Gross cubed

It's 12/12/12 12:12:12.

Not as fun as last year's 11/11/11 sequential date, but nonetheless it looks cool on your watch. Alas, unless you're too young to be reading this, more than likely you'll never see another numeric coincidence like this in your lifetime: the next one will occur on January 1, 2101.

Of course, no one is going to see that anyway, because in 10 days on 12/21/12, the Mayans are going to rise from the dead and bludgeon the planet into extinction with their calendar.

That is all.

On this day

Had he not passed away yesterday, today would be the 92nd birthday of jazz legend Dave Brubeck (1920–2012). His groundbreaking 1959 album Time out was centred around the concept of unusual time signatures, and though unconventional, it soon became a huge bestseller, and arguably is one of the "gateway" albums through which newcomers to jazz approach the genre.

Brubeck was second only to Herbie Hancock on my hierarchy of jazz pianists, and the world is significantly less groovy today. By now you've probably heard more than your fair share of Brubeck clips on the news, but I hope you're not averse to one more take of "Take 5" in his honour:

So it turns out I'm exactly 50 years younger than Dave Brubeck. Well, that's something.

Also today is the 95th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion. On December 6, 1917, the Norwegian steamer Imo collided with the French cargo ship Mont-Blanc in Halifax Harbour. Mont-Blanc subsequently caught fire and then detonated, levelling much of Halifax and killing nearly 2,000 people. At three kilotons, it was the largest man-made explosion in history until the birth of the atomic bomb (by comparison, Little Boy, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, was 16 kilotons). The shock wave from the blast was heard and felt hundreds of miles away; then-Prime Minister Robert Borden was in Charlottetown, PEI, and he heard it.

Third, this is the 23rd anniversary of the Montreal Massacre, in which the deranged Marc Lepine armed himself, entered L'Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, and killed 14 women. Despite being a white, Christian male (who was also studying engineering at the time of the murders), I still stubbornly refuse to accept responsibility for Lepine's actions.

Finally, this is the feast day of Saint Nicholas of Myra who, in addition to being the prototype of Santa Claus, was notorious for beating Arius at the Council of Nicaea. Go celebrate the day by slapping out a heretic.

Ecce agnus Dei qui tollit peccatum mundi

On Thursday night, I attended the opening performance of John Pielmeyer's 1979 play Agnes of God, the final production of 9th Hour Theatre Company's 2012 season, at the Great Canadian Theatre Company's Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre.¹

Sister Agnes (Gabrielle Lazarovitz), a naïve young novice in a Catholic convent, was discovered in her cell, unconscious and covered in blood after giving birth to a baby. The baby was strangled and left in a wastebasket under Agnes' bed. She claims she has no recollection of giving birth—she did not know she was even pregnant (nor, apparently, did any of the other sisters), or even how she became so.

The court has appointed a psychiatrist, Dr. Martha Livingstone (Anna Lewis), to assess Agnes' mental state and determine whether she is fit to stand trial for manslaughter. Mother Superior Miriam Ruth (Janet Rice) is determined to protect Agnes from the influence of the chain-smoking, atheist doctor. She believes Agnes is a complete innocent: she was raised in an isolated house, sheltered from worldly things, before entering the convent at age 17 when her mother died. Miriam believes it is plausible that Agnes has been "touched by God."

Dr. Livingstone, on the other hand, wants to protect Agnes from the influence of the church; an embittered ex-Catholic, she is not certain whether Miriam is looking out for Agnes' best interests first, or the convent's reputation. Beginning with psychoanalysis followed by hypnotism, Livingstone begins to reveal the mystery of whether Agnes is responsible for her baby's death.

9th Hour's mandate is to use the dramatic arts to tell stories that explore questions about faith and spirituality, and Agnes of God certainly does that. This is a play of contrasts: between belief and unbelief (Livingstone the atheist vs. Miriam the faithful, if somewhat modernistic, Catholic), miracles and science (the possibility of a miraculous virgin birth vs. "hysterical parthenogensis"), faith and logic (during one of their truces, Miriam laments to Livingstone that what they've gained in the latter, they've lost in the former), and saints and sinners (neither woman is sure which one Agnes really is). Though Agnes of God has been billed as being about the nature of faith and love, it seems to me that it is more properly about the question of the place of faith in the modern world. I am definitely not sure that I buy into this play's premise that they are antithetical.

Agnes is staged in the GCTC's studio theatre rather than the mainstage (where, coincidentally, it was also opening night for another play featuring an all-female cast). The studio seats about 75, and the seats are arranged around three sides of the stage. This is a big change from the traditional proscenium theatres I have attended in the past: it's a lot more intimate and immersive. It also makes the stage feel somewhat like a courtroom, which seems suitable for this particular work. On the other hand, Anna Lewis' chain-smoking Martha goes through about a dozen herbal cigarettes, and in such a small room, the constant smoky smell is off-putting at times. (It was too much for one attendee.) To be fair, we were warned.

The set is minimalist, consisting of a back wall as well as two gables to define the "room" in which the action takes place. The props are three chairs and three wastebaskets. Stage lights shine either through the gable structures or dirty gels, casting banded or dappled shadows on the stage floor. Together with Stephen Lafond's eerie score (performed by cellist Martain Pearson), the overall effect is quite pleasantly surreal.

All three cast members are on stage for the entire production—no mean feat for a 90-minute play with no intermission. Janet Rice's performance stands out: she is completely convincing as the Mother Superior who appears to be soft-spoken, pleasant, and benevolent at the start, but as the story progresses we realize she's hard as nails and has her own secrets to guard. Gabrielle Lazarovitz, who has a beautiful singing voice for Agnes' Latin chanting, does very well portraying the beatific and seemingly innocent Sister Agnes. But Anna Lewis has the hardest job, with only a couple of short breaks in which she is not engaged in dialogue or monologue (her character also serves as the narrator). She is certainly up to the challenge of such an extended stage presence. As the play progresses, the antagonism between Livingstone and Miriam escalates. The dialogue suggests that there's a lot of bitterness and pent-up rage in the psychiatrist: after all, she's a lapsed Catholic who hates nuns by her own admission. Lewis will have to try harder to convince me. She isn't angry enough. But she does have a few very good moments, for example, when Livingstone suddenly realizes the effect her cigarette smoking is having on Agnes during hypnosis.

Despite a few flaws, this production of Agnes of God is competent, entertaining, and thought-provoking. Director Marc-Andre Charron, the cast, and the crew have put together something they can be proud of. Agnes of God runs until November 10.

Footnote

¹ In the interests of "full disclosure," I was part of the chorus for 9th Hour's inaugural production, "Telling the Story," back in 2010.

Thankfulness

Yesterday morning, our senior pastor dropped a bombshell during his Thanksgiving sermon: he announced his resignation to accept the presidency of Heritage College and Seminary in Cambridge, Ontario. (The story he told of how he gradually came to this decision was touching. If and when I revive my rather moribund series on the will of God, I may have to find a way to include it.)

Pastor Rick has been a part of our church family for nearly 15 years—only a few months' shorter time than I have been there myself. In fact, he candidated for the pulpit only a week before I moved to Ottawa: in the midst of the infamous 1998 ice storm, no less, which fortunately didn't stop him from moving to Canada from California in the end! He is probably the finest expository teacher I have ever heard in Real Life, and also someone with whom I've had a good "professional" relationship, of a sort, as the computer operator who turns his PowerPoint slides for him a few Sunday evenings per month.

It will be very disappointing to see Pastor Rick go. Heritage's gain is our loss. But I would rather not eulogize his pastorate on Thanksgiving weekend; rather, I'd prefer to list a few things for which I am now profoundly thankful.

• I am thankful for having met Rick Reed, and that I can count him as a friend.
• I am thankful for his faithful exposition of the Word of God these past 15 years, and for the way that he preached exactly the message that I needed to hear on several occasions, his encouragement, his devotion to his pastoral duty, his personal integrity, and his Christian humility.
• I am thankful that the Met's partnership with Heritage means he isn't really gone all that far.
• I am thankful for the rest of our pastoral staff and the board of elders, whose oversight will ensure that we will weather the coming changes.
• I am thankful for the wisdom of the elders, whose recommendations of pastoral candidates has always had the overwhelming confidence of the congregation.
• I am thankful for the Met, a beacon of the Gospel and a locus of biblical faithfulnes in the Ottawa area for 80 years.

It is that last bullet that is most significant. Senior pastors will come and go (Pastor Rick is the eighth), but the church stays, because its head is not in the ever-changing parade of staff, but the unchanging Christ. I am called to fellowship with the local assembly, not to follow a man about the country like a spiritual Deadhead.

On the same day that Rick Reed resigned, I submitted my application for membership in the Met. The work of the Gospel continues here in Ottawa, and I want to be part of it for the long hall. Meanwhile, I think it will be in good hands in Cambridge.

God speed, Pastor Rick.

On September and science fiction

It's October 1, which means my eighth stab at a science fiction-free September has, more or less, come to an end. My goal for this September was twofold: first, to focus on nonfiction (which I normally only read in between novels, as time permits), and to finish up some books that I had started earlier in the year. As usual, I fell somewhat short of those goals, but if the point is to get my nose into something other than space opera, can it really be called a failure?

I started the month with Mark Steyn's After America. Steyn's previous book, America Alone, foresaw a future in which the United States alone refused to capitulate to the expansion of Islam. The book was so controversial that excerpts published in Maclean's got him, and the magazine, in trouble with Canada's human rights commissions. After America is a sequel of sorts, in which Steyn argues that even America itself is in decline. Whether you agree or disagree with Mark Steyn's politics, you at least have to admit that he is a treat to read—one of the wittiest columnists now working.

Next, I started in on Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, about the Clutter family murders in Kansas in 1959—the book that originally defined the true-crime genre. It's engaging reading, but I was sidetracked by lighter fare: What Einstein Told His Cook by chemist and food columnist Robert Wolke. I love to cook, and often it's the science behind cooking that interests me most. A lot of the science in this book I knew already, of course, but nonetheless Wolke is an entertaining writer. I look forward to reading the sequel someday.

Then, I got sidetracked again, this time by Ann Coulter's Godless. This time, though, the book was on loan, so it trumped anything I didn't have to return soon. (This would apply also to any SF books I happened to have on reserve; the moratorium isn't absolute, and I'm not going to pass up on a library book just because it's the wrong month.) Like Mark Steyn, Coulter is an effective and witty polemicist, but unfortunately I'm finding Godless more shrill than persuasive.

So that's September. I've still got about half of In Cold Blood and two-thirds of Godless, so I'll see if I can get those two volumes off my nightstand by the end of the week. Then, it's back to Frank Herbert and Stephen King.

Yes this was Sam Sniderman (1920-2012)

Sam Sniderman, aka "Sam the Record Man," has died at the ripe old age of 92.

Sniderman opened his first record store in 1937, and the Sam the Record Man chain rose to prominence in the 1960s when the chain opened its flagship Yonge St. store in downtown Toronto. At one time, Sam's was the top music dealer in Canada, before a changing music industry forced the company into bankruptcy a decade ago—unfortunately, the chain predeceased its founder.

Sniderman was also a major promoter of Canadian music, giving records by Canadian artists prominent shelf space and holding concerts in his stores. He was an advocate of Canadian content regulations for radio stations, which gave some Canadian musicians airplay that they might not otherwise have had.

After I discovered popular music in 1984, no trip to the mall was complete without browsing through the stacks at the record stores, whether Sam's or rival chain A&A. But it really wasn't until I first set foot in the flagship store in downtown Toronto, a couple years later, that I fell in love with the retail music business. Its iconic signage, with two giant spinning neon records, was a perfect enticement. Inside, the store had three floors, including a huge ground floor—to this day, it's still the largest music store I've ever set foot in. A friend back home once challenged me to find a copy of Kerry Livgren's solo album Seeds of Change. Guess where I found my copy? If you couldn't buy it at Sam's in Toronto, it didn't exist.

As my tastes in music diversified and matured, I discovered that the Yonge Street store's classical-music section alone was bigger than any entire mall-based outlet. (Of all the music chains, Sam's stores always had the best classical selection; any Ottawans want to make a case for CD Warehouse?) I lived in Toronto for eight months in 1994, only a year after buying my first CD player, and I spent a lot of Saturday afternoons—and money—in Sam's classical CD racks. Even in later years, busing to or from school in Waterloo, I'd take advantage of my stopover in Toronto to hike up to Yonge and do some music shopping. I'm pretty sure that today, 15 years after my life in southern Ontario is a memory, the majority of my classical CD collection was still purchased at the flagship store.

Today, my favourite store ever is gone and the giant spinning discs are a memory. (Is there even any such thing as a record store any more?) Nonetheless, thank you Sam Sniderman—without your fine business, I might be somewhat richer in assets, but my teens and twenties would have been somewhat poorer.

(Not)able firsts at the DNC

Amongst the dignitaries on stage last evening in Charlotte for the Democratic National Convention:

• Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Law School professor, former advisor to President Obama, and Massachusetts senatorial candidate, claims Cherokee ancestry, and has been billed as the "first woman of colour" on the Harvard Law School faculty. In reality, Warren is no more Cherokee than she is Martian; she's been nicknamed "Fauxcahontas" by her critics, and the Indian delegates at the convention want to have a word or two with her.
• Former president Bill Clinton, once hailed as the "first black president" by author Toni Morrison, because of his good relations with the black community and other superficial considerations, such as a love of jazz. He's no more black than Warren is Indian.
• Finally, at the end of Clinton's speech, he was joined briefly by President Obama, recently described in a Newsweek cover story as the "first gay president." Go on, guess how gay he actually is. Someday, the U.S. will actually have a gay Democrat for president; I wonder what trumped-up distinction they'll have to resort to for him?

Symbolism, it seems, trumps the reality at the DNC.

Of the reading of books there is no end . . .

. . . or so would Solomon have said, if he weren't so busy making 'em.

This being the halfway point of the year—roughly; it's more like the halfway point of the summer—I thought I'd take stock of this year's reading program. As of now, I've completed 14 books and have a further 4 in various stages of incompleteness. This being the eighth month of the year, that's somewhat less than two books per month. But it's also the 32nd week of the year, and so by rights I should be through that many books, and none of these have been particularly long (excepting, perhaps, The Stand).

Methinks I'm often too ambitious. Not with the volume—I think a novel a week is quite achievable, and I've done it before. But I'm trying to balance various genres, pulp vs. literary fiction, and so forth, and I'm finding that my enthusiasm for reading waxes and wanes accordingly. For a guy with a BA in English, for example, my tastes in fiction are decidedly populist: better suited to an airport lounge than a wing chair. And while I'm not in the least apologetic about my tastes, it does mean that when I try to tackle, say, Dickens or Steinbeck, my page count takes a hit.

So I've decided to change tactics in the short term. A while back, I started reading through the complete works of Stephen King, in order, although, as I said back in February,

I have a definite bias towards the first half of King's writing career. This is simply due to the fact that apart from Dreamcatcher and Under the Dome, I haven't read anything of his more recent than 1996's The Green Mile. Somewhere I got it in mind to reread King's works anew from the beginning, and got caught in the 1980s.

So, for the foreseeable future, every other book is going to be by King. Earlier this week, I finished up The Stand, so next on the block will be The Long Walk, the second of the "Bachman books."

In alternating weeks, I plan to read Frank Herbert's six original Dune novels, of which I finished the first today. Last week I watched the 2000 miniseries again, and really enjoyed it; I followed this up with the David Lynch feature from 1984, which only served to remind me that a cast of fine actors and some great source material does not guarantee you a good movie. Nice design, though. In any case, John Harrison and David Lynch inspired me to go ad fontes and reread the novel. I haven't read any in the series in at least 10 years, and in fact I've never read farther than God Emperor of Dune, so at least somewhere in October I will be breaking new ground instead of treading over territory I've covered before.

Speaking of science fiction, it's only a few weeks until September, and my eighth annual moratorium on reading SF. I've decided to do something a little different this year: focus on nonfiction instead of fiction. On my works-in-progress list to the right, Mark Steyn's After America and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood are languishing, so I'll start by finishing them, and then move on to something else. Stephen King's Danse Macabre should be more or less in position to read at that point, too. After that, I'll fill in the rest of the month with whatever I can. My goal is to maximize the number of books I can complete in a single month, rather than hold strictly to the one-book-per-week schedule. I'm also re-reading Augustine's Confessions, so I hope finally to begin blogging a series on the book that I've long wanted to do, and which I hope will lead to regular blogging on a few profound theological or philosophical books each year.

It seems odd to update an all-too-often-neglected blog just to let you all know about my all-too-often-neglected reading habit, but there you go. Happy reading!

Ernest Borgnine (1917-2012)

Veteran character actor Ernest Borgnine died today in Los Angeles of renal failure at the ripe old age of 95.

Like most 80s kids, I first saw Borgnine as the co-star of Airwolf. It was only in relatively recent years, when I've had the chance to watch more classic TV and cinema, that I discovered his best work: movies like The Dirty Dozen, The Wild Bunch, The Poseidon Adventure, and selected episodes of McHale's Navy. (He was also in Disney's The Black Hole, for which I have a fondness disproportional to its actual merits.)

95 is a ripe old age for a hard-working actor. Rest in peace, Ernest.

Come, all ye bold Canadians, to Canada Day

Happy Canada Day, mes amis. Today is Canada's 145th birthday. I'm actually writing this up on the evening of June 30, but if the weather is agreeable, then by the time you read this, I'll be downtown seeing the sights on and around Parliament Hill (and I'll be viewing this evening's fireworks from a friend's balcony).

Since I started this blog, it has been my tradition to give a brief history of a different Canadian patriotic song each July 1. I believe I hit the point last year where I had done the last song I knew. So I found myself at a bit of a loss this summer for new material.

However, at some point I realized, "Hey, wait a minute—this is 2012. It's the bicentennial year of the beginning of the War of 1812!" After all, surely a major war produced a patriotic song or two . . .