Uncategorized – Page 39 – Babel-on-the-Bay

In resolution of the red sky.

November 22, 2011 by Peter Lowry

The time of the occupy movement has ended. Reality and the Canadian winter are reclaiming our parks and streets. Despite the large amount of empathy for the frustrations of the so-called 99 per cent, further occupation can achieve nothing. The time has come for the protesters to realize that lazing around and pontificating can never replace the hard work of the real world.

There might be the occasional anarchist left for the police to evict but the smart ones will be developing a long-term plan of action. In their planning, they will find there are many routes to the levers of power. Some will take the way of community activism. This is a fast, effective route to being noticed and to work your way into the municipal scene. It can include work for charities, community services, and local news and information media. Building a solid base in the community provides that place you can back up to.

Going directly into the political arena provides only a tenuous base of operations. For every winner in this venue, there has to be losers. For every opportunity, there are many pitfalls. When one person moves forward, others have to step back.

You have to serve a political apprenticeship. Nobody starts at the top. There are no training wheels. Ask former Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff how it feels to be out there in the top job and turning to find nobody behind you, nobody to trust.

And start by ensuring your livelihood outside the political sphere. It can be fun to live hand-to-mouth when you are young with no commitments. It is no fun when you are older and have responsibilities for others.

Making things happen all comes down to finding the point of leverage. You can change the world. You just have to remember that there are irrefutable laws of physics that apply to politics too. For every positive action you take for change, there will be equal and opposite reactions against change. And, sometimes, they do not feel all that equal.

Our only advice to the participants in the red sky is to go peacefully when asked. That will keep your enemies off guard and confused. Never do the expected. Make your point and go on. That will enable you to make the point again.

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Every blog has its reason.

November 6, 2011 by Peter Lowry

The following was originally run October 8th, 2009. We need to run it more than just every couple years.

Have you ever asked a blogger why? Did you get an answer? Did you get an honest answer? You wanted to know why they did it. You cannot believe that so many people have that big an ego. Could they really consider their pontificating so profound?

Or is the answer very simple. Take the case of this blog. What is it all about? Why call Barrie, Ontario Babel? Simple answer: I am a professional writer. As a writer, I am available for hire. I write for people who pay me. If someone needs a writer to produce a speech, a lecture, a presentation, a brochure, a résumé, a book, a script, a poem or a posting for twitter, I am your ghost. The web site babelonthebay.com is a sampler. It showcases my wares.

It helps that I love writing.

I also make it easy for people who wish to hire me. Take a speech, for example. All you need to tell me is to whom you will be speaking, what is the subject and if you for it or against it. You can tell me more if you wish but I am mindful of the time a client gave me a two-hour explanation of a 15-minute speech he needed. He was angry when he read my first draft. “This is just what I told you,” he blustered. “What have you contributed?” I thought I had done an excellent editing job.

And then there are clients who are not interested in your view. I was once offered more than twice my normal rate for a 50-minute lecture a client was giving at an American university. The reason for the higher rate was that the client was extremely rightwing politically. The client might have got a standing ovation for his speech but I deserved every penny of that fat fee for fiction writing.

Hands up everyone who thinks all business people write their own presentations. Those of you with your hands up; you must also believe in the tooth fairy. When I started writing presentations for others, we were still using slide shows. PowerPoint makes life much easier.

Modern low-cost, on-demand publishing has given impetuous to the world of business book ghost writing. It has reached a point that if you open a restaurant, the opening can be shared with the introduction of your new book of recipes that is a regular reminder of a good place to eat out. You have an auto parts firm, so you produce a book of tips on doing minor auto repairs. No matter what your business, there is a book that can be written that reminds people that they should deal with you because you are the expert. Just leave the writing to an expert at writing.

I am not sure I want to resume writing résumés. I used to brag that nobody I wrote a résumé for ever failed to land a suitable job. Today, it is necessary to qualify that bravado. One problem is that younger people do not trust someone my age to know their audience. And they might be right. Today, there are many barriers to getting your résumé to the person with whom you really need to communicate. I still believe in my résumés but I am losing touch with those barriers. It is becoming more of a team effort.

Poetry is something else. I tend to inflict it only on friends and family. While they are not always enthusiastic about my poems, they are kind.

What some people say is missing from this sampler blog is humour. I apologize for that. I have been accused of being a bit capricious with whimsy. That is the reason that I refer to Barrie as Babel. I think Barrie gets a bad rap. Babel is a more whimsical place, more open and accepting. Babel seeks challenges and opportunities. Barrie is a harsher, colder environment, full of potholes and bars, hockey players and hookers. (Yah, I know, your sister plays right wing.)

But I love twitter. This is a venue where writers can shine. Effective tweets are full of alliterative allusions, weighty words of wisdom and devoted to doggerel. It is a medium that eschews whole sentences while demanding clarity. It is in twitter where everybody knows your name but not the name of your writer. Can you imagine a writing gig that pays you to write less than 280 characters a day? It’s golden!

And one last comment about the art: Writing to precisely fill a column is a big part of a writer’s training. A column is usually limited to an average of 800 words. As is this one.

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The Commonwealth: An anachronism built on avarice.

October 30, 2011 by Peter Lowry

It was all designed by Adam Smith, the father of capitalism. He said grow the opium poppies in India, ship the product on British ships, sell it to the Chinese and send the profits to London. That way the gentry of England could buy furs from the Canadian colony to keep the Lords and their Ladies warm and dry. Today there are still 54 countries in the British Commonwealth of Nations that was built on the rape and pillage, greed and avarice that Adam Smith legitimatized.

And the tenuous thread that holds the motley assortment of countries in the Commonwealth together is the monarchy. There are still 16 of these nations that actually claim the British Monarch as their head of state. Some of the others have their own King, Queen or Leader for Life but these wannabes all play second fiddle and stand in awe of the wealth and substance of England’s sovereign.

But the Commonwealth is in failing health. Even with the British Queen herself making a guest appearance, some of the heads of state failed to make an appearance. Mind you, there are some of them who would be deposed if they made the mistake of leaving their country. There are even some who are attending who might not be head of state for long if Quantas Airline does not end its labour dispute and get them home soon.

One of the major problems of the Commonwealth is the lack of shared direction. If other Commonwealth heads disagree with a member’s approach to human rights, who is going to make them change? Expulsion from the Commonwealth is no longer the threat it used to be. Bribery might work but who is going to put up the big bucks?

As the last vestige of British colonialism, the Commonwealth has little to sustain it other than the generosity of Australia and Canada and the influence they, along with Great Britain, have on the Americans. What the Commonwealth might not be able to fund, the Americans might. The Americans are today’s imperialists.

What the Commonwealth has to recognize is that the British monarchy is on its last legs. The amused agreement to a change in Great Britain’s primogeniture laws in respect to the monarchy is a small band-aid. No Commonwealth leader is likely to go home and find his or her government will not support the change—except for Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron. He might be in for a fight with the Church of England over the clause to let royals marry Catholics.

There is more than just the pomp and ceremony of its meetings for the Commonwealth. It is another avenue for communication and support between nations. It might have lost the commercial values promoted by Adam Smith but it offers additional communications between peoples. In that, it does some good.

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