It's the birthday of the novelist P.G. Wodehouse, (Pelham Grenville Wodehouse), born in Guildford, England (1881). His father was a magistrate in Hong Kong. His mother traveled back and forth between England and Hong Kong, so Wodehouse was raised by a series of aunts. He wanted desperately to go to college, but his father went bankrupt and couldn't pay for his education. Wodehouse got a job as a bank clerk instead and started writing humorous stories and poems on the side.

It was as a journalist that Wodehouse first came to the United States—to cover a boxing match—and he fell in love with America right away. He said, "Being [in America] was like being in heaven without going to all the bother and expense of dying."

He moved to Greenwich Village in 1909 and started to write stories for the Saturday Evening Post about an imaginary cartoonish England, full of very polite but brain-dead aristocrats such as Bertie Wooster, who was looked after by his butler Jeeves. The first Jeeves book, My Man Jeeves, came out in 1919, and it was followed by many others.

People who knew P.G. Wodehouse said that he was incredibly dull in person, not a funny man at all, and did not seem to have any emotions. But he authored some of the funniest books in the English language.

P.G. Wodehouse wrote, "It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A.B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't."

(from Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac" on National Public Radio--NPR--in the U.S.)

I'm very glad that the CBC labour dispute is finished! I wish that management would realize that CBC won't survive by trying to be the same as private broadcasters. It exists to do things that private broadcasters don't do.

I'M GOING TO WRITE ABOUT MYSELF, WHICH I HAVEN'T DONE FOR A LONG TIME IN MY BLOG.

This year has been very difficult for me, beginning with a fall on an icy street in the winter. That aggravated my ongoing neck and back problems and probably worsened my sleep problems. In the spring, after having waited for about two years, I finally got an appointment for an overnight study at the Royal University Hospital's sleep clinic. They found that, as a specialist had already thought was the case, I have sleep apnea. For those of you who don't know already, sleep apnea is when you stop breathing many times during the night. Severe cases of it can lead to things such as heart damage. My results had both good and bad news. The good news was that my case of sleep apnea is mild and I don't need to use a CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine, which some people have to do at night. The bad news is that there's no real treatment for a mild case of sleep apnea. Fortunately, knowing that I don't have a severe case relieved a lot of my anxiety, which improved my sleep somewhat. Despite that, I still feel tired a lot of the time.

There have been some things happening in my personal life and at work that have been difficult for me recently, but I won't bore you with the details.

I've come to realize that I've probably been depressed for a while. I have many of the physical and psychological symptoms. This is probably part of the reason why I haven't been writing, have had low energy and haven't kept in regular touch with most of my friends and family members. (Please forgive me!) A lot of the time I've just wanted to stay home and be alone. David has often had to encourage me to go to social events.

Well, enough whining! I just thought I'd try to explain to people who know me why I haven't "been myself" lately. Thanks for reading this.

Poem: "HOW TO BE A POET"

by Wendell Berry
from Given: New Poems.
© Shoemaker Hoard, Washington, D.C.
Reprinted with permission.


HOW TO BE A POET
(to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill-more of each
that you have-inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your work,
doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

Today In History

October 12, 1998: Wyoming college student Matthew Shepherd dies of injuries inflicted during a gay bashing.

Here are some great quotations from Bishop Desmond Tutu:

"It is very easy to break down something. Throw a stone through that window; that is easy. Try fixing it, and that takes longer."

"If you are neutral toward injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."

"History, like beauty, depends on the beholder."

"The unavoidable language"

Christopher Caldwell
9/30/2005

As German politicians continued negotiations to build a governing coalition in the wake of the confusing election result, Guido Westerwelle, chairman of the successful Free Democrats (FDP), took over the leadership of his party's parliamentary group. He described the discussions on the matter as having been "sehr fair". In times of crisis, people tend to fall back on their unaffected selves. So it is telling that, at a moment of drama and tension, Mr. Westerwelle should use English words in full confidence that his fellow citizens will understand him. "Fair" is no longer really even a foreign word in Germany; you will find it in German dictionaries as surely as you will find "budget" in French ones. English terms are creeping into the very fabric of all other languages. Sometimes that is because a specific cultural particularity of the English-speaking world is untranslatable. The closest German synonym for "fair" -- gerecht -- doesn't mean quite the same thing. The word "hamburger" supplants no French equivalent.

But sometimes English words are imported into languages that do not need them in the slightest. Surely no culture lacks a word for "meeting" or "leader", yet there are now few languages in which these English words (transliterated if necessary, as in the Spanish mitin and líder) would not be understood. This makes the experience of a native English speaker in a globalising world very different from that of a non-native. A study done last year by the Pew Research Centre found 71 per cent of Germans in their thirties and forties agreed that "children need to learn English to succeed in the world today". The closest equivalent question you can ask an English speaker is whether it is important to learn any foreign language. Only 30 per cent of Britons in their thirties and forties think it is, Pew found.

The question arises of whether a linguistic world that English bestrides like a colossus is a good or a bad thing. There are two ways in which the importance of English might cause justifiable resentment. First, being a native English speaker is the equivalent of possessing a reserve currency. Most international conversation requires English, just as most international trade requires dollars, euros or pounds. When a French and a British company bid on a Russian contract, making sure that nothing is lost in translation constitutes an extra cost for the French company -- whether that is monetised (through the hiring of translators) or not. Because of this cost, if two knowledge workers -- one a native English speaker, the other not -- seem to be of similar quality, the non-English speaker is likely to be the better worker in his own language. But perhaps economies of scale - the weight and variety of thinking and commerce carried out in English - negate this effect. Perhaps the native English speaker is subject to more quality control, having already proved his value in a more competitive (because more global) marketplace.

Just as economists differ over how big a benefit the US draws from not having to purchase another currency to do business, it is hard to quantify the benefits to the US and UK of getting to work in their own language. Another way the predominance of English might rankle non-speakers is by swamping smaller languages. But here, too, the picture is mixed. Languages that have been historically disadvantaged may actually benefit from English dominance. If a Catalan speaker in Barcelona also speaks English, he can work in any multinational corporation there, or transact business across Europe. He no longer has to master Spanish to rise out of the local economy. Similarly, an English-speaking immigrant to continental Europe from the Arab world can get by for longer without the language of his new country. This does not mean that the growing importance of English is good, only that its effects on linguistic minorities are ambiguous.

It is speakers of other dominant languages who are most likely to resent the rise of English. Last winter, Le Monde Diplomatique published a number of articles that explored the possibility of replacing English with a global language less associated with the American hegemon. Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and (naturally) French were among the possibilities considered. Such a replacement is most unlikely. English as a language has two obvious advantages that no potential rival can match. First, because it is a hybrid of Romance and Germanic languages, it has a ring of familiarity not just to western Europeans but also to many Africans and virtually all Latin Americans. In Asia, the only continent where a majority speaks an unrelated language, English is already the lingua franca of gigantic India and Pakistan. Second, however complicated English may be as a literary language, it is fantastically simple as a pidgin. In Turkic languages, to take one comparison, one must master the grammar before one can say practically anything at all.

English has become self-sustaining more for sociological reasons than for linguistic ones. It is the language of elites, largely as a result of Britain's empire, and then thanks to US postwar dominance. Speakers of Chinese and Arabic may rival English speakers in terms of numbers but they are not as strategically situated. Good luck trying to find a Chinese speaker at a corporate headquarters in Quebec or an Arabic speaker in a government office in Paraguay. Not only will tomorrow's elites be inspired to learn it by imitation; today's elites -- including those in China and the Arabic-speaking world -- have a vested interest in maintaining it as the world's linguistic reserve currency. If all memory of British colonialism were erased and the US retired from the world stage, English would still remain the international language of choice -- even if that is not, as a German might put it, "fair".


The writer is a senior editor at the Weekly Standard.
— FT Syndication Service

"If you remember the original Hollywood Squares' and its comics, this may bring a tear to your eyes. These great questions and answers are from the days when 'Hollywood Squares' game show responses were spontaneous and clever, not scripted and (often) dull, as they are now. Peter Marshall was the host asking the questions. Enjoy!"


Q: Do female frogs croak?
A: Paul Lynde: If you hold their little heads under water long enough.

Q: If you're going to make a parachute jump, at least how high should you be?
A: Charley Weaver: Three days of steady drinking should do it.

Q: You've been having trouble going to sleep. Are you probably a man or a woman?
A: Don Knotts: That's what's been keeping me awake.

Q: According to Cosmo, if you meet a stranger at a party and you think that he is attractive, is it okay to come out and ask him if he's married?
A: Rose Marie: No; wait until morning.

Q: Which of your five senses tends to diminish as you get older?
A: Charley Weaver: My sense of decency.

Q: In Hawaiian, does it take more than three words to say "I Love You"?
A: Vincent Price: No, you can say it with a pineapple and a twenty.

Q: As you grow older, do you tend to gesture more or less with your hands while talking?
A: Rose Marie: You ask me one more growing old question, Peter, and I'll give you a gesture you'll never forget.

Q: Paul, why do Hell's Angels wear leather?
A: Paul Lynde: Because chiffon wrinkles too easily.

Q: Charley, you've just decided to grow strawberries. Are you going to get any during the first year?
A: Charley Weaver: Of course not, I'm too busy growing strawberries.

Q: In bowling, what's a perfect score?
A: Rose Marie: Ralph, the pin boy.

Q: It is considered in bad taste to discuss two subjects at nudist camps. One is politics, what is the other?
A: Paul Lynde: Tape measures.

Q: During a tornado, are you safer in the bedroom or in the closet?
A: Rose Marie: Unfortunately Peter, I'm always safe in the bedroom.

Q: Can boys join the CampFireGirls?
A: Marty Allen: Only after lights out.

Q: When you pat a dog on its head he will wag his tail. What will a goose do?
A: Paul Lynde: Make him bark?

Q: If you were pregnant for two years, what would you give birth to?
A: Paul Lynde: Whatever it is, it would never be afraid of the dark.

Q: According to Ann Landers, is there anything wrong with getting into the habit of kissing a lot of people?
A: Charley Weaver: It got me out of the army.

Q: It is the most abused and neglected part of your body, what is it?
A: Paul Lynde: Mine may be abused, but it certainly isn't neglected.

Q: Back in the old days, when Great Grandpa put horseradish on his head, what was he trying to do?
A: George Gobel: Get it in his mouth.

Q: Who stays pregnant for a longer period of time, your wife or your elephant?
A: Paul Lynde: Who told you about my elephant?

Q: When a couple have a baby, who is responsible for its sex?
A: Charley Weaver: I'll lend him the car, the rest is up to him.

Q: Jackie Gleason recently revealed that he firmly believes in them and has actually seen them on at least two occasions. What are they?
A: Charley Weaver: His feet.

Q: According to Ann Landers, what are two things you should never do in bed?
A: Paul Lynde: Point and Laugh.

Here are some of George W. Bush's malapropisms:

(1) "I am mindful not only of preserving executive powers for myself, but for predecessors as well."

(2) "Natural gas is hemispheric... because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods."

(3) "The law I sign today directs new funds... to the task of collecting vital intelligence... on weapons of mass production."

(4) "Oftentimes, we live in a processed world, you know, people focus on the process and not results."

Pioneering Canadian Gay Activist George Hislop Dies

by The Canadian Press
Posted: October 9, 2005
4:00 pm ET

(Toronto, Ontario)

George Hislop, Canada's first major LGBT civil rights activist has died at the age of 78.

Instrumental in fighting to get gays included in Ontario's Human Rights Code and later in federal human rights laws, Hislop in later life continued the battle for gay equality over survivor benefits for widowed same-sex partners.

When Hislop's longtime partner died after years of contributing to the Canada pension plan, Hislop applied for a pension but was turned down.

He fought the decision and spent the last 19 years trying to get the rules changed.
Earlier this year, Hislop declared victory and in August he said he received his first check from the government.

``George was a leader in the lesbian and gay community in fighting discrimination and demanding equal respect,'' said Douglas Elliott, Hislop's lawyer.

``With his unique combination of charm and courage, George transformed our city, our nation and our world. His death is a great loss to all of us.''

The federal government began making the payments to Hislop despite the fact it planned to ask the Supreme Court of Canada to strike down a November 2004 Ontario Court of Appeal decision.

The Supreme Court challenge is expected to be heard in February, and Ottawa has warned beneficiaries that they may have to repay the money if the ruling is struck down.

At issue is federal legislation passed in 2000 that allowed same-sex partners to collect survivor benefits under the CPP. The law restricted payments to those whose partners had died after January 1998. That sparked complaints of discrimination against people who were arbitrarily excluded.

Hislop and his co-claimants want the cut-off point set in 1985, the year in which the Charter of Rights took effect and opened the door for gays and lesbians to eventually win equal treatment with heterosexual couples in pension matters.

The government has been fighting that demand for years. Ottawa says the case could set a precedent for a broad range of other social programs and end up costing the federal treasury up to $80 million.

www.365gay.com 2005

"If you keep thinking, 'That man has abused me,' holding it as a much-cherished grievance, your anger will never be allayed. If you can put down that fury-inducing thought, your anger will lessen. Fury will never end fury, it will just ricochet on and on. Only putting it down will end such an abysmal state. "

- Sunnata Vagga

From The Pocket Buddha Reader,
edited by Anne Bancroft, 2001
Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Boston
www.shambhala.com