Chris Turner: Wielding the axe of hope

“Hope is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency.”

Those words come from Rebecca Solnit’s book, Hope in the Dark, but as far as Chris Turner is concerned, they must be the starting point in every battle against global warming. And if you want a living personification of that sort of hope — find an event where Turner is speaking, and GO. Once you hear him, you’ll probably come away uplifted and inspired.

“Hopeful inspiration” isn’t what we usually feel, listening to the litany of inevitable disasters if we don’t start fighting global warming immediately (or, according to some, even if we do). It’s easy to become nihilistic, thinking our small efforts can’t make a difference. But Turner claims we have good reason to hope.

He was in Toronto on Monday, promoting his book, The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World we Need, at another “This is Not a Reading Series” event at the Gladstone Hotel. And even he, beginning his visual presentation, started with some of the litany. Global warming is indisputable, and its effects are outside the ability of our current world systems to rationalize. You cannot “balance the environment against the economy” — the environment is the economy. Destroy it, and everything else goes too.

But there the similarities between Turner and many other prophets of global warming end. When his daughter was born, four or five years ago, he discovered new incentive to try to change things. And having begun with the principle of hope, he made a trip around the world to discover what was actually possible.

He found countless buildings that produced more energy than they consumed, and entire communities — even entire islands! — that did the same. Nor were all these solutions pre-planned and imposed from on high. Once a community decided which energy saving method best suited them, the ideas tended to snowball, until eventually several methods at once contributed to the community becoming clean.

The most stunning example Turner encountered was the Danish island of Samsø, the most carbon-negative place on earth. The island first set up wind turbines to produce most of its energy. People didn’t even need to be environmentalists; most turbines were, and still are, privately owned, by individuals or groups of investors. They discovered that once their own energy needs were met, they could feed the remaining power into the larger Danish grid. Now they pay off their loans and make a profit while saving the planet.

But it didn’t stop there. At the moment, Samsø’s solutions include solar as well as wind, and a power plant that burns straw. Now they’re working on vehicles that use something other than petroleum.

Meanwhile, in Scotland, Turner visited the Ecovillage at Findhorn. Not only were they experts in ecological buildings and solar and wind power, but they’ve designed a sewage treatment plant consisting of vats with natural mini-ecosystems that gradually purify raw sewage into clean water.

On the continent, Germany drastically changed its energy structure, aiming for 100% renewable energy by 2020. Turner showed one slide demonstrating how the rows of solar panels along the edges of German farms were protected from long grasses growing up to block the panels: sheep grazed freely among the panels and kept the area clean. Not every energy solution needs to be high tech, obviously. Additionally, Germany appeared on the brink of financial collapse before the project began, but with the generation of jobs and the saving of energy costs, their economy has skyrocketed.

As we saw examples of large and small changes from Manchester, England, to Indonesia, it dawned on us, that evening, that we weren’t merely watching someone with an optimistic personality. There are reasons why Chris Turner is so hopeful. The examples are real. It’s been done. And all the tools we need to fix global warming already exist. We don’t even have to wait for someone to invent them.

At the end of the presentation, Turner wryly mentioned the dire predictions others have made, about the transition from a petroleum-based to a green lifestyle inevitably producing violence and disruptions in society. He promised to show us real-life pictures of these horrific disruptions — and then produced photos of a quiet, peaceful street in Samsø.

Yeah, that transition is going to be tough, all right.

Do I want to read this book? I not only yearn to read this book, but I suspect it should be required reading for everyone on the planet.

A visit to Samsø

Findhorn’s Ecovillage

The Geography of Hope

Richard Beymer - Impostor

When you read Impostor: or Whatever Happened to Richard Beymer? (an unauthorized autobiography), the one thing you should not attempt to do is try to discern the autobiographical from the fantastical. The questions would drive you as crazy as he — or at least his literary representation — appears to be, in the book.

Did he or his mother spend time in a mental institution? Did he really have a brief dalliance as a young man that resulted in very eyebrow-raising results later in his life? Did he really rent that New York apartment, with its sinister connections to the apartment next door?

Did he really die by gunshot? Or on an operating table?

Is he really from another planet??

See what I mean?

The book takes the form of a movie script that attempts to chronicle the life of George (Beymer’s alter ego) from his early teen years till the present. But the bizarre disconnects begin when we realize that George himself is actually writing and filming the script as it goes along. He is both a character inside the film and the observer who chronicles all the events, watching himself live (and die?). Add to this the time shifts, replaying of events with different characters and outcomes, and Spaceman George’s desperate attempts to escape this planet once and for all, and the book is both confusing and exhilarating from beginning to end.

The format of a movie script is logical, given Beymer’s line of work, but it might take some time getting used to, for those more accustomed to reading a linear narrative in prose form. But once the reader has made the mental shift from “prose” to “script,” the story thrusts itself forward, with all its convolutions.

The premise of the book is that all Beymer’s life has been an act, which is symbolized by George’s obsession with filming absolutely everything that happens to him and the people around him. The inside cover of his book reads: “Who am I when not being who I think I am?” This encapsulates George’s search for what is essentially an escape from Ego. And yet, even while he tries to escape from himself, he himself appears never to have fully participated in his own life. After all, he was supposedly filming it rather than experiencing it directly. The constant refrain in the book, especially from female characters, is that he never puts down the camera; he is always fretting about his life while not actually living it. So there is a contradiction in his own quest: he seeks to know who the “real George” is when all the acting stops, yet he also fights to escape from the “I.”

The implications of the book, especially when it’s assumed to contain some genuinely autobiographical elements, are disturbing. One senses that the dislocation Beymer suggests, between his actor persona and who he really is, is genuine. What is being chronicled here seems to be a very long struggle to discover his real identity, coupled with sadness that what began as a very promising career seemed to fizzle and never quite fulfill that promise. When one begins with a triumph like West Side Story, where does one go from there?

When you read the blurb on the back of the book, the impression of sadness is strengthened. “Richard Beymer is somewhat famous for acting in certain films and television shows bla bla bla…” The book itself is described as “a totally nonsensical contrivance that most likely will never get published.” The blurb concludes, “In spite of evidence to the contrary, Beymer continues to think he exists…and so on and so forth bla bla bla…”

This resembles nothing so much as a tactic we all use at times, when trying to shrug something off as unimportant even though it would have been very important if only it had gone further, gotten noticed, been a success, etc. We play something down in this self-deprecating way because it really matters to us, and not because it doesn’t. This blurb is humourous, but when you combine it with the contents of the story — the search for self, for success, for release — it comes across more wistful than amusing.

If you want to learn the straight, linear facts about Richard Beymer’s life story, this is probably not the book you’re looking for. But if you want an account of how things looked and felt from the inside — through the sex, drugs, failures and successes, all the seeking, and even the possible answers to Beymer’s lifetime quest — then this crazy, careening, heart-wrenching movie script is exactly what you’re looking for.

Erotic Craft Fair - Not your Christmas craft sale!

Would you have been shocked or embarrassed while visiting this weekend’s Erotic Arts & Crafts fair at the Gladstone Hotel? The subject matter alone sets it apart from, say, a Christmas craft sale or a school fundraiser. But depending on your level of comfort with open discussion (or depiction) of sexuality, no, in general you likely wouldn’t have been shocked.

In fact, you’d probably have been delighted. Sexuality can and should be entertaining as well as pleasurable, whether that entertainment means feather nipple pasties or anatomically correct sock monkeys. When you have displays of everything from erotically embroidered handkerchiefs to thongs knitted from balloons to glass-blown cocks — well, you get the drift. You want vibrating underwear? It’s there. Explicit photography? You’ll find it. Literature? Yep. Chains? Oh yes. But only small ones.

“Wait — just a minute!” you interrupt. “Did you say ‘glass-blown cocks’??”

Yes indeedy. But don’t worry, they’re not meant to be used as dildos. (She says, shuddering.) They are definitely art pieces. When Catherine Hibbits heard about this fair, she decided to experiment and apply her glass-blowing talents to erotic art. She enjoyed showing visitors how the process evolved from more clunky, less detailed earlier pieces to later works that were not only creatively detailed but quite beautiful.

But since this was a new type of project for Hibbits, she faced a new problem. “I didn’t even know what you should charge for a blown cock!” she laughed mischievously. “I mean — it’s already blown!”

“Yes,” I agreed, “so I suppose there should be an automatic discount.”

What? You know some jokes are simply inevitable in this situation.

People’s crafts were displayed in several areas on the hotel’s second floor: a central room branched into two hallways lined with display tables, while a few rooms opened off the hallways. These could only contain three or four displays, but that created an intimate atmosphere that accommodated both the asking of questions or silent, meditative viewing.

The sock monkeys, made by Nicole Dawkins (whose business is called “Dirty Knitty Things”), began simply. The prototype was a cute gift for her boyfriend, but when friends liked it so much, she created more. Every time she makes a monkey, some new idea occurs to her, like using magnets in a two-monkey set, to hold certain body parts together. So every creation is unique.

Other enterprises at this fair began equally accidentally. The artist whose business name is “Boldax,” who embroiders erotic handkerchiefs, was a pregnant woman on maternity leave, with draining sinuses. And the handkerchiefs she had were boring. And she knew how to embroider, and so…

So she posted some photos online, just to get help with stitches, when suddenly the website BoingBoing took notice. Soon people were calling for interviews, or emailing to ask how to buy the handkerchiefs.

Margaret Saliba (of “Exotic Knitwear”) may not have begun her craft accidentally like Nicole or “Boldax,” but her specialty is just as quirky: she knits unused balloons into thongs. Yes, balloons. And yes, thongs that you wear.

But odd as this sounds, they are remarkably soft. Margaret treats them with special lubricant to make them durable and wearable, and customizes them for each client’s measurements. She acquires balloons from all over the world, in a multitude of colours. Her samples from Europe were almost satiny, coming in soft pearl colours we never see in North America. Apart from the thongs — I wanted those European balloons!

Do you sense an underlying theme? This was an erotic arts & crafts fair, certainly, but the actual craft involved in these artists’ work was just as important as the use to which their pieces might be put.

Two other artists were perfect examples: Arlen Gruszczynski (whose business is “All Dressed”) designs custom-made corsets. A trained costume designer, she has worked in commercials, animated projects, and fashion. But looking through her record of other projects, I was delighted to see photos of a wedding party whose members were costumed as super heroes! An awful lot of training and experience lies behind Arlen’s current work, making her corsets stunningly beautiful.

At the same table, the artist known as Lola By Design enthusiastically explained her glass-blowing method when creating her small, exquisite pendants. While she doesn’t concentrate exclusively on erotic art, the pendants she brought with her were both attractive and marvelously suggestive, consisting of small pearls or beads nestled within a voluptuously curved envelope of glass.

I wondered, exploring each display, if maybe the more hard core items were left behind and the fair toned down for public consumption. But on the other hand, in the fetish or sex toy world, really “hard core items” would be categorized more as “manufactured” than “crafted.” So they might not belong in a crafts fair with vagina pillows and hand-twisted rope.

What shone through all the exhibits was that artistry and creativity bring joy, variety, and pleasure into every area of life. And sexuality, being so vital, benefits magnificently from being treated to this playfulness, rather than always having to be a sombre, weighty matter.

Taking “Consolation” in history

There’s a story behind the story of wherever we live, whether it peeks out from a weathered keystone, lurks in the architecture behind the modern signage on an old building, or ghosts through someone’s comment about a house or business that “used to be here.” And according to Michael Redhill, we might just be less lonely as a society, and even treat each other differently, if we discovered and paid attention to that story.

This past Monday, as part of the “Keep Toronto Reading - One Book” initiative, the Reference Library launched the month-long program with an evening featuring the “One Book” itself — Michael Redhill’s Consolation. The choice of book might seem obvious for a Toronto program, since it features dual storylines set in the city in 1997 and 1857, but the underlying idea that propels both stories is universal and equally important to any city or other community.

It’s too easy, Redhill said during his discussion with journalist Tina Srebotnjak, to be interested only in the “here and now,” while letting the past go without even a look or any documentation. Yet he believes that the way we treat our physical city “leaks into” how we treat other members of our community. The physical city has a lot to do with “the polis,” which the Greeks conceived of as the community itself, exercising citizenship responsibilities within that physical place.

So the modern-day storyline in the book deals with the race between finding and documenting the remains of an old shipwreck at the former shoreline in downtown Toronto, and the threatened destruction of the archaeological site by the construction of a major sports centre on top of it. Running in parallel, the 1857 story depicts the loneliness of three characters who forge a relationship in the old city (part of the “consolation” of the title), and eventually document its early growth with the emerging photographic technology of the time. The result of their work is a 13-part panorama given to the city, which is then sent to Queen Victoria by municipal officials who hope to persuade her to choose Toronto as the capital of pre-confederation Canada. It is the original plates for this panorama, possibly carried as cargo in the lost ship, that the archaeologists seek in the modern story.

The prints of this panorama do in fact exist, one copy in Toronto and another in London, England, although the plates are gone and no one actually knows whose work it was. But it was this photographic series which inspired the novel Consolation and, Redhill said, “put flesh on” the instinct that there was an ongoing Toronto story, carried through past and present.

Monday’s event was more than “just” Tina Srebotnjak’s interview with Michael Redhill. Ross Manson, founder and director of Volcano, an independent theatre company, presented two dramatic readings from the book, one from each time period. And singer Mary Lou Fallis, accompanied by pianist Peter Tiefenbach, provided a musical setting with several early Canadian songs.

In fact, a couple of those musical numbers perfectly illustrated the points Redhill was trying to make. “Oh, What a Difference Since the Hydro Came” chronicles a lover’s complaint that amorous trysts in the darkness of an evening have disappeared, since “the hydro” now makes night as bright as day. Even in 1913, when the song was written, the customs of the past had been cast aside by the progress of the present.

Another early song, “We Dye to Live,” was originally sent around on sheet music by the Parker & Company Dye Works, to the firm’s customers and other citizens in 1890. It served both as a marketing tool, and a song the whole family could sing around the piano.

And the Parker & Company Dye Works, so far as can be ascertained, was originally situated on the site of the Toronto Reference Library. There’s the past and present, connecting once again in a single evening.

Do I want to read this book? Actually, I cheated: I read it last year when it first came out in hardcover. But because I love discovering the history of a place and feel that it helps a person experience the present life of that place in a richer way — yes. That was exactly why I wanted to read the book. And this evening with Michael Redhill would have induced me to read it if I hadn’t done so already.