'Od's Blog!

Genesis and Evolution

2009-10-17T08:14:00.000-07:00

Have you ever noticed that the stages of Creation as given in Genesis seem to loosely follow the same sequence understood by science? First, God creates light (or perhaps this stands for energy?). This makes day possible. First day, he creates time. Then he creates space. Then he creates plants. Then he creates the stars and planets. Then he creates the fish, then the birds –which began, we know now, as the dinosaurs. Then he created the mammals. Then he created man.

The only thing that seems definitely out of place is to have the planets formed after plants. (And it is entirely possible we will discover, in the future, that organic beings indeed formed in the primordial soup before the stars and planets formed, just as we only recently discovered the ancient pedigree of birds.) But other than that, how can Genesis have gotten it so “right” in scientific terms, when it ought to have been random?

Divine inspiration?

Well, here's a bigger mystery. Genesis's sequence makes sense on the principle of greater consciousness with each step, greater “complexity.” First the physical world, then plants, then fish and birds, then animals, then man—each one more conscious, more ensouled, than the last. We more or less know that to be so now, by examining cell differentiation and nervous systems—though there is no reason to suppose this would have been evident to the ancients. And, while this might make sense on the premise that a God who is all spirit, all consciousness, created the world, it makes no sense at all based on the Darwinian theory of evolution. Never mind that a gradual progression to greater complexity seems to violate the law of entropy. There is also no intrinsic reason, given the “survival of the fittest” mechanism, that greater complexity and greater consciousness should always win out in the evolutionary process. They have no apparent inherent survival value to it.

Granted, necessarily, things started out simple, so over time greater complexity on average might be expected to result, by the law of averages. But at a minimum, we ought to see both trends—we ought to see life forms evolving into simpler, less conscious forms almost as often as into more complex forms, if not just as often. We do not.

One more little proof of God's existence, for those who have eyes to see...

News Flash: Sky Not Falling After All

2009-10-14T07:31:00.000-07:00

Subtitled "Engineers have perfromed their magic once again." New technologies are rapidly bringing huge new sources of natural gas from shale on line. Canada, the US, and Britain have large domestic reserves. This alone could make talk of an energy crisis old hat--within a few years. It could also rapidly shift the balance of power, as world dependence on Middle Eastern and Russian oil is rather rapidly reduced.

The Man in the Arab Street Reacts to Obama's Nobel

2009-10-10T05:56:00.000-07:00

The local paper does “man-in-the-street” reactions to current news. Strikingly, the local reaction—here in the heart of the Arab Gulf, to the Nobel Peace Prize for Barack Obama is 100% negative. This is ironic, becuase it was supposedly for improving relations with the Muslim world.

The paper interviewed local Qataris, Lebanese, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, Indonesians, Indians, and Afghans. All were clear in feeling that the award was undeserved. Some seemed to find it actually insulting to the Arab and Muslim world—after all, some Muslim and Arab leaders have positive accomplishments in terms of world peace to their credit—the return of democracy in Pakistan, the end of the Lebanese Civil War, the Doha Round...--and yet this American gets it for nothing!

In other recent news, Al Azhar University, in Cairo, has banned the niqab, the veil, in all female classes, as un-Islamic. For those who are not aware, Al Azhar University is the closest thing Sunni Islam has to a Vatican.

This being so, nobody should still cling to the false notion that wearing a veil is either 1. a religious requirement for Muslim women, or 2. something forced upon them.

A friend has posted this video from The Daily Show. In my experience, this is what the Middle East is really like. It is not the strange, Medieval world that so many seem to think.

The New Priesthood

2009-10-06T08:57:00.000-07:00

Harrison Ayre, letter writer in today's National Post, has issued what amounts to a challenge to the Catholic press, and Catholic bloggers. He writes, of the current case of Bishop Lahey, stopped at the border and accused of having child pornography on his laptop:

“It is strange that there is silence among the Catholic bloggers,and stranger still that there is silence from big Catholic newspapers.”

A friend has also written me, “What do you think?”

I am indeed guilty, as a Catholic blogger, of thus far saying nothing. My excuse is that I have already said it all; there is nothing this case raises that I have not said already about previous cases. There is nothing new about this case.

But I hear a call here for some kind of guidance—if that is not too presumptuous. Some are perhaps crying out for some kind of explanation, of any of the rest of us who might have one.

In fact, Bishop Mancini of Halifax is crying out for some kind of explanation. In his pastoral letter on the matter, he wrote:

"I have cried and I have silently screamed, and perhaps that was my prayer to God:Why Lord? What does this all mean? What are you asking of me and my priests? What do you want to see happen among your people? Is this a time of purification or is it nothing more than devastation? Are people going to stop believing, will faithful people stop being people of faith? Lord, what are you asking of us and how can we make it happen?"

These are good questions. Yes, there is nothing new in the revelation that priests too can sin, and yes, there is nothing in this that calls into question one jot or tittle of traditional Catholic teaching. But it is a matter causing suffering to a lot of innocent people: firstly, all the innocent priests; secondly, the innnocent Catholics and non-Catholics alike who might have their faith shaken, or their coming to faith delayed.

Shouldn't God prevent this from happening?

Nah—that's the good old problem of evil. God decided, long ago, when he made Adam, that he was going to allow us free will. That means, inevitably, we will sin: bishop, layman, atheist, priest, or pope—or saint. Nothing new here.

But perhaps it also even serves a divine purpose. Something is surely going on here, in historic terms—a decline in vocations to the priesthood, and now also these never-ending scandals involving priests.

Perhaps it is a change in the nature of the priesthood.

I think Catholics in general—not theologians, perhaps not priests, but common Catholics—have often, even usually, tended to overesteem the priest. They have imagined priests really were a kind of superhuman being who did not sin. For were it not so, such revelations would not be news. This has always been quite wrong in Catholic theology. In fact, it is a sort of idolatry—worshipping priests instead of God is not much better than worshipping gilded livestock.

One thing these scandals do is to disabuse those guilty of this heresy. If some lose their faith as a result—well, it has to have been an idolatrous faith, for this to do it. It is better to have no faith at all than to worship an idol. The path to true faith is shorter.

While the priestly scandals are correcting this immediate spiritual ailment, isn't God also suggesting a more permanent solution, for the longer term?

That would be the growing shortage of priests.

What is the simplest thing to do in face of such a shortage? Surely, to lower the entrance requirements for becoming a priest: let more in.

Is this not what God is saying?

What entrance requirements? Not celibacy. After all, the Protestant churches have the same clergy shortage, without it. Besides, celibacy is a test of sincerity; without it, we should expect more scandals, not fewer.

Lower the educational standards. They are useless, and perhaps worse than useless. How much education, after all, did Peter and the first apostles have? Fishermen? They were probably barely literate. Yet they did all right. More: Jesus made a point of choosing them _instead_ of the well educated. Those latter would have been the scribes and Pharisees. You might even say Jesus rather disliked them.

So why do we want to make them our priests, or rather, make our priests them?

In Canada, the US, or the UK, to be ordained, one ordinarily needs a first degree, then a two-year graduate degree, then another year of on-the-job training. It takes longer before you are assigned your own parish.

How much of this training is necessary? The only essential for a priest is to be able to competently perform the sacraments. He need not be an authority on doctrine—that is the bishop's job, and that of religious educators. He need not, any longer, know Latin, if he ever really did. He demonstrably need not be able to give a good sermon—since most priests can't. In any case, in this day and age, great sermons are accessible to any parish prepared to purchase a screen and projector. Why avoid using them?

All he needs is the order of the mass more or less committed to memory—no, all he needs is to be able to competently read it, and make the right gestures. For the mass, and the other six sacraments. He is an actor, but with just one part to repeat indefinitely.

At a pinch, a three-month course ought to do it, for anyone already literate.

Besides probably quickly replenishing the numbers of priests, this approach would have the colossal additional advantage of pulling the priesthood itself down off its lofty pedestal. It would be best if roughly half the congregation would normally look down on the priest socially. That would bring the priesthood closer to the common people, and it would also discourage class prejudices in the wider society. It would begin to draw the priesthood from about the same pool that has already, so successfully, produced our Charismatic prayer leaders, the most vital and fastest-growing part of the church.

Scandals might be no less frequent, but they would be less damaging, without the priestolatry.

But I suspect they would also be less frequent. Priests would then indeed commonly be the salt of the earth, just as Jesus's disciples were. These are the people Jesus himself identified as the most truly moral.

Sure, insist on a good education and a good academic mind for bishops, and for religious educators. Their job is different.

For priests? Just insist on a vocation, and celibacy. Don't put up artificial barriers to it.

Joe McCarthy vs. Jennifer Lynch: The Smackdown

2009-10-06T05:11:00.001-07:00

Believers in basic freedoms really owe it to themselves to hear what Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn had to say recwently before a Parilamentary Committee investigating Canada's Human Rights Commissions.

Joe McCarthy never came near the sort of things these commissions have done. Think Star Chamber.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Polanski and Letterman

2009-10-03T04:02:00.000-07:00

You may expect me, gentle reader, to agree with apparently every other right-wing columnist in God's creation, in condemning David Letterman and Roman Polanski, both currently prominent in the yellow news.

I do not.

I do not want to hear about David Letterman's sex life. It is none of my business, it is between him, the women, and God. It does not become my business just because he is famous, and I feel the main issue here is that his privacy has been violated. I deliberately did not read anything about the affair until obliged to to respond to a friend's emai, just to make sure there wasn't anything genuinely scandalous involved.

As for Polanski:

1.The statute of limitations should have run out on that one. Sure, legally, it hasn't, but the reasons for having a statute of limitations largely apply here. Over thirty years later, you are barely prosecuting the same man; and our view of the seriousness of the crime has changed dramatically in the interim.

2.The main purpose of punishment should be rehabilitation. Polanski is already rehabilitated. He has not reoffended in thirty years.

3.He has already been sufficiently punished in any case, by exile, by a civil settlement, by damage to his career and public reputation, and by 42 days in jail.

4.The greater good of society as a whole is best served by allowing him to go on making movies.

"Why I Loathe Feminism"

2009-09-24T00:59:00.000-07:00

The founder of the world’s first “shelter for battered women” has broken silence and spoken out about something that must have troubled her for many years. This took some courage:

“feminism is a cynical, misguided ploy.”

“I have never been a feminist, because, having experienced my mother's violence, I always knew that women can be as vicious and irresponsible as men.”

“the movement, which proclaimed that all men are potential rapists and batterers, was based on a lie that, if allowed to flourish, would result in the complete destruction of family life.”

“when I later opened my refuge for battered women, 62 of the first 100 to come through the door were as abusive as the men they had left.”

“Many years later, when feminists started demonising all fathers, these stark images continually reminded me of the truth - that domestic violence is not a gender issue.”

“Feminism, I realised, was a lie. Women and men are both capable of extraordinary cruelty. Indeed, the only thing a child really needs - two biological parents under one roof - was being undermined by the very ideology which claimed to speak up for women's rights.
This country is now on the brink of serious moral collapse. We must stop demonising men and start healing the rift that feminism has created between men and women.
Harriet Harman's insidious and manipulative philosophy that women are always victims and men always oppressors can only continue this unspeakable cycle of violence. And it's our children who will suffer. “
Read it and weep:

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1215464/Why-I-loathe-feminism---believe-ultimately-destroy-family.html#ixzz0S0bAPfNc

Sabbath in Sofia

2009-09-21T06:28:00.001-07:00

I was walking alone through the darkening streets of downtown Sofia, homeward from a sidewalk supper with my colleagues. As I passed Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, I reflected once again on how beautiful Bulgarian culture was, but then began to brood on the fact that it once also included a large Bulgarian Jewish culture, which is now gone. Before the war, one fifth of Sofia's residents were Jews. They were not killed in the Holocaust, to Bulgaria's eternal credit. But almost all chose to emigrate, to the new state of Israel, after the war.

Just as I was feeling sad about this, about how great a cultural loss this was, I became aware of being surrounded on the sidewalk, otherwise almost deserted at this hour, by a small parade of rather elderly men and women. I looked up from my brooding, and noticed next in the gathering darkness that the men were all wearing yarmulkes.

Of course. It was Friday evening. The Sabbath had begun. As orthodox Jews, they could not drive or ride—they had to walk to the Central Synagogue, once the largest Sephardic synagogue in Europe, still standing a few blocks away, for the sundown service. Shabat Shalom.

Judaism, it seems, is still here in Sofia. And, while this trickle of old mn and women may be the last generation there, perhaps not.

The overall population of Bulgaria is declining, though its economic future seems rosy. Israel's future looks less and less secure. I think, if I were a young Israeli, I would think very carefully about the possibility of emigrating here, where there is no tradition of antisemitism.

Indeed, all across Europe, populations will soon be declining. They could use the Jews back. In what may after all be their God-given role, as a leaven among the nations, not just one more nation among all the others.

The Honour Due One's Parents

2009-09-18T02:05:00.000-07:00

“Honour thy father and thy mother.” So runs the fourth commandment—or fifth, of you are Orthodox or Reformed.

But that is not the complete commandment, either. The full passage, in Exodue, reads, “Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” And in Revelations, it reads: “Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”

The extra bit is important, I think, and ought not to be dropped—this is demonstrated by the fact that it appears in both versions of the list. It is needed to make the true meaning clear.

Without it, the commandment is often quoted to children to suggest a divine obligation to obey their parents. But that is not what is meant at all. Jesus makes this clear in the New Testament when he says the true Christian “despises” his father and his mother, that we should call no one father but our Father in heaven, and that, rather than respectfully mourn our sire, we ought to “let the dead bury their own dead.”

We cannot, of course, assume all families to be benevolent, any more than we can assume all governments to be benevolent. This being true, the common interpretation of the commandment can be profoundly harmful in the case, for example, of abused children. But more: the pressure for solidarity within a family can be the first and the worst example of “peer pressure” as an assault on the individual conscience—of “the world” as it appears in that ungodly trio of tempters, “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” And then there is the danger of nepotism, of family solidarity as collective selfishness.

The commandment is, in any case, superfluous in the case of young children. They have no option, after all—their very survival depends on keeping their parents happy. They have no free will in the matter.

It is, accordingly, only to adults that the commandment is addressed. And the word, after all, is “honour,” not “obey.”

What the commandment means, rather, is a moral obligation to look after our parents' needs in their old age. It is precisely this obligation, if socially recognized, that ensures that “our days may be long.” No euthanasia, as is indeed practiced by some cultures, no mocking of the old, of the sort Ham was indeed cursed for, and no “elder abuse.” It is of a piece with the commandment, elsewhere, “not to forget the wife of your youth.”

This meaning would be much more apparent in cultures that, unlike ours, do not have social security to tend to the old. Even without this, is is easy for the young and strong to become reckless of the interests of the old farts and has-beens.

Our own culture is not exemplary in this regard.

More Evidence in Favour of Catholicism

2009-09-08T07:48:00.000-07:00

I think it may be possible to evaluate various religious traditions objectively, and decide which religion is better than which other religion.

Here's how.

Premise: God is manifested by the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. These three are ultimately all one, and together are God. This is necessarily so: God as a perfect being must be perfectly good, perfectly real, and perfectly beautiful; for any being that was not all these things would not be perfect. An ugly being is self-evidently not a perfect being; an evil being is not a perfect being; and an unreal being, as Anselm pointed out, is not a perfect being.

All this seems self-evident and true of necessity.

But something important follows from this, does it not? It follows that any religion which fails to value and teach appreciation for any one of these three aspects is to that extent deficient, and to that extent inferior to a religious tradition that acknowledges all three. It does not fully reflect the true nature of the divine.

We can, then, proceed to make judgements:

Paganism, shamanism, animism, for example, tends to fail to fully acknowledge the good; it tends towards amorality. It is therefore an inferior religion, as history itself has shown: it has been mostly abandoned in practice. Buddhism and Hinduism also seem lower on the pole than the ethical monotheisms here. Confucianism also scores high.

Calvinism fails to properly honour the beautiful, standing opposed to beauty in almost all its expressions: music, visual art, female beauty, dance, drama. In this regard, it is simply wrong; a wrong turn in religious history. Possibly for this reason, Calvinist creeds tend to fade over generations. Wahhabi Islam can also be faulted here. Taoism scores high, on this one factor.

Buddhism falls relatively short on truth—it does not value metaphysical truth, but only “skillful means.”

Who comes out on top? Catholicism, it seems to me, as clearly as one might wish. I'd like to say “Catholicism/Orthodoxy,” as it seems to me they are very much the same on this score. But I cannot say “Christianity,” because, as noted, Calvinist Christianity is not at the same level. Catholic/Orthodox Christianity seems to stand out among the great word religions in most clearly valuing all three qualities: a rigorous and sophisticated metaphysics, a rigorous and sophisticated ethics, and a rigorous and sophisticated tradition of religious art.

This is perhaps confirmed by the accomplishments of Christian civilization. The cultural cultivation of the virtues of truth, morality, and beauty will naturally tend to manifest as accomplishments in philosophy and science, saintliness, and the arts. And surely Europe leads the world in all three spheres? Granted, there may be some Eurocentrism in such a claim—but really, the rest of the world basically concurs.

Some may argue, mind, that there is no clear superiority of Catholic and Orthodox over Protestant Europe in cultural accomplishment. In philosophy and science, Protestant Britain, America, and North Germany may have an edge over Catholic France and Italy and Orthodox Russia. But if so, it is not a huge edge.

As to ethics, it is hard to say a given nation is more ethical than another. Protestant nations tend to have more honest governments—and higher crime rates. But what of actual paragons of saintliness? Here, surely, the Catholics have the advantage.

In the arts, I think even most artists of Protestant Europe would award the Catholics the laurel. The terms “Romantic” and “Bohemian,” after all, both refer to Catholic cultures. You don't go from Paris to London in search of a life in the arts.

High Noon

2009-09-06T01:11:00.000-07:00

As I was exercising last night, I rewatched High Noon, probably the first movie I remember from my childhood. I first saw it sometime between the ages of 2 and 8, and it burned some things indelibly into my psyche.

It remains one of the greatest artistic products and purest expressions of American culture.

Most striking is how it conforms to the traditional dramatic unities, as prescribed by Aristotle millennia ago. The movie lasts one hour and 20 minutes; the time covered in the movie lasts one hour and 20 minutes. All around one act and one action: that train rolling in at 12 noon.

One would have imagined these rules for drama really only mattered for the stage, and were about creating the willing suspension of disbelief. In fact, one would expect them to be a bad idea for the screen, because they artificially limit the visuals and so the visual interest. Not so: they apparently matter just as much in a movie. High Noon is not the only classic movie that attends to them: Night of the Living Dead and Twelve Angry Men also come to mind.

It is also of course, true that you can make a great movie, or a great play, without them. Shakespeare proved that.

Nevertheless, High Noon proves that there is some kind of magic here: all else being equal, if you can conform to the three dramatic unities, you are adding the weight of a spiritual sledgehammer to your performance.

As for American culture: if and to the extent that it ever forgets the essential message of High Noon, it has lost its soul.

Penn and Teller Strut the New Aggressive Atheism

2009-09-05T00:52:00.000-07:00

Penn and Teller, a pair of magicians of whom I was previously only vaguely aware, have apparently broadcast a TV show directly attacking the Catholic Church. A friend sent it along. I at first did not respond, not believing that anyone could take it seriously. But he felt strongly that some would, and after the wide credence given to some of the things in the Da Vinci Code, I guess anything is possible.

So here's my detailed refutation, in case you've seen the TV show:

The very silliest thing is Penn and Teller's centrepiece claim that the Italian comic Sabrina Guzzanti is being persecuted by the Church for saying the Pope was going to go to hell. And, what, it turns out, has the church done to her? Nada, nothing; except to announce publicly that they forgive her whatever she has said. Nobody has sued her, nobody has prosecuted her, for anything. Apparently simply _disagreeing_ with her is an intolerable violation of her rights. But if so, how is it okay for her to disagree with the Church in the first place? How can she object, as she does explicitly in the film, to the Vatican "expressing its opinions about everything." Free speech for the rich and famous, but not for Catholics? What could be nuttier? What could be more hypocritical?

Penn and Teller make much out of the Vatican's opposition to a UN Resolution to supposedly "decriminalize" homosexuality back in 2008. A few things they fail to note: first, there was no such resolution. There was only a non-binding "declaration" brought to the floor, because France, the sponsor, saw it could not get enough support for a resolution. And even the declaration was voted down. Most of the members of the UN opposed it, notably including the USA. So why single out the Vatican's opposition? It was a lousy idea, and, directly counter to the film's claim, asserted far more than the notion that homosexuality should not be a crime--a proposition with which the Vatican publicly agrees. For example, it would have officially declared that homosexualty was entirely genetic, and that homosexual sex was a human right.

The clip notes that bishops, on their appointment, vow to "protect the church from scandal," and claim this as proof of a conspiracy to suppress evidence. Eh? What it means is that the bishops vow not to _cause scandal_, i.e., not to do anything scandalous. That is scandalous? Catch-22.

Then they turn to the document CRIMEN SOLLICITATIONIS, which they call a "bombshell," and ignorantly refer to the Church "discreetly" writing the title in Latin. Were they aware of the existence of human life beyond the English-speaking world, they might realize that all Vatican documents are written entirely in Latin--what they have seen, presumably, is an unofficial English translation.

So what's their bombshell? Apparently, the revelation from this document that the Catholic Church has always, like every other properly-run large organization, kept personnel files, and that, like every other well-run large organization, these files include references to any marginally credible accusations of impropriety.

So let's get this straight--it would have been more responsible to ignore such accusations?

Of course, the files are secret, as they are in any organization; otherwise, accused employees would have a legitimate legal case of slander to pursue in most countries.

A bombshell in one sense, I suppose: I'm surprised to learn the Church is this well organized.

Another spectacular bit of ignorance: Penn explains that the Pope is able to get away with this "coverup" because he was granted immunity from prosecution "by President George W. Bush." This would be meaningful, of course, only if the US President's word were law in all countries of the world. The Pope is neither a citizen nor a resident of the US.

One of their interviewees intones "The Vatican has said a man who has AIDS cannot use a condom even to save the life of his wife." That implies that it is established fact that using a condom will save her life. It is far more likely that, over time, using a condom and continuing to have sex will murder her in cold blood. The Catholic position, of course, is that the man should stop having sex. Tough medicine? No more than the priesthood asks of themselves.

Penn then ridicules a claim in the Vatican newspaper that female hormones from birth control pills are causing environmental pollution, a claim that cited over 300 medical studies. His refutation? Simply calling it "ridiculous" and saying "the Vatican should leave science to those who actually believe in it."

So where are Penn's opposing studies? Where is his science, if he believes in it?

And on what does he base this offhand claim that the Vatican does _not_ believe in science?

Here's his evidence: the apparently rhetorical question, "Wasn't it the Vatican who said that smallpox vaccine was a product of the devil?"

Sneaky: the correct answer, of course, is no. Catholic priests were actually among the first promote vaccination, and to vaccinate, way back in 1862. It wasn't a rhetorical question at all: just a complete red herring. The startling lack of anything better proves Penn's original claim to be a conscious lie.

There are too many smaller lies to mention. The Vatican holocaust deniers?

To sum up, their own title, "Bullshit," definitely applies. If this were something clearly directed against an individual, it would be an open and shut case of slander. These two guys would be absolutely nailed to the wall by any good defamation attorney.

We Have Met the Enemy ...

2009-09-03T22:49:00.000-07:00

The world is full of Pharisees, phonies, mountebanks, and charlatans. We knew that, right? It's too obvious. A writerly friend loves to quote the adage “95% of everything is bunk.” This much is old to anyone who has read the New Testament.

But here’s a recent thought that's new at least to me: it’s not just the fault of the Pharisees. All of us are egging them on.

This revelation came to me while watching one of CNN’s house ads in a hotel room in Abu Dhabi. It was describing all the fascinating, controversial, interesting people you would encounter on one of their programs. “Mavericks!” the voice-over rang out breathlessly, as a photo of Al Gore appeared on the screen.

Al Gore!?!? A former Vice President of the US? When has he ever bucked a trend, as opposed to settling in for the ride? Whose opinions on anything have been more utterly predictable? Who on earth can be left to represent the political establishment?

It’s not as if the current US political street doesn't offer more obvious candidates to illustrate the term: Joe Liebermann, Arlen Specter, John McCain, Ralph Nader, Jesse Ventura, Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan … Assuming the people who run CNN have a minimal knowledge of their own business, how do they come up with such a non sequitor?

Because, is seems to me, most people prefer a lie to the truth. It is Pharisaism with which they feel most comfortable—just like the mob that cried out “Give us Barrabbus.” It was safer in their minds, and it is safer in ours, to free a known murderer than a genuinely honest man. Without this sentiment from the mob, the Pharisees wouldn't last a day.

Jesus was a maverick, if anyone was. The very concept of a maverick, someone who thinks for himself instead of following the established consensual line, is necessarily frightening to anyone invested in a lie. As just about all of us are, in one way or another: the lie that we deserve all the money we have, say, or that we are really much smarter than everyone else, or that we will never actually die, or ...

Any real maverick threatens this. It seems wisest, therefore, to co-opt the term; ideally, to co-opt it for its opposite. Lies persisted in breed bigger and more terrible lies, to protect themselves, hiding the truth everywhere behind double-switchbacks. If you cannot damn “mavericks” as such, damn them instead for being “conformists.”

I’ve seen this double-lie happen politically many times in my 56-odd (very odd) years. When some golf club a few years ago would not admit Tiger Woods to play in a tourney, another friend of mine, the oft-mentioned left-wing columnist, lamented this example of “systemic discrimination.”

It was, of course, the opposite of “systemic discrimination”: currently, the “system” discriminates aggressively in favour of African Americans. It was an incidence of personal prejudice, shared by a small group of individuals in defiance of the system. But “systemic discrimination” is a comfortable lie, because it absolves all of us, as individuals, of any present or past guilt. The devil made us do it, so to speak.

If, on the other hand, real “systemic discrimination” came up and bit us on the nose—why, that wouldn't be discrimination at all. For admitting it was would be bucking the system, questioning the shared consensus, and where would we be then? Obliged, sadly, to confront truths bare. Consider “feminism”--really the systemic discrimination against men. Compare, after all, the historic fate of women with that of American blacks—a group truly and obviously discriminated against. Blacks had to give up their seats on the bus; women were the first ones seated. Blacks were served last at restaurants; women always went first. Blacks were obliged to work at hard, manual labour until they dropped in the open field. Women were excused from any manual labour as soon as their family circumstances or society's circumstances permitted it. And so on and on: the term “discrimination” has been co-opted to describe the opposite, and to justify and add to the special privileges privileged members of society already have. The rich get richer, and the poor get further stigmatized, so we needn't feel guilty about it.

Skillful Pharisees are merely able to exploit this bottomless public appetite for being deceived. David Suzuki springs to mind: when environmentalism gained enough steam to look mainstream, he, already entirely an establishment figure, was able to rush to the front of that parade and claim leadership. People embraced him, over the real founders of the movement, because Suzuki, being establishment, could be trusted not to really rock the boat in the end. He could rail and shake his tiny fists; everyone knew he was fully invested in the status quo, and would never do anything that might actually rattle our morning teacups. So everyone now could pretend to be an “environmentalist,” blame the poor, outlaw the real environmentalists, do something symbolic, and carry on as before.

So again, when some politician suddenly changes his or her stripes, in blatant response to an opinion poll or the sentiment of some new electorate, we almost always happily go along with the sham. We act entirely as though we still consider their newfound political views principled, though all of us must know they are not; it's very much like the “willing suspension of disbelief” needed to appreciate a good novel. We all now accept that Mitt Romney is a conservative, for example. Far from being troubled, we feel we can now trust him, because he has made public his final Pharisaism. No danger here from Mormon principle: we can trust him, like the rest of us, to predictably behave in his own self-interest, instead of inconveniently seeking truth, justice, or any nonsense of that sort.

This craving for charlatans over the genuine article makes the world go round. We always want a charming rascal, not an honest man, in the van.

It is the source, I suppose, of such cryptic sayings as “The devil is the god of this world,” or “the devil is a gentleman.” The entire social sphere is corrupted, fallen, from this tendency, so much so that it constantly breeds wild conspiracy theories. Everybody knows there is a vast selfish conspiracy in control of the world, deliberately manipulating it; and they are right.

What they fail to realize is that we ourselves are the conspirators.

Canada--What's That?

2009-09-03T00:24:00.001-07:00

Last Canada Day, I was feeling a liitle homesick. So I hunted on YouTube for something stirring and patriotic to watch to celebrate the day.

I was disappointed. Everything I found featured only geography, or celebrated "multicultural" stuff that is not, in the end, Canadian.

As Canadians, we can take no pride in the beauty of the land. We didn't do that; God did. All that matters is culture, and, thank you very much, everywhere else, but actually, we have our own. Love it or leave it.

So I made my own little slide show using Animoto. Next Canada Day, I hope to do better.

Black Irish and White Bulgarians

2009-09-02T00:57:00.000-07:00

Okay, maybe my imagination is just getting carried away. But have a look at those ancient Thracian faces again, put up a few posts ago.

Besides looking a lot like modern Bulgarians, don’t they also look a bit… Black Irish?

I grew up among the Irish of Canada, and it seems to me I see familiar features on the streets of Sofia: the inverted smile, broad faces, dark Firbolg looks like those of my Black Irish cousins, receding chins like Tommy Makem’s.

There are two possible reasons, other than chance or personal delusion. First, we know there were Celts to the north of Greece in early Classical times. Classical Greek authors speak of them; Pythagoras claimed they taught him all he knew. It might have been a branch of these same Bulgarian Celts who later crossed the Irish Channel, in their general move westward through Europe.

Second, there is the amber route. Ancient Thrace was madly rich with silver deposits. Amber was a major trade good, and it was mostly found on beaches along the North Sea. There is a natural river trade route, up the Danube and down the Rhine, that starts in Bulgaria and ends near the English Channel. From there, the Celts dominated the sea trade in amber, at least from the 4th to the 1st centuries BC.

The Celts or the Bulgarians might easily have migrated along this route, in either direction, just as the French Metis migrated along the fur trade routes in early Canada. It would have made strategic sense for them to have tried to control both ends of the trade, the point of production and the point of retail distribution: a vertical monopoly.

It would follow that the designation of the Irish as “Celts” and the Bulgarians as “Slavs” is not really accurate; but these were always linguistic terms, and language is easier to change than blood.

It’s one way to explain the strange Black Irish.

Nota Bene

2009-08-21T23:13:00.001-07:00

A good friend of mine writes a regular column that appears in a number of publications in North America. A longtime former editor of the United Church Observer, his political views, and those of most of his readers, are resolutely left-wing in modern terms. I almost always comment on his columns, almost always disagree, and he, being an utterly honourable man, almost always publishes some sort of excerpt from my email as reader response in his next column. I must drive him mad, I'm afraid.

A couple of columns ago, I even floated the radical idea that Canada should feature its greatest artists, instead of dead politicians, on its banknotes. It is the duty of a government, I believe, to promote the national culture.

To be precise, here is what I wrote, as excerpted by my friend for the sake of other readers:

"It has long bothered me that Canada features politicians on our currency. I recall reading that no other country in the Commonwealth does -- and very few countries of any kind. My wallet right now is stuffed with bills from Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, and Croatia. All feature artists of some sort, except for [the goddess] Athena. None feature any politicians. It is the artists who represent, and indeed who form, a nation. Not having ours on our currency is advertising to the world the notion that we are uncultured. And, by God, we want to stay uncultured. Regardless of the cost.

I wonder if we would have the problems we do with regionalism and separatism if we were a bit more supportive of our common culture?"

Sound controversial? Perhaps to non-Canadians. I noted in my email that many Canadians seem openly hostile to the idea of a distinct Canadian culture.

And nothing could have so delightfully or so clearly demonstrated my point, that a large segment of Canadians are actively hostile to admitting Canada has, or even allowing Canada to develop its own distinct national culture, then the immediate response of other readers to my comments. My friend noted in print that my observation generated much more email than his own column that week. To think that, of all the things I have written in response to your columns over the years—all the controversial things, I might say-- _this_ suggestion, to put artists on the currency, was the one to spark a firestorm!

Only in Canada, surely! I would never have dared to make that one up.

I quote:

AG: "One comment about Steve Roney's comment on [putting] politicians on our money. Considering the near total ignorance that has been shown time after time on the subject of Canadian history by the Dominion Institute, I would say that anything that might make people think even a little bit about that history is a plus...”

SR:
So—our history consists only of politics, and not of any significant cultural events? And this is taken by Mr. G as self-evidently so...

Surely any European or Asian would be rolling on the floor already.

Beauty crieth in an attic and no man regardeth:
O God! O Montreal!
AG: “The politicians pictured on our money, like the politicians pictured on the US currency, are the major nation builders of our history.”

SR: Okay; It must be the right thing to do—the Americans do it. God forbid we should raise our sights any further. That would be so—uncolonial. That would be like … seeking our own culture. We must always look instead only to the motherland, even if our motherland might have shifted over the years since the Second War.

Of course, the American situation is different. Their currency portrays not politicians per se, but heads of state, who are indeed supposed to be national symbols, like our Queen. Ours portray political leaders.

AG: “And although one may question the monarchy, which is, perhaps over-represented in that the Queen's picture appears on all coinage as well as the most commonly used bill, I think that the concept of putting nation builders on the currency is a good one.”

SR: “Nation-builders”? Again, anyone in Europe or Asia or indeed not on Mars would surely find it funny to see politicians, and not artists, as “nation-builders.”

Note Oxford's definition of “nation”: “a large body of people united by common descent, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular state or territory.”

If Canada is or is ever to be a nation, it is only in that second sense, of sharing a common culture. You could put all the politicians who had ever lived in one long line, and they would never produce one single nation. But even one true artist, a Dante, a Cervantes, a Shakespeare, a Homer, might. And has. Repeatedly.

Politicians merely react to, or exploit, or create the conditions for, the nation's existence.

RC, another reader, wrote back, regarding my original observation: “I take huge offense at this statement; I find it very elitist.'”

SR: Indeed. The very suggestion is offensive!

Let's see: who are the obvious choices to go on our currency? Who are the founding figures of Canadian culture? I'd suggest the obvious big four, more or less as already given elsewhere in this blog, are Lucy Maud Montgomery, Stephen Leacock, Robert W. Service, and Gabrielle Roy. Seriously, everything that has ever been written in Canada since by anyone who has not been simply passing through has echoed or even channelled one or more of these four.

Let's see how elite their backgrounds actually were.

Lucy Maude Montgomery: obviously, her subject matter was not some elite. Anne Shirley was an abandoned orphan raised by a farm family. Neither is her audience: any Canadian schoolgirl, and most of the schoolgirls of East Asia. Could you get less elitist than this?

Yes you could. Lucy Maud Montgomery's own life story inspired Anne's. Her own mother died in her infancy, and she was shipped across the country by a father in Saskatchewan to be raised on the Island by grandparents.

Stephen Leacock: his subject matter was the ordinary life of ordinary people in a typical small town. His only reference to any elite was to the local Knights of Pythias. His writing is accessible to any high school student—personally, I read everything by him I could find when I was still in primary school. And he himself was the third of eleven children of a failed farmer and hopeless alcoholic. Poverty forced him to leave school, but he gradually kept at it, eventually all the way to a professorship, by studying nights.

Yep, definitely born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Like all his readers.

Robert W. Service? He arrived in Canada with a few dollars in his pocket and one change of clothes. He took the train as far west as he could get before the money ran out. He sought any work he could find, and nearly starved, before he finally landed a job as a bank clerk. He wrote his most famous poems, quite literally, from a log cabin. His subjects had similar life stories: desperately poor men who could not afford to marry, who died in lonely cabins seeking a fortune, and so forth. “The men who never fit in.”

Again, any high school student can read him with enjoyment; I devoured him whole in primary school. Just like Montgomery and Leacock, his characters are not elite, his readers are not elite, and he was not elite. That, indeed, summarizes Canadian literature in a sentence.

Gabrielle Roy is the poshest of the bunch: tenth of ten children of a Manitoba homesteading family. Her mother married at 19. Her first novel was about the life of working class St. Henri, one of the poorest parts of Montreal.

Something is clearly wrong with RC's concept of what Canadian art is. One suspects he has never paid it close company. Perhaps fearing contamination.

By contrast, the folks we currently do promote on our legal tender are definitely members of an elite. Never mind the Queen. WL Mackenzie King's father was a professor at Osgoode Hall, his grandfather mayor of Toronto. Wilfrid Laurier's father was also the local mayor, and justice of the peace, and his family proudly traced itself back through seven generations in Canada—four generations ago. Robert Borden was the direct descendant of the surveyor sent from Massachusetts to redivide the Acadian lands for apportionment to English-speaking settlers—the first English-speakers in Nova Scotia. His cousin was also a knight, and also a prominent politician.

Only Sir John A Macdonald truly came from humble roots; and only John A ever did anything worthy of the term “nation-building.” He at least produced the political framework of a nation.

RC's first suggestion is to replace these four with the sort of beaming portraits of muscular peasants and factory workers popular on the currency of dictatorships. This approach is popular with governments, of course, because, far from honouring some common man, it avoids honouring anyone, while implicitly scolding the average man for not working harder in the service of the government.

Saving this, he suggests another politician—merely a significantly less successful one. Tommy Douglas.

Right. It is not just that Tommy Douglas never became a PM of any prominence. He never even became PM. And it is not just that he never became prime minister. He never even made it as far as leader of the opposition, which is at least a semi-official post. For roughly half of his federal career, the best he could manage was leader of the fourth-largest party in the lower house of Parliament.

Wow.

In 1965, he finally managed to make it to third place, sweeping past “Other.” He owed this to the collapse of the Social Credit Party. Pure luck, in other words.

This being so, it is a bit bizarre to consider him, in any real sense, “The Father of Canadian Medicare.” Good or bad, that distinction belongs to Lester B. Pearson, the person who actually introduced it. Oddly enough, it is not usually even cited as the most significant of Pearson's accomplishments. And, oddly enough, even with far more accomplishments than this, Pearson has never been though to rise to the stature of deserving a bank note. And, if not the organ grinder, why the monkey? Perhaps, if Pearson were one day judged worthy of inclusion on the currency, for this along with his other accomplishments, Douglas might be worth a bit of small print somewhere on the bill—if merely wanting something is a worthy distinction. And if we can believe nobody else wanted it.

And if we were really prepared to so honour someone who could also be referred to with some accuracy as “the father of Canadian eugenics.” A man whose first idea on how to deal with the poor was to sterilize them to ensure there were no more of them.

But even this would be odd, surely. If the government of Canada were really to announce to the world, through the issuance of such a banknote, that Canada's claim to nationhood consists merely in having a health administration generically similar to that of nearly every other developed country in the world—if any non-Canadian suggested such a thing, wouldn't it sound like a grave insult?

Which again demonstrates my original point: positive hostility to Canadian culture among many Canadians, most notably our “elites.”

Canadian Literature's Big Three

2009-08-09T03:45:00.000-07:00

There are three great founder-figures of English Canadian literature and the English-Canadian literary imagination, all of whom should feature on our banknotes. But, if the current cultural or political elite got to choose, I feel sure none of them would be.

They are:

Lucy Maude Montgomery
Stephen Leacock
Robert W. Service

Everything else ever written in English Canada since has been based on one or all of these.

I hope to God they are at least still taught in the schools.

Words to Ponder

2009-08-08T23:22:00.000-07:00

"Liberals [sic] don't understand human nature. That's why they always turn out to be wrong about everything. They think the truth is a lie and lies are the truth. They fall for hoaxes and ignore the facts."

- Kathy Shaidle. Right or wrong, authentic voice of the Canadian working class.

The Ancient Thracians are Still With Us

2009-08-02T08:03:00.000-07:00

It is not that difficult, even withour DNA samples, to figure out the overall ethnic makeup of folks in and around the Classical world. Ancient sculpture was accurate enough to capture common ethnic features clearly. We can tell, by looking at ancient sculptures, that the inhabitants of South Italy today are very much the same ethnic group as the ancient Romans—Julius Caesar and Frank Sinatra look enough alike to be cousins.

We can also tell, from ancient Greek sculpture, that the ancient and the modern Greeks are the same people. Statues of Zeus look in profile very much, for example, like Spiro Agnew. You can tell the difference between a Greek and a Roman statue: it is the difference in appearance between the Greeks and the Italians today.

You can also see that the modern inhabitants of Egypt are the ancient inhabitants of Egypt--Nefertiti's profile is everywhere on the streets of Cairo.

From these examples, more broadly, I think we can hypothesize with some confidence that populations don't shift all that much. Languages, pottery styles, change far more readily than the actual ethnic makeup of the people. Otherwise, future archeologists might easily hypothesize from the distinctive pottery style of the Coke bottle that sometime around 1950, Americans killed everyone else and took over the planet.

Accordingly, we can actually plainly see that the people we now call “Bulgarians” are in fact largely the same ethnic group as the ancient people called “Thracians.”

Consider this ancient head from the Bulgarian Archeological Museum.

Surely that’s not a Greek head, or an Italian missing his greater corporeal part, but a Bulgarian.

How about this one, a Thracian king from the 4th century BC:

You tell me: if you saw that face drunk in an alley, would you think Greek? Italian? Or would you think Slav?

Here’s a golden death mask from an ancient Thracian tomb: fitted over the face of the corpse, it was presumably meant to preserve his facial features for eternity. Note the face will have been distorted by the attempt to flatten it for museum display. But what modern nationality do you see?

Yeah, I see a Slav too.

Not all the statues in the Sofia Museum look like "Slavs." But that is no surprise—Greeks and Romans certainly lived here too, from very early times. But the modern Bulgarians are not, ethnically, some distant tribe from the steppes who wandered here in historical times. The language did; not the people. They are essentially the direct descendants of the ancient Thracians.

THis is especially unsurprising considering the density of the Thracian population--Herodotus thought it was the most heavily populated nation in the world after India--much more populous than Hellas. This is a measure of the great fertility of the Thracian plain, far richer agriculturally than Greece.

Such a dense population is unlikely to just disappear. They are much more likely to assimilate anyone who might come along.

Thoughts on the Plovdiv Folklore Festival

2009-07-30T12:00:00.000-07:00

I have two thoughts on having attended the Plovdiv Folklore Festival.

First thought: a lot of us North Americans and Anglos are inclined to see Paris as the capital of world culture--realizing how much richer it is culturally than our own sad Anglo efforts. Food, painting, dance, fashion, discussing philosophy in a sidewalk cafe, the bohemian life--all that.

But we ain't seen nothing. The French may impress us, but guess who blows the French mind with their wild romantic passions? The Slavs. Hence the term "Bohemian"--based on a cadre of Czech students who appeared at the Sorbonne. No way the French could handle them. And when a regiment of Croats passed through? All the French wanted to dress just as they dressed. Hence the necktie or "cravat."

The French are cultured enough to appreciate a superior culture when they see one.

There were folk troupes from countries other than the Slav nations at the folklife festival. But they embarrassed themselves by showing up. The Bulgarians were terribly nice--they started applauding loudly whenever the foreigners seemed to falter. But the non-Slav groups were just not in the same league.

I suspect Slav culture really runs in a continuous line--more continuous and consistent than we realize--to ancient Greece, and is the inheritor of all that awesomeness from Greece, the Levant, Byzantium, Macedonia, Thrace, and the empire of Alexander. In fact, the Russian royal house always laid claim to being the direct successors to Byzantium. Culturally speaking, they are our European big brothers.

My second thought: if the EU and NATO really think they can assimilate the Western Slav lands without also eventually making room for Russia, they have no idea what they are doing. In the long run, whatever are the local rivalries, any alliance that splits the Slav world is artificial, unstable and untenable. Ask Austria-Hungary. The ties of pan-Slavism feel too strong.

There can be no united Europe without Russia in any event.

Tom Thompson: Not Dead Enough?

2009-07-28T11:04:00.000-07:00

Visiting the Plovdiv Museum of Art today, I was tremendously impressed at how good their Group of Seven collection was. Maybe a half-dozen canvases in that very distinctive style, all painted in the 1920s.

Except that the landscapes were all Bulgarian.

I remember being taught back in high school that the Group of Seven were historic for forging for the first time a genuine Canadian artistic aesthetic, free from European models.

Well, no. This was pure hype. They were doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same time that European artists were. Seeking out wild landscapes, without sign of human habitation, and painting them in an Impressionistic style.

They simply happened by luck to have a distinctive landscape in front of their easels. Big deal. A good model does not make a good artist, or good art. Otherwise, a photograph would do just as well.

Their art, in fact, is bad art. It is trivial, purely decorative. It depends on a distinctive style, but one easily imitated by anyone who might want to do so.

There is great Canadian art out there: Kurelek, Colville, Aislin. But as with everything else, it is the phonies and imitators most people prefer. Good art makes you think. This is not something most people are inclined to do.

They'd rather just have something that matches the drapes.

(I owe a hat tip to Cathy Shaidle for my head here--purely derivative of her style.)

News Flash: Woman in Possible Danger of Honour Killing in London!

2009-07-27T23:49:00.000-07:00

You gotta love the news business. Here's a story about a man who was gang-kicked, stabbed in the back twice, beaten with bricks, had acid poured all over him, then down his throat, leaving him blind and without a tongue. And what's the lede? "A Muslim woman has been warned that she is at risk..."

All to sustain the official myth that "honour killings" are only of women, making them a "feminist" issue.

None so blind as those who will not see.

Say it Loud: I'm a Tub o' Lard, and I'm Proud!

2009-07-27T23:11:00.000-07:00

Margaret Wente has a good one today: the current alarm about obesity, like so much else we are told by the "experts," is not supported by any real science, and instead exists to serve vested interests. While being fat may, say, increase blood pressure, the more important point is that it will not, statistically, shorten your life. Nope--actually, fat people live longer. Quite a bit longer. Twenty-five percent lower fatality rate.

The thin and those who diet often? Higher than average mortality rates.

Gananoque, Kingston Mills: Spot the Difference

2009-07-26T10:36:00.000-07:00

To the clown who has just sent me six identical emails insisting that the three deaths I referred to last post happened in Kingston Mills, and not Gananoque, let me point out that these are two quite separate incidents. I did not mention Kingston Mills, nor, for that matter, Topeka Kansas. I said Gananoque.

That's all I can do for you. I wouldn't have thought the spelling was so hard to work out, even if you have to move your lips to do so.

A Spooky Day in Plovdiv

2009-07-26T05:36:00.000-07:00

I'm not really all that far from Transylvania here in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Eastern Europe has a certain sense of place...

I arrived in Plovdiv the day before yesterday, and booked into the hotel ranked number one by Rough Guides. Hotel Hebros has in the past been widely recommended elsewhere as well. Its restaurant was chosen the best in Bulgaria for two years running. Nevertheless, my visit seemed to present a very different story.

I am sure it was once a very nice hotel, and the décor is still nice—though not, if you look closely, very high quality. But I do not think it is any longer the hotel it was. In fact, I am not entirely sure it is really a hotel any more.

Here's what I discovered, when I booked in:

1, The room rate is at least 30% over that quoted in the guides—now 139 euros. This happens, of course. Not necessarily sinister. Though quite a jump in one year...a year of recession...especially, with swine flu, in the travel business...

2. I seemed to be the only guest. In peak season, on a Friday night, during the Plovdiv Folklore Festival. Other hotels seemed to be full or close to full. This was downright eerie, especially given the top billing Hebros is given by all the big-name guides. Even eerier was the fact that

3. There was nobody at the front desk. Nobody when I arrived, and nobody for six or seven hours of periodic checking. I did get checked in; once I rang the front door bell, a woman appeared from the restaurant outside and showed me to my room.

4. The check-in procedure was very strange. She did not ask for a name; she just took my passport and ushered me to a room, saying they had been expecting me. This was creepy to the max, and suggested they were not anticipating any other guests.

5. To make things worse, the woman who checked me in did not return my passport. She disappeared with it. This was especially troublesome because it is actually illegal to be on the streets of Bulgaria without some form of official ID. I was then trapped in the hotel, for some hours, in a strange city, with no services, no sources of information, and no apparent way of contacting hotel staff.

Visions of Count Dracula began to dance in my head. I half-expected the grand piano in the hall outside my room to start playing by itself.

Wanting food, water, and Internet, and with no apparently relevant buttons on the in-room phone—and no answer to dialling zero--I eventually went down to the lobby and tried to ring the bell on the lobby desk. Interesting—-it did not ring. It had apparently been welded shut. I tapped it with my fingernails to get it to make a reasonably loud sound. Repeated attempts--nothing. Then I thought to ring the doorbell; from the inside; hoping it would attract someone relevant from the restaurant. It had worked, after all, when I checked in. But this time even that did not work. Obviously, then they were expecting someone—I had a reservation. Now, they were not.

Not knowing what else to try, I repeated the exercise perhaps four times, at long intervals. Maybe twenty minutes passed.

Finally an old man in the street outside seemed to take an interest. He made some sort of gesture and disappeared into the restaurant. He returned with a woman, who entered the lobby. She was not the same woman who had checked me in. I explained to her my problem with the passport, which she did not have. She in turn seized the opportunity to ask me to pay in advance. She said this was necessary because there would be nobody on the front desk the next morning who knew how to take payment.

This concern revealed three things: 1) they had no trained desk staff, 2) they assumed nobody would stay in the hotel for more than one night, and 3) they had never actually looked at my reservation. It was for ten days. Had they even possibly mistaken me for someone else? Is Hitchcock going to show up here as a cameo?

This raised a new problem, because I was expecting the reduced rate for an extended stay promised on their website—a rate reduction of 40%. I figured I’d better confirm this immediately.

No—this seemed to be a problem. The woman pulled a notebook computer over to me and insisted I go on the internet and show my reservation to her, to confirm the rate.

Odd that she would not know what was on the hotel web page, and odd that she would want the guest to do this for her. She seemed, in fact, to be threatening or challenging me. It looked very much as though there was going to be a problem with the stated rate…

At this point, I had decided the best thing was to move on—-it was not worth the hassle. I told her so, in not immoderate terms, but I expressed my concern at the apparent hostility to guests and lack of professionalism. I mentioned that I was a travel writer, and would obviously not be able to give them a good recommendation should I write the experience up.

Believe it or not, my decision to leave made my problems worse. This was apparently not okay at all; as if I had now offended somebody's honour. The woman made no concilatory noises, but said something like “oh-oh” under her breath, and asked me to return to my room, and she would bring the passport to me.

I returned to my room, and waited. After perhaps another twenty minutes, a knock on the door. Instead of the woman, it was a quite burly man, with my passport visible in one fist, but a credit-card reader in the other. He said he would not give me back my passport unless I let him swipe my credit card.

Uh-oh indeed. Okay, getting scary now. At best, he seemed to be insisting I pay a day rate before he would let me leave. At worst, I was giving out my credit card information to an establishment that seemed not to be on the level. Not one to take well to being bullied, I told him if he did not give me back my passport, I would have to phone the police. I asked him for their number. He refused it, and said he was going to phone the police himself.

Which he then did. I phoned them too, but not speaking Bulgarian, had no way of actually communicating the problem to them. Hopeless; I had to hang up the phone.

Next, I packed up my things with all deliberate speed, figuring if I could not get my passport from this guy, my best bet was to get myself to the closest nearby hotel, hope the owner's name was not Bates, and throw myself on their mercies. I needed someone who spoke Bulgarian to act as my translator with the police, in order to get my passport back, and thought the lure of my patronage for ten nights might make it worth their while. If I stayed put, though, I figured this tough guy, who presumably was the manager on duty, might claim I was refusing to leave, or even stall, then claim the next day I had been refusing to pay the bill for a night's lodging. I was also feeling pretty trapped by now. And possibly vulnerable to a bogus criminal charge.

When I emerged into the street—the hotel still apparently completely deserted--the police had already arrived, and were discussing the case with our friend the muscle. Of course, understanding only Bulgarian, they heard only his side, and heaven knows what he told them. But fortunately, my passport, which the police examined very closely, showed clearly I could not possibly have slept in the hotel for even a night, as I had just arrived in the country. Probably very lucky for me.

The muscle sent somebody up to check out the room, and made a fuss about a coke and a water from the mini-bar. I had drunk them, as they were cold, but then replaced them from my own supplies, as his informant must have known. But I did not want to give him a chance at a red herring, in the circumstances. So I paid for that on the spot. He also demanded that I pay for cleaning the room, which I had not slept in; I refused to do so. I doubted he could have made that stick with the cops, were they able to understand what he was saying to me--they could read the date in the passport. After much apparent inactivity, which I took to be the process of filling in a report, the police seemed to give him a mild lecture in front of me—hard to say when you can’t understand Bulgarian--handed me my passport, and waved me off. I got the sense the police themselves were unsure of their ground with this fellow, and he seemed to be swaggering a bit at them as well as me. If nothing else, he was a born bully, and obviously not suited by temperament to be working in a hotel.

I felt as though I had had the last word, for whatever that was worth, but was also left by now lugging my backpack and two smaller pieces of luggage around the steep and uneven streets of Old Plovdiv, an overweight man of 56, at about 9:30 pm, in search of a room for the night, during a heat wave. In high season, on a weekend, during the Festival. And having been on the road from Athens for over a day. Not a situation any tourist wants to unexpectedly find himself in, and it seems to me worth warning the travelling public that such things can happen here in Plovdiv. The first three hotels I checked were either full or took advantage of my obvious plight to ask a patently dishonest rate—as in, one thousand euros per night for a single at a very two-star-looking hotel—but the desk clerk at the Dali Art Hotel, bless his heart, although that hotel was also full, voluntarily got on the phone and found me a good room at a good price at the Saga Palace Hotel across town, then called a cab for me. All this without being asked, and without hearing any kind of sob story from me—just at seeing an old fat guy in his lobby with a heavy backpack
.

I would like the Dali to get credit for this, at least as much as I'd like to warn people against the current owners of the Hebros.

Through this random last minute method, I actually ended up with a pretty comparable room, in terms of actual facilities, if not décor—unless perhaps you fancy, as I do, glued, framed jigsaw puzzles on your walls?--in a pretty comparable location in relation to the sights, and a much better one in terms of street life and shopping, for a little over one fifth the price posted at the Hebros. All this, and actual service too. Even smiles.

The Saga Palace Hotel, in short, seems patently a better value, regardless of anything else, than the Hebros, even though essentially found at random.

It is sheer speculation, but I know something of the hotel business, and have a guess at what has happened to the Hebros. The same thing has happened to many hotels even in Canada, where organized crime is much less of a problem than in the Balkans.

My hunch is that its great reputation—not just the hotel, but the restaurant--made it overwhelmingly attractive to local individuals lacking just that particular commodity. It may serve as a respectable front for laundering large sums of money the provenance of which might otherwise be awkward to explain. The restaurant, which I did not have the opportunity to sample, may well still be legit—harder to disguise that, since locals probably patronize it. But a hotel that reports itself as always full can claim a lot of revenue; so long as real guests do not too often foul up the accounting.

Then again, they might have just been out for blood...