The Point

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Sunrise at eight


I don't know whether you've heard of this magazine called Ode? My friend Dianne directed me toward it a while ago when we went to go see Carol Off speaking at the U of A. We were trying to figure out what we knew about the cocao trade in the Ivory Coast (Ms Off's topic of the evening) and child slavery and the conversation started getting darker and darker. With marine life in the oceans now on the brink of collapse and journalists in China being regularly harassed and imprisoned, I reasoned, what hope is there for the future?

Dianne smartly upbraided me for that little bit of self-indulgence. We have a responsibility, she said, to be optimistic, to be hopeful and dream big dreams for the future. Our grandchildren's world (and the generations after them) after all, will be shaped - are being shaped - by our choices today. Milan Kundera's musings about kitsch, I think, are what have brought my thoughts so dramatically to swirling pools of cynicism and negativity. She told me to read Ode, because it was a magazine with an outlook of recognition of our world's weighty injustices and cruelties, but courage enough to look brightly at people making a positive difference and encourage them. Purely coincidentally, someone had recommended I pick up this month's issue of The Walrus for the same reason. Sure enough, they were pondering too On Optimism*.

So last week I picked up a copy of both at Front Page down on Jasper. I remembered, actually, that I'd heard of Ode before because of an article they'd published by Vandana Shiva articulating clearly what the real roots of poverty are, and what it means. Bizarrely, I flipped through the Muhammad Yunus article and the excited murmurs of algae-based power on my way to a Christmas party only to meet a woman named Tilly talking about exactly the same way of looking at life (over mulled wine, of course) not an hour later. The research doesn't seem exhaustive, and they certainly seem to have some undue optimism here and there, but I think it's kind of wonderfully subversive to turn to imagination and creativity and hope instead of sheer depression about The State of Things.

Certainly a welcome warmth in the belly of Edmonchuck winter.

*Article available to Walrus print subscibers only (and I'm not one either)

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posted by Christopher at 7:55 p.m.

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