Letter to the Editor, Stoney Creek News

Stoney Creek News reader Leon Sauers' letter in the September 2 issue had me scratching my head at its conclusion:

"A stadium for a city as large as Hamilton having a well-known sports franchise requires a minimum of 30-35,000 seating capacity. To be successful and profitable, in addition to capacity, it requires an easy to and from location with an abundance of parking.

This is not possible at the west harbour site.

The sooner the mayor and majority of council realize this, Young can get the show into a touchdown mode with a simple eeny, meeny, miny, moe."

As L.L. Cool J once opined: "I don't think so."

Mr. Sauers is tangentially known to me, so I have a rough idea of his age. ('older') So this comment wasn't that much of a surprise, because his generation is used to the 'driveway-to-driveway' experience. (Not just for attending sporting events...for everything.)

I hate to be the reminder of bad news, but that world no longer exists.

Um... Allow me to rephrase: that world is no longer being propagated.

When I finally came on-board with the whole 'Where are we going to put this stadium?' discussion, it was pretty clear to me that the decision-making process was a flow-chart.

At the top of the chart, two options:

1) Urban Stadium

2) Suburban Stadium

It's that simple a beginning for this process. (Despite what others may insist is the truth, or that this notion is bunkum. Pfft.)

If you want the stadium to contribute to the 'urban' landscape' (in all ways this approach implies), then you go with an urban location. If you want things like big-box malls to be the ancillary effects, then you go suburban.

If you want public transit to be the default method of getting to the events, and you want to open up attending the stadiums offering to those who may not fall within the 'We Can Afford To Drive A Car' category, you choose urban. If you want the driveway-to-driveway experience...and you're the team owner and want not only the revenue resulting from the 6,000 parking spaces on game days but also all the revenue from all other events held at the stadium because your team is so precariously perched on the precipice of financial viability...then you go suburban.

If you have a conscience regarding the environment...urban. If you're more interested in your needs, getting what you want...suburban.

So the idea that, as Mr. Sauers insists, "...(the stadium) requires an easy to and from location with an abundance of parking..." is just...plain...wrong.

It requires an abundance of parking if that's the way you've approached the decision as to where to locate it. If that's the mindset you're mired in. If you cannot think in any other way than the one you've been thinking in for decades upon decades upon decades.

Now, what's interesting to me is that I do not align myself with those (such as Ryan McGreal, the editor of 'Raise The Hammer'), who insist, spittle flying everywhere, that 'peak oil' and all the concomitant changes attached to these circumstances will soon enough prove the end of the automobile, and therefore, it behooves us to begin making the transition now. (I happen to believe that some form of Personal Transport Vehicles are going to be around for a looooong time; only the fuel and the resultant engine requirements will change. If you seriously believe that people will be willing to forever and ever, Amen sever their attachment to the autonomy and the declaration not only of independence but of identity that a PTV provides...never mind that there's a potential industry there waiting to make the most of this transition away from fossil fuels...well, I'm not sure what to say, honestly.) But I do believe that suburban sprawl sucks the big one, that we need to return to our urban spaces not out of resignation but out of a sense of connecting to our innate urban natures (something that goes back thousands of years), our heritage, that it just makes so much more sense...and that besides; suburban sprawl sucks the-

Oh.

Sorry.

All that talk of aging and of spittle must have had some kind of osmosis effect on me.

Mea culpa.

Anyway, while I did very much enjoy Mr. Sauers' letter...even if it veered like a truck with some steering issues needing to be addressed...this believer in urban stadium locations needed to let his reaction be known.

That's what a 'personal blog' is for, right?

Flay me if you wish..

Titian’s Flaying of Marsyas.

...but the truth of the matter is that most comments I read online at sites such as 'The Hamiltonian' or 'Raise the Hammer' are...well... Disposable. they fall in the category of what I refer to as 'unqualified opinions'. Chaff. Sludge. Intellectual speed-bumps. Irritating rashes. Chafing-

LMAO.

OK; even I grant that riffing on this stuff is a little too indulgent. So instead, I'll post a tirade previously published elsewhere, but before I do, I'm compelled to post this quip made to me recently about a fairly well-known 'commenter/personality/gadabout':

"Yes, I find his comments are intentionally disruptive, and it seems he gets pleasure out of this approach."

I think I've determined my view on Comments sections, on message board contributions.

Now, I'm not talking about one site.

Or one topic.

I'm referring to a broad spectrum of both. Low-brow to the intellectually challenging. From IMDb to ESPN to The Washington Post to the Toronto Star to Newsweek to The Huffington Post to PBS.

Sports. Politics. Entertainment. Relationships. General news.

Here's what I've come up with:

Roughly 90% of all posts aren't worth reading. Are a waste of time. Contribute nothing to either generating or furthering dialogue or discussion.

Roughly 7% of all posts have some degree of merit. Contribute something to generating or furthering dialogue or discussion, even if it's well-mannered filler.

Roughly 3% of all posts actually further discussion, promote dialogue, elevate the exchanges, or inspire heightened awareness, promote intellectual investigation.

And to be honest, I think the last two numbers are a little high.

Seriously; what depresses me the most is that people use the Internet as a means to validate their existence by typing something and pressing 'Submit'. That's all.

As with the case with cell phone technology (which absolutely, positively has not made relationships in general 'better', and I highly doubt has done much to 'improve' the world, certainly not to the extent of its penetration into modern life), access to Internet discussions has not heightened political acumen, has not increased peoples' general awareness levels, has not endowed them with much beyond the ability to spew.

To hector.

To hate.

Here's a further truth, from someone who has, this week, been accused of being an 'intellectual snob': many people have nothing to say.

Many people are 'functional' intelligence-wise, but are not capable of much beyond this.

'Small minds talk about people. Average minds talk about events. Great minds talk about concepts.'

This is oh, so demonstrable online.

The Comments section of articles is the equivalent of old-fashioned Letters To The Editor. How many people who take sixty seconds to type out a vitriolic response do you really believe would make the effort to write an actual letter to a publication?

We live in a world where people are fear-filled. Scared. And in this state, they lash out. They're not willing to consider, they're not interested in rational debate, civil discourse... They want to damn this person to hell, they want to dismiss entirely that person's skills...they even want some people to be 'dead'.

'Net Courage'. This is what fuels so much of what you can see online. The energy that allows someone sitting at a keyboard to say things to someone else that they simply would not say to their face. Or to the collective face.

People talk about how the Internet has brought people closer. They talk about how Facebook and Twitter have allowed people to reconnect, to maintain 'relationships' from a distance.

From my perspective, it's allowed people to believe that they're connecting, to convince themselves that they're engaging, that they're in the middle of a 'relationship'. When in reality, they're not.

Further to this, I believe that all electronic communication is, to a large extent, false. I may come off as a real luddite here, but I'm beginning to believe that unless you can breathe the same air as the other person is breathing as you're 'talking', it's not real, true, substantive communication. The further away you get from this, the further away you get from authentic exchanges. Standing in front of the person is better than the phone which is better than writing a letter which is better than an email or an online chat which is better than a text which is better than a Tweet. God didn't design us with built-in modems. We're living, breathing animals, living in an animal world. As I came to understand years ago, 'It ain't real until you kiss 'em.'

It saddens me that so powerful an influence hasn't really accomplished much in terms of enhancing communication between people. Instead, it's acted as a means for people to vent, to somehow validate vacuous existences, to empower those who clearly need to address their lives and not give them a false sense of entitlement.

I think that in many ways, the more efforts that are made to promote 'equality', the further into the dreck we wander.

That kind of thought undoubtedly makes me a snob of a different type entirely...but I'll save that for another time.

This...*this* is our greatest liability...

(Teeny apologies for the tech glitch at the start of the clip.)

...and our greatest challenge.

Recently, over at Cal 'The Great Enigma' DiFalco's 'The Hamiltonian', in the middle of this discussion about Bob Bratina's candidacy, a comment was made that for me, crystalized -once again- that the 'problem' in local politics (and I'm limiting myself to this aspect of governance and will probably forever more, because that's where my philosophy about engagement will find the most traction) isn't on the City Council side of the equation...it's on our side of it.

Before I get into the specifics of the comment and how effective it is in illustrating the thrust of this particular yammering-on, I want to quickly review this philosophy of mine. As presented in this series of editorials, I believe that in order to get to a place where our City Council is able to provide us the 'type of government' we need, we'll have to effect a wholesale shift in terms of what we contribute to the process.

To wit, voting every four years and then leaving the Council to its work is not enough.

Unless you believe that us being delivered 'better candidates who will perform better than the last batch of bums' is something fated from on-high. (Which would have me champing at the bit to ask questions, starting with 'What on Earth makes you think that this is a reasonable hope/wish/expectation?!?')

I believe that in order to migrate to the next level of our society's evolution, we need to be part of the process. An active part of the process. Authentic participants in the process, not merely observers. (And yes, how I propose getting there is in the aforementioned series. No, I'm not going to parse-and-present for you; frankly, if this notion of increased engagement doesn't appeal, doesn't pique your curiosity and get you to want to make the effort to read the material...then what we have here isn't so much 'failure to communicate', but rather, an entrenched disinterest that parallels, for example, those who have detached themselves from their bodies and are dealing/not-dealing with obesity, all its associated ailments and the non-fitness travails that go along with this general state of affairs: someone who, for identifiable reasons, cannot be bothered.)

What we currently see in terms of how people regard their local politics is actually reminiscent of sports. Of a particular fan's relationship with a particular team in a particular sport. They're consumers of the team's offerings, they dive into each season and accept what's offered...bewailing the defeats and failures while occasionally being able to celebrate victories and championships. (I know, I know; I'm being generous here, but bear with me.) Other than investing their time (and money, if they're attending games and purchasing team product), fans don't have a 'say'. So they're limited to their spectating role.

And this is the hands-off dynamic that we have always been burdened with regarding local politics. We vote every four years...we passively watch as Council does what it does...we bitch and complain when something goes 'wrong' (witness the Pan Am Stadium Site Selection Process)...and then en masse, get enraged, take our delivery of umbrage from www.highdudgeon.com and begin screaming 'VOTE THE BUMS OUT!'

Resulting in me asking 'How's that working out for you?' Or to sardonically mutter my favourite British expression 'Good luck with that.'

Just as people being detached from their physical forms, not being mindfully active in a fitness sense, not looking after the quality of food they gift themselves, living a life that doesn't in any way honour what they've been blessed with, this paradigm doesn't work. And will never work. Even if we got lucky and elected half a Council of truly blessed talents, it still won't get us where we want to be. Because to get there, we're going to have to change the way we see local government, the way we design our participation in our neighbourhoods, our communities, our wards, our city...we're going to have to effect a value system shift in accordance with what I lay out in that series: a 'relationship of engagement' with our councillors.

(And at this point, I have to say that there have been indications from the materials that I've been reading from various candidates that give me hope. Ward 2 candidate Martinus Gelynese said this in a recent article on 'The Hamiltonian': "It is essential for a councillor to represent their constituents at City Hall, rather than being a representative of City Hall in their ward." And Ward 9 candidate Nancy Fiorentino says on her site "Let me ENGAGE you in discussions, let me RESPECT your opinions by bringing them to the table where decisions are made and by being accountable for doing so, and finally, let me DELIVER by working hard to ensure that your needs and the communities needs are addressed in the decision making process," noting as well her commitment to 'Encouraging and Providing New Means for Public Participation and Citizen Engagement.' These are but two heartening examples of philosophies that align -at least as far as they go- with mine. I'm not claiming that either candidate would agree as to how we actually arrive at a more equitable paradigm, especially as I believe the effort has to come from the citizen side, but as far as the end result they both propose, I think we're on the same page.)

As for what prompted this editorial...

Within that original article about Bob Bratina, this comment in response to a fairly loaded broadside about Mr. Bratina and one of the BIAs in central Hamilton:

"After all, the BIA is mandated by City Council and its budget is approved by the Council as well as its Board. Commercial property owners have no choice but to pay the extra levy."

I bring this up because it's a great example of someone with admirable ardour, but clearly lacking a functional understanding of how BIAs are set up, what their functions are, how they operate, yadda, yadda, misconception yadda. (In the end though, it's a good idea to remember that just about all governments everywhere, if they could, would be controlling just about everything...though nobody would ever admit to this notion, not even when under the influence of alcohol or drugs...so it's safe to assume that one of the reasons for BIA support by Council by way of funding, etc, is to in fact steer their courses...at least that's certainly my impression after pointed observation hand-in-hand with doing some research...)

In a system where we're all active participants, where there's a far, far higher standard of engagement, of involvement...and by extension, capability within discourse, while you're still going to have disagreements, diametrically-opposed stances, you'll -hopefully- have far, far less instances of ignorance. Which really, ardour aside, is what this comment reveals. (Bless the commenter just the same, of course.)

Because, going back to the title of this post, as Sy Syms has said for decades: 'An educated consumer is our best customer.'

Not that I've ever had *any* respect for taggers...

...but this scene takes the proverbial cake.

This snapshot was taken this morning just south of the TH&B railway tracks at Battlefield Creek.

A half-dozen cans just dumped in the bushes.

Nice.

Some years back, I wrote a short screenplay about tagging. A kindasorta 'the chickens have come home to roost' sort of tale. Anyone interested in reading it, please email me: mystoneycreek@gmail.com

Please choose one of the following:

Bob Bratina has chosen to run for mayor.

Which means he won't be back as Ward 2 Councillor.

And he's resigning from CHML.

So, here is your multiple-choice question (or, think of it as a 'Let's Make a Deal' affair, choosing Door 1, 2 or 3...without that final option):

1) He's going 'all-in', believing he'll become mayor.

2) He wants to retire from everything, so has effectively decided to make a dramatic exit from both politics and broadcasting...something that will more resemble a funeral-pyre/self-immolation than a graceful swan-dive.

In contrast to Andrew Dreschel's opinion in this Spec article, my belief is that at best, Mr. Bratina will garner whatever 'hardly better than scraps' percentage the third-place candidate is capable of garnering. So from a political point-of-view, I'm curious as to the actual context of how Mr. Bratina is viewing this fascinating endeavour.

Maybe a local playwright will put pen to paper and come up with an adaptation of all 'this'. Title suggestions, anyone...?

Addendum: It's been suggested to me that this is a precursor to him entering provincial politics. As an attempt to wipe clean the slate. Okaaaaaay...

Regarding 'pulling out'...

As we've entered into yet another phase regarding the Pan Am Games stadium, every once in a while the idea of backing away from the table is mentioned...usually with people crossing themselves, saying a quick prayer...or enduring what I've long referred to as a 'piss-shiver'. (Other more genteel souls might spin this as 'the sensation of someone walking over your grave'.)

My reaction has long been consistent: if an equitable 'solution' can't be found, pull out. And if those involved in the decision-making process can't or won't allow this to be an option, then I wonder just how much capability any and all have regarding the notion of 'comporting themselves with a sense of informed responsibility' in executing their duties.

I've most recently made my feelings known in this comment on 'Raise the Hammer'.

Twin Sons of Different Mothers?

Chris Martin of Coldplay

Martinus Geleynse of Ward 2 Candidacy