June 2005 blogposts

Miracle

I found an old backup of my blog, dated September 7th, 2004! The import went well, although there will certainly be broken links, missing images, duplicated categories, etc. It's a miracle, like getting part of your brain back.

However, all blog entries between September 8th and November 1st, 2004 are permanently deleted and cannot be retrieved. They're gone forever, and frankly, good riddance. Those of you who were readers then will remember what happened; and the rest of you will just have to take my word for it, that it was a black time from which I still bear the scars.

Going Back In Time: A Tale of Two Ryans

I've had a chance to reread blog entries I'd never thought I'd read again, and contemplate the many changes that have taken place in my life since I first started this blog in September 2003. And the significant impact that this blog, this thing, has had on my life, the amazing assortment of people that I have gotten to know through this medium and how our lives have intersected.

And I realize that there are, in fact, not one but two Ryans: the online Ryan and the offline Ryan. They overlap but are not necesarily the same person.

The online Ryan is both braver and more foolhardy than the offline Ryan, more likely to speak up for a cause or address an injustice.

The online Ryan is is chattier, more likely to interject with a comment or a joke than the offline Ryan. He's both merrier and more despondent, angrier and sorrier, than his offline counterpart.

(Amazingly) The online Ryan is more gregarious than the offline Ryan, effortlessly moving from node to node in myriad social networks, juggling dozens of contacts ranging from nodding acquaintances to bosom buddies and making it look easy.

The offline Ryan—the real Ryan from which the online Ryan springs—is in reality a quieter, soberer, lonelier person. It's almost as if I feel I have to inflate myself into a carnival version of who I am, to make that mark on others. Why? I already know how useless this strategy is in real life; why do I pursue it online?

*sigh* Another question to live, right? It's a perfect example of how you can look at yourself through a blog, and see things that you never realized before.

Maybe I'm bolder online because I'm afraid I'll just wash out in the blare of the blogosphere, my voice drowned out by other, stronger, voices. That no one will hear me. The offline Ryan already knows that it doesn't matter who hears me; what matters is that I hear myself. It's odd that the online Ryan hasn't learned that yet.

Wedding social??

Ah, here I need to explain. Socials. We have something here called a "social", which I have discovered is unique to our province. (This is essentially a re-edited repost of a one-and-a-half year old blogpost.)

A local tradition that I've been told came originally from Manitoba's large Polish/Ukrainian immigrant community, a social is when the friends and family of a to-be-married couple (or a sports team, or a Ukrainian dance troupe, or a singles group or whatever like-mided group of people) rent a hall (often in a community centre, a curling club, or a church basement) and throw a rave ;-)

O.K., it's not exactly a rave. They rent a social hall for 100-300 people (most Catholic chruch basements/bingo halls or community clubs will accommodate) , where they hire a D.J. to spin CDs or records, get a one-night-only liquor license from the provincial government, and throw a party (or, to be more accurate, a thrown-together one-night-only bar) as a fund-raiser. Around midnight, a bread-and-cold-cuts buffet is put out (food must be served as one of the conditions of the liquor licence).

My chorus, The Rainbow Harmony Project, usually has a series of queer socials every year as fund-raisers, and they are always well attended. Fun too :-)

One particularly memorable social was thrown by a separated/divorced/widowed support group, for a friend who had undergone a cancer operation, and it was a fundraiser to help her meet her daily expenses as she recovered from surgery. We were packed in like sardines (probably way over capacity) but everyone had a marvelous time, especially the friend, who had a helluva surprise...

The really popular socials (usually Filipino, Italian, Ukrainian, and French-Canadian weddings) can sell out quickly... Winnipeg has a large Filipino population (mostly more recent immigrants) and fully 1/4 of the city has a Ukrainian background (mostly from the big immigration boom of the 1910's). Winnipeg is also home to the largest French-Canadian community in Western Canada. And we're also the largest Icelandic community outside of Iceland. Like I said, a real mix of people.

The music is always a real mix too... not just contemporary pop/rock stuff either. We may have a snowball dance to start (especially if it was a singles social), and a couple of spot dances during the evening to give away door prizes. The music ranges from the latest dance pop and country two-step to waltzes, polkas, and the schottise (butterfly)... everything from conga lines to the macarena (in my opinion, the only dance that straight people do better than queer people). I have fond memories of one particular Transcona social where the conga line went in and out of the men's and women's washrooms, outside the social hall, around the block, and back inside again.

People sell social tickets ahead of time to their coworkers, friends and relatives, and whoever else wants to go out dancing and drinking on a Friday or Saturday night. You can often get a really bizarre/interesting mix of people you know (uncles and cousins and aunts) and complete strangers who heard about the social second- or even third-hand and buy tickets at the door, if there are any left (shhhhh... the government's not supposed to know that you're selling social tickets at the door, that's not allowed... but come back out into the parking lot and we can do business).

I can remember in high school that one in-the-loop friend of mine always knew what socials were going on where that weekend, and she always seemed to have social tickets for sale. We'd form a group and head out almost every weekend; didn't matter if we knew the couple who were getting married or not...although it helped if at least ONE of us knew ONE of them. Socials always had dirt-cheap drink prices (most teenagers got their first taste of underage booze at a social). Socials seem to have become much less popular since I was a teenager, but they still happen often enough to keep me up on my polka steps :-)

Dancing While Vic Fiddles

  (Click thumbnail for full-size photo)

Anyone who's been reading my blog for a while already knows how I feel about Manitoba's shame, Conservative Party justice critic (and parliamentary sphincter) Vic Toews.   (Oh My, was that my outdoor voice??)   Good thing I live in a REAL democracy and not Vic's vision of a Mennonite theocracy.

Currently Vic is the equivalent of a parking lot speed bump, tying up passage of an impending federal same-sex marriage bill by throwing every parliamentary procedural hurdle in its way. Bill Neville, professor and head of the Political Science department at the University of Manitoba. has written an excellent editorial in today's Winnipeg Free Press on the matter:

Vic Toews, MP for Provencher and the Conservative Party's justice critic, appears to have forced the government (and the other opposition parties) into a procedural agreement which will delay a vote on the government's same-sex marriage legislation 'till mid-June. The result may be to ensure that a final decision on Bill C-38 will be delayed until the autumn.

Those in Parliament and across the country who wonder whether there is anything to say on this matter which hasn't already been said many times may well conclude that Toews is simply trying to conduct a war of attrition. As a parliamentarian that is, of course, his prerogative. Yet, a war of attrition is hard to justify unless it achieves something, or prevents something, and Toews may end up doing neither.

Toews' position is, to say the least, disingenuous in at least two respects: strategic and substantive. On the first, the general thrust of the Conservatives' opposition (there being only a handful of Conservative MPs who support the legislation) seems to be that a long-drawn out battle will wear the supporters of Bill C-38 down and that it will die or be defeated. The clear implication is that if the amendment to the Marriage Act is defeated, the legitimization of same-sex marriage will die with it. Such a message, though it may keep the troops happy and in line, is simply wrong because it ignores where most of the country is now situated on this issue.

Indeed, for most of the country same-sex marriage is not only legal but happening all the time. It is an accomplished fact in seven provinces (Alberta, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island being the exceptions) and in Yukon which, between them, encompass roughly 85 per cent of the population of Canada. Beginning in 2002, when provincial courts held that the equality provisions of the Charter of Rights guaranteed same-sex couples an equal right to marriage, no appeals to higher courts were undertaken by any of the affected governments, including the federal government. If the present legislation in Parliament is amended, gutted or defeated, one can safely predict that new challenges will be brought before the courts of Alberta, New Brunswick and P.E.I. and the Supreme Court; and since all previous judicial decisions (and the opinion rendered by the Supreme Court) have been essentially the same, it is highly probable that these last appeals would lead to similar decisions.

There would of course be a certain irony if opposition by Conservatives was to produce this result. The Conservative Party in its previous incarnations as the Alliance and the Reform Party was highly critical of judge-made law and quite insistent that important questions should be decided in Parliament. Yet Mr. Toews' strategy is to defer that decision for as long as possible and to hope, at the end, Bill C-38 dies. In short, he favours a parliamentary decision so long as it is one he agrees with; otherwise, he is prepared to see the decision thrown back to the remaining provincial courts and the Supreme Court and then, no doubt, to complain that the courts are making the decision. (Source: Neville, William. "Toews arguing absurd case on Bill C-38", Winnipeg Free Press, Jun 3rd 2005.)

Bill is bang on the money. The overwhelming majority of Canadians already have same-sex marriage, the sky has not fallen, and the clock will not be turned back. One way or another, long way or short, one day all Canadians will have the same freedom to marry whom they love, another step to full human rights and equality for queer people under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Next Friday, while Vic is no doubt lying in his good narrow Mennonite bed, fiddling and scheming, I plan to be dancing at the wedding social of Gord and Gilles, and rejoicing in their happiness.

Another Rilke Quote

I found this purely via serendipity, in a new e-zine about heartbreak advertised on tribe.net. But it does seem to fit where I am tonight. 

Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and yet a little way beyond the outworks of our divination, perhaps we would then endure our sorrows with greater confidence than our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy perplexity, everything in us withdraws, a stillness comes, and the new, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it and is silent.

(Source: Broken Heart Zine (PDF file)