I guess this means that city dwellers and country souls recycle regularly. You and Steve prefer the countryside, I was bored having a country hideaway. At home in Oklahoma I struggled to escape the waste and constant pursuit of the new. I knew that if I stayed I would end up one of the 25,000 automobile dead on the highways needed to keep such an absurdity going.
I love Toronto and traveling but my home is here and my local opera company has a budget larger than all of the rest of the companies in the US and Canada combined. And it still isn't as large as the Baptist's Bond fund. I go out to see my relatives and the tolerance for my Heathen practices are very low. I will also say that as much as I love my Canadian friends, the general population hasn't been that much friendlier to my religion or people either. My Indian Friends that move to Oklahoma, Montana or Canada usually end up in the local church simply in self defense while practicing their religion at home. There is little dialogue. So I like the density. I think that a real government would find a way to both enhance individual freedom but increase community planning based upon quality and good taste and a curbing of waste. The problem comes when the issue of the handling of complexity arises. Most community planners are not very good at that while most artists flourish in it. To this day I don't understand why Paris and Rome can handle such things as honoring heritage while being in the Avant Garde at the same time; but America, Canada and the UK doesn't seem to be able to. But maybe I'm wrong. I'm not that well traveled and for every opinion there is an exception. I know this country pretty well having both traveled and toured it but I only know the UK by reputation, the people on these lists and one very great old voice teacher who changed my life. She was the exception. She would have very little to say to ignorance and complaints about artistic R & D being a theft of funds from conservatives while their pet projects are so much more expensive and took so much more from her life and finances. She had no trouble getting along with Italians or Germans and she would have never agreed to Verseille after the first world war. She knew the greatness of each and understood that revenge was only going to create monsters. That was why she felt comfortable teaching in Oklahoma after the Americans were smart enough to create the Marshall plan rather than exact revenge. The wars were the work of corporatists and politicians and destroyed her greatest years. She had no problems with Jews or Gypsies and she wasn't a prude. She got along with Toscanini and Martinelli. But she was the greatest dramatic soprano of her day and she did more than most people deserve to bring that back. She did truly live for Art having given up everything for it. But her life was significant and she lived and taught into her nineties. She was the brightest light of my childhood and I will always thank England for her. Monetarists always come in complaining about peanuts while spending billions on themselves. Frankly I don't think they would know the C major scale if it bit them. Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director The Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Original Message ----- From: Brian McAndrews <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Ray Evans Harrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2002 2:18 PM Subject: Re: pop. density (was Re: The Future of Work) > At 12:32 AM -0500 2002/02/21, Ray Evans Harrell wrote: > >I live in a city where my costs for transportation are low and I take cabs. > >I don't own a car and I work in my home. My food is from some of the best > >restaurants who deliver the meals and they are not that much more expensive > >than my doing it at home except I would lose the time at work doing all of > >that preparation. I have a cleaning lady while my wife and I earn more by > >being able to work while she cleans. The museums are the finest you could > >imagine, the Opera is great and the symphony is first rate. Three of the > >greatest halls in the world and every culture you could desire to visit not > >more than a couple of miles from me. No one in the regions could touch > >what I have here on five times the salary. I also have one child who has > >gotten a world class education in high school. We don't use a lot of > >energy and we don't have gas guzzlers as required by living in cities on the > >plains or in the suburbs. We also have several million people within a > >ten mile radius. I would put the efficiency of the NY Subway system next > >to any in the world and you could put most of the world's cities in the > >NYCity Subway system and still have a seat. > > > Hi Ray, > Canada has all kinds of room! We have 1/10th the population of the US > and we are bigger than you. Great Britain would fit nicely into south > central/eastern Ontario. Friends who visit from the UK can't get over > how much space we have. We took them on a trip to the west coast > (about 3000 miles) and they couldn't get over the vast amount of > space there is along portions of the highways with nothing but > forests, fields, lakes, mountains and no people or buildings. > > Toronto, which is a 2.5 hours drive west of me, is the most racially > diverse city in the world I'm told; 160 different languages spoken. > It has excellent museums, theatres, restaurants, symphony, subway. I > enjoy visiting there once or twice a year. > > My sacred place is a log cabin on the edge of a spring fed lake( we > drink the water) about one hour north of my home in Kingston . My > father and I built it from scratch 20 years ago.My children spent > their formative summers there and Walt Whitman was right when he > wrote: > > THERE was a child went forth every day; > > And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became; > > And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of > the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years. > > The early lilacs became part of this child, > > And grass, and white and red morning-glories, and white and red > clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird, > > And the Third-month lambs, and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the > mare's foal, and the cow's calf, > > And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the pond-side, > > And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there-and the > beautiful curious liquid, > > And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads-all became part of him. > ------------------------------------------- > I feel very fortunate to have this retreat. It is truly a place of > re-creation for me. I get to do hard physical labour (Tolstoy was > right when he said this is good for the soul) as I cut, spilt and > haul firewood. > Wendell Berry captures my feelings beautifully with: > The > Peace of Wild Things > > When despair for the world grows in me > and I wake in the night at the least sound > in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, > I go and lie down where the wood drake > rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. > I come into the peace of wild things > who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. > I come into the presence of still water. > And I feel above me the day-blind stars > waiting with their light.For a time > I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. > > > Wendell Berry > ------------------------------------ > I've never had this experience in Toronto. And the last three lines > of this poem much more powerfully express what I feebly tried to say > in an earlier posting concerning Whitman's Learned Astronomers poem. > It had nothing to do with science and everything to do with wordless > wonder and awe. > > Take care, > Brian McAndrews > > > > -- > ************************************************** > * Brian McAndrews, Practicum Coordinator * > * Faculty of Education, Queen's University * > * Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6 * > * FAX:(613) 533-6596 Phone (613) 533-6000x74937* > * e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * > * "Education is not the filling of a pail, * > * but the lighting of a fire. * > * W.B.Yeats * > * * > ************************************************** >
