Donna's Flight Of Fancy

..

As was
My usual pre-dawn circle. Twice. Into the park from the mall-end. Barefoot in cold, wet grass along the tram-side of the soccer-field - this whole stretch in darkness. Past that along the path to the park-gates: there - in bare feet again - behind the large flower-bed - at this time mysterious with high, lush, wet growth on either side. Turning back along the lake: still quiet, except - for a while - wet-feet-squeals in my crocs; the occasional duck's dream; a muskrat's splash. Given dark-on-darker reassurance by Elephant Mountain. Sometimes dodging unpredictable sprinklers! Occasionally, lamps with what's-what imposition.
Rosehips behind the pumphouse to be picked after the second circle, meditation, exercises - dawn breaking by then. Farther along the path and beaver-territory, after the left-bend: more rosebushes - more rosehips.

I know these circles well, the only changes are with weather and seasons. This early-morning ritual grounds me, puts/keeps waking Nelson in proportion for me. Energy like this is a large part of why I came back to Nelson.

As is now

Has been for a week. On the water-side of the path - between the pumphouse and the Osprey/Millennim Plaque - now stands a metal tube/pipe/post/cylinder of about 20 feet in height and 55 inches in circumference. Huge! Like: hugging it (this once only!) the tips of my middle-fingers touch. Picture 55 inches compared to your waist, or visualize a wooden hydro-pole. That's an average of 12 inches less at shoulder-height, while tapering towards the top. This metal-tube is not - same width all the way, except for a much narrower pipe-insert of maybe 2 feet in length, closer to the top, before the original width continues for another 3 feet or so. From  this narrow part 4 metal rods with large metal-balls at their ends are pointing horizontally in 4 directions - arbitrarily so and non-functional, not north-south/east-west either.

Then - topping all this - an awkward sharp change in direction turns into a thick neck and enormous stylized head of a heron, about 5 feet in height and a beak going on forever. Also metal.

The immediate overall impression is that of a giant swizzle-stick or outsized stuck weather-vane on a post. More prosaic: there's this enormous shiny bird's head sitting on top of a fat, plain and shiny tube: this taking up about three quarters of an overbearingly huge, pointless, badly placed whole.

Heron's Landing

This then is Councillor Macdonald's Heron's Landing. Obvious first question: If it indeed landed in Nelson - why is it facing Taghum, or Castlegar, maybe Vancouver? Could it be just stopping over?

This whole heron-business doesn't only look heavy - it is. Weighing about 1 ton. So its feet should be of interest: like how firmly are they (is the pipe) resting on the concrete platform. Not very - it seems. Imagine (yes, most of this is about imagination - and not) 3 people are standing back-to-back inside the pipe, forming a tight circle, with their legs slightly spread, and about 6 inches of their feet visible outside. So - there are 6 brackets sticking out from under the pipe. Each bracket is fastened to the concrete with 2 sets of bolts and nuts - the bolts embedded in the concrete. This is it: there are no additional bolts inside the tube; what else is going on in there I don't know - like how brackets connect with the tube. Back to the feet: also imagine that all toes are flexed - pointing upward, not resting on the ground. Neither are the brackets: instead of completely sitting on/connected to the concrete, there are gaps of different widths towards ends, between them and the concrete - the widest about half an inch. This seems dodgy! What with often very strong winter-winds along here, the whole gestalt is prone to some shifting: conceivably leading to bit-by-bit further upward-bending of brackets and - ultimately - the heron crash-landing.

Herons

Imagine a heron - the bird reality. In flight the body is an arrow, with wings not flapping but stroking the air. It prepares to land gliding like the Concorde - remember the Concorde? - with spread wings resting on air, the tail fanned and long legs lowering: for a moment trailing like 2 ribbons, then reaching forward to stand - never stumble - and immediately walk. In the spare elegance of its body, sinuous curves in the movement of its long neck: measured steps on most slender legs. Quietly watchful. Choosy.

Understandably, there is a haiku magazine of international repute: Heron's Nest.

in winter silence

the heron's wings part the mist

above the river

                                      Jan McMillan

blue and grey feathers

lightweight body on thin legs

wings wrap around core

                                       Andros

evening wind

water laps

at heron's legs

                                       Buson

                                 (1716 - 1783)

All this is missing in the heron of Heron's Landing: its shiny metal-bulk - harsh visual assault in a natural setting - would never allow it to rise, soar and land! Where it should have a heron's body - it has a stump! Visual assault: because it does not fit-in, complement, emphasize. No context! Definitely not gluten-free!

During the day its in-your-face presence is not softened by trees and shade, and after dark one of the path's lamps gives it enough light to make it jar the senses.

Size is everything: seeing this piece is not an option - it can't be avoided!

Where it squats

A while ago, some members of the Cultural Development Commission (CDC): supposedly in charge and Donna Macdonald: really in charge - go to the lake-side to scout possible sites for this heron-pipe. Although it - the real thing - at that point, has never actually been seen by the CDC - I don't know about Donna. A few pictures only. Always partials in the horizontal from oblique angles, making a contextual choice of an appropriate location impossible - one would think.

The piece as a whole has never stood upright - by itself - on its own feet, until it is eventually placed here at the lake, and there are members of the CDC who still haven't seen it to this day - horizontal or vertical.

No other-area sites are considered, and the group comes up with 3 possibles at the lake - one of them where the post is now. Seemingly, the now-location is picked by the CDC because it has no outstanding features to distract from the hoped for maximum look-at-me-impact of the piece.

Although - supposedly - the public is making the location-decision by voting on the Internet. Nice PR! This process is flawed in several ways: it limits voting to those using a computer and only offers 3 choices - those predigested at the lake. My objection is: there should be 4 at least. The 4th would be None of the above and/or Other - allowing for suggestions of other locations. Also - the Internet-public's decision is based on 3 very small pictures only, with the post photo-shopped into them - but in proportion much smaller, more slender than the real thing, in real space and time. Hardly any visual impact on its environment or anything else.

So, after having seen the post only as a partial horizontal and/or mini-vertical - all in few pictures - the impact of the real thing, now squatting at the lake, may be a (shocking) revelation to CDC and voters.

Hatching
The clincher! You ready? This heron was never meant to fly - or land! The name has nothing to do with a heron landing but is the name of a proposed high-end condo-development in Kelowna: Heron's Landing - like Kutenai Landing or Johnson's Landing. Meaning: some place at the water. This group - as developers tend to initially - throws a lot of money around, even before the project gets off the ground. So they order a Look-At-Us-We're-Heron's-Landing marker - sort-of what a barbershop pole used to be to barbers - to the tune of $200.000, from an internationally recognized artist with a padded resume, based in Kelowna. Jock Hildebrand.

This is a commercial contract for a heron-post with a specific purpose: name-recognition/branding - PR/advertising. Having it done by a sculptor has certain cachet, but the piece is never meant to be a piece of art for its own sake. Instead - it is put together following specific requirements.

The sculptor produces the piece, hands it over, gets paid, totally leaves the picture - and the development is dropped! So - the developer is stuck with this bird - moving it to Calgary - and tries to just get rid of it. But finds no takers.
Like Kelowna. It says no, thank you - even though the piece is now offered as a give-away. In return for a $200.000 tax-receipt (as in corporate tax write-off No. 2). But Kelowna's Art Folks aren't convinced of its artistic merits, and their City Council says that installation-costs would be prohibitive.

Hatched

Trumpets! Our Donna to the rescue! Hearing about this heron-deal, she gets right on it! Bypassing the CDC which - if anyone at all - should run this, and of which she is just another member: leadership issues. Taking this on by herself being against nailed-down City rules. With time clearly not being of the essence either: after all, we're talking unwanted discard here! But she pulls the Council-card and shops the bird as a world-class piece of art to go public in Nelson: here for the taking and a tax-receipt! Such a deal!

Yet the $200.000-value the councillor is excited about is not based on any art-market considerations: the piece has never been on the art-market. It's simple business-arithmetic: idea + design + materials + labor/time + profit.

Why the developer would give away a world-class piece of art, or even just a major art work: it eventually is toned down to - instead of selling it - is not questioned here. I mean: these people do money!

Council - either not asking questions about CDC involvement or here not concerned with due process - approves the deal just like that! Possibly partly blinded by this obsessive need to find something - anything - to substantiate Nelson's claim to being the cutest, most artistic little town in the whole universe!

I provide Nelson Council with the link to a CBC interview: Kelowna Council explaining their reasons for not wanting the bird. The Nelson-end hadn't known! Hadn't thought to ask Kelowna: why not?

The lure of free stuff!

Bits of egg-shell

Over  time, the public has not necessarily always been given coherent and reality-based information about the hatching-process by Councillor Macdonald and the Nelson Star. The Star - while doing little digging into the matter - has largely relied on recycling previous articles and recalling/telling what our art-expert/dealer extraordinaire has put out, maybe. Dressing that up with the same picture in 4 different write-ups!

City Hall's feeding-frenzy approach to raising its profile with this project is self-defeating: it clearly shows we are not ready for primetime!

As for Heron's Landing a week later. Footwork: Concrete has been pasted somewhat haphazardly around the gaps between brackets/base. Which begs the question: does this significantly add to the structural integrity of the whole - or is it cosmetic? Regardless - the whole is ready to be adored by all forever and to be insured until then as well, just in case: not because someone may steal it (all that metal!) - but because it may fall over! Not only adored as is - but also as a high-end prop, made irrelevant and discarded within corporate strategizing. Now, how 1%-cool is that?

There will be a new CDC: this one a committee instead of a commish. Whatever that will mean. But - with the new version also getting new members - it will be meaningful indeed to lock-in clear directives for the leadership of the group! And follow through!

You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can fool all of the people all of the time.

Yes?

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Onagawhat Now?

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Nelson, Sep. 2012
When the coast of Japan is struck by the Great East Japan or Tohoku Earthquake, Mar. 11-14, 2011, destruction by the quake and the ensuing tsunami - in terms of human lives and property - is devastating. An added complication: the nuclear Fukushima reactors are damaged, and a vast area has to be evacuated indefinitely as a precautionary measure.

The enormous scale of immediate humanitarian need there causes a spontaneous explosion of generosity here - immediate need coupled with spontaneous generosity are keys to this post.

Nelson has two direct connections with Japan: Izu-Shi is its sister-city, and Onagawa is where the last Canadian - a fighter-pilot, born in Trail and long-time Nelson resident - was killed at the end of WW2.

Izu-Shi is about 140 km south-west of Tokyo, and a group of students with chaperones from there recently visits Nelson. An exchange-program was in place before the earthquake, but Nelson students have not gone to Izu-Shi since because of radiation-concerns. This makes some among the Izu-Shi group openly wonder: why they - living there and healthy, what with the Fukushima problem somewhere else - should come here, while Nelson students won't go to their sister-city any longer because of far-fetched (literally?) health-concerns for themselves. Although on some level understandable - this appears to be a fair-weather relationship. From sister to stepsister.

Nelson's connection with Onagawa is even stranger. It is based on Robert Hampton Gray - shot-down while sinking a Japanese war-ship in Onagawa Bay - getting a memorial-plaque in/by Onagawa. Like: the Onagawa folks are honoring a foreigner who killed their own.

About Nelson efforting with relief:

Nelson, Mar. 2011

Aside from many giving on their own, there is the To-Japan-With-Love fund-raiser; the fire-fighters - in collaboration with Trafalgar Middle School - are collecting; as is Jude Davison in a concert.

What starts as spontaneous outburst of generosity quickly turns into political event, with a volunteer-group-appointed-by-whom? declaring: the money should not go to the Japanese Red Cross but to Onagawa only. In other words: Onagawa's needs are more deserving of Nelson's blessings than the needs of all others affected. Same earthquake, same tsunami.

And that's where all goes pear-shaped - 18 months later about $30.000(?) are still sitting around City-of-Nelson Account No. 26 at the Credit Union. Doing no good to anyone!

The "Scholarship" Thing

City Hall is obviously pushing for/in the Onagawa direction with its

announcement of a $10.000 scholarship-fund for Onagawa high-school students. Specifically. Only.

What exactly is a "scholarship" for Onagawa students? Having their flight to Nelson paid to come here (when?) alone for a few weeks during a break there? To live with and be petted by strangers who don't speak their language, and in whose language they can't communicate comfortably? To probably feel even more confused, more displaced, more lonely - after possibly experiencing loss of family-members, home and friends? And silently so - while feeling obligated to smile, when paraded throughout as a political photo-op? What's scholarly about that? Not to forget: this "scholarship" would feed Nelson's economy instead that of their affected home-area! Tacky!

In neither case are those who contributed consulted: having given directly time, energy and money to/in events and indirectly their tax-dollars towards this "scholarship" thing!

Onagawa, Mar. 2011

The speed of Japanese bureaucracy is glacial at the best of times. Plus - at the Tokyo-end no clear plan is in place for a disaster of the given magnitude - and at the other end no functioning Onagawa administration is in charge. What connects both ends is undeniable emotional shock of unimaginable depth - the Japanese mindscape generally not being open to its own emotions to begin with.

The only knowledgeable organization on the ground is the Japanese Red Cross: used to dealing with large-scale emergencies of any kind, including bypassing or slicing through bureaucratic Gordian knots. If those in charge in Nelson - some of them Japanese-Canadian, and at least they should know! - handed the money to the Red Cross: it could be put wherever most useful NOW - within the disaster-parameters! - to fill immediate need. Done!

For Nelson's decision-makers going it alone is not so much about helping for its own sake but for self-glorification. Tacky! And meaning: with no functioning administration; a severely limited communication-system; most of Onagawa leveled; few young people left, the Nelson-end - while attempting to put the money where its mouth is - obviously has to face overwhelming difficulties. Which promptly it does! Of its own choosing!
Except - maybe - if/when handing-out these unexplained "scholarships": that could be a feel-good breeze to do. For City Hall! And here! Tacky!



So those in charge dither for a year, with the whole affair becoming an abstract exercise in far-away futility. While none of the donors demand action, and the news-media are not following-up.

Then a year later: movement!

Nelson, Mar. 2012

John Craig - also Echan Deravy - self-defined first japanthropologist - enters the public picture in a dazzle of media-coverage. He - of long-time Japan experience - had been back there during the past year and is just about to go back again to come-up with a plan (deep breath!) for the money. It seems he is flying solo with making those decisions. Whatever - finally something! Anything, please!

But then - he apparently already has put forth several ideas to those in charge of stuff around Onagawa, which - without exception - have been rejected. This puts Mr. Craig in a considerable huff, aired on the CBC as: those Japanese have to get some new thinking, some new ideas! One new idea (his) is that they should have a mini-Nelson-consulate, which can take the locals' minds off the negativity their lives are focused on. From relief to comic relief. According to him: seeing that Onagawa can't come to a decision - it has to be made for them!

According to his website http://japanthropologist.com, his modus operandi is to motivate Japan into leaving its old, non-doable ways for something new and now - through his Arise Japan lectures! Yet he admits - at the same time - that a book by the same title he wrote in Japanese for the Japanese market found no takers. They just don't know what's good for them!

This is coming from a place of astonishing insensitivity: something happening often with Western expats - almost naturally slipping into saving the natives from themselves. First by getting them to dump their language for a better one, then by expecting them to adopt the mindset behind it. The old colonial thing! He is actually saying that Nelson is particularly well-suited for making this consulate-and-whatever happen - because it has pioneer-spirit!

And the Japanese - unfailingly polite - bow and smile and don't tell gaijin to please just bugger-off!

Craig repeats his mantra in the Nelson Star. There is not one letter to the editor about the weirdness of it all - at the time, I communicate my qualms to Greg Nesteroff at the Star.

Nelson, Aug. 27, 2012

As far as I know: no further developments have been reported in our news-media since March - 5 months ago! So - enough being quite enough - I decide to check  into the situation:

John Craig

E-mail - prompt reply: He is not connected with any of this any longer. With hints of Council there and Council here indirectly leading him to that decision, he is getting-on with his own work in Japan.

Fire-Chief Grypma

In person: He is uninformed on what actually happened with the fire-fighters' money - they were/are not involved in any kind of decision-making process. But he wonders why so far nothing seems to have moved.

Jude Davison

E-mail - prompt reply: Jude - living in the UK now - has little contact with Nelson and is uninformed about what happened with the money brought-in by his concert - or any plans for it.

Kim Osika

Phone: My call to her - one of the organizers and behind To Japan (not Onagawa!) With Love - has not been returned.

Wendy Lacroix

Phone: Initially one of the organizers as well, she soon finds herself in the position of being in charge - she hints at weirdness with Mr. Craig - and rather overwhelmed by attempting to connect with people in decision-making positions around Onagawa and subsequent Nelson-idea rejections.

What the group - ostensibly running all this, but not having met in some time - has sort-of decided to do is maybe to possibly turn the total amount donated into (more!) "scholarships"! Convenience!

My argument against that is - Wendy being receptive - Nelsonites gave spontaneously and so generously - 18months ago - because they perceived an immediate need. They probably would have been far less enthusiastic, had they known funds wouldn't go to the most needy NOW and/or that "scholarships" eventually are the goal. Wendy understands the concept of immediate need coupled with spontaneous giving.

I mention that there has been a clear window to apply these funds directly through the Japanese Red Cross, but that this window seems to be closing, what with a recent short article in the Star about the base of the Gray plaque - busted during the earthquake - now having been fixed. Important news from Ground Zero! While mentioning nothing about the general devastation and reconstruction/revitalization efforts.

We explore the possibility of further immediate need - and Wendy brings-up the persisting lack of enough housing for seniors with no home, family and little general support. I remember having seen an item on the Internet about temporary one-room-box accommodation having been put up for seniors like that there and suggest applying the funds to such an effort.

Here - again - the Japanese Red Cross would know what and where and how!
We both get excited about this; I suggest a meeting of her group with me attending. Wendy is not sure(!) that all members are in town, but we agree that even just getting a few together could get things started again. She will call me. Later I send her an e-mail to remind her that with fall/winter coming soon a speedy follow-through is necessary. Wendy does not reply.
Greg Nesteroff
In person: Greg - having covered the issue with several articles in the Nelson Star -Mar./Apr./Nov. 2011 and Mar. 2012 - has no more recent info from there or here.

It takes me one day, Aug. 27, to get behind all the above - now I know why the money is still gathering dust here, and how it may end-up being (mis)used when. Almost two weeks later, Wendy Lacroix has not contacted me.

City Hall

It is not up to the City to make decisions regarding these relief-funds, other than releasing them NOW from its trust and forwarding them to the Japanese Red Cross. Holding on to these funds any longer for whatever reason - except for the $10.000 of tax-payers' money earmarked by Council for scholarships - is unacceptable.

The Organizing-Group
Members of this group are to be commended for their effort thus far - yet they may benefit from looking at the current level of their (dis)engagement, to be able to finish this project appropriately. They may be tired (of it all), but the situation they're in was created by them - with their eyes wide-shut - and turning all collected funds into "scholarships" to be done with it lacks regard for those who gave. Wall-to-wall "scholarships" are not on-the-ground relief!

Time to come from unconditional compassion: it was the Japanese Red Cross 18 months ago and still is NOW!

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