doberman pizza. a baha'i (bahai, bahá'í) blog.

Disclaimer: long post follows.

I came from a small town. Okay, so I wasn’t born in a small town. I was born in Montreal, arrondissement Côte-des-Neiges. My family didn’t live in a small town at the time, either. They lived in Longueuil, on the south shore. But the earliest thing I remember was living in a farmhouse just off the Georgian Bay, in southern Ontario. When my family moved to the Ottawa area, we set up camp in one of the most remote parts of the city, on the east end. There was a farm up the hill and another down the main road, and our street was a sleepy loop of a bedroom community that wasn’t even on the maps at the time. whenever friends did come down to my house (which wasn’t often) they would claim that I lived at the ends of the earth. To be honest, it was boring. I would sometimes walk down to the corner store out of boredom, to check the selection of comic books or get popsicles or a bag of potato chips. For a time, there was another corner store (!) a little further down that had an arcade-style Super Mario Bros. game - so I would sometimes walk down there, ask the guy at the garage to split a five-dollar bill into quarters, and then spend an hour jumping on mushrooms and turtles to my heart’s content. I tended to get depressed back then, too. When I was really bored (or depressed) I would go for a walk down to the crusty old dock to watch the ferries go back and forth between the Quebec and Ontario sides of the Ottawa river. I hadn’t made a lot of friends in the village (and un-made some of the ones I had made), so it was lonely and boring as all get-out. There was nothing to do. I hated it.

Now, though, I go back there and see that the village has picked up. Maybe it’s just that I’m less depressed and I see more things happening around me, but I think the place has really livened up too. There’s been a lot of development there in the past fifteen years, as the National Capital region amalagamated into the City of Ottawa, and people began to explore the benefits in moving out of the big crowded downtown and staking out a corner of land in the quaintness and relative quiet of the suburbs. Local sports teams are big out there - there are always huge soccer games, baseball games, hockey games and what have you. There’s a fancy expensive French restaurant (français de France) there now, and the ferry dock’s been upgraded and fixed up. They’ve developed a beach down the highway at Petrie Island, just a ten-minute drive out of town, and just a five-minute jaunt down the other way, the little town of Rockland is quickly growing into a big town - with a plethora of big-box stores moving in to the mostly francophone community, clogging traffic and drawing my parents weekly during their regular grocery run.

When I moved to Québec to help out the Baha’i community there, I saw small town life with new eyes. Mainly, it was thanks to the difference in culture between anglo and franco, but also because I was there in a spirit of service, and determined to find out what made these people tick and how best I could serve them. For example, Warwick, a little town outside Victoriaville, with its cheese festival, coffee roastery, and worldwide potato chip headquarters. Baie-du-Febvre with its geese. Saint-Ferdinand with its hills, and its lake.

While I was there, I worked with two wonderful organizations affiliated with the federal government through the Community Futures Network, known as the Réseau des SADC (Société d’aide au développement des collectivités) in Québec. One was in Bécancour and the other was in Victoriaville. Each one works with members of the local community who are looking to set up business or community projects that would, in some way, develop the economy of the village and get things moving. A lot of their help is financial, but while I was there I helped with some other things, too. The one in Victoriaville hired me to co-ordinate the PAC program - community internet access centres, where you can go to use high-speed Internet for a very low price. I also spent some time giving computer classes. Most of the interested parties were older folks with nothing else to do, and who wanted to learn a new skill. Groups of 50- to 60-year-olds would come to the classes and watch the strapping young man of 23 that I was show them how to double-click. I never got many teenagers - they already knew how to use computers… for playing online games, chatting, surfing the web, and whatever else they cared to do. Besides, the teenagers usually had computers at home.

Québec is a beautiful place, but it’s a troubled place too. I was at a going-away party for my friend Aref on Thursday night and I met one of his co-workers, who’s originally from Québec City. We got to talking about Québec (the province), and one of the things she mentioned was that the province has the highest suicide rate of all of Canada. I can verify this through having lived in Drummondville (which apparently is one of the cities with the highest teen suicide rate in all of Québec). Apart from being influenced by increased drug use, fewer job opportunities, boredom, and so on, we theorized that part of this debacle might also be a general lack of hope brought on by the collapse of Catholicism and the rejection of the Church in Québec. Said rejection was a reaction against the dehumanizing oppressiveness and tyranny of the Church in French Canada during the first half of the century, an oppressiveness that many baby-boomers alive today, including my own mother, went through. She’s told me enough horror stories about les soeurs (the nuns) and les curés (the priests) that I’d rather not hear any more. Anyway, if I understand correctly, that’s partly what the Quiet Revolution (révolution tranquille) was all about.

Anyway, all this is just leading to what I really wanted to mention. I was searching for quebec-related stuff today when I came across an article from the Montreal Gazette entitled It takes children to raise a village, the story of a little village in the Beauce called Saint-Magloire, and its struggle to keep its only elementary school open and prevent a slow descent from village to ghost town. Having worked at the SADC and met a lot of people from the little villages around the Centre-du-Québec, I relate to the story. “Demographic decline” has killed a lot of small towns throughout the landscape, as children grow up, move to the big city and never come back. Sometimes, as mentioned in the article, it’s about education, or lack thereof in those small villages. Sometimes it’s because there’s no work to be found in their field. Combine all these factors with the ubiquitous disintegration of family and community units due to emotional, spiritual and psychological dysfunction, and what reason does anyone have for staying in a place that offers them nothing to see, nothing to do, and no tangible source of economic or moral support?

There are material and spiritual reasons for leaving one’s place of origin (besides altruistic reasons such as pioneering): either you leave because the place isn’t providing you with the material support you want or need, or because it isn’t providing you with the spiritual support you want or need. Does that make sense? I hope so; let me know otherwise. It’s true that I haven’t gathered all the scientific evidence I need here, except the knowledge that rural exodus is a given fact, that people - especially young people - are leaving the country in troops to settle in the cities. I also must admit that I haven’t developed my arguments a whole lot. I rather suspect (i.e. this is a hypothesis) that moral and spiritual emptiness is an important factor.

If that’s so, then it would return us to the secularization of culture - the rejection of the Catholic Church I mentioned above. I’m not saying we should have stayed with the nuns and their rulers, or the priests and their extortion schemes^[1]. Nor do I approve of sociopathic pretenders who terrorize families and towns in the name of the gods of their idle fancies. However, the outright rejection of religion because of the actions of said megalomaniacs, without considering the benefits of religion and its power to effect positive change in individuals and society as a whole, seems to me to be like throwing the kittens out with the kitty litter. Take a look at what Bahá’u'lláh says:

The weakening of the pillars of religion hath strengthened the hands of the ignorant and made them bold and arrogant. Verily I say, whatsoever hath lowered the lofty station of religion hath increased the waywardness of the wicked, and the result cannot be but anarchy. (Baha’u'llah, quoted in The World Order of Baha’u'llah by Shoghi Effendi, p.186)

Although the secularization of Québécois culture during the Quiet Revolution undoubtedly had its benefits, it may also have contributed to the weakening of a vital pillar of society - one that united and improved the lives of many of its inhabitants.

What do you think? Are there spiritual underpinnings to the phenomenon of rural exodus, or it is a purely material, economic phenomenon? Is it the schools that keep the town alive, or is it the town that keeps the school alive? Are youth leaving villages only because “there are no jobs” and “there’s nothing to do”, or because the villages themselves are like a spiritual and emotional void for them? I’m curious to hear your thoughts. I’ll probably continue to develop my arguments on this topic as time goes on, and it definitely helps to have other points of view. Perhaps other tesidents of the blogosphere will provide some of these…

^[1]: (one of the stories my mom would often tell is how the curé would come by regularly and insist that families, whatever their income, pay their tithe to the Church - even if the choice was between tithing and feeding their children)

ayafor and elham, two lovely souls and friends of mine,
recently announced their engagement to be married.
many congratulations, best wishes and blessings
to the both of you!

(sorry aya… it was the best
pic of you I had on hand…)

hmm. tomorrow is garbage day. the neighbours threw out an old guitar.
some guy just walked past our front walk, saw the guitar, picked it up and started beating the hell out of it. seriously. he whacked it against the sidewalk until it flew into splinters, in some kind of Pete Townshend-esque whacking frenzy. I looked out the window to see what was happening, and called out to him - upon which he stopped, said “rock ‘n roll, dude” and walked away.

Si vous vous demandez c’est quoi que j’ai écrit ci-haut, ben euh un gars vient juste de fesser sur une guitare abandonnée juste en dehors de mon appart… c’est la journée des vidanges demain alors bien sûr ya du stock sur le trottoir, y compris une guitare… pis le gars vient passer, il le voit, le prend et puis il commence à virer fou en le fessant contre le trottoir… entk y en a des ces gens.

En passant (et complètement hors sujet), il y a des nouvelles mises à jour sur le site Jeunesse Baha’ie.

I’d like to pause here, and take a few moments to thank each and every one of you out there who participated in putting together tonight’s Coffee House at Harmony Gardens. Words fail me (as they sometimes do) to express my amazement and delight at the night’s dénouement, and the way everything just came together out of a process which, due to my close and detailed involvement and (perhaps) lack of higher vision, seemed to me to be disorganized. As Catherine said to me just now, it’s amazing how things went off without a hitch. It would seem that God had our backs after all.

I’d like to give shout outs to the performers. We were all captivated and amazed by the sheer amount of talent showcased at the event. Don Irving, always a classic, entertained us with songs written by the likes of Bob Seeger and the Eagles. Jessica and Steven Thirlwall sang a couple of beautiful songs, including Van Morrison’s Tupelo Honey. The stars of the evening were definitely Damien and Lisanne MacLaughlin, two professional artists who simply blew the crowd away with their energy and catchy rhythm. Damien and Lisanne already perform in Ottawa, and are always looking for new gigs, so if you’re looking for a dynamic duo who can sing (and write!) pop, rock, blues, and more, you know where to look. I think the highlight was the “Friends” theme. My personal favourite, anyway. Then we had Kiri (Christine), a junior youth virtuoso on the violin, who raised eyebrows and wowed everybody with her prowess with the bow. Next was Melody, who showed us her talents as a pianist by pulling out (I think) a nice Chopin number. Catherine (my sis) followed with a favourite song of mine - Black is the Colour of my True Love’s Hair. I went to Carnegie Hall thanks to that song! Oh, and next, I sang a little song that went over well with the francophones in the house: Partons, la mer est belle, a folk song I learned while living in Québec. I got some good comments from that one, and the above-mentioned francophones left with big smiles on their faces :)

One of the evening’s great successes was the combo of the varied and impressive talents of a few budding Baha’i artists: Tassnim Moradipour, James and Eric Farr, and Michel Ross (big ups to Fanfan, too). These youth put their heads together after meeting each other for the first time only that afternoon, and put together a jam to make your head spin. We also got a sample of each one’s talents solo, whether it be poetry, flamenco guitar, or piano - rising stars indeed. Mad ups, guys!

The evening wouldn’t have been the same without the talents of two more people - Fanfan (Dona) Séléger, who brought to us his inimitable expertise on the djembé (also known as the “unity drum”), and had us dancing in time with some phat Haitian rhythms; and Armin Parsa, who showed us the exotic harmonies of the persian tar (like a guitar, or a sitar… but not). Finally, Jay, our MC, took us through the evening with his amicable wit and held all the performances together; much respect is due.

The power team of Jessica, Rhona, Steven and Don (and Sahba as the Maiden of Heaven (!)) charmed and enthralled us with their tale of the life of Bahá’u'llíh, spun as a mix between a radio play and a exposition of the finest poetry, intermingled with soft and subtle music to give the sensation of floating through the whole narrative like a boat gliding through a garden of Paradise. Many thanks to these people who put so much effort into creating this work of art for us to enjoy.

I must also thank the people who worked so hard at carrying forward the logistics of this event: the servers, captained by Sahba - who coordinated a team of dedicated youth in characteristic black-and-white, all bent on bringing refreshment and ease to the gathered souls; Delta and company, who ferried the food to and from the event, coordinated the coffee and drinks, and who put the sweetness (that caramel apple pie looked delicious) into our evening; DJ Shahriar, who kept a close watch on the sound equipment, and fended off the unwelcome intrusion of feedback from the mikes; Hania, who acted as the hall representative in her mom’s absence, and who made sure no disasters happened; Ayafor, who oversaw the operations and kept the team going amid the frantic pace of action, and who was there to take action when we needed it - and who also brought the expertise of the Teaching Committee to bear in helping things go smoothly; Catherine, for helping make calls, acting as go-between, and hooking up the miracles we needed to get this done; and, finally, the people who, though physically absent the night of, were with us every step of the way with encouragement and drive, who made cell phone calls all the way from Toronto to congratulate us on a jog well done, who owned the process from start to finish - Aram and Natalia, a force to be reckoned with, who brought their know-how and experience to bear even with so many things (including wedding plans!) cluttering up their collective agendas, and who still found the time to plan the whole event so that it would be pulled off without a hitch. I love you guys, really. You were our guiding stars shining in the night.

I’m sure I’ve missed people in this long list. This event couldn’t have happened without the massive cooperation between so many wonderful souls. To all of you, each and every one, I offer my heartfelt appreciation and thanks; we couldn’t have done it without you.

O thou who art attracted by the Fragrances of God!

Verily I am in receipt of thy last letter which indicateth thy exceeding love for Abdul-Bahá, thy confidence in God, and thy good and sincere intention in the service of the Cause of God.

Excellent is the statement given by thee in that precious letter — that ye are in need of love and affinity in that country to unite the hearts and spirits.

This is the truth and there is naught beyond the truth save error. Know thou assuredly that-

Love is the mystery of divine revelations!

Love is the effulgent manifestation!

Love is the spiritual fulfillment!

Love is the light of the Kingdom!

Love is the breath of the Holy Spirit inspired into the human spirit!

Love is the cause of the manifestation of the Truth (God) in the phenomenal world!

Love is the necessary tie proceeding from the realities of things through divine creation!

Love is the means of the most great happiness in both the material and spiritual worlds!

Love is a light of guidance in the dark night!

Love is a bond between the Creator and the creature in the inner world!

Love is the cause of development to every enlightened man!

Love is the greatest law in this vast universe of God!

Love is the one law which causeth and controlleth order among the existing atoms!

Love is the universal magnetic power between the planets and stars shining in the lofty firmament!

Love is the cause of unfoldment to a searching mind, of the secrets deposited in the universe by the Infinite!

Love is the spirit of life in the bountiful body of the world!

Love is the cause of the civilization of nations in this mortal world!

Love is the highest honor to every righteous nation!

(Abdu’l-Bahá, Tablets of Abdu’l-Bahá v3, p. 525)

hey y’all. I be chillin in my air conditioned workplace, waiting for things to cool down outside a little (and waiting for some things to finish up). Work’s finished, so I’m taking a little down-time. Jeremy (from Trois-Rivières) just got online so we’re chatting a little. There’s a new update at Jeunesse Baha’ie - go check it out. (Français: Y a une nouvelle mise à jour sur le site Jeunesse Baha’ie, allez donc voir!)

I got mystery shopped this morning. That was a new experience. I first heard about mystery shopping when I was working at the SADC in Bécancour. One of the people who worked there was in charge of the “Mystery Shopper” program. Basically, she called up shops and companies who subscribed to the program (or showed up at their doorstep, depending on which sort of shop or company it was) and evaluated their customer service. So, for example, today, I had to deal with a request about the Conference Board’s visual style standards. Very interesting. I like the concept. And it was funny when the person finally told me who she was. It was sort of like being on Candid Camera, except they’re not making fun of you. Like that Bell Canada guy who called me up one time. Anyway, I digress. Besides, that’s an entirely different story.

hmmm we had a really great weekend. Saturday night, Catherine and I had a barbecue with our neighbours - and for the first time ever, we really had a chance to spend time together and get to know them. They’re all pretty cool. Two of them, John and Tamara, are moving out at the end of the month so we figured we had to send them off, hence the BBQ. It’s too bad we didn’t do this earlier, though. It’s amazing what you can miss if you don’t reach out to people and get to know them. That’s why I’m enjoying this process of getting to know the people around me… it really does some good to be friends with the people around you. Sure, for me, it takes some time to get to know people. I think that’s one of the things that’s traditionally kept me from putting too much time into getting to know people - it took me so long to get comfortable with people that, by the time I got anywhere, I had to move on. I guess working on this contract at the Conference Board has given me the short-to-medium-term stability that I needed to start building stronger relationships with people. Actually, yeah, that makes sense. In the past while I’ve seen a lot of my friendships with people grow stronger. Some haven’t progressed as well, but I’m learning from my mistakes. God knows I’ve needed a shot in the character for a long time.

Hmm, OK, gotta go. Dinner calls. More ramblings later, perhaps, or maybe more links!

hey. You’ve probably seen the Baha’i Temple in Wilmette, Illinois on Google Maps. I know I have. But have you seen the Lotus Temple in New Delhi on Google Maps? Thanks to Google Sightseeing, now you can. Cool, huh?

hey. listening to Jurassic 5, chatting with friends. here’s a quick wrap-up of the last seven days of my life.

between workplace birthday parties and all-day divisional meetings at The Log Farm, I must have worked less this week than any other. what work I have been doing has been uncharacteristically… well, uninterrupted. it’s not often that I have whole days to myself to work on mostly the same thing. I tend to work very well under pressure, so I don’t mind too much when there’s a lot of stuff to do — I find it exciting. Like Indiana Jones swinging over fiery document pits and escaping from the ravenous clutches of e-mail cannibals. I’ve been dipping into ASP and VBScript for a client who wants an interactive web form… neat, more stuff to put on my resumé! The Conference Board has been a great thing for my career so far… lots of learning and horizon expansion going on.

One cool thing: there was a speaker at our recent divisional meeting who was touting RSS as a superior communication protocol, and left a good impression of it on the participants… and I turned out to be the person in the crowd with the highest level of expertise in RSS, so that means more meetings… and perhaps RSS development at the ‘Board? Who knows. I’ll keep you posted.

Here’s a little excerpt from a post I made to my photoblog, but it’s deep enough that it applies here too: I’ve decided to make it a point to get to know the people around me a little better, reach out in friendship, take time out of my busy schedule to have one-on-one people time. I’m not generally a “people person”, that is, a person who feels real comfortable dealing with people on an individual basis. I’m more of an introvert. (Oddly enough, I seem highly outgoing, I can perform on stage like a maniac and I’m an excellent tour guide.) So real friendships have seldom been a big part of my life, except for certain rare deeper relationships with people I feel exceptionally comfortable with. anyway, I’ve been doing some work on myself lately and lightening up, as it were - starting to feel a little more comfortable with making and keeping friends. so I’ve decided to push it for the next little while, and replace some of my “alone time” with some people interaction. we’ll see how it goes.

Right now, the Ottawa Baha’i Community is going through what’s being termed an “intensive program of growth” - if you’re not up to speed on it, then read up on Martin’s explanatory note.

allez voir ça - à Victo ils ont eu un concours de pompiers d’à travers le Québec… ils ont plein de photos. voilà un autre article à propos des compétitions, et puis un autre au sujet du défilé mouillé… ça paraît peut-être bête de souligner tout ça mais bon… j’aime bien suivre les nouvelles de Victo… et puis au travail je suis entouré de femmes qui parlent très souvent de pompiers (qu’ils sont beaux ces pompiers!) alors ils vont bien aimer ça…

ah oui et pendant que tous le pompiers étaient occupés avec leurs olympiques, un bâtiment de ferme a brûlé jusqu’aux cendres… tous les bêtes qui s’y trouvaient sont présentement en route vers le McDo.

and just in case you didn’t understand all that, it was about a weekend-long firefighters’ skill contest in Victoriaville. aaaaaaaand while they were all busy competing, a barn burnt down and grilled a bunch of cows… trip to McDonald’s to celebrate, anyone?

if you want to see some advance pictures from the July 2nd youth hang-out at Lac Philippe, check out (gasp!) Kamran’s photo album (MSN Passport required). The pictures are mine, and a lot of them are of Marty and Kam wrestling, but there are other, more representative photos as well - BBQ photos, card games, tackle football, etc. Oh yeah, and happy birthday to Kam - his birthday was on Canada Day. Speaking of which, check out some of my Canada Day photos on my photoblog.

You’ve heard that NASA smashed a probe into a comet over the weekend, right? They wanted to see what kind of dust would fly up. Well, my friends, bear witness to the funniest thing ever:

Astrologist sues NASA over crash

MOSCOW, Russia (Reuters) — A Russian astrologist who says NASA has altered her horoscope by crashing a spacecraft into a comet is suing the U.S. space agency for damages of $300 million, local media has reported.

OMGROFLOL.