalism

Posted in Bruce Byfield, FOSS, Free Software, journalism, open source, Personal, writing, tagged , , , , , , , on January 4, 2014| 1 Comment »

Towards the end of 2014, I will have been writing about free and open source software (FOSS) for a decade. The realization surprises me, because I am used to thinking of myself a newcomer. More – I still think of myself as an outsider whose criticisms do not apply to me as much as those who might be called colleagues. Under the circumstances, I hesitate to talk about the quality of coverage that FOSS receives, even though honesty forces me to say that much of it is not very good.

The outlook is not completely bleak. There are some FOSS journalists whom I am proud to call colleagues, such as Carla Schroder, with her practical outlook and wicked turn of phrase, or Steven J. Vaughan-Nicholls who has been reporting and commenting on technology in general and FOSS in particular longer than just about anyone.

However, for every one whom I admire, there are many others who leave me wincing and rushing to analyze my latest article to check whether I am guilty of exactly the same tendencies that I publicly deplore. Specifically, I see at least seven problems with how FOSS is covered:

A lack of journalistic training: I was lucky to have apprenticed at Linux.com in the days of Robin Miller and Lee Schlesinger. Even though I have no formal education in journalism, they hammered into my head the ethical standards of journalism, teaching me about fairness, conflicts of interest and the differences between reporting and editorializing, as well as a dozen other things I needed to know. However, too many of those writing about FOSS – like most of the computer press in general – have no idea that they need anything beyond a fondness for the sound of their own voice. They don’t know how to summarize opposing views accurately, much less that they have any obligation to try. Nor do they check facts. Readers are the poorer for their failures.

A lack of business and marketing experience: Working in business is invaluable for a tech journalist. Such experience teaches you how far you should trust news releases and how a product is brought to market. Unless you know these things, you are likely to be credulous, accepting information that you should be questioning. For instance, when Canonical announced the first vendor for its phones but declined to say who that vendor was, most FOSS journalists focused on the first part of the news and ignored the second. Only blogger Larry Cafiero, who is a mainstream journalist by day, reached the right conclusion: Without the vendor’s name, the news was the manufacturing equivalent of vaporware and essentially worthless.

An imbalance between writing skills and technical expertise: Like the technical writers who crank out manuals, FOSS journalists come in one of two forms. Either they are people who know how to write, or people with expertise. The result? On one hand, you get well-written articles that tend to avoid technical details. On the other hand, you get expert articles that are so arcane that they might as well be written in assembly language. Too few writers seem to strive for articles that are both well-written and expert in their subject matter.

An apocalyptic outlook: Talking about companies and products, FOSS journalists tend to speak in absolutes. Linux will bury Windows one day, and Android triumph absolutely over iOS. What no one notices, however, is that such Conan-esque victories rarely occur except when you are talking about startups and very small companies. When the companies involved are larger, what you usually see is incomplete victories in which market share changes hand, but most of the competitors continue to co-exist.

Quickie reviews: Once you have experience, writing reviews is easier because you know what to look for. Yet, even then, you need time to investigate. But, instead of taking the necessary time, too many reviews touch on the least important parts of their topics, such as the installation program. Nor do they take the time to look for general tendencies in a new release, simply recording a bunch of random observations instead. Such practices frequently make reviews next door to useless.

Too much fanboyism (or fangirlism): It should go without saying that those who write about FOSS believe in it and see themselves as helping it grow. However, loyalty to a cause should not mean blind acceptance of every vagary. As naïve as it sounds, journalists are supposed to deliver the first draft of history, doing their best to tell the truth even when doing so is inconvenient for the causes they support. They may be diplomatic in their expression of the truth, but they are still supposed to express it. This obligation does not make them traitors, as you sometimes hear; if anything, they are being more useful than those who pretend that no problems exist that need to be exposed.

Encouraging personality cults: FOSS is full of colorful personalities. However, although defining an issue as a battle between a couple of people adds drama to an issue, it usually simplifies and distorts it. For instance, the existence of the armed camps of free software and open source is not due just to the fact that Richard Stallman and Linus Toravalds have different personalities and leadership styles, but also to very different motivations shared by hundreds of thousands of people. Were Stallman or Torvalds to die abruptly, the issues would be no less urgent or influential.

In making these observations, I am not excluding myself. At one time or other, I have probably been guilty of all these problems, and one or two of them, I uneasily suspect, may be habitual with me. In fact, part of my reason for mentioning this problem is to identify them so that I can do more to avoid them.

But in addition to being a writer, I am also a reader. While I know all too well that deadlines mean that articles do not always receive the amount of thought they deserve, I also get impatient with the fact that so few articles about FOSS are worth reading or add to my understanding. Many of us who write about FOSS could do much better than we do – but we are hardly likely to try if the problems are never mentioned to begin with.

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Aggressive panhandling

Posted in begging, Bruce Byfield, homelessness, panhandling, Personal, Uncategorized, Vancouver, tagged , , , , , , on December 30, 2013| Leave a Comment »

When the homeless ask for spare change, I generally give what I have. The fact that some of them are undoubtedly going to use my contribution to buy their drug of choice fails to bother me – I figure it’s none of my business, and I can’t be sure that in their position I wouldn’t buy a few hours of escape myself. But every now and then, I meet a panhandler who pushes hard, demanding more than I am willing or able to give.

It’s not that I imagine that parting with a dollar or two gives me any right to gratitude. They are probably frustrated by having dozens of passersby ignore them. Nor am I to blame if they conclude from my blandly wholesome face that I am an easy mark. But when someone pushes me, I turn stubborn.

Usually, the result is only being sworn at and maybe followed a few steps. Occasionally, though, I meet a panhandler whose stubbornness matches my own.

Once, for example, I was walking from the Chinatown-Stadium Skytrain station to Yaletown when a man approached me saying that he needed money for a bus ticket to Whistler. The bus was leaving in twenty minutes from in front of the Hotel Vancouver, he said.
I suspected he was lying – the excuse is a common one, and I happened to have looked up the bus schedule a few days previously. Yet I gave him a few dollars. It wasn’t enough for a bus ticket, but the deadline was a new twist, and I thought he deserved the handout for his creativity.

Immediately, though, he started demanding more. I said (truthfully) that I had no spare change or bills until I went to the bank. He then said he would accompany me to the bank, and started to walk along with me, alternately telling me long, rambling stories about his life and repeating his request for more money and cursing the selfishness of rich people like me who wouldn’t help him. My repeated insistence that he was not getting more from me apparently went unheard.

The time was early afternoon, but it occurred to me that an attempted mugging was a possibility. I made sure that he was never behind me, and kept walking at a steady pace, determined not to appear nervous or afraid, either of which might provoke an account.
At the bank, the security guards let me in, but not him. He backed away, yelling that I had promised him money, and I joined a long and slow-moving line of customers, even though I had no account at the bank. When he finally gave up, I left the line and got my money from the bank machine.

On Christmas Day, I met another persistent panhandler while waiting for the bus in from of The Bay downtown. I was sitting on the bench at 9:30 in the morning when a passing woman seemed to size me up in passing and return to sit beside me.

With a Quebecois accent, she poured out a series of reasons for needing money. She needed to get breakfast, she told me. She had two kids in a car a few blocks away who needed to eat. She wanted money to stay at a shelter. In a similar rush of contradictions, she said that she was a good girl, that she didn’t do drugs, that she needed the money to get to an addict support meeting.

I gave her what change I had. It was less than she said she needed, and she insisted I must have more money in my wallet. I said she could easily find the rest, and she insisted that the locals were not so generous. She suggested going to a bank machine, and I refused, pointing out that I was waiting for a bus. She said that the Virgin Mary had told her that I would be the person who helped her, and that if I bought a lottery ticket that day, I would surely win.

Over and over, I told her that she had had all that I was prepared to give. Over and over, she changed her story, as though a new one might make me change my mind.

Before very long in this development, others waiting for the bus had moved away – although not so far that they were unable to hear. I was starting to think that only boarding my bus would let me escape, when she abruptly gave up and stalked down the street, obviously furious.

Such encounters disturb me. I am reluctant to ignore those begging on the street, yet, at the same time, I dislike being pressured into doing something, or to be thought gullible. Usually, I spend several hours after them wondering if I have been arrogant or handled the situation well. Sometimes, I wonder if I should have been afraid rather than annoyed.

But I see no way of solving the dilemma to anyone’s satisfaction, so it is sure to happen again – most likely when I am tired or distracted and want nothing better than to be left alone and not to see such social problems first-hand.

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Deciding what to write about

Posted in Bruce Byfield, journalism, Personal, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , on December 5, 2013| 1 Comment »

Every now and then, someone takes a harsh view of my journalism – not my how-tos and reviews so much as my commentary. From some people’s perspectives, I am trolling, trying to deliberately create controversy, specifically in the hopes of getting more page hits on my articles. I never quite know how to answer such attacks, because they are so far from what actually happens that I doubt they would believe my explanations could possibly be true.

However, if I did try to explain, I would have to start with the fact that I am a writer, not an editor. Unlike an editor, I hardly think about page hits. Page hits may affect whether a given website continues to buy my articles, and occasionally an editor will veto a suggested topic on the grounds that it has never done well, but otherwise? Planning writing around page hits sounds all too likely to mean writing about topics that don’t particularly interest me, or about which I have nothing original to say. If I wanted to write that way, I would go back to writing technical manuals, which not only pays more, but also pays more regularly.

My first consideration when choosing a topic is whether I can write about it while it is still timely. Online articles are rarely current for more than a few days, and sometimes my other obligations or the complexity of what I would like to say mean that I have no time to do a particular topic. justice, even if it interests me. Rather than do a superficial job, in these situations I prefer to ignore a topic altogether.

However, for me, the biggest perq of journalism is that I get to write about what interests me, restricted only by the need for editorial approval. When I am generating topics, what I think about is: Am I interested enough in this topic to spend the hours that the story takes to write? Are the facts interesting and important to readers? Do I have any perspectives that are different enough from those of the half dozen or so others who might write on this topic that I can contribute something original to the discussion?

Unless I can answer all these questions with “Yes,” I usually avoid a story – which is why I only occasionally write about breaking news. (Well, that and the fact that living on the Pacific coast means that by the time I log on in the morning, writers living on the east coast have probably already filed their stories). I figure that a story that will bore me will probably bore a lot of readers as well, and fortunately most editors regard me as more than a reporter on the beat. Most of the time, most editors will trust my judgment on whether a story is worth writing.

Perhaps I should be flattered that my detractors think of me as a sort of Professor Moriarty of journalism, constantly engaged in manipulations of everyone around me in the fulfillment of some obscure but diabolical agenda. But honestly? I lack both the energy and inclination for the requisite plotting.

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Charles Edenshaw, Bill Reid, and the Northwest Coast Revival

Posted in aboriginal art, art, art appreciation, art exhibits, Bill Reid, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, Charles Edenshaw, Dogfish Woman, First Nations art, indian art, Northwest Coast Art, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 4, 2013| Leave a Comment »

The Charles Edenshaw exhibit currently at the Vancouver Art Gallery is a rare opportunity to understand not only one of Canada’s greatest artists, but also his influence. The odds are against these two hundred pieces being shown together again any time soon, but, while they are together, they allow visitors to observe the elements of Edenshaw’s style, such as his growing awareness of negative space as part of the design. Just as importantly, the exhibit shows the importance of Edenshaw in the development of not only Bill Reid, but of the entire revival of Northwest Coast Art in the last sixty-five years.

This is an outcome that Charlie Edenshaw (as he was known during his lifetime until a more formal version of his name started being used as a sign of respect) could hardly imagine. We know little of his inner thoughts, but, as he started his day’s work with a prayer, preparing to hunch for hours over his latest work, he seems to have had little concern beyond making a living for his family. In fact, he once said that he was so tired of carving that in his next life he planned to avoid it altogether. When a descendant was one of the few of his generation not to experiment with art, he was widely believed to be Edenshaw’s reincarnation.

Bill Reid never hid the debt he owed to Edenshaw. I suspect, for example, that Reid’s love of deep carving may have come from seeing Edenshaw’s argillite carving, whose cutbacks are so deep that you can often stand to one side and see daylight on the other side. If you are know Reid’s work, you cannot spend ten minutes at the Edenshaw exhibit without being haunted by a sense of familiarity. Reid was not being the least bit humble in his comments about Edenshaw; he was only stating the truth about his own development.

Two exhibits make that influence especially clear. Near the start of the exhibit is Edenshaw’s famous sketch of Dogfish Woman – done, if I remember correctly, at the request of anthropologist Franz Boas. Although acknowledging that we no longer know the story of Dogfish Woman, Reid adapted the design many times in his career. Not only that, but dozens of other First Nations artists, both Haida and non-Haida, have copied the same basic pose and design in the last half century.

The second exhibit is in a display case of bracelets near the end of the exhibit. In the middle of the case are two bracelets, one by Edenshaw and one done by Reid in 1956. They are supposed to be of two different animals, but the use of negative space and even most of the features are identical – and Edenshaw’s has the strongest sense of line. Early in his career, Reid clearly not only studied Edenshaw, but, as developing artists often do, copied him almost exactly – just as dozens have studied and copied Reid since. The next time I go to the exhibit (which is so overwhelming as to be impossible to comprehend in a single visit), I mean to watch for other evidence of the influence.

Besides an appreciation for Edenshaw’s work by itself, the exhibit is important for understanding modern Northwest Coast Art. I do not think that I am detracting anything from Reid’s reputation to notice such signs of influence; one reason that Reid is so fascinating as an artist is that he began as a copyist, and the depths of his talent only blossomed fully thirty years later, in the last two decades of his life. To see what Reid owes to Edenshaw does nothing except to offer more insight into the process of his development.

Just as importantly, as a key figure in the Northwest Coast revival, Reid himself continues to influence dozens – possibly hundreds – of artists. Considering his debt to Edenshaw, it would not be too much to say that, without Edenshaw, the revival either would have been stunted, or else not happened at all.

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The artisianal pride of typography

Posted in art, Bruce Byfield, craft, design, Personal, typography, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 1, 2013| 2 Comments »

When someone suggests that design doesn’t matter, I like to mention Jan Tschichold, whose ideas help to create modern typography and were considered so subversive that Nazi Germany gave him the choice of exile or imprisonment. I can’t say that typography was quite so important in my own life, but there was a period when it helped to keep me sane.

At the time, I was working as a technical writer, having realized that the reduction in tenured positions made academia a dead end. Technical writing was far more lucrative than teaching, and it taught me the importance of organization and brevity, but it was far from challenging. In six months, I had gone from a beginner to hiring my own sub-contractors, and I was looking for the next step.

I branched out into marketing, which quickly lead me to graphic design. I soon realized that typography was a craft in itself that most designers knew little about, and, the more I studied, the more fascinated I became.

Part of the appeal was the esoterica. To appreciate typography, you have to learn about ascenders and descenders, bowls and leading and all the details that most people see without observing. Moreover, the roots of typography were in the early Renaissance, although the modern concepts of design were less than a century old. If you had any hope of understanding what typography was about, you had to train your eye by absorbing obscure concepts that most people never even guessed existed.

Yet paradoxically – and contrary to what many believe – the point of typography is not to call attention to itself. In fact, design that called attention to itself can be called a failure by definition. The point of typography is to enhance the content, to make it more legible and, present it appropriately. Such goals are so contrary to those of our post-modern age that they seemed to me an example of art for art’s sake. After all, why else would someone labor over a design that, if successful, would affect people’s experience with only a handful ever appreciating what it accomplished? Such attitudes immediately commanded my respect. I wanted to understand what successful design was about.

Also, I soon realized that my growing obsession had a practical side. If I could design as well as write, I would become highly employable. I could market myself as an all-in-one service, combining writing, design, and project manager in a way that no one else was doing. Even more importantly, I would have enough variety in my work that I would rarely be bored.

It became common place for clients to tell me that they wanted accurate manuals, not pretty designs. Often, I was cleaning up after writers who thought the ability to put words on paper was all they needed, so the last thing clients wanted was someone else giving themselves airs. I did my best to deliver the hands-on accuracy that other writers avoided – but, for my own sake, I also gave clients well-designed manuals and help files without saying anything.

To my satisfaction, almost every client as they signed off would say some variation of, “I know I said I didn’t care about design – but damn, that design is something else.” I enjoyed giving them a little extra, and proving that accurate content and quality design were not polar opposites. To this day, I can look at my work from that period with artesianal pride at a job well-done.

Soon, however, my restlessness led me to management and finally to journalism. Both were satisfying in themselves, but neither gave much scope for design.

However, in the last few months, I’ve returned to typography, designing the book I’m writing and even designing templates for a client. I’ve probably forgotten more than I ever knew, and I never was more than an apprentice in the craft, but I find the work as satisfying as ever. As far as I’m concerned, combining writing with design is the closest I’m likely to come to what Bill Reid used to describe as “the well-made object”– a tiny piece of art in which I can demonstrate all my knowledge in every aspect of it.

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Getting back in shape

Posted in Bruce Byfield, exercise, injuries, Personal, recovery, tagged , , , , , on November 23, 2013| Leave a Comment »

For at least the twentieth time, I am currently in the process of getting back into shape. As a regular exerciser, I find it an effort that consists equally of humiliation and patience.

I know that treatment for an injured knee should include staying off it. However, when you live alone, that’s not possible. There’s no one else to do the laundry or cook meals, and even ordering take out means dragging yourself to the door. Occasionally, too, I need groceries, and although neighbors and friends offer to help, it’s easier for me to get them myself than describe with precision the food I want.

As a result, the original injury is only the start. After a few days, collateral damage sets in on the other leg. If I’m especially unlucky, the collateral damage can cross back and forth several times between legs.

Being forced into as much inactivity as I can manage is a blow to my self-image, because for much of my life I’ve been on the high end of fitness. Suddenly, my muscles feel flaccid. Simple tasks like pulling on socks and shoes require all my ingenuity.

Even worse, as I hobble out with a cane, I am slower than everyone else – slower, sometimes, than even octogenarians. Instead of offering help, I am faced with the decision of whether to forget my pride and accept it. Instead of giving up my seat on the bus, I am offered one. Twenty times a day, I tell myself to cultivate patience, and sing Stan Roger’s “The Mary Ellen Carter” in my head to keep myself going. When I come home, I collapse on the bed, as often as not falling asleep before I can pull my shoes off.

Nor does the ordeal end with the last of the collateral damage. Having gone for days without the usual outlets for my excess energy, my first impulse is to throw myself back into my full exercise routine. But the sensible part of me knows that is the last thing I should do. Three or four days of full exercise will only make me an invalid again. I have to start slowly, if not from the beginning, then close enough to it that my pride takes another beating. Often, the first few days leave me feeling like my entire body is bruised, and the gradually increasing effort leaves me lightheaded for a week or more.

That’s where I am now, and, as always, I have some insight into why so many people who are new to working out quit after a few weeks. Every step of the way, I have to caution myself against impatience and the temptation to do too much too soon. One good day, and I can all too easily do a harder workout than I can manage. Physically, I have high expectations of myself, expectations unsuited to my current circumstances and increasingly out of sync with my age. Unless I am careful, I could easily find myself at the beginning of the process again – and I seem to be an appalling slow learner, reluctant to do as much as take a day of rest when I have missed so many.

Of course, unlike newcomers, I know that the effort will be worthwhile. But getting back into shape is not a process that improves with repetition. It’s simply preferable to any alternative.

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Returning to Billy Bishop Goes to War

Posted in Billy Bishop, Billy Bishop Goes to, Bruce Byfield, Canada, Canadian Nationalism, Eric Peterson, John Gray, Personal, Remembrance Day, Uncategorized, World War One, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 18, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Around Remembrance Day, I always make a point of listening to the orginal cast recording of Billy Bishop Goes to War. It’s a suitable observance, because I know of no other piece of writing that covers so many different reactions to combat.

If you’re not Canadian, you’ve probably never heard of Billy Bishop Goes to War, but it’s one of the most-performed Canadian plays of the last forty years. Originally written and performed in 1978 by John Gray and Eric Peterson, it’s a one man show (or one plus a piano player) about how William Avery Bishop from the small town of Owen Sound, Ontario went from being a perennial screwup to one of the leading flying aces in World War One. Revised several times since its first performance, the play draws heavily on Bishop’s own autobiography, as well as many of the jokes and traditions of the war. During the course of the play, the actor playing Bishop also plays over a dozen other characters, ranging from a female torch singer and a drunken cavalry officer in a bar to Alderman Lady St. Helier and George V, usually with a minimum of props, making the role unusually demanding.

The main character and setting are especially suitable for an exploration of Canadian nationalism. To several generations of Canadians, World War One was the moment when Canada established its own identity, as its recruits on the ground soon proved among the most effective of the Commonwealth troops, rivaled only by the Australians. Its fighter pilots were equally effective, with more Allied aces coming from Canada than any other country. In some places, the play celebrates this fact, with the peak of Bishop’s success being that “nobody asks me where I’m from / They’re happy for the men I’ve killed.”

However, what makes the play so effective is that, while it sets off to explore the subject of war, it never takes sides. Instead, it sets out to express all the various emotions with which soldiers face combat, beginning with the naivety of the new recruits suggested by the title, and moving quickly through disillusionment to the mixed pride and misgivings about becoming a survivor and a hero, and, finally, a has-been not much different from the clueless superior officers that the main character once despised.

Even the glory is qualified. True, at the height of his success, Bishop may crow, “Number One is a hero / Number One’s the hottest thing in town” as he is feted by London society. But the play undercuts such celebrations with other moments in which Bishop admits that he is “scared shitless.” Similarly, while Bishop sings about aerial combat being like a meeting of chivalric knights, he also mentions chilling moments when the death of an enemy unnerves him.

Nor, as he becomes famous, is he ever far away from the knowledge that the reward of winning a dogfight is only to “get a little older” – to push aside the inevitability of death for a short time before he faces it again. He is always facing the paradoxes that “the only way to learn survival is to survive” and that most of the emotions with which soldiers face war – religion, cowardice, hate – do nothing to help survival and may, in fact, prevent it. Instead, the key is a dehumanizing detachment, a cold determination to take whatever advantage available that Bishop is proud of at the same time as realizes that his fiancée at home would hardly understand it.

As with the individual, so with the big picture. The celebration of the king awarding him three medals on the same day is undercut by “The Empire Soirée,” which hints at the coming collapse of the British Empire. “The birth and death of nations, of civilizations / Can be viewed down the barrel of the gun,” the song suggests, and everyone is helpless to break the pattern: “All you and I can do is put on our dancing shoes / And wait for the next one to begin.”

In the play’s last moments, the story leaps forward twenty years to Bishop as a recruiter in World War Two, faintly surprised that the War to End Wars has been followed by another one. “But I guess we’re none of us in control of all of this,” he mutters into his drink, and the only summary he can muster is, “looking back, all I can say is that it was one hell of a time.”

In the introduction to the published version of the play, Gray suggests that this ambiguity is, in itself, typically Canadian. He talks about the bemusement of American audiences who expected the play to be either definitely pro or anti war, adding that as a Canadian who tends to gets lost in the complexities, such attitudes confound him.

That may be so, and as a Canadian, maybe I share Gray’s attitude. But what American audiences might find puzzling, I find a virtue. I am far more likely to fall into the anti-war camp than the pro one, but what I appreciate is that Billy Bishop cheats neither. Sentiments on both sides are taken into account, and, although no conclusions are reached, the result seems to me the kind of truth that is rarely expressed. It may not be a conclusion that is intellectually satisfying, but it seems accurate in a way that most literature about war fails to manage. The fact that it manages to do so with broad swipes of humor while being perennially popular only makes the play that much more of an accomplishment.

At a time when Remembrance Day is used by some to drum up support for military adventures on the one hand and for demands for peace on the other hand, I can appreciate a piece that does justice to all perspectives on war. If Remembrance Day is supposed to be a time for looking back at what soldiers have done and acknowledging what they still do, I find it only fitting that I try to do so with some accuracy – and Billy Bishop Goes to War helps me to do that.

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