mir's blog

I was reading Proposed ban on Israeli academics sparks bitter debate this morning, when I noticed the story had only gotten on comment, surprised I went to read the one comment that made it through moderation and found:

Jim Sheppard from Executive Editor, globeandmail.com, Canada writes: To our readers: globeandmail.com policy is to close comments on all stories related to the Middle East. Past experience has demonstrated that too many people post racist, vulgar, abusive and offensive comments, often encouraging violence against specific individuals or peoples whenever we open comments on such stories. In the interests of furthering intelligent commentary, we invited Mideast expert Michael Bell, a former Canadian ambassador to the region, to take your questions Monday. full transcript is available here.

Not that this surprises me. Still it's scary and so disheartening to realize that even here in North America, people lack the basic common decency to disagree about an already tortuous issue without becoming hysterical and hateful. I mean if Globe and Mail readers become bullying and spiteful and they are thousands of miles away from the culture and the site of conflict how is there any hope for peace?

And yes, I firmly believe the ball is in Israel's court on this one, and if they continue to behave with such cruelty there will be huge repercussions. Also yes I am a little scared.

Here is the song I will use to introduce 2009 musically to the blog.

Why? Mostly because I have been really into learning about mental health lately (okay maybe forever, natch). Currently I am reading Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present and it's a page-turner, seriously. "Crazy chicks" are fascinating and the subject of a great deal of cultural material, also often the objects of a great deal of affection. Why is that? I am digressing a bit here, but no matter how interesting the book is, it really strikes me that the author is more comfortable sticking to a very objective and cursory description of the gendered history of mental health. Rather then trying to analyze or suggesting any patterns or recurring themes in terms of social relations with, or community reception of the mentally ill. I keep hoping for a richer more textured narrative of the relationships and experiences that take place in (and out of) asylums and through outpatient care, but I keep getting stuck with stuff like. "After an apparent full recovery she was returned to her family and died at the age of 76". Okay... that's a bit vague. I guess that's why I read novels, things like Bedlam may be fiction, but they seem to provide more deep insight then the real histories are able to.

Insomnia costing economy $20-billion a year. Interestingly are the comments (56 of them), the vast majority of which take offense at the suggestion that one should look at insomnia as a productivity issue, And not the sad result of working in the hyper-stressful global market economy.

Usually I wait until the day after the debauched evening of the new year, but this time I got home ate some lovely apple bread from Kate and read Master Rao's 2009 Chinese Astrology forecast. Year of Fire Snake for me.

A big day for reading in the hottest apartment in Toronto.

After I finished Bedlam, I wandered over to my friend's bookcase to look for something to preoccupy me. It seemed I had caught a mild flu so the question of socks was out the window for today.

My friend has made the interesting decision to put all the in-house spirituality books on one shelf, the shelf directly at eye-level. Since I am at heart a browser and not a searcher, I picked a book by Karen Armstrong and took it with me back to the living room.

10 hours later, here I am book finished, sweating and a little hungry. I did actually make some noodles, and I did in the immortal words of Sheryl Crow "scrape the mold off the bread", I made regular toast though.

The book so good I ate moldy bread is called The Spiral Staircase: My Climb out of Darkness. It is Armstrong's personal account of the years, the career and the transformation of faith that followed her decision to renounce her vows at the age of 24 and leave the convent she had joined when only a 17 year old in in 1962.

Of course the book is not simply about leaving her faith. It is about regaining one's sanity after nervous collapse, living with failure, finding a vocation, and ultimately discovering a transformative faith and in my opinion a renewal of the self.

It is also about developing compassion, in a major way, but I will leave that for tomorrow's post which will doubtless be huge unless I have to actually spend time with my family who would probably like to see me.

For now I will leave you with the T.S Elliot poem that served as inspiration for Armstrong's journey, and is a fitting testament to all people who wrestle with lives that seem not to be a "broad, noble flight of steps", but a "twisted spiral staircase".