While perusing the headlines on the Jerusalem Post for work (it’s my last day! whoot!), i encountered an ad with the following text: “What’s the Jewish answer to Jews for Jesus?”

My response: “Umm… we told Pilate what we thought the first time…”

It must be Thursday. No wait. It isn’t. No excuse.

I think this may be the first remotely funny joke i have made all summer. At least there was one.

okay.. a fan. Her name is Olga and she participates in a book club with our research director here at the Institute. A copy of my review on Heather Pringle’s Master Plan was forwarded to her and she took the trouble to call me up and thank me for writing such a nice piece. Apparently, when she chose it for the book club many of the members were upset with her. She intends on passing my review around to validate her choice among all those who abstained from reading it.

More importantly, a complete stranger called me up at work today and said they liked my work. Wow.

I am leaving Montreal in less than three days. This past week-end was spent crossing items off the list of things that any good Montrealer SHOULD have done years ago: Go to the Casino (but only spend $8 betting) with a boy and play the horsey races; Watch a series of short films at the Foreign Film Festival (meh… they were from a competition dealing with immigration issues and though i have compassion for the problem of integration, stereotypes are a problem everyone faces, not just immigrants. Some were great though… it was just a little too much for one sitting); Gorge on chocolate at Juliette and Chocolat.

I am far from packed, but not so far it will not be done before i leave my home with everything in boxes waiting for the van to arrive.

This has been one of the best summers ever - thanks to great people like my aunt, Eric, Zach, Isabelle, Tim, Bryan and Lisa, Derek, Veronica, Julia and the sunny, warm weather. Why must it end so melodramatically?

The following is a reprint of an email i sent to Margaret Wente in response to her August 23rd, 2007 article “Time to just say ‘no’ to cannabis” that ran in the Globe and Mail [reprinted below]. Ms. Wente is one of my favourite columnists - hence my need to write her when we disagree.

Dear Ms. Wente,

After reading your recent article, i felt the need to argue against increasing spending on anti-drug campaigns. I know my thoughts draw heavily from John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty.

Firstly, the decline in smoking rates over the past decade is not necessarily due to public awareness campaigns. Taxes have also increased and smoking is no longer allowed in public areas - making the habit much more inconvenient. Furthermore, any campaigns to publicize the dangers of marijuana usage would need to distort the effects in order to make them as noxious as cigarettes - the government should not be engaging in blatant lies to the public.

Secondly, the negative characteristics you have listed that are related to marijuana usage can also describe many licit substances, such as caffeine and alcohol. More importantly, however, Canada aspires to be a liberal democracy - as the government has no place in our private bedrooms, it has no place in our private habits as long as they are not endangering others. Though i feel compassionately for the wife in question, one must wonder what possessed her to believe a marriage with such an individual would work out. Such irrealistic expectations are not solely the bane of wives of pot-smokers, but also the spouses of philanderers, work-a-holics, overly enthusiastic sports fans and compulsive shoppers. It is not the government’s place to dictate my choice of vice: be it playing Bingo or spending exorbant amounts on used books.

Lastly, education should be about teaching children skills, not values. Money does not grow on trees and though perhaps in an ideal world schools and governments would have the resources to run every program for the public good imaginable, until then, i think money would be better spent on better books, after-school tutoring, public transport, health care and even the armed forces.

Parenting is for parents.

Thank you for providing the opportunity for me to re-evaluate my conceptions about marijuana usage in Canada with your insightful and well-written article.

Margaret Wente, “Time to just say ‘no’ to cannabis,” Globe and Mail (Toronto: August 23, 2007).

2007 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

I know a guy who does a lot of weed. It’s not a happy story. He started smoking dope in high school. After university, his friends began working hard and building their careers. He smoked dope instead. His friends got married and had kids. So did he. But he couldn’t ever keep a job for long. He had lengthy spells of unemployment. His family was always broke, because he inhaled every cent they had. Eventually his fed-up wife threw him out. Today, well into middle age, he’s scraping by somewhere, living in some basement.

So don’t tell me marijuana is harmless. Don’t tell me marijuana doesn’t destroy people and their families. It does.

This week Tony Clement, the Health Minister, promised to launch a new public-health campaign against drugs. It’s about time. We’ve raised a generation of kids who think marijuana is invariably benign. That’s by way of contrast to cigarettes, which, of course, can kill you. Many of them grew up lecturing their own parents about the demon nicotine and snatching illicit smokes from their trembling hands. As for marijuana, though … hey! It’s practically legal now. Isn’t it?

Um, no. But it’s no wonder the kids are confused. The adults can’t decide whether pot should be barely illegal, decriminalized, legalized or what. According to many progressive, liberal-minded adults, there’s nothing really wrong with pot and the authorities should, like, chill out. Kids hear this message not just from the reefer lobby, but from leading lawyers, academics and newspaper editorial boards. You can scarcely blame them for believing that marijuana is less harmful than obesity, trans fats or lawn spray. As for booze - it’s certainly less harmful than booze. Isn’t it?

Well, maybe not. Today’s pot is to the stuff I used to inhale as whisky is to beer. Recent research indicates that some people, because of their genetic makeup, react badly to the chemicals in cannabis, and are at heightened risk of psychosis. More commonly, the effects of regular indulgence include apathy, self-centredness and disengagement from life in general. A recent 10-year study found that regular cannabis users did far worse than drinkers in terms of mental health, occupational success and relationships, and were far more likely to be taking other drugs.

“Cannabis really does look like the drug of choice for life’s future losers,” said George Patton, the study’s author. It’s not too good for your lungs either. A couple of joints inflict about the same damage as a pack of cigarettes. In Britain, the government has begun a major policy reversal on marijuana after dozens of top experts in the field condemned it as a mental health risk. Even the permissive Dutch are doing a re-think.

Thanks to our permissive attitudes, marijuana use in Canada has doubled since 1994. Meantime, smoking rates have hit record lows. So don’t tell me public-health campaigns won’t work. Obviously they can, and do. Young people are notoriously resistant to public-health messages. Still, if we can teach them to recycle, there ought to be a place for teaching them how to live healthy, drug-free lives.

Wars on drugs have a bad name these days. No doubt the reefer lobby will be warning that the Conservatives’ Bush-inspired war on drugs will revive the bad old days, when we made criminals of innocent 16-year-olds for having a couple of Js. So far, however, nobody is advocating this. The cops should stick to busting grow-ops and traffickers and street gangs. And the health minister should be leaning on the medical and public-health and education establishment to get the message out. It won’t be easy. Most of the public-health officials currently involved with drug issues don’t seem interested in the “prevention” part of drug campaigns. They’re far too busy lobbying for more injection-drug sites, more needle exchanges and more free crack-cocaine kits to hand out to addicts.

Influencing public behaviour is no mystery. You start by changing public attitudes. You try to get everyone - government, the media and schools - to give the same message: No. And if that message is too righteous for you, please recall that cannabis is the lifeblood of your friendly street or biker gang. You know, the ones with guns. Have a nice day.

I intercepted a text message from “Christina” last night at dinner - a 17-year-old he has never met face-to-face but has been chatting with online over the past two months. In said message, she wrote “I miss you, my love.” [my translation]

I burst out laughing.

Ironically, we had just been talking about how he is “supposedly” unable to talk to women.

I was trying so hard not to be catty.

He admitted that it was a weird that she was so “involved” when they are going to meet for the first time tomorrow. (I asked if she was handicapped…LOL).

However, his logic was that “it’s nice to be told you’re loved sometimes.” [my translation]

I couldn’t resist:

“If she knew what love was, she wouldn’t say it so easily.” [my translation]

Nothing like a good cry.

Yes, yes it is.

Coming home last night my mother and i witnessed a tar truck with a full-fledged fire on the top of it. We pondered how long it took the driver to notice the billows of black, sooty smoke trailing behind him.

The bed is purchased. The basement gear is packed (leaving me with school supplies, clothes and books - in other words, the stuff i can’t bear to be parted with).

A new book is begun. The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Nabokov’s first book to be written in English. I am ever amazed by the poignancy of his narrator’s voice - it’s intimacy and force. I love Nabokov.

Spent yesterday evening with Zach and Eric. There was good food. We picked up EXCELLENT sushi at this place on Queen Mary by Snowdon Metro called Queen - i suggest you try their specialty roles. I had made guacamole the evening before and it was consumable.

There was not good entertainment to accompany. We watched The Illusionist - the movie i liked the least of everything i have ever seen with Edward Norton. A red lens when shooting does not constitute art. A long, drawn-out plot does not constitute suspense. A twist that everyone saw coming a mile away does not constitute a good ending. Skip it.

We also caught part of CNN’s God’s Warriors. The segment was the first of three: on the Jews/Israelis. I was flabbergasted. Though much of the facts were correct, i have never seen anything warped to appear so sinister for no apparent reason. I am interested in the backlash from the segment and the two others two follow in Islam and Christianity. I will not be watching however. I couldn’t take the sound bites just to begin with.

In an attempt to get excited about the move - i only have one more week to spend in beautiful, downtown Montreal - i subscribed to the New Yorker and the Toronto Star at my new abode. I love mail.

I finally got around to writing out my feelings about the left vs. right debate and how it is portrayed in the media - i wrote a letter to Barbara Kay of the National Post after reading an article which i took offense to. See below for the article.

Dear Ms. Kay,

I was recently going through some documents that someone had saved for me to read during the past semester and came across your article appearing in the National Post on April 11, 2007.

I take great issue with your claim that it is “the truth that the left has indeed been wrong on every meaningful historical question for 200 years up to and including the existential threat posed by Islamofascism and the invidious canard that Israel is the ‘problem’.”

Though i stand wholeheartedly in the right-wing camp when it comes to question of foreign policy and international interventionism (and i firmly support the state of Israel in its continued attempts to gain recognition worldwide and end the war on its citizens), i CANNOT, as a good Canadian, deny the benefits of social welfare, the women’s liberation movement and gay rights advocacy. I would, in fact, argue that the sexual revolution and the widespread adoption of birth control have been THE MOST important cultural changes of the 20th century - and they stem undoubtedly from the left-wing of the political spectrum.

It seems foolhardy to continue to polarize a debate that is NOT about left and right, but rather about foreign policy, or economic policy, or domestic policy. Your diatribe against the leftist intellectuals (of whom i am happy to know many and think that MANY times there may be an inkling of truth in their thoughts) brings about equally vehement responses (hence this letter) and shuts down any hopes at fruitful conversation.

I hope that your intent with this article was not to have a generation of twenty-year old women scream out “what about birth control?!” and interpret your work as challenging many of the benefits post-modern Westerners would never give up - like liberation from a state of

bare-footed pregnancy.

It is very easy to write about the “right vs. left” problem. Unfortunately, your foray into this debate undermined what i considered an otherwise informative and well-written article about a

very interesting phenomenon i have noticed on campus myself.

I wonder what your thoughts would be as to my own, tentative, unresearched hypothesis that much of this recantation of “leftist” principles comes in a post-Cold War environment where communism and socialism just don’t appear to be viable outside of an ideal world.

Respectfully,

Me.

Kay, Barbara. “What Rhymes with ‘I Was Wrong?’” National Post. Toronto: April 11, 2007.

(Copyright National Post 2007)

‘It is in its way a perversely exhilarating spectacle,” writes David Solway, summarizing the message of his just published book, The Big Lie: On Terror, Anti-Semitism and Identity. “Not many people get to see in their lifetime a civilization coming to pieces before their very eyes, like a star going supernova.”

Solway, whom some consider Canada’s greatest living poet, equally at home amongst both anglophone and francophone literati, is himself something of a creative supernova: (retired) college teacher, educational theorist, travel writer, producer, scriptwriter and the recipient of numerous prizes. He’s also a contributing co-editor of the review Books in Canada, in whose pages and elsewhere he continually gives evidence of being our most elegantly insightful literary and cultural critic to boot.

The Big Lie was conceived in an act of war. Although Solway has always been an aesthetic conservative (”Canadian poets, learn your craft/and celebrate the hundredth draft”), it took the events of 9/ 11 to rouse him from the “ignorance and laziness” of half a lifetime’s default identification with the leftist ideology his cohort internalized in the student-revolutionary sixties.

The Islamist assault on America plunged Solway into “a kind of Cartesian interrogation, a relentless scrutiny of the values and beliefs I accepted as gospel.” Six years on, this radical reappraisal of principles plus meticulous research has produced The Big Lie. The book is an idiosyncratically formatted polemic, composed of theme-linked literary and political sorties, and fleshed out by the poignant chronicle of Solway’s personal sojourn, from secular and even arrogant indifference to Israel’s fate toward a proud, informed and loving embrace of Jewish destiny.

The Big Lie joins a swelling tributary of books produced by a special breed of political evangelicals: former leftist intellectuals (”mugged by reality,” in Irving Kristol’s memorable phrase) from whose eyes the scales have fallen through personal or political trauma. Some familiar exemplars of the type: Norman Podhoretz, David Horowitz, Christopher Hitchens, Alain Finkielkraut and Michael Novak, to name but a few.

Driven by savage indignation on one hand and remorse on the other (intellectuals, their whole identity deeply invested in ideas, experience particular shame in admitting bamboozlement by their ideological gods), some reformed leftists, and now Solway, have harnessed their intelligence, high seriousness and rhetorical prowess to prophetic warnings of the abyss into which they suddenly find themselves staring with horror.

Their “conversion” lends credibility to their writing. For they escape from the dark side at great personal expense– the loss of friendships, professional reputation, career advancement in many cases — and most important, the blow to their intellectual self- esteem. As Solway ruefully notes in his preface: “For this book was written against the grain as I came to realize that I had been wrong about nearly everything.”

Converts share an impatience with received wisdoms, and a burning sense of mission that those who “got it” from the beginning can’t approximate — “it” being the truth that the left has indeed been wrong on every meaningful historical question for 200 years, up to and including the existential threat posed by Islamofascism, and the invidious canard that Israel is the “problem,” while a Palestinian state — “Islam’s Trojan horse,” Solway calls it –is the “solution.”

The Big Lie is an anatomy of our times, a vivisection of the West- hating mindset that leads to active complicity with our enemies. The main thrust of the book — not entirely original, but more exhaustively researched, more passionately and eloquently articulated than other polemics of the genre — is to limn the seamless relationship between anti-Semitism and Islamist terror; to provide forensic evidence of a dangerously irresolute society; and to articulate the sad reality that we have, at our peril, evaded, conciliated, appeased and equivocated in the craven hope that history will pass us by.

The book ends on a humble note: “I have no prophetic pretensions. I can only say what I see, and write in the hope of a miracle.”

True poetry, Solway once said, is a “form of prayer.” When the writer’s motive is pure, and the writing sufficiently brilliant, prose can be, too — for The Big Lie, it seems to me, springs from an innately devotional sensibility — and prayers sometimes do, I have heard, produce miracles.

Updated (08/22/07): Ms. Kay responded to my email. In all fairness, it seems wrong to publish a piece of correspondence here without her permission. If you are interested in reading her response, pls feel free to ask for it below and i will email it to you.

Stephen Marche, Raymond and Hannah. Toronto: Anchor Canada, 2005.

I was recommended (and lent) this book by Dr. Rosemarie Krausz, a Ottawa-region psychoanalyst, who, more importantly for the vast majority of my readers, is Zach’s Mom.

I must admit that her description of the plot didn’t warm my heart to the tale. Two twenty-somethings meet in Toronto for a one-night stand that turns into a week-long frolick. She leaves to find her Jewish roots in Jerusalem. He stays behind to work on his dissertation at the University of Toronto. They keep in contact via email.

The recommendation that it was given, however, encouraged me to take a crack at it. I was VERY pleasantly surprised and will now count Stephen Marche among my favourite Canadian authors (actually, other than Yann Martel, i can’t think of another Canadian author i really love to read…).

There were two VERY appealing aspects of the book which i can share without ruining it for a future reader. Firstly, the typesetting. Raymond and Hannah adopts a Mrs. Dalloway-esque narrative structure. The readers zooms in and out of both characters heads as well as an omniscient narrator reflecting on the weather, the cities, etc. The text of the story is justified to the center of the book and the margins have tiny, editorial descriptions of what each paragraph is about. I like this technique. It makes finding something already read simple, it makes the spasticness of the approach less difficult to manage. It’s fun.

Secondly, Raymond’s dissertation, on Burton, is chunked into the later portions of the story where they are relevant to the budding relationship between the main characters. I have experienced the work i am currently doing in academia running out of its bounds and into “the real world” and thought this was an effective portrayal of a very difficult and disconcerting, though prevalent, phenomenon.

Raymond and Hannah is a love story. I am just not sure how it ended. Reading it at this point in my life was fitting. The text deals with the different settings of Toronto and Jerusalem in an approachable, open way. It made me look forward to my upcoming move for just a second. It also made me smile.

The book is currently on sale at Chapters for $4.99 - if you are looking for a late summer read, i, the hater of mush, love stories and Can. Lit, highly recommend it.

Our time at the National Gallery was edifying to say the least. I fell in love with one particular Renoir (Seine at Chatou) which i also bought a poster of for my new abode.

I don’t understand why boat rides are so enjoyable. Sitting around with the wind in your hair is more interesting when on a boat than in a car… why?

This evening the big plan is going to be baking strawberry-banana muffins and making a salad for lunch tomorrow. Exciting, i know - but it will be if the recipes turn out well. The muffin recipe is from the cookbook i bought in NY - i am optimistic. Eric and i tried making

oreo brownies from it two week-ends ago, but i added more marshmallows and they came out too gooey - that will teach me.

In case you were wondering, i did not pack anything last Thursday. Rather, i lay in bed watching Wonderfalls. I am good at summer lounging. It may be the only thing i am good at.

Tonight i have one big item planned out: I want to start packing. I am going to start with the absolute smallest bit of packing i can come up with - my jewelery. I am going to label the box nicely and put it with my kitchen stuff which was never unpacked from the last move… Then my mother may not yell at me that i have done NOTHING to prepare for a cross-country haul that will commence in just over three weeks.

We (Eric, Zach and i) are spending the week-end outside Ottawa. The big plan is to attend the Renoir Exhibit at the National Gallery. Just what i needed, another art book…

Watching Being John Malkovich last night has very seriously screwed me up.