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John Wilson, “Summer Moon Maskette”

Posted in aboriginal art, art, art appreciation, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, First Nations art, indian art, John Wilson, maskette, moon, Northwest Coast Art, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 8, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I first crossed paths with John Paul Wilson a year ago. Another artist wanted to send me pictures, and John agreed to take and send them. Since then, we have been in touch once or twice a week, and I have enjoyed watching his art move from promising to a first maturity. It is hardly surprising, then, that “Summer Moon Maskette” was under our Christmas tree this year.

The moon is a popular subject in Northwest Coast art. So far as I know, the moon is nobody’s crest, so the question of having permission to use it never arises. Perhaps just as importantly, it is a subject that requires no special knowledge of mythology to appreciate. Wilson himself describes the moon as one of his favorite subjects, and, if you look at his Flickr site, you can see several different ways that he has approached it.

What makes “Summer Moon Maskette” stand out is its simplicity. It has no complicated design, and no red, the second most important color in the northern style. Even the black paint is applied sparingly, being confined to the mouth, nostrils, and eyebrows, and not to the pupils.

This simplicity means that the piece’s carving stands out more than usual. Wilson has responded to this situation by carving with more realism than usual. He has shaped the mouth more, and made the nose fuller than usual on the sides. He has also given close attention to the cheekbones and the area where the nose, eyes, and eyebrows meet.

However, what really makes “Summer Moon Maskette” stand out is the eyes. Slanted, with an inner fold and no pupils, they are very different from most eyes in the northern style – so much so that I almost wonder if they are a portrait. They seem to be closed, suggesting a sleepiness that is appropriate to a hot summer night.

Another result of the simplicity is that, after the paint, most of what catches your eyes is the grain. Wilson has always excelled in sanding the grain until it conforms with the contours of his carving, but “Summer Moon Maskette” is an especially fine example of this practice. For example, if you look, you can see how the grain conforms to the line of the cheekbones and the forehead, or the hollow beneath the eyes. The effect is almost hypnotic in itself, relieved only by a small imperfection which is confined to the chin – and which is also a relief after your eye has been following the apparently billowing lines of the grain.

This simplicity is an indication of how far Wilson has advanced in his art. A less experienced artist would be tempted to tart up the mask with abalone or copper. By contrast, Wilson lets the maskette speak for itself, which makes it all the more powerful. That is a risky approach, but the fact Wilson succeeds is a measure of his advancing skill and confidence.

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The bid committee and I

Posted in British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, communications, marketing, Personal, Uncategorized, Vancouver, Whistler, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on January 2, 2010| Leave a Comment »

When the news came that Vancouver would be hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics, I was jogging down from the Stadium-Chinatown Skytrain station to the Yaletown office where I was working. I didn’t hear the announcement, but I heard a cheer go up from the offices on all sounds of me.

Personally, I was surprised. At that point, I had no strong feelings about the Olympics one way or the other. But I had thought that the logistical problems of keeping people moving along the road between Vancouver and Whistler would prevent the bid from being successful. Even more importantly, my own contact with the bid committee hadn’t impressed me much.

About six months earlier, I had applied for a job as a writer on the bid. It wasn’t a position that strongly interested me, but I thought it worth a hour or two of my time to satisfy my curiosity. So, I duly strapped myself into my interview suit, stripped any obvious signs of eccentricity from my person, and presented myself at the Gastown office of the bid committee.

I was interviewed by two women who I quickly classified as marketing and communication workers. That isn’t prejudice; I’ve done similar work myself, after all. But, after a while, you get to know the signs. The two women talked in generalities, and displayed an artificial optimism and enthusiasm at all times. Somehow, I couldn’t imagine them taking part in a casual Friday.

Mostly, the conversation went well enough, so far as conversations during a job interview can ever be said to go well. But when I asked about how the logistical problems might be overcome, the women’s reply boiled down to, “Somehow, everything will work out..” I could also see that, in their minds (and probably on their clipboards), I had set a black mark against my name. That was all right; their replies had cost them points with me, too.

However, two other points were what really disturbed me. First, they said that working on the bid committee would be no guarantee of a continued job if the bid was successful. Since I was sure that the leaders of the committee would land jobs in Vanoc, that seems a lack of loyalty to staff members.

Secondly, as part of the interview, they asked me to go home and write seven or eight pages on how I would promote the Olympics. That is a considerable effort to ask someone to do on spec. Combined with the lack of a guarantee of continuation, I concluded that the request showed a cavalier attitude towards employees. I thought for a couple of days, then phoned the interviewers to say that I would not be responding to their request and that the job no longer interested me.

I have no idea whether those particular women found work with Vanoc. I no longer even remember their names. But it seems to me that their attitudes are echoed in everything I’ve heard from Vanoc ever since, from the feeling that problems would work themselves out to the assumption that local residents will put their lives on hold for the duration of the games next month.

It is not an echo that promotes happy thoughts about how the games will be organized and what the after-effects will be. Frankly, it has kept me from supporting the games ever since. I might talk about the financial and social costs, but behind them is an emotional core of distrust based on this one brief encounter.

This attitude puzzles people from outside the Vancouver area. When I was in Calgary last spring, people were surprised by my lack of enthusiasm. Remembering the Calgary games twenty years and the very different social attitudes in which they took place, everyone assumed that I must be looking forward to the occasion. They were surprised by my lack of enthusiasm, even when I explained my reasons. I’m not sure they ever did understand.

However, I don’t think my attitude is unique in anything other than its origins. No doubt it’s the company I keep, but I’ve found that only one in four – or thereabouts – actually supports the upcoming games. The intial cheering at the news of the bid just doesn’t seem to have lasted.

In fact, I’ve only found one person who defended the games with any passion, and her criticisms were bizarre – she argued that nobody who objected or even questioned the games should use the newly improved highway to Whistler (never mind that she also insisted on the official line that such improvements were not part of the costs of the games). But of eight or nine people in the store, nobody felt like taking her side in the discussion.

Maybe more people will show enthusiasm as the games approach, but, I don’t expect that most people will. The average person in the Vancouver region seems resigned to the games, largely indifferent and if anything mildly hostile, although you wouldn’t know that from the media.

You might say that, for most of us, 2010 will be divided into two parts: enduring the preparations and the games themselves, and the rest of the year. And, like most people, I find myself looking forward to the rest of the year far more than the preparations and the games. If I became dubious earlier than others, it is because I was exposed to the spirit of the games earlier than others.

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Introducing Colin Morrison: “The Spirit of the Wolf”

Posted in aboriginal art, art, art appreciation, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, First Nations art, Freda Diesing School, indian art, John Wilson, native art, Northwest Coast Art, Personal, Tsimshian, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 30, 2009| 1 Comment »

A couple of months ago, Haisla artist John Wilson told me about a promising first year student at the Freda Diesing School named Colin Morrison. After seeing some minor pieces by him, I commissioned a painting. It turned out to be his first professional sale.

I am absolutely confident that it won’t be his last – and not just because I would like to boast ten years from now that I had the foresight to see his potential before he became well-known. “The Spirit of the Wolf” is an accomplished piece that illustrates Morrison’s potential better than anything I can say. It is all the more remarkable because it comes from a man in his mid-twenties.

On the surface, “The Spirit of the Wolf” is a traditional piece, reminiscent of Roy Henry Vickers’ work. It shows a strong interest in style, with a variety of ovoids and U-shapes used throughout and a variety of tactics used to control the thickness and joints of the formlines. The sheer number of tactics could easily result in a mishmash, but Morrison controls it by having shapes mirror and contrast each other in disciplined way. The mirroring is especially obvious when the primary and secondary formlines are adjacent to one another.

At the same time, you do not have to look very long before you realize that “The Spirit of the Wolf” has a playfulness that suggests a very contemporary outlook as well. The design is basically a play on the various interpretations of the title, with wolves spread throughout the design – everything from the physical wolf to the Wolf as a clan crest. This dichotomy is suggested by the vaguely yin-yang shape of the overall design.

There is even, Morrison says, several spirits in the metallic paint of the design. So far, I have to admit, I have been unable to detect what kind of spirits they might be, or if anything specific is intended, but I find the idea immensely appealing all the same.

You could even go one step further and say that, since Morrison himself is a member of the Tsimshian Wolf Clan, that the painting itself is a manifestation of a wolf’s spirit.

You might call the painting a kind of Northwest Coast “Where’s Waldo?” If you wanted to say the same thing more seriously, you could say that the content is as inventive as the style.

Asked to say something about himself, Morrison replied, “I’m Tsimshian, Ginadoiks tribe, Wolf Clan. I’ve been an artist since I was young; I started painting when I was 18, and didn’t take it seriously till I was 23 years old. I’ve been painting off and on since that time, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life.

“Then, one day last year, my Mom started going to a carving class in school. She wanted me to go and dragged me there. I started painting again, and liked what I was doing. My instructor (Harvy Ressel) saw the raw talent and asked me if I wanted to go to the Freda Diesing School. I said yes. Since then, I have found my calling.”

Since doing “The Spirit of the Wolf,” Morrison has completed his first mask and is in the process of finishing his second. I expect that the world of Northwest Coast art will be hearing more from him, but remember (I said, with a certain pride) – you heard of him first from me.

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Walking through West Vancouver on Christmas Day

Posted in Bruce Byfield, childhood, nostalgia, Personal, Uncategorized, West Vancouver, tagged , , , , , on December 25, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Every Christmas, after the turkey and stuffing and yams and mashed potatoes and trifle, the other members of my surviving family settle down for a nap. While they are snoring, I go for a walk or a run. By then, the restlessness that comes when I don’t exercise is stealing over me. Besides, I don’t get to my native West Vancouver very often, so the exercise is a chance to see what has changed in the neighborhood where I grew up.

Superficially, very little has changed over the years. True, the distances seem shorter than I remember, and the streets seem slightly shabbier, no doubt thanks to the small size of contemporary budgets for infrastructure. But the traffic is as light as ever and the trees as many, and overall, the reality syncs with my memory of a quiet suburb of moderate privilege.

The main difference is in the houses. Real estate prices being what they are, the middle class bungalows that I remember from my teen years are being steadily replaced by monster houses built as high and as close to the edges of the lots as the bylaws allow. Also, places that once seemed not worth building on are now subdivisions – never mind that they are so close to creeks that the basements are rumored to have their own pumping system. No doubt owners call these changes maximizing their investment, but to me these monster houses always seem a decline in aesthetics, especially when they pop up in unlikely places.

Every year since I moved away from my parents’ house, I half-hope that I’ll see someone I knew at school. The possibility isn’t completely unlikely; a surprising number of classmates never left the municipality, and others, like me, have family ties that might take them back on Christmas Day.

But I never have seen anyone I know, not once in all these years, although I peer hopefully at everyone I see walking or jogging, and often pass by the track at my old high school, where some of the people with whom I used to run might be expected.
Instead, as I pass by familiar scenes, I remember.

That house used to belong to a fellow athlete who, the last I heard, had been living where he grew up to take care of his mother. She’s supposed to be dead now, but I wonder if he is still living there. I heard Eighties rock from the sidewalk and wonder if he is spending Christmas alone, but somehow I don’t have the courage or the inclination to knock.

I look up at the house where a girl I once knew grew up. We never dated – we just exchanged sympathies on the miserable states of our separate (mostly theoretical) love lives – but I wouldn’t mind seeing her again. Too bad her family moved away years ago.
I pass the house where four of us used to gather for blackjack and board games when I was in grade eleven. I wonder if my former friend still has family there, but I see a basketball hoop and a hockey net, signs of teenagers, and judge it unlikely.

Cutting through a park, I glance on the bridge on the house where a boy I thought obnoxious once lived. Then I remember that at the reunion three years ago the boy had grown into an equally obnoxious man, and increase my pace, as if thinking about him might make him reappear.
Now heading home, I consider passing by the house where a girl lived who was once the object of my unrequited crush. But I tell myself that would be indulgent, to say nothing of several blocks out of my way, so I continue on my planned path.

Nearing my old elementary school, I look up at the house where yet another crush lived. After the last reunion, we emailed each other a few times, but we haven’t had any contact in months, and aren’t likely to in the future.

A few houses further on, another crush used to live. At the reunion, she had seemed prematurely aged and bitter, and somehow I hadn’t had the heart to talk to her. I wonder what her story is, and part of me is glad to realize that I’ll probably never know.

By now, the sunset is near, and what little heat remains is being leeched with the light from the air. I ask myself what I am doing, growing melancholy over people who probably haven’t thought of me in years. I am no better, I tell myself, than the ex-friend who phoned us on Christmas Eve, full of news of other ex-friends in whom I have only a passing interest.

If anything, I am worse, because I have no reason to suddenly feel lonesome. I hurry through the school grounds and back to my parents’ house, my exercise in sustained nostalgia over for another year, and no more successful than it has been in the past.

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My last Christmas Eve in an office

Posted in Bruce Byfield, bureaucracy, careers, Christmas Eve, employment, Personal, Uncategorized, work, tagged , , , , , , , , , on December 24, 2009| Leave a Comment »

When I was a university instructor, the semester was over by Christmas Eve.When I was a consultant, I could usually contrive to take the day off. Consequently, I’ve rarely had to work on Christmas Eve. But looking back, I think that the last Christmas Eve I did work was a major reason why I made the move into freelance journalism.

At the time, I was working in Yaletown, at a small software company that had limped along for twenty years without ever finding much of a market for its product. Realizing that the company’s time was running out, its board had hired a new CEO for one last shot at profitability. The CEO was full of management theories, and was fond of saying that he wanted passionate employees. At the same time, his core approach to leadership must have been modeled on Josef Stalin’s, because he had the habit of periodic purges.

In six months, the CEO had three purges. Between the difficulties of losing key information with key employees and the waiting for the next purge, morale was deeper than the Mariana Trench, and falling.

Having just come off two successful positions in which I had been in the inner circle of decision makers, I found the CEO’s antics hard to tolerate. My frequent thought that I could do a better job was not conceit – I had done so, and little credit to me. Frankly, anyone with sense could have done a better job than the CEO, too.

Surprisingly, the CEO sprung for a Christmas party. Looking back, I wonder if he calculated that, the office being in Yaletown, an ex-warehouse district where every block had half a dozen restaurants, most people would have put in a full day before the party began. More likely, he had simply read in one of his management books that a Christmas party was a way to win over the staff.

Whatever his motivations, the party was not exactly a success. The food was better than average, but the talk was about the rumors of a new purge, which made the occasion as festive as a school tour of a slaughter-house. Spirits rose a little with the gift exchange, but it seemed a dismal occasion compared to the one in which I had participated a couple of years earlier in Indianapolis. A few games of pool and foosball later, everyone had gone except the CEO and a couple of other company officers.

Still, the party had encouraged everyone to think that the CEO might unbend enough to let people go home early on Christmas Eve. But he had said nothing on December 23, so everyone arrived the next day uncertain what was expected.

The CEO showed up early in the morning, then went out. As usually happens in an office on Christmas Eve, most people made a pretense of trying to work, and the more conscientious actually put in an hour or two . But by 11AM, people were drifting between offices, leaning in door frames and chatting. Occasionally, they shifted positions so as not to be too obvious.

By 12:30, people were concluding that the CEO wasn’t coming back. In fact, he had left without a seasonal greeting to anyone – and no mention of whether people were expected to work the entire day.

Before long, people started to sneak out. By 2PM, the last of us decided that there was no point being martyrs, and exited together. I don’t think the CEO ever did learn what had happened.

Being a contractor, I noted that I owed two hours, and made up the time in the next week. But I kept thinking of the CEO’s abandonment of his responsibilities.

Perhaps he felt that he could not officially condone people going home early, and his disappearance allowed him to offer the holiday without officially knowing what people were doing. But, considering his purges, I doubted he had such a humanitarian gestures in him. I think he left early to please himself, and never considered the employees at all – and that his behavior was only an extreme form of what I had seen elsewhere in business.

Frankly, I was fed up.

I am not one for New Years’ Resolutions, but, that year, I promised myself that I would not celebrate another Christmas at that company. By next summer, I had moved on. But the company officers at my new consulting gig proved just as unempathic, so, with Christmas approaching again, I took the jump into journalism.

I have never worked in an office since. But this year, as I’ve spent a leisurely Christmas Eve going to the bank to pay for our latest work of art, then coming home to exercise and wrap the last few presents, I feel overwhelming relieved not to be in an office at Christmas. So far as I’m concerned, people like this CEO rank next to malls crowded with shoppers – both are things I’m grateful to be able to can avoid.

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Saying Goodbye to Queen Charlotte

Posted in British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, Haida, Haida Gwaii, Personal, Queen Charlotte Islands, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 16, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Last Friday, the Queen Charlotte Islands in British Columbia were officially renamed Haida Gwaii, the name preferred by the First Nations people who live there. I suppose I should have a twinge of uneasiness about the fact that part of the geography I learned so painfully in elementary school has disappeared into the recycle bin with Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, but my main feeling is that the change was long overdue.

In fact, in the last couple of decades, I’ve hardly heard anyone refer to the Queen Charlotte Islands. The only exceptions I can recall are The Globe and Mail, which I often think of a newspaper written by seventy-year-olds for seventy-years-old (and as too Eastern to know better), and members of the Monarchist League, who blindly defend anything with the remotest connection to royalty. The people who live on the islands call them Haida Gwaii, and that is enough for most people, either because they’re polite or out a vague sense that the people who live there should have a right to determine the name.

I mean, it’s not as though one person in ten knows who Queen Charlotte was. I know, but, then I read history. Yet although in theory I have a good deal of sympathy for Queen Charlotte, who had to endure George III’s madness, in which he sometimes yearned for a woman other than her, in practice she doesn’t have much to do with British Columbia. Her sole association is that a ship on George Dixon’s voyage of discovery in 1786 was named for her. She probably would have hard-pressed to locate the islands without help.

At any rate, the 18th century explorers of the Pacific, Cook and Vancouver included, may have been fine surveyors, but I don’t see why we should regard their poverty of imagination as unchangeable. When they came to naming landmarks, their resources were painfully limited: First, their officers, then their ships, then all the members of the English royal family they could remember, then start all over again. If you read about their voyages of discovery, you soon sense an air of desperation about their names. Sometimes, I’m surprised that we don’t have coast lines full of No Name Bays, Capes #42, and Mounts Whatyoumacallit.

By contrast to the arbitrary names of the European explorers, Haida Gwaii is deeply meaningful to those who live there. Translated as something like “Islands of the People,” the new name acknowledges the people who have lived there for a minimum of ten thousand years, developed and still practice some of the most genuinely moving art that I have seen, and who are now moving rapidly towards self-determination. All this seem far more worth acknowledging in a name than a half-forgotten royal consort. Besides, if anyone wants to remember Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the islands still include a Queen Charlotte City.

But when you think of it, the name change isn’t really radical at all. It’s just a recognition of how things are – and have been for some time.

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Announcing the Freda Diesing School Mature Student Award

Posted in aboriginal art, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, First Nations art, indian art, Mature Student Award, Northwest Coast Art, Northwest Community College, NWCC, Personal, scholarship, Terrace, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 9, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Last year, when I attended the Freda Diesing School Student Art Exhibition in Terrace, I noticed that most of the awards were for students 25 years old or younger. The school has some fine younger artists, but I thought that the older students deserved some recognition, too. To fill the gap, Trish and I decided to sponsor a Mature Student Award of $1000 per year, and to work towards making the award self-funding.

The official description of the award reads:

This award is given annually to a mature student (25 and over) from the
Freda Diesing School of Northwest Coast Art who has demonstrated
leadership and mentoring qualities in the classroom. Faculty from the
School of Northwest Coast Art will select a student after confirmation of
enrollment in the second semester of the certificate or diploma program.

The award recipient must; be a First Nations Freda Diesing School of
Northwest Coast Art student; identify and work with a mentor to facilitate
the ongoing learning process; reside in British Columbia; demonstrate
potential in visual arts in the Northwest Coast style; and display
mentoring and leadership qualities in their relationships with other
students in the school both inside and outside class.

The award will be given for the first time in January 2010.

I have two main reasons for starting the award. First, as a late bloomer in my own craft of writing, I sympathize with the mature students. Being a student is hard enough when you are twenty, but when you are thirty-five or fifty, returning to school is even harder, because you probably have a family, and you are more set in your ways. Often, it means giving up a steady income when you’ve been used to one for years.

At the same time, I know from years as a university English instructor that older students are worth encouraging. They add a maturity to the discussion, and often serve as role-models and mentors to younger students.

Second, I am a buyer and lover of northwest coast art, especially art in the northern style taught at the school. I am not one of those people descended from Europeans who feel personally responsible for the wrongs against the First Nations that began before I was born, but I do believe in paying my debts and in doing the little I can to alleviate current problems. Northwest Coast art has given me hours of pleasure and learning, and I want to repay those hours with more than simple payment for each piece. I’d like to think that the award would help a student a little in the short term and in the long term maybe help them to launch their careers.

Compared to the other awards that the school gives, the Mature Student Award is starting off slowly. But I hope that it will eventually match the other awards, and become self-perpetuating.

If you are an artist, an art dealer, or someone who appreciates Northwest Coast art, please consider donating to the Mature Student Award. But don’t contact me. Instead, please contact Jill Girodat, the Associate Registrar at the Terrace campus of Northwest Community College at 250-638-5477 or jgirodat AT nwcc DOT bc DOT ca.

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James Hart, the White Raven, and Forton

Posted in aboriginal art, art, art appreciation, Bill Reid, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, Celebration of Bill Reid pole, Don Yeoman, Douglas Reynolds Gallery, First Nations art, forton, Haida, indian art, James Hart, Northwest Coast Art, Personal, Raven, Uncategorized, Vancouver, West Coast art, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 6, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Northwest Coast art has a new medium. It’s called forton, and it’s a mixture of gypsum, fiberglass and plastics, and has the advantages of being non-toxic, lightweight, weather resistant, and capable of imitating anything from marble to plaster or bronze. So far, you can see the largest collection of sculptures in forton in Vancouver at the Douglas Reynolds Gallery, including one cast from James Hart’s Celebration of Bill Reid pole that was officially presented to the public on December 5.

The Celebration of Bill Reid pole is a permanent fixture at the Bill Reid Gallery in downtown Vancouver. Carved by James Hart with the help of Ernest Swanson, Tyson Brown, Carl Hart, and GwaLiga Hart, the pole is topped by a raven whose chest is a stylized version of Bill Reid’s face. Through the Douglas Reynolds Gallery, eighteen copies of the raven are being made in forton – six imitating plaster, and 12 bronze, including three artist proofs.

Hart spoke briefly at the launch, arriving after the crowd had already gathered and was well into the buffet and wine. A tall man with long gray hair, he wore a bright Guatemalan jacket and carried a string of trade beads in his hands that someone gave him as he came in the door. He walked with a stoop and a slight hesitation. As he stood halfway up the stairs in the gallery, he was surprisingly soft-spoken for a well-known artist who is also a chief.

Hart spoke briefly about the pole and its intent to honor Bill Reid. He explained that he not only learned carving from Reid, but how to survive in the city, including such details as how to use an elevator, something he had rarely encountered in his rural youth. Turning to the plaster raven in the corner, he emphasized that it was a white raven, a representation of the trickster before he stole the moon and was singed black in his effort to escape with it through the smoke hole.

Afterwards, I managed to talk briefly to him as he mingled with the crowd. He said that the project was his first effort to work in forton, and that he liked the way it could be carved and was resistant to weather. He also expressed his enthusiasm for the new medium and designs that younger artists from all the local first nations were developing the traditional art forms.

Until the new raven cast, most of the works in forton that I’ve seen were done by Don Yeoman at the Douglas Reynolds Gallery. However, Reynolds mentioned the side of a house in Whistler that recently had several dozen forton panels added to one side, and I suspect that any artists who encounter it are likely to be as interested in it as Hart seemed to be.

One look at the cast and you can understand why. Made from a mold of the cedar original, the pseudo-plaster cast picks up so much detail that you can actually see the wood grain and tool marks in it. With forton offering so many benefits and no drawbacks so far as I can discover, I strongly suspect that, just as local first nations artists adopted to argillite a century and half ago and glass in the last few decades, many are going to seize on forton as yet another medium for their work.

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Closing paragraph strategies

Posted in Bruce Byfield, closing paragraphs, composition, essays, Personal, rhetoric, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 5, 2009| Leave a Comment »

(The following is a handout from my days of teaching first year composition at university. It consists of some informal examples of closing paragraph strategies, but should be equally useful for formal essays. Anyone who finds it useful can reproduce it, so long as they give me credit for it)

Summary:
Will North Americans continue to take their high standard of living for granted? Probably not. As we have seen, North Americans use more energy, buy more goods, and create more garbage than even the Europeans. Yet this state of affairs is barely fifty years old, and already it is changing. The North American standard of living has been declining for over a decade, and, as Europe and Japan retool for modern technology faster than we are able or willing to, there is every sign that this decline will continue. Indeed, many people believe that we are overdue to return to a more equitable rate of consumption. Perhaps in another century, historians will look back at Twenty-First Century North America in astonishment, and shake their heads with both envy and disgust.

Final Generalization:
As these examples demonstrate, social networking is transforming the way people work as well as how they play. Clearly, our lives are in the middle of a transformation whose end we cannot yet perceive..

Final Example:
One final example will illustrate the need to quarantine exotic birds. In 1934, a small shipment of cockatiels with Newcastle’s disease arrived in Holland without going through quarantine. Before the birds could be traced and destroyed, thousands of domestic poultry had to be destroyed to stop the spread of the disease, and dozens of farmers lost their livelihood. To make matters worse, 39 people caught Newcastles’ and died from the disease. Ever since, Dutch officials have insisted on a three month quarantine for imported hookbills. Without such precautions, the risk of financial health and illness are simply too high.

Final Analogy:
The disappearance of homo neanderthalis and the prevalence of homo sapiens can be compared to the Norman conquest of England. Contrary to popular belief, there was no widespread slaughter of the Anglo-Saxon population of England by the Normans. Many Anglo-Saxon leaders had died in battle, and many of those who were left chose to swear allegiance to the Normans rather than face execu­tion. Few of the middle-class or laborers were killed, for the simple reason that they were needed to run the country. Anglo-Saxon language, customs and culture were modified, but not destroyed by the Normans. Four centuries later, neither Norman nor Saxon existed–they had all become English. If such assimilation has happened so quickly in historical times, it could just as easily happen in prehistoric times as well, especially since we cannot pinpoint the disappearance of the Neanderthals to within more than five or seven thousand years. It seems likely that, instead of being slaughtered, the Neanderthals inter-married with homo sapiens, disappearing as a distinct species, but contributing their genes to present-day humanity.

Call for Action:
Such evidence indicates that the attempt to do without government automobile testing is a failure. Over half of the vehicles on B. C. roads are mechanically faulty, and over two-thirds do not meet federal emission standards. Clearly, the provincial government must act at once to put an end to this dangerous situation.

Mention of Related Issues:
Obviously, this paper cannot cover all aspects of the question. Given that some dinosaurs were warm-blooded and evolved into birds, what happened to the rest of them? Was giganticism an evolutionary experiment that failed spectacularly? Or did the dinosaurs have some help–perhaps the meteor strike that some theorists have speculated on recently. Or are modern reptiles the direct descendants of the dinosaurs? These are large questions, but they need to answered before our understanding of what happened to the dinosaurs is complete.

Denouement:
There is little left to say. Defeated in his attempts to bring responsible government to the Crown Colony of Vancouver Island, Richard Blanshard returned home to England. He married well, and became known in his home town for his charities. He never held public office again. James Douglas, his successor as governor, continued to represent the interests of the Hudson Bay Company in the area for another twenty years, doing all he could to prevent the rise of responsible government. Douglas became rich, and the center of high society in Victoria. Today, he is known as “the Father of British Columbia” by people too ignorant of the past to know how hard he fought to prevent its existence.

Rhetorical Question:
The issue, then, is clear: do we have the right to imprison and mistreat animals so that we can view them at our ease? Or does anyone dare to suggest that we have no responsibility to our less intelligent neighbors?

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The return of the book glutton

Posted in Books, Bruce Byfield, Gillian Bradshaw, Personal, reading, tagged , , , , , on November 28, 2009| Leave a Comment »

I’m not a heavy drinker, and, while I appreciate fine food, I don’t stuff myself. But books are another matter. Give me a stack of unread books and the time and place to read them, and I become as gluttonous as anyone.

The habit dates back to my teen years. I’d no sooner get my allowance than I’d descend on the stores to spend it on books. Used books, new books, science fiction, classics, biography, history – it hardly mattered which. After an hour in a book store, I would emerge with a dozen books and rush home to bury myself in my room. Ignoring the parental pleas to come out into the living room and “be sociable,” I’d stretch on the bed, reading intently and staying up as late as possible. In the morning, I’d be at the breakfast table with a book in my hand. If I had to go to school, I’d walk along reading. If I had to go out, I would take along a couple of my new books.

When I reached adulthood, these habits only intensified. When I was in my twenties, I considered the perfect Saturday afternoon a descent upon the local science fiction specialty shop in which I bore home a pile of paperbacks and the odd hardcover for spoils. Just like when I was a child, a good part of my discretionary income went for books.

However, as I grew older, my habits changed. I was no less an avid reader, but except after Christmas or my birthday (when, naturally enough, most people would give me books), my habits became less gluttonous. I’d buy a book or two at a time, and be content. Had I thought of it, I would have said I was a changed man.

Then, about a week ago, I started re-reading a few books by Gillian Bradshaw, the English historical writer. Realizing that the newest one was over a decade old, I started wondering what she had done in the interval. A search on the Internet revealed that not only was she active, but that the local library had at least a dozen titles that I hadn’t read. When Trish checked out five or six, suddenly my book gluttony was back, insatiable as ever.

What triggers the gluttony, I realize now, is not just unread books. It’s books in which I can expect imagination, fine writing, and a variety of them. Although Bradshaw is only one writer, her work stirs the gluttony on all both accounts. Her extrapolations into the remoter regions of the classical past show a convincing imagination, and her understated writing is very much to my taste. Moreover, she writes not only of a variety of classical settings, but also contemporary novels and science fiction for both children and adult. What these things add up to the luxury of choice. When I finish each book, I have a delicious moment when I can stretch and linger over what I am going to devour next.

Fortunately for the rest of my life, these outbursts of gluttony are usually short. But, while they last, I feel wealthier and more privileged than I have any right to feel.

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