the future of women's basketball is wearing a hijab

"Enlightening the Clothesminded," by Selena Roberts in Sports Illustrated.

How does she do it? In the face of triple teams, with defenders all but linking their arms like paper dolls, Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir is able to exploit the limited daylight she gets and average 42 points a game.

How does she do it? Passing Rebecca Lobo's 17-year-old Massachusetts high school mark of 2,710 career points is about as easy as bumping Julie Andrews off the hilltop, and yet Bilqis graciously eclipsed the legend in January on her way to becoming the first player in state history -- male or female -- to score 3,000 points.

How does she do it? For the last four seasons --beginning one year after her 43-point varsity debut as, yes, an eighth-grader -- the 5-foot-3 1/2 Bilqis has played for New Leadership Charter School in Springfield in full Muslim dress, arms and legs covered beneath her uniform, wearing a head scarf, or hijab.

Bilqis doesn't mind remarks rooted in curiosity; it's the questions out of ignorance that she meets with a confident rejection. "When some people come at me with, 'Oh, is that a tablecloth on your head?' -- it's like, really, don't," Bilqis (pronounced Bill-KEACE) said last Thursday, the day she ended her high school career with 51 of the Wildcats' 57 points in a regional Division III quarterfinals playoff loss. "If you're going to have that kind of question, don't ask me. But some people are truly honest in asking a question, like, 'Oh, I don't want to be rude, but why do you wear that?' That's the kind of question I'd rather answer."

Read the story here.

This is the kind of story I used to try to pounce on for girls' and kids' magazines. Not enough venues, too many writers, too few hits, and I mostly let it go. But stories like this still make me drool.

we visit the ago

When we first moved to this area, two of Toronto's major museums were both closed: the Royal Ontario Museum (the ROM), and the Art Gallery of Ontario (the AGO), were both being redesigned by famous architects.

So during my first year here, when I was very into exploring Toronto, I didn't see either of those. I did enjoy watching the progress of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal at the ROM, and I did see a small exhibit at the AGO while most of the museum was closed, but both were generally inaccessible.

Then my focus shifted to exploring Mississauga, then to the surrounding regions of Ontario, and I started having more of a life here, and I left the rest of Toronto to discover when I get to it.

Yesterday, taking advantage of the only stat holiday that actually falls on one of our day-job work days, we visited the AGO. I find it ridiculous that the Christian holiday of Good Friday is a national holiday, but it is very nice to have an extra day off together.

I have some criticisms of the new ROM, but I really like the building, especially the visual explosion it makes on the streetscape. But although I usually love Frank Gehry's work, I find the exterior of the AGO disappointing. It looks oversized - hanging too far over the sidewalk and feeling too homogeneous and monolithic - and I dislike the transparent cladding, which looks to me like cheap Lucite. (Photos here and here.)

The interior, however, is wonderful - light and airy, sleek but still warm. Some photos of the interior from various people's Flickr pages: here, here, and here.

At the AGO, we spent some time in the beautiful Galleria Italia, enjoyed the Henry Moore plaster casts and the African collection, and wandered through some rooms of European paintings. I'm afraid that growing up with New York City has spoiled me for art museums, setting my standards too high, but the Art Gallery of Ontario is very nice.

One thing I really liked is that some rooms are arranged thematically, rather than by chronological period or style. One room displayed women depicted by male artists beside work by female artists, another was still lifes from all different styles and periods, a third was a collection on the theme of discovering diversity. This is unusual for an art museum, and an idea rich with possibilities. I noticed, too, that the explanatory texts were very very accessible and non-jargony, another great idea.

We had lunch at the bar at Frank restaurant, which was excellent. Beginning with a long walk with the dogs in the morning, and a Red Sox game at night, it was a lovely day off.

2009 f-word blog awards

Thank you very much to Alison at Creekside, for nominating we move to canada for Best Political Blog in the 2009 Canadian F-Word Blog Awards.

There are so many great Canadian feminist bloggers, and I'm very honoured to be included among them. That will be all from me about the F-Word Blog Awards.

why not let them stay? current conservative arguments demolished

The Conservatives' arguments against letting US war resisters stay in Canada are lame and getting lamer by the minute. Conveniently ignoring that Parliament has now voted twice to let them stay - conveniently ignoring a little thing called democracy - they are currently focusing on two things.

One, I call "but they volunteered": Vietnam was different, those were conscripts, that's why Canada took them in, these people volunteered.

And two, Obama will save them. Bush is gone, Obama is going to end the war in Iraq, and under an Obama administration, the war resisters won't be punished harshly.

Shine a light on either of these excuses and they melt faster than snow in June.

Let's look first at "but they volunteered".

Know your history. Not all the Americans who came to Canada during the Vietnam War were avoiding conscription. Many had volunteered for military service. When they saw what was really happening in Vietnam, they decided they could not participate. They deserted the military and came to Canada. And Canada allowed them to stay.

Here's one man who is testament to these facts, and there are many others.

More recently, many Americans joined the National Guard in order to help their country in times of national emergency – and were then deployed to Iraq. They never volunteered to fight in Iraq, but had no legal option to refuse deployment. That cannot be considered volunteering.

Many soldiers were promised that they would not see combat because they had families with young children. They were also deployed, and had no legal option to refuse.

Some soldiers volunteered after the September 11th terrorist attacks. After deployment to Iraq, they discovered they had been misled about the purpose of the war. They had no legal option to separate from the military.

Some soldiers served their entire tour of duty and were honourably discharged, then were involuntarily re-enlisted, a practice known as "stop-loss". That cannot be considered volunteering.

Under international law, a soldier has not only a right to refuse to participate in human rights abuses and war crimes, but a duty. Many former US soldiers seeking refugee in Canada witnessed abuses against prisoners and civilians. It is their right and duty to refuse to participate, irrespective of how they joined military service.

Now that we've demolished that excuse, let's turn to excuse number two: Obama.

No matter what Obama plans to do in the future, the war in Iraq is going on right now. Is a Commander In Chief of the US armed forces going to absolve deserters during an ongoing war? The idea is preposterous. Progressive people who imagine this are fantasizing. Conservatives who raise this issue are either lying or extremely ignorant.

Changes in the civilian justice system do not effect the war resisters. If deported back to the US, war resisters will not stand trial in civilian court - they will be court martialed. That is, they will be tried and judged by their accusers, the military. As some southern USians say, it's all over but the shoutin'. During these court martial, the only thing in question is the sentencing: how long the jail time, and what kind of discharge.

Robin Long is now serving a 15-month sentence in a military brig. His original sentence was 30 months, but peace-activist lawyer James Branum managed to have it reduced. Daniel Sandate, who was AWOL in Canada and turned himself in, was sentenced to eight months. James Burmeister, who also turned himself in, was sentenced to 9 months.

A US soldier who murdered four Iraqi civilians for no reason was sentenced to seven months.

Indeed, there is a large and growing body of evidence showing that AWOL soldiers who speak out against the war are being punished more harshly than the many soldiers who quietly desert and don't voice their political opinions or moral beliefs.

* * * *

Those are the only responses necessary to the "Obama will save them" non-argument. But if you are speaking to a Canadian who mistakenly views the Democrats as the party of peace, consider this: Obama has advanced a military budget that is $21 billion larger than the Bush military budget. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates - meet the new boss, same as the old boss - has called for eliminating certain expensive weapons systems, but the overall budget he's asking for and will receive is larger than his previous budget.

Once upon a time, when the Soviet Union collapsed, we talked about a "peace dividend" - all the money that could now be diverted from the military into the general US budget. Then terrorism replaced communism as the excuse du jour. US military budgets don't get smaller. They only grow.

Bush's DoD budget was $513 billion budget. Obama's is $534 billion. On top of that, Obama will ask Congress for yet more funds - probably $75.5 billion more - to wage war against Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Is this a party of peace?

* * * *

Next time you hear Canada should deport war resisters because they volunteered, and can deport them because they won't be harshly punished anyway, you'll know what to say.

u.s. equal marriage perspective from the aclu

I got this in an email from the ACLU, and thought it was worth sharing - a perspective on the recent same-sex marriage victories in the US.

Some week. The Vermont legislature voted to let same-sex couples marry, and the Iowa Supreme Court decided that it is unconstitutional not to let same-sex couples marry. Together, these two events are a much needed shot in the arm for marriage.

Iowa is the first win in a flat state without an ocean view. And the decision was unanimous. Vermont is the first time a state legislature has opened marriage, and it did it by a stunning veto override.

Iowa and Vermont don’t entirely erase the damage from losing the Proposition 8 vote in California last November. They don’t have either the cultural or economic influence that the Golden State has. Still, there’s nothing like winning and winning big.

One of the nice things about Vermont is that it more or less puts an end to the idea that marriage is the creature of “unelected judges.” This is two-thirds of the state legislature.

The Iowa Supreme Court decision is the third from a state high court to treat government discrimination against gay people generally as a serious constitutional problem (the other two are the California and Connecticut marriage cases). All three courts say that a long history of discrimination driven by prejudice should make courts suspicious anytime the government singles gay people out. We now have something we’ve been working toward for years; a body of case law we can use to attack discrimination.

What truly sets the Iowa decision apart is a passage in which the Court addresses head-on what it says is the “unspoken” reason why many support the exclusion: religious opposition.

The Court says that while many oppose marriage for religious reasons, religion cannot justify a law excluding gay people from marriage. “State government can have no religious views,” the opinion says, “either directly or indirectly expressed through its legislation.” “This proposition,” the Court goes on to say, “is the essence of the separation of church and state.”

That proposition ought to be obvious, but in the last 25 years, it seems almost to have disappeared from civic discourse in America. It took guts for the Iowa court to say what virtually no other government official has been willing to admit. By bluntly pointing out that religion has driven much of the debate and reminding other courts and legislatures of their obligation not to enshrine religion in law, the Court gave a deeply practical rationale for insisting that marriage exclusions either be based on rigorous logic and evidence or be struck down. And it is that down-to-earth honesty that will, I believe, make this a deeply influential opinion.

More here.

another cost of the occupation of iraq: iraqi refugees

My previous post gives me an opportunity to blog about something that's been sitting in my inbox for ages.

These two videos are part of a campaign to focus attention on the five million Iraqis who have been made refugees from the US invasion and occupation of their country. The most serious situations are in Syria and Jordan.

Refugees International is calling on US President Obama to include Iraqi refugees in the US's plans for Iraq. The organization's language strives for the neutral and apolitical - the US "military intervention" in Iraq? that's quite a mouthful - but I'm sure that's necessary in their line of work. I don't know why the website says "five years," as the invasion took place in 2003, six years ago.

But my quibbles aside, we must remember all the costs of war. Along with the dead, the wounded, the psychologically shattered, there are the millions of people displaced from their homes, everything they own destroyed, family members dead or disappeared, left to cope in a surreal world, a vacuum. Why? Because they had the bad luck to live in a place the US wants to control. A place with oil.

Five years into the US military intervention in Iraq, the country is dealing with one of the largest humanitarian and displacement crises in the world. Millions of Iraqis have fled their homes – either for safer locations within Iraq, or to other countries in the region – and are living in increasingly desperate circumstances. Failure to address the needs of Iraqis will have dramatic impacts on security inside Iraq.

Current Humanitarian Situation

Refugees International has observed extreme vulnerabilities among the approximately 1.5 million Iraqi refugees living in Syria, Jordan and other neighbors of Iraq, as well as the 2.7 million internally displaced persons within Iraq. Most are unable to access their food rations and are often unemployed; they live in squalid conditions, have run out of resources and find it extremely difficult to access essential services.

The Government of Iraq has access to large sums of money, but it lacks both the capacity and the political will to use its resources to address humanitarian needs. Due to this failure, militias of all denominations are filling the vacuum and playing a major role in providing social services in the neighborhoods and towns they control in Iraq. Not only do these Shiite and Sunni militias now have a quasi-monopoly in the large-scale delivery of food, oil, electricity and money, but an increasing number of civilians are joining their ranks– including displaced Iraqis.

Some Iraqis who have tried to return home have found their homes occupied or destroyed, the likelihood of violence still high, a collapse of social services, and neighborhoods divided into homogeneous, sectarian areas. While Refugees International hopes that Iraqis will be able to return to their homes in the future, the necessary conditions for returns to take place in safety and dignity do not exist. Returns must not be encouraged until the violence subsides and people can receive adequate assistance and protection.

Actions Needed

The U.S. must craft a new policy to:
1. Assist Iraqi refugees.
2. Ensure a safe, voluntary return home when possible.
3. Pressure Iraq to meet its responsibilities to its own people.
4. Increase resettlement for those who can't go home.

Read more about our comprehensive plan here.

Refugee International's website says: "A campaign by Refugees International and other organizations led the U.S. State department to increase the resettlement of Iraqi refugees from 200 in 2006 to 13,823 Iraqis in 2008." 13,823 is a small portion of five million, but that's nearly 14,000 people who would be suffering even more today, had it not been for these advocacy groups.

You can show your support by signing a letter to Obama. Refugee International's blog is here.

iraqis protest on anniversary of staged statue-toppling (updated)

From Al Jazeera:

Thousands of people loyal to an Iraqi Shia leader have gathered in Baghdad to protest against the US' continued presence in the country, six years to the day after the capital fell to American troops.

Supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr rallied on Thursday in Firdous Square, where the statue of then-Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was pulled down on April 9, 2003.

The demonstrators waved banners and carried pictures of al-Sadr, calling for an end to the US occupation of Iraq.

The rally, which went ahead despite heavy rain, comes amid US preparations to pull its combat troops out of Iraq by the end of June.

Iraqi police kept watch over the protest but did not enter the main square. Iraqi and American armoured cars were on standby a short distance away.

Public opinion

Abdel Wahab Al-Qassab from the Strategic Studies Centre in Doha, Qatar, which researches political and military strategies, said that Iraqi public opinion is overwhelmingly in favour of US forces leaving the country.

"The US has said verbally that it will end the occupation but we do not know what the real ambition of the invaders is. They could yet say there is no stability in the country and extend their presence there.

"The US has already said that 50,000 troops will remain in Iraq for what they say is training Iraqi troops. But I think that every Iraqi wants US troops out of the country because what has occurred is the shattering of the Iraqi society." . . .

If you haven't read about the famous statue-toppling, six years ago today, you might find this piece from Source Watch interesting.

Toppling the statue of Saddam Hussein was a staged event, by U.S. soldiers, for the media. A Reuters long-shot of Firdos Square where the statue was located (see below) shows that the Square was nearly empty when Saddam was torn down. The Square was sealed off by the U.S. military. The 200 people milling about were U.S. Marines, international press and Iraqis. However, the media portrayed it as an event of the Iraqi people.

An American military vehicle actually pulled down the statue. Marine Corporal Ed Chin, who temporarily placed a U.S. flag over Saddam's face, became an instant media celebrity. His sister, Connie, appeared on the "Today" show and spoke with her brother via a video hook-up.

. . .

On Point, a US army report on lessons learned from the war, notes that it was a Marine colonel, not Iraqi civilians, who decided to topple the statue. "We moved our [tactical PSYOP team] TPT vehicle forward and started to run around seeing what they needed us to do to facilitate their mission," states a U.S. military officer involved in the operation. "There was a large media circus at this location (I guess the Palestine Hotel was a media center at the time), almost as many reporters as there were Iraqis, as the hotel was right adjacent to the Al-Firdos Square. The Marine Corps colonel in the area saw the Saddam statue as a target of opportunity and decided that the statue must come down." The psychological team used loudspeakers to encourage Iraqi civilians to assist, packed the scene with Iraqi children, and stepped in to readjust the props when one of the soldiers draped an American flag over the statue. "God bless them, but we were thinking from PSYOP school that this was just bad news," the officer reported. "We didn't want to look like an occupation force, and some of the Iraqis were saying, 'No, we want an Iraqi flag!' So I said 'No problem, somebody get me an Iraqi flag.' "

There are also these photos, and "Is this media manipulation on a grand scale?", both from Information Clearinghouse.

Update. As a joke, I said to the Campaign friend who sent me the Al-Jazeera story, "Does 'thousands' mean 'tens of thousands'? Does Al Jazeera do that, too?" I assume you all know what I'm referring to!

My friend pointed out that Reuters did say "tens of thousands". Tens of thousands of people coming out to protest in the rain, in an occupied country, where protest could bring great risk to themselves, is a testament to human strength and spirit.

Tens of thousands of followers of anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr thronged Baghdad on Thursday to mark the sixth anniversary of the city's fall to U.S. troops, and to demand they leave immediately.

"Down, down USA," the demonstrators chanted as a Ali al-Marwani, a Sadrist official, denounced the U.S. occupation of Iraq that began with the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003, and the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Firdos Square.

The crowds of Sadr supporters stretched from the giant Sadr City slum in northeast Baghdad to the square around 5 km (3 miles) away.

Protesters burned an effigy featuring the face of former U.S. President George W. Bush, who ordered the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and also the face of Saddam. . . .

prorogation was "fundamental abuse of power". but you already knew that.

This is making the rounds through the Canadian blogosphere, and worth reading:

Canada cannot be both a parliamentary and a populist democracy.

Parliamentary Democracy In Crisis, an explosive new book analyzing December's constitutional showdown, written by 15 of Canada's leading parliamentary experts, says Canada must bridge its two largely irreconcilable democratic cultures or face an uncertain future.

Canada's two solitudes are no longer Quebec and English Canada. Today, the two solitudes are Historic Canada and The West.

Polls taken during the crisis found that Historic Canada -- Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes -- backed parliamentary democracy and the Liberal-NDP coalition supported by the Bloc Quebecois. Under parliamentary democracy, the government of the day must win and maintain the confidence of a majority of the members of parliament to retain power.

The West overwhelmingly supported the populist outcome -- a two-month prorogation allowing the minority Conservative government to avoid defeat on a confidence vote. Populist democracy, as promulgated by Reform Party leader Preston Manning, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his former chief strategist Tom Flanagan, favours the American presidential model of one directly elected leader not responsible to the legislature but answerable only to the people.

. . . .

Simon Fraser University professor Andrew Heard says Harper's prorogation was "unconstitutional... (T)his type of manoeuvre is simply unheard of among modern established democracies. It is a fundamental abuse of power to shut down a newly elected parliament at the moment when it is poised to vote non-confidence in the incumbent government."

The University of Toronto's Peter Russell says the crisis has "left a legacy that could be the basis of a serious constitutional crisis in the near future: a country dangerously divided over the fundamental principles and the rules of its parliamentary democracy."

The most damning indictment comes from David Cameron, chair of the University of Toronto's political science department. "Stephen Harper demonstrated that there was no bridge he would not burn, no low road he would not take, to stay in power. Beyond the deceit and the intentional obfuscation, what could not be forgiven was the prime minister's willingness to conjure up our national-unity demons...

"Successive prime ministers have seen it as their duty to manage the national unity file with prudence and care; to light a match near a can of gasoline -- to set east against west... simply for the sake of personal political survival was to scatter this primordial leadership obligation to the four winds."

Read the Winnipeg Free Press column here.

on canada and the us switching places, or, why canada, part 3

Canada and the US have switched places. The US is now an open, free society, marching steadily to the left, and Canada is "the new US," regressing ever rightward.

Wherever there is punditry, you can find this theme.

Too bad it's bullshit.

Ever since Barack Obama was elected President of the United States - at roughly the same time Stephen Harper shut down democracy in Canada in order to maintain his government, and Michael Ignatieff backed him up because that's better for his party - this has been the easy headline.

Whenever I see a column or blog post on this theme, I wonder if the writer knows anything at all about the US, or indeed, has forgotten some basic facts about Canada.

* * * *

First, on the US side. There's no doubt Obama casts a better shadow than the last person to live in the White House. But are we so shallow as to be fooled by window dressing, no matter how pleasant the appearance or more advanced the vocabulary?

How is the US changing?

War? Empire? The same, or worse. The US bases in Iraq are permanent, at least in terms of our lifetimes. Someone will be needed to defend them, and whether a privatized security force, US-trained Iraqi puppets, or actual US military, the defending will be done by the US.

In case there is any loss of military-industrial contracts from a step-down in Iraq, Obama is insuring the maintenance of profits by stepping up the war in Afghanistan. And of course, there will be more invasions and wars to come, although they might not be called wars. A change from Republican to Democrat to Republican does not change US foreign policy substantially. No, strike that. It doesn't change foreign policy. Period.

Health care? No sign of single payer now or on the horizon.

Abortion rights? That happens under state law. Obama has no control over it, except indirectly through the Supreme Court. Twenty-five years in the US pro-choice movement taught me that the focus on Roe v. Wade is wishful thinking for the uninformed. The damage has already been done, as the Supreme Court through the late 1980s and 1990s allowed the states to make Roe irrelevant in most of the US.

Equal marriage? Obama has no control over that. I'm not familiar with the inner workings of the US equal marriage movement, and I imagine there is a lot of work going on to move something federally, but states right are states rights. That is, when it comes to limiting the rights of citizens.

Fair elections? No change.

Unchecked, deregulated capitalism? The Globe and Mail scare-graphics notwithstanding, Obama is not a socialist. In case you missed it, Canada's self-proclaimed national newspaper ran a front-page, above-the-fold illustration of the US flag, with communist hammer-and-sickles replacing the stars. Cute. I guess I missed the part where Obama nationalized the vast corporate wealth and distributed it to the people.

All the President is going for is a little accountability, to quell some of the well-justified rage of taxpayers who financed bailouts only to see CEOs retire with more money than they will see in ten lifetimes on their Wal-Mart poverty wages. Like Franklin D. Roosevelt before him, Barack Obama will rein in capitalism to secure capitalism.

Death penalty? There does seem to be some movement away from capital punishment - but it started ten years ago, as activists using DNA evidence helped exonerated many death-row prisoners. How far the movement will go and whether it will have traction on a federal level remains to be seen. That has little to do with which party is in power, as the Democrats will follow public opinion on this, not lead it.

I'm not saying nothing is changing in the US. But in the ways that matter most to me, the US is still the US.

* * * *

On to Canada.

Things are changing here. There's no doubt that the Harper-Ignatieff coalition is moving the country to the right. When you're a political immigrant, the political blends seamlessly into the personal. How many times have I been asked, Are you sorry you moved here? Are you going to move back? I wish I had been keeping track.

I detest the Harper Government, what it stands for, how it stays in power, where it is taking Canada with its de facto majority government. But the Harper Government is not Canada, and it has not yet re-made Canada, in the ways that are most important to me.

When I first started this blog, while still living in New York City, I answered the question "Why Canada" like this:

National health insurance, legal gay marriage, no death penalty, full abortion rights, less crime, less poverty. Canada didn't support the invasion of Iraq, and they don't keep a huge military with which to bully the rest of the world. Religious fanatics do not control the government.

So which of these has changed?

Of the above, there are only three areas Canadians could possibly dispute.

Poverty. Obviously, there has been an increase in poverty here, as there has been everywhere on the planet. Too many people are unemployed and social services are inadequate.

But Canada could not have been immune to the global recession, no matter who formed the government, and the party that will be trusted to help the economy the most will form the next government.

Relative to the US, Canada is booming. Because of the de-regulated banking industry and the subprime mortgage catastrophe, millions of USians have lost their homes, unemployment and underemployment has skyrocketed. And remember, in the US, if you lose your job, you lose your health care.

Crime. I know many Canadians are upset about an increase in crime in Canadian cities. If a US city the size of Toronto - roughly speaking, Philadelphia or Boston - had less than 100 murders in a given year, they'd appoint a Mayor For Life and hail him as a national hero. I know Vancouver is currently in the throes of crime hysteria, but when a city is in the midst of that, it's difficult to distinguish between reality and media-fueled hype. From my US-raised perspective, Canada is very safe.

That only leaves the religious influence on government. Having lived in both countries, I can tell you that the US at its most secular is ten times as religious as Canada at its most religious. If we want a secular society, we must continue to be vigilant and take an active role in ensuring that. But that's always the case.

A few months after we moved to Canada, I wrote "Why Canada, Part 2," and added this:

We knew life in Canada would be different, if only for how we see the United States: foreign wars for profit; unchecked poverty and its twin, rampant violence; increasing government intrusion into citizens' personal lives; media controlled by the government, and a government controlled by religious fanatics; a corrupt, antiquated election system.

Elections. The Canadian election system is still first-past-the-post, so it is not truly democratic. But the votes are counted fairly, with independent oversight. There is at least a legitimate movement fighting for proportional representation.

And although the Canadian system is not not fair - and not democratic - if you are a Conservative voter in a traditionally NDP riding, or a Liberal voter in a riding the Conservatives have a lock on, and your vote is consistently thrown away, at least a riding is a relatively small slice of the population. The US first-past-the-post system divides 306,000,000 people into only 50 voting blocs!

Add to that partisan, politically-appointed "oversight", electronic vote-changing, and byzantine rules that disenfranchise millions of citizens. And only two parties!

There are, sadly, many liberal Canadians who don't understand this: having more than two parties at the federal level helps keep Canada, Canada. When people call for the NDP and the Liberals to merge - as if they stand for the same things! - they are calling for Canada to take one massive step towards becoming the US.

* * * *

I didn't leave the US because of which party was elected. As I always say, anyone who would have been happy enough in the US had John Kerry been elected wasn't moving anywhere. Nor did I come to Canada because I was in love with the Liberal Party of Canada, who formed the government when we got here.

I don't like the Harper-Ignatieff government, but for me, Canada is still Canada. I'm proud to be working to keep it that way.

sweden, too!

Did I forget Sweden? Whenever a country (or state) gets equal marriage, I usually welcome them into the fold. But apparently I missed Sweden. Ledset!

Sweden is is the seventh country on the planet to recognize same-sex marriages as fully equal. One day this will be so commonplace, it won't be worth mentioning. But until then...

Thanks to the wonderful Slap.

four down, forty six to go: vermont gets equal marriage

Four down, forty-six to go, as Vermont becomes the fourth US state to legalize same-sex marriage.

Vermont has become the fourth state to legalize gay marriage — and the first to do so with a legislature's vote.

The Legislature voted Tuesday to override Gov. Jim Douglas’ veto of a bill allowing gays and lesbians to marry. The vote was 23-5 to override in the state Senate and 100-49 to override in the House. Under Vermont law, two-thirds of each chamber had to vote for override.

The vote came nine years after Vermont adopted its first-in-the-nation civil unions law.

It’s now the fourth state to permit same-sex marriage. Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa are the others. Their approval of gay marriage came from the courts.

Tuesday morning's legislative action came less than a day after Douglas issued a veto message saying the bill would not improve the lot of gay and lesbian couples because it still would not provide them rights under federal and other states' laws.

Gov. Jim Douglas, who vetoed legislation, said, "I prepared myself for this outcome and predicted it. The outcome was not unexpected."

He had called the issue of gay marriage a distraction during a time when economic and budget issues were more important.

"What really disappoints me is that we have spent some time on an issue during which another thousand Vermonters have lost their jobs," the governor said Tuesday. "We need to turn out attention to balancing a budget without raising taxes, growing the economy, putting more people to work."

House Speaker Shap Smith's announcement of the vote brought an outburst of jubilation from some of the hundreds packed into the gallery and the lobby outside the House chamber, despite the speaker's admonishment against such displays.

The true jubilation didn't start until everyone gathered downstairs where they congratulated legislative leaders who championed the cause.

Among the celebrants in the lobby were former Rep. Robert Dostis, D-Waterbury, and his longtime partner, Chuck Kletecka. Dostis recalled efforts to expand gay rights dating to an anti-discrimination law passed in 1992.

"It's been a very long battle. It's been almost 20 years to get to this point," Dostis said. "I think finally, most people in Vermont understand that we're a couple like any other couple. We're as good and as bad as any other group of people. And now I think we have a chance to prove ourselves here on forward that we're good members of our community."

Dostis said he and Kletecka will celebrate their 25th year together in September.

"Is that a proposal?" Kletecka asked.

"Yeah," Dostis replied. "Twenty-five years together, I think it's time we finally got married."

Also, the Washington DC city council voted to recognize same-sex marriages from other states. Progress!

ann jones: "the boys are coming home, and they're not the boys who went away"

Military resistance save lives - in more ways than one. Here's a piece by Ann Jones, author of many important books about violence against women, now a gender advisor to the UN.

How Can We Stop the Epidemic of Killing Women and Children By Returning Soldiers
By Ann Jones

Wake up, America. The boys are coming home, and they're not the boys who went away.

On New Year's Day, the New York Times welcomed the advent of 2009 by reporting that, since returning from Iraq, nine members of the Fort Carson, Colorado, Fourth Brigade Combat team had been charged with homicide. Five of the murders they were responsible for took place in 2008 when, in addition, "charges of domestic violence, rape and sexual assault" at the base rose sharply. Some of the murder victims were chosen at random; four were fellow soldiers -- all men. Three were wives or girlfriends.

This shouldn't be a surprise. Men sent to Iraq or Afghanistan for two, three, or four tours of duty return to wives who find them "changed" and children they barely know. Tens of thousands return to inadequate, underfunded veterans' services with appalling physical injuries, crippling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and suck-it-up sergeants who hold to the belief that no good soldier seeks help. That, by the way, is a mighty convenient belief for the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, which have been notoriously slow to offer much of that help.

Recently Republican Senator John Cornyn from Texas, a state with 15 major military bases, noted that as many as one in five U.S. veterans is expected to suffer from at least one "invisible wound" of war, if not a combination of them, "including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and mild traumatic brain injury." Left untreated, such wounds can become very visible: witness, for example, the recent wave of suicides that have swept through the military, at least 128 in 2008, and 24 in January 2009 alone.

To judge by past wars, a lot of returning veterans will do themselves a lot of damage drinking and drugging. Many will wind up in prison for drug use or criminal offenses that might have been minor if the offenders hadn't been carrying guns they learned to rely on in the service. And a shocking number of those veterans will bring the violence of war home to their wives and children.

. . . .

The battered women's movement once had a slogan: World peace begins at home. They thought peace could be learned by example in homes free of violence and then carried into the wider world. It was an idea first suggested in 1869 by the English political philosopher John Stuart Mill. He saw that "the subjection of women," as he called it, engendered in the home the habits of tyranny and violence which afflicted England's political life and corrupted its conduct abroad.

The idea seems almost quaint in competition with the brutal, dehumanizing effectiveness of two or three tours of duty in a pointless war and a little "mild" brain damage.

We had a respite for a while. For nearly a decade, starting in 1993, rates of domestic violence and wife murder went down by a few percentage points. Then in 2002, the vets started coming home.

No society that sends its men abroad to do violence can expect them to come home and be at peace. To let world peace begin at home, you have to stop making war. (Europe has largely done it.) Short of that, you have to take better care of your soldiers and the people they once knew how to love.

Excellent (long) article here.

suite française, last post

If the novel Suite Française is not your cup of tea, I highly recommend reading the transcripts of the author's notebook and the letters appended to the novel. They are, as commenter Cid says here, heart-wrenching.

Némirovsky's husband continues to write his wife's publisher and anyone who he believes can help, becoming increasingly frantic, desperate to know the whereabouts of his beloved wife. If her release is not possible, he concedes, can he send her a package? Medication? Can he get word to her that the children are safe? Can he just know where she is? He says he can neither sleep nor eat, as he is so consumed with worry for her.

In his letters, he lists the many logical reasons that his wife should be spared, but none of those matter. It doesn't matter that she was never political. It doesn't matter that she converted to Catholicism. None of that matters.

While he writes, trying to get information, trying to save her, she is already at Auschwitz.

She is already dead.

Soon, he will be, too.

When the war ends and the concentration camps are liberated, Némirovsky's two daughters, now out of hiding, go to the Paris train station where survivors are returning. Every day, they stand in the station, holding signs with their names, waiting and hoping.

* * * *

Amid the carnage of the 20th Century, the Holocaust is not unique in size or scope, and amazingly, is only one of the many genocides and political massacres with victims numbering in the millions. Yet it is the one massacre that I know would have happened to me, had I lived in Europe at the time. It's the one my parents or grandparents would have perished in, had my great-grandparents not escaped the pogroms of Russia a generation earlier.

As I mentioned here, when I blogged about the movie "Fugitive Pieces," my Holocaust education is over, having been absorbed into my bones, my DNA.

But every once in a while, something slips through my defensive wall, like this book has. When it does, it effects me in a visceral way. My stomach knots, my throat clenches. I have nightmares.

Now, in Israel, Jews are acting like Nazis.

The details differ, but they always do. The means are different, but the end results are the same.

There's a semi-apocryphal story that the political satirist Tom Lehrer declared irony dead when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize. Surely there can be no irony more cruel, more ridiculous, more head-spinning, more insane, and simply more horrifying, than a state founded as reparations for the Holocaust committing genocide.

suite française: "our parents practice no religion; as for us, we are catholic..."

I recently blogged about Suite Française, the novel about Nazi-occupied France, written by a woman who was living the nightmare. The "suite" was meant to be five novels; the author wrote two before being arrested, imprisoned, and murdered at Auschwitz.

Yesterday I read the appendices to the novels. The first appendix is the English translation of Némirovsky's handwritten notes. She writes about the situation in France, and about her plans for her books. It begins:

My God! what is this country doing to me? Since it is rejecting me, let us consider it coldly, let us watch as it loses its honour and its life. And the other countries? What are they to me? Empires are dying. Nothing matters. Whether you look at it from a mystical or a personal point of view, it's just the same. Let us keep a cool head. Let us harden our heart. Let us wait.

The author's notes are even more riveting than the book itself. The entries on what is happening in France are impossibly tragic, as the reader knows the ending, but the writer did not. Naturally, The Diary of Anne Frank comes to mind, but this is written by a mature woman, now stripped of her means of providing for her family, struggling to survive.

The entries about the book itself are fascinating to me as a writer. Némirovsky sounds flush with discovery and joy; I recognize the excitement of the creative process, the questions she wrestles with. She believes she is creating a masterpiece. (She did.)

In Dolce, the second book of Suite Française, Némirovsky writes about the ordinary German soldiers with a great deal of sympathy, distinguishing between the individual soldier and the regime that sent him there. She has infinitely more sympathy for the German soldiers than she does for the French upper-class who couldn't capitulate fast enough in order to maintain their own comfort. In her notebook she writes about the Germans that were occupying the town.

They're leaving. They were depressed for twenty-four hours, now they're cheerful, especially when they're together. The little dear one sadly said, "The happy times are over." They're sending their packages home. They're overexcited, that's obvious. Admirably disciplined and, I think, no rebellion in their hearts. I swear here and now never again to take out my bitterness, no matter how justifiable, on a group of people, whatever their race, religion, convictions, prejudices, errors. I feel sorry for these poor children. But I cannot forgive certain individuals, those who reject me, those who coldly abandon us, those who are prepared to stab you in the back. Those people...if I could just get my hands on them... When will it all end? The troops that were here last summer said "Christmas," then July. Now end '41.

The second appendix is correspondence: Némirovsky's to her publisher, Némirovsky's husband, Michel Epstein, trying to save her. He naively believes that his wife's specific circumstances will save her.

My wife, Madame M. Epstein, is a very famous novelist, I. Némirovsky. Her books have been translated in a great many countries and two of them at least - David Golder and Le Bal - in Germany. . . . [He details how their families fled the Russian Revolution.] All this must satisfy you that we feel nothing but hatred for the Bolshevik regime.

In France, not a single member of our family has ever been involved in politics. I was a bank manager and as for my wife, she became a highly esteemed novelist. In none of her books (which moreover have not been banned by the occupying authorities) will you find a single word against Germany, and, even though my wife is of Jewish descent, she does not speak of the Jews with any affection whatsoever in her works. My wife's grandparents, as well as my own, were Jewish; our parents practice no religion; as for us, we are Catholic and so are our children, who were born in Paris and are French.

If I may also take the liberty of point out out to you that my wife has always avoided belonging to any political party...

Finally, for many years my wife has been suffering from chronic asthma . . . and internment in a concentration camp would be fatal to her.

I know, Ambassador, that you are one of the most eminent men in your country's government. I am convinced you are also a just man. And it seems to me both unjust and illogical that the Germans should imprison a woman who, despite being of Jewish descent, has no sympathy whatsoever - all her books prove this - either for Judaism or the Bolshevik regime.

Although this letter is clearly written as a plea - it's doubtful that he really thinks the German ambassador is a just man - Epstein writes many other letters, to everyone and anyone who might be in a position to help. The correspondence is gruesome to read, because you know the ending.

There is also an afterward, which was the preface to the French edition, and gives the chronology of Némirovsky's life, her exile, her arrest, and what happened to her and her family afterwards. About her husband's letters, it explains:

When Irène was taken away, Michel [her husband] did not understand that to be arrested and deported meant certain death. Every day he expected her to come home and insisted, at mealtimes, that her place be set at the table. In complete despair, he wrote to Marshal Petain to explain that his wife had a delicate constitution and to request permission to take her place in the labour camp.

In October 1942, the Vichy government responded by arresting him. He was first imprisoned at Creusot, then Drancy, where his search document shows that 8,500 francs were taken from him. On 6 November 1942, he too was deported to Auschwitz and was sent straight to the gas chamber.

spring begins today at 2:00

Happy Opening Day!

Major League Baseball began its 2009 season yesterday, and today, Baseball Season begins - freals - in our home. This afternoon, the Boston Red Sox host our new archrival Tampa Bay Rays in beautiful, historic Fenway Park.

Am I ever glad not to be in New York City today. With both the Yankees and the Mets opening new stadiums, the hype must be out of control. Here, we live in our little cocoon of Soxness. Now if we could just have some spring weather - it's chilly, gray and wet today - we'd be all set.

As always, see Joy of Sox for all your Red Sox needs. As we of Joy Nation like to say:

It is on.

toronto star says let them stay

Let U.S. deserters stay

With support from all three opposition parties, the House of Commons last week again voted for a motion calling on the Conservative government to allow American deserters from the Iraq war to stay in Canada. And again the government paid no attention.

The opposition parties note that during the Vietnam War some 50,000 American draft dodgers and deserters were given asylum in Canada. "It is an identical parallel situation right now because what is happening in Iraq is very similar (to Vietnam)," said New Democrat MP Olivia Chow during debate on the motion. "Canada chose not to fight the war in Iraq. It chose not to fight the war in Vietnam. We really should allow war resisters to remain in Canada."

But Conservative MP Laurie Hawn, parliamentary secretary to the minister of defence, responded: "They are not identical at all. In Vietnam it was a conscripted army, and in Iraq it is a volunteer army."

Not entirely true. Many Americans (and even some Canadians) volunteered to fight in Vietnam, and some of them later became disillusioned with the war and deserted.

The government's real concern is that the Americans will be mightily displeased if we don't send back their deserters. That may, indeed, have been the case when George Bush was president. But the concern seems misplaced with Barack Obama now in power. He has vowed to end the war.

There are not many U.S. deserters seeking refugee here – about 200 in all. Those who have already been deported to the U.S. have been sentenced to time in the military stockade. Allowing the remainder to stay here is the humane response.

what i'm reading: suite française

Still reading novels, I'm now finishing Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky.

Némirovsky was born in the Ukraine and grew up in France; she was Jewish. (That is, she had Jewish ancestry. She and her husband, from a similar background, were Catholic.) In France, she became a best-selling novelist, until 1940 when the Nazis prevented her from publishing. In 1941, when Paris fell to the Nazis, Némirovsky and her family went into hiding in a small village. The following year she died in Auschwitz.

Her two daughters managed to escape, and they kept with them their mother's most valued possession: a box full of notebooks, written in a nearly microscopic script. They assumed the notebooks contained a diary, and never read them, believing it would be too painful.

When the sisters finally delved into the contents of the box, they were amazed to discover that their mother had been writing a series of novels about life in occupied France. There were to be five novels. Suite Française represent the two books - both unfinished - that Némirovsky wrote before the Nazis found her.

Unlike most books set in the past, these were written when the outcome of the events were still unknown: written as the author was living them. But perhaps the most amazing thing about Suite Française is that the books themselves are not dwarfed by its provenance.

The portrait of society Némirovsky paints is not a pretty one. No tales of heroism and solidarity here. The people in these books are greedy, selfish and hideously materialistic. They cling to their possessions at the expense of other people's lives, and use war as a way of increasing their wealth in any way possible.

People not only do what they must to survive, they do whatever they can get away with. They stop at nothing to accumulate more than their neighbours, all the while criticizing and denouncing others who appear to do the same. Even charitable do-gooders are Dickensian in their hypocrisy and self-interest.

The books seethe with the arrogance and entitlement of the rich, the bitter resentment of the middle and working classes, and the numbing survival instincts of the poor. The people Némirovsky shows us are class-conscious to an extreme degree, the rich truly believing their lives are more important than those of the lower classes, and acting accordingly. As the elite begin to form alliances with the Germans, an aside notes, "What separates or unites people is not their language, their laws, their customs, their principles, but the way they hold their knife and fork."

But the poor and working classes are not saints. At every level of society, there is utter selfishness, seen alongside the random chance of who survives, and who does not.

And there is hypocrisy to spare, especially the stark contrast between how people imagine themselves and what their actions show them to be.

"...They'll raid the farms. We could be denounced."

"Frenchman don't denounce one another," the old woman said proudly. "You've forgotten that, my girl, since you got friendly with the Germans."

Lucile remembered something Lieutenant von Falk had told her in confidence: "The very first day we arrived," he'd said, "there was a package of anonymous letters waiting for us at Headquarters. People were accusing one another of spreading English and Gaullist propaganda, of hoarding supplies, of being spies. If we'd taken them all seriously, everyone in the region would be in prison. I had the whole lot thrown onto the fire. People's lives aren't worth much and defeat arouses the worst in men. In Germany it was exactly the same."

In the first book, Storm In June, Paris has been invaded, and every Parisian who can manage it is fleeing to the provinces. The second book, Dolce, takes place in an occupied town, illuminating the complex relationship between conqueror and conquered when they are forced to coexist. Both are told from an on-the-ground perspective, short vignettes of people's lives.

Although her portraits of her countrypeople are unflattering to the extreme, Némirovsky's vision is also more nuanced than what many official histories will show. This world is not divided into "resistance" and "collaboration". People's choices, and their motivations, are complex.

This edition of Suite Française, translated by Sandra Smith, also includes Némirovsky's handwritten notes, and her correspondence with her publisher and others.

I have only one minor criticism of the book as published. As the stories pile up, they do become a little repetitive. However, the book was unfinished and may have been edited significantly before publication. Also, this was meant to be two separate books, and the effect would be different if they weren't read back-to-back.

The writing is superb, and the author's ability to describe human motivations and emotions is astounding.

Here is the New York Times book review of Suite Française; it was the lead review on Sunday, April 9, 2006. The book is truly a masterpiece.

wmtc in the g&m again

Here's a letter exchange in the Globe and Mail.

First:

The NDP's message has been consistent through good times and bad (With Capitalism On Its Derrière, The Left Still Gets No Respect - April 2). Eventually, they were going to be at least partly right (pun intended). However, most people are not in favour of government control of most aspects of their lives, which is what socialism is about.

Despite its up and downs, or maybe because of them, capitalism is still the most responsive system and therefore, because of its continual improvement, it always will be better than socialism in the ability to deliver freedom of choice.

Colin Lowe,
Nanaimo, BC

Then:

Letter writer Colin Lowe is off base when he suggests socialism is about "government control of most aspects" of citizens' lives (Ideology's A Tough Sell - April 3). It is conservatives who want to control most aspects of individuals' lives - who you marry, where you travel, what you watch on TV, what you read, what you say, what you smoke. Freedom is reserved for businesses.

Socialism, on the other hand, wants to ensure fair access to scarce resources and make sure businesses behave in socially responsible ways.

Bryan M. Kramer, Oakville, ON

*

[Letter writer Colin Lowe says "most people are not in favour of government control of most aspects of their lives, which is what socialism is about". In fact, socialism is about public resources being used for the public good.]

Socialism is the reason Canadians don't have to worry about providing their families with health care, even if they are unemployed. Socialism is the reason there are minimum wage laws, workplace safety laws, and a little something called "the weekend."

People shouldn't accept or reject an idea until they understand it.

Laura Kaminker
Mississauga, ON
[The portion in brackets was cut.]

*

There is a good reason why the NDP have not made gains during this economic crisis (With Capitalism On Its Derrière, The Left Still Gets No Respect - April 2). Every day in the news, it's the same thing: Market up means good, market down means bad. We are swamped with econo-speak nonsense that shows little acknowledgment of our joint human endeavour: to lead a good life.

The message is clearly geared toward frightening people back into overspending and debt with the explicit message that to be living well is to be a fully engaged consumer, not a fully engaged citizen.

The project of socialism is not to destroy people's lives with meaningless talk about anti-capitalism. It is the step-by-step process that directs the economy toward non-predatory purposes and goals.

The NDP are on the right course; they know that it's never too "left" to do the right thing.

Paul J. Graham, Saskatoon

Thanks to Bryan Kramer and Paul Graham; together, the three letters make a nice statement. I write a lot of letters, but I hope nothing as ignorant as Colin Lowe's letter ever escapes my keyboard.

five reasons to march this saturday

Tomorrow, April 4, is a global day of action to protest the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. From Toronto Coalition to Stop the War:

Five reasons to march this Saturday

Saturday, April 4 is a global day of action against war in Afghanistan. The date coincides with the 60th anniversary NATO summit in Strasbourg, France and is the anniversary of Martin Luther King's famous "Beyond Vietnam" speech at the Riverside Church in New York. [L note: it is also the anniversary of King's assassination.]

The Canadian Peace Alliance and the Collectif Échec à la guerre are calling for pan-Canadian demonstrations on April 4 to demand an end to the NATO-led war in Afghanistan. These demonstrations have taken on a renewed significance this week.

Here are five reasons you should join demonstrations across Canada this weekend:

1. Free speech - use it or lose it!

The Harper government and its backers are trying to silence anti-war voices in Canada. They have banned British MP George Galloway from speaking in Canada, cut funding to the Canadian Arab Federation because it spoke out against war on the people of Gaza, encouraged suppression of free speech of Palestine solidarity activists on university campuses, and are denying refuge to US war resisters against the will of the people and the Canadian Parliament.

Every person that comes out this Saturday will help protect our hard-won civil rights and freedom of speech.

2. The surge and expansion

The US has already sent another 21,000 troops to Afghanistan and has expanded the war to Pakistan. This is a disaster that will stoke more violence in the region - bringing open war to a nuclear armed nation of 170 million people. They have also begun arming local militias throughout Afghanistan, sowing the seeds of a bloody future. Every new soldier sent to Afghanistan makes the situation worse. According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: "The mere presence of foreign soldiers fighting a war in Afghanistan is probably the single most important factor in the resurgence of the Taliban."

The Canadian Forces have told soldiers to expect their tours-of-duty to be extended and Harper has hinted that they may be willing to extend Canada's deployment. We need a strong show of opposition to the expansion. Don't extend it. End it!

3. Women's rights

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has just passed a law that legalizes rape in Afghanistan. The new family law also places draconian limits on a woman's right to education and employment. It allows their husbands to determine when they may leave the house and bans women from refusing their husbands' sexual advances.

As the courageous Afghan MP Malalai Joya has been saying for years: "The government that Canada supports in Afghanistan is a 'photocopy' of the Taliban when it comes to women's rights."

4. $18 billion is being spent on the war

We are in the midst of the biggest economic crisis in decades yet the Harper government has continued to plow more money into war. It will spend $18 billion on the war in Afghanistan and is increasing military spending to a total of $490 billion over the next 20 years. With $4 billion, we could provide affordable housing for all Canadians or abolish tuition fees. That money could be used to expand Employment Insurance, invest in green technology, re-tool empty factories and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions or nationalize industries in financial trouble.

Join us to demand that we fund peace, a clean environment, good jobs and human needs - not war.

5. Self-determination for the people of Afghanistan

The Afghan people want disarmament and a free society. NATO responds by sending troops, tanks and guns to support a corrupt warlord government, and then they wonder why it's not working. The only way we will see a bright future in Afghanistan is if the Afghan people are in charge of their own country. That cannot happen under a foreign occupation concerned with its own geo-political interests.

Join us this Saturday!

Freedom for Afghanistan. Bring the troops home now!

In Toronto:

Rally & march
Saturday, April 4 at 1:00 p.m.
Yonge-Dundas Square, Toronto / TTC: Dundas

For a list of events in Canada, go here.

In the US, national mobilization march on New York City.

my new chair

I'm in love with my new chair.

I can't believe I spent so much money on a chair, but I'm so happy I did. And in the long run, it's actually a great value.

I've had a long series of office chairs that last a few years and are never quite right for me. I need to add a removable back support, or sit on a pillow, or use a foot rest, or something, and I'm never really comfortable.

Fibromyalgia makes my joints hyper-sensitive, and arthritis doesn't help, and the march of time just adds insult to injury. My old chair was so uncomfortable that it was exacerbating everything else.

I started looking for a better chair, but every place I looked had the same models. And they were mostly crap. For $250 or $300, you can buy the best chair at Staples, but it's not well made, and comes with only a one-year warranty. Which is why I've been buying a new chair every two or three years.

Driving around one day, we saw the ergoCentric retail store, and went in, just to look. The prices looked completely out of our range. It seemed ridiculous.

But the chairs are amazingly comfortable. They adjust for five different parameters, and are warrantied for a full ten years. These days, when things are purposely made to fall apart, that's pretty amazing. Their factory is right here in Mississauga! Not just Canadian-made, but locally made. They are also a very environmentally-conscious company, and although I wouldn't choose the chair for that reason, it doesn't hurt.

But the price seemed prohibitive, so we kept looking around. And all we saw was crap, crap and more crap.

We started thinking that if we spend $200-300 on a chair every two or three years, spending $800 on a chair that is supposed to last a lifetime isn't so crazy. It might actually be a bargain.

Allan also suggested that I think of this chair the way I think of my glasses or custom orthotics: something I need for my health. I spend an enormous amount of time in my chair. It's not just blogging and emailing (although that would be a lot); it's all my writing and any other work I do from home, like legal transcription.

The more we shopped around, the more convinced I became.

The only other option was an Obus Forme chair. $650 before tax, three to four weeks to order, three-year warranty, and it wasn't nearly as comfortable as the ergoCentric, for $150-200 more.

To seal the deal: an interest-free payment plan. Twenty-five percent down, the remainder spread over a year.

On Monday we ordered it, and on Wednesday we picked it up.

I love it.

This week I am transcribing, and I am utterly amazed at the difference in how I feel at the end of the day. At the end of a long day of transcribing, I'm used to being in pain, and barely mobile. Yesterday I felt completely fine.

ergoCentric advertises that they are the first chair recognized by the Canadian Physiotherapy Association, and now I know why. Wow!

Some good ergonomic info on their site here.