Still managing the comedown

So yesterday was a beautiful day.

In many ways…

I didn’t have to go to work.

Man, that was beautiful.

I hadn’t had a day off since Easter.

And the weather was gorgeous. So I got out the sun lounger, and my suntan lotion, and my towel, and my new book, The Navigator of New York, by Wayne Johnston, who is my current ‘isn’t he great? How did I not know about him before’ writer.

There is some great writing coming out of Newfoundland. It must be the long winters. Or maybe it’s the Irish influence – there’s great writing in Cape Breton too.

I just finished his Colony of Unrequited Love, which is a fictionalised biography of Joe Smallwood, the man who brought Newfoundland into Confederation and then nearly bankrupted it. As a young man, Smallwood walked around Newfoundland several times organising the fishermen and the railway workers, before eschewing socialism for a career in Liberal politics.

I highly recommend it as both a great novel – the love story between Joe Smallwood and his political nemesis, a journalist called Fielding is very well told – and an interesting account of how England shafted Newfoundland for three hundred years and then passed it on to the nice Canadians when they were done with it.

Although the Germans etc have been very good to us, I can’t help thinking sometimes that confederation with Canada might have been the best thing for Ireland, if we had been able to paddle the island across.

There’s a wonderful account of Smallwood and some other Liberals going to Ottawa to negotiate the terms of confederation, their gradual realisation that the Canadian negotiators were so nice that they would agree to whatever demands the Newfies made, and their complete inability to take advantage of that, due to their ongoing complete inability to see the woods for the Liberal trees.

Story. Of. Effing. Atlantic. Canada.

The Navigator of New York is set in St. John’s and New York and is the story of the abandoned son of an Artic explorer who tries to overcome the pain of his childhood by making it to the North Pole. As with the other book, Johnston peoples Navigator with real characters such as Robert Peary et al. And makes the explorer circle sound like the pack of egotistical maniacs I always imagined them to be.

Like today’s mountaineers.

I know this is a bit late, but I was really struck by the death of that climber on Everest recently. There was a big debate about it in Canada. Of course, two days later, some Canadian climbers saved a man in similar (but not as bad) circumstances. So it was all about how Canadians are the nicest people in the world for a bit. (They can be a bit smug sometimes, but it’s okay because they are tremendously nice people).

But then an Albertan (Albertans are not as nice as other Canadians is an unspoken national instinct here, usually unspoken because Canucks are too polite, currently unspoken because the Albertans are in charge) female climber, who had to leave a partner behind on Everest a number of years ago, got into the fray saying abandonment was the correct approach as you have to keep moving. Which of course, coming from a woman, was particularly difficult for people to take, and so on it went.

What the effing hell are they all doing up there in the first place, is what I want to know?

Is there to be no mystery in the world anymore?

What is it about men (and some women now too) that they have to dominate everything, or take it apart to figure out how it works, or have races over getting to some point on the horizon? Why can’t they just sit back and enjoy it for what it is?

That’s what I spent yesterday doing.

Sitting back enjoying it.

Of course, I’m still coming down from my experience so a lot of the day was spent wondering where all the people I spent all my time with were, and what they were doing. Sort of like the day after Glastonbury, the same type of exhausted emptiness, but with the glow of the experience keeping you upright.

Then Paul cooked me supper. Again.

I would not have made it through the last six weeks without my roomies.

Seriously.

And we ate and talked about religion, which is what we talk about because he’s a pastor who is on a very arduous journey at the moment, and I’ll talk about anything, so long as I can do it at length in a very opinionated manner.

Which religion is good for.

And also, because I have been forced to re-examine my attitudes to faith in the last few weeks.

The woman who administered the office in Glace Bay was a Baptist.

We’d have these endless arguments about original sin. She was convinced of it. I don’t have any time for it, as I believe it is just a two thousand year old male antidote to their ancient fear and jealousy of women’s ability to take part in the creation myth. Which we have never gotten round to reframing, despite the fact that since then, men have figured out how we do it, and taken over the business of birth, and even taken on the mantle of co-parenting.

Yes, I’m still thinking about framing.

Did you know that there are no midwives in Nova Scotia? Well, there are, but they are not allowed to practice here the way they are in Ireland. Isn’t that just insane?

Anyways, at the same time as disagreeing with her absolutely, I realised that it was Ruth’s faith that brought her into the office every day. And her contribution was tremendous.

And she was a lot more sure of her role in life than I am.

But maybe that’s because she was an older woman.

Paul and I talked about the Eucharist last night. We were eating flat bread with Nova Scotia’s famous German sausage (unbelieveably good) and salad, and I said it was strange that this is probably somewhat similar to what Jesus had at the Last Supper, and yet if we want to be Christians we have to sit in a cold building being lectured at before eating a stale wafer, in a totally stylised us and them event, instead of all sitting round in somebody’s house, eating pitta bread and olives with a nice bottle of cabernet sauvignon.

I’d do that anytime.

Paul just smiles to himself when I do this, and then goes off to the computer room to type furiously.

I have a strong suspicion that I am contributing to his sermons in some small way.

I saw a great poster in Just Us! a few months back. It said: “When I feed the poor they call me a saint, but when I ask why they are poor they call me a communist.”

That’s what annoys me about religion, and particularly the Nova Scotia versions of it – Unitarian, Baptist, Anglican, Catholic - which is very focused on the church being a tool for good in the community (as opposed to being an opportunity to socialise). Doing good works is a fine human endeavour and we should all do it. But questioning the underlying cause of human suffering is more important. Otherwise we are just treating the symptoms and not the disease.

Listen Up, United Way!

That's what I like about organisations like St. Vincent de Paul in Ireland. They got stuck into the politics of poverty. And reframed the debate in the nineties.

And Oxfam. Oxfam is one of the best organisations in the world for that.

My friend accentmonkey has just left Oxfam Ireland after making a tremendous contribution to the organisation. They hired her to run a second-hand bookshop, she figured that out in ten seconds, and then proceeded to position them as a funky, politically astute, trendy cause in the national media, building strong relationships with journalists and donors and other key groups. Which is what Oxfam in other countries was doing, but they hadn't figured it out properly in Ireland.

As well as raising their profile in the media, she developed a successful business in the shop and also had to face the challenge of going to work in a charity shop with a sofa near Junkie-ville, with all the stress that entails.

You say you're tired, girl. And you sound tired. Quite rightly. Remember, there is no more arduous job in the world than working your butt off for people who don't have the money to give you stock options.

Half the people in the world have never used a telephone. And you overcame your hatred of said object to make life better for them.

You need to refocus your energies on yourself and Mr. Monkey. If you never do this type of work again it's not a problem, because you've done more than most people. But knowing you as I do, I imagine it won't be long before you are writing letters of outrage about some other cause you've come across in your full, meaningful life. And then sorting it out without getting up anyone's nose, or asking for any kudos, or expecting any of the rest of us to get off our asses and get involved.

Before waking up again one morning to think bah!, why do I do this?

I love when you do that, because your periods of outrage at the world's seeming inability to let you fix it all by yourself follow the same modus operandi - overwhelming irritation at the incompetence of others, followed by a swift stroke of genius that ensures you glide majestically past the effing nincompoops who are blocking the solution - that you use in your many successful efforts to fix the world.

All that 'bah' is is mental exhaustion, I think.

And you probably won't get too much thanks for what you did for Oxfam, because it's an NGO, and you are a woman who doesn't see the point in wasting energy on promoting yourself when you can be promoting your cause.

Like so many others, who climb the Everest of poverty purely to clean up the discarded oxygen tanks and care for the Sherpas, while the mountaineers of charity sit around and brag about the glorious torture of their tough ascent and just GET IN THE BLOODY WAY.

You should be very very proud of what you achieved for Oxfam.

I know I am very very proud of you.

Big kiss from Nova Scotia.

Second may be first loser, but it's other things too

I woke up this morning to the phone ringing at ten. It was one of my election volunteers, one who mostly did nothing, except torment the vulnerable members of my team by finding their weak spot and poking at it.

He wanted to speak to the woman of the house where I was staying.

I said she was still in bed. I didn’t mention that he had woken me up, as I couldn’t make that sentence yet, never mind say it.

You tell her that A* Mc****, her first cousin wants to talk to her now.

This in a really peremptory manner that let me know the dislike was mutual.

Half asleep, really annoyed, and quite delighted not to have to be nice to him despite the fact that he didn’t pull his weight anymore, I just hung up.

And went back to sleep. A couple of minutes later, after he’d hopped round his living room in rage a few times, he called back.

This time he woke the woman of the house and she took the call.

But I got up anyway.

Meanie – depriving me of that precious lie-in, I thought.

Turns out his sister had died.

Ooops.

Anyways, it’s over.

OVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVER!!!!!!

I am home in Halifax after a long, long drive back from Cape Breton which thankfully I got to share with my colleague and good friend Swampy (remind me to tell you why he’s called Swampy one day) after picking him up from the Tim Horton’s on Exit 21 an hour and a half late.

Bless him, he didn’t say a word.

Swampy did E-Day in his home riding of Pictou East. Which he won as I knew he would as he is a genius at that kind of thing. But we had a good chat about why my candidate didn’t win and I feel much better now.

That’s right.

My candidate didn’t win.

The incumbent held his seat by 1,100 votes.

http://www.cbc.ca/nsvotes2006/riding/023/
I was one devastated little Queenie last night. We knew about halfway through the boxes. But we had to sit there and take the beating.

Her grace was what saved me.

Up to the church hall then for the party which was a non-starter of course but I got to see a bit of the party in Halifax on tv. And learned that my home riding of Halifax Citadel went NDP to Leonard, who’s a good friend at this stage, what with canvassing since October with him.

And the NDP is up five seats.

And all my politicians got home safely.

We own Metro. Metro is Halifax Regional Municipality and the surrounding ridings.

The more urbanised Nova Scotia gets, the better we do.

The Liberals are in complete disarray. Their leader didn’t win a seat and said he was through with it.

The Tories lost four seats to us and have only 23 seats.

But they will form the next government.

And when my candidate made her thank you speech and said lovely things about me and the campaign manager, it was all I could do not to cry.

I bolted into the ladies and looked at my face under a strong light for the first time in about three weeks.

Ewwwww.

Need a facial real bad.

I mean real bad.

A five week diet of Tim Hortons doughnuts, coffee, cigarettes and take away has not given me the skin of a maiden. More like a midden.

But the benefit of not being in government is that I’ll have time to heal and get back to full health again.

My back is in bits.

Two weeks of a 5’ 10” girl sleeping in a 5’8” bed with a footboard, plus three weeks of working at a low desk while sitting on a conference chair, plus all the driving, plus no exercise has done for it.

Yoga class next week. Some soothing stretching is needed.

But my candidate got 29% of the vote. We pulled a hefty percentage of our vote.

And I had a wonderful experience. I learned a lot. I met lots of really interesting new people. I cemented some friendships forever. I found my Cape Breton experience very rewarding. Almost spiritual in a way that I cannot put my finger on. But it was a combination of spending time with people who are religious, but all different types, so it wasn’t dogmatic, and the kind of pastoral work I ended up doing in the office as well as working on E-Day.

Although at three am last night, as I was on the beach throwing stones at the moon and yelling at the stars about the unfairness of it all, I didn’t feel this way.

All the what ifs and could bes and should haves.

Did I work my team hard enough, did I train them well enough, did I get enough volunteers, were there people sitting at home wondering why they didn’t get a call to help out on E-Day…?

But you just gotta let them go.

It’s done.

We did eighty drives. We called sixty one polls. We had a team of almost fifty people on the day. We got over 2,000 votes out.

It’s done. I did my best.

The fact that many of the people I had working with me had cancer, or had learning difficulties, or had massive domestic challenges, or had no money, or had nothing else to do except hang around the office all day and chat was not a hindrance. It was part of the challenge of pulling it all together in a seamless piece where everyone felt valued and everyone gave their best. Whatever that was.

My campaign manager was a union guy from Ontario, who has spent the last couple of years organising Walmart workers and was both an inspiration and a hilarious example of how utter calm or sang froid and apoplectic rage or stress can easily co-exist in the same person at the same time.

He was a big man, so that might have helped.

And my candidate and her husband and family were a great example of how to treat your neighbour as yourself.

I learned a lot. I stretched my patience levels out a lot. That can only be a good thing.

I also ran my first E-Day by myself.

But we were up against it.

The old ways.

While I got hassle from the Returning Office for delivering sandwiches and cookies to our poll agents, the Liberal candidate was going round handing his agents envelopes containing $50 (I was told this, I didn’t see it myself).

Maybe that’s why he won.

Even if we had had $2,500 to spend on E-Day we wouldn’t do that. You volunteer for the NDP, you volunteer.

It’s why the Liberals are traditionally strong in Cape Breton. They get you your job, your pension, your compensation. Even if they don’t they pretend they do and some people believe them.

But I think what happened was that the Liberals pulled the heartstrings of Cape Bretoners by talking about emigration and jobs. Not that they actually have a clue how to stop emigration or create jobs. But they struck a chord.

Funny how Charlie Haughey died the day I got shafted by the Canadian equivalent of Fianna Fail.

Well, not me personally.

But he used to talk the same bullshit, didn’t he?

Well, my mother says I should be merciful and I know lots of people who think he was a great man, or an interesting and human character at least.

I just don’t like people like him.

I think if you find a vulnerable person’s weak spot, you should teach them how to cover it or protect it, or heal it. Not stick your fingernail into it.

Anyways, going to read the letter I got from accentmonkey and have a sleep.

E-Day 5.35pm

85 minutes to go.

Can Queenie bear the tension anymore?

Guess she's gonna have to.


And after a quick scan on CBC, Queenie rocks big time with regards to her policy work on the environment - http://www.cbc.ca/ns/story/nsv-environment20060608.html

But you all knew that.

Thankfully, a blogging friend covered the NJ bear in the tree story - my work goes on without me.

E-Day 3.38pm

Three hours and twenty two minutes to go.
The polls close at 7pm.
The results are in at 8pm

www.cbc.ca and click on Nova Scotia if you want to check them.

E-1 We'll know in 30 hours

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gotta go.

Talk to you tomorrow.

E3 - Waiting for the wet shoe to drop

E-3. Time is so elastic, isn’t it. At the beginning of a campaign, even before it begins, the time yawns in front of you. You think you’ll never get to the end of the line. But you get busy and time passes and then one day you lift your head and it’s E-3.

Late on E-3.

I’m in the campaign office, waiting for central campaign to finish the last phone canvass. Then I have to print out all the voter records and get ready for E-Day.

It’s been an interesting week, up here in Cape Breton.

I’m staying in a town not far from Sydney. Everyone has cancer. Well, not everyone, but a substantial number of people with whom I am working my ass off in order to win a seat will not be alive when I come back to help them defend the seat.

That’s kinda scary.

It’s all environmentally-related.

The Sydney Tar Ponds I mentioned before. I won’t go into it again.

Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It was my first anniversary in Canada on Thursday. I had been planning to spend it thinking highly intellectual thoughts about how much I’ve learned and how much I’ve experienced and how intense its been, blah blah blah, in what must be one of the most challenging, interesting and (at times) emotionally and physically stressful years of my life, but thankfully (for you lot), I was too busy to blog, and spent the day working in the office, with the usual crew of helpers, and breeze shooters, eating Mabel Davies’ egg sandwiches, answering the phone, sorting out the e-day packs, fund-raising, looking after sign locations, drives to the polls, recruiting volunteers, more volunteers, more volunteers, talking to the candidate, getting the foot canvassers out the door into the rain, going to Tim’s for coffee and TimBits.

Kind of ironic really. A circle of my adult life complete. The first really grown-up political thing I did. Being repeated for the nth time, but almost duplicated this time.

Right down to the Atlantic mist.

Except this time I get to hang out with a young female timber wolf. Who comes to visit with her owner every day.

And there’s Ebony the standard poodle. And Shandelle and Eoin the incredibly cute kids. And all the elderly members who stop in every day for a chat.

It’s a regular Sesame Street round here. The advance team for tomorrow’s rally arrived tonight and I could see the disdain in their eyes. I shall complain vociferously about it when all this is over.

This is what it is about. Groups of people getting together to create momentum for change. Maybe we’re not as glamorous as The West Wing, nor as media-interesting as a metro campaign, but we’re getting there.

Anyways, my campaign manager is pacing a hole in the carpet and we’re going to shut down the numbers soon and get started, so I’ll go for now.

E-7 One week to go. T-14 Two weeks to go

Oh my God, it's only one week to go.

And Himself is coming home a week later, or so he announced recently.

Excellent timing on his part, doncha think. Hysterical, stressed, election-mode Queenie should be well and truly gone by E+7.

Unless we lose of course. In which case morose, devastated Queenie will still be mooching around the house.

Unless she's morphed into vindictive, nasty 'fuck 'em all' Queenie.

Or of course it might be hysterical, stressed, post-election-win Queenie...

No.

Definitely not.

Even if they win.

Queenie is enjoying having charge of her brain again. Back into the message box she will not be prodded. No sirree bob. If the medium is the message, then the message has escaped.

So to speak.

It's taking a while for Queenie to understand that she's not in command central anymore. She asked her campaign manager if it was okay if she went for lunch yesterday and he looked at her as if she were insane.

This must be what it's like to leave the army.

The constituency is very like one of Queenie's former Democratic Left campaigns - Cork North Central in 1994. Strong female candidate with a very supportive husband and a large, supportive family. Working class constituency that the current government has ignored. Factory closures and long-term unemployment. Chronic ill health and lack of community health services.

This town could do with half a million invested in the facade alone. Just to cheer it up a bit. There's a Tim Hortons. There's an A&W. There's a Home Depot. There's a nice river running through the town but the big houses built alongside each bank prevent much public access and they all have Liberal signs in their yards.

And some sidewalks. There aren't enough sidewalks in the town.

There's a beach. But the water is polluted.

Down the road is Sydney Tar Ponds.

So there's a lot of illness here.

Some people say the illness is due to bad diet, smoking and alcoholism.

Possibly.

What causes the bad diet, smoking and alcoholism?

Poverty, stress, unemployment.

And as I said, down the road is the Sydney Tar Ponds


Anyways, the omens are good - Queenie feels very good about this riding.

Queenie is organising E-Day. Election day. It's called pulling the vote.

Identify the support. Ensure it gets to the polls. Record the fact that it did.

Fascinating stuff. Very methodical. The kind of work she likes.

Still, only one week to go. It'll be great when it's over.

E-14 Nominations Close and we take a breath

Nominations closed today.

Apparently that's a big day here.

I can't remember if it's the same at home.

Anyways, a number of things happened today.

The men were being extra-special-nice.

Queenie's wrath is obviously more impressive than she thought.

She only had a quiet word with one of them.

But the word is out.

The ladeez were coming down with compliments about their shoes and work and commitment to the cause etc.

To the extent that we almost ran out of salt.

And Queenie is the first to be moved out to a campaign.

She is assured the two issues are not connected.

She doesn't care.

She's off to the action.

In Cape Breton apparently.

That should be fun.

I was saving Cape Breton for when Polly comes over. But I'll avoid the nice bits.

Shouldn't be too hard where I'm going.

We don't win too many seats in the mountains.

So Queenie is doing a mix to celebrate.

She's going to hand it out at work tomorrow, to thank all the incredibly cool people she has met in the last few weeks.

We are going to make history boys and girls, so we need a soundtrack.

First up, Maggie May.

I know, I know...

He can't be perfect. Our Great Leader.

1973, he could have picked Led, he could have picked Springsteen, he could have picked
Alice Cooper for chrissakes.

That's what he really wanted.

So we'll put on No More Mr Nice Guy next.

And now I'm going to put on Thin Lizzy, The Boys are back in town.

For the boys.

For being so nice today.

It was appreciated.

Then, I can't get next to you, by The Temptations, which is the song Queenie chose for the campaign, but which didn't get picked, because it was too cool.

That's Nova Scotia for ya.

Moby, Lift me up. Ya gotta have a bit of Moby. Anthemic, boppy, happy clappy music with soul-destroying lyrics.

Speaking of, Barbara told me Glastonbury is not on this year and so tickets to Electric Picnic are already sold out. So much for that plan.

Never mind.

Miracles, by Firstborn, because you always need one of them.

And then a bit of AfroCelt SoundSystem. Saor/ Free/ News from Nowhere. For Angel and her man. Take the sunglasses off girl, you're at home now!

Next, Boredoms, Two Circles, because everyone at home in Ireland in the other one was off watching them while I was home having a nervous breakdown. Or in work having one. Can't remember which.

Because I was missing the gig, of course.

Not because I was letting the election stress get to me.

The Doves' Firesuite, because Hotspurr the Goddess of Spin likes her Doves.

Then speed it up again with Firestarter, by The Prodigy.

For our own Special Agent Felicity Shagwell. For her battle against Dr. Evil and mini-me.

Took a while for them to notice the flames, but they did eventually.

Mofo, from U2's Pop, because that's what I feel like most days. But some days you gotta stand your ground.

Then a bit of Linkin' Park.

For a nice long stretch of highway up towards Canso.

I can't wait to do that drive.

Better hurry up - I am actually feeling sleepy for the first time in about a month, as opposed to just exhausted and wired, so I should take advantage of it and go to bed.

The Who. Of Course.

Bloc Party. Of Course.

The Wailin' Jennies, Beautiful Dawn. In case we have one.

And finally, The Waterboys, When ye go away.

For when they all do.

Campaigns.

Stress. Heartache. Conflict. Herculean effort. Boredom.

One of the days I'll know why I do this.

Old friendships. New friendships. The first coffee of the day. The chase. The release. The coverage. The mop up. The endless trips to Wendy's. Sitting in the sun talking about old campaigns. The total inter-connectedness of everything everyone does for a finite period of time. The sore feet. The back aches. The shared bottle of Tylenol.

The store of memories growing.

Maybe it's all I know how to do?

E-15 Skippy's trampling on our hearts

This is the face of evil.

I shit you not.

It's a work thing. I'm not at liberty to explain it here.

You guys have gotta trust me on this one.

Besides, there are those who read this who will understand. And they need a laugh.

So, why do we do this?

We were asking ourselves today.

Not for the glory. Oh no. That's for the men.

Not for the glamour. Although my sparkly sandals added a bit today. The only bit of me that sparkled today.

But there's nothing glamorous about the work I did today.

Dear X, it would be great if you would vote for us, because then we would invest in education and you would learn how to use punctuation properly.

Dear Y, it would be great if you would vote for us, because then we would ensure you got the tax break as well as those goddamn single mothers you were ranting about in your long capitalised email.

Dear Z, it would be great if you would vote for us, because ....

Why because?

If we all have the same platform and we all have the same vision, what's the difference?

The application.

We stand for dignity, for caring, for inclusion, for equality, for freedom of expression.

That's what we stand for.

It's all in the application, boys and girls.

No, there's absolutely no irony in what I am saying.

None.

You must be mistaking me for someone who was reduced to tears today by the blatant sexism wrapped up as 'the way we do things here' that's appeared in my workplace.

Tomorrow:

I am going to sing slowly to myself all day, quite possibly to the tune of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo:

I am the epitome of what I believe in and work for. I am a caring, inclusive, committed, experienced, talented, unique, bright, sparkling example of what the alternative could be for us all. I represent both the vision and the application of what we stand for. The how of things is as important to me as the what or the why.

I am surrounded by people like me. They cloak me in a forcefield of wit and humour and love that protects me from any permanent scarring. I cloak them in return and protect them.

What's going on doesn't matter, because it's people like us who will win in the end. We have to because the how of now is destroying everything.

The desire to control, to divide, and to manipulate always stems from a deep insecurity. So deep that it is often unrealised. That insecurity disappears when the desire to care becomes stronger.

It takes a long time for some people to get to that place.

The reason I know we will win in the end is because Mama Gaia's need to be cared for ain't gonna wait that long more...

It was 25 degrees today. In Halifax. In the Northern Atlantic.

E-16 Bears in the Alps!

If you go down to the Alpine woods you're in for a big surprise: a 100kg wild brown bear who goes by the name of Bruno, writes Derek Scally in the Irish Times.

He has had the starring role in a three-week bear scare after leaving his home in the Italian Alps for Tirol in western Austria. He crossed the border into Bavaria last weekend, making him the first bear sighted in the region since 1842.

Italian nature groups say Bruno is likely to be one of 20 cubs born in the mountains since a group of Slovenian bears were let into the wild there a decade ago.

But, on his travels, Bruno is suspected of slaughtering dozens of sheep, chickens and racing pigeons, as well as breaking and entering several bee hives.

Bavarian police circulated blurry mugshots of Bruno, warning local people to keep clear of the violent animal. Bavarian environment minister Werner Schnapauff branded Bruno a problembär because he seemed fearless of approaching humans. Last Monday, the minister bowed to demands to allow farmers and hunters to shoot the bear on sight "in cases of physical or mortal danger".

Animal rights activists, angry at the decision of the Bavarians, were infuriated when, on Tuesday, Austrian authorities decided to follow suit.
Germany's Bild newspaper put an image of Bruno in a gun's crosshairs on its front page under the headline: "Death Sentence for Bear". But since the sentence was pronounced, Bruno has gone on the lam.

Hunters have tried without success to lure him into a 2m-wide aluminium tube trap. Another suggestion to set up snares was rejected by the director of Munich Zoo, Henning Wiesner. He told a Bavarian newspaper that a bear such as Bruno would rather gnaw off his own leg while dangling from a tree than get caught by hunters.

Mr Wiesner suggested using darts to knock Bruno out after locating him with a pack of hunting dogs. "The only problem is that no hunting dogs in Germany have ever smelled a bear," he said.
Yesterday it emerged that he has probably escaped Germany and is now in Tirol. But Austrian authorities say Bruno is an unbearable threat and will be killed when caught after they conduct a DNA test to make sure they have their bear.

Hoteliers in the Bavarian village of Garmisch-Partenkirchen on the Austrian border have jumped on the bandwagon. They're offering Bruno-spotting packages starting at €169 a night.

E-21 The Age War has begun

Ben should be using his vote because he can be bloody sure that Brian will.

The Age War has begun


This was the last two lines of a great article by Andrew Rawnesley in last Sunday’s Observer, which I am only reading tonight because I am always in work.

The article was very close to my heart.

It was all about how the baby boomers are going to bankrupt us lot. And all we have to look forward to at the end of it is no pension and no kids to worry about when we get old. Which boils down to no kids to look after us when we grow old, of course.

I am being extreme. And I don’t really mind because I happen to think seniors are worth looking after. But nowhere is the building problem more evident than in Nova Scotia.

There are currently 95,000 seniors (that’s what we call them in polite Canada, you know them as old people, or aul’ wans, in Ireland) living in Nova Scotia. That’s about 10% of the population. By 2030(?) that will have gone up to about 150,000. And the population of Nova Scotia isn’t going to expand dramatically anytime soon, far from it. The population of under-fives, the people who will be in their mid-thirties in 2030, dropped by one fifth in the last ten years, to just 47,000-ish.

You do the math.

Seniors are expensive.

They need healthcare, long term care, nursing home care, drugs, palliative care, etc.

They get pensions.

They don’t pay much tax.

Young people on the other hand, are cheap. If they don’t contribute you can just ship them off to the Oil Sands of Northern Alberta.

Of course, you don’t get their tax payments then.

You do the math.

So what do we do?

The article in the Observer said that politicians would find it difficult to balance this war of the generations.

Bloody right, they will.

The first thing that needs to be done is for someone, somewhere, to tackle the ridiculous price of drugs.

There is no reason why they should be so expensive. Other than the stock market.

No, there isn’t.

India has a remarkable generic drugs industry that should be examined for ways in which to apply it to other jurisdictions.

The second thing that needs to be done is for a model of community care to be worked out, so that elderly people don’t need as much hospital care as they do now.

That means rethinking workplace models so that 9 – 5 m/f patterns are finally abolished and giving communities some money and time to develop ways in which to care for older and younger members on a more flexible basis so that working age people can work.

Work however it suits the community. Part-time, or for a couple of months a year, or whatever. But the days of one young, fit, educated, experienced person staying at home full-time for years to look after one other person (or maybe two, if there’s enough money), while another person works ridiculous hours in order to deliver a necessary health or educational or other product or service to society MUST end.

I’m going to get it in the neck for that.

I don't care.

The nuclear family is not working. It takes a village to raise a child and a community to care for an elderly person and the reason why we have juvenile crime and scared old people is because we leave it up to hassled stressed parents who aren’t even sure they want to be together anymore to raise their children by themselves.

We should bring in ASBOs that involve sitting talking to old people for six hours a day. That would sort out juvenile crime in ten seconds.

They'd either refuse to reoffend out of boredom, or they'd refuse to leave the stories of the war and the old days because they're so interesting.

The third thing that must happen is that immigration must become more fluid. For chrissakes, I’m a productive member of Canadian society and I can’t even get a credit card. It took three months to get a work permit sorted out. It will take me months more to get a driver’s licence, years to get a mortgage or a health card if I want one.

And I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m not a neurologist driving a cab because the Medical Association ‘doesn’t trust my experience and qualifications’.

Yeah. I believe you. I've been to the conferences.

If this part of the world has skills shortages and a need for people to come and work in the caring professions, then people who live in parts of the world and who want to come here to live and work should be able to without having to become full-time forever residents. They should have portable residencies. Like we do in the European Union.

Think globally, act locally is great for recycling your egg cartons, but sometimes you need to think locally and act globally.

I’m going to bed now – I’m very tired.

E-26. I think. Nope. It's E-25

Energy is the new politics.

It’s very cold here in Canada. And we’re running out of oil. And we’re cutting down all the trees. So we need more energy.

But it’s okay, because we’re the people who carved a country out of this land.

So we’ll figure it out. Eventually. Or the Americans will pay us to do it.

I’m watching Kojak. The new series. It’s class.

The women in it all are a bit stupid.

All the ads here are about cars. Or losing weight. Or getting your teeth whitened. Or buying furniture on credit.

Or signing up for charity events.

What amazes me is there are a whole lot of people here who are on television here all the time, and I have no idea where they drink.

But they must drink somewhere.

Everybody does.

Anyway, Kojak hates white men. But he always falls for their helpless wives.
Just a little.

And he wears a hat.

I bet half the province is watching this muck.

Somebody said to me today, why is it that all these people bust a gut to get something out, and then it’s not on?

And I said excuse me?

Because I was really shocked. That she could think that. That politics was on anyone’s agenda on the Friday evening of the May Bank Holiday.

Why do I always have to work bank holidays?

We’re dealing with a big murder tonight on Kojak.

Ten thousand dollars.

You could get two people shot with that on the streets of Dublin.

Now they’re advertising going to the optician regularly.

I cannot figure out the advertising demographic of this province.

Gardening store.

Tuesday on Breakfast television. This one is on a lot.

Now there’s some tv movie about a mother’s fear.

I think I’m on the wrong channel.

The Japanese have it I think.

It’s just all a big wrestling match.

But they made an art of it.

Kojak’s telling the crazy woman that if she believes in God it’ll be alright. So she puts her weapon down. And then she gets shot.

Oops.

There are so many wrongs.

But Kojak has the answer.

The two top stories on the news tonight are about school bullying. The police are arresting loads of kids.

I hope it’s picked up.

E-26. Amazing what a little shouting can do. Or not.

I have learned that sometimes, if you shout at the universe, it gives a little.

Sometimes it just craps on you some more of course, but this time, the universe heard my shout of anguish and responded.

I got my work permit today.

Himself got a little give from the universe too. Due to my shouting last night of course.

So that's two things that gave a little today.

If only the same approach worked with campaign managers.

E-27

If something in my life doesn’t give soon, I am going to be stretched apart.

Nova Scotia, Ireland, Alberta, family, partner, partner’s divorce, partner’s job, my job, my visa, house, apartment, election, visits, car, bills, mortgage, rent, the ability to have enough time off to cook a meal without having to deal with phone calls, texts, messages, neighbours, room mates, people wanting to pick up signs, people wanting to drop off signs, people wanting to go out, people wanting to stay in. The ability to sleep one night straight through.

Being expected to drive around this city using Map Quest. And catch the Rod in his Winnebago.

And instead of a cherry on top they gave me a Blackberry today.

There is a circle of hell, no a RIM of a circle of hell, set aside for the makers of and the addicts to, the Crackberry.

Mine’s going in the harbour on June 14th. I don’t care how much it costs to do it.

Himself is bearing the brunt of it of course.

Why do we do that?

I went to the bank today to wire money home and they asked me whether I knew how to do it.

No, dear, that’s YOUR job.

We found the manual eventually.

And I read the small print out to her.

And we did the wire transfer. I can’t wait to see where the money ends up.

E-31

So why am I doing this?

I'm not sure. I'm very busy.

Maybe I'm just keeping busy.

I don't know.

I'm too busy to think about it.

Which is good.

If a little stressfull.

Story of my. Fucking. Life.

I'm actually getting used to it at this stage.

You rage against it in your twenties, don't you.

Your being.

I wonder why we do that?

Then once you get busy, you start to see it in perspective.

That it's innate. And not necessarily bad.

You just have to learn to manage it.

And then you get really busy and stop caring.

Whether it's kids, or work, or someone else, or maybe just yourself (and some people do make a lot of money just thinking about themselves all day).

You just start trying to get some downtime.

I could go on. But I hope you get my drift.

Anyway, I met Aaron at the convention. He was upset because nobody wanted to vote for his motion to nationalise the power grid. Which is full of expensive belching smoke stacks. And crappy supply. That charges aul' ones through the nose. But he was also pissed off because he had to go and sell his labour in Banff for the summer.

I thought he was joking when he said that. I'd love to sell my labour in Banff for the summer. But then I thought about it. He'll be in some hotel, with some crappy Albertan manager shouting at him. For minimum wage. For six months.

I was so close to voting for his motion I had to remove myself from the convention and go home to bed.

It had been a rough night anyway the night before.

The magii had had a party. Filled the back of William's pick up with beer. For the troops. And held a frat party in the university residence.

It was great fun.

I think that's why I'm doing it. They're such lovely people.

And they are really smart.

But they know how to enjoy themselves. They know how to get on with each other.

I am learning a lot.

A complete failure to zine works out as an opportunity to blog

I hadn’t planned on doing a zine this time. Too much work, not enough music. None in fact. I didn’t even make the Junos. Just watched a bit of the awards ceremony on tv. Had the weekend of personal life hell instead, while the two wristbands sat in an envelope calling to me.

No, I was just going to pay the Crumpster the money I owe him through my shiny new ‘just put some money in from your Canadian chequing account’ Paypal account, sit back and wait for the envelope, and read someone else’s article first for a change (am I the only self-obsessed Franker’s who does that? Or even the only Franker’s).

But there was a strong sense of ‘the zine must go on’, so I thought I should contribute.

Frank’s guilt. As if I don’t have enough guilt in my life.

Then I thought about all the Mailcomms that would get lost in time forever if I missed a beat, so I hauled myself out of my pre-election lethargy and went to a gig the other night. To have something to write about. D’ysee?

And it wasna’ bad either, cap’n.

But of course work got in the way and I never finished it, so now it can double as the blog post I don’t have time to write.

Also, I finally figured Nova Scotia out that night. As I was sitting watching the band thinking about them all. The Nova Scotians I know I mean.

I know lots of them. I just don't blog about them much.

It’s tribal here. Everyone’s in bands. Of about a hundred.

And there are shifting alliances, but they’re all built on sand. Or rock. Wet, slippery, sharp rock.

And you have to find one. And force it to let you in. Undergo some strange rite of initiation that they don’t explain to you.

It’s extremely irritating most of the time, because I want to join all the tribes. But they keep trying to get me to pick one.

I do hate making decisions.

I have learned that about myself this year.

Anyway, the music I was going to tell you about.

The Windom Earle All-Stars Volume One: A Series of Minor Tragedies. Featuring the Jeff Coll Five, Operation Impact and Windom Earle.

They’re from PEI. That’s Prince Edward Island. Home of Anne of Green Gables. Potato capital of Canada. Great beaches. It’s like being in Brittas Bay in 1952 going on holidays in PEI.

Six of them are in the Jeff Coll Five. Seven of them are in Operation Impact. And three of them are in Windom Earle. Altogether there are twelve of them. It appeared to me that they all spent most of their time on stage during the gig.

They all look about nineteen, but that’s probably just my oldarse inability to age people younger than me kicking in. The lead singer is a wriggly mental stage spider. He has a male co-singer who dances behind him laughing. It’s like watching angry Paul Watts sharing the lead vocals with Dermot and a punked up nineteen year old Jimmy Cake reunion, complete with Lisa in a pink dress, playing drums at the front of the stage.

They’re class.

I bought the album. This album, and The Woods are the only albums I bought since the last Franks. Anyways, A Serious of Minor Personal Tragedies has thirteen tracks, recorded in random bedrooms, cabins, attics and living rooms by Stephen McLeod between 2003 and 2005. As far as I can make out, Stephen is the co-singer. They have a website of course, with most of the tracks on it. www.windomearle.com/music.html. That will save me burning it for anyone.

Touched by a Transvestite is good. Boppy. And Emily’s Song.

According to a zine interview on the site, Beck is their main influence. I couldn’t hear it particularly. I heard a lot of the early Depeche Mode sound; and Daftpunk of course. It’s all about Daftpunk these days, isn’t it?

Back to me

I love writing my Franks. I always make an event of it. Just have a beer. Or tea. Or Tropicana Jungle Mix. Whatever I feel like on the night. Or day. Sometimes I wrote it on a Sunday. When it’s quiet. When the only sound in the house was Bruce going about his gut-bursting with pent up fury laden Sunday afternoon routine.

It was very complex. And completely irrelevant. Even he knew it. That’s why he was so angry, but he didn’t feel any responsibility to change it.

But he’s gone now, so the Sundays are lovely and quiet. Lovely. Particularly for zine writing. Except now I have to go canvassing every Sunday.

Election guilt. As if I don’t have enough guilt in my life.

Lou Dobbs' bull and a baby cow

Monday evening. May Day. Commie-day, according to Lou Dobbs on CNN tonight. I tuned in for a minute to see how big the immigrant marches were in the States, as I had missed Balanced News on CBC and Reasonably Balanced News on Global Maritime.

Boy, is Lou pissed. All the other networks are referring to these people as immigrants.

THEY ARE ILLEGAL ALIENS, Lou informed me.

He had a couple of Democrat Congressmen on who had sponsored a resolution that would give these people an opportunity to be recognised by the country they are holding together with their labour.

Taking jobs away from American workers, grumbled Lou.

Remind you of anywhere?

They probably all get free washing machines from the welfare officer too.

Or maybe not. Maybe they’ll all be over to Ireland when they hear about the free washing machines.

The Congressmen were playing it pretty cleverly. For Democrats. Let’s lock the gates now, because the Republicans forgot to do it after 9/11. But when we do that, we’d better keep these people in. Because the Republicans couldn't evacuate New Orleans so we can't trust them to deport 12 million people.

Pretty good I thought. Balanced argument. Building a coalition of the needy and the virtuous and the scratch their arse and belch into their beer can brigade.

Then he had some neo-Con Hispanic woman on who was only delighted to be captured pissing on her own people by the meejia.

Then he had some footage of the Minute Men building a fence in South California somewhere.

Hundreds of them!

Give Lou his due, even he recognises the folly of that particular stunt.

Only 1,599 miles to go, he said wryly. Well, as wryly as you can do when you're botoxed to the hairline.

Which is probably wrong. What's the length of the southern border of the USA?

Up here in nice reasonable Canada you have nice reasonable CBC and slightly less reasonable Global, but at least Global still understands the concept of balanced news coverage. So you are lulled into a false sense of security. ‘Just because you celebrate May Day doesn’t mean you’re a Trot’ kind of security.

And then you switch on CNN for a minute.

And remember that you're a commie. In Lou's eyes anyways.

I had an argument with Himself about CNN once. I came home from work and caught him watching it.

“You’re not to watch that shite if you’re going to be with me!” Grabbed remote, switched tv off, and sat on remote to drive home the point.

“I just want to see the news, for chrissakes.” Of course he’s far too polite to push my ass off the remote, so he sat there waiting to be educated. Like the immaculate boyfriend he is.

“That’s not news. That’s right wing rhetoric dressed up as news.”

He knows enough now to know that when I say right wing, I really mean special ops battalion of the devil.

And that’s bad in anyone’s books.

We’re having an argument by text at the moment. Although Himself is backing off a bit now, because he has to go to sleep. It’s half past midnight in Ireland, eight thirty pm in Halifax and five thirty in Grassland, and he has to go to sleep for a bit because he’s on nights this week and has to go driving in the dark.

Which I don’t like of course. Because I will worry until he texts me that he’s home. Which won’t be until four pm Halifax time tomorrow. Or eight pm in Ireland. So he’ll be back when Eastenders finishes.

We don’t communicate when he’s in the truck. It nearly broke us the last time. Signal in, signal out, kshsasfasdhfaldf…, cut off.

It all started when I called him as I was starting dinner. To tell him what I was going to eat and to make sure he had bought vegetables this week. And to remind him he has to give up smoking because I am not going through all of this crap now just to have him die on me in a couple of years.

I was in Pete’s Fruitique yesterday, which is the best food store in the world, and they had veal escallopes so of course I couldn’t resist.

“Veal? What’s that?”

Not many people eat veal here. Nova Scotia is not noted for its production. Or for lamb for that matter.

“Baby cow.”

“WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?”

I moved the conversation on swiftly, sensing a weak spot in my case as role model for all right-on, leftie things in life.

But he was not to be turned. Himself is a hunter of course, so he just picked a good spot and waited. Silently, patiently, in the long grass of Grassland until I was perched in front of tv with yummy veal escallopes, tortilla patata and fresh tomato salad watching CNN – it’s okay if you shout at Lou – with Melanie, who was hiding her eyes behind her hands in horror at the nasty Amerkaans. She’s very French, is Melanie. And she's not well at the moment. Had to go to the emergency room last night.

Then he struck.

“Shame on you for eating that baby cow. My heart is broken.”

I am not for turning either, of course.

“Belch. Slurp.”

“STOP THAT! Oh, that poor baby.”

“At least I didn’t boil it alive in a pot after capturing it in a watery trap.”

I didn’t even mention the countless baby ground fish he probably murdered over the years. Or the defenceless deer he stalked and shot.

Texting is quite limiting when you're a pedant.

“Lobsters don’t have brains.”

“Yes they do.”

“Well, just little ones.”

And so on and so on.

And so life goes on. As it always does.

Eventually, I capitulated. Agreed I wouldn't eat them anymore.

The thing I love about Himself is that when, on the rare occasion that I allow him to win an argument (and he should win this one as he is right about the baby cows, although they are VERY tasty), he doesn't rub my nose in it.

He gives it a little rub instead.

"It's up to you. I don't think it's right tho'. But I still love you."

Phew! :-)

"Go to sleep."

"What are you doing?"

"Blogging."

"What about?"

"Baby cows, you and CNN."

"Oh no..."

"It'll be grand. Go to sleep."

"Don't be too hard on me, baby."

"Sweet dreams."

When is a frame an elephant?

My last post was a long journey into 'what is framing if it's not about putting in windows?' territory and I spent a couple of hours last night thinking about what 'framing' means in the political sense. Then I told Hotspurr the goddess of spin this morning that I had figured out framing and she handed me a post-it note saying that there was a book on elephants, which is actually about framing, which is on the must-read list of the moment.

How prescient of me, I thought.

Like love, politics is all about geography and timing.

Anyways, here's an article, from PublicEye newsletter of Fall 2005, about George Lakoff and his elephants, which suggests to me I won't agree with the book.

I need to think about the elephants a bit more. Also, having the misfortune to go to university in Ireland at the time when structuralism and deconstructionism were on the rampage probably has something to do with why I have problems with framing. Framing is an acceptance of joined-up thinking, whereas structuralism and deconstructionism is a denial of it.

I suppose I'll have to figure out where Noam sits on all of this...

You know, I can't help thinking that all this focus on the way we speak to each other is a waste of time, and we should focus more on our biological interfaces.

That'll get loads of kudos when I say that at a meeting...

Thinking about Elephants
Toward a Dialogue with George Lakoff

By William Gamson and Charlotte Ryan

Since last November's election, George Lakoff's book, Don't Think of an Elephant!, has deservedly captured the imagination of mainstream Democrats and of many progressives as well. He offers us the promise that we can achieve our political vision if only we spent a little more time "framing" our messages to appeal to mainstream America.

For a large number of Americans, he argues, the Right creates a personal connection to policies such as tax cuts for the wealthy and the idea of small government by communicating values — values like personal responsibility and the importance of a strong "traditional" family rather than big government to solve most social problems.

But we shouldn't get so excited about Lakoff 's contribution that we overlook some deafening silences or, to switch metaphors in midstream, some glaring blind spots in his way of framing American politics.

Lakoff is a cognitive psychologist but he weaves together insights shared by the sociologists, political scientists, and communications specialists who have been analyzing "framing contests" for the past 30 years. On the following points, he speaks for a broad interdisciplinary consensus:

Facts never speak for themselves. They take on their meaning by being embedded in frames, themes which organize thoughts, rendering some facts as relevant and significant and others as irrelevant and trivial. Framing matters and the contest is lost at the outset if one allows one's adversaries to define the terms of the debate. To be self-conscious about framing strategy is not being manipulative. It gives coherent meaning to what is happening in the world. One can either do it unconsciously, or with deliberation and conscious thought.

A frame is a thought organizer. Like a picture frame, it puts a rim around some part of the world, highlighting certain events and facts as important and rendering others invisible. Like a building frame, it holds things together but is covered by insulation and walls. It provides coherence to an array of symbols, images, and arguments, linking them through an underlying organizing idea that suggests what is essential — what consequences and values are at stake. We do not see the frame directly, but infer its presence by its characteristic expressions and language.

The idea helps us understand why changing our political situation does not rest on just the media presenting the facts better or people paying better attention. Some progressives threw up their hands in dismay and frustration when polls showed that most Bush voters believed that there was a connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. The "facts" were clear that no connection had been found. If these voters didn't know this it was because either the media had failed in its responsibility to inform them, or they were too lazy and inattentive to take it in.

But suppose one frames the world as a dangerous place in which the forces of evil — a hydra-headed monster labeled "terrorism" — confront the forces of good. This frame depicts Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda as two heads of the same monster. In this frame, whether or not there were actual meetings by agents or other forms of communication between them is nit picking and irrelevant.

People carry around multiple frames in their heads. We don't simply have one way of framing an issue or an event. Lakoff emphasizes two meta-frames or cultural themes operating in the United States, embodied in two competing family metaphors: the Strict Father vs. the Nurturant Parent. He sees these meta-frames as underlying, respectively, conservative and liberal thought more generally. But Lakoff is wise enough to recognize that we don't carry around just one of these in our heads but both of them. One may be much more easily triggered and habitually used but the other is also part of our cultural heritage and can be triggered and used as well, given the appropriate cues.

In a framing contest, such as between liberals supporting gay civil unions and conservatives opposing gay marriage, a successful framing strategy involves the ability to enter into the worldview of one's adversaries. Lakoff does not demonize conservatives but makes a successful effort to enter into their way of thinking. In doing so, he illustrates a useful rule of thumb: To reframe a message effectively, you should be able to describe a frame that you disagree with so that its advocates would say, "Yes, this is what I believe."

The Problem with Strict Fathers and Nurturant Parents

As critics have pointed out, part of Lakoff's appeal is the promise of a silver bullet through which liberals and progressives can rebuild their majority support if only they will follow the formula. Progressive values such as fairness, inclusiveness, empathy, and community have broad cultural appeal, Lakoff reminds us. Reframing political debate to focus on those values, then, is the roadmap to regaining power.

Well, yes and no. The family metaphor seems to work better as a metaframe for conservative thinkers than it does for progressives. But even here, there are fissures between conservatives who find it resonant and those who fear Big Brother rather than embracing Strict Father when thinking about the role of government. Some libertarian conservatives make common cause with liberals who don't like the government telling them what they can read or buy. It isn't very clear how the Strict Father model articulates with a free market meta-frame that underlies conservative support for the privatization of Social Security, for example. Strict fathers don't have invisible hands.

Furthermore, the nurturant parent embodied in the New Deal — America's soft version of the European style welfare state dating to the 1930s that brought us Social Security and federal labor regulation — resonates differently between those who call themselves liberals versus those who call themselves progressives. The nurturant parent metaphor doesn't really have a lot of resonance for people who see themselves on a quest for social justice. Nor is mutuality — a progressive goal or value — quite the same as nurturance. Locking arms and singing "We shall overcome" is about self-help and interdependence, about brotherhood and sisterhood, not parents.

Family metaphors are not the most likely frames for most people to use on foreign policy issues. Lakoff has little to say about another resonant meta-frame: The world is a dangerous place. Much has been written about the cultural roots of such a frame in supporting the Cold War and the nuclear arms race. One can substitute "terrorism" for "communism" and the same underlying frame remains serviceable. The superhero who rescues the innocents from unprovoked attacks by evil forces in children's cartoons isn't exactly a strict father or nurturant parent but a benevolent outsider who protects the whole family from outside threats. What to do about Osama and Saddam is not really about tough-love versus cocounseling.

What Lakoff Obscures

Like any frame, Lakoff's framing of contemporary American politics highlights some things and obscures others. Lakoff directs our attention to the message but he shifts attention away from the groups, political parties, governments and other carriers of those messages, and the complicated, uneven playing field on which they compete. Social movements and the advocacy groups they spawn successfully challenge official or dominant frames frequently. They compete on a playing field in which inequalities in power and resources play a major role in determining whether they succeed. Nevertheless, some movements were dramatically successful against long odds in reframing the terms of political debate and it behooves those engaged in reframing efforts to analyze their experience.

In failing to embed framing guides in this broader movement-building context, Lakoff asks us to ignore not only the elephant in the room but also the moles, ferrets, chipmunks, occasional black panthers, raging bulls and wild boars, and the more domesticated donkeys and carrier pigeons. There is a whole menagerie out there that Lakoff is not thinking about. And it is this multi-faceted complexity that the Christian Right has, at times, effectively traversed.

To succeed, challengers need to integrate their framing strategies with broader movement- building strategies. This means building and sustaining the carriers of these frames in various ways — for example, by helping groups figure out how to gain access where blocked, and how to strengthen their ability to collaborate better with groups sharing similar goals. Framing contests are about a lot more than staying on message.

There is an irony here because Lakoff, to his credit, has been spending a lot of his time over the past several years talking to many of the "carriers," convincing the political groups of the importance of framing. The danger here is that the focus on message, divorced from movement-building, reduces framing strategy to a matter of pitching metaphors for electoral campaigns and policy debates, or perhaps contracting with think tanks like the Lakoff's own Rockridge Institute to find the right hot buttons.

By focusing entirely on the content of the message, while ignoring the frame carriers and the playing field, Lakoff falls into the pitfalls of the social marketing model. Without a strategy to build a base or constituency, and without democratic media reform, framing can become simply a more sophisticated but still ungrounded variation on the belief that you just need to communicate the right ideas – i.e. "the truth will set you free."

To counter the assumption that the frame will set us free, framing strategies must not just address the content of the message or the style of debate but attend to base building and challenge the contours of the non-level playing field in which the contest is carried on.

The one intermediary that Lakoff recognizes is the think-tank that helps its political allies to shape their message through its clever marketing skills. He rightly appreciates the skill of conservative social marketers ensconced in their wellfunded think tanks like the Heritage Foundation or American Enterprise Institute. But he has nothing to say about the rise of a relevant social movement, the Christian Right, in the late 1970s. The Christian Right's infrastructure supported conservative frames in ways that went far beyond finding better ways of marketing their message. Political scientist Duane Oldfield describes how evangelicals built movement- oriented broadcast media and active local congregations to grow in political significance. By the late 1980s, the influence of the movement was directed through the Republican Party.

Christian Right organizations did a lot of movement-building work to further the success of their preferred frame but often remained behind the scenes. On the abortion issue, for example, they rarely speak to the media directly but support broader coalitions such as the National Right to Life Committee as spokespersons for their movement's frame.

People-driven framing

Lakoff's narrowness leads him to such astounding claims as the one he makes in his introduction to Don't Think of an Elephant!: "There is only one progressive think tank engaged in a major reframing exercise: the Rockridge Institute." Perhaps it is tunnel vision stemming from Lakoff's roots in cognitive psychology that blinds him to the civil rights movement's "major reframing" of Black American experience, the feminist movement's "major reframing" of women's experience, as well as the major reframing of gay, lesbian and transgendered experience, the reframing of labor (social unionism) and the major reframing of nuclear power.

The list of successful reframing efforts would be incomplete without mention of the Black feminist movement, that reframed the feminist reframing, and the environmental justice movement that reframed environmental organizing. In other words, not only are broad-based social movements critical to reframing efforts, but such movements ensure that reframing remains an active process of engagement with shifting political realities.

Nor does Lakoff acknowledge the rise of a media reform movement, whose participants engage in a variety of media critique, alternative and oppositional media, and media reform efforts. While we strongly agree with Lakoff that progressive framing efforts have lacked adequate resources, hundreds of organizations operating at the national, regional and local level have included reframing in their efforts to build progressive movements.

The central lessons to be learned from Lakoff's omission is that building an effective framing strategy is not merely about more effective marketing expressed through catchy symbols that tap an emotional hot button and trigger the desired response. The problem isn't that it doesn't work — in the short run, it may — but that its singular focus on finesse in individual framing undermines the goal of increasing citizens' sense that they can collectively change things. By treating potential participants as individuals whose citizenship involves voting and perhaps conveying their personal opinion to key decision-makers, citizens as collective actors are moved off of the screen.

In contrast, a participatory approach to promoting progressive frames looks at the failings of mass media with an eye on supporting a group's strength in building longterm, on-going relationships with journalists. Building these working relationships are themselves opportunities for framing contests that, when successful, further the prominence of one's preferred frame in the competitive media field.

An essential guide for progressives must address these issues as well as how framing strategies can draw out the latent sense of agency that people already carry around with them. In sum, a participatory communication model involves developing an ongoing capability of people to act collectively in framing contests. One doesn't transform people who feel individually powerless into a group with a sense of collective efficacy by pushing hot buttons. Indeed, one doesn't transform people at all. People transform themselves through movement building — the work of reflection, critique, dialog, relation building and infrastructure building that synergistically constitute a "major reframing effort."

Conclusion

(warning! serious metaphor alert! - Queenie)

Framing matters but it is not the only thing that matters. There is a danger of "quick fix" politics — the sexy frame as the new hot button. Just as conservatives worked slowly and patiently for three decades, progressives need to start small and build big, to win back our base of support. Framing work is critical to this process, but framing work itself must be framed in the context of movement building.

Integrating framing and other forms of movement building is necessary if the frame carriers are going to be able to compete successfully against the carriers of official frames with lots of resources and organization behind them. This involves an explicit recognition of power inequalities and how to challenge them and a recognition of citizens as potential collective actors, not just individual ones. Think tanks that want to help progressives are an important component of creating a supportive infrastructure but they will fail if they adopt a social marketing model that ignores the nature of the playing field and focuses only on the message.

There is a story circulating on the Internet, attributed to Jim France of the Pavilion Hotel Group in Bangkok. Elephant rides were one of the main attractions at a resort hotel in Phuket. About twenty minutes before the first wave of the tsunami hit, the nine elephants became extremely agitated and unruly. They broke out of their confinement, climbed a nearby hill, and started bellowing. Many people followed them up the hill before the waves hit.

After the waves had subsided, the elephants went down the hill as a group and started picking up children with their trunks and running them back up the hill. After the children were taken care of, the elephants started helping the adults. According to the account, they rescued 42 people. They wouldn't let their handlers mount them until the job was done.

To make the metaphor fit our message, let's add a detail that didn't actually happen. Let's imagine that in carrying out their rescue mission, the elephants confronted a group of government soldiers assembled to enforce a law against elephants acting as a pack. And imagine further that these nine elephants just ran right by the soldiers, brushing them aside to complete their mission.

Now there are some elephants to think about.

William A. Gamson is a Professor of Sociology at Boston College, where is codirects the Media Research and Action Project (MRAP) with Charlotte Ryan. He is the author of many books and articles on political discourse and social movements, including Talking Politics and is a past president of the American Sociological Association. Charlotte Ryan is the author of Prime Time Activism: Media Strategies for Grass Roots Organizing and an associate research professor in sociology at Boston College.

This essay is the product of a collaborative process involving the MRAP (Movement/ Media Research and Action Project) seminar including Matt Williams, Jeff Langstraat, Vered Malka, Michelle Gawerc, Johanna Pabst, and Jesse Kirdahy-Scalia.