I woke up this morning far too early;   I was having a bad dream though and so was really quite happy to be awake.  I was dreaming that we’d all missed the boat … literally.  In my dream the boat was some kind of sea-going vessel and I was watching from the shore – waving like a penguin, and trying to get the folks on the boat to notice me – as it pulled away.  Missed the boat!  Now what could that really be all about?

Many years ago I had the good fortune of taking an interesession course (May and June) at the University of Windsor as I was trying to hurry my way through undergraduate school.  I’d started at Hebrew University and then transferred back to the University of Western Ontario (in London, Ont where my parents lived and I sort of grew up).  Because I was pretty much footing my own bill I wanted to get through as quickly as I could while still needing to work almost full-time to support myself.  So unlike most students who took 5 courses between September and May and worked for four months in the summer, I worked full time Sept to May taking a couple of night courses and then I’d take 2 credits at intersession and 2 at summer session.  It really worked well for me because most of my courses were compacted into a 2-month stretch which was just about the length of time it would take for me to start losing interest anyhow.  So, back to Windsor.  The spring I was there I took two wonderful psychology courses, one in Child Psych and one in Abnormal Psych.  I wish I could remember the name of my Abnormal Psych prof because I really admired him;  he had us reading no text books at all, just source material.  One of the books we struggled through was Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams.  Now according to Freud, and I quote from the first pages of his tome on dreams: “there is a psychological technique which makes it possible to interpret dreams, and that on the application of this technique, every dream will reveal itself as a psychological structure, full of significance, and one which may be assigned to a specific place in the psychic activities of the waking state”.  In other words, dreams are the way that our unconscious mind tries to resolve a conflict of some sort.  A major assignment in that course was to have a dream, make notes about it and then do a Freudian analysis of the dream.  I slept each night with a pen and pad of paper by my bed … didn’t help much though because my dreaming seemed to stop short as soon as the assignment was given.  I did finally manage to do the work for the course and have always had a certain fascination with dream interpretation.

So what to make of this “missing the boat” dream?   I took some time this morning to just sit and cogitate on the dream.  What is the boat that I fear we’re missing?  Thinking about it, and even meditating on it, didn’t reveal any insights to me so I decided to just relax into the day and see what popped up.

I took my cup of coffee (yes, sweet David is still taking good care of me in the mornings) and the newspaper and headed out to sit in the backyard.  A quick glance at the front page of the paper immediately began to shed light on what was distressing me.  I read headlines about an invisible plume of oil lurking beneath the Gulf of Mexico, research indicating that the moon is shrinking and becoming wrinkled (I can relate to the wrinkling part), the ongoing non-response to the flooding and deaths in Pakistan, and the hundreds of Tamils who landed on Canada’s shores last week seeking refuge.  That wasn’t all though.  There’s the story about Orca whales off the coast of Newfoundland that are attacking the Minke whales who’ve long lived there.  Then there was the story about 20% of Americans still stubbornly persisting in their belief that Obama is a Muslim.  And of course the story that’s been driving me crazy for a couple of weeks now about the response to the potential development of a mosque several blocks from Ground Zero in New York.

It became easier and easier as I read through the paper to see why I was dreaming about missing the boat.

For over 20 years we’ve been listening to – and mostly ignoring – warnings about global warming.  It is almost impossible for me to believe – although when it comes to what I believe people will believe, I tend to have to suspend all rational judgement anyhow – that there are still people who want to maintain that there’s nothing awry in the climate world.  I don’t know about what you’ve been experiencing lately in your part of the world, but I can tell you for sure that we’ve never had weather quite like this here before.  Heat waves that go on and on and on relentlessly.  Moscow finally had cooler temperatures – in the low 90s today – after 2 months of extreme heat … something they’ve never had before and which meant that they had crematoria going day and night just to take care of all of the Moscovites who’d actually died from the heat.  Seasons seem to be shifting here; I actually saw some trees turning colour already when I was in the countryside last weekend which makes no sense at all.

And then there’s what we continue doing as we virtually rape the earth for whatever we want.  When we were in Santa Fe we went to a hotsprings where lots of folks who worked in Los Alamos were soaking their weary bones.  I listened to a conversation that David and our friend Ed Young were having with a fellow who worked on some sort of nuclear project and he just kept on talking about how we have to stop being dependent on oil and shift to clean nuclear power.  Every so often – as they talked in highly scientific terms – I’d interject “And we need to change the way we think we can live on the earth” and be pretty much ignored.  So today I get to look at pictures taken 1,490 metres below the surface that show oil floating in the deep, deep water.

Where do I even start on the devolution on the social justice front?  After Dr. Laura (who has a Ph.D. in physiology by the way, not psychology) gave us her take on racism – using as they say in the papers “the n-word” 11 times – she decided to give up her radio show claiming that her freedom of speech was being inhibited.  Of course good ole’ Sarah Palin jumped in to support her with her wise words: “Don’t retreat … reload.”  Reload?  Please forgive my language, but is she f’ing nuts?  What about the brain capacity (wellness if you will) of the folks who take her seriously?  I’ve seen it in so many ways lately, the way that racism is becoming far more acceptable and open again as if all of the work done and gains made during the civil rights protest days didn’t happen at all.   I remember the time , after so much truly wearying work for change, that the first Minister of Education and Training that I worked for, Dave Cook, released the Antiracism and Ethnocultural Equity in School Boards:  Guidelines for Policy Development and Implementation in 1993.  The preface to that document said:  “This policy document is intended to assist schools and school boards in ensuring that the principles of antiracism and ethnocultural equity are observed everywhere in Ontario’s school system.  These guidelines will help members of the education community to shape school board antiracism and ethnocultural equity policies and implementation plans.  It is important to understand that antiracism and ethnocultural equity are an integral part of all aspects of the school system. These principles must apply to and have the full support of students, teachers, support staff, school board trustees, administrators, and the community.  A great deal of work and consultation has gone into the creation of this document. The guidelines point the way to the important work that still lies ahead. The document also symbolizes the strong commitment of the Government of Ontario and its partners in the education system to work together to build a more equitable province.” Those were truly wonderful days to be working at the Ministry and I met fairly often with the Minister and got to know him.  They didn’t just publish that document,  I believe that they meant it.  It felt like they really meant it.  I really meant it for sure.  There was a branch dedicated to Aboriginal Education (it was immediately shut down by the following, right-wing gov’t) and a branch dedicated to Equity – both ethnocultural and gender.  Those were the years that we worked really collaboratively, not pitting politicians against bureaucrats, not pandering to the loudest voices be they wise or just noisy, not losing sight of the purpose that we had.  Those were the years that we actually struggled to articulate what the purpose of public education was, grappling with the balance of life skills and earn-a-living skills.  Those were also the years that the Conference Board of Canada published it’s chart of employability skills and made it clear that the “hard” skills (what you know and what you know how to do) might get you the job, but it was the “soft” skills (how you could work with others) that kept you in the job.  Those were the only years (and there were far too few of them) that I walked into the government building I worked in a couple of weeks before Rosh Hashana and there was a placard from the Premier with good wishes to those of us celebrating the Jewish New Year.  Those were the years that schools, and almost all public institutions large and small, had calendars that included a range of religious festivals/days/observances.  And they all used those calendars in planning their events for the year.  That was then.

Yet in the past week I’ve already started running into things for the coming year that were clearly planned without any consideration for the fact that the Jewish New Year this year starts on the eve of September 8th and runs until the evening of September 10th.  My own Common Thread chorus is having the first rehearsal of the year the evening of Wednesday, Sept 8th.  I drew their attention to the fact that the first rehearsal – when we get into our sections, gather our music, and have a first go at singing together … and this year with the “real” conductor back from maternity leave – excludes me because of the timing and I’m guessing excludes a number of the other Jewish singers as well.  Oh how I was hoping they’d respond with an email out to the whole choir saying that they’d be starting one week later this year so that everyone could come to the first gathering.  Instead they’ve “excused” us from coming that night if it’s problematic, and given us the option of coming the night before to just pick up our music – if we arrange that ahead of time – or just coming to the 2nd rehearsal and getting music/joining in then.   Yet the calendar they sent us shows that at that first meeting – the one that they say they know will be impossible for some members to attend – the activities will be “music pick-up, welcome, orientation to season”, and the next meeting is listed as a regular rehearsal.   I know that they’re trying to be accommodating; what they aren’t somehow getting is that they’re not being welcoming … right off the bat I’m an outsider in the choir because I’m starting a week late and without a welcome or orientation.  Even if the missive sent out had included good wishes for the New Year to the Jewish members that would have felt better.  I know, I know, it’s at least a step forward.  The Raging Grannies have their first meeting on September 9th, the 1st day of Rosh Hashana.  I’ve never met any of them and so somehow I’m having less trouble just letting them know that I’ll be starting a week late because of Rosh Hashanah than I am responding to the people who I’ve sung with for a year.  This is all still hard for me, and I’m struggling with what I want to do and how I want to respond.

So it seems that at least in my unconscious and processing mind I’m worried that the boat – the one that carries respect for the earth and respect for each other  - is pulling away into the distance again.  Or maybe it’s just an illusion that it ever really was there at all.  Still, it’s a boat I want to be sailing on and … yes … I am afraid we’re all just missing that boat.

Then again, maybe that’s what I’ll be doing over the next little while; reminding folks – especially teachers – of how much is at stake if we don’t remember to care for each other.  I can do that now, unencumbered by fealty to the government or the threat of repercussions if I raise my voice.  For so many years I had to be silent … and yes, I know that some of you who might know me well are laughing and saying to yourselves: “Sylvia, silent?  I don’t think so.”  But everything’s relative isn’t it.  So many times I had to just bite my tongue and keep on smiling when I truly and deeply disagreed with a direction being taken.  So many times I felt the pressure to be a team player, which always really meant to shut my mouth and do what the person in charge of the team wanted done.

Surprisingly, since retiring I’ve been discovering what a great team player I can be, as long as I’m on a team that believes – at a basic level – the same things as I do and wants similar outcomes.  I’m really happy being a follower (just ask the dance community folks who keep pressuring about taking a leadership role while I continue to just be a very enthusiastic participant.  Little by little I’m finding more kindred spirits to share time with, play with, and work with.

Isn’t it grand to be retired?!