The idea of Christian Socialism in Canada is often viewed as an English import, coming directly from continental thought and in this sense its politics prioritized over any theological competent; in some ungenerous readings, the theological practice could be considered window dressing to make the political palatable. In English Canada, the presence of the Anglican church as a direct conduit to the mother country imbued this reading with less cynicism and more authority—the disputes between high Anglicans and low Anglicans; between evangelicals and catholics; between those seeking charity and those seeking justice; even between those who stayed in the church of England those who left, were not only English political disputes, but Anglo Canadian ones as well.
But those disputes suggested a political and social homogeneity, an argument to use the same language with the same people in the same contexts. Though Christian socialism in eastern Canada was not exclusively Anglican, the churches that worked through its messages had similar castes, powers, desires and structures.
Canada has always been a loose confederation, barely federal in how they connect to each other, and that looseness has influenced our political and theological heritage. Western Canada’s experiments with Christian socialism lacked the homogeneity of the east. They were more communitarian, derived information and practice from more sources, originated less in patterns of emigration and more in patterns of exile, featured religious movements that were very much outside the mainstream, and originated in a world view that was more multi-cultural, less organized by traditional family and power structures, and to this day, have an almost libertarian willingness to allow unconventional patterns of human connection.
In the next ten pages, starting with a brief history of Western Canada, and fully recognizing the problems inherent in some of these discourses, I hope to talk about how three religious communities (The Dukabhors, the Latter Day Saints, and the Hutterites) worked within the context of this psycho-geographic place, how they interacted with both local and national thought, how their political and social practice were intractable form their theological sensibilities, some of the later difficulties they might have had, and how the western Canadian experiments with collective action allowed for a wider and stranger understanding of how the gospel could work, in relation to both Canadians and Christians
. Beginning with the idea of Western Canada, it began not as wilderness in the manifest destiny imbued American sense of that word, and was founded as part of a business contract, between the Hudson’s Bay Company, and a fey prince named Rupert. The land was settled by men, but men who under the careful supervision of factors, and other bosses. They were expected to live, work, and function as a family unit, without women, and without the carousing and drinking that often accompanied social collectivity—there were no individual, and no settled identities in this world, and it can be seen in for example, how the Hudson Bay Company refused to allow all but the most substient farming around the factories.
This idea of men together, working, without the benefit of women, or religion; this cult of homosociality, founded on the voyagers and courier de bois of western Canada grew from the end of the fur trading movement, ca 1860 and the rise of ranches and railroads closer to the borders. At this point, the gender of those who were on the ranches, became less important then the idea of Western Canada as a place that made new kinds of families, that broke apart the old ways, and cut ties from England

May 25, 2010

Dear U of T Student,

RE: G20 Summit: Restricted Access on St. George Campus

As you may know, the G20 summit will be taking place in Toronto on June 26-27, 2010. Queen's Park North, which is immediately adjacent to the St. George Campus, was recently designated as the official protest site.

We of course respect the legitimacy of peaceful protest. But we know from past G20 summits (including last year's summit in Pittsburgh) that these protests may be associated with violence, tear gas, arrests, disruption and damage to buildings.

It our hope that these untoward incidents do not materialize here in Toronto. However, it is only prudent to act so that we protect those students, staff, and faculty who do not wish to participate or get caught up in these protests. Hence, we will be moving through a series of restricted access measures during the G20 -- the week of June 21-27.

On the St George campus, there are no classes scheduled during this period in the Faculty of Arts and Science. Summer session exams will be moved to the early part of the week, with accommodation made for students for whom this disrupts plans. For the later part of the week, classes scheduled in other faculties will be rescheduled. These plans do not affect classes or exams scheduled at UTM and UTSC.

Those students staying in Innis, New, University, and Woodsworth college residences who wish to remain on campus at this time will be moved to other U of T residences from Wednesday evening through to Sunday. If you are affected by one of the college residence closures, staff from your college will be in contact with further details. Planning decisions for Victoria, Trinity and St Michael’s colleges will shortly be communicated by the heads of those colleges.

In addition, no events will be held on the St. George campus during that week (Monday, June 21st to Sunday, June 27th).

What this means effectively is that the St. George campus will be for all intents and purposes closed from 6:00 p.m. Wednesday, June 23rd through Sunday, June 27th. We will be continuing to work on our planning over the next days and weeks. Please consult the Preparedness website (accessible on the U of T homepage or directly at www.preparedness.utoronto.ca) where further information will be posted.

Sincerely,


Jill L. Matus
Vice Provost, Students

--

Office of the Vice-Provost, Students
University of Toronto
27 King's College Circle, Room 221
Toronto, ON M5S 1A1

ovps@utoronto.ca
www.viceprovoststudents.utoronto.ca

i have decided after a long working through, to become an anglican formally.

p5240226.jpg

p5240226.jpg
Originally uploaded by PinkMoose

i don't know how homophobic this is, but its really fucking weird.

hawaii has placed limits on the number of birth records of obama.


david allen coe was a mormon

all yr ufc jesus memorbillia.


oh, the 70s, you make me so happy.

toronto life used my photo again.

dana barnesis a textile artist, whse loft is filled with felted work.

sholem's drawings from photos on facebook.

From Untitled Album

dozens of full book scans of pattern libraries and textile craft books from the 19th and early 20th century.

jay steensma's paintings are on the verge of ugly, often on paper bags, simply painted, and verging on folk culture, i found the austerity of them to have a savage edge. esp. love the fish ones.

6 new speices including a super creepy giant woolly rat, found in indoesia.

emoticon rubber stamp

pauline hanson is forced to take her home of the market and stay in australia, because she annot find anyone she likes to buy it (racism schadenfreude is amusing)


Lyle Lovett and Fontella Bass sing Don't Mess Up a Good Thing

love the vertical and horizontal tension of this small house in queensland.

stephanie morris who is a sound and installaiton artist, her husband (a musican), killed himself, her work about that event, using her husband's voice has an intensity of expereince that moves away from the morass of sentiment it could be bogged in.

sean penn has reached his sgt kurtz moment, actually not in iraq, but haiti.

English and Scottish Ballads complied by Childe, all on line.



Chely Wright on Oprah.

arguing about the efficvtiveness of the three strike laws in cali.

comic about the lying and the corruption of the scientiest who wrote the heavily falsfied, ethically dubious autism mmr story.


How to prevent oil spils, how to clean up oil spills, and how BP fails.

alberta as corperate and collective, as opposed to americans, et al

1. Prince Rupert's Land, some of BC, some of Manitoba, all of Yukon, NWT, Alberta, Sask.

2. Worked together, employees for one larger corporation, not individual

3. for most of it's history, until the 1860s, no farming at all allowed by the HBC, with the possible exception of some subsistence farming.

4. Ranchers not farrmers

5. and the idea of family on ranches and the like

6. With the rise of the Railroad, the need to populate this land raised a need to export farmers, et al

7. the canadian government imported these groups in large clumps (i.e ukranians, southern germans, poles, incelandics etc)

8. all of these factors would suggest that the history of western canada would feel more comfortable with a wide variety of practices.

• prince rupert land, agrian conflict, multi culti

  1. Western Canada was then born mulit-cultural

  2. b/w Prince Rupert, the Railways, and the RCMP it lacked the violent manifest destiny that marked the American history of the west

  3. Would explain why people who viewed the dangers of perssucation on their homeland for a variety of unusal theological practices would be given a safe harbour in alberta (i.e. The Mennoites in 18(6?) for the pacifism, the Hutterites in 1878, and again in 1918 for t heir pacifism and collectivism, the LDS in 1878 for their idea of united order and polygymy, the dukhabors in the late 19^th century for siimilar reasons.

• variety of collective expriments in farming, et al, that combined political and religious instinctls

  1. the collective exxpriments in agricultural practice by these groups were grounded in a theological practice that was explicitly theology--, ie:the lds:
     An organization through which the Saints in the early days of the restored Church sought to live the law of consecration. Individuals shared property, goods, and profits, receiving these things according to their wants and needs (D&C 51: 3; 78: 1-15; 104).
     In your temporal things you shall be equal, D&C 70: 14. The Saints were to be organized to be equal in all things, D&C 78: 3-11 (D&C 82: 17-20). The Lord gave unto the united order a revelation and a commandment, D&C 92: 1. John Johnson should become a member of the united order, D&C 96: 6-9. The Lord gave general instructions for operating the united order, D&C 104. My people are not united according to the union required by the celestial kingdom, D&C 105: 1-13.

  2. The hutterites use of acts
     Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold,
     
     And laid them down at the apostles' feet; and the distribution was made every man according to as he had need.

  3. The dukabhors treated their collectiveiation in Saskatchewan communities as the direct message of Peter A Vergtin

  4. also use of language that would suggest that thsese places were the literal gifts of God—Zion in the LDS, Heaven on Earth in the words of Vergtin, the Hutterite seperation of English and Hutterisch worlds, etc

• canada as a better fit for these groups then other places

  1. The Laws against polygymy occured 10 years later, and were less enforced in Western Canada

  2. The violent supression of LDS culture was mostly, if not an exclusively american phenom

  3. the 1895 protest in russia, where the dukabhors burned all of their guns Nicholas II putsch

  4. 1918 Hutterites forced off their land, and into southern alberta/manitoba from the Dakotas due to Anti German sentiment.

• canada as a refuge for alt theologies, including lds, duhkabors, mennoties, hutterites, et al

  1. few places that existed for places of collective action did not last more then a few years in other places (i.e burnt over distrct lasted about 15 years in upstate new y ork, pentacostal revivals in LA and Kansas lasted about 5)

  2. Though the LDS does not have collectivism any more, the united order is viewed as part of how the church exists, the Desert Ranch near Lethbridge, and Orchards/Canneries near Penctin still provide food for an internal system of food banks/welfare offices called bishops store houses

  3. Bountiful

  4. Hutterites, unique legal challenges, including legislature in 1972 that tried to break apart collective farms—Desert Ranch used as a example to allow for the continued legal presence of their farms: The Hutterites have fought the Federal government in several tax cases, but since the 1970s, relationships between the Hutterites and the local population have improved considerably, and the Alberta government has strongly supported their rights as a religious community. But there has been some residual resentment and resistance against them. In 2000, the MLA from Little Bow in southern Alberta introduced—unsuccessfully—a private bill which would make it illegal for anyone to own in excess of 15 per cent of the total amount of arable farmland in any municipal district or county. At that time, a spokesman for the Hutterites defended their colonies saying that they were family farms just like everyone else's; the colonies just happened to have more families living on them. Each colony is, after all, a separate legal identity. It was pointed out that in Warner County—the county with the largest Hutterite holdings—59,792 hectares or 13.5% was owned by the Hutterites in 2000, but the Mormon Church owned the 41,600 hectare Desert Ranch, by far the largest Alberta farm corporation, and no complaints have been made about this fact. (Mennoite Central Committee)

• tie this to ethnic and social positions from the east

  1. lack of a collective history in ontatrio, etc

  2. with the possible exception of the Mennonites in southern Ontario, but those are break off sects from Manitoba, so an example of the east from west—and the Amish, who have impt seperations from the Hutterites, and technology. et. Al

• the falling apart of this collectivism

  1. Problems with lost boys and bountiful

  2. Hutterites and the 9^th Grade eduaction, role of women, dowries, and the like

  3. if its a good idea that the church owns that much land, regardless of its use,

  4. aryan nations

• soultions for maintaining balance

1. curb the obvious excesses

2. the western, or the alberrtan attitude is to allow for a large amount before it is consdiered excess

3. a theological/political reworking of hippocratic oath—first do no harm, if it is not doing harm, leave it the hell alone

• political lessons for today

  1. awareness of the multplicity of xian voices

  2. awareness that canada has always been a much looser federation then we imagine it to be

  3. theological allowance for an understanding of our practices as ones that are inter-realted, away from chairty models and towards a organic web of inter connected justice

  4. thin line b/w politics and religion

  5. goats.

1. alberta as corperate and collective, as opposed to americans, et al
2. prince rupert land, agrian conflict, multi culti
   
3. 19th century reversal of agrian tendencies
   
4. variety of collective expriments in farming, et al, that combined political and religious instinctls
   
5. canada as a better fit for these groups then the us
   
6. canada as a refuge for alt theologies, including lds, duhkabors, mennoties, hutterites, et al
   
7. tie this to ethnic and social positions from the east
   
8. the falling apart of this collectivism
   
9. the pushing of legislative solutions to religious otherness
   
10. soultions for maintaining balance
    
11. political lessons for today
    

Physique Pictorial in the 50s was an ambiguous and unstable document. There was no surety if the photos of naked men where aspirational as a fitness goal, or as a sexual goal, or both, or neither. There were hand written notes from the editor, scrawls about freedom of the press, and sometimes this freedom of the press hinted at sexual frontiers, but there were also notes on how to achieve these bodies. The homo-social and the homosexual messed together with the political, the social, and the aesthetic. There were no strict goals, and no strict identities.

Physique Pictorial firmed up its ambiguity in the next decade. The copy became cleaner, the lay outs more elegant. The homo-sociality was replaced with a piss elegant camp homosexuality. This firming allowed for the potential of other texts to take over the niche previously held by PP. I want to talk about one of these magazines, explicitly. Butch was published in the mid to late 60s. It was slick, better photographed, better laid out, and better written. They had an attachment to the radical establishment of the time—quoting Ramparts, and It lacked the games of hide-and-seek that made PP so ambiguous. They also used many of the same images, sometimes directly, and sometimes ambiguously.

If one of the markers of identity in a post-information age is how to choose allies, and if one of the strategies of choosing allies is learning how to curate and control how they disseminate information—In this presentation, I hope to use the case study of Physique from the 50s and Butch from the 60s provides several moral lessons: about how information controls identity, how the radical politics of sex relates to other sites of contention, about how the recent debates about authorship and ownership have a long and queer history, and how formal matters of aesthetics and design stabilize collective ideas of self hood.

Chely Wright is really good at figuring out professional narratives--she released Single White Female at the time of Shania, and Bumper of my SUV at the time of Bush's biggest war mongering. Her melodramatic arc here is really interesting, because it allows a conservative, female gendered language to mouth ideas that are fairly radical...If and when she releases tracks about her sexuality, it could be a lot like Dolly and her poverty, or Loretta, but everything sound so rote...

all of that said, try finding her song The River, it's pretty haunting.

PR6051 .L33 H35

From Sinker

First, imagine you were inducting a reasonably intelligent outsider, of natural curiosity and openness, into the world of strong, useful, insightful or inspirational writing about music: which FOUR writers would you point them to? (Note: it can be any kind of music AT ALL...)

To start us off, I am going to name nine writers not to bother naming: they get a bye into the poll. DON'T WORRY OR BRIDLE: If you hate them, this is your chance to vote against them! I just want to get a slightly wider pool of potential entrants, really. The nine not to name are: Richard Meltzer, Robert Christgau, Greil Marcus, Lester Bangs, Jon savage, Paul Morley, Ian Penman, Richard Cook, Simon Reynolds. ALSO: Don't name me. I will be all over any project I am involved with. Known and active Poptimists (apart from me) you can of course name, though you're all kind of a given just by turning up.

a) alex ross the rest is noise
b) kandida crazy horse her village voice work
c) anne powers the peice she did about mars hill for blender
d) sasha fere jones. his writing on stephin merritt


2: Now imagine the pool of writers we generally get to see in a "best of music writing". Which FOUR writers would you like to see added to it that currently don't get in? (This can be based on a much smaller body of work I think...) Which writers do you think are overlooked or poorly understood? Which writers have an approach -- perhaps mainly directed at some "non-popular" music, or indeed some NON-music -- which you think would be valuable if others adopted it?

re 1&2: Please append to any writers nominated an exemplary work --book, interview, review, sleevenote, whatever, long or short, typical or atypical.

a) chuck eddy the accidental history of rock and roll
b) thomas inskeep reviews for stylus
c) charles k wolfe country music goes to war
d) barbara ching hard is what i do best

: Name SIX books about music that everyone should read. It can be about ANY kind of music. But it can't be by any of the folk you nominated in 1 or 2 (so yes, you may have to do some juggling to get the results you favour...). If six such books do not yet exist, please say so.

a) carl wilson's journey to the end of taste
b) chris' willaims rednecks and blue necks
c) gulhanik's two books on elvis
d) cages books on silence
e) escaping the devil by elijah wold
f) the hymnals of eliza snow

: Now name FOUR pieces that AREN'T books -- can be reviews, blog posts, comments -- that everyone should read (they can be collected in books; they just can't be books). Again: not by any of the folk you named in 1-3. \

a) alice randall's intro lectures on country broadcast on line
b) the linear notes of the anthology of american folk music
c) big fish, steve kandell's feature on chesney in blender
d) merce cunningham's dance notation

Name THREE zones of debate or discussion that were really hoppin. Thus for example: the Zigzag gossip column 1977-79; the comments threads on the War Against Silence in 2001; the reviews pages of the east Village Eye in 1967... They have to be accessible -- so eg not pub discussions on that amazing night or so-and-so's tutorials when x was in her class; they can be the whole of a magazine across a slice of time; or a website; or whatever you want that fits the bill. This is a question about chemistry of voices, voices that haven't perhaps been so strong or interesting when divorced from their co-squabblees.

a) what it meant to sell out in the folk scene, in the early 60s
b) the emergence of new patterns of dancing in shaker communities in the 1860s
c) when the brazillan gvnt tried to shut down tropicala

6: Name SIX films or documentaries about music that everyone should see: ; non-fiction; fiction; biopic -- whatever. What matters is the question of how they deal with music itself: how they make it the subject, or backdrop, or whatever they do.

a) cocksuckers blues/gimme shelter
b) paris is burning
c) truth or dare
d) the film from 55 or so of the holiness movement, availble on the web archives
e) David Bowie on Dick Cavett ca 1977
f) the ballroom scene in Visconti's the Leopard.

Gary Allan, Smoke Rings in the Dark


sudanese date wine and the implications of sharia law.

beautifully written essay about someone who moved away from arizona, and the implcations of friends who stayed at home.

From Untitled Album

Ryman Auditoriam after the floods

and San Diego congressmean Duncan Hunter wants to deport the children of undocumented workers.


Sometimes it takes balls to be a woman


Lauren Zungia totally fucking owns the patrichal assholes in Oklahoma.

the lusty lady the union led sex workers paradise in seattle, has shut its doors.

9 out of the 11 issues of diseased pariah news, sadly in a really awful format.


Kari Fall is a finnish country singer. this is him singing 16 tons on television in 1963. this might be my erotic ideal. (who knew that my erotic ideal was from finland instead of tennessee or texas)

greek riot dog

6 landscapes by Salamon Van Ruysdael, dutch landscape painter i hadn't paid much attention to, but the milky grey light in the sea scapes are almost perfect.

more information on the subterfuge that the vatican engaged in to hide american sex abuse cases.


Deadly Gentleman sing Come in My Kitchen.

jenny dubnau's portraits, with their muddy greige backgrounds, ugly subjects, and odd clothing choices, are like duane hansen thru the lens of a post ironic tim gardner.

peggy nash rips apart the harper anti abortion agenda

11 other organazations that ideological funding cuts.


this video of new york exteriors of artists and writers who died of aids, almost made me cry.

ice crystals are one of a number of reasons

house constructed by concrete encased hay bales, and then emptied by cows eating said bales.

toronto life uses one of my photos



wayne coe makes gay porn marquees from the 70s made into sand drawings on the sidewalks of present day times sqaure--cowboy connects to my work, but also the empherability, the site specific nature of it, and of course, the empherability.



the video of this new video from Tame Impala reminds me of the more stoned edges of 70s public service commericals...

feds are threatening to sue over the AZ immigration laws.

shots by helicopter of the oil slicks in the gulf of mexico, a bit of the burtynsky sublimity to the shots, but well worth looking at besides.

brief interview with zak smith, mostly about LA

From Untitled Album

Koons and Gagoasian, at the Richard Prince afterparty, held at a bar owned by Greydon Carter, shot by Terry Richardson.

your judgment of it can't stand as an impartial judgment. neither can mine. we love campy things. the very fact that naomi wrote a book is campy. we have a love of these things regardless of their actual merits. we are not to be trusted.

Sholem Krishtalka

frazetta is a good test case for taste, or at least my taste--i loved him unironically when i was a kid, and then when i was in high school i was allergic to him, i was above him, then i started to love him ironically, and now i just love him, i love his earnest strangeness, and his wonder, and oddness, and the tits--the magnficent, omnipresent, hyperpowerful tits, they call it fantasy for a reason.

Untitled Album

Franzetta, RIP

feburary mood in may.

A group of people on a high school senior trip from Jacksonville, Fla., said they were stuck for about an hour and a half in the Bubba Gump restaurant at 44th Street and Seventh Avenue.

“A lot of people were getting tense who were there longer than we were,” said Billy Wilkerson, 39, a police sergeant in Jacksonville and a chaperone for the trip. “It’s so good to get out, but it was exhilarating.”

He said he was impressed by his New York counterparts. “I just sat back and learned a lot,” he said.

hooray hooray the first of may
outdoor fucking begins today