Incite Magazine - September 2010

Incite Magazine Volume 13, Issue 1 · McMaster University, Hamilton ▪ September 2010

thrills ‘n chills: A treat-seeking Hamilton food adventure Bertrand russell: From Cambridge to McMaster plus Beach bums: Naturism laid bare

Editorial Moving right along Andrew Prine, Editor-in-Chief

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hat others’ lives go on in my absence remains one of the saddest realizations I have ever come to. It’s also one of the most liberating. The ice cream shop back home didn’t go out of business just because I abandoned my quest to try every different flavour of sundae, and some new busboy will ensure that no half-sauced patrons ever have to suffer through the indignity of having their tables cluttered by empties. No matter what it cost my ego, it was only after this discovery that I really began to feel at ease with myself and my actions.

What I do still affects my loved ones and surroundings in a meaningful way, but on a larger scale, life goes on, and I think that fact is beautiful.

The world didn’t end during Incite’s hiatus last year. McMaster University’s international reputation, endowment size and institutional sanctity remained unaffected, give or take a few arts programs. Like 1280, the school might have been better off without us. But at the same time, the rebirth of this publication was, in the eyes of myself and Incite’s

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Artwork by Alexandra fomicheva

great, noble, clever, well-dressed, fine-mannered, modest and goodlooking executive, a cause worth championing. Incite has been around for twelve years, and we truly believe that there is a place for an alternative publication here at McMaster. If we don’t review everything from sex shops to shampoo bottles, who will?

Notes of change, absence, and renewal occur throughout our September edition. Our covers, by Lisa Xu and Dorothy Leung, feature the phoenix. What I don’t know about Greek mythology could, and probably does, fill a large chunk of Mills Library, but the bird’s perpetual cycle of birth, death, and rebirth is, hopefully, like the evolving story of Incite. Likewise, Patrick Byrne’s Lessons from Mama and Adira Winegust’s Five Weddings and a Funeral tell of poignant familial change, but also of renewal. Blacksheepish recounts coal’s constancy in our energy system, but also changes in the fuel’s perennial use. As well, Dr. Louis Greenspan’s article on McMaster’s Bertrand Russell Archives sketches the evolution of Russell’s ideas, politics and influ-

ence over the course of 20th Century.

Change is everywhere (see Volume 10, Issue 3). It’s the harbinger of death and decay, but also the chaos of creation, and with a bit of luck, we’ll be able to tap into this wellspring for inspiration in our 13th season.

Speaking of change, Siva Vijenthira, Incite’s editor-in-chief last year, has graduated from McMaster University and is working as a learning consultant/medical writer/user experience designer/social media chick/Jack-ofall-trades at a great company housed in a former jewellery factory at the edge of hipsterville. To those of us lucky enough to not hail from the GTA, apparently this means Queen West. She has left Incite to a vibrant, growing group of writers, artists, designers, and I am thrilled to be a part of the team. Welcome to and welcome back to McMaster, and in the spirit of our covers, I hope you’ll join me in taking advantage of the last few days of summer and toast our relaunch at 4:30 p.m. on Friday, 17 September, on the patio at the Phoenix. Cheers!

incitemagazine.ca Features

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Fuckin’ eh!

Why do Canadians swear so much?

Ishani Nath Lessons from Mama Creative non-fiction Patrick Byrne Eurovisions Photography Michael Wexler Russell At McMaster Whispers of the 20th Century Louis Greenspan Blacksheepish Coal’s dirty history Andrew Prine Five Weddings and a Funeral Wedding Season 2010 Adira Winegust Dreams Waking ambitions Sarah Jennison, Natasha Turner Playing Out Work, play and exercise Chris Hilbrecht

Departments

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6 8 12

Photography by will van engen

Minutes from Last month Selected news from near and far Food Adventure Chris Hilbrecht, Hilary Noad Sexin’ Marisa Burton Power/Play Yang Lei

Incite Magazine is published six times per academic year by Impact Youth Publications, founded in 1997.

Entire contents copyright 2010-2011 Impact Youth Publications. Opinons expressed in Incite Magazine are those of the author(s), and do not necessarily reflect the views of Incite Magazine’s staff or Impact Youth Publications.

Letters of up to 300 words may be sent to incite@ mcmaster.ca; they may be edited for length and clarity and will not be printed unless a name, address, and daytime phone are provided.

Though we usually try to keep as much of our artwork McMaster based as we can, we came across a website with great photoshop tutorials, and the artist was kind enough to let us use her Planet Egg graphic. Here’s what she has to say: My name is Alexandra Fomicheva. I have been interested in graphics since childhood and I spent 8 years in art school. After finishing school, I entered university and graduated with honours. I also hold a Master’s degree in graphic design. While in university, I became interested in different graphic design software technologies and started creating digital art work.

The works became popular and can be found all over the web. I’m doing all kinds of graphic/ web development/web design for different clients and some of the works can be found on my website. Photoshop Tutorials created by me and presented on Alfoart.com became a good educational tool for lots of people on the web and my website’s traffic is constantly growing as people get to know more and more about this resource.

Editor-in-Chief Andrew Prine Managing Editors Yang Lei, Layout Joanna Chan, Graphics Ishani Nath, Graphics Editors Chris Hilbrecht Anna Kulikov Hilary Noad Adira Winegust Contributors Ashley Adcox, Jessie A$hbourne, Khanh Be, Marisa Burton, Patrick Byrne, Alexandra Fomicheva, Louis Greenspan, Alex Irwin, Angela Irwin, Sarah Jennison, Joy Santiago, Kaitlin Troisi, Natasha Turner, Will van Engen, Anne van Koeverden, Michael Wexler Cover Lisa Xu Back Cover Dorothy Leung, Lisa Xu Printing Digital Art & Graphics, Inc. Contact incite@mcmaster.ca Volume 13, Issue 1 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 3

Happenings Photography by alex irwin

INSIDE THE BUBBLE...

IN NORTH AMERICA...

Deane-nied Another chapter in the Hamilton PanAm 2015 stadium debate has come to a close.

In a statement released on 13 September, the new president of McMaster University, Patrick Deane, announced that discussions regarding the use of McMaster Innovation Park (MIP) as a potential site for the stadium have ended. The MIP was put forward as a site option after conflict arose over the proposed West Harbour location. The Tiger-Cats, Hamilton’s football team, originally favoured an East Mountain location but have since abandoned the project all together. The City depends on financial support from the provincial and federal government for the construction of the stadium, but such funding is subject to the city securing a long-term tenant, with the obvious choice being the Tiger-Cats. It is now unclear whether Hamilton will get a PanAm stadium at all, with no solution in sight.

Caffeinated Caper PETERBOROUGH, Ontario—Some people just can’t function without a good cup of coffee. Apparently, suspected bank robber, William Gray, 62, is one of those people. After holding up a bank in Peterborough, Gray stopped for a mid-getaway coffee where he was quickly apprehended by authorities. Police say that around 10:30 a.m., an elderly man claiming to have a weapon approached the TD teller and demanded money. The suspect then fled in a cab with an undisclosed amount of cash. However, the suspect didn’t get far before stopping at a Coffee Time. Gray was walking out of the store when he was arrested and charged with robbery. It looks like Gray will be trading his coffee time for hard time.

...AND AROUND THE WORLD Thar she blows up AUSTRALIA—After over a week languishing in an Australian harbour, a sick humpback whale was euthanized by being blown up by local authorities. The 12-ton marine mammal became untreatably ill while stranded on a sand bar near the southwestern port city of Albany.

Once the Department of Conservation and Environment (DCE) determined that the humpback was on its last fins, officers strapped Gelignite explosives to the animal’s skull and helped the sea creature end its life with a bang. Readers need not blubber over the whale’s fate though, explosives are, according to the DEC, a humane -- if dramatic -- way to euthanize whales.

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Tortoise and the Bureaucrat AILSA CRIAG, Ontario—After receiving some much-deserved publicity, Ailsa Craig’s annual turtle race came under heavy shelling this summer. The Toronto Star’s Out There column describes bizarre festivals and events held within driving distance of the provincial capital, and its coverage of this unique gathering raised eyebrows and government scrutiny. The reptilian competitors were traditionally caught in the wild and trained by local kids. After the event, the turtles were then returned to their natural habitat. While Hayfever ENGLAND—Fans of the British rock group Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) will be crushed to learn of the tragic death of cellist and former ELO member Mike Edwards who was killed in a freak accident on Friday, 3 September. During Edwards’ time with ELO, he became known for a stunt in which his cello exploded at the

casualties are rare in this nail-biting, fast-paced spectacle of turtle athleticism, the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) contends that catch and release turtle harvesting can lead to the spread of disease and, in the most serious cases, turtle stress. To prevent this, the MNR decided to ban the race this year, with the concession that it could continue with rented, pet shop turtles in years to follow.

Bird Course ALEXANDRIA, Virginia—Five-foot, onehundred-and-five pound Sonya Thomas, of Alexandria, Virginia defeated world eating champion Joey Chestnut in a chicken wing eating contest in Buffalo. In 12 minutes Chestnut (6’ 2”, 230 lbs) devoured 169 wings but could not out-eat Thomas, who inhaled 181, setting a new world record.

Thomas attributed her victory to her fast finger technique. The 43-year-old, whose nickname “the black widow” refers to her ability to eliminate her male competitors, now holds 38 world eating records.

Her accomplishments include demolishing 552 Oysters in 10 minutes, 44 lobsters from the shell in 12 minutes, and 11 lbs of cheesecake in 9 minutes. Thomas claimed to still be hungry after the competition, and returned an hour later to eat 20 more wings in the “Ridiculously Hot Wing Eating Contest”. end of his performance of Saint-Saens’ The Swan. Edwards met his untimely end while driving on a highway near Devon, England, where a 600 kg (1323 lb) bale of hay fell off of a passing tractor and onto his car, killing him instantly. compiled by Chris Hilbrecht, Ishani Nath, Hilary Noad, Yang Lei & Andrew Prine

Fuckin’ eh!

Ishani Nath

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n the English language’s vast repertoire of idioms, words and phrases, there have always been an alluring few that have remained off limits, at least in certain company. We learn the power of, and even start using, swears long before we’re cognisant of the meaning and linguistic momentum behind them. In fact, if my years as a babysitter are anything to go by, it almost seems that we are at the point where kids become potty-mouthed before they are even potty trained. At the same time, it is only fun to say a swear if you know that it’s forbidden, and if that same little Jimmy is cussing and grinning, you can bet that he knows what he is doing. It is not part of the typical academic curriculum, but somewhere along the way, everyone learns which words are good and which words will merit an express ticket to the timeout corner, a slapped wrist, or even the dreaded mouth soaping.

Frequently no more than four letters in length, swearwords are small but mighty. They pack a punch that normal words cannot. In theory, swearing is taboo, but the reality is that profanity remains an integral part of the language, and according to a recent study, Canadians are particularly well practised. Despite their

Artwork by chris hilbrecht

polite reputation, poll results reveal that Canadians use more vulgar speech than their English speaking allies in the Western hemisphere. Apparently it doesn’t take a large military to drop F-bombs.

On 4 August, 2010, Angus Reid Public Opinion released poll results revealing that Canadians swear more often than Americans or Britons. The online study was conducted between 20 July to 23 July, 2010, and randomly surveyed over 1000 Canadians, Americans and Britons.

Over half of Canadian participants polled (56%) admitted to using less-than-PG language with friends compared to just 51% of Brits and 46% of Americans. Casual environments were not the only place Canadians reported hearing profanities though; not even business casual is safe in the true north strong and free, with 26% of Canucks also admitting to frequently hearing coworkers swear. While not a commanding lead, we also outstrip the Brits’ 24% and Americans’ 18%. Despite the use of profanity in both personal and professional settings, all three nations confessed to cutting the cussing in front of relatives. A conservative 33% of Britons, 32% of Americans and 27% of even the uncouth Canadians swear that they

never curse in front of family members.

Dr. Joe Kim, assistant professor of psychology at McMaster University, examines the psychology behind swearing in his lecture The F-bomb and Lessons on Language. Dr. Kim explains that swearing can be broken down into five categories based on its use and motivation*: • Dysphemistic Swearing: “I want to emphasize a point by making you to think about just how fucking awful this is.”

• Abusive Swearing: “I am showing aggression towards you. Fucker.”

• Idiomatic Swearing: “I am fucking swearing just to arouse your attention, assert a macho pose, or express informality” • Emphatic Swearing: “I am using swearing as an adjective to make an emphatic fucking statement” • Cathartic Swearing: “I am SO FUCKING ANGRY that swearing will relieve my tension and stress!”

In an email response to the results of the poll, Dr. Kim writes that,“if we assume Canadians are “nice” and good-natured, I would guess they are doing more of the idiomatic or emphatic type of swearing”.

According to this interpretation, based on our national stereotype, foulmouthed CaContinued on Page 7 Volume 13, Issue 1 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 5

food adventure thrills ‘n chills Chris Hilbrecht and Hilary Noad

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ce cream and warm weather go together like Westdale landlords and extortion.

With this tightly entwined relationship in mind, two of Incite’s foodie editors spent an afternoon this summer hunting for Hamilton’s best frozen desserts. In a few hours of decadence they cruised around the city in an SUV, grabbed cash from a drivethrough bank, and realized their childhood dreams of eating only ice cream for dinner.

The following is their treat-seeking diary: Schilling’s, 139 Locke St. S. “Chocolate — Pastry — Ice Cream” Our first stop is at Schilling’s, a tiny, cottage-like building on Locke Street, complete with gingerbread trim. Inside, we find gorgeous baked goods, a sign advertising Stoney Creek ice cream, and, in jarring contrast to the otherwise old-fashioned atmosphere, grating musak. The ice cream selection is large enough that we have to take a few minutes to make our decisions. What’s more, on the counter sit poppy-seed strudels enticing enough to make one wonder if world domination by the Third Reich would have been all bad. As we weigh our options, we chat with the proprietress who, we find out, learned to bake

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Artwork by khanh be

in Germany and who seems to believe in a rather controlling approach to training novice ice cream scoopers. At one point, she instructs her hapless trainee in where to pass ice cream products over the counter so as to not drip on the carefully-arranged display of chocolates. We also learn that, despite the Stoney Creek Dairy sign, the ice cream served at Schillings comes from a dairy in London, Ontario. The owner explains that she thinks the quality of Stoney Creek ice cream has dropped since they expanded into supermarkets—no more nuts, fruits, or berries.

We decide on a single-scoop waffle cone of “Spider-Man” ($3.75, tax included) and a milkshake made with “Canadian maple-walnut” ($4.75, tax included.) The shake is served with a narrow straw probably normally used for pop but proves to be drinkable, creamy and altogether delicious. The maple-walnut flavour is sweet, but does not contain enough regional disagreement to be truly Canadian. That said, the walnut bits (real nuts!) did show signs of separatism by sinking to the bottom of the cup. Spider-Man, if his namesake ice cream is any indication, is incredibly creamy, tastes strongly of ambiguous berry flavours, and has a

powerful ability to dye one’s tongue blue.

But where is Spider-Man’s characteristic angst? Apart from a few, small icy bits, the ice cream is much too smooth and entirely too sweet. Life is never this smooth for Spider-Man. As we leave the shop, we are left with a troubling question: what would we find in “Wolverine” ice cream?

From German Pastries to German Shepherds Situated a block or so from Schilling’s is Al Simmons Gun Shop. Curious, we walk up to the store as we enjoy our treats and press a buzzer to be let in. A giant stuffed bear stands like a sentinel at the door and, as we enter the rows of bullet boxes, hunting decoys and rifle racks, a surprisingly non-threatening German Shepherd trots up to us, tail wagging. As we savour our first frozen desserts we check out gun prices (a cheap revolver can be yours for $150, a futuristic-looking rifle for upwards of $1000), and ask the staff to show us their coolest gun. The man behind the counter smiles and points to an intimidating multi-barrel machine gun perched by the front window. He quips that it would be Continued on Page 7

good for shooting groundhogs, noting that “there wouldn’t be much groundhog left.” This is apparently good because he’s squeamish (and it saves clean-up?).

We finish our ice cream and exit the shop.

Chris’ appetite is whetted and he is excited for more. Hilary’s mouth is beginning to burn from the taste of sugar and her tongue has been dyed blue, but she is willing to face another, maybe less heroic flavour.

Next we drive to James Street, having heard rumours of excellent gelato at Bar Michelangelo. Tragically, the place is closed. We gaze longingly through the front window at racks of Italian CDs and the gelato freezers, the lemon and pistachio labels tormenting us from afar. We move on, deciding to hit up the famed (and defamed

by Schilling’s) Stoney Creek Dairy.

As we drive down Barton Street toward Stoney Creek, Chris sees a sign which appears to read “XXX and Ice Cream”. Hearts already set on our destination, we were — alas — not able to investigate at the time, but if any of our readers feel so motivated, the shop is located just before Centennial Parkway and letters to the editor are always welcome...

Stoney Creek Dairy/ Hutches — Stoney Creek, 135 King Street East We arrive, at last, at Stoney Creek Dairy, “a meeting place for friends after a baseball practice, a delicious spot for a first date” — readers, take note! — “and home of the ‘super sundae’.” The Dairy has teamed up with another Hamilton-

area franchise, Hutch’s, to provide customers with the ultimate in sweet and savoury precursors to heart disease.

The building is laid out in the shape of an L, with the foot of the L housing the Dairy, and the top part home to Hutch’s. The ice cream bar area, with its pink-painted cinder block walls and teenage staff, has an Archie comics feel.

The place is wholesome, but also vaguely industrial, with heavy-duty ice cream manufacturing equipment behind the counter. A few of the letters on an old neon sign in the window have gone out.

Over the counter hangs a big chalkboard inscribed with the 43 flavours on offer plus options such as milkshakes, sundaes, and banana splits. An upright freezer that holds grocery store-style tubs of Stoney Creek Dairy ice cream (which cost only a little more than a single scoop in a waffle cone) is located off to one side.

We order a strawberry milkshake ($4.15 plus tax) and a scoop of “Birthday Cake” ice cream in a waffle cone ($4.89 plus tax). The milkshake is thick — too thick for a straw but not quite the right texture for using a spoon. No strawberries are to be found. The birthday cake ice cream, complemented by its crunchy waffle cone, is blue and white with multicoloured sprinkles throughout. Through a miracle of food science, the ice cream actually tastes like real store-bought birthday cake!

Ice cream products in hand, we head over to the Hutch’s side of the building where the décor consists of Hamilton memorabilia, the odd swordfish (dead

and mounted), and a portrait of George W. Bush. While the Hamilton waterfront Hutch’s location has a nautical feel, this place is more like the bar the Skipper would go to on shore leave. At any rate, the fries we order are excellent: crispy, warm, obviously made from real potatoes, and, with ketchup and malt vinegar on top, absolutely delicious.

Nevertheless, the fries are the last summery food we can cram into our mouths; we finish our snack, hesitantly poking our stomachs to check if we’ll be sick.

All three nations reported high levels of intolerance for potty-mouthed politicians and doctors. With results like that, it’s no wonder that there was such uproar after Vancouver Mayor Gregor Roberston began colourfully venting his frustrations. Roberston apparently forgot that he was wearing a microphone and began dropping F-bombs all over the city committee meeting. It seems that those in attendance were not amongst the 12% of Canadians who believe that “fuck”ing and politics go hand-in-hand.

Swearwords have evolved to have such a profound impact on our language and expression; however, the exact history of these words remains unknown.

Some believe that outlawing certain phrases came from “word magic”, the

belief that words held different powers.

This power dichotomy, like most throughout history, clearly identified the good and very, very bad. Swearwords were the result, the verbal Darth Vaders of the Linguistic Empire. According to Angus Reid’s recent poll results, Canadians have mastered the foul-mouthed force. With these new statistics, perhaps people in the future will not “swear like a sailors” bur rather, “swear like Canadians”.

The Aftermath No one vomits, but for the next few days Hilary will crave vegetables of the strictly non-deep-fried variety. Chris is secretly happy that summer is coming to an end. Hopping into our vehicle for the overstuffed drive back to west Hamilton, some final thoughts occur to us: Schillings buys their ice cream out of town, and — according to rumours overheard in Hutch’s — Stoney Creek Dairy recently outsourced their production to Quebec. Did we, in fact, fulfil our quest for Hamiltonian ice cream? Is ice cream more than just frozen sweetened milk? We could have purchased an entire tub of Stoney Creek product for little more than the price of a scoop, yet there would have been something lacking in the experience if we had taken the more economical approach. Perhaps ice cream is more than its ingredients, instead the sum of the crunchy cones, 1980s rock music and luxuriously fat sparrows in the dairy parking lot.

fuckin’ eh!

“Fuckin’ EH!” continued from Page 5

nadians are swearing for linguistic effect rather than with cruel intentions. On a personal level, Dr. Kim clarifies that he believes there is, “never a place for dysphemistic or abusive [swearing] — it’s just not F#@& dignified”. Dr. Kim goes further to explain that although he doesn’t swear in a professional setting, unless he is giving a lecture about it, he believes that there can be an appropriate time and place for certain types of toilet-talk, such as with friends. Canadians clearly share this outlook as only 17% of those polled claimed to abstain from swearing with friends.

Brits, Americans and Canadians alike reported similar opinions on when, where, and specifically in which professional settings profanity is acceptable.

*Editor’s Note: Profanities were added to illustrate each category and add emphasis, bitches.

Volume 13, Issue 1 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 7

Sexin’ Beach bums Marisa Burton

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n Germany, people sunbathe nude in city parks. In Denmark, all but two beaches are clothingoptional. Public nudity is still illegal in almost all parts of Canada, but don’t despair, aspiring nudists!

There are three naturist resorts in the GTA, as well as several nonlanded clubs (though none in Hamilton) that regularly plan swims in and around Toronto. You should go! I did.

The Whirlwind Naturist-Club Tour of the GTA

First up was Ponderosa Nature Resort (www.ponderosaresort.ca) in Puslinch, just off Highway 6 near Waterdown. We announced ourselves into the little speaker box and drove up past a few homes to get to the clubhouse. We were met by Rob, who showed us around the clubhouse’s pool, sauna, cafe, social room, hotel rooms and outdoor pool with a swim-up bar (drained for the winter). Overall, it was a very relaxed, low-key atmosphere. A few people were sitting around clothed in the cafe or outside in the nude catching the season’s last bit of sunshine.

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Photography by jessie a$hbourne

The next club, the Four Seasons Family Nudist Resort (www.thefourseasons.com), is only about a twenty minute drive away in Freelton. We didn’t get a full tour because there was only one staff member working when we happened to be there, but the Four Seasons has a pool, a sauna, tanning beds, a gym, a social room, and a restaurant named Scandals. There were a few more people there than at Ponderosa, and it seemed to have a bit more of a fitness-club feeling.

Third, and furthest away, was Bare Oaks Family Naturist Park (www.bareoaks.ca) in Sharon (north of Aurora, near Newmarket). We arrived just after it had closed for the day, but the manager Karen Grant, also the current president of the Federation of Canadian Naturists, was nice enough to show us around anyway. It had the same basic setup (saunas, guest rooms, restaurant, pool, common areas) as the others, but it still seemed unique. I felt like Bare Oaks had a homier, closeknit feeling than either Ponderosa or Four Seasons, though that might

have been just because a large group was cooking a communal evening meal while we were there. It’s also not clothing-optional: in the first two clubs, a few people including staff tend to be clothed, but at Bare Oaks, absolutely everyone is nude.

Why Be Nude?

Naturist websites like to answer “why be nude?” with “why not be nude?” This is meant to point out the fact that clothes are an arbitrary social construction — when you come out of the shower on a warm summer morning, why do you put on clothes? What’s the point? All you’re going to get are some weird tan lines and a pile of sweaty laundry.

Although this does a great job of explaining “all else being equal, why not be nude,” I still feel like there’s got to be more to it, especially since naturists don’t simply choose nudity. They’re willing to join a club, pay fees, drive all the way up to Newmarket, and carry a towel around all the time just to spend time in the buff, so why do they do it?

Karen Grant happily tried to explain it to me; as did Paul Rapoport, Coeditor of the FCN’s magazine Going Natural (available at Titles); many naturist websites and a few members of the Hanlans Beach Naturists Yahoo Group, but it’s important to remember that not every naturist subscribes to all or even any of the following reasons. Although the various naturist governing bodies do all have their official philosophies, an individual’s philosophy could be completely unique.

For some it seems to be at least partly an instinctual draw rather than an intellectual decision. Karen Grant explained that despite being raised in a textile household, she felt from a young age that there just had to be a better way, and that she just feels more comfortable nude. Others had similar, if slightly simpler reasons: it’s just fun.

Others also cite an intellectual side to the lifestyle/choice/hobby.

Many stressed the equalizing power of nudism; you lose a lot of visual clues that let you judge a person’s social class or profession from a distance in a textile society. In a naturist setting, everyone makes an equal first impression, at least in some ways.

Another important reason was the feeling of acceptance and the freedom from body-image anxiety that comes along with it. When you are surrounded by non-airbrushed naked bodies and people who are obviously comfortable with them, you begin to realize that your own body is normal and nothing to feel uncomfortable about. This is also the reason why many nudists feel that naturism is so beneficial, especially for children growing up in an increasingly superficial world.

Finally, there also seemed to be a lot of support for the connection between nature and the feelings of relaxation and freedom that naturism allows — hiking naked without any “protection” from nature leaves you feeling a lot closer to your environment. Other reasons, ranging from a sense of rebellion against restrictive social norms and freedom from corporate culture and all the things it tries to get you to buy and wear to the even the all-over tan look were given

too, but the answers were so diverse that it was very hard to generalize.

Naturists go to great lengths to make it very clear that it’s definitely not about exhibitionism, voyeurism, or any other kind of sexual thrill, even if these facts haven’t all been laid bare by the mainstream media.

So What Does This Have To Do With Sex?!

The short answer is I’m not sure, though I don’t think that it’s “nothing”.

When I put nudism on my list of article topics, I assumed that it would be quite sex-positive. This isn’t to say that I thought that it was about being sex positive, but I did think that a community that was very determinedly open and shameless about the body would also be open and shameless about sex. I think this perception might partially have been because I, like many, assumed that naturism was a product of the free-love sixties. Actually, naturism emerged at the turn of the 20th century and was based around natural living, fresh air, and vigorous calisthenics.

When I’d thought about it some more and began to do some research though, I changed my mind. When you think about it, clothes aren’t for shielding one another from the raw lust that would be aroused by the naked human form. If it were about that, we’d all wear burlap sacks and be done with it. Clothes are as often as not used for inspiring sexual desire, and I don’t just mean lingerie and miniskirts. Rejecting clothing might actually be more about rejecting how sexualized society is. This seems to be borne out by the fact that several clubs also seek to make sure that when clothing is required for practical purposes, such as cold weather, it must be strictly practical clothing — anything alluring or attention-grabbing is discouraged.

All this is confusing though, since the sense that I got from naturists was that nudism and sex are completely non-related. As a result, what appears to be a slightly conservative leaning (“textilist society is too sexual”) is actually (sometimes deliberately, sometimes subcon-

TERMS: Naturism/Nudism: A lifestyle centred around personal, public, and/or family nudity. When there is a distinction between the two, nudism is considered an activity while naturism is more of a lifestyle and can encompass healthy living, environmentalism, and acceptance of others along with nudity. As is the case in this article, the two terms are often used interchangeably.

Clothing-optional: Pretty much what it sounds like. An area where nudity is legal and acceptable but where wearing clothes is also allowed.

Textile (adj): Not nudist. Just about everything outside of designated nude beaches and resorts is a “textile environment”.

FCN: The Federation of Canadian Naturists is Canada’s national nudist organization. The FCN promotes naturism in various ways and helps groups establish new naturist clubs and resorts.

Naturist park or resort: Also called nudist resorts, nature resorts, or something similar (though never “nudist colony”).

The ones near Hamilton are large properties that include wilderness/hiking areas, permanent (or just about) residences, camping/trailer sites, and a central clubhouse which is sort of a hotel, restaurant, and rec centre (pool and gym).

Non-landed club: Basically, a naturist club with no land. Non-landed clubs meet for nude dinners at members’ homes, rent pools for nude swims, and visit naturist parks and beaches, among other things.

Continued on Page 10 Volume 13, Issue 1 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 9

“BEACH BUMS” continued from Page 9

GIVE IT A TWIRL: -There are three landed clubs nearby: Ponderosa, Four Seasons, and Bare Oaks (formerly New Forest). There used to be another called Glen Echo but it has recently shut down. Day-passes are available at all of them, as are room rentals and campsites.

-Drop in on one of the non-landed club events: Ontario Roaming Bares (www. orbtoronto.org) Hanlan’s Beach Naturists (also called TANS) (www.pathcom.com/~frebeach or yahoo group http://groups.yahoo.com/ group/Hanlans-Beach-Naturists1/) -Find other nearby clubs (http://www. fcn.ca/ontclubs.html) and nude beaches (beaches: http://www.fcn.ca/ontbchs. html) -Take a towel — naturist clubs ask that you place a towel between you and the surface you’re sitting on.

-You don’t need any special pubic-hair styling (a fair number of people have asked me this). Naturists sport everything from totally bald to au-naturel — no one’s going to judge you.

-If you’re worried about naturist etiquette, resorts and clubs usually post any rules and policies on their websites.

sciously) a reaction to viewpoints like the one I began at. That is, the need on a PR level to fight the “den of sin” perception has forced naturism to have a stance on what would have been a non-issue. There’s also a sense that it’s a practical consideration: naturism is seen as a family activity, and most people don’t approve of children being exposed to sexual situations or images.

Still, the need for positive public relations seems to be very important, and it does also tie in to the “think of the children” argument, another myth that naturists feel is prevalent.

Although studies have proven this common conception false, the idea that nudism is harmful to children remains pervasive. As I see it, the PR need is probably a result of two things: 1) The false assumption among the general public that nudists are also very sexually liberal (or worse, that they are all swingers or exhibitionists.) This was always cited as the biggest myth about naturism and the biggest source of problems, both the problem of unpopularity among those who dislike swingers and exhibitionists and the problem of unwanted patronage from those who want to join because they are swingers or exhibitionists.

2) The exhibitionist/public sex/ swingers communities are sometimes seen to be riding the coattails of the naturist community. For example, naturist activists succeeded in turning Wreck beach in Vancouver clothing-optional but some people who want to have public or outdoor sex have taken advantage of the fact that nudity is allowed, annoying a lot of naturists and feeding reason one.

Thus, it has become important to become slightly sexually conservative in order to avoid the lines being blurred in the public eye. I did wonder though whether there was also some sympathy or feeling of solidarity for the public/outdoor sex group, because though their goal is obviously different, their underlying argument seems to be quite similar: where naturists say “The naked body

10 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ September 2010

is completely natural and should not be a source of shame. There is no reason to hide it and no reason why it must necessarily be a private rather than public affair. Some people will be offended by our decision, but no one is forced to go to nude camps and in the end we’re really not hurting anyone,” another group might say “the act of sex is completely natural and should not be a source of shame.

There is no reason... etc....and in the end we’re not really hurting anyone.”

Interestingly, this sympathy definitely doesn’t exist within most of the communities I encountered. For some it seemed to come down to the PR problem again — naturists can’t support the second argument for fear of damaging their own cause.

Paul Rapoport suggested that another reason may be that nudity has all kinds of deeper symbolic meanings including vulnerability, innocence, purity, beauty, strength, protest, and connectedness with nature while sex, as an act, does not. Personally, I feel that the act of sex has a similar semiotic cache as many of the traits of nudity outlined above, but I can still see the need for caution. I’m not arguing that naturists should embrace public sexuality, but I do believe that the antagonism might be misplaced as their differences may not be as divisive as is commonly assumed.

In the end, I’m not really sure what the relationship between sex and nudism is, though I do believe that it’s more complicated than simply “nothing”.

But don’t take my word for it!

Why not give it a shot? If nothing else, it will be a fun day of swimming and lounging (and hiking and drinking at swim-up bars, if you wait until the summer). Who knows, you might even realize that you’ve never felt so comfortable. Even if you don’t, you’ll certainly come away with an interesting experience.

[Many thanks to all the naturists who so generously offered their time and thoughts, especially to Karen Grant and Paul Rapoport. Thanks also to the many friends I’ve cornered into long conversations about nudism in the last few weeks!]

Lessons from MaMa Patrick Byrne

A

fter a sleepless night, three trips to the commode, a lungwrenching bout of coughing and a heavily assisted hobble to the breakfast table, Mama whispers a prayer before the morning meal: “Thank you for our food, our family…and sunshine,” she says, as a smile creeps onto her thin lips. Her gaze rests on the sunlight streaming through the open curtains, her worn face serene, and her blue-grey eyes bright. The porridge dribbles down her chin now, her muscles slowly mutinying, switching their allegiance to the cumulative effects of arthritis and multiple strokes. I push my creaky chair back from the table and walk to the kitchen to get her a glass of milk, aware that the roles of server and served have now switched. My eyes catch an officiallooking form on the counter, signed by my uncle. The words “Do Not Resuscitate” tumble off the page into my chest, slowing my heart before jumping back up and catching in my throat. I swallow hard and rejoin my grandmother at the table.

Between my own bites, I sneak

artwork by Ashley Adcox (FLiCKR)

glances at Slava Skerl. Her hands are thick, still strong, smooth and transparent. Her hair, grey with dashes of white, no longer fully covers her head, yet is still carefully combed and curled. She looks up and states matter-of-factly, “you will have more,” in her heavy Slovenian accent. “No Mama, thank you, but I’m full.” There is a pause; neither of us knows what to do. We both understand that after I refuse seconds, she will rush off to the kitchen, fetch a steaming pot, and return with serving spoon in hand, “a little more, a little more, you are a growing boy,” she will insist, and I will relent. Our eyes meet. I look away and scramble out of my seat, “well maybe I can fit in just a bit more,” I say as I move past her hunched frame and into the kitchen to fill my bowl myself. I pass her walker and try to imagine her as a twenty year old woman, trekking through the Alps to escape mass killings in Yugoslavia, journeying toward an uncertain future.

After a trip to the bathroom, assisted by my mother, she readies

herself for the exhausting walk to the recliner, where she begins her morning prayer routine. Reading in her head from worn-out Slovenian prayer books, she sometimes lets phrases escape in a mumble. I sit beside her on the couch, flipping through an old National Geographic magazine. Ape. Volcano. Whale.

Jungle. The images titillate but do not fully rein in my attention. My grandfather’s clock, hung a few feet above my head, whiles away the seconds that drip like a slow leak from the faucet. There is a heaviness and an aura of intentionality in the air, as if any disturbance would wreak havoc. I scan the room slowly, afraid to upset the precarious balance. In her presence I feel sacred.

Another night passes and the next day I gather my scattered belongings from around her house, feeling like I have broken the sense of calm order with my rushed actions. Mama watches me from her chair, serene. Before I leave, there is one more tradition between us that must be fulfilled, a tradition Continued on Page 13 Volume 13, Issue 1 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 11

Power/Play Bandwagon activism Yang Lei, Columnist

W

e have all had the pleasure of walking through the student centre with a thousand and one political “causes” vying for our attention. They can use anything from banners and music to events and evangelism to draw attention to whatever group they seek justice for, and they have ample inspiration: the defeat of the Tamil Tigers, Iran’s 2009 election, the conflict in Darfur, and a myriad of other social issues. While there are those who do their background research, are willing to sit down for genuine debate, or even acknowledge their own biases, there are equally as many—certainly louder if not more numerous—that ride the bandwagon of activism.

It has seemed to me, especially over the last few years, that student activists are increasing in number.

Everybody remembers that one person in high school who worked hard to help organize a big fundraiser for a far-off country with gross human rights violations and development hurdles. While our aspiring Craig Kielburgers may have since revised

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Artwork by Anne van Koeverden

their rosy worldviews in university, many others are more than ready to fill in their role. When the North American media started covering the events happening in Darfur in the latter half of 2004, suddenly everyone wanted to “Save Darfur”. A disappointingly low number of people knew that Darfur was in Sudan. Even fewer knew the role of the Janjaweed.

It is much easier to be riled up by the media’s emotional reports and wail about the “genocide in Darfur”, human rights violations, and death tolls (all while wearing the particularly half-glazed expression associated with talk of “saving” an impoverished region in the developing world) than to have an educated, balanced, and infinitely more boring outlook. As soon as the word “genocide” is mentioned, certain zealots will start on an impassioned speech about the value of a human life and the evils of ethnic cleansing. “Genocide” is not a word to be thrown around lightly, and a 2005 UN report concluded that the word “conflict” is more appropriate for what was happening in Darfur at the time. In

addition, the death tolls widely cited by the NGOs that received the most media coverage turned out to be incorrect. This is not to say that what is happening in Darfur is any less serious. Increased disputes about land usage and access to water caused by global warming and a growing population will incite conflict anywhere.

The fact is that Khartoum is tacitly supporting one side, and damning Google Satellite images of destroyed villages and internally displaced people camps show that the difficult issues of land and water are being “resolved” in a rather crude way. Quite often, it can be shown through a simple demonstration of facts that a cause or issue is indeed worth our attention, so why then fall back on emotional accusations?

The pretend-intellectual atmosphere of undergraduate students (and student publications...) confers a few advantages upon the activist.

If you are talking to your friends about “the genocide in Darfur”, you can assert your worldliness while at the same time keeping your friends Continued on Page 13

sympathetic. Having the experience of organizing a fundraiser for helping any aspect of the developing world looks good on a résumé, and indicates to future employers and admissions reps that you are a wellrounded individual with a passion to help others in the world. “Helping” the poor wretches of the developing world may also serve to address some of the guilt that we are supposed to feel by living in the developed world which has exploited the others in the past.

While it is rare to have these reasons form the entirety of a person’s motivation to become active, certain combinations of the three do end up being less healthy than others. The same motivations pose a similar problem for voluntourism.

No one will dispute that it requires a herculean effort on the part of the activist to know all such political issues thoroughly, but if bandwagon emphasis is based on the kind of easy to swallow, populist slogans that have helped to mobilize the masses for so long, is the

fight for critical examinations of popular movements a futile struggle? On one hand, those who care enough to participate in activities for causes have at least broken through the protective bubble of their own well kept backyard. Such initiative gives hope that our bandwagon activists just have to wean

commended, often lends itself to solidifying dogmatic positions. An entrenched position on an emotionally-charged issue is the perfect brew for detaching the issue from reality.

For better or for worse, bandwagon activism is here to stay. To call them second-rate activists would be elitist, but to call them first-rate activists would be mocking those who spend the time researching the issue. They inject energy and momentum into a cause, but dilute its message with onesided, provocative factoids.

Their harm lies in the spread of misinformation, leading to a wider gulf in communication and understanding between groups, but their benefit is in giving much wider exposure to the issue. We cannot separate the positives from the negatives, but it is possible shift the equilibrium in one direction. On the bumpy road of political activism, one must maintain balance, otherwise, you might just fall off the bandwagon.

If bandwagon emphasis is based on the kind of easy to swallow, populist slogans that have helped to mobilize the masses for so long, is the fight for critical examinations of popular movements a futile struggle? themselves off the sound-bites and read a little before being able to differentiate between what is analysis and what is human-interest. On the other hand, if they’ve jumped onto the bandwagon, chances are that they have already begun to pontificate about the cause. Such exuberance, while energetic and to be

Lessons from mama “Lessons from mama” continued from Page 11

that has not yet been robbed from us by her failing body. I reverently approach her and kneel down beside the chair. Her hands firmly clasp mine and she looks me in the eye, tells me I am a “good boy” and that she loves me. She then carefully unwraps her right hand from mine and traces the sign of the cross on my forehead with her thumb. “In the name of the Father,” — vertical line, from top to bottom, “the Son,” horizontal line, from left to right, “and the Holy Spirit,” the horizontal line crosses the vertical line and her thumb lifts from

my head. Shaking with both the strength of her conviction and her own reserves of vitality stored up despite the pain, Mama looks me in the eye and again says she loves me. Usually, she would tell me to come visit her again soon, but this time I somehow get the sense that she is truly saying goodbye.

This woman, mother of ten, grandmother of sixteen, is now lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by her nine daughters, slowly, painfully, drawing air into her lungs. A nurse enters the room and leans over the bed to check Mama’s condition.

Unaccustomed to being taken care

of, she nevertheless accepts her new role with grace and gratitude, making every effort to thank those who adjust her pillows, squeeze her hand, and sing softly at her bedside. It has been two days since she has eaten or drank and her words are coming slowly now. She stirs, her mouth moving, trying to pull the words from her heart. “Make… sure…” Mama mutters to her daughters, “you…get nurse…some lunch.”

My grandmother left me with three lessons: 1). Love others selflessly 2). Be grateful for every moment 3). Never, ever, let your guests leave hungry.

Volume 13, Issue 1 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 13

eurovisions

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Photography by michael wexler

Volume 13, Issue 1 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 15

russell at mcmaster Dr. Louis Greenspan

I

n purchasing the Bertrand Russell Archives in the mid-sixties, McMaster University brought an incomparable record of the intellectual development and political ideals of the English-speaking world to Canada. Russell was Isaiah Berlin’s fox—a creature that seeks many things. For philosophers, the archives contain ample material on the development of British philosophy—from its late nineteenth-century infatuation with Hegel, to the renewal of empiricism, and the current controversies, initiated by Russell’s student Wittgenstein, that threatened to marginalize Russell, on what, if anything, constitutes objectivity. For political theorists, there is ample material on the efforts of British liberalism to absorb, reject, and define itself in relationship to communism and modern industrialism. For historians, there is ample material on the struggle between nationalism and globalization and on the history of pacifism in the twentieth century. After a few hours in the archives, visitors will question Russell’s modest statement that his pen was neither mightier nor busier than other people’s swords.

The collection can be found in the catacombs of Mills Library. From the main floor, you descend a staircase to the Research/Rare Books Collection until you arrive at a room that contains a bust of 16 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ September 2010

individual image taken from the nobel foundation

Russell, his desk, and his personal library.

An adjacent room houses hundreds of his articles and all of his books in numerous translations, some 10,000 letters including correspondences with figures such as T.S. Eliot and Einstein, not to mention political leaders such as President Kennedy, David Ben-Gurion and Abdul Nasser. The uninformed novice will think of him as a high-class Forrest Gump. It is no wonder that one of McMaster’s presidents told me that in her travels she had found that McMaster is best known for its medical school and for the Russell collection.

But many of you will politely ask, “Bertrand Who?” For indeed this man, who from the 1920s to the 1970s dominated the intellectual and at times the political scene, has fallen off the radar of those who influence our world. Today he has a loyal and distinguished following in philosophy, but, in my lifetime, I can easily recall different, even contradictory, images of Russell as an iconic figure. In the 1950s he was one of the great cold warriors, an implacable enemy of Bolshevik philosophy; in the 1960s he seemed to reinvent himself as a revolutionary, a leading opponent of nuclear proliferation and a leading opponent of American military adventurism in Vietnam. It was chastening to find that a whole generation of stu-

dent revolutionaries, who bore the logo “don’t trust anyone over thirty” treated a 97-year-old relic of Victorian radicalism as a pied piper. Those who came before my generation (there are still some left) remember Russell as the great innovator in philosophy, one of the few founders of what we now call analytic philosophy.

When I was working at the archives, first as a researcher, then as director of the Russell Editorial Project, my most common FAQ was “How in the hell did McMaster get this archive?” There is a condescending story of our acquisition of this golden grail, told by our colourful, former head librarian, William Ready, in his memoir Files on Parade. The most knowledgeable person connected to the archives is Kenneth Blackwell, who, like me, is retired, but always around and can be consulted on this history. For my part, the years that I worked there have provided great anecdotes about the collection itself. For example, once I discovered a letter to Russell, apologizing for a critical article about him by his brotherin-law, George Grant, who was chairman of our department. There are many more, but in the short space that I have, I will forego these stories and instead sketch some topics in Russell’s work that remain of great interest to your genera-

tion, including, Russell’s overview of the twentieth century, his response to the scientific revolution in the early decades of the century, his lifelong experience with communism and his views on nationalism.

There is much more, available from my colleagues Richard Rempel, Nick Griffin, Kenneth Blackwell, Andy Bone and others still mining this incomparable collection.

Bertrand Russell, the godson of John Stuart Mill and grandson of Prime Minister John Russell, came to maturity in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century—the Victorian and the Edwardian era. However much he satirized the stuffy, high-minded rationalism of these years, he always identified them the apex of the age of progress. For him, the twentieth century began in 1914 when the leading powers of Europe plunged into the First World War—a senseless orgy of self-destruction—which, however complex the economic and political causes he, like Freud, perceived as the wild manifestation of a death wish. When it ended in 1918, Russell was a different man. He was convinced that modern civilization contained a will to self destruction at least as powerful as the will to progress. He never changed his mind. Throughout his life, he argued that fascism, economic chaos, the Second World War (in which he supported Britain), Stalinism and the terror of the Cold War were spinoffs of that initial catastrophe. At times, Russell’s frenzy of activities made me think that he was obsessed by the metaphor of Western Civilization as a Humpty Dumpty that had destroyed itself and that he was desperately trying to put together again. This was the starting point of Russell’s approach to social and political theory which can be described as a project designed to give psychological depth to the ideals of John Stuart Mill and project a society that encouraged and embodied a will to live.

Another issue that is fully engaged in Russell’s writings is the scientific revolution of the twentieth century. This began before the war, its great moment being the publication of Einstein’s papers on Relativity in 1905, and refers to the discoveries in microphysics which undermined the original discoveries by Galileo and Newton that classified the universe as a predictable machine. These new discoveries, which some physicists tried to conceal, suggested that, in the world of microphysics, there is no reliable reign of causality, that the position of the observer affected the results of the observation, that matter was chaotic. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle defined this revolution, which many felt brought the universe into a dark

Chaos. Others were delighted; Eddington and Jeans wrote books announcing that physics had brought back free will, God’s agency, and that theology could once again come back from the closet. Some scientists, including Robert Oppenheimer, the builder of the atom bomb, adopted the Bhagavad Ghita and its portrayal of the visible universe as a realm of darkness as the best imaginative account of the universe.

Russell, as well as Einstein, fought a fierce rearguard battle on behalf of the traditional account of a universe structured by determinism. His volumes argued for the continued validity of the reign of causality and the relevance of scientific objectivity. The struggle still goes on and Russell is still a player. Even his celebrated volume, The History of Western Philosophy

“He was convinced that modern civilization contained a will to self-destruction at least as powerful as the will to progress.” (still the philosophy book most likely to be found in airport bookstores), should be read mainly in the light of these issues.

As we commemorated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, we could not ignore Russell’s relation to Marxism as a theory and a political movement. It began early and seemed to go through many transmutations, but on this issue, Russell, who was notorious for changing his mind and who seemed to be taking a different stand on communism every few years, remained remarkably consistent.

Russell’s first book, German Social Democracy, was a study of the German SPD, the first Marxist Political party in the West.

He argued that it provided many lessons for progressive Britons and that Marx’s Communist Manifesto was the best political tract ever written. But he also criticized the party’s “fatalism” in adopting

the thesis that class war leading to the dictatorship of the proletariat was inevitable. Blinded by this doctrine, Marxism continued to underestimate the power of capitalism to integrate and benefit the working class, and secondly it called for unending violence. In 1920, Russell was one of the first to visit the Soviet Union when it was founded and became a pariah on the Left for making these same points in his celebrated work, Bolshevism in Theory and in Practice. In the thirties and forties, Russell was both celebrated and reviled as communism’s worst enemy, but in the sixties, when he became a critic of nuclear proliferation and America’s war in Vietnam, he was praised and hated as a fellow traveller and communist dupe.

Despite these zigzags, he never believed that the future belonged to Marx. He always argued that communism would bring itself down by its economic naiveté, rather than by war. The results of 1989 certainly corroborated these views.

Finally, Russell argued that the most powerful and most sinister force to emerge from industrial civilization was nationalism. In the articles he wrote at the end of WWI, he assumed that the pre-war global economy had brought nationalism to an end—indeed, the First World War might be redeemed as a lesson in the destructiveness of nationalism (as the Second World War was in Europe). By 1924, when he published The Prospects of Industrial Civilization, he was appalled and alarmed at the continuing strength of nationalism, especially when it became so incendiary in the rise of fascist Europe in the twenties and thirties. Early on, he called for world government, and, always the odd man out, he shocked his pacifist associates by arguing that the post-First World War League of Nations would be futile. World government, he argued, could only be established by force, and the most likely instrument was the United States of America.

In the years after the Second World War he maintained this view while remaining a bitter critic of America’s resort to force in Vietnam and elsewhere.

At the end of his life, he was caught in this dilemma. I have argued elsewhere that he probably would have liked to go to sleep, and wake up with America having conquered the world, so that he could continue to issue his denunciations.

The student who studies these issues as they are presented in the archives may not find solutions to these problems but will at least find himself or herself struggling with them as issues that affect our own time.

Volume 13, Issue 1 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 17

Black sheepish Andrew Prine

W

oody Allen’s Annie Hall concludes, somewhat obliquely, with an old joke. “This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, ‘Doc, my brother is crazy; he thinks he’s a chicken.’ And the doctor says, ‘Well, why don’t you turn him in?’ and the guy says, ‘I would, but I need the eggs.’” Allen follows it up with a quick explanation of why it describes most people’s feelings about interpersonal relationships, but I tend to think that it’s also a pretty astute observation about the state of our own relationship with a lot of the inanimate world. Complaining about the weather will probably forever remain the best publicized example of this particular English propensity for paradox, but the way we feel about coal, while less pervasive, is probably even more important.

While coal’s interesting colour and flammability have long been known to humans around the globe, it wasn’t until the relatively developed areas that had hosted human settlements for centuries began to run short of wood that its use as a fuel source began to grow. Britain, as a rocky and geographically isolated island, felt this wood shortage sooner than many

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Photography by L. hollard

areas in Europe, and because it had such large reserves of easily accessible coal, it entered into common use.

Despite the fact that it fulfilled a national need for cheap, locally available fuel, it was never well loved.

King Edward I enforced a ban on the burning of coal in London, and Queen Elizabeth I, some 300 years later, prohibited coalfires when parliament was sitting. Years later, the asthmatic John Locke couldn’t stay long in London, and poets like William Blake called Britain’s industrial manufacturing centres “dark satanic mills.”

After the UK started to adopt coal as its primary fuel source both demand and supply grew rapidly.

Thanks to its centuries of use on a smaller scale, the locations of accessible coal deposits were fairly well known, but it didn’t take long for these easily harvested, near surface patches to be used up. Mine shafts were dug deeper, but rainwater, underground springs and the presence of toxic mine gasses effectively limited the depth of 17th century coal mines to about 200 feet. Once even these mines began to reach the end of their useful lives, a new prime mover was needed. The strength of human

power and animal musculature had been used as efficiently and effectively as it could, but their fundamental limitations meant that they were insufficient to meet the demands of a nation with an increasingly large population and increasingly more capital ready to invest in new projects. Things changed though, when Thomas Newcomen invented the first method of transforming coal’s thermal energy into mechanical energy— a primitive steam engine—in 1705.

This new discovery, while seemingly simple when compared to later developments like steam shovels, coke ovens and locomotive trains, was still ground breaking, or at least ground displacing, for its day. Newcomen’s primitive steam pumps, which used steam from coal-boiled water to raise a piston and cool-water fuelled contractions to lower it, were built and installed near mineshafts to constantly remove water, vastly increasing England’s supply of recoverable coal. This novel use of hydrocarbons to generate mechanical energy provided humans with a much needed new prime mover and, following patent expiration and subsequent improvements, steam (and therefore

coal) powered technology grew in complexity and influence. Its increasing entrenchment into industrial processes not only ensured self propagation since coal-powered extraction techniques increased total supply, but also an increased need to switch to coal powered technologies in order to remain economically competitive.

Interestingly, even when coal allowed for unprecedented population growth, increased economic growth, and provided a cheap source of heat for millions, it was still never really accepted or praised. Proof of this prejudice against collieries can be found everywhere from Shakespeare’s tragedies to Oscar Wilde’s witticisms, and even 19th century thinkers like Sir Thomas Edward Thorpe feared and lamented the fact that it was non-renewable. All the same, because it generated a lot of wealth and greatly decreased the demand for human labour and, arguably, eliminated the need for European serfdom and slavery, it remained the standard. It’s probably not considered an official SI unit today, but back in the 1800s, it wasn’t even uncommon for people to measure a steam machine’s power output in terms of the number of slaves it would take to perform the same task.

Although internal combustion engines and AC power generation through dynamos have more or less rendered the use of coal for mechanical energy obsolete, demand for coal has never decreased. We may possess a more thorough knowledge of all the ways it can damage human health and the environment, and we may have developed technologies to reduce its impact in those regards, but ultimately, we still know that it’s both non-renewable and polluting. The same questions about its long term sustainability have been asked for centuries, but at the end of the day, we still need the eggs.

Unlike with a lot of other technologies, public opinion regarding coal as a fuel sources has remained more or less constant. Even during a period when almost the entire world’s economy ran on this sooty hydrocarbon, nobody ever really liked it, but they used it all the same. This kind of stiff-necked tenacity, while probably not great for environmentalist efforts at the present, does say a lot about our capacity for survival, but even so, chickens can’t live forever.

Photography by will van engen

WRITE, DRAW, EDIT, OR DESIGN FOR INCITE MAGAZINE incite@mcmaster.ca Volume 13, Issue 1 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 19

five weddings and a funeral* Adira Winegust, *with apologies to Mike Newell

S

ummertime usually conjures up images of beaches, pools, ice cream and parties. Well, this summer, of those three things, I only experienced parties. Not any party, but wedding parties, and not any wedding parties, but Jewish wedding parties. Yes, my four months of summer vacation were spent preparing, driving to, and celebrating not one, not two, but five weddings of close friends.

Since I love to continue spreading the joy that all newly married couples have, I have decided to review their weddings and take notes for my own (don’t tell my boyfriend…at least until I’ve made the down payments).

I probably should explain to you what happens at a Jewish wedding. If I were lazy, I would just tell you to watch Fiddler on the Roof for a good idea of the nitty gritty details (minus the Cossack attack), but, since I’m nice, I will give you a (very) quick rundown of the ceremony: 1. The bride and groom are marched up to the chuppah (wedding canopy) by their respective families. The bride then walks around the groom seven times.

20 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ September 2010

photography by angela irwin

2. The groom presents the ring to the bride and places a plain, gold ring on her left index finger.

3. The ketubah, a Jewish prenup, is read. This tends to be the most boring part of the ceremony, as the ketubah is written in Aramaic, a language that only Yeshiva students and Mel Gibson can understand.

4. Even more rabbis get up and bless the couple with seven wedding blessings 5. The groom steps on a glass to remember the destruction of the city of Jerusalem (and not to represent the breaking of the hymen, no matter what you might hear).

6. Family and friends rejoice with the bride and groom while celebrating at the reception. The specifics can change, but no wedding is complete without dancing, merrymaking and the performance of entertaining little skits called Shtick. If the hosts need a little help to get the party started, the reception is also home to the great Jewish tradition of an open bar.

While each wedding contains these 6 elements, it’s the little things that transform a gathering

into a real party, and it’s those little things that I’m going to go into now.

The One with the Redheads This wedding kicked off the season with a fiery bang as two redheaded lovers married (read: invest in Coppertone NOW). The ceremony was joyous, with people singing when the rabbis were trying to bless the couple, and the couple’s friends storming the aisle when the ceremony was over to dance with the bride and groom.

During the reception, but after the martinis, the wedding guests and the groom were treated to a musical theatre surprise, a fully choreographed musical rendition of “That’s How You Know You’re In Love”, from Disney’s Enchanted by the bride. It might not have been a Broadway troupe, but it did feature a former child star of the Canadian children’s Television show Ricky’s Room. This was not the only musical entertainment the guests had that evening, as the bride’s former a capella group also gave a performance of “Don’t Stop Believing”.

What that has to do with a wedding, I don’t know, but this wedding

was also the first one my boyfriend, then of 7 months, attended with me.

It was a culture shock for the Jewish boy from Oakville (Jewish pop.

300) to come to a Jewish wedding in Thornhill (Jewish pop. 70,000+).

The One where I March This marriage was one of the most anticipated weddings of the summer.

Well, actually of the past five years, ever since the couple began dating.

Since I am close to both the bride and the groom, the bride being one of my closest friends, and the groom being so close that my mother does his laundry, I was asked to be a bridesmaid for the wedding. All I can say is thank God my friend was no bridezilla. She allowed the bridesmaids to design their own dresses and really did not want us to do anything big for a bridal shower/bachelorette party.

Her bridal consultant, on the other hand, managed the wedding processional like an airport controller. If the bridesmaids were not where they were supposed to be at the proper time, watch out! Fortunately, we were all on time and where we had to be, so the wedding went off without a hitch. Admittedly, the groom did forget the rings at home, but as soon as he realized his mistake he promptly sent his uncle off to get them. At the reception, we ate, drank, and danced until our shoes had holes in them.

The One with the Bagpipe For me, this wedding was a half a wedding, as I was only invited to the wedding ceremony and the dessert/ dancing part of the reception. Still, the reception was memorable, featuring a bagpiper in full Scottish regalia. The cousin of the groom just happens to be one of the only certified Jewish bagpipers this side of Scotland and, accordingly, most of the dancing was to the wailing tunes of the bagpipes, a wonderful way to while the hours, if you’re into that type of thing. Otherwise, I spent most of the wedding babysitting.

The One with the Traffic This wedding, between my friend and his American fiancée, was the first of two weddings I attended in and around New York City. Since it

was held on Long Island, it was also the wedding that took TWO BLOODY HOURS to get to, travelling only 15 miles on a Sunday morning to arrive at the country club. The traffic between Brooklyn and Jericho Long Island was ridiculous. Even the birds on the Jericho Turnpike wanted to kill themselves (the bird that dove into my car is now lovingly referred to as Turnpike Jerry). We made it with about 15 minutes before the wedding ceremony, so we missed the infamous New York City smorgasbord, or a cocktail hour with everything from appletinis to zombies available. The ceremony itself was outside in the

The traffic between Brooklyn and Jericho Long Island was ridiculous.

Even the birds on the Jericho Turnpike wanted to kill themselves... humid June heat, and like the traffic, also took two hours (to be fair, the ceremony’s rabbi was the bride’s father). This couple took the traditional Jewish wedding ceremony and made it their own, making it more creative and fun. The reception had the best food but was held in a tiny room with not enough room to dance. The country club was like a wedding factory, as at the same time as the nuptials I was at attending were going on, four others were happening. We ate, drank, danced, sang, and finally left to sit in traffic for another three hours.

I hate Long Island.

The One with the Vuvuzelas

This was the other New York wedding I attended this summer.

Thankfully, it was not on Long Island.

Two Princeton students were wed, so orange and black, the Ivy League school’s colours, rivaled the green hue of the bridal party in representation. Since my family was epically late for the other New York wedding, this was the first time I got to experience the New York City smorgasbord with food stations serving roast beef, salad, pasta, crepes, fruit, sushi and martinis. I think I patronized the martini station (in my underage status in the US), a little bit too often, as every picture that I have seen of me shows a martini in my hand. No wonder I can’t remember most of the reception… Finally, this wedding had the least traditional music, complete with the groom walking down to a medley of Elvis and the Beatles, and the wedding party being marched away by a wonderful vuvuzela band.

As soon as the vuvuzela wedding was over, I thought I would have a break from marriages for a while but apparently I am doomed to be wrong. My sister’s boyfriend proposed to her. Summer Wedding Season 2011, here I come!

Endnote: Lastly, I must apologize to Mike Newell, Hugh Grant, and the rest of the cast of Four Weddings and a Funeral for ripping off the title of their movie. The little change in the title does summarize my summer of 2010. When I was initially asked to write this article, the running title was Always a Guest, Sometimes a Bridesmaid, But Never a Bride. But in early August, my sister’s future brother-in-law was killed in a freak boating accident, leaving behind a wife and three children under the age of six. This caused my family to transplant from Toronto to New York City in order to support the family and my sister’s fiancé during shiva, the 7-day Jewish mourning period.

The weekend of the funeral and the shiva was one of the most emotionally intense and exhausting weekends I have ever experienced, as I had to watch and babysit the children, who kept asking for their daddy. Even so, watching his children reminded me that while life is not all happiness and celebrations, it goes on.

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Dreams

by sarah jennison, natasha turner “American dream”—first coined by J.T. Adams in 1931’s “Epic of America”—is “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it.

It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

Did you ever have one of those teachers who loved a subject so much that you couldn’t help but love it too? Maybe your uncle was a hot dog vendor and instilled in you a passion for the family business. It seems to make sense that the people closest to us would have a direct impact on our goals and ambitions (maybe if your parents let you play with a toy hammer instead of a kitchen you’ll be an architect instead of a chef) but what is the impact of society as a whole on our dream development?

Do I want to be what I want to be just because somebody else said that it was okay? I think that sometimes we change our goals based on what is acceptable at that stage in our life.

When you’re 8 it’s cute to be whatever you want to be, but once you reach 18 you need career goals that actually take you somewhere in life or result in you achieving something. It’s as if instead of being dreamers we have been motivated to be goal achievers; rather than following our hearts, we find ourselves following a bread crumb trail that leads straight to the top, and unlike the kids in the fairy tales, we never dare to step off of the path.

It raises the question that, if we were left on our own would our dreams stay the same as the ones we first generated when we were young? Was that the truest expression of what we really long for or just the ideas of a child? Maybe if we were on our own we wouldn’t need goals. If we were on our own we wouldn’t need to be successful in anyone’s eyes.

There would be no way to measure winners and losers on a scale with only one value, your own.

2. T he comatose sleeper.

Brain waves slow down and eye movement stops. T he sleeper loses all conscious awareness of his/her environment.

1. T he non-committal sleeper.

Muscle contractions slow, the whole body relaxes. Light sleep, the sleeper drifts in and out and is easily awoken.

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We live in a more-based culture. Society often touts that having more—more money, more power, more nice things —will bring happiness and satisfaction in life. Obviously, we can’t all attain this. Does this mean that we are unsuccessful, unable to achieve Hollywood’s dream? Maybe we’re just more comfortable with the dreams that we create ourselves than with those that are manufactured for us. Besides the ocean air and plastic surgeons, what else keeps us from being celebrities?

When does the dream end? If waking up is the equivalent of achieving your dream then what happens when we let go of our dreams before we achieve them? It’s almost like some part of us stays asleep to the possibility. Because we didn’t live out that desire in our life, we’ll never know what could have been and are a little bit incomplete.

Or maybe not. Maybe we just stop caring for some things and deep down we remain unaffected by that past part of our lives.

4. T he dreaming sleeper.

T his where the magic happens: memorable dreams, boring dreams, wet dreams, bad dreams, and any dreams at all. T his stage also contains the REM period, where breathing becomes rapid, irregular and shallow. T he eyes jerk rapidly, limb muscles are paralysed temporarily and heart rate and blood pressure increase. T he body loses its ability to regulate its core temperature and males develop erections. T his is where the magic happens.

3. T he zombie-like sleeper.

Brainwaves are extremely slow. T he sleeper has achieved deep sleep. It is very difficult to wake the zombie-like sleeper. T his is the stage where sleep walking, sleep talking, bedwetting and night terrors occur.

If you could do anything in the world, what would it be? Hold on to that. Unless your dream is to be the first person on the moon (it’s been done), it’s probably not impossible. Even if it sounds a little ridiculous, just remember how much more ridiculous it would be not to follow through with it. If you want to reach for the stars, why not head out for the sun? Even if we don’t have that kind of technology yet, maybe you could be the one who develops that better spacesuit or welds together the support tower at the launch pad. I don’t think that life should be about finding the most normal desk job and just getting by — people have within them an extraordinary capability to be so much more, so reach for your stars, wherever they may lie.

Just like it’s impossible to go the night without dreaming, I think people also need dreams to get through the day. If you don’t want anything, are looking to achieve nothing, and can’t imagine a future that is better than the present, what’s left to keep you from dying? People cling to life because they aren’t finished with something yet.

At the same time, it’s interesting how quickly we forget our dreams. People who yearn to start their own restaurant end up in the kitchen at a family diner—is it always because of circumstance or do our dreams actually change? We value security over adventure so we choose not to go for it, or we choose family, food and shelter over the risk of being out on the street. We stay where we are because it’s enough. Maybe the idea that we already have what we actually want isn’t so nightmarish after all.

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Artwork by Joy Santiago

I remember the first Olympics I ever watched; I couldn’t have been much older than seven. Watching the excitement, passion and athleticism of the competitors resonated deeply with me. I was sitting cross-legged on my scratchy basement carpet and I remember thinking, “I’m going to be an Olympian one day.” I had no concept of what sport I was going for, I just decided that I was going. I’ve grown up with that dream simmering in the back of my mind, waiting to see if it was possible. There is just something inherently thrilling about the Olympics, it’s a place where champions are born.

In high school I was a competitive rower. My schedule, and very nearly my whole life, was built around rowing. I was at the club every morning at 4:50 a.m. and every evening at 5:30 p.m. on every day except Sunday. All year long we trained for Henley, but in the summers we really went for it. We lived and breathed rowing. I remember looking up as we drove onto Henley Island for the first time and I read to myself the infamous words painted across the metal arch that decorates the island’s entrance: “Racing at Henley is the mark of an Athlete, Winning at Henley is the mark of a Champion”. The idea of the Olympics flashed through my head again and I was hooked; I wanted to be a champion. We ended up coming second. We lost to a crew we’d beaten earlier in the summer. After the race, I remember a senior from the rowing club told me I just had to keep coming back. One day I would win Henley if I was persistent enough, if I really was a champion. I remember not being sure. Maybe this wasn’t my road to the Olympics, maybe I should look somewhere else. More importantly, maybe I wasn’t a champion at all.

How do we get so caught up on the path to our dreams that we lose sight of ourselves and don’t realize when our dreams change? How do we manage to shut out the voice telling us something is wrong? As a species, we’re good at shutting it out. That’s why mid-life crises were invented. Maybe I’m cynical. Maybe it is all worth it. Maybe the statuses we are taught to dream about are worth the single minded pursuit. I’m not trying to say don’t reach for difficult, prestigious goals. I think it’s honourable and important. What I’m saying, is don’t lose yourself along the way. Often we get so focused on one of our dreams that we forget that our other tangential dreams, like learning to double bike, are just as important as our main dream.

We need to remember to realize dreams in conjunction with each other, not linearly.

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“You’re living the dream!” I’ve heard this exclamation countless times, and although often it’s followed by an exclamation of agreement and excitement, it’s not always like that. Too often the person will sigh, shrug their shoulders and nostalgically say “Yeah...,” and I think to myself, how is that possible, they’re living the dream!

But what is the dream? Is it getting into med school after third year, having the perfect boyfriend, a car and beautiful hair? I’ve never really understood the concept of the dream. I’ve always thought of dreams as profoundly individual. So how have we, as a society, created the notion of one dream fits all? My heaven is another’s hell so how could we possibly both aspire to the same singular dream? If we are both working to realize the dream then we can’t both be happy.

I think as a society we need to start saying “you’re living your dream!” I think that makes more sense.

Dictionaries tend to define a dream as something that occurs only when we are asleep. Many of the definitions I found were some variation of “dreams are a succession of images, thoughts, sounds, or emotions passing through the mind during sleep.” I had to look to the fifth or sixth meaning of ‘dream’ before I could find it defined as a goal people strive to achieve in their waking mind. Perhaps this means that we are witnessing the evolution of the English language. In old English dream meant “joy, mirth, music”. It is also speculated that dream is a derivative of the German trugen which means “to deceive, to delude”. Clear- ly, the meaning of dream has changed, but now it is changing again.

It seems that a s a society we’ve hijacked the notion of a dream to make it loosely synonymous with ambition.

Maybe soon the first definition of ‘dream’ will be a waking ambition.

A year after I started rowing, I started playing rugby too.

Eventually, I quit rowing and concentrated on rugby because it was more exciting to me. At the end of my first year at university, I was asked to try out for the U-20 Team Canada. After a series of painful training camps, I made the team. I remember sitting in the hotel room facing the two coaches as they evaluated my performance at the training camp, tantalizingly withholding the only piece of information I was interested: did I make the team?

When they finally told me, I couldn’t have been more elated.

A week later I was standing on the side of the pitch with my hand on my heart singing “Oh Canada”.

I remember thinking, even if I never make it to the Olympics I’d be happy because in my own way, I’d already become a champion.

I’ve always been puzzled when I walk by the library or office buildings on Friday and Saturday nights and I see people sitting at their desks, absorbed in their work. I just don’t understand it. It’s your time off, time to spend with friends and family, not time to further your career. I once asked someone why he consistently worked all night on weekends. He told me it was so he could get into law school, and that he would have fun once he got there. When I asked if it would all be worth it if he got into law school, he said he didn’t ask those questions, it had to be worth it.

But what makes law school any different from undergrad?

Once he’s in law school he’ll work so that he can get into a good firm, and once he’s in the firm he’ll work to stay there.

Where does life and self-fulfilment enter into the equation?

Finally, I asked if getting into law school was his dream. “I guess... it has to be,” was his answer. I don’t think this situation is so uncommon, but still, it baffles me.

Artwork by Kaitlin Troisi Volume 13, Issue 1 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 25

playing out Chris Hilbrecht

B

iking past the slushy intersection of Main and Dundurn last winter, I noticed a strange billboard.

Not only did it lack sad-faced children of workplace accident victims promoting one personal injury lawyer or another, but the sign bore a jarringly strange caption. The advertisement publicized a fitness centre. On it, a good-looking man in his early thirties stared confidently and intently at the minivans turning into Fortinos to pick up milk. Next to him, the tag line read “when I work out I am free.”

I laughed as I rode along: rather than inspiring thoughts of freedom, exercise at the gym always reminded me more of the gruelling punishment of Sisyphus who, having aggravated more than his fair share of Greek gods, was condemned to an eternity of pushing a boulder up a mountain only to watch it tumble down again.

Admittedly, I have a few more push-ups to do before I enter the “jacked enough to be lifting boulders” class of weightlifters, but the analogy to dumbbells is not a stretch of the imagination requiring Cirque du Soleil flexibility. In short, I expected the billboard to run a slogan more to the tune of “when I work out I am sub26 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ September 2010

Illustration by ishani nath

mitting myself to an hour of mind-numbing drudgery that I’ll never get back.”

I was puzzled. How could this giant two-dimensional gym patron feel free?

Just the term “working out” seemed dubious to me—I don’t feel free when I’m at work; I feel free when I’m at play. The billboard made me wonder: how many of university students, schoolyard romps long behind us, still get our physical activity from play? What makes us change how we exercise as we move from playful childhood to gym-going adulthood?

As well, does this notion of “working out” instead of, say, “playing out”, figure into a culture of over-work? Finally, how important is it for adults to play?

To look into this topic, I spoke with Luke Potwarka, a doctoral candidate and lecturer in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies at the University of Waterloo, and Marianne Staempfli, a sessional lecturer whose research focuses on play at the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development at the University of Guelph.

These questions, Potwarka explained, originate in dramatic changes in the nature of work over the last century. One hundred years ago, for the majority of

Canadians, work and exercise were interwoven. Farmhands, miners, factory workers and builders usually had no want of physical activity. And while women were not as present in the work force (with the exception of wartime), household labour was much more intense.

By contrast, today there is often a disconnect between what we do for a living and how we stay fit. Work and working out are considered separate parts of life and we build facilities and structure time for exercise. That is, if we’re on-the-ball. Staempfli pointed out that university students often struggle to balance mental and physical activity; when we need to exercise our bodies the most to de-stress, our less-than-amazing time-management skills usually mean that we are only exercising our minds.

In any case, the growing divorce between work and physical activity opens us up to the question of how to get our exercise: from weightlifting to kayaking, hockey to chess boxing, we need to do something to keep from turning into unhealthy, weak, inflexible blobs coagulating in our computer chairs. One option is “working out”, and as my discussions with both Potwarka and Staempfli revealed,

the gym might not be as home to dull toil or as separate from play as I had imagined.

Yes, working out is repetitive, Potwarka admitted, but he cautioned that one cannot forget the important social aspects of going to the gym. A fitness centre can be a place to meet and connect with friends, and the social benefits of working out with friends or family are often just as important as any resulting improvements in physical condition and health.

While we may be inundated with images of hard abs in gym ads, less commonly promoted is the positive role physical activity can play in social relationships.

Similarly, social relationships can have a positive effect on physical activity, transforming what might be “mindnumbing drudgery” into a good time.

If Sisyphus had good company, his everlasting torment might actually have been fun. Both Potwarka and Staempfli stressed that “work” and “play” are ultimately subjective terms, and that the same activity can be experienced as one or the other depending on what we expect, who we do it with and our level of autonomy in the activity. Consequently, having spent a fairly unstructured childhood wandering and playing in the neighbourhood with local friends, I was taken aback by the slogan “when I work out I am free,” but someone who grew up with regimented 5 a.m. hockey practices might see how structured work-outs could be liberating. Likewise, someone with a different set of experiences and expectations might find it perverse that in penning this article I’m spending a summer afternoon writing an essay for fun.

Staempfli also suggested that beyond being highly subjective, work and play frequently overlap. Work can be play—we can still, for example, have a good time and be creative at our jobs— and on the other hand play can require work—elite athletes, for example, may be playing a game, but they will follow very structured and sometimes monotonous training programs to be able to play well.

Overall, Potwarka maintained, play and leisure are states of mind defined by a sense of freedom. Staempfli suggested that the level of freedom we experience in our physical activity depends on whether we’re the ones setting our goals. Chasing an idealized body shape, for example, is not freedom. Whether we experience freedom in any domain, she contended, be it our exercise, play

or work, depends on allowing ourselves to make a choices about what we need without listening to external pressure.

Altogether, with so many factors influencing his experience of exercise, it could well be that when the man on the billboard works out he is, as he claims, free. Still, gym drudgery happens, Staempfli said, but only because people lack creativity. People realize unstructured play gives them pleasure, she explained, they just don’t take the time to think of something different to do with the hour they’ve carved out of a busy schedule for physical activity. When pressed for time, it’s much easier to stick to the social norm of hitting the elliptical instead of inventing and playing a game.

“Play allows us to reclaim the spontaneity and imagination that may be stifled by the more rigid worlds of school, work and other grownup responsibility.”

It takes courage and energy to be different and, in that sense, the way we exercise is a reflection of our society and the priority (or lack thereof) we place on individuality. Staempfli noted that our choice of physical activity factors into our sense of belonging. As a cross-country ski coach, she noticed that teens often quit the sport due to the social pressures that come with pursuing a sport seen as “geeky” by their peers. In this case, swimming with the flow uses less energy and thought than choosing with one’s own, perhaps more playful, way of getting exercise.

One muggy afternoon this June, dense, dark clouds opened up over Westdale, spilling out the summer’s first thunderstorm. I was biking home from campus and by the time I had reached my house I was drenched. After tossing my bike in the back yard and glancing at the immense pools of water accumulating around each storm drain on my street, I was struck by a childish urge to jump in the puddles. I launched myself into the first pool, landing with a loud splash that sent the water’s

oily rainbow film flying in all directions around me. Laughing, I ran along, kicking showers of murky rainwater along the road and springing from puddle to puddle.

With a strange look from a passing car and a giggle from underneath an umbrella across the street, I became conscious of myself, soaked to the bone and smiling like a maniac. I had forgotten it was weird for a 20-year-old man to frolic in the rain.

Spontaneous play becomes rarer, and stranger, as we get older. For many university students, Staempfli noted, drinking is the only form of unstructured play they regularly experience. Adults often lack the comfort to play. Full-grown people are not supposed to innocently play, if the images the term “adult play” conjures are any indication. As we get older, Staempfli contended, we are socialized out of playing (but, as her email sign-off, a quotation of George Bernard Shaw explains, “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing”). If we flail our arms around as we bike down the street, people think we’re crazy. Yet to Staempfli, it is important that such spontaneous craziness be socialized back into us and that we return to thinking that play is okay.

Why? Play provides plenty of benefits to adults. It allows us to reclaim the spontaneity and imagination that may be stifled by the more rigid worlds of school, work and other grown-up responsibility.

Any society that values creativity (buzzwords like “innovation” come to mind) needs adults who are not just automatons. Potwarka suggested that returning to a childlike state of play has strong restorative power. As well, added Staempfli, play allows us to learn about ourselves and about others around us, helping to develop and maintain essential social skills.

In the end, our play can lend meaning and definition to our lives. As Potwarka explained, “play helps us define our lives in a way other than ‘what we do for a living’ which is often the first thing people ask about us at cocktail parties”. That our jobs are such a standard topic of introductory chitchat demonstrates the cultural value we place on work. We think we can get to know people based on their work, but as Potwarka continued, “No one ever asks how we play or what we do for leisure — but for many, how we play and what we do for leisure better captures who we are as people than work ever can”.

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