Half-Irish Blues

I grew up believing I was Scottish (which is a bit daft because I was born and raised in Canada, as were both sides of my family for three generations) but when I was 30-something (probably years of age) my maternal grandmother was ranting about my Irish heritage. What does this have to do with me? “Didn’t anyone ever tell you, Evan? The ancestors of both of your grandmothers were from Ireland.”

Suddenly a deep dark family secret came to light: I was not simply, as I’d always been told, a descendent of pale redheaded people who tended sheep and subsisted on oats and whisky in the northern part of the island of Britain, I was every bit as much a descendent of pale redheaded people who tended sheep and subsisted on potatoes and whiskey in the northern part of the island of Ireland! In an instant, my self-image was tossed in a raging wind of uncertainty!

In my bewilderment and rage, I went ’round the pub and drowned my sorrows in beer after beer. At closing time, as the bartender was rolling me out the door he said, “What are you, Irish?” And suddenly I understood. I’m a double Celt half-breed.

Now, instead of being woefully ignorant of Scottish Gaelic, my burden is doubled by my ignorance of Irish Gaelic. I’ll have to fill my sporran with potatoes. And it won’t be easy playing the bagpipes with one arm and the bodhrán with the other. Half the time I would otherwise have devoted to trying to comprehend Robbie Burns’ Address to a Haggis must henceforth be devoted to trying to fathom James Joyce’s Ulysses. And now my options seem to be limited in religious matters, much as in Canadian politics, to only two possibilities: the orange or the green. But what is presented as black and white is all grey to me.

Only sometimes can I distinguish whether an accent is Irish or Scottish, or whether a foxy redhead is a bonnie lassie or a pretty Colleen. And I’m less expert in matters of Mc and Mac than people have come to expect of me.

Fortunately, there is an easy way out of my dilemma. Based on my appearance, people often ask if I’m German. Since I speak more German than Gaelic anyway, henceforth, I should just reply, “Ja”.

Scottish or Irish? Nein!

Whatever you consider yourself to be, Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to you!

Please also read my brief and rather silly St Patrick’s Day article http://www.postcity.com/Eat-Shop-Do/Do/March-2013/Seven-things-all-Torontonians-should-know-about-Ireland-for-St-Patricks-Day/

Who Needs International Women’s Day?

Who needs International Women’s Day? Didn’t Mary Wollstonecraft and Sojourner Truth take care of all that two centuries ago? “Women can vote. What more do they want?” Hmm…

Malala Yousafzai, 14-year-old girl shot for speaking out about her right to education, in 2012. She can’t be stopped; but she can be supported.

If you are unaware of the continuing practices of female genital mutilation, the forbidding of education for females, acid attacks and ironically-named “honour killings”, your ignorance must be blissful.

And if you think these are all problems of faraway places, not here in safe and civilized Canada, you must be avoiding mainstream news even more vigorously than I do.

Perhaps you are unmoved by the frequency with which Canadian Aboriginal women are murdered or go missing, but don’t imagine such crimes are limited to one group or community.

Statistics Canada declares, “violence against women in Canada continues to be a persistent and ongoing problem.”

Who needs International Women’s Day? We all do. Learn the facts, and let women have their day.

Black History and You

Along with the USA, Canada and the UK celebrate Black History Month. If you are one of those who would ask rhetorically “What does that have to do with me?”, please consider the following question.

What do you and I have in common with Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Dick Gregory, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglas, Jack Johnson, Louis Armstrong, Josephine Baker, Nelson Mandela, Maya Angelou, Kunta Kinte, Ricky Gervais, Richard Dawkins, Muhammad, Moses, Jesus, Madonna, Adolf Hitler, Kim Jong-eun, L’il Kim, Kim Kardashian and the Ku Klux Klan?

We all came from Africa. (And if you deny that fact, enjoy your 4,000-year-old flat Earth. Careful you don’t fall off the edge.)

Familiar Faces from African-American History, Caitlin Tamony bbc.co_.uk_

You may hear it claimed that “Black History Month” is vitally significant, especially for a continent not yet free of ignorance-based tensions and hostilities. You may hear that Black History Month has outlived its usefulness — “We all saw Roots on TV.” You may hear that Black History Month is self-defeating—it should all be just History. As Morgan Freeman said, “I don’t want a black history month. Black history is American history.”

As with so many debates, there is truth to be found on all sides. Only the ignorant claim the ignorance is all behind us now. And history should, indeed, be history for one and for all. If only there were no ignorance amongst historians, publishers, educators and media.

The Underground Railroad, Charles T. Webber, Cincinnati Art Museum

So let it be History Month, and let’s all look into a bit of history—look up something you know nothing about, or investigate whether certain “facts” you like to quote are as solid as you have always believed. Just notice the limitations of the sources you check. Who wrote what you read and what are the foundations of their claims?

Regardless of how direct or indirect you consider your African heritage to be, why not take a moment or two this month to do yourself and the world a favour: learn something new about our collective past.

Deaf Jam: the Poetry of ASL

Deaf Jam documentary (USA 2011)

Deaf Jam, a documentary which celebrates American Sign Language poetry, is screening on the afternoon of May 10^th at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival. People unfamiliar with sign language may find it difficult to conceive of ASL poetry. “Like, how does it rhyme?” Poetry in any language is about more than the sounds of the words and sentences; it is about creative ways of expressing ideas and emotions. And ASL is at no disadvantage in that department.

Whereas a word in English is made of syllables and letters, a sign in ASL has the following five components:

1. Orientation (which way the palm is facing)
2. Location (of hand(s) in relation to head/body)
3. Hand shape(s)
4. Movement (of hands/head/body)
5. Facial expression

By manipulating these elements, an ASL speaker can express simple and complex thoughts in amazing, innovative ways. Sign language is equal to spoken language in emotional and intellectual range, and, just as English does, ASL uses metaphor, connotation, wordplay, and all manner of poetic devises. ASL is handy with puns and can be flat out ironic. English poetry can make patterns of word sounds; ASL poetry can make patterns of sign shapes. Signs can be shuffled, pulled apart, and reconfigured in ways parallel to how words can be in English and other languages.

ASL does not differ from spoken languages in its boundless capacity to convey even the most nuanced and subtle concepts and feelings. The difference is that, whereas a spoken language is, for a hearing person, an auditory experience—even when read silently—, sign language is visual (except for the Deaf-blind, for whom sign language is tactile), and although it can be transcribed for academic purposes, ASL is not written and read communicatively. Therefore, ASL poetry is not written and read; ASL poetry is performed.

Remembering the observation that, “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture”,I will not try to describe ASL poetry, but for a hint about the sorts of things involved, consider this scene from the film.

In Deaf Jam, Aneta Brodski,* a student at Lexington School for the Deaf in Queens, NYC, is participating in an extra-curricular poetry program.

When Aneta introduces herself, she fingerspells her name (lightning fast) as one normally does, but when she performs (“raps”) her name, she signs each letter (designated by shape) with movement/location that incorporates the meaning of another sign so that her name becomes a story:

A + “dress up”; N + “look at me”; E + “I’m cool”; T + “walking in high heels”; A + “stumble”.

There is a lot more to ASL poetry than that; it’s really something you have to see. And the same goes for Deaf Jam, so if you can, go see the Canadian premiere on May 10^th at 3:30pm, Bloor Cinema, 506 Bloor Street West, Toronto. If not, find out more at http://www.deafjam.org/ or PBS.

*Aneta, like her parents, was born deaf. Her language, and the language of her family, is ASL. Statistically, this is uncommon. The typically hearing parents of Deaf children have to—or should!—learn signing as a second language.

You Are Here: Iceland, Where Björk Comes From

Björk's 2011 album Biophilia "combines nature, music, and technology"

In honour of the inimitable musical artist Björk, who was interviewed by Stephen Colbert this week to promote her new album Biophilia, I decided to devote this edition of You Are Here to her homeland.

I know you could find it on a map, but I bet you’ve never been there and don’t intend to go any time soon; and I think you likely know as little about it as I do. So let’s see what we can find out.

Although Iceland is culturally European, it is kind of “out there”, and not just geographically. Here’s a nifty example:

Instead of using family names, Icelanders use patronymics and matronymics. Hence, the full name of the above mentioned artist, Björk Gudmundsdottir, means “Björk, Gudmund’s daughter”. For this reason, the Icelandic phonebook is listed alphabetically by first name.

This might sound impractical were it not for the fact that there are not very many Icelanders. Over the centuries the population has periodically been cut down by half as a result of plagues, famine-inducing volcanic eruptions, and mass migration to Manitoba, leaving the current population at about 320,000 (considerably smaller than Halifax) in an area of 103,000 km² (bigger than Portugal, smaller than Cuba) — and 62.7% of that is tundra. Sound like Canada? Indeed both countries have a population density just above 3 people per  km².

Geyser Catland, Iceland. Image: Terekhova via Flickr

Iceland has many geysers, (one of which, Geysir, gives us the English word for… You guessed it!), lots of fjords and hundreds of volcanoes. What Icelanders lack in firewood, they make up for with geothermal power. Iceland kicks environmental ass.

First settled in the ninth century by the Norse (although it’s hard to think of Vikings “settling down”), but possibly previously visited by Scots, Iceland’s original population of was (according to genetic studies) of Nordic and Gaelic origin.

Iceland was granted independence from Denmark in 1918 and formally declared itself a republic on 17 June 1944 (following Allied occupation during WWII while Denmark was occupied by Germany). The current Prime Minister, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, has twice made Time magazine’s top ten list of female world leaders.

Icelandic Language Day (dagur íslenskrar tungu) is celebrated on 16 November. On top of Icelandic, (an inflected North Germanic language of Old Norse derivation, largely unchanged over the centuries), English and Danish are studied in school and widely spoken in Iceland. Icelandic Sign Language (based on Danish Sign Language) was officially recognised as a minority language in 2011. Your first Icelandic word is Ísland. Guess what it means. (Hint: it’s the same as the French word l’Islande and the Korean word 아이슬란드 .)

The Canadian Connection

The Icelandic currency is the króna (ISK). But with the economic crisis and the Euro looking shaky, there was talk of Iceland adopting the Canadian dollar.

There are 88,000 people of Icelandic descent living in Canada (the largest community outside of Iceland), and Islendingadagurinn, The Icelandic Festival of Manitoba, has been celebrated for well over a century. So at the end of July, after seeing my play in the Toronto Fringe, you can go to Gimli and have some wholesome Viking fun. If you can’t get to Gimli, find out what you’ve missed by reading Icelandic Connection (formerly The Icelandic Canadian magazine). Or stick to the classics, like the 14^th century Eiríks saga, which describes Erik the Red’s pre-Columbian voyage to Vinland (Newfoundland).

The temperature in the capital, Reykjavik (pop. 118,000), will be a few degrees above freezing for the next week or so; yet another reason to visit Iceland without delay. And here’s one more. If you’re ever dickin’ around Iceland and find yourself hard up for entertainment, you might want to visit the The Icelandic Phallological Museum.

P.S.

Now I have a regular byline that links to my blog. Henceforth, my Post City articles (such as my latest, on Black History Month) will be followed with: Evan Andrew Mackay is a Toronto playwright and humourist who writes about culture and social justice.

Merry Winter Solstice! Here Comes the Sun…

Don’t wait for Sunday; today/tomorrow is the day to celebrate!

While strip malls are swarming with stressed shoppers scrambling to get to the bottom of their lists in time for the big gift switch, the truly monumental moment is happening tonight (or tomorrow, depending where you are). It’s winter solstice – go hug an evergreen!

Sun Tree Winter Green

This midwinter festival goes back way more than 2012 years. It goes back into the cold dark pagan past. It goes back to the beginning of human consciousness, when the first naked apes looked up at the winter night sky waiting for a speedier return of the increasingly overdue sun.

With days getting colder and nights getting longer, these people – with no Weather Network, no electricity, no streetlamps (nor streets) – huddled together under precious animal skins and waited for the return of light and warmth.

Must have been a hell of a thing.

But they weren’t stupid; they’d lasted long enough to figure out that things would turn around, that snows would melt and new buds would blossom.

In time, ancient peoples such as Druids and Mayans constructed stone temples that took precise celestial measurements by which they pinpointed the date on which the longest night of the year past. And you know what they did then? They celebrated!

Merry Solstice to all of you, far and near, famous or forgotten, preachy or pagan, squished together or totally solitary – Merry Solstice to every one of you!

And for those of you in the southern hemisphere, enjoy your harvest. And don’t worry, your days won’t get shorter forever.

You Are Here: Geography Investigations, Inspired by Ishmael Beah

In 2009, I spent a week home in New Brunswick, leaving in Toronto a book I planned to read on my return.

Arriving in NB I saw that the book, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, was the title chosen by my hometown for their first annual community read, and the author, Ishmael Beah, was coming to speak. I altered my itinerary to attend. I was as compelled by Beah’s speaking* as I soon would be by his writing. (*Beah was more intimate and candid in the crowded school gym than on George Stroumboulopoulos.)

Beah’s closing remark at that community event was that, despite horrors he had known in his native Sierra Leone, he remembers it still as his beloved homeland and as a place of more than just war stories. He challenged us to learn about far-away places without waiting to hear about them only as news stories when there is an uprising or an earthquake.

Finally, now, I will begin a monthly look at some part of the world that is not dominating ephemeral headlines. I begin with a place where I lived and worked for several months as a substitute teacher a dozen years ago. Though in the middle of Canada, it felt in some ways more foreign than Gangneung, Korea or Torreón, Mexico.

You Are Here:

Berens River First Nation, Manitoba

Located on the eastern shore of Lake Winnipeg and accessible only by boat, tiny planes landing on gravel, or winter road (driving across Lake Winnipeg will keep you awake), Berens River will not be hosting the next Olympics or G20 Summit. The population is something like 1,400 – slightly more than the enrolment at my old high school.

The first language on the reserve is Anishinaabe (a.k.a. Ojibwe, etc.) although I heard locals refer to themselves as Saulteaux (/soto/) which is a dialect of Ojibwe – but everyone speaks English there because, unlike most Canadians, the people of Berens River are fluently bilingual. (Ironically, I didn’t meet any Saulteaux – French for “people of the rapids” – who spoke French.)

Here are some things I remember about Berens River.

You could call it a one-horse town:

• One hotel (which had the only restaurant and bar)
• One store (where food was four times as expensive as in urban eastern Canada)
• One school (K-12)
• One hockey arena
• One RCMP officer
• One road

A typical phone conversation:

         Me:       Hello?

   Voice:       Who’s’is?

         Me:       Evan

   Voice:       Can you teach grade 7 in the afternoon?

         Me:       Yeah, sure.

   Voice:       [ click ]

   That was the vice principal. Friendly and pleasant in person. I thought I’d done something wrong, but I found that was the phone etiquette no matter who called. The phone is a machine. It did its job. Let’s not be so formal with that hello/goodbye stuff.

Although interactions at the school and the store (the only places I went) were always pleasant, I did not mix in the community. The teachers lived in a clump of houses beside the school. Walking the 100 meters to the school was like a commute from the suburbs to the reserve.

Most of what I “learned” when I lived there was in fact only reported to me. Here are some things I heard:

• I heard of and read about violence and substance abuse being commonplace on some reserves (and gained some appreciation for a few of the reasons why), but never saw any sign of either.
• I heard school staff saying their houses had been without water for two weeks. (No problems of any sort in the teachers’ ‘suburb’.)
• I heard that a bright cheerful boy I knew in the grade seven class was quite illiterate, despite being the son of a prominent member of the school staff.
• I heard many tales of a Black Robe (or whatever they call them now) preaching about sinners, pointing at teachers and telling the students not to believe what they say and not to follow the example they set. A teacher told me that a little girl asked in tears at recess if it was true what the minister said, that on that millennial New Year’s Eve the world would end and she would go to hell. I wish such a minister would practice what he preached.

Having lived there for several months, what do I now know about life on a reserve? Only that I have scarcely any idea what it’s like. And that realization is a hell of a lot more than I knew before.

ASL Comedy at Yuk Yuk’s – A Silent Celebration of an Unwritten Language

ASL Comedy at Yuk Yuk’s Toronto 26 November

Whereas stand-up comedy shows are ubiquitous in the English speaking world, a comedy show performed entirely in American Sign Language (ASL) is a rare event in Toronto, almost unheard of, despite the fact that about six percent of people living in the Greater Toronto Area are Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing. That is why Mike Cyr and Andrea Kraus of Silent Voice Canada, (a charitable organization offering support to deaf children and adults in ASL in the GTA), decided to put together an ASL Comedy Show as a celebration of what is said to be the fourth most-used language in North America.

Christopher Welsh, one of the half dozen comedians who will perform on Saturday, sat with me recently at the Bob Rumball Centre for the Deaf (BRCD) to talk about comedy and Deaf culture. I wouldn’t have had the nerve even to think about interviewing someone in ASL – which I have only begun to learn – except that Christopher Welsh was my group leader at this summer’s Ontario Camp for the Deaf, and I know him to be a gifted communicator and a man of generous spirit.

comedian Christopher Welsh

A number of years ago, Welsh was the first Deaf comedian to perform at Yuk Yuk’s for a hearing audience. His training in mime and clowning contributes to his ability to entertain people not fluent in sign language. He might perform again for a hearing audience at Yuk Yuk’s “but,” he says, “I’d want to prepare some new material first.”

Humour differs from one culture to another (Saturday Night Live is not Monty Python) and from one language to another (try convincing high school students in Japan that Far Side cartoons are funny). Welsh, who has studied at the National Theatre of the Deaf in Connecticut, at Second City in Toronto, and with Shakespeare Link in Wales, says, “Some jokes don’t translate.” Different groups might laugh at the same thing but express it differently. And some stories may be funny for one culture and not another, no matter how you tell it.

And for a comedian, the same joke might kill one night and die the next. Welsh says that holds true whether the audience is Deaf or hearing. Either way, “it’s the same. Some audiences are good, some are difficult.” For a hearing comedian with a hearing audience, a heckler can completely disrupt a performance. For a Deaf comedian with a Deaf audience, Welsh says, “It’s the same.” But he is not worried about hecklers on November 26^th. “When I was younger, yes. But now I’m experienced.”

And it seems likely that everyone in the audience will be thoroughly appreciative on Saturday. ASL entertainment programming is in short supply. There are virtually no TV shows in ASL (although Welsh has appeared on TVO’s Deaf Planet). According to Welsh, films produced in California are the main form of entertainment available in ASL, such as the comedy Versa Effect (2011) which was given a single screening at BRCD in September. It’s great to see short-form entertainment in ASL becoming increasingly available on the Internet but nothing is more fun than getting a crowd together for a live show.

The complete list of performers for ASL Comedy at Yuk Yuk’s:

• Christopher Welsh
• Gord Dadalt
• Teresa Fleming
• Michelle Bourgeois
• Lisa Faria
• Regent Gendron
• And the MC will be Mike Cyr

Hearing people are welcome to attend the ASL Comedy Show on Saturday, of course, but there will be no interpretation of ASL into English, as the aim of this event is to revel in the beautiful language of ASL.

Information about the show is available in ASL at

http://www.youtube.com/user/ASLatYukYuks

Tickets are $15

For your tickets, contact Andrea Kraus at aslforall@live.ca today before they are sold out!

ASL at Yuk Yuk’s

Saturday November 26^th

1:00pm – 4:00pm

Yuk Yuk’s Comedy Club
224 Richmond Street, Toronto ON
(map)

Marshall McLuhan, the Original M’n'M

Marshall McLuhan, the father of communications and media studies – the guy who looked at TV and pointed out, ‘This is going to change us, and TV is only the beginning’ – would have been 100 on July 21^st. This year the world is celebrating his legacy with McLuhan 100. And what a perfect time to look into what that’s all about, as major cities around the world are participating in Social Media Week.

The Original M’n’M

In the 1960s at the University of Toronto, McLuhan’s explorations into the implications of mass media for the society that uses it gained global attention for himself and for Toronto. The ‘Darwin of communications and media’, Marshall McLuhan was born in Edmonton in 1911 and died in Toronto in 1980, decades before the Internet and video cellphones with GPS came along. McLuhan had his moment in history, but his legacy lives on. What would he say of this 24/7, LOL, Twittering, Facebooking, Googling, blogosphering, iPhoning world, other than “Told you so!” And if he said more than that, would he be understood? Following are two phrases that McLuhan’s name immediately brings to mind.

The Medium is the Message:

What does that mean? It means the information you are reading right now is as much about the Internet as it is about the subject matter (McLuhan). The significance of that is, if you have an opinion about what you are reading here you can leave a comment (please do) and if someone has an opinion about your opinion, they can comment further (please do). What you see on TV news or read in a newspaper or encyclopaedia is static and might have shades of a lecture or propaganda, but you can turn what are reading here into a dialogue. The message of this medium is that you can share your own message here.

When McLuhan’s manuscript for his work “The Medium is the Message” came back from the printer with the cover reading The Medium is the Massage, he choose to leave it like that because there is truth in that typo.

Global Village:

In explaining his phrase “global village”, McLuhan said that, for better or for worse, the ability for everyone in the world to communicate with each other instantaneously means that everyone’s business becomes everyone else’s business; privacy goes out the window and we’re all stuck with each other.

On the other hand, since we’re stuck with each other on this planet anyway, shouldn’t we be communicating with one another?

Two events happening in Toronto this weekend come to mind. The Go Global expo lets you explore dozens of ways to see the world, for work, study or adventure. While world travel these days is almost as easy as getting a tank of gas (at about the same cost), you can also let the world come to you by attending the European Day of Languages events being held at Alliance Française on Friday, or find a language group or ex-pat group around town on www.meetup.com (in Toronto, check out Toronto Babel!, or stay at home and chat online with people anywhere in the world. “Love thy neighbour” no longer refers just to the people on your street.

For more on McLuhan from a Toronto perspective, please click here  (< McLuhan knew this kind of thing would happen).

What’s Worn Under Your Kilt?

Who stole the punchline? It was in there when I submitted this article!

Please add your own answer to the question, “What’s worn under your kilt?” in the comments section below my new Post City article,

http://www.postcity.com/Eat-Shop-Do/Do/September-2011/Whats-up-with-the-kilt-A-crash-course-just-in-time-for-the-annual-Beach-Celtic-Festival/

What's worn under your kilt?