Monday, August 17, 2009
The upside of mental illness - creative brilliance
Nice to see mental illness finally getting some good press. The latest news is of a genetic link between creativity and mental illnesses, which seems to confirm once and for all what many other studies over the decades have also found.
From the Oracle of Delphi to the great creative talents of today, this thing we call mental illness has been enriching our communities for a very long time.
These days, it’s popular to wish for all mental illnesses to be treated and cured. But we’d be a poorer society in so many ways were we ever to achieve that questionable goal. Think of all the beautiful words, paintings, music and design we’d have missed out on over the centuries were it not for the brilliant work of creative people with mental illness.
I met a young busker and his friend on the Inner Harbour a couple weeks back, and have been struggling with how to write up their very interesting story without falling into one of those man-with-schizophrenia-overcomes-disability tales.
Because the thing about mental illness is that it’s not all about trying to “overcome” it. As science is now confirming, illnesses like depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are linked to creative brilliance. And what’s intriguing about the story of Jordan Blaikie and his pal Ross Johnson is that their mental illnesses are in fact what brought them together in the first place, which has turned out to be a very positive thing.
Blaikie is 30 and Johnson is 29. Both have lived with mental illness for all of their adult lives and then some, having been diagnosed when they were teenagers.
They certainly know the negative aspects of living with mental illness, not the least of which has been an inability for the two men to find and keep a decent job. They’ve had to get by on disability cheques for the most part, supplemented with part-time work at pizza joints and the like. (“It’s a lot more fun to go busking,” notes Blaikie.)
Over the years they’ve been on medication, off medication and everything in between, and are all too aware of the challenges faced by people living with chronic and persistent mental illness.
Still, if they’d never experienced a mental-health crisis, they’d never have met. They met because they were housemates in 2007 at the Seven Oaks psychiatric facility, and struck up the conversation that ultimately led them to their new business venture: Tricky Magic Productions.
Blaikie had worked off and on as a street magician for three years before he met Johnson, having inherited his sister’s old magic tricks after she lost interest. Johnson had ideas for how Blaikie could extend his busking season by performing indoors in the winter months at seniors’ centres and community events.
And so far, so good. Blaikie took his magic show to 25 venues over the winter. More recently, the pair has branched into “casino nights” at some of the seniors’ facilities, having discovered the joys of dealing blackjack and Texas Hold ‘Em for delighted residents gambling for Thrifty Foods coupons.
It’s on to bigger and better things this fall. Johnson has booked the theatre at Eric Martin Institute for a variety show Oct. 10. The show will be a fundraiser for the Friends of Music Society, an organization that works on bridging the gaps between musicians with mental illness and those without it. The headliner will be Blaikie, of course - “The Great Jordano.”
“I’m hoping to have nine performers that night - we’re calling it ‘Monty Pylon’s Family Circus,’ “ says Johnson. “Most of us have disabilities, but not all of us. Anyway, it’s about the ability, not the disability.”
Blaikie dreams of becoming a cruise-ship magician. Johnson lists six Vancouver Island theatres he wants to do shows at one day. Mental illness will undoubtedly complicate things for the men, because it generally does. But maybe it’s also the thing that helps make Blaikie a confident and charming magician, and Johnson a sweetly enthusiastic pitch man.
Think of the creative gifts that mental illness has given us over the centuries. Would Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf have set pen to paper in such compelling fashion if not for their mental illnesses? Would Van Gogh have painted with such passion and insight? Or Beethoven written with the same power?
Call it a sickness if you must, but the truth is that the world is a much better place for having people with mental illness in it. I wish my young busker friends a lifetime of shining in the dark.
Nice to see mental illness finally getting some good press. The latest news is of a genetic link between creativity and mental illnesses, which seems to confirm once and for all what many other studies over the decades have also found.
From the Oracle of Delphi to the great creative talents of today, this thing we call mental illness has been enriching our communities for a very long time.
These days, it’s popular to wish for all mental illnesses to be treated and cured. But we’d be a poorer society in so many ways were we ever to achieve that questionable goal. Think of all the beautiful words, paintings, music and design we’d have missed out on over the centuries were it not for the brilliant work of creative people with mental illness.
I met a young busker and his friend on the Inner Harbour a couple weeks back, and have been struggling with how to write up their very interesting story without falling into one of those man-with-schizophrenia-overcomes-disability tales.
Because the thing about mental illness is that it’s not all about trying to “overcome” it. As science is now confirming, illnesses like depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are linked to creative brilliance. And what’s intriguing about the story of Jordan Blaikie and his pal Ross Johnson is that their mental illnesses are in fact what brought them together in the first place, which has turned out to be a very positive thing.
Blaikie is 30 and Johnson is 29. Both have lived with mental illness for all of their adult lives and then some, having been diagnosed when they were teenagers.
They certainly know the negative aspects of living with mental illness, not the least of which has been an inability for the two men to find and keep a decent job. They’ve had to get by on disability cheques for the most part, supplemented with part-time work at pizza joints and the like. (“It’s a lot more fun to go busking,” notes Blaikie.)
Over the years they’ve been on medication, off medication and everything in between, and are all too aware of the challenges faced by people living with chronic and persistent mental illness.
Still, if they’d never experienced a mental-health crisis, they’d never have met. They met because they were housemates in 2007 at the Seven Oaks psychiatric facility, and struck up the conversation that ultimately led them to their new business venture: Tricky Magic Productions.
Blaikie had worked off and on as a street magician for three years before he met Johnson, having inherited his sister’s old magic tricks after she lost interest. Johnson had ideas for how Blaikie could extend his busking season by performing indoors in the winter months at seniors’ centres and community events.
And so far, so good. Blaikie took his magic show to 25 venues over the winter. More recently, the pair has branched into “casino nights” at some of the seniors’ facilities, having discovered the joys of dealing blackjack and Texas Hold ‘Em for delighted residents gambling for Thrifty Foods coupons.
It’s on to bigger and better things this fall. Johnson has booked the theatre at Eric Martin Institute for a variety show Oct. 10. The show will be a fundraiser for the Friends of Music Society, an organization that works on bridging the gaps between musicians with mental illness and those without it. The headliner will be Blaikie, of course - “The Great Jordano.”
“I’m hoping to have nine performers that night - we’re calling it ‘Monty Pylon’s Family Circus,’ “ says Johnson. “Most of us have disabilities, but not all of us. Anyway, it’s about the ability, not the disability.”
Blaikie dreams of becoming a cruise-ship magician. Johnson lists six Vancouver Island theatres he wants to do shows at one day. Mental illness will undoubtedly complicate things for the men, because it generally does. But maybe it’s also the thing that helps make Blaikie a confident and charming magician, and Johnson a sweetly enthusiastic pitch man.
Think of the creative gifts that mental illness has given us over the centuries. Would Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf have set pen to paper in such compelling fashion if not for their mental illnesses? Would Van Gogh have painted with such passion and insight? Or Beethoven written with the same power?
Call it a sickness if you must, but the truth is that the world is a much better place for having people with mental illness in it. I wish my young busker friends a lifetime of shining in the dark.
Saturday, August 01, 2009
We're NOT going to take it - are we?
Ever been to one of those meetings where you’re thinking damn, if I have to take another five minutes of this, I’m going to run screaming from the room?
BC Ferries has found an easy solution. They just pay their directors to go - $1,500 a pop if you’re there in person, $750 if you phone in. And that’s on top of the $48,000-$58,000 a year the directors are already getting just to be on the board - an amount that’s quite a bit more than the full-year working wage of an average Canadian.
What the heck is going on? So much is weird in this world around the things we give value to that I sometimes fantasize about becoming one of those crazed tax resisters holed up in a (sunny) hideaway in some distant land. I mean, really, when IS the revolution?
Something dehumanizing must happen to people when they reach the top of the food chain. Otherwise, how could it be that just sitting on a board of directors ends up being worth more than, say, a full year of difficult, stressful work for a bullet-sweating manager of a typical non-profit?
There are nine directors on the ferry authority. Eight receive an annual stipend of $48,000 for agreeing to be on the board, and $10,000 more if they chair a committee. The ninth is the board chair, who gets $140,000. In the last fiscal year, the directors met six times as a full board, and 10 additional times as committees.
If we assume that all nine attended the board meetings (wouldn’t you if someone was paying you $1,500 to be there?), that’s another $81,000, and a further $75,000 if half are presumed to have attended the committee meetings. All in: about $700,000.
My mind often goes to the non-profit sector when I hear about stuff like this, because the contrast is just so dramatic - especially with the government revising its 2009-10 budget downward at this very moment and scaring the wits out of every non-profit in town.
So here’s an interesting fact: What the ferries board got paid last year just to go to a few meetings and stand as directors is substantially richer than the total annual budget of PEERS when I was finishing up my time there as executive director in 2007.
We employed 11 people at PEERS at that time, most of whom were coming out of tough circumstance. We provided outreach to more than 100 women. We ran a training program for another 50 or so participants who came for help getting their lives on track. I like to think we made a real difference in a lot of people’s lives.
Obviously, it’s difficult to compare the worth of providing support to citizens in need with keeping the ferry service running. I’ve seen loads of stats on the tremendous value the ferry service adds to the B.C. economy, but nothing from government that measures the worth of the thousands of little agencies that help British Columbians stabilize and improve their lives.
Fortunately, you don’t need to be clear on any of that to question whether being on the board of the ferry authority should ever be worth more than a year of work for the average Canadian. I say no.
Another example of top-of-the-food-chain syndrome: the use of gambling revenues. Anticipate disaster for non-profits if the grants really are frozen this year, because the arts and culture grants hitting the headlines now are just the first of seven waves of annual grants that thousands of agencies depend on.
Once upon a time, British Columbians agreed to let government turn gambling into a major revenue stream, largely because charities were supposed to reap the benefits. And gambling did indeed turn into a major revenue stream, one that generates over a billion dollars a year in net profit for the province. That’s more than a 100 per cent increase from a decade ago.
But the amount designated for charity has risen less than 25 per cent. Ten years ago, 5,000 B.C. charities shared just under a third of all government gaming profits. Now, almost 7,000 charities compete for just 17 per cent of the pie, and the average annual grant per charity has fallen almost $3,000. And we just take it.
Throw open the nearest window, people, and lean out all crazy-eyed like Peter Finch did in the movie Network. Shout loud enough to rattle the roof in the places where it’s so painfully clear they don’t have a clue how it feels to be us: We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore.
Ever been to one of those meetings where you’re thinking damn, if I have to take another five minutes of this, I’m going to run screaming from the room?
BC Ferries has found an easy solution. They just pay their directors to go - $1,500 a pop if you’re there in person, $750 if you phone in. And that’s on top of the $48,000-$58,000 a year the directors are already getting just to be on the board - an amount that’s quite a bit more than the full-year working wage of an average Canadian.
What the heck is going on? So much is weird in this world around the things we give value to that I sometimes fantasize about becoming one of those crazed tax resisters holed up in a (sunny) hideaway in some distant land. I mean, really, when IS the revolution?
Something dehumanizing must happen to people when they reach the top of the food chain. Otherwise, how could it be that just sitting on a board of directors ends up being worth more than, say, a full year of difficult, stressful work for a bullet-sweating manager of a typical non-profit?
There are nine directors on the ferry authority. Eight receive an annual stipend of $48,000 for agreeing to be on the board, and $10,000 more if they chair a committee. The ninth is the board chair, who gets $140,000. In the last fiscal year, the directors met six times as a full board, and 10 additional times as committees.
If we assume that all nine attended the board meetings (wouldn’t you if someone was paying you $1,500 to be there?), that’s another $81,000, and a further $75,000 if half are presumed to have attended the committee meetings. All in: about $700,000.
My mind often goes to the non-profit sector when I hear about stuff like this, because the contrast is just so dramatic - especially with the government revising its 2009-10 budget downward at this very moment and scaring the wits out of every non-profit in town.
So here’s an interesting fact: What the ferries board got paid last year just to go to a few meetings and stand as directors is substantially richer than the total annual budget of PEERS when I was finishing up my time there as executive director in 2007.
We employed 11 people at PEERS at that time, most of whom were coming out of tough circumstance. We provided outreach to more than 100 women. We ran a training program for another 50 or so participants who came for help getting their lives on track. I like to think we made a real difference in a lot of people’s lives.
Obviously, it’s difficult to compare the worth of providing support to citizens in need with keeping the ferry service running. I’ve seen loads of stats on the tremendous value the ferry service adds to the B.C. economy, but nothing from government that measures the worth of the thousands of little agencies that help British Columbians stabilize and improve their lives.
Fortunately, you don’t need to be clear on any of that to question whether being on the board of the ferry authority should ever be worth more than a year of work for the average Canadian. I say no.
Another example of top-of-the-food-chain syndrome: the use of gambling revenues. Anticipate disaster for non-profits if the grants really are frozen this year, because the arts and culture grants hitting the headlines now are just the first of seven waves of annual grants that thousands of agencies depend on.
Once upon a time, British Columbians agreed to let government turn gambling into a major revenue stream, largely because charities were supposed to reap the benefits. And gambling did indeed turn into a major revenue stream, one that generates over a billion dollars a year in net profit for the province. That’s more than a 100 per cent increase from a decade ago.
But the amount designated for charity has risen less than 25 per cent. Ten years ago, 5,000 B.C. charities shared just under a third of all government gaming profits. Now, almost 7,000 charities compete for just 17 per cent of the pie, and the average annual grant per charity has fallen almost $3,000. And we just take it.
Throw open the nearest window, people, and lean out all crazy-eyed like Peter Finch did in the movie Network. Shout loud enough to rattle the roof in the places where it’s so painfully clear they don’t have a clue how it feels to be us: We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Too-efficient parking enforcement no way to lure people downtown
As a general rule, I try to avoid being self-serving in my column. I try not to use my public platform to write about issues that I’ve got a personal stake in.
But - and there’s always a but, isn’t there? - I do have one personal issue that drives me absolutely mad, to the point that on rare occasions I ignore all that stuff about separating the personal and the public and have a little rant anyway. The subject is parking tickets.
I’ve had a few in my day - probably 10 a year since I moved here in 1989. I generally pay up within the two-week discount period, primarily because I refuse to let the city take any more money from me.
Every one of the tickets has angered me. That’s neither here nor there as a public issue except if you consider that the City of Victoria has given me at least 200 easy opportunities to feel resentful toward it. I suspect the same goes for virtually anyone who gets a ticket, unless there really are people out there who chuckle good-naturedly at their knuckleheadedness at the sight of another ticket on their windshield.
I’ve had three tickets in the last week and a half. Anyone who spends even small amounts of time in the downtown on a regular basis can relate to the sinking feeling of dashing back to your car only to find a ticket fluttering under your wiper and a $20 instant fine waiting.
The first ticket was issued one minute after a 20-minute meter expired (the city has a grace period of five minutes, but wouldn’t you know, only on 90-minute meters). The other was issued five minutes after I’d distractedly walked away from an unfed meter and briefly poked my head inside a store with a good sale on.
The third was more garden-variety: a meeting simply went on longer than predicted. Running two blocks to feed the meter - which the city doesn’t allow anyway, of course - simply wasn’t an option.
I get the whole revenue/expenses thing. One of the city’s objectives is to offset costs through parking revenues, which generate more than $4 million a year for the city. I also get that if there weren’t rules and fines, people who work downtown might take up all the street space and shoppers wouldn’t be able to find parking.
But equally important objectives in the city’s 2007 parking strategy are to “support the economic vitality of downtown,” and “create incentives to position downtown as the destination of choice.” How does an overly efficient parking-ticket process fit in?
I expect the city will follow up this column with a letter directing me to one of the city’s five parkades, all of which have rates that match that of street meters with the bonus of a discount first hour. They might also recommend I get a parking card, which ensures I always have money for a meter.
I have, in fact, been motivated by rising fine prices to work much harder at using the parkades, and I love my parking card. But there are days when I think I’m going to take 90 minutes, but I take longer. There are days when I’m running late, lugging heavy things, or just unable to turn away from some beautiful open parking spot right out front. Why do I have to be fined $20 for that?
With no disrespect to hard-working city councillors, I’d take away their free parking privileges if it were up to me. Elected officials need to stay real if they want to keep their citizens happy, and that includes experiencing the frustration of parking tickets. Councillors, you need to become familiar with the feeling of being fined for spending too much time in the downtown.
If the problem really is downtown workers hogging meters, then let’s deal with that rather than continue to fine a completely different group of downtown users.
How about opening up the meters to accommodate longer parking? A bigger discount at the parkades, and a reasonable first-day fine rate? Not so long ago, people paid $7.50 if they dealt with their parking tickets promptly; how about a rate like that for those who pay up within a day or two?
Thank you, Downtown Victoria Business Association, for your two-hour-free Saturday coupons and your “meter fairies,” who use top-ups to quietly save people from tickets. I appreciate your attempts to mitigate the effects of an overly efficient parking system.
But it takes more than fairies to fix the inherent problems of a city constantly fining the very people that it’s ostensibly trying to lure into doing business downtown. There has to be a better way.
As a general rule, I try to avoid being self-serving in my column. I try not to use my public platform to write about issues that I’ve got a personal stake in.
But - and there’s always a but, isn’t there? - I do have one personal issue that drives me absolutely mad, to the point that on rare occasions I ignore all that stuff about separating the personal and the public and have a little rant anyway. The subject is parking tickets.
I’ve had a few in my day - probably 10 a year since I moved here in 1989. I generally pay up within the two-week discount period, primarily because I refuse to let the city take any more money from me.
Every one of the tickets has angered me. That’s neither here nor there as a public issue except if you consider that the City of Victoria has given me at least 200 easy opportunities to feel resentful toward it. I suspect the same goes for virtually anyone who gets a ticket, unless there really are people out there who chuckle good-naturedly at their knuckleheadedness at the sight of another ticket on their windshield.
I’ve had three tickets in the last week and a half. Anyone who spends even small amounts of time in the downtown on a regular basis can relate to the sinking feeling of dashing back to your car only to find a ticket fluttering under your wiper and a $20 instant fine waiting.
The first ticket was issued one minute after a 20-minute meter expired (the city has a grace period of five minutes, but wouldn’t you know, only on 90-minute meters). The other was issued five minutes after I’d distractedly walked away from an unfed meter and briefly poked my head inside a store with a good sale on.
The third was more garden-variety: a meeting simply went on longer than predicted. Running two blocks to feed the meter - which the city doesn’t allow anyway, of course - simply wasn’t an option.
I get the whole revenue/expenses thing. One of the city’s objectives is to offset costs through parking revenues, which generate more than $4 million a year for the city. I also get that if there weren’t rules and fines, people who work downtown might take up all the street space and shoppers wouldn’t be able to find parking.
But equally important objectives in the city’s 2007 parking strategy are to “support the economic vitality of downtown,” and “create incentives to position downtown as the destination of choice.” How does an overly efficient parking-ticket process fit in?
I expect the city will follow up this column with a letter directing me to one of the city’s five parkades, all of which have rates that match that of street meters with the bonus of a discount first hour. They might also recommend I get a parking card, which ensures I always have money for a meter.
I have, in fact, been motivated by rising fine prices to work much harder at using the parkades, and I love my parking card. But there are days when I think I’m going to take 90 minutes, but I take longer. There are days when I’m running late, lugging heavy things, or just unable to turn away from some beautiful open parking spot right out front. Why do I have to be fined $20 for that?
With no disrespect to hard-working city councillors, I’d take away their free parking privileges if it were up to me. Elected officials need to stay real if they want to keep their citizens happy, and that includes experiencing the frustration of parking tickets. Councillors, you need to become familiar with the feeling of being fined for spending too much time in the downtown.
If the problem really is downtown workers hogging meters, then let’s deal with that rather than continue to fine a completely different group of downtown users.
How about opening up the meters to accommodate longer parking? A bigger discount at the parkades, and a reasonable first-day fine rate? Not so long ago, people paid $7.50 if they dealt with their parking tickets promptly; how about a rate like that for those who pay up within a day or two?
Thank you, Downtown Victoria Business Association, for your two-hour-free Saturday coupons and your “meter fairies,” who use top-ups to quietly save people from tickets. I appreciate your attempts to mitigate the effects of an overly efficient parking system.
But it takes more than fairies to fix the inherent problems of a city constantly fining the very people that it’s ostensibly trying to lure into doing business downtown. There has to be a better way.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Consider yourself a journalist? Post your ethics code
No TC column this past week (CanWest cutbacks), but I thought I might fill the blank by posting my personal ethics code as a journalist.
I put it together last fall when I was teaching a journalism course at the University of Victoria. We got into a big discussion one day about ethical behaviour in journalism, and I went home and for the first time wrote down the personal code I followed as a journalist.
In these times of disintegrating mainstream media and anyone-is-a-journalist, I think it's going to be essential for readers/viewers to ask their favourite bloggers and writers to produce their own codes. If we're all going to be getting our news from wildly diverse sources, we'd be wise to understand what principles our news gatherers are using when collecting their information.
Anyone can call themselves a journalist, but there's no association that journalists have to belong to, or code that we have to swear to uphold. So the only thing that separates a conscientious journalist from an irresponsible, muck-raking fiction writer is the internal ethics code that the writer is guided by. Here's mine:
Jody’s personal ethics code:
- Through my own efforts or that of trusted sources, I have done my best to ensure that the information I’m presenting is factual.
- I believe the story I’m writing is in the greater public interest or meets the test of the public’s need to know, and is not merely voyeuristic, sensational or exploitive.
- I have done my best to present all sides of the issues, and have set aside my own personal views in order to provide a fair and balanced story that puts the issues at hand in context for the reader.
- I understand that people may be harmed in some way as a result of my story, but have considered those risks and believe that the greater public good in this case outweighs the risks of individual harm.
- I am familiar with Canada’s laws around libel, defamation and contempt of court, and have done my best to present a story that is not in conflict with those legal issues. Where a story still may be a concern on those fronts, I have notified my editor.
- While I have been very careful to avoid making mistakes of any kind - errors of fact, spelling, geography, timelines, etc - I recognize that mistakes are always a possibility. I take full responsibility for correcting those mistakes quickly, graciously and without malice.
- I identify all sources of information for my readers, and in the rare case when it’s not possible to identify a source, I tell the reader why anonymity is justified.
- I recognize that “facts,” perspectives and knowledge are ever-changing, and am always willing to take another look at an issue or change my mind.
- I do not lie or falsely represent myself to anyone I am seeking information from or interviewing.
- I am proud to put my name to the pieces I write and recognize that my personal reputation is on the line with every story that appears under my byline.
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