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Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category

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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First contacts

Posted in animal awareness, Bruce Byfield, Cambridge Declaration, Irene Pepperberg, Ningauble, Parrots, Personal, Raven, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 15, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Recently, a number of scientists signed the Cambridge Declaration, stating their conviction that animals have conscious awareness. I was pleased to see among the signatories Irene Pepperberg, a personal hero and the leading expert in parrot intelligence, and I appreciate that so many people were willing to risk accusations of anthropomorphism and sentimentality. But, otherwise, the announcement mainly gave me the satisfaction of other people saying what I have known for years.

I have been convinced since childhood that at least some animals were self-aware to one degree or another. However, at least twice, this fact has hit me with the force of revelation.

The first time was shortly after Trish and I bought Ningauble, a Nanday conure. I was lounging on a futon by the window, and he was on my chest. As the sky darkened outside, Ning began to get agitated, indicating the direction of his cage with his whole body and making anxious noises.

I knew perfectly well that he wanted to be carried over to the cage, but I didn’t feel like moving. If he really wanted, he could fly there.

But after a few minutes of expressing his desire, Ning quietened. His head began to move, first to look at my toes and the end of the futon, then down to the floor and over to a chair beside his cage. He repeated the same eye movements several times, then marched along the path I have described, ending by climbing to the top of his cage and letting out one triumphant shriek.

Ning, I realized as a thin thrill of excitement passed through me, had just planned his route and followed it. He had at least a limited sense of the future, and enough awareness of himself to imagine doing something in the future. Of course he would have had an easier time if he had flown, but parrots’ intelligence rarely exceeds that of a three or four year old human, and he had all of a toddler’s obsessive tendencies.

This was not a random incident, either. Over the decades of living with parrots, I have seen Ning and all the other birds that have been through our house making simple plans and coming to a decision more times than I remember.

I particularly remember when each bird came to a decision and reached out to preen a human for the first time. Not only was it a sign of affection, but it has always been preceded by a moment of deliberation, as though the bird was deciding whether to extend trust. It has never been as unexpected as that moment of watching Ning, but the repetition showed that his planning was more everyday than something unusual.

The second moment was in early Spring. Trish and I were at Centennial Park on Burnaby Mountain when we noticed two ravens picking at the garbage bins outside the restaurant. We immediately observed that only one raven foraged at any given time; the other would perch, a little higher, shifting slightly and looking all around.

Over about half an hour, we worked our way cautiously closer. We were about ten meters away when a restaurant worker opened the door and tossed a big black bag of garbage into the bin before turning on his heels and disappearing inside again.

The ravens took the air. One landed on the grass about five meters of us. Abruptly, it realized how close we were, and looked up.

At once, I had a sense of being evaluated. My perception was not just based on the raven’s obvious wariness, or the fact that it was cocking its head as though to get a better view of us. It was the fact that I was close enough to look the raven in the eyes.

Once at a wildlife refuge, I had been eyed in the same way by a bald eagle separated from me by a wire cage. Its eyes were so mad that I could tell that its only thought was: Food? Not food?

By contrast, the raven seemed to be doing a more complex evaluation of us. Its wings were poised to take flight, but it seem to be risking a moment or two to be curious about us – even, perhaps, curious about our curiosity. What else the bird might be thinking about us I can only imagine, but what struck me was that looking it in the eye was exactly the same as looking a human in the eye. I was watching another patch of self-awareness watching me.

After about thirty seconds, we started to ease down to our knees, by unspoken agreement hoping that we would be less threatening if we looked smaller. But, as cautious as our movements were, they were enough for the raven to take to the air, flying over us with the single click of its beak. A moment later, both ravens were flying for a high stand of trees on the other side of the park.

Both these incidents took place years ago, but both have formed an important part of my thinking ever since. You might accuse me of an over-active imagination, but all I can say is that you would have had similar perceptions if you had been in the same position.

I hope that our planet will encounter aliens in my lifetime, but, if not, I won’t be too greatly disappointed. So far as I am concerned, my own first contacts with alien intelligences has already happened.

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Why phones bore me

Posted in Bruce Byfield, computing, Personal, phones, productivity, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 11, 2013| Leave a Comment »

I confess: I’ve tried and tried, but I’m unable to muster more than a polite interest in smart phones. The disappearance of pay phones and bus schedules mean that I need to carry one, but, unlike a laptop or a workstation, it has never seemed more to me than utilitarian. It allows me to text, scan QR codes, play Angry Birds – oh, and make a phone call – but I can’t warm to the thing or get excited about it the way that most people appear to.

So far as I am concerned a phone is a limited piece of technology that hasn’t made any advances to speak of for years. True, every new release, those around me sigh over the latest round of specs. But most of them are small enhancements at best, and soon forgotten after purchase. And while the fact that we carry in our pockets better computers than were used in the Apollo moon mission is worth a moment of awe, it’s hard to sustain that feeling in everyday use, especially when the memory and the RAM make the average phone very much yesterday’s technology by workstation standards.

Of course, I might think differently if I lived differently. But I work from home, and I see no particular reason to switch from my old land line, especially when doing so would mean waiting a couple of weeks for a new Internet connection. When I carry a cell phone, I’m away from home and on my own time, so I carry it turned off, turning it on only for a purpose (which sometimes, I admit, includes boredom and the lack of new reading material and a dead battery on my music player). When I’m away from home, I’m on my time, and generally I don’t want to be accessible. The average emergency, I figure, can wait.

It doesn’t help, either, that I have short, stubby fingers and thumbs that make texting an exercise in frustration. On any phone, texting more than every now and then leaves me sympathizing with those who require accessibility features and grimly determined to avoid the ordeal unless absolutely necessary.

But these are peripheral reasons for my lack of interest in smart phones. Mostly, I don’t care for them because they are so limited.

When I got my first workstation, what excited me was what I could do with it. Even the early version of WordPerfect I was using was a tremendous boost in productivity over my old Selectric (which seemed pretty cutting edge in its day compared to ordinary typewriters). I was excited by the graphic designs that were suddenly possible, and by the simulations that strategic games made easy, even with CGA graphics. Later, the largest screens that would fit my work space, to say nothing of virtual workspaces, made me more productive still. But, every step of the way, I was excited about a workstation or a laptop let me do.

By contrast, even the simplest productivity is torture on a phone. The speed is slow, the precision almost non-existent, and the feature set limited. More is done for me, as if that is an advantage over the exact hands-on control that to me is the whole point of productivity apps. Very little professional work is possible, and what can be done takes three or four times as long – if I’m lucky and it can be done at all. Things do get better if you start adding peripherals, but at that point I’d rather simply carry a laptop, and not have to worry about leaving something expensive behind me.

I can admire the design that goes into phones, and admit their usefulness. But get excited about them? Please. You might as well expect me to get excited about my toaster.

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The charge of the tin hat brigade

Posted in Bruce Byfield, harassment, journalism, Personal, trolls, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , , , on October 26, 2013| Leave a Comment »

For most of the last week, I’ve been having a troll problem. I’m not going to provide a link, because one encounter with trolls is very much like another. Usually, it starts with a hijacked thread, and involves a lot of generalizations and name-calling based on comments taken out of context, conspiracy theories, and a kind of naive cynicism that insists that I could never have done anything except for the worst of reasons.. This encounter was no different, and, like the others I’ve had, leaves me uncertain how I should respond.

I have no trouble with someone who disagrees with me. I enjoy the benefits of a liberal education, in which differences of opinion are seen as a chance to deepen and expand the discussion. Nor am I young enough to expect everyone to like me – in fact, in most cases, I’m relieved when a troll dislikes me, because I usually don’t think much of them, either.

But as a former teacher of rhetoric and composition, I am by nature incapable of ignoring a fallacious argument – especially if it is directed at me. Let someone judge me by a single sentence from a single work, or misquote or take a sentence out of context, and I’m immediately tempted to leap in with a correction. As I have said many times, if you’re going to disagree with what I’ve said, please make it something I actually said and not something that you imagine that I have said. Whether out of carelessness, vindictiveness, or inability, very few trolls seem capable of reading or reporting with any accuracy or precision, so enticing me to reply is often ridiculously easy.

Not only that, I am all too aware of how others might interpret my silence. Will they go away thinking that the troll’s inaccuracies are true? Will they think that my silence is an admission of guilt, that I am ashamed to reply? Worse, will I think myself cowardly? With such questions buzzing in my mind, I can easily find myself wrestling with trolls before I realize what I am doing.

At the same time, I am well-aware that answering is only going to waste my time. By definition, trolls lack an open-mind, and no eloquence of mine will coax an apology out of them, ever. Anything I say will be taken in the worst possible way, if not dismissed outright, and I will convince them of nothing. If I manage to counter one barrage, another will simply start up from a different direction, often using my replies as additional ammunition against me. Under these circumstances, almost anything else will be a better use of my time.

Usually, I compromise, and confine myself to two replies. That way, I reason, I can satisfy my urge to reply and correct any misrepresentations for any audience without taking up too much of time. This time, unfortunately, I was distracted enough to make several other replies before stepping back, mainly because it has been a couple of years since I dealt with a troll, but I’ll remember next time.

This morning, after the thread’s owner had shut it down, the troll started up again from their own account. I’ve resisted the temptation to see what they are saying, but from experience I can predict it. They’ll revise the encounter to make me seem the unreasonable one, and their friends will chime in with words of support that will make them feel heroic for opposing my Satanic self.

But I’ll let them do so unopposed. I’m annoyed that I let myself be dragged in, and I won’t make the same mistake again any time soon. I never know whether attribute such encounters to hypocrisy, or incompetence, but what is clear to me is that, whatever this last week, it wasn’t a meeting of two minds. Att best, it was only a meeting of one and a half.

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Thinking big

Posted in body language, boys, Bruce Byfield, childhood, height, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on October 23, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Short men are often said to compensate for their lack of height by being aggressive – Napoleon being the usual example. I hope I don’t act that way, but, if I do, I have an excuse. You see, until I was about fourteen, I was tall for my age.

I don’t know how it is for girls, but height makes a difference to boys, if my experience is anything to go on. For a boy, being big means that you are afraid of very few other children. Generally, nobody tries to bully you, although every now and then another boy might pick a fight.

I imagine being tall could also make you a bully, although I don’t think I was one very often. With my head is full of Robin Hood and King Arthur, I was always looking out for opportunities to act the way they would, and once or twice I made a point of standing up for one or two of the weaker boys in my classes.

Still, a tall and stocky boy can hardly help but be an unconscious bully in some senses. Because of your build, you get used to people thinking twice about taking the ball away from you on the soccer or rugby field, and start to take advantage of the fact.

You know, too, that other children will generally give you more space to sit down, and tend to listen to you more. Even if you don’t actively take advantage of such treatment, you still come to expect it as your due, no matter how guilty the expectation makes you.

However, such things changed when I was in my mid-teens. At twelve, I was 175 centimeters, and taller than every boy in my class except one or two who had failed a grade or two. But somewhere between fourteen and fifteen, I stopped growing at about 180 centimeters. Meanwhile, the other boys were catching up. By the time I could vote, I was on the small side of medium.

Today, the only reason I’m not considered small is because of the arrival of even shorter immigrants from cultures with a traditionally low-protein diet. And even then, the second-generation immigrants are likely to be taller than me.

However, I sometimes wonder if my hind brain has caught up with this reality several decades later. I acknowledge my lack of height consciously, but not very deep down, I’m still conditioned by having been tall in my early years. No doubt the fact that I am usually fit and always stocky contributes to my denial.

At any rate, I’m told that I can still project the easy – or maybe arrogant – air of the tall. On some level, I assume my right to be treated like a tall person, and, bluff being so much a part of human relationships, I am often given it.

Occasionally, such assumptions clash with those of men who are actually tall. Their mild bewilderment amuses me, although I tell myself that if I’m not careful, my assumptions are going to result in me standing up at the wrong time to the wrong giant – possibly one with a gun.

However, the surest sign that I still think I’m tall is how rarely I think of such things. If, as feminists are apt to say, the greatest privilege is not to understand that you’re privileged, then the fact that I don’t usually act the way a short man is expected to is a good indication of how I tend to think.

In fact, mostly I don’t think of my height much at all, unless I’m straining to reach the top shelf in the kitchen. It’s only the behavior of others that reminds me of my relative lack of height, and how important that can be in male body language.

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