Uninhabited Spaces

The Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen's announced today that it has been gifted a second Rembrandt painting from Drs Alfred & Isabel Bader, amongst the most generous of its benefactors. Valued at USD $16-million the painting dates from 1661. With this gift the Queen’s University gallery now holds two of Canada’s six Rembrandts. Both Rembrandts join over one hundred European paintings already given by the Baders over the past three and a half decades, making the Agnes Etherington Art Centre a leading public gallery in Canada in the research and presentation of Old Master painting.

I stumbled across this remarkable memoir three years ago in a discount bin. It was such an ignoble place to find such a singular work. I have read it about five times now since my discovery, and I recommend it for anyone interested in etymology and the origins of human civilization, and its accompanying deitrus. This is not an academic book but rather a very personal journey of its most poetic author. So much of humanity sprung from the sands, and our stories of creation and time can be traced back to the desert and its eternal mysteries.

It has abruptly come to my attention that we are in a state of disprepair when it comes to social graces. From sales associates, to e-mail, to meetings, to dates, to invitations, and even to the humble phone call, we have lost our way. Seduced by the promise of technology we have utterly confused the tool with the relationship. Witness the texting of nonsense on small phones during movies, a groups of students "meet" with their laptops, the ubiquitous white chain of the iPod, the person who calls a meeting with you and then proceeds to stare at their lap the whole time, slave to their Blackberry. People are spending inordinate amounts of time (and money) in picking and personalizing their devices and the least amount of time in composing their thoughts to actually broadcast. We have failed to maintain the essentials of good manners in our postmodern social interactions. How many couples in restaurants have you seen, ostensibly on a date, who have one (if not both) seated part...

It's somewhat painful to realize that the U.S. is only in the midst of the nominations process. There is much more rhetoric to come, once the actual campaign for the Presidency begins. Of course in so many ways, the campaign has begun. The field of dreams is loaded down heavily, and we await the first casualties. Clearly there are those who need to stop rearranging the deck chairs and call it a day, while others need to stop listening to their handlers and try, even if for a day, to say something unscripted. One gets a sense that every soundbite, every speech, every gesture and emotion played out has been test-screened in 30 states. And how many more YouTube videos from the candidates can we be expected to take, as they reach out the masses and crave to be seen like you and me, and the guy next door, and your old-enough-to-vote niece too? Were I a Democrat American and able to vote I would be struggling with the choices. I really want to like Hilary. No doubt she has the experien...

Last night CBC aired the poignant documentary "9/11: The Falling Man". This unsettling photo was published word wide on September 12 but then disappered due to public anger. The print media's self-censorship contributed, the film argues, to the deliberate avoidance of a most gruesome thought: that people chose to jump to their deaths on that fateful morning. Instead the media specifically focused on presenting images of the heroic. The film reminds us that many peoples' loved ones were essentially erased from public discourse (and public grieving) simply because the jumpers had made this last act of free will. It is impossible to watch the footage and not imagine oneself in this harrowing position. It is also impossible, it seems to me, to judge these doomed souls as they wrestled with a most horrible choice. And yet there's that iconic photo, like that of Phan Thị Kim Phúc 29 years earlier, a defining image full of grace and a strange peace amidst a cacophony of ...

According to Statistics Canada, Kingston (with a population of 152,000) ranks 7th in Canada for the proportion of its population that identifies as being in a same-sex couple! We were exceeded only by Vancouver, Montreal, Victoria, Halifax, Moncton and Ottawa-Gatineau. In case you're wondering: we tied with Toronto. Of Kingston's same-sex couples, 12 per cent are married and 88 per cent are common law. Oh yeah, on July 20, 2005, Canada became the third country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage (after the Netherlands and Belgium). As far as I can tell, our country has not collapsed...

Queen's has just purchased the former Prison for Women (circa 1934), seen in the middle of the photo above, as part of its need to gain more space for its increasingly congested main campus. It's most likely that Queen's Archives will move into the site, once it's been renovated and prepared. And, yes, we are taking the walls down (save for the one that backs onto a residential area on the western end). By the way, you can also see the Queen's Faculty of Education right across the street (where my partner Mark is currently pursuing his B.Ed.) and the red building is a Queen's residence hall. At the bottom of the image is the main gate into Canada's most infamous prison, Kingston Penitentiary (circa 1835). Kingston makes for an interesting locale indeed...

Given the powerful emotions and hot-button nature of the topic, I wondered how the presidential candidates were messaging today's sad anniversary on their home pages. Here's a selection: Barack Obama "Remember 9/11. Unite Again." Hilary Clinton "September 11, 2001. We will never forget". John MCCain [nothing] Mitt Romney From soldiers guarding our liberty on foreign shores to those of us living under the umbrella of the protection they provide, we are united in remembering loved ones lost on that day and in our determination to protect our homeland from future attacks." Rudy Guiliani "September 11, 2001. We will not forget. This massive attack was intended to break our spirit. It has not done that. It has made us stronger, more determined and more resolved.” John Edwards "9/11/2001. We remember..." Fred Thompson [nothing]

Luciano Pavarotti October 12, 1935 - September 6, 2007