You are currently browsing the monthly archive for September 2007.
Alternative Routes
Blog posting #14
by Shayna Stock, with photography by Dominique Fenton
![[image]](http://www.briarpatchmagazine.com/batches/shaydom/lofstedt1.JPG)
We recently had an intriguing conversation about the (un)sustainability of communal living. Paul, who has lived at Lofstedt Farm in Kaslo, B.C., for the past 5 years, said that he doesn’t think living communally is sustainable. From his perspective, “it’s tiring.”
Alternative Routes
Blog posting #13
BriarpatchMagazine.com
by Shayna Stock, with photography by Dominique Fenton
I have written a lot about people who are creating community somewhat outside of greater society— often rural or, if urban, generally restricted to one household or so. Some of these communities do reach out to greater society through education programs such as the Free School offered by the Waldegrave Farm in Nova Scotia; however, I saw something recently that has got me thinking about fostering a sense of community in pre-existing neighbourhoods, in our cities and towns.
Alternative Routes
Blog posting #12
BriarpatchMagazine.com
by Shayna Stock, with photography by Dominique Fenton
![[image]](http://www.briarpatchmagazine.com/batches/shaydom/edge1.JPG)
There is one community I had been postponing writing about. This group of people so embodies what we have been seeking on this trip that to put their story into a single posting seemed a daunting task.
It’s the great paradox of our time: poverty makes us more susceptible to mental illness, while affluence drives us to depression. Exploring these topics and many more, Briarpatch takes a fresh and fearless look at the state of our mental health in an age of growing inequality.
Click image to enlarge.
By J. F. Conway
Briarpatch Magazine
September 2007
While the condition of a people is prosperous, and uninterrupted by violent and sudden changes, insanity never exceeds. But when the dispensations of Providence fail of their accustomed bounteousness, or man by trouble is afflicted beyond his nature, or by his own wilfulness o’erleaps the bounds which nature and reason defines; then insanity is engendered; and an increased number of lunatics indefinitely swells the catalogues of human calamities.
- G. M. Burrows , An inquiry into certain errors relative to insanity, 1820
What good to us is a long life if it is difficult and barren of joys, and if it is so full of misery that we can only welcome death as a deliverer?
- Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, 1930
Back in the 19th century, the people charged with the care, treatment, and control of “lunatics,” as the mentally ill were often indelicately labeled in those days, began to notice repeating social patterns in the occurrence of the afflictions. They observed that the various mental illnesses were selectively, rather than randomly, distributed among the population, and that they tended to prey particularly on the lower classes. These were the first epidemiological studies of psychopathology, and they focused primarily on the social conditions associated with the prevalence of mental disorders.
By Peter Dodson
Briarpatch Magazine
September/October 2007
Illustration by Aimee van Drimmelen
Of all the notions by which our society abides, none influences our daily life more than the idea that “money buys happiness.” It is why Canadians spend an average of 8.9 hours a day working, up from 8.4 hours just 20 years ago. It is why we forfeited 32 million vacation days last year and have over $750 billion in debt. It is why we average 12 full days per year commuting to and from work. But if happiness is what we’re after, there’s a growing body of evidence that suggests we’re on a dead-end path. While our houses get bigger and our televisions become wider, flatter, more colourful and cheaper, greater numbers of us are becoming depressed.
By Stanford Sinclair
Briarpatch Magazine
September/October 2007
You do not know what wars
are going on down there
where the spirit meets the bone.
- Miller Williams
Illustration by TJ Vogan
I’ll never forget my first day at the Centre, the beginning of a nearly two-year period that would alter my life forever. They’re not all bad memories, but still, they stand as reminders of a traumatic childhood and a time of immense and difficult transition in my young life.
The Child Study Centre was a children’s mental health facility, equipped and designed for children with a variety of psychosocial and behavioural problems. The building itself sat on the grounds of the University of Ottawa, at 120 University Private. I was ten when I first went there. It was the summer after I had completed grade four. I was there because my adoptive family could no longer manage my disruptive and self-destructive behaviour.
By Tracey Mitchell
Briarpatch Magazine
September/October 2007
A review of:
Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President
By Justin A. Frank
Harper, 2004
The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis
By Paul Levy
Authorhouse, 2006
The Madness of King George
By Michael K. Smith & Matt Wuerker
Common Courage, 2003
“You’re crazy!” “That’s insane!” “This is a psychotically good muffin!” Indirect (and often unintentional) references to mental health and mental states have become a staple of contemporary colloquial English. These terms have also become part of the political discourse, used in both earnestly serious tones and in mocking ones, to describe political actors, most notably U.S. president George W. Bush.
Alternative Routes
Blog posting #11
BriarpatchMagazine.com
by Shayna Stock, with photography by Dominique Fenton
Bonnie’s home in Pic River.
What seems like lifetimes ago now, when we were staying with the Belzers in Nova Scotia, Ed Belzer said something that has stayed with me ever since.
“The best thing I can do for myself,” he said, “is to surround myself by people who help me to be who I want to be.” This was part of the motivation for starting a co-operative housing project on his land.
I was reminded of Ed’s words again while visiting Bonnie in Pic River, Ontario. When I asked her what it was about the small First Nations community that first appealed to her, Bonnie replied, “I think it makes me make more sense to myself.” As a Native person who moved around a lot before settling in Pic River, she said it is the first place that has felt like home for her.
Since moving to Pic River 15 years ago, Bonnie has put a lot of effort into creating a physical space that helps her to be who she wants to be. The location, with nothing but vast wilderness across the narrow rolling river that runs behind the house, provides her with a certain tranquility that seems to nurture her soul.
Though she lives alone with her teenage daughter, Bonnie has made her space conducive to attracting the type of people that will cultivate the person she wants to be. A passionate musician, she designed her house with music in mind, with space for house concerts and a guest suite for traveling musicians. She organizes the concerts, feeds and accommodates the performers, and in return asks for a lesson, or for them to record something with her, or anything else they feel like bartering.
“It gives me access to the music that I love, without having to leave home,” explains Bonnie.
It is with memories of Bonnie’s creative space, and Ed Belzer’s words still in my mind, that I happened across a book titled Dwelling, just yesterday. River, the author, describes making a personal living space as “one of the highest and most profound creative experiences of life.” Her words brought into perfect perspective this concept of creating a space for ourselves that nurtures the people we want to become:
“We have cheated ourselves too long of this experience, allowing professionals and experts, developers and businessmen, politicians and bureaucrats, to determine for us the very shape of our living space. At great personal cost (for huge corporate profits), we have given away one of our greatest potential gifts — the creation and expression of ourselves in the form of our shelters.”
I think it’s easy in our society to blindly follow the path that has been laid out for us. Ed Belzer calls this “sleepwalking through life.” The stories of these people have inspired me to be more creative with my own life — to think more deeply about who I want to be, and how I can create an environment that will nurture that person.
Dom has already drawn up plans for an underground, dome-shaped, solar-powered, straw bale home, complete with built-in wall cubbies and woodstove for heating and cooking.
Shayna and Dominique are traveling across Canada in search of community, and sharing what they find with Briarpatch readers. Read their introduction to the project here.
