The CUPE union in Nova Scotia is right to raise an alarm over calls from two of the province's three visible registered parties to have a single Halifax based health board run all the hospitals in the rural part of the province.
Will the whole damn world, one day, be run out of one office at the UN ?
The disease of giantism and the view that bigger must mean better administration still has as many admirers today as it did in 1941 during the era (error ?) of big empires.
But Nova Scotian unionists have hardly been consistent on this issue.
When the NDP (union-supported) government tried to move some government jobs out of Halifax , to de-centralize some of these good-paying and stable jobs, unofficial blowback by union members crippled the project.
It maybe be something in union-brand Kool-aid, but sadly, union leaders would rather cut their own baby's throat than ever criticize their memberships' attitudes.
There is union democracy and there is courage and sometimes, the two must mix.....
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Thursday, August 29, 2013
The smallest 'small school' has no permanent school building at all
My small school proposals seem to be too radical for most in this inert little province by the restless sea.
I discovered this when I went before a Nova Scotia public inquiry and suggested that public schools follow the example of the province's universities.
Our two biggest, Dalhousie and St Mary's both moved about a fair bit before settling in their current physical locales and even then their university centre could move about within the campus lands.
Dalhousie , for example ,has been at its present location for over a century but its original building ,the Forrest Building, is now but the Dental School portion of this now immense university.
But from locale to locale, building to building, Dal has kept its name and institutional history.
But close the present building of the Burlington Elementary School because it is far too big for just twelve students and the school nd its history disappears along with it.
I suggested to the public inquiry that instead of killing that school's institutional history (and link to the present students' grandparents own school days) stone dead by busing all the kids to a big new consolidated school thirty miles away, why not house the same school in a new locale - the local fire hall's upstairs meeting room for example.
My wife, Rebecca, happily attended a public taxpayer financed school that rented space in an Antigonish County church basement and she has no signs of physical or mental abuse as a result.
But the public commissioner was left unmoved by my comments - to him and his ilk, schools aren't about learning but about real estate.
To be fair - the very varied public (Dartmouth area) audience before him felt no differently - I heard no murmur of support behind me as I sometimes get when I make bold suggestions at public meetings.
British public ( ie private) schools feel as I do and are content to rent ---- maybe that is why they are more noted for their students' successes than for the quality of their plumbing and heating .....
I discovered this when I went before a Nova Scotia public inquiry and suggested that public schools follow the example of the province's universities.
Our two biggest, Dalhousie and St Mary's both moved about a fair bit before settling in their current physical locales and even then their university centre could move about within the campus lands.
Dalhousie , for example ,has been at its present location for over a century but its original building ,the Forrest Building, is now but the Dental School portion of this now immense university.
But from locale to locale, building to building, Dal has kept its name and institutional history.
But close the present building of the Burlington Elementary School because it is far too big for just twelve students and the school nd its history disappears along with it.
I suggested to the public inquiry that instead of killing that school's institutional history (and link to the present students' grandparents own school days) stone dead by busing all the kids to a big new consolidated school thirty miles away, why not house the same school in a new locale - the local fire hall's upstairs meeting room for example.
My wife, Rebecca, happily attended a public taxpayer financed school that rented space in an Antigonish County church basement and she has no signs of physical or mental abuse as a result.
But the public commissioner was left unmoved by my comments - to him and his ilk, schools aren't about learning but about real estate.
To be fair - the very varied public (Dartmouth area) audience before him felt no differently - I heard no murmur of support behind me as I sometimes get when I make bold suggestions at public meetings.
British public ( ie private) schools feel as I do and are content to rent ---- maybe that is why they are more noted for their students' successes than for the quality of their plumbing and heating .....
The Small Party : North America's first and most radical 'green' Party
I seem to recall meeting Elizabeth May in the summer of 1979 at an environmental fair on Halifax's Garrison Grounds just after the 1979 federal election.
She was nonplussed by the total lack of reference to any environmental issue in the election from any party and talked about forming some sort of party that would.
A few months later she did just that : THE small PARTY ran almost a dozen candidates - all but two in the Maritimes, Elizabeth among them.
I was still an NDPer (democratic socialist) then but rapidly becoming disillusioned.
I catch the allusion to "Small is Beautiful" and heartily agreed: I wanted Nova Scotia to cede from Canada and go its small way alone.
Still do.
Seeing how all the huge mega-corporations and vaulting political empires have happily co-opted the word "green" , I wonder now if the move to the Green Party label was the right one.
It doesn't seem offensive enough now, as a name.
Rupert Murdoch can see himself saying he is pro-green but never saying that he is pro-smallness.
He'd rather kill himself first.
Maybe "The small Party" label needs to be brought back out of cold storage and ran past the Nova Scotia voters once again.....
She was nonplussed by the total lack of reference to any environmental issue in the election from any party and talked about forming some sort of party that would.
A few months later she did just that : THE small PARTY ran almost a dozen candidates - all but two in the Maritimes, Elizabeth among them.
I was still an NDPer (democratic socialist) then but rapidly becoming disillusioned.
I catch the allusion to "Small is Beautiful" and heartily agreed: I wanted Nova Scotia to cede from Canada and go its small way alone.
Still do.
Seeing how all the huge mega-corporations and vaulting political empires have happily co-opted the word "green" , I wonder now if the move to the Green Party label was the right one.
It doesn't seem offensive enough now, as a name.
Rupert Murdoch can see himself saying he is pro-green but never saying that he is pro-smallness.
He'd rather kill himself first.
Maybe "The small Party" label needs to be brought back out of cold storage and ran past the Nova Scotia voters once again.....
I propose to a (book) editor.... in an elevator
Clutching my manuscript to my heaving chest (insert bodice here) I got down on one knee and said to her , "This Manhattan Project is from Venus ---- and so are most of your customers."
"So enough already on any more books about Manhattan Projects that kill. This wartime Manhattan P. saved lives : its all about life and love and the whole nine months."
"Listen to your mother, she says you won't even be here if it wasn't for penicillin : cheap, abundant, natural, non-patented penicillin."
"Now does that sound like how Big Pharma normally operates ?
Yeah, exactly --- this time, despite America being at war, Doctor Mom was in charge and she saw to it that it was done up right."
"If this book proposal has legs - and I think it does , try to think of those legs as being shapely, shaved and belong to an avid reader of character-driven narratives ."
"Besides, market-wise, isn't it long overdue for a Good News Story to come out of WWII's Bad News War ?"
"Give it a read and then get back to me before the bidding war gets heavy ----- 'cause, baby, this here book project is all about peace, love and understanding...."
"So enough already on any more books about Manhattan Projects that kill. This wartime Manhattan P. saved lives : its all about life and love and the whole nine months."
"Listen to your mother, she says you won't even be here if it wasn't for penicillin : cheap, abundant, natural, non-patented penicillin."
"Now does that sound like how Big Pharma normally operates ?
Yeah, exactly --- this time, despite America being at war, Doctor Mom was in charge and she saw to it that it was done up right."
"If this book proposal has legs - and I think it does , try to think of those legs as being shapely, shaved and belong to an avid reader of character-driven narratives ."
"Besides, market-wise, isn't it long overdue for a Good News Story to come out of WWII's Bad News War ?"
"Give it a read and then get back to me before the bidding war gets heavy ----- 'cause, baby, this here book project is all about peace, love and understanding...."
May the small, like the Big, always be with us....
A blog that celebrates the small, in a world that drinks the Kool-Aid of Bigness ...
The Big are in absolutely no danger of disappearing, certainly not from our culture and not even as a result of rapid changes in the global environment.
The small also are hardly in danger of disappearing in the world's rapidly changing environmental situation.
In fact, when the environment suddenly changes they always do much better than bigger beings : always have and always will.
But culturally, the small are very much a collection of Rodney Dangerfields : never getting anywhere near the respect they deserve.
As microbe beings too small for us to see with our naked eyes, they keep this whole biological ball of wax afloat : without them the world would be a barren chunk of rock.
Small but visible species of plants and animals are the next layer of beings that help make this rock a nice place to live for us, those human parasites at the topper-most top of the whole food , air and water chain.
Within the human species and culture, 'small' humans (aka the poor, tired and huddled) still tend to be treated with general indifference.
Small places and institutions are still quickly dismissed as yesterday's entities.
This blog , by contrast, is devoted to reminding us of the comforting safety factor that comes with the diversity and flexibility of a world with many small beings and entities all exploring different options.
It seeks also to remind us of the danger of putting all our intellectual eggs in a few Big (tired) baskets as we face a rapidly changing world.
And it seeks to remind us of the sheer joy we get out of being immersed in an incredible variety of experience.
And it intends to warn us of the danger of returning to being gray-suited citizens of a few unitary-minded empires that all look and act and feel alike as they march eagerly towards their environmental doom....
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
The irony of 1945's twin triumphs ...
1945 was , on any account, an extraordinary year, not the least for its twin scientific triumphs.
At the time, it was almost universally held that the Man-made Bomb was the way of an atomic future so bright we'd have to wear shades .
By contrast, 1945's new Microbe-made medicine (natural penicillin) was viewed as but a temporary anomaly, a dusty throw back to the outdated caldron practises of medieval midwives.
But more than a half century later we are no longer so sure of all of this.
Atomic energy has not at all fulfilled its early promise.
Meanwhile, microbiology and biotechnology (descendants of 1945's natural-produced penicillin) have far outshot their 1945 rival, synthetic chemistry.
So today, with 20/20 hindsight, while 1945 can still feel like the apogee of the Modern age,it is also revealed as its very nadir.
Because 1945 is now seen as the birthday of our present post-Modern age.
In which case, Henry Dawson's twin follies of advocating on behalf of small individuals and on behalf of small microbes can be seen as promoting a distinguishing hallmark of postmodernity.
For few of us, under the age of eighty, devote much energy these days to replacing our current rainbow of many small cultures with a return to yesterday's dreary unitary monoculture of constipated WASP-dom.....
At the time, it was almost universally held that the Man-made Bomb was the way of an atomic future so bright we'd have to wear shades .
By contrast, 1945's new Microbe-made medicine (natural penicillin) was viewed as but a temporary anomaly, a dusty throw back to the outdated caldron practises of medieval midwives.
But more than a half century later we are no longer so sure of all of this.
Atomic energy has not at all fulfilled its early promise.
Meanwhile, microbiology and biotechnology (descendants of 1945's natural-produced penicillin) have far outshot their 1945 rival, synthetic chemistry.
So today, with 20/20 hindsight, while 1945 can still feel like the apogee of the Modern age,it is also revealed as its very nadir.
Because 1945 is now seen as the birthday of our present post-Modern age.
In which case, Henry Dawson's twin follies of advocating on behalf of small individuals and on behalf of small microbes can be seen as promoting a distinguishing hallmark of postmodernity.
For few of us, under the age of eighty, devote much energy these days to replacing our current rainbow of many small cultures with a return to yesterday's dreary unitary monoculture of constipated WASP-dom.....
Social Darwinism turns Peace into Undeclared War...
The attributes of the Age of the Big (Social Darwinism Mk I) makes the idea of contrasting it with the concept of the War of the Big (Social Darwinism Mk II) a moot point.
This is because the Social Darwin idea of reducing all Life to an unceasing, total, struggle for life or death means that only a formal declaration on paper could separate Darwinian War from Darwinian Peace.
It was always assumed , without much proof, that in this struggle the big would inevitably triumph over the small and then the ever bigger would do likewise over the merely 'big' .
By contrast ,Henry Dawson championed the small all his life - it must have come almost naturally to him, with his coming from a Canadian province that was increasingly viewed as too small to be relevant to Canadian values.
But he also noticed in his scientific investigations that while the big did thrive in stable circumstances, the small could still at least survive in hidden niches.
But in non-stable times, the big (over-extended) broke up, while the small (insured against normal hard times) took it all in stride.
Rather than modern science quickly dismissing Life's small as just part of evolution's dusty, distant beginnings, he felt they should give the small a second glance - and a second chance.
He extended this in the 1930s to those judged chronically ill and second rate and then, in the war years , to those American young people with SBE who were judged to be 'life unworthy of expensive medical care during a military crisis' .
Modern science had no time for his theory - his championing of the small was viewed as a damning folly from a medical scientist with an otherwise worthy medical career.
But post modernity science is largely shaped around the concept of reality's inherent complexity and diversity : admitting that reality will always consist of the mixing together of large and small phenomena and large and small beings.
In this long view, Dawson's folly begins to look quite prescient ...
This is because the Social Darwin idea of reducing all Life to an unceasing, total, struggle for life or death means that only a formal declaration on paper could separate Darwinian War from Darwinian Peace.
It was always assumed , without much proof, that in this struggle the big would inevitably triumph over the small and then the ever bigger would do likewise over the merely 'big' .
By contrast ,Henry Dawson championed the small all his life - it must have come almost naturally to him, with his coming from a Canadian province that was increasingly viewed as too small to be relevant to Canadian values.
But he also noticed in his scientific investigations that while the big did thrive in stable circumstances, the small could still at least survive in hidden niches.
But in non-stable times, the big (over-extended) broke up, while the small (insured against normal hard times) took it all in stride.
Rather than modern science quickly dismissing Life's small as just part of evolution's dusty, distant beginnings, he felt they should give the small a second glance - and a second chance.
He extended this in the 1930s to those judged chronically ill and second rate and then, in the war years , to those American young people with SBE who were judged to be 'life unworthy of expensive medical care during a military crisis' .
Modern science had no time for his theory - his championing of the small was viewed as a damning folly from a medical scientist with an otherwise worthy medical career.
But post modernity science is largely shaped around the concept of reality's inherent complexity and diversity : admitting that reality will always consist of the mixing together of large and small phenomena and large and small beings.
In this long view, Dawson's folly begins to look quite prescient ...
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