Little Mosque on the Praries Still Going Strong

The Jerusalem Post's Middle Eastern Musings has recently referenced my article "How Canada's Little Mosque on the Prairie is aiming for our souls" which was published in the American Thinker a couple of years ago (December 13, 2008, to be exact). That was more than three years ago. And what I've written in the article hasn't changed one iota. Little Mosque on the Prairie is still running, now on Mondays at 8:30pm, the best of prime time right after the weekend. I'm not sure who is watching the show, since it was struggling with funds when I wrote the article. But the CBC puts on many shows by using government funds to advance its ideological (leftist) stance, as I explain in the article, and the mosque show is no exception.

The writer of the article exclaims, "we ought to consider that this show’s creators mean to conscript their viewers into the great Ummah. Scary." She continues that "the popularity of Little Mosque on the Prairie leaves me simultaneously shocked, flabbergast, uneasy, and numb."

She wrote this in response to my observations in my article that the show:

intends to introduce, as unobtrusively as possible, the Muslim presence to the Canadian public. By borrowing well-recognized and often beloved Canadian symbols [like Laura Wilder's Little House on the Prairie] to advance their show, Muslims can be portrayed as being just like any other Canadian -- in fact they are now the new pioneers of the vast, empty prairies, building their societies like Laura and her family had done.

Well, Muslims are aided and abetted by the culture at large, without whose assistance they wouldn't be able "to conscript their viewers into the great Ummah." And the CBC is the prime culprit.

I still don't know who watches the show. The last time I skimmed through it, the jokes were not funny, the storyline uninteresting, the acting was pretty bad (over-exaggeration is the method), and the town's whites are still classified as the duds while the Muslims the new, brave, smart pioneers. It is easy to write off the show as an obscure program that no-one really watches, a little like infomercials. But, this is part of the unobtrusive march that Muslims are so clever at sustaining, and then suddenly burqa and mosque (and halal) become part of our everyday vocabulary, if not practice.

We can blame overtly leftist organizations for turning our societies upside-down, but they are aided and abetted by our silence, which translates to acquiescence. So, we should stop blaming the obvious culprits, and start by denouncing their tactics. This of course requires an increased awareness and vigilance. And the times require that now. It is no longer an excuse to be uniformed and thus unaware.

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Flowers for an Emperor

I don't think I've ever posted photos of myself, other than my profile picture. This blog isn't really about "me" although I hope my voice is distinct in what, and how, I write. Personalized blogs are really boring, after the initial fascination with who the individual is, so I've always avoided that.

Now, after that long explanation! I decided to post the above photo.

I was chosen to present flowers to Emperor Haile Selassie. The dress and cape were especially made for the occasion. I wasn't really instructed on what to do, how to do it, and what to do after I gave the flowers. But, I do remember following closely behind. I was rewarded with a call from the Emperor to join him at the end of the tour. He took my hand, my wrist as I remember and as the photo shows, and led me toward the exit, asking me my name, and questions about my school. I was not shy at all, and talked, like little girls do, to this nice old man, with the pleasant smile who didn't seem at all like the imposing figure that everyone seemed to fear.

Later on, people were gently admonishing me for looking straight in his eyes when giving the flowers. But look at how seriously he took my small task of giving him the flowers. And he must have found me just a little amusing, with his interested and gentle smile as he took my hand.

Within a year of my flower presentation, my family left hurriedly for France, which projected me into a whirlwind of cities and countries from Paris, to Dover (England), Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Connecticut in the US, and now in Toronto Canada.

And not short after that, the Emperor was no more.

It is only recently that Ethiopians who believed in those "changes" are having second (weak) thoughts about those events. Things didn't turn out as they had planned (although "planned" is too definitive of "revolutions." A better work, to give them some credit, might be "hoped.")

The country will never return to monarchy, but ordinary people are yearning for some kind of hierarchical stability, where good men, and good kings, through spiritual and traditional guidance, tried to rule with their best interests at heart.

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Beauty in unexpected places

Below are close-ups of the Ronald York Wilson mosaic panels at the Toronto Bell Canada building, which I blogged about here. These close-ups are mentioned in Mills' biography by his wife Lela Wilson, York Wilson: His Life and Work¹, but she doesn't provide any images. I went looking for them in various other biographical books and on the internet, and couldn't find them anywhere. So, I went back with my trusted camera and took more photographs.

Color is hard to find in Toronto, but sometimes it surprises us in unexpected places. Despite the unattractive building, which stands right across the street from the beautiful Art Deco Concourse building, the murals on the Bell Canada facade add much appreciated color to the surroundings.

"Satellite in Action"

Prehistoric men

Prehistoric animal

Panel with "Satellite in Action"
[image center left]

Panel with prehistoric men
and animal

Below is an excerpt from Lela Wilson's York Wilson: His Life and Work which describes a little of the method behind his murals, including the collage effect he achieved which I discuss here.

A mosaic for the Bell Telephone company

Russell Branddon’s book Roy Thomson of Fleet Street was published in 1965. Inside was a photograph from the early 1940s of Thomson posed in front of Land, Lakes and Forests, the mural he commissioned York to complete for his Timmins Press Building in 1940. It was York’s first mural.[continued below]

I'll break here to add some information about Roy Thomson, for whom York designed his first mural Land, Lakes and Forests, and which then got him many other commissions around Canada, including his famous ones in the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts (which I've posted here).

Roy Thomson, who was known as Lord Thomson of Fleet due to some obscure lineage and for which he denounced his Canadian citizenship to become British to receive his title, died in 1976 a British citizen in London, never having reclaimed his Canadian citizenship. Nevertheless, the concert hall in downtown Toronto, the Roy Thomson Hall, is named after him. I think is partly in honor of his enterprising spirit and legacies of radio stations and newspapers he left behind. His family had also donated $5.4 million towards the construction of the hall.

Thomson started out modestly by selling radios. He then set up his own radio station in Timmins, a northern Ontario town. Eventually, he bought the Timmins Daily Press, and thus began expanding both his radio station and newspaper business. While in Timmins, he got Wilson to design Land, Lakes and Forests for his office, which depicts the rugged nature of northern Ontario.

Below is a photograph of Roy Thomson in his Timmins office, presumably holding the Timmins Daily Press, with Wilson's mural behind him.



I've added the names of the towns in red. A bigger version is here.

And below is a map which shows the distance from Toronto (and Ottawa and Montreal) to Engelhart - shown as point A on the map.


North Bay is what most Canadians would think of as the beginning of the (mythical) north, with its wild wilderness and empty landscape. A harsh place with long winters, and very little reprieve in the warmer months, with hardly any spring and a short summer. Thomson's venture up north was bold, as his later business acumen would show.

Below, I continue with the excerpt from Lela Wilson's biography, describing Wilson's commission to design the Bell Canada mural, which still stands today, in a side street below Queen Street in downtown Toronto, which I've never noticed before until recently, when I started to photograph the buildings around the downtown area. Most of these buildings are impressive, solid highrises, some skyscrapers, with beautiful turn-of-the-twentieth century Art Deco ornaments. The Bell Canada building, as I wrote here, was built much later in 1965, but it seems to be a "bridge between the "old" skyscraper age and our new [glass] one" as I wrote here.

A mosaic for the Bell Telephone company [cont.]

More than two decades later, York received a commission for a mural at the new Bell Telephone building on Adelaide Street in Toronto. York completed this project and the Port Arthur General Hospital murals during the eighteen month period separating our return from Paris in early 1964 and our departure for a world-round trip in late 1965.

York was thrilled at the prospect of a mosaic mural for Bell. He had been interested in mosaics ever since we stopped at Ravenna while en route from Venice to Rome in the autumn of 1957. York had discussed mosaics with architect Ronald Dick and Franklin Arbuckle when they visited us in Paris in late 1963. When the building was contracted to Marani, Routhwaite and Dick architectural firm, Ron Dick recalled that Paris conversation and contacted York. In a letter of April 25, 1964 to Dick, York outlined his theme and declared the mosaic medium desirable “in that it would introduce colour in an unusual way, where it would have value both as decoration and as identification.”

The mural was to take the form of five vertical panels, each 20’ by 5’, installed on the building’s external façade. The mural’s title was Communications. Each panel expressed a different of the theme: written, drawn, musical, verbal and electronic. Within the panels are many symbols, including Greek, Moabite, and Etruscan letter forms, early Spanish cave paintings, bars of music, abstracted human faces, and a satellite in action [note: I've posted some of these images above, from photographs I took of the mosaics].

To execute the Bell mural, York contracted the services of Alex Von Svoboda of Toronto’s Conn-Arts Studio, a firm specializing in mosaics, murals, designs and sculptures for ecclesiastical and commercial projects. York designed the mural, selected the material and Conn-Arts did the installation. At the Conn-Arts studio, York enlarged his sketches onto heavy brown paper later marked like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The tesserae were glued face down onto the paper in their final design; when the tesserae were embedded in cement, the brown paper was removed and the panels were installed on the building. Throughout the process, York enjoyed an excellent rapport with Alex and was pleased with the finished mural, installed in 1965.

In “Wilson Rings Bell with Mosaics,” published in the Globe and Mail (June 12, 1965) shortly before the mural’s installation, Kay KritzWeiser discussed the project’ genesis and execution, and noted that York had been careful to mimic the uneven surfaces of early mosaics, “so that the play of light and shadow during day and night will become a continuous wonder. Rain will sluice away soot. Sun will catch the glitter of gold leaf impregnated between layers of glass.”

These beautiful colour murals, surrounded by white marble, are best appreciated when viewed up close. Unfortunately, they are placed so high that one cannot appreciate them fully, and the mosaics are no longer lit at night. Bell’s brochure, which featured a colour reproduction of the finished mural, is no longer available. York made a small sample mosaic section which the AIO toured to schools and small towns in Ontario in 1965. At that time, numerous buildings in Toronto featured mural decorations. As an article in the Toronto Daily Star (August 9, 1965) queried, “What’s a Business Without a Mural?” York’s works for Imperial Oil, the O’Keefe Centre and Bell are mentioned therein.

Reference:
1. Lela M. Wilson. Edited by Sandra Dyck (1997). York Wilson: His Life and Work, 1907-1984. Carleton University Press.
pp171-172

[Photographs by KPA]

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"Chink in the Armor"

[Photoshop by KPA]

I remember when newspaper headlines were fun to read. Those in charge of finding titles seemed to enjoy themselves, and had no pcpolice at their throats monitoring their words.

The New York Post has been my source on the recent New York Fashion Week, with great images and reports. I still go there to read the regular stories on fashion and entertainment, so I would have caught this headline anyway:

"ESPN apologizes for racist Lin headline"

I've been following Lin, somewhat, although I'm not really interested in basketball, and I don't think I've ever watched a full game. So I was curious what the "racist" headline would be. And here it is:

"Chink in the Armor."

I think this is funny.

It is perfect, in that it describes exactly what happened. A Chinese player (the only one, hence the chink) who is supposed to be the star player pulling the team (the armor) together, was found to be deficient, and became the liability.

On a more serious note, I don't understand the eulogies that go alongside Lin's name, as though he could do no wrong. He is only one, tall Chinese guy, after all.

And on yet another serious note, black basketball player who went to China found that the Chinese players had no politically correct sentiments when fending off aggressive blacks. Although it came as a shock to the black players, I don't really see anything redeemable for the Chinese either. I get the feeling that they can be as vicious as any black, and perhaps even more so.

I think that we should keep an eye out on the Chinese. My blog has been writing on that for a while now.

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Dolly Girl

Anna Sui's fragrance Dolly Girl.
Channeling her inner China Doll?

I posted on Anna Sui and her designs at the New York Fashion Week. There is very little biographical information on Sui other than that she was born in Detroit Michigan, and her parents lived in Paris before they settled in the US.

Anna Sui and Family:
[Image Source]

[Image Source]

Neither of these sources give full information on the members of this family, if they are all indeed part of the family. Why post images without telling us what or who they depict? Anyway, the best I can come up with is this:

- Sui's parents are both Chinese, so the elderly Chinese woman in the second image is most likely her mother.

- Various biographical sources write that Sui has two brothers, so it is likely that the two older Chinese men are her brothers.

- One is sitting close to a white woman holding a young child, in the top photograph. She looks like she's the same woman with the child in the bottom photograph, standing next to a man holding another child. These children could be their children, they do have the half Caucasian, half Chinese features, so they must be part of the family at some generational level.
- The other Chinese man, with the his hand on the young girl's shoulder in the bottom photograph, at the far right, could be the girl's father.

- The two young girls in the two photographs are likely the same girls. They also look half Caucasian, half Chinese, and may be the children of either one of the brothers - Sui, as far as I can find out, is not married, and has no children.

- The boy in the top photograph, sitting second from the right, looks like the same boy in the bottom photograph, sitting in the middle of the front row. He also looks half Caucasian, half Chinese, and could be the son of either one of Sui's brothers.

The boy next to him in the top photograph looks Chinese (not mixed). It's hard to deduce who he could be. I'm assuming that the Chinese-looking boy is not part of the family since all the other younger members of the photograph look like they have some mixture.

- The boy in the bottom photograph at the far right looks like a mix (Hispanic and Chinese?), and it is also hard to deduce who he could be, but it could be that the Chinese part resulted with darker skin than the others.

- Is the white man standing at the far left in the bottom photograph Sui's husband/etc? He looks like he's part of the family, and perhaps doesn't want the publicity that goes with being associated with a famous person, and may be keeping out of the radar.

My point really is that Chinese families are now a mix, of mostly white and Chinese. And it is mostly Chinese women and white men who make this mix, as Sui's photographs seem to show.

Sui's Inspirations:

Sui's inspirations are numerous and eclectic (this is another way of saying that she's promiscuously all over the place.) In another interview, she says:

"There’s something about the ‘60s. I love the color palette, and so much of the ‘60s was inspired by folk art but also the Victorian period, and I love that," Sui said in an interview.

Rock and Roll and Punk Rock is another theme that comes up. According to Fashion Encyclopedia:

When Anna Sui started her own apparel company in 1980, her mission was to sell clothes to every rock 'n' roll store in the country. "It was right after the punk rock thing and I was so into that," said the designer, who has earned a reputation for bringing a designer's sensibility to wild-child, rocker clothes with a vintage spin.

Her enthusiasm runs the gamut from Art Deco (she also gratuitously adds in Art Nouveau) to Vienna’s Wiener Werkstätte, and an obsession with the1920s fashion illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, according this this:

Everyone’s talking about Copenhagen right now and a lot of people go there for research,” she offers. “I went to Finland and Stockholm but we didn’t have time to go! In Finland they had vintage Art Deco — there was a flea market there, really good old stuff, for nothing!” The Art Deco movement is just one of Sui’s enthusiasms, which run the gamut from textile maven Zika Ascher to obscure 1970s rock to patterns from Vienna’s Wiener Werkstätte at the turn of the last century. Each collection expresses the latest tangent of Sui’s curiosity (“If you saw my office, it’s shock full of inspiration — layers of inspiration!”), often trimmed in crochet, handmade lace and other decorative trims.

Rock stars and glam girls seem to be part of this 47-year-old's psyche. Here's what she says at her website:

People are attracted to my fashions because of all the elements I try to put into it -- There's always a very sweet feminine, girly aspect…a touch of nostalgia. There’s also the aspect of trendiness; the hipness I try to create by always adding a rock-and-roll coolness. There's always that ambiguity…the Good Girl/Bad Girl thing. All these facets have to go into my designs, or it doesn't look like "Anna Sui". Every product I put my name on has to personify the "World of Anna Sui". When a customer buys a tube of lipstick, it should give them the same excitement as buying a dress from my collection. If it doesn’t, then I'm not really doing my job.

And of course, China.

Growing up and learning about Chinese culture from my parents, and hearing them talk about all the different places they had lived…prepared me for thinking globally. This perspective took away any fears of being able to function in a foreign country. Their experiences were a gift to me.

This erratic, unfocused, state of mind is apparent in her work. As I wrote in the previous post on her designs at New York Fashion Week:

There's too much going on!.... When in doubt, keep adding, is usually the motto of the mediocre.

This is similar to what I wrote about another Asian fashion designer, Vera Wang:

Most brides still prefer their dresses in white (or ivory)[note: Wang is designing off-white, beige, grey and black wedding dresses], so I wonder how Wang even makes good profit off her bridal designs? Not surprisingly, she has branched out into "regular" fashion design (I'm getting tired of shoddy dresses thrown at us by mediocre and irresponsible designers), as well as standard home decor, which other designers have done better. I don't see any particularly stand-out products from any of her departments.

Sui also designs perfumes, which is standard fare for fashion designers, but here are the names of her fragrances, referencing her girly, rock and roll, hippy, good girl/bad girl, Chinese glam girl facets:

- Night of Fancy
- Flight of Fancy
- Live Your Dream
- Sui Love (as in Sui Generis?)
- Classic
- Forbidden Affair
- Rock Me!
- Rock Me! Summer of Love
- Sui Dreams
- Secret Wish
- Secret Wish: Magic Romance
- Dolly Girl (As in "China Doll?)

I go to my trusted online perfume connoisseurs at Fragrantica to see what the word is on Sui's perfume Dolly Girl. Below is what "missk" (Miss K?) writes. Her writing is lucid, and she doesn't seem to have the giddy opinions which seem to come mostly from teenage girls on the site, which this floral/fruity/juicy perfume seems to be geared toward:

I didn't have high expectations prior to testing this fragrance, and not surprisingly I wasn't blown away by this scent.

There was nothing unpleasant about it, but then again there was nothing overly wonderful about it either. Looking at all the unique and interesting notes listed, I'm wondering where all those notes were.

I could definitely not smell cinnamon or melon in the top notes, which is a damn shame, because those notes when blended with the apple and bergamot should have created something interesting. However, I was met with a scent that can only be compared to a cheap drugstore fragrance.

What is supposed to be a beautiful heart of florals, turns out to be so faint that you can hardly smell it. In fact, Dolly Girl hardly lasts at all. It's possibly one of the worst fragrances when it comes to lasting strength.

I didn't get any of the powderyness that everyone is describing here, instead I got a big jumbled mess of fruits and flowers, making it very difficult to distinguish any particular notes.

Although I find the bottle design creative, up close it looks rather cheap and tacky. Unfortunately there's nothing about Dolly Girl that I actually like. Even the name is a little ridiculous and childish.

I haven't tried the other fragrances in the Dolly Girl series, but here's hoping they are much better than the original.

Another Asian designer "almost" moment.

Sears, at the Eaton Centre has a stand, right by the escalators, with Anna Sui products. I always walk by them a little fascinated. Everything seems so over-exaggerated. Large black roses are carved on gaudy pink, yellow and reds plastic tubes, on a counter which looks more like a boudoir than a makeup stand. My first impression, when I saw this was not "Who is the designer?" but "What do these exaggerated colors and bottles really hide?" As in, "Is the product as good as the packaging?" It seems like fruity/floral/juicy concoctions for the perfume, geared at teen-agers like Vera Wang's Princess, and just another red - Vivid, as Sui blandly names her red lipstick.

Vivid

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New York Fashion Week Revelations

Asian designers have "almost" moments, as I wrote about Vera Wang's dresses (view my recent entries under "Fashion" for more on this). They are clever at marketing themselves, and also clever at picking up (copying) certain current trends. But their works lack something. It is partly creativity, partly craftsmanship, and the overall effect is oddly inferior work which almost passes as something of quality.

Anna Sui is an Asian fashion designer who has been somewhat under the radar, but has entered the limelight due to some fascination for all things Asian. At the February 2012 New York Fashion Week, her collection of prints don't quite get the grade, as I explain with samples of designs below.

On the other hand, Oscar de la Renta convinces us that prints are back again, from tweed suits to prints made from images of magnified jewels.

Below, I compare de la Renta's works with Sui's, and later on, how glamor is presented by an old pro.

Sui herself, probably in one of her "creations."
I've written about this trend where (some) designers
present themselves in unattractive attire,
and how this actually reflects on their works.

Sui brings on a mish-mash of pseudo-prints
Left: The pattern is erratic, and the colors unattractive
(and in some places, they clash - fuchsia with orange?)
Right: Layering of prints doesn't work,
unlike de la Renta's better approach to mixing prints (see comment below)

Her prints on wool look like a faint imitation of tweed: the pattern is unbalanced and the colors unattractive. Her prints on the lighter material are more successful, with an interesting play on squares, but the dress as a whole, which is too short, and with an odd collar and unnecessary pockets, doesn't work. Her layering of prints which are very different (the jacket vs. the dress) simply makes the overall outfit look badly designed.

Left: Oscar de la Renta reintroduces the classic tweed, but with a twist with a non-matching jacket and skirt, and a large (giant) fur collar
Right: His colorful print on the right are enlarged images of jewels

Left: Sui's sequins any which way. Stripes down would have made the dress more elegant. And the feathers around the neck?
Right: Clumsy, heavy faux fur jacket with jacquard print, and matching jacquard boots? A buttoned-down round collar for evening wear?

Close-up of neck-line of Sui's evening gown

Another mish-mash of materials, without much structure or design. It looks like a mop with glitter. An open neck-line (with a v-collar), following the direction of the design, would have been more attractive, and more classic.


I've done a simple photoshop edit to remove the fluffy neck-line (and the sleeves). I think that without it, there is more shape to the dress. There is still something ungainly about the horizontal stripes, the odd drop waist, the transparent sleeves with embroidered designs that compete with the rest of the dress, as do the lace stockings. There's too much going on!, which is the criticism I have of the blue dress. When in doubt, keep adding, is usually the motto of the mediocre.

Emerald elegance for de la Renta. And even his mounds of chiffon is inventive, with swirls adding drama for evening wear.

Ralph Lauren's inventive bodice,
with old Hollywood glamor as reference

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Architecture and Art

Toronto's Bell Canad building on 76 Adelaide Street with the
five-panel mosaic "Communication"by Roland York Wilson.
The panel was constructed in 1965
[Photo by KPA]

Close-up of the mosaic "Communication"
[Photo by KPA]

I recently posted on the Art Deco Concourse building in downtown Toronto, and found that the mosaic in the archway was by Group of Seven artist J.E.H. MacDonald. Across the street from this building is a more recent highrise, with a five-panel mosaic mural on the wall above the entrance. I asked several people about the panels, but the only answer (help) I could get was to look for the information on the Bell Canada site, since the building is the Bell office in Toronto.

Above are photographs of the Bell Canada building with the mosaic panels, and a close-up of the panels. I couldn't find more information on the panels other than that they're collectively called "Communication." The works are clearly of an abstract nature, so what part of their imagery relates to "communication" remains a mystery to me. They appear to be some kind of collage mosaics. Some even look like colored paper that has been ripped or torn, and pasted together to form the image. But they certainly add color to the building and the street.

The building is far less interesting than the Concourse building just across the street, although the marble facade and the railings at the very top might make it more attractive once the construction ramps are removed. The architects are Marani, Morris Allen, who built several other important, but nondescript, buildings around Toronto. The Bell Canada building was completed in 1965.

Around the corner from the building is the new Trump International Hotel and Tower, the reason I went in that neighborhood in the first place. The hotel (which is really a combination of condominiums and hotel rooms) is now complete. It is the usual, glass-heavy, post-modern architecture that is sprouting all over major cities these days, but has none of the beauty and, I think, lasting power, of the older skyscrapers like the Concourse building. The Bell Canada building looks like it was the bridge between the "old" skyscraper age and our new one. Glass and marble are not cheap and they are hard to carve and decorate. So many current buildings are left plain. And it is as thought the expense of the material is enough to throw out ornament.

The artist who designed the panels is Ronald York Wilson (1907-1984) about whom Lawren Harris, another Group of Seven artist, writes:

"Although it is certainly not my customary habit to write so-called fan letters to my colleagues, in this singular instance I feel moved to do so. I made a point of stopping over in Toronto with the express purpose of seeing your imperial oil Murals. I am happily convinced that this break in my journey was completely justified and rewarded, for the murals proved to be beyond my furthest expectations. You have succeeded in a gigantic undertaking, the very thought of which would undoubtedly terrify the great majority of your contemporaries in your own profession..."

(Lawren Harris to York Wilson, 1959)[Source]

Here's a brief biographical information on Wilson:

Ronald York Wilson, painter (b at Toronto, Ont 6 Dec 1907; d there 10 Feb 1984). Wilson studied commercial art at Central Technical School and first worked at Brigden's engraving house in Toronto (1926), where he was influenced by Charles COMFORT and Will OGILVIE. Wilson was first recognized for paintings of the burlesque, such as those he exhibited with the Canadian Group of Painters at the World's Fair in New York (1939), and other social commentary pictures. He became a full-time painter in 1950. Trips to Mexico in 1950 and 1953 exposed him to the influence of Rico Lebrun and stimulated an interest in mural painting.

Wilson was best known for his commissioned murals, including those for McGill University's library (Montréal, 1954) and the Imperial Oil Building (Toronto, 1957). In the later 1950s his interest in "picture construction" led him to abstract painting and then, in the 1960s, into geometric art.

And here is more extensive information, including his early influences and decision to take up mural art.

Wilson's work reminds me of early 20th century collage art. Although none of his biographers describe his work as collage, some of his painting clearly have that influence. For example, the piece "Blue Opus" which I've posted below is described as "Ink, Lithography, Paper, Print" by one source, and as "Colour mixed media print" by another.

Blue Opus
1978, colour mixed media print, 14" x 18.5"

Below is an example of a collage-like painting:

Cape Breton Hills
1980, oil on board, 12" × 16"

Facade
Acrylic on Canvas, 24" x 32"

And Wilson did create mixed media or collage work.

Penatantes
1943-45, Collage, 15" x 11 1/2"

Wilson's Mural in the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, Toronto

The Lincoln Center also has panels of murals, by Chagall, in its foyer. Perhaps that is where the Sony Centre got its idea from. On another note, Sony Centre, with its clear reference to a corporate sponsor, has such an empty ring to it compared to the Lincoln Center (which despite this article's ambiguous information, clearly is named after the president).

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Whitney's Last Dance

I've always liked Whitney Houston. I think she looked great, before she got all caught up with the bad black boy Bobby Brown. And I think she had a phenomenal voice.

I wrote here on various renditions of "My Funny Valentine" that:

Contemporary black singers perform it with too many riffs and improvisations (known as melisma [pdf article]), which overloads the melody.

For some reason, Whitney avoided this vocal overload that is so common in contemporary black singers. Perhaps it shows her true talent.

I was really sad when I heard of her death (suicide, most likely). She must have suffered a lot. She tried a couple of come-backs, after her humiliating public disintegration (or disintegrations). She couldn't make it.

Here's a video, vintage Whitney from the 1980s when she was in her prime:

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The Pseudo Anti-Feminist, Liberal White Man

The insipid Mr. Chua

I wrote in one of the posts in which I analyze the "Tiger Mom" phenomenon:

I think liberal (conservative-liberal) men are punishing white women for their feminism, or at least their support of feminism. Deep down, I don't think any male likes or supports feminism. It is essentially a movement against men.

So, these super-hypocritical liberalized white men, who ideologically support feminism, cannot do so in their private and family (and love) lives.

They goad on white (liberalized) women to follow this ideology but then they pull the rug out from under their feet. "We like what you say, but not in our castle" is their evil message.

Jed Rubenfeld manages to confirm my points about two minutes into this video where he is being interviewed, along with his wife Amy Chua and their daughter, on Chua's book Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mom, and Chua's views (and practices) on child rearing. Here's what he replies to the interviewer's question: "What do you think Jed, from your vantage point?":

I do think Chinese mothers are superior…I don’t mean it ethnically or racially…I never thought of it as Chinese or Western when we were raising our kids. I thought it was more like old fashioned parenting vs. like post 1960s parenting…That’s what I thought when we were raising our kids…Things changed sometime around the 1960s…There was a way that kids used to be raised, not just in China, in America, pretty much in Europe, pretty much all over… There was a traditional style of parenting then there was a more lax style of parenting which I think is fairly recent, really…So I always thought that we were doing this kind of traditional type, or old fashioned, traditional [emphasis] type of parenting and people get nervous about that.

No, Chinese mothers use rash and irresponsible bullying techniques as traditional methods to warding off potential bad behavior from their children. He's right, it is a Chinese thing, Chua said as much in the interview linked above. But for all her pushing, her daughters are no stars. The concert-pianist potential is now absent from the daughter who played in Carnegie Hall (once, as a teenager, which could be some special program to get young musicians to perform in that famous concert hall), and the other daughter has gone off the radar.

Information on Rubenfeld's background is surprisingly sparse. Here's one article which describes his defense of abortion:

In 1989...he wrote an article for the Harvard Law Review, which is still talked about in legal circles. It was what legal scholars call a brilliant argument about...the right to privacy.

In his article, Rubenfeld used the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade to argue that privacy is inextricable from personhood, and that the Constitution should guard a woman’s right to choose an abortion because not allowing her to do so amounts to a kind of governmental control over a woman’s identity. “Women should be allowed to abort their pregnancies so that they may avoid being forced into an identity," he writes.

A 1997 article discloses, from what I can glean through all the jargon, that he thinks affirmative action is not such a bad thing.

He branched into fiction writing, soft porn specifically. A little embarrassing for a law professor at Yale, no? I wonder how he explains that to his students.

[H]e is a successful, popular author. He reportedly received an advance of $800,000 for his 2006 book, The Interpretation of Murder, a thriller about Sigmund Freud. (It was a massive bestseller in England, though it fared poorly in the States. Filled with kinky sex—“her entire body glistened in the unbearable August heat”—the book was described by a reviewer for The New York Times as “both smutty and pretentious.”)

An abortion-supporting law professor, soft on affirmative action, who writes soft porn in his spare time (encouraged by his proud-to-be Asian wife, "She was the one who said I should write a novel, and she was even the one who suggested using what I knew about Freud in it") is no example of a conservative and a traditional American. He may pick and chose to live the kind of lifestyle that will not tear apart his family in his elitist enclave (and he's picked Chinese traditionalism!), but he will have to eventually climb into the trenches with the masses, including his daughters, to whom he has thrown scraps of indigestible liberalism. I don't recommend he join them, though, since they will not see him as their ally, but as their enemy.

Such is the hypocrisy of liberals.

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The Retreating "Tiger Mom"

I posted about author/lawyer/tiger-terrorist Amy Chua's impressions on National Post opinion writer Jonathan Kay, and how he might follow (or rather, how his wife might follow) her examples of bringing up children. The Kays have already somewhat diverged from her methods in that Mr. Kay doubts extra curricular reading classes will be of any use for his daughter's reading skills.

To digress, I agree with him. To many, reading is a necessity in life, to fulfill certain obligations and functions. I think this can be taught quite adequately in any school. To others (a few), reading is a real pleasure, and such enjoyment cannot be taught or enforced. I would recommend that the Kays leave their daughter alone and let her get the adequate instructions in her classes. Then maybe, when left alone, she might be one of those who loves reading. At this rate, any affection she may have for books might be stifled by her over-zealous parents. But, not being tiger whatevers, I don't think they cannot muster the necessary sternness of heart to enforce extra reading classes on their daughter, so I doubt that they will follow through with their plan anyway.

Amy Chua, her husband and one of their daughters were interviewed on the Wall Street Journal online program Speakeasy (Click on the "go to video center" link on the video to find the complete interview). I wonder at the attention this family is getting from serious publications like the WSJ, the New York Times, and so on. Are people really bereft of information on how to raise their children? Don't women have mothers, grandmothers, aunts, neighbors they can turn to for help on child rearing? Do they really need some odd family, and an even odder woman, telling them what to do?

Well, Chua, gesticulating wildly and smiling broadly, is having the time of her life on the show. She's in a mini-mini-skirt, a shaggy, cut-off jean skirt no less, looking like some middle-aged woman channeling her inner teenager, and with no style at that. Her daughter has come looking more demure, both in dress and behavior. And this is how Chua plans on teaching her daughter the facts of life, dressed like that? The insipid husband sits there with a blank expression, which belies his full approval and admiration of his wife's behavior. Why would he be there otherwise? Or are women so out of control (is Chua so out of control) that his only option is forever to keep quiet?

The interview is interesting because Chua is backtracking on her strict outlook, and says that her book was really a humorous take on her family life. No-one has mentioned humor once when reviewing her book. It must be some Asian thing that we're not getting. I think she's making it up. She got into so much trouble that she has to somehow modify her language and her opinions, even though they are clearly there in the book, in black and white.

Her daughter defends her. I don't blame her. Who wants to be ostracized by one's mother? I'm sure she went through a lot with her sister. And being the Westernized girls that they are, I'm sure they refused to participate in their mother's bullying. Chua had no choice but to go easy, if she wanted to keep her family in tact, and the rest of the world at bay.

It is once again a clever strategy that I've seen many Asians take. They come on forcefully, then they have to tread carefully, and retreat a little. This dogmatic, aggressive behavior I think is part of the Asian personality, but they are clever enough to step back when things get too heated.

I think that Chua's family will always be dealing with these push forward and pull back scenarios from her. I think this also reflects how Asians behave in our society in general. But at some point, if they get strong enough (in numbers and in convincing others of their methods), we might see some interesting cultural and societal repercussions.

I've written about the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's over-population by Asians, and how such an Asian-majority orchestra produces sub-standard music. I've described the aggressive Asian designer Vera Wang, whose clothes are coming apart in their seams, so to speak. Now, we have Amy Chua getting into the fundamentals of the family, which is the building block of any society.

We live in interesting times.

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The Queen's Style

Queen Elizabeth at the Commonwealth Heads
of Government Meeting in October 2011

Perth, Oct 28 (IANS) Queen Elizabeth II wore a powder blue silk jacquard dress at CHOGM here. It was designed by Angela Kelly, a royal dresser.

The Queen Friday declared open the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).

She wore the dress and coat with navy trim to the back. Her hat had a navy blue brim, with the crown of the hat made of the same silk as on her coat.

She also wore a sapphire brooch which previously belonged to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. [Source]

Meanwhile, Australia's Prime Minister Gillard, whose country hosted the event, wore an odd, lose jacket with a giant scarf/belt. And it is the same outfit she wore for the APEC meetings (here is my post with a photo of her, her "partner" and the Obamas at the APEC meetings).

Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard
with Queen Elizabeth at the CHGMO

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Chinese and (vs.) Jews

Amy Chua and her husband Jed Rubenfeld

I glanced at the National Post yesterday afternoon while waiting at the supermarket checkout. A large part of the issue seemed dedicated to the Chinese in Canada. I refrained from buying the paper, which touts itself as the conservative paper of Canada, but is overwhelmingly liberal. I always end up disappointed that I spent my dollars on the paper, so I decided to look for this story online.

And I did find what I was looking for.

The paper's opinion page has an article by Jonathan Kay titled:

"Canada is becoming a nation of ‘Tiger Mothers’"

Of course this was in reference to Amy Chua, the "Tiger Mom" who tried - bullied - (unsuccessfully) to make her daughters into concert musicians, and who wrote a book to tell her tale. I posted on her here: "A Sino-Draconian Mission."

Kay mentions "Tiger Moms" in his article to describe his wife's concern that their children needed more activities after she read Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mom. They sent them to piano classes, and one to after school reading classes, "even though I'm not sure she needed them" writes Kay.

Kay's article is not about music classes, but about the changing demographics of Canada's universities, and especially the University of Toronto. Here's what he writes:

According to census results released on Wednesday, Canada has the fastest-growing population of any G8 nation, with two-thirds of the growth coming from immigration. These newcomers aren’t just redrawing Canada’s population map, they’re also radically transforming our elite educational institutions.

He goes on to say:

A 2010 study of Toronto District School Board students found that 72% of students from Eastern Asian immigrant families, and 50% from South Asian families, went on to university — as compared with just 42% of Canadian-born students. The city of Vancouver is about 21% East Asian. Yet roughly double that proportion of UBC students self-identify as East Asian.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the trend is the same in competitive high schools. When I attended Selwyn House School in Montreal in the 1970s and 1980s, there were exactly three Asian students in my class. When I returned to SHS recently to give a speech at career day, 25 years later, it was, let us say, a world transformed. The same pattern is on exhibit here in Toronto, where high-achieving Asian students now account for a huge component of the incoming class at schools such as Bishop Strachan and Havergal, which once were as white as mayo on Wonder bread.

I have simple, intuitive questions to ask all those who praise Asian intelligence over that of Jews and whites: If Asians' intelligence is superior to that of whites and Jews, why then do they come from societies (China, Japan and Korea) which are not comparable in social, cultural, technical, scientific or artistic advances as the white societies in Europe and America, and of course the Jewish state of Israel? Will they then proceed to make these societies similar (in achievement and progress) to their countries of origin, once they have left university and started their scientific/engineering/technical careers?

I wrote recently that Asian musicians were able to enter Western, classical orchestras because the audition system is most likely biased to their type of playing (memorization and greater ability at scale-like exercises, as I wrote in the linked post) but that orchestras with a large number of Asians are actually inferior to those with mostly white musicians. And I think that Asians are able to enter universities in higher numbers because certain aspects of university admissions tests are biased to their type of intelligence. This is a controversial opinion, and I have been gathering information to substantiate it. Here is one articles (amongst the many that I've collected so far) which seems to provide some answers to my questions:

Asian accomplishment (or lack hereof?)

Guy White recently asked why East Asians, though their average IQ is higher than European Caucasians (105 IQ to 100 IQ), are not as inventive, creative, or as historically accomplished as European Caucasians...

[I]s there a viable answer to White’s question? I think so, and it involves the difference in cognitive profiles between East Asians and Caucasians. Simply put, the answer to White’s question involves verbal IQ and its relation to creativity, inventiveness, or accomplishment...

I, therefore, propose the following hypothesis. Creative accomplishment and eminence in the humanities and sciences requires good spatial ability (though less so for the humanities), but it also requires even better verbal ability. The East Asian cognitive profile tilts toward spatial ability, and they are known to be generally weak in verbal ability. However, the European Caucasian cognitive profile is evenly balanced between verbal and spatial ability—the best of both—so they are likelier to have more in their population reaching the optimal verbal IQ required for eminence.

Other related articles in the February 11 National Post are:
Our Chinalands
The home and homelands of new Canadians

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