How Did the Five W's Become an Endangered Species?

For your reading pleasure something from my rejection pile. The following is an Opinion piece submitted to and rejected by the Globe and Mail. (As a writer I do not let rejection get me down.) However, I feel it covers an idea worth exploring. 

Who. What. Where. When. Why. And How. These are the bedrock upon which
are built sound journalism, criminal investigations and, likely, the
discovery of a disastrous mess in the kitchen.

A recent Globe and Mail Opinion piece (Saturday, Dec. 7, 2019)
entitled 'How can we save Canadian non-fiction?' decried the apparent
policy shift by the Canada Council away from fact-based literature
(non-fiction) and the imminent demise of that genre due to lack of
critical funding. In its place there will be mainly "fiction, poetry
and the sort of first-person non-fiction that appears to be in favour
at the council stated writer and publisher Kenneth Whyte.

Reading this made the word "storytelling" bubble to the fore of my
consciousness from deep within where it had been percolating since a
Stratford Festival Forum discussion I attended in October on The
Integrity of Journalism. (Three eminent journalists discussed the
state of their craft and commented on audience observations.) There
were the expected questions about coverage of the troublesome U.S.
president and the slow death of print media; however, what lodged in
my brain was the way University of Toronto professor Naheed Mustafa
shook her head sadly when asked about the trend toward Storytelling.

As a lifelong learner, that visual pronouncement germinated a truism I
had not known existed up to then: Storytelling is the easy way out.

To define the thing--Storytelling is the first-person recounting of
that person's own story. Period. It is often heart-breaking and
difficult to listen to the details; many times I have heard the
interviewee break down and cry. Solutions to problems and happy
outcomes are rare in this genre. After the story is over I am no more
knowledgeable than when it started about the causes of said problem,
remedies attempted, incidence rates and determinants of success.

As an example, take homelessness. I have read and listened to too many
"Docs" as a homeless person takes us through the details of that hard
life: the begging, the sleeping on grates, the difficulty getting
health care, the eating of other's leftovers and on and on. Then the
so-called documentary ends. I ultimately feel bad and think I should
donate some money or knit some socks or something but.... where to
donate? Who can solve this?

Maybe it makes for good ratings but journalists and their
employers/authors and their publishers and, in the end, the Canada
Council are letting us down here.

Back to homelessness. I would like a well-rounded analysis of that
issue. Sure, include one person's story to put a face on it but
explore the Why, What, How, Where, When of the thing, not just the
Who. To my way of thinking, a thorough investigation would discover
how many people are homeless, root causes such as government closures
and cut-backs to mental health facilities, drug and alcohol addiction,
lack of affordable housing, marital dissolution and unemployment, to
name a few. The reader would learn percentages of men, women and
children caught up in it; regional hot spots, city versus small town
rates; how other provinces and countries deal with the problem;
programs that have shown promise or are proven successes.

All of the above involves the gathering and presentation of facts.
Non-fiction. The stuff that is needed to make informed decisions. And
to keep me, as a listener and reader engaged, a glimmer of hope or
some ideas from those in the know on how to help would be ideal.

It's The Little Things That Are Big

Delight. That's what it was. It took me a moment to identify; I was just so surprised to be offered up a moment of pure happiness on a drear Tuesday morning as I slogged my way through a mundane list of household tasks.

It was akin to having a butterfly land on your rare flowering cactus as you clicked the shutter. It made me break into a goofy grin. I felt I should share this miraculous moment with someone but my husband was out. A text to a friend could not convey the sublime zen I felt; nor is there an emoji that could capture it. I wanted to call my mother with the good news but she is a bit confused at 89 and it would be lost in the explanation. Twice.

So it fell upon a complete stranger to absorb my over-the-top blathering and for that I should probably apologize. But maybe it made her day as well.

The episode in question began when I called our local newspaper to restart the paper after putting it on "vacation hold" for the summer. I had procrastinated because The North Bay Nugget's automated answering service is a special kind of hell designed, I am guessing, by devious millennials tasked with the ultimate corporate goal of eliminating the use of archaic instruments such as landlines--maybe all phones in fact--and newsprint. 

As close as I can figure the current business model dictates we should be interacting with our news providers online only: reading it, watching it, paying for it, never putting it on vacation hold. Except the websites have been designed by another set of devious millennials in the Philippines or India who will chat with you online about what you want to do; they will thank you profusely for that information; they will not understand First World problems like the inability to have a newspaper delivered to an island cottage which means the papers will pile up in the driveway for the entire season of summer unless our neighbour clears them away. Even though I had dutifully suffered through the automated system to put it on hold at the beginning of summer. 

I probably should not name specific newspapers but I worked for The Nugget back in the day when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. There is a special place in my heart for the old rag even if it no longer has much in the way of local content or thoughtful editorials and op-ed pieces. Despite the fact Sun Media Corp insists reporters are an expensive option and editors and proofreaders are an unnecessary luxury, I still subscribe. 

So to restart my subscription I called the local number with dread. I had my coffee at hand and my nerves steeled to combat the approaching frustration. It rang once and I thought, Here we go. A voice answered and it took me a full second to realize it was a living breathing woman asking how she could help me. I coughed on my coffee and then could not come up with the words "I would like to take my Nugget off vacation hold". She waited. And then when I did sputter my request, she efficiently said she would transfer me to Circulation. Here we go, I thought again.

But no. Another efficient, real live woman offered to help me. I told her my phone number, address and she said it would restart the next day. "But wait," I gasped. (And here is where the gushing began.) "Can I just say how nice it is to talk to a real human being to transact this?" I could hear her smiling over the line. 

"Someone at Sun Media changed something and now the calls come direct to us," she said happily. We said our good-byes under the cloud of probability that someone at head office will discover this breach of business model efficiency and went on about our days. I don't know about the Nugget women I spoke to but the serendipitous pleasantries exchanged made my day better. 

And our Nugget was in the box the next morning.

The In Box Advantage

It is a sadly apocalyptic landscape I have been travelling through lately. The trees are refusing to bud out. Rain clouds keep blocking out the sun. The flood waters are lapping at the doorstep and garden centres remain empty, cold bastions of hope and shivering annuals. (Oh sorry, that is the reality of a very late, reluctant Northern Ontario spring that is following on the heels of an unusually long, cold winter.)

No, the other landscape I am witnessing is a miasma of shifting technologies, a dearth of sober second thought and the abdication of belief in rigorous research ideally shared with all in clear, unvarnished language. Why, just the other day I sauntered along a new route—out to jack up my infernal step average, if truth be told—and came upon a hulk of a vehicle, one of those glorious stretch limos complete with all the appointments, broken down at the road side. On closer inspection I saw on the door, in precise New Times Roman font, the words “Old-style Journalism” and a tarnished motto about all the news that’s fit to print. I sensed, before I saw, movement on the other side of those smokey windows; toiling away without benefit of library cards, clean ashtrays or a decent Internet connection were a half dozen practitioners of the old way of getting out the news, madly talking on phones and typing stories in a race to deadline.

Although reluctant to put aside their assignments to talk to me, I was able to establish that their vehicle had broken down sometime around the turn of the century and no one quite knew how to fix it. Occasionally their conveyance would come to life and they would continue haltingly on their journey but most days now are spent on the sidelines confusedly watching what passes for news dissemination. What they see is a storm of vitriol, half-truths, cruelty and feel-good memes hidden behind an impenetrable wall of anonymity.

But for a career turn, I too would be in the limo looking out. A bit of my heart and loyalty is in there with them. You see I was schooled in the old-style Journalism where slander and libel suits were to be avoided at all costs. Heads were known to have rolled. So a young reporter learned first and foremost to get the facts and quotes right. It was not a legitimate story without a solid source and facts that could be verified and double-checked. And the person who decided that was an editor.

And this brings me to the all-important credenza. Who knew that the nub of all that ails current news dissemination would be a $5.99 purchase at Staples but it is true. Sitting on the corner of every editor's desk was the In box. When I started in a news room it was an actual thing crammed to overflowing with photos, story ideas, rough drafts, opinion pieces and polished features. Every morning the editor sifted through the offerings and decided-- based mostly on a gut feeling moiled with news judgement and bad coffee--what would make that day's paper. Then he or she went to work assigning reporters and photographers to tighten up what they had written the night before and call sources to confirm or deny rumours. The editor then edited the results--and this is very important--correcting spelling and grammar, moving the most important facts to the lead, questioning any dubious innuendo, deleting slanderous and libellous material and deciding on its prominence according to the page layout.

All was done under a looming deadline; and holding up the press run was akin to cancelling Christmas. Most days the editor's task was a frantic attempt at accuracy, good judgement, smoothing ruffled feathers among reporters/photographers who did not agree how their work had been cropped, taking calls from the public who did not agree on how they or their business had been reported on and maintaining a sense of humour. That done, the editor would turn to the In box again because tomorrow was another day and another paper had to get out.

So, yes, the news landscape has changed and is never going to be the same. And, no, I do not think the tech giants of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and their ilk even considered the importance of news integrity back in the heady days of million-dollar startups and juvenile CEOs. Nor did those in the traditional press twig onto the story that their world was about to end. One of the hazards of being the story is not knowing it.

There are a few faint beacons of light trying to beat off the fog at the end of the questionable news tunnel. This week the Prime Minister announced Canada will be instituting a digital charter to police the wild west that is the Internet. It was remarkably short on details but it is something if done correctly. I would vote for someone who grew a spine and stood up to the tech industry's lackadaisical attitude toward lawful expression of opinion and common decency.

Should this theoretical leader be interested, I would suggest the mandating of editorial boards through which all would-be online material must be vetted in order to reach Canadian viewers. Too cumbersome to be practical? An unmanageable volume that would cause Facebook, say, to stop being the go-to platform for current happenings? On the contrary. I posit that if every user was registered using their real name, linked to an algorithm which would automatically remove submissions by non-registered users, most of the trolling would stop. Legitimate user posts would be scanned by a team of (probably, harried) editors from their electronic In box. If there is nothing slanderous, libellous, cruel or illegal it will be posted.

These are just the musings, of course, of an old hack. I would not know an algorithm from a Game of Thrones storyline. I do know there are a lot of smart young people who could be trained up as editors and I am betting they could quite handily sort out the online news world. It might slow the news feed by a millisecond but I think it is worth the wait. And there are legions of lawyers who could begin prosecuting and defending slanderers and libellers should they persist.

Wouldn't it be Utopia-like to have the Internet working for us and with us instead of against us?

                                                       ✳✳✳✳✳✳✳

One of the ironies of all this is that when I hit the Publish button this blog is dispersed electronically only. No paper copies will ever exist. And to enhance my readership audience I post it on good ole Facebook. There is an actual messy In box on my desk. I, for one, would welcome another set of eyes on what I deem important to share before it is released to the Wild West.

Up Up and Away...and all that

The Travel Section fell out of the Saturday paper at my feet and I ignored it; it lay there for an inordinately long time like a cast-aside love letter and then I put it out with the other recycling. There was a time not so long ago that I saved it for last, idly flicking through it, stopping to pore over gorgeous scenes and descriptions of adventures. Adding and subtracting destinations from the bucket list in my head.

It dawned on me, by my callous disregard for the venerable escapism of "Great Getaways", somewhere along my well-travelled paths between Toronto, Florida, Calgary and Europe something in my psyche had shifted. On reflection, I think my soul has wearied of air travel; that, for the time being, the allure of every exotic destination will be weighed against the exhausting inconvenience and bullying meanness of airport security personnel.

I feel like I should be sad about this quasi decision; after all, there are an average of 102,000 flights daily. Can that many people be wrong? Maybe....Perhaps we were never meant to take flight. I read recently there were dinosaurs walking the Earth the size of a 737. Every time we taxi down a runway for takeoff using one more foot, one more second than I feel necessary before liftoff, I am convinced this is it. "We" are never going to get this lumbering behemoth into the air...and why did I ever believe them when any dimwitted landlubber can see it'll never work. Then the strip drifts away and I can taste relief like the best mint chocolate ever.

Instead of routinely handing over my credit card for another tortuous flight, for another so-so adventure, for a less-than-exotic all-inclusive experience (that is not all-inclusive, just saying). If I were to stay at home and, say, watch a documentary on Thailand or New Zealand or London I could do so without fear of an overhead bin disgorging its overweight, oversized contents onto my head. There would be no child kicking the back of my seat or rude man using all the armrests and half of my leg room. I could eat real food and not have to slog all my electronics and water and trail mix in a backpack when I go to the bathroom.

My world-weariness definitely is partly due to the distemper afflicting our American neighbours but they are not entirely to blame. The over-reaction to the 9/11 attacks in their mistaken belief that terrorism can be reined in by regulation has only succeeded in harassing everyday flying citizens into a misery bordering on the agony of watching paint dry while limping on a treadmill that speeds up and slows randomly.

In the U.S.' defence, I am probably my own worst enemy. I suffer with an affliction akin to the phobia of everything; except my difficulties arise in the form of being prepared for every contingency. Into a duffel designed to hold a week's worth of gear I am compelled to pile in protection from heat, cold, drought, sunburn, flood, boredom, sinusitis, power outages, starvation, blisters and the very real possibility that I will forget all my passwords. With all that margin of safety stowed I inevitably forget an essential like reading glasses or pyjamas.

In my time I have struggled across vast expanses of airport real estate with as many as four electronic devices strapped to my body. This is as insane as lugging a filing cabinet full of every photo I have ever taken, every document ever written by me and every book I have read or intend to. Those devices do not actually get heavier as we load them with books and games movies; it just feels that way.

I could be wrong about my intentions to stay put. I will probably be coaxed back into the air by husband or friends or the allure of warm climes during a cold winter. Or maybe I will truly be grounded; I will tackle the myriad projects on the back burners; I will explore and enjoy the Canada around me; I will partake of the international flavours that others have brought to us in our larger cities.

Either way, I am glad I did every trip. And that I made it back home safely. If nothing else extensive travel has made me appreciate my own bed. My own home. My own country.

‘Tis the Season

There is nothing like extended periods of wakefulness in the wee hours to spur the mind into fertile fields of curiosity. Inane, insane existential possibilities can circle endlessly in a brain addled by sleep deprivation. And a body somewhat dehydrated due to the expectoration of mucous, phlegm, sputum, you name it.

I must insert the disclaimer. This is just a female cold. Not the dreaded Man Cold which, backed by dodgy research done by a male (just saying), has “proven” that testosterone amplifies the effect of cold germs in the delicate male anatomy causing the victim to cry pitifully from the sofa for soup and tender loving care.

My ailment began a week ago in the depths of December, as the daylight hours dwindled to near-nil. I recklessly attended a Christmas concert for the kindergarten set. Upon pulling open the school door I was assailed with the coughing, sneezing, germy, squirmy masses. They were all adorable of course. The concert was short, sweet and delightful and, upon exiting the building, thought to myself, I may as well just lick all the door knobs on my way out. I knew what to expect. On schedule I came down with the standard symptoms 24 hours later. And faithful to the best medical advice I treated myself with antihistamines, Vicks and plenty of fluids so that the pestilence lasted only seven days instead of the normal week.

Throughout my ailment I was able to finish the shopping and wrapping, attend to my and my mother’s appointments and Tai Chi classes. I made a full meal at the end of every day and finished up some Christmas sewing projects. And during the long nights, when it feels like all your bodily fluids need to exit at the same time, my mind wandered into odd territories. Of course, blessed with wifi and bedside device I was able to Google all kinds of weird and wonderful topics.

Did you know, for example, that there is a significant difference between mucous and phlegm? (You will want to store up the coming information to drop into your next cocktail party conversation.) The former, the slippery aqueous secretion produced by and covering mucous membranes, can be manufactured in many parts of the body—and secreted from various orifices. (See how this is going to delight your fellow party-goer?) Phlegm, on the other hand (well, maybe both hands during full on expectoration) is limited to mucous produced by the respiratory system—and this is very important—excluding that from nasal passages.

After taking in all that information at 4.35 a.m. I had kind of lost interest and did not ask Google to find the medical term for snot. Sorry. You will have to investigate that yourself in the mid-night hours because today I am feeling better and have a long list of activities to occupy me: walking outside in the snow, baking cookies, watching schmaltzy Christmas movies and, oh yeah, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Because my husband has been moping about this morning, whimpering and looking at me accusingly. The second week of suffering will be the worst.

With that being said, I would like to wish everyone a healthy holiday season. May we all emerge with our immune systems, spouses and senses of humour intact.

The Dog Days of Summer

If you should be so lucky as to find yourself sitting beside an expanse of water in the early morning sunshine this summer you are one of the luckiest people in the world. I count myself among that fortunate diaspora when I get to live on an island for three months every summer and as glorious as that can be, I think it is the silence I enjoy the most.

The perfect beginning to a day begins with me perched overlooking the water, coffee at elbow, sunshine on my legs, watching the loons perform their ablutions. The only sounds are the chirp of birds, the click of a screen door on the next island, a rustle of breeze in the leaves, the distant buzz of a motorboat....ah, perfect. Oh, and the quiet hum of a refrigerator inside the cottage because cottaging is sooo much less enjoyable without easy storage and cooking of food. Thank-you to the 18th-century scientists and inventors who figured out electricity.

When my husband and I began this island adventure over 30 years ago--and it can be a daunting adventure when you're trying to get building materials, furniture, heck, even the weekly supply of groceries into boats, out of boats and up 30 steps--I thought it would be the solitude I loved most. As it turns out, solitude is not all it's cracked up to be. It is important, to be sure, but must be mixed judiciously with regular infusions of laughter with friends and family, witty conversation and games played with children. Apparently, though, it is silence that is the essential ingredient to successful cottaging for me.

Now to be overbearingly exact, there is a difference between solitude and silence. The former designates the state of being alone, ideal for hermits, loners and introverts. Silence, on the other hand, means no sound; zero decibels; nothing for your ear drums to do. Ideal for, apparently, only me.

Over the years I did not properly relish the bounty of silence that was mine for the taking. It was not until my husband, semi-retired and suddenly my new best friend, was also enjoying the cottage more...but in a perversely noisy way. All of a sudden there was equipment running from morning to night--lawn mower, leaf blower, pressure washer, chain saw, fire pump, compressor and other mysteriously useless but decibel-enhanced pieces of equipment. I complained and, for the most part, he has agreed to use them when I am away. Or when he forgets that I exist, which happens more often than one would imagine.

So having tamed that beast, it was with consternation that I realized I had come up against a much bigger wall of sound. Dogs. And before I hear from all the pet-lovers out there, full-disclosure, I like a well-trained, well-behaved dog. We owned one until we realized the dander was triggering asthma attacks in our daughter and either she or the dog had to go. We kept her, gave the dog to a good home and moved on.

To digress, the ideal society--the daily living that we do in conjunction with everyone else we come into contact with--pretty much mandates peace, order and good governance. Simple, right? Of course, the devil is always in the details. My definition of each will differ from my neighbour's and that is where "peace" comes in. I think of it as everyone trying to get along. If that cannot be achieved, governance sometimes is required.

Anyway, back to the cottage--where, you recall, I would like silence to reign supreme--I am surrounded on all sides by dog-owners. Not in close physical proximity but, given the propensity for sound to travel long distances over water, the dogs seem to be nearby. There are two at my neighbour's on this island and I can count up to a dozen on the islands in our bay. When one canine begins to bark, they all feel the need to join in. When one of the dogs next door decides to howl incessantly every 30 seconds until her owner returns from an outing, not only are other dogs yowling, other islanders are yelling to shut it up and I and my book are begrudgingly driven indoors.

There is no noise bylaw and, short of reverting to a police state, it would be impossible to oversee anyway. Besides that would be overkill. Shouldn't the key to success in this world just be us figuring out how to all get along? On little islands and across vast continents where tyrants rule and their populations flee or starve or shoot each other over differing ideologies?

I am happy to report that peace and, mostly, quiet has broken out in our little bay. My neighbour takes her sad little dog with her when she leaves. This makes me and all the other neighbours and their dogs a little happier. And my husband has only had one recent incident of the need to pressure-wash everything in sight. In spite of 40 days and nights of rain. It just goes to show that happiness (or the chance for silence??) begins at home.

Backing Onto Success

A remarkable event occurred in my life this week. I weeded my overgrown flower garden. I dug up a perennial and moved it to a sunnier location. (I know. I know. The Green Thumbs are wagging saying, You should wait until autumn to do that.) Never mind. Given the standard state of neglect reigning in my patch of Earth any TLC is as welcome as a whiff of freshly-baked bread.

Not only did I pull and dig and remove the offending growth with a wheelbarrow, I was able to walk--upright--back into the house at the end of the day.

Let me "back" up. Three months ago I would not have been able to achieve that level of normal function. As I edged (aged) into my sixties, my lower back pain had ratcheted up in step; two hours of manual labour would put me on the couch for the rest of that day and probably another as well, devouring Advil, with a heating pad cranked up to High against my lumbar region. My doctor ordered x-rays that showed degenerative disc disease and sent me to physiotherapy. The PT pooh-poohed that phrase, said there is no such disease, it is only normal wear and tear and ordered exercise. I went back to my heating pad.

The good news is the PT was right. The bad, of course, is that it took me way too long to accept her verdict and get down on the floor and do the exercises. My epiphany occurred while listening to an interview on CBC Radio with American journalist and author Cathryn Jackobson Ramin who, after a long tale of woe about back pain similar to my own--except she also had unsuccessful spinal surgery--investigated the "back industry" and wrote a book called Crooked, Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting On the Road to Recovery. I do not regret immediately ordering it online and reading it late into the night, nodding all along the way. In fact, if my e-reading device develops dog-eared edges it will be Ms. Ramin's fault. She also has a very informative website: www.cathrynjacobsonramin.com which she updates as new information becomes available.

The book details, among other things, her discovery of University of Waterloo professor of spine biomechanics Stuart McGill and his simplification, explanation and demonstration of the Big Three exercises needed to maintain a healthy, functioning back. He has a very slick website (www.backfitpro.com) which frankly worried me a little with its slickness. On offer are courses, books, videos, testimonials and lumbar supports for purchase. Not to worry though. There is no need to set up an account or purchase material and there are helpful You Tube videos of the essential exercises.

I won't try to explain the exercises here but they are simple to perform and take a total of six minutes. I timed myself. It's a good idea to review the video occasionally because I just realized I should fine-tune my technique on a couple of them. But the most important technique is: Do Them Every Day.  Dr. McGill likens it to brushing your teeth. Just because you brush your teeth one day and they are clean does not mean you don't get up and brush them again the next morning. Now I do my exercises right after I brush my teeth.

There are many good points that I took away from the book and it is important to remember that Ms. Ramin's experiences and research took place in the United States (as well as investigating innovative practitioners and programs from Europe, Australia and Canada) under a medical system that based much of the medical profession's remuneration on the number of diagnostic tests and surgical interventions. Counselling lifestyle changes, while the most effective solution in the majority of cases, did not generate revenue for doctors.

Two of the scariest outcomes for many American back-pain sufferers were unsuccessful surgery (not only did the surgery not relieve patients' symptoms, many were significantly worse afterward i.e. in more pain than before surgery); added to this was a breakdown in the evidence-based system for approval of opioid drugs, causing many back-surgery "failures" to become addicted and unable to function in their jobs, families etc.

We can be thankful for our Canadian health care system in that we avoided the American scenario. However, physiotherapy is not free and many health benefit plans either do not cover it or provide limited access. Luckily ongoing PT (or x-rays or chiropractic interventions, for that matter) should not be required in the journey to back health. Doing the back-strengthening exercises every day, not sitting more than three hours in a row ever (admittedly difficult to avoid in our sedentary, screen-oriented, lengthy-commute environment) and dropping the avoidance behaviour that we all thought would save our backs, seems to be the way to go.

So get back out there: weed your garden; carry your own groceries; move regularly. And maybe avoid Dr. Oz's advice. He did not fare well in the book. Next I'm going to enrol in the neighbourhood Tai Chi class and attempt to learn all 108 poses. Memory work as well!