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| | VOLUME 32, NUMBER 3 | WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2001 | ISSN 1199-5246 | |
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By Paul Delaney 
Lights ... Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight .... Well, from Toronto, that may not be all that bright a star and it certainly will not be too soon after sunset. In fact, from Toronto or any large city, urban sky, the total number of stars visible to the naked eye is depressingly small. As a recent scientific report dramatically reports, nearly 97% of all residents of North America live in conditions that disallow the direct view of our own Milky Way galaxy, arguably one of the most breath-taking of all natural phenomena. The increasing problem of light pollution is a topic, which is near, and dear to my heart but one, which I often feel, is not discussed by many folks. It is a problem that affects us all in one way or another and it certainly impacts on the environmental legacy we will leave the next generation. As I was driving home tonight from York University, I was dismayed (appalled) by the increase in illumination that was occurring. Recently parking lot floodlights (security lights?) had been installed within a few hundred metres of the observatory, to the north and west. Searchlight beams now periodically pierce the sky from cinema complexes, interfering with almost every aspect of astronomical endeavor. However, despite my unhappy observations, it does seem that more and more people are becoming aware of the problem and are prepared to do their bit in improving the general state of the night sky. For example, the Town of Richmond Hill has long protected the David Dunlop Observatory with good light pollution bi-laws that have not caused a decrease in public safety yet have succeeded in protecting the quality of the night sky (to some extent at least) for all of us. Municipalities all across North America (most recently the City of Calgary) are enacting bi-laws that curb the indiscriminate distribution of light into the sky. Articles have appeared in many municipal and National newspapers indicating a real concern about ad hoc lighting standards being adopted by various town planners and lighting engineers. In fact, the various professional bodies under whose mandate it is to inform politicians of what constitutes suitable lighting standards, are seriously examining full cut-off lighting standards (at last!). Some years ago York University commenced a program of improving the intensity level in all its parking lots and pedestrian walkways to allow for television surveillance. Despite the fact that up to a 10 fold increase in light intensity has occurred on the ground, no additional light is being directed above the horizontal plane, protecting the skies above York and ensuring that everyone's dark adaptation and personal safety is improved. In general, artificial illumination directed skywards is obnoxious as it scatters off gas molecules and dust particles in the air and creates the gray background that makes star gazing difficult. Such lighting is also an enormous waste of energy (and money). If all of the illumination from a light were aimed at the ground, the intensity of the light bulb would not have to be as high to produce the desired levels of ground illumination. This would mean a more economical light to operate that would not need replacing (or repairing) as often and of course such a light would be more environment friendly (less coal, oil or uranium consumed). Such a light is easily created by a better-designed shield over the bulb itself. Further, better-shielded light fixtures would be less offensive to the eye, creating less disability glare, causing the eye not to dilate and become less dark sensitive. How many of you appreciate looking at the high beams of oncoming traffic when the vehicles low beams give sufficient warning of its presence. How many of you have bare (and thus glare) lights in your homes in comparison to lamp shade or fully shielded lights? In short, bigger and brighter light fixtures are not better nor more effective in achieving the aims of personal and property security. The net effect of not having a clear lighting standard is brighter lights than necessary that disturb an individuals dark adaptation making it less safe to operate in the affected area. There is even increasing evidence that too much night-light increases an individual's susceptibility to cancer! While the evidence is not yet conclusive, there are significant studies underway to test the link between melatonin production (a cancer inhibitor naturally produced by the body) and the amount of light that people are subjected to during nocturnal hours. Is the increasing amount of light at night interfering with the body's natural defense mechanisms? If so, the simple cure is to be more responsive to night lighting needs. This does not necessarily mean turning off a light but rather make sure lights are task oriented, illuminating what needs to be lit and avoiding the injudicious spray of light into the sky and into your eyes. (If the light is purely cosmetic, maybe it should be turned off?) In the final analysis, good lighting practice helps wildlife, in particular migrating birds, our general environment, our pocket books, our health and, perhaps most importantly, preserves a natural legacy for future generations: the starry sky. Anyone who has traveled to the country, away from the city light sprawl, will know the joy that awaits them around a dimly glowing campfire: the scatter of stars silhouetted against the dark velvet of deep space. It is an awe-inspiring sight that you will never forget. Imagine seeing that from the comfort of your city home.... Paul Delaney is senior lecturer in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at York University, and master of Bethune College. Special thanks to York alumnus in astronomy and physics Mel Blake for the October Star Chart
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A panel of experts will examine the changes wrought by the events of Sept. 11 in a special town hall meeting 5-7pm on Thursday, Oct. 11 in the Moot Court of York's Osgoode hall Law School. Examining a wide range of issues including Canada/US relations and border policy, the political landscape of the middle east, lawful responses to terrorism and the "harbouring" of terrorists; the impact on financial markets and economic policy, the repercussions in Afghanistan and surrounding region, and a view of Islamic religion and culture, the session will begin with a brief overview from each speaker followed by questions from the audience. Speakers: * David Dewitt, professor of political science and director of the York Centre for International and Security Studies (YCISS) * Sergei Plekhanov, professor of political science and coordinator of the post-communist studies program at YCISS * Craig Scott, professor law at Osgoode Hall Law School, specializing in international criminal law * Bernie Wolf, professor of economic and international business at York's Schulich School of Business, specializing in international trade and the international monetary system * Amila Buturovic, professor of Islamic studies and coordinator of York's religious studies program * Daniel Drache, professor of political science and director of the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies Moderator: * Robert Drummond, dean of York's Faculty of Arts
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Whitaker named Distinguished Research Professor at spring convocation By Cathy Carlyle 
Reg Whitaker Reg Whitaker, professor of political science in the Faculty of Arts and member of the Graduate Program in Political Science in the Faculty of Graduate Studies, received high acclaim at York's spring 2001 convocation when he was named a distinguished research professor. This latest distinction is one of many he has received over the years, including a Killam Research Fellowship, 1994-1996. Since he joined York in 1984, Whitaker has served as coordinator of the Public Policy and Administration Program, 1986-1989, and as director of the Graduate Program in Political Science, 1990-1992. He is noted as one of the University's most distinguished professors with a national and international reputation in research and scholarship and first-rate record in teaching, supervision, mentorship and service to York and to the community. Whitaker is one of the leading authorities in the study of political parties, federalism, security and intelligence, immigration policy and the history of political thought in Canada. He, in collaboration with historian Greg Kealey, compiled, edited and published eight volumes of RCMP security bulletins, covering the entire inter-war period as well as World War II. His work on Canadian security and intelligence have brought him considerable praise and attention worldwide. The seven books and numerous scholarly articles he has written and published have garnered wide recognition as well. Some of his most notable works are The Government Party, a study of the Liberal Party of Canada; Double Standard, his treatment of Canadian immigration policy; Cold War Canada, his definitive work on anti-communism in this country and on the emergence of a "national security state" in Canada; and The End of Privacy, his work on Canadian security and intelligence. His essays are described as "substantial, beautifully written and often bitingly funny." In particular, one on "Federalism and democratic theory" is said to be among the finest philosophical analyses of federalism in the English language. In addition to his academic work, Whitaker has provided media commentary and has tendered advice to public commissions and to refugees facing deportation.
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From the Archives - Lind on Wieland By Sean Smith 
Drawing from Joyce Wieland sketchbook Sitting, listening to Joyce Wieland tell her life story during a series of interviews for a children's book was all the prompting that writer, artist and editor Jane Lind needed to start thinking about writing a full length biography of the celebrated artist and filmmaker.It has been over 10 years since Lind received Wieland's approval for her project and having spent a considerable amount of time and energy researching and writing Joyce Wieland: Artist on Fire, it is with a sense of sadness, relief and exhilaration that her book has finally been released. "When I finished the book last year, I was depressed. There was a sense of loss. I mean, I spent ten years with her, thinking about her. On the other hand," muses Lind, "I was happy that it ended." Lind first wrote about artists when writing grammar exercise books for children's book publisher Ginn and Co. The idea of looking at questions of form through actual paintings seemed to make sense and it served the dual purpose of introducing children to art. While Joyce Wieland: Artist on Fire is a work written for an adult audience, according to Lind, there are parts of Wieland's story that would still be of great interest to any child. "Her childhood is full of pathos. Her father died when she was seven; her mother died when she was 11," explains Lind. "You know the stereotypical idea of artists who draw from a very young age? Well, she did. She spent a lot of her childhood inside her head and inside her imagination. She played imaginary games about finding her parents. Artists' lives are really fascinating for kids." "The book is the story of [Wieland's] life," offers Lind, "and I should say that it is my perspective and I think that's really important because I don't think there is such a thing as the 'definitive' Joyce Wieland or the 'definitive' Margaret Laurence. I did tons of research and there is a lot of stuff that's not in the book. I had to make choices. It's a very fluid process and I'd like people to remember that." Lind was able to do most of her archival research for the book at York University Archives and Special Collections which has over five and a half metres of Wieland's personal papers along with over 600 of her drawings and over 750 photographs. It was a learning experience for Lind and a chance to continue to become intimate with the artist years after her death in 1994. "There is one notebook that says 50¢ on the cover that goes from about 1951-1955," says Lind. "What I learned from her diaries from when she was 21 was the turmoil she went through. There was this inner turmoil from wanting to have a career in art but also having a family. In the 1950s, the pressure on women to go back to being the silent member in the Dick and Jane household was enormous. She absorbed that yet she had a really strong passion to paint. The diaries really display that." In her telling of the story, Lind is keenly aware of Wieland's role as a woman who forged a path and an identity for herself in a patriarchal society. Lind introduces her biography by describing the scene outside of the National Gallery of Canada on July 1, 1971, at its first major show by a living female artist, "True Patriot Love - Joyce Wieland - Véritable amour patriotique". "I really want this to be in libraries," states Lind. "I hope people are able to just read it though too but particularly women who are interested in stories about women's lives. Women's lives have not been documented. That's an understatement and yet its trite by now too but its true. For me telling this story is something I enjoy doing. It's not a novel but it reads. It's a story and I love stories." Lind is also using her book to acknowledge the influence of Wieland's work on subsequent generations of Canadian artists. "It was really sad and the end of the book is sad but I used the last chapter to write about her legacy and who she's influenced. That's part of her story. "Even artists who don't work the way she did, who work much more theoretically and who do not agree with Joyce, recognize her pioneering spirit and what she gave them. I really think that's an important part of the story. You didn't have to agree with her but everybody had respect for her courage and her pioneering spirit." Sean Smith is archivist's assistant with York University Archives and Special Collections.
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Be pre-prepared for Becky Singleton
"Why is this interlude like a Swanson frozen dinner? Because it's preprepared." (Photo from a video still)
Enter the Art Gallery of York University these days and encounter six film images of a middle-aged, generously proportioned, topless woman dancing alone projected onto a large wall. What does it mean?
Artist Becky Singleton created Six Projections in 1981. Using six film projectors to create a row of identical figures, Singleton's film installation anticipated new media art forms such as video installations. The same model, Margareth Kluka, is also the subject of Singleton's 1981 How-To series which features text plus images of the semi-nude woman doing a variety of tasks such as feeding a Chihuahua, eating pie, sitting on a toilet or wearing a party hat. These absurdist depictions spoof advertising and also challenge ideas of body image.
These were among the early works exhibited at the gallery which brought together two decades of Becky Singleton's conceptualist works. The Toronto-born artist, who attended the Ontario College of Art in the early 1970s, has been creating a challenging body of work that raises more questions than it answers. Artists such as Canadian Michael Snow and American Joseph Kosuth inspired the
Recently Singleton has turned her attention to video as her medium. Beauty and the Beast and The Girl Guide series use enlarged video stills with text. In The Girl Guide series, the diminutive Singleton, dressed in a strapless, vintage-style pink formal gown and a friend have been videotaped in conversation and the video stills are captioned with plays-on-words such as, "Be preprepared. Who's motto would that be? A neurotic girl guide." The medium of Singleton's art is language which she mentally molds as an object to be turned over in one's mind.
Singleton says the girl guide series is a preparatory study for her next project, a long series of video stills with each unit dealing with a specific idea. Not until she has finished the project and stood back to view the disjunctive units in totality will Singleton herself know what she has created.
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In person: an interview with poet Roo Borson
Governor General's Award for poetry nominee Roo Borson kicked off York's Canadian Writers in Person series on Sept. 20th. Her reading is part of York Professor John Unrau's innovative first-year English course introducing students and avid readers to some of the best Canadian fiction and poetry being written today. Unrau's course gives students a chance to meet, hear and ask questions of authors whose works they are studying.
The Gazette caught up with Borson before her reading.
Q: What are your earliest memories of poetry or writing?
A: When I was a little kid my father, who was a physician, used to recite Keats and Shakespeare at the kitchen table. After Shakespeare, he probably recited Wordsworth the second most. He loved poetry. He didn't do it to instruct me...he loved the sound of words. One line I remember went something like "sweet are the uses of adversity, which, like a toad ugly and venomous...." He never explained what anything meant. I'm sure I picked up his rhythm and delight in rhyme.
I never thought about being a "serious" writer. But as soon as I could write I remember writing little poems. I remember that in the fifth grade my little friend then would illustrate them...little nonsense rhymes.
Q: How seriously do you take poetry?
A: I some senses I don't take it seriously at all, although poetry matters a great deal to me.
Certainly the idea of publication never entered my head until I went to college in the US. A teacher talked to me about publishing in magazines. I'd never thought of that before, or thought it possible.
Q: Does poetry matter anymore? There was an article in The Atlantic magazine a number of years ago that suggested the kind of poetry being written today only had itself to blame for its own irrelevance. Would you agree?
A: Poetry matters to me. I don't know about anyone else or about the wider context. I occasionally read The New Yorker and I think their taste in poetry is terrible. It's not alive. My question is, "Is the language alive?" If it isn't then it's not poetry I don't think. It's not that a poem requires any specific ingredient. But the voice of the poem itself has to be alive.
Q: If you're at a party and someone asks you what you do, what do you say? Do you say "oh, I'm a poet"?
A: Depends on who's at the party. Maybe yes if I'm among writers, but if I'm at a party of physicists....If the audience isn't receptive then it becomes too much work [to explain]. I take the easy way out.
Q: Have you always stuck with poetry or have you ever branched off into prose?
A: I've never gone into prose in a big way...or that's to say what prose I've written... I've been told I write prose that's like a poet....In terms of writing a novel or a short story it's not something I have ANY talent for...thinking up characters or plots seems foreign to me.
Q: Why write? That is, if poetry isn't a job, a trade or an occupation, what is it?
A: Writing is so great because it's so engaging . The moment is suddenly struck alive as if you lit a match. And you can revisit that moment. You can draw from it for different poems. The experience - whatever it is that sparks a work - isn't necessarily just visited once... it can come out in different ways and angles....
Poetry is one of the things I like to do and that I'm very engaged with...it's part of my life, not separate. It's where the intellectual engagement is for me. But sure, it's sacred too just as sleeping, sex or food is sacred...it's all of a piece.
Simply, I suppose I need writing. It's always been part of my world.
Q: What do you like to read?
A: I like to read a lot of non-fiction. Right now I'm reading A Taste of Japan: Food Fact and Fable What the People Eat Customs and Etiquette by Donald Richie. It's about the ingredients in Japanese cooking and how they're made, how they fit into the culture etc. I'm also reading a book about ancient Chinese bells called Suspended Music. I read poetry when I want to or non-fiction when I want to. I keep it simple. I don't read poetry, for instance, because I "think" I should be reading it. No. Poetry, fiction, non-fiction - these things move in and out of my life. Although I should say in the past I read poetry to learn about poetry directly but now it's more indirect.
Q: How about writing? Do you, as one writer suggested - I think it was Marianne Moore - "write a little everyday, without hope and without despair"?
A: I only write when I want to. If I try to force it, it comes out all wrong. I find now that the themes, my themes, whatever they are, eventually come out. I don't quite know when or what they are. But they appear.
Borson read from Night Walk: Selected Poems (Oxford, 1994). Often anthologized, she has gained popularity not only in Canada but in the US as well.
York University students and the public will be treated to readings and musings by 12 Canadian writers, including Booker Prize nominee Jane Urquhart and award-winning author David Adams Richards. Now in its third year, the series is sponsored by the Master's Office and Student Association of York's Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies, with the support of the Canada Council, and other benefactors.
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Terry Fox Run
Terry Fox Run site co-ordinator Steven Scullion, left, jogs with Stephen Kohout, a master's student in the business administration program, and Dezsö Horváth, Schulich School of Business dean, Sept. 16 at the third annual run at York. Altogether 210 participants raised $15,000 for cancer research, $4,000 more than last year. They walked, ran, cycled and rollerbladed between one and 10 kilometres around Keele campus. Faculty, staff, students and their families turned out in force from the Schulich School of Business and the School of Kinesiology and Health Science. Given that week's events [in New York] I wasn't sure how it would impact," said Scullion, an alumnus and former assistant to Dean Horváth. Scullion organized the five-hour event with Danyah Rivietz. Next year, he plans to challenge student groups and sports teams to take part.
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The Journal
GETTING CLOSE TO YOUR STUDENTS. In the September issue of Harper's, Cristina Nehring, a writer and graduate student in English at the University of California at Los Angeles, argues that the current trend of forbidding (and punishing) professor-student relationships in academe may well smother the creativity and fire that such relationships inspire. "When a student has a crush on a teacher," Nehring writes, "it is a powerful and productive thing: she or he works much harder, listens far more voraciously, appropriates, in many cases, the teacher's intellectual enthusiasms." For the professor's part, Nehring continues, if he or she "has a weakness for even one student in a lecture hall, the whole class benefits: she or he speaks with far greater care, switches from autopilot to real-think mode, and (with luck) even looks forward to reading papers." To police the professor-student relationship, whether through strict campus rules, overzealous sexual-harassment policies, or hand-wringing about the relationship's inherent "power differential," Nehring writes, is sexist, stultifying, and short-sighted. While she states that she does not advocate students sleeping with professors, she begs tolerance for those truly in love, circumspection when evaluating bitter accusations of harassment from jilted lovers, and respect for the dynamic that inspired Abelard and Heloise, Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt, and Socrates and his many pupils. "Teacher-student chemistry," she concludes, "sparks much of the best work that goes on at universities, today as always. It need not be reckless; it need not be 'realized.' It need not even be articulated, or mutual. In most cases, academic eros ... lingers behind the curtain and ensures that the production onstage is strong." The article is not available online, but information about the magazine may be found at
www.harpers.org/
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JAPANESE SCHOOLS TRAIL U.S. IN INTERNET ACCESS, USE. According to a study released by the US Department of Education, Japanese elementary and secondary schools lag far behind their American counterparts when it comes to Internet access and usage. While 98 per cent of public elementary and almost 100 per cent of public secondary US schools are connected to the Internet, only 56 per cent of public primary and 71 per cent of public middle schools in Japan have Internet access.
American schoolchildren also have faster connections and spend more time online in the classroom than do their Japanese counterparts, according to the study. Just 11 per cent of US schools use slower, dial-up connections to access the Web and e-mail, continuous high-speed connections are the norm. In Japan, few schools use dedicated subscriber or cable lines. Only six per cent of Japanese schools surveyed - five per cent of primary schools and seven per cent of middle schools - said they believed they were "making full use of" school computers, partly due to lack of funding for software. Source: Daily Yomiuri, 6/19/01,
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/index-e.htm
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INTERVENTION CAN HELP COLLEGE DRINKERS AVOID RISK. American researchers found that high-risk college-age drinkers participating in a university-based intervention program called BASICS were less likely to suffer from alcohol-related accidents than high-risk drinkers not given the intervention.
In prior research, the investigators found that this effect lasted for two years, and this latest study extends that finding to 4 years after treatment. The research was published in the August issue of the American Journal of Public Health, and was funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Source: Reuters, 8/06/01,
http://daily news.yahoo.com/h/nm/ 20010806/hl/drinking_1.html
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CANADIAN UNIVERSITIES PULLING IN RECORD REVENUES. Canadian university revenue increased for the third consecutive year in 1999-2000 to a record $14.9 billion, a 15.7 per cent jump from a year earlier, Statistics Canada reported in late July. Grants and contracts from federal, provincial and municipal governments surged 15.1 per cent to $8.2 billion, almost $1.1 billion more than in 1998-99.
Despite this increase, government grants and contracts still accounted for 55 per cent of total revenue, unchanged from 1998-99. Student fees accounted for 19 per cent, compared with 20 percent in 1998-99. In Nova Scotia that was almost 26 per cent of total revenue, the highest provincial proportion, followed by Ontario at 24 per cent. The lowest revenue rate was Quebec at 12 per cent, where government grants and contracts accounted for 65 per cent of revenue. Source: CBC News, 7/30/01,
http://www.cbc.ca
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FOR THE SECOND CONSECUTIVE YEAR, Princeton University claimed the title of top US national university in the annual rankings by US News & World Report, while Harvard and Yale Universities remained tied for second. Source:
http://chronicle.com/daily/2001/09/2001090702n.htm
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NEW ACCUSATIONS about corruption at a provincial centre for university admissions in China are feeding a furor over how bribery and political influence are tainting the supposedly objective process of selecting the Chinese students who are allowed to go on to higher education. Source:
http://chronicle.com/daily/2001/09/2001090706n.htm
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OMAN'S FIRST PRIVATE INSTITUTION of higher learning will open this month. The government has announced. Sohar University, which is named for and located in Oman's second-largest city, will offer undergraduate degrees in engineering, business, management and information technology. Source:
http://chronicle.com/ daily/2001/09/2001090707n.htm
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IN THE SUMMER ISSUE OF FIRST OF THE MONTH, Stanley Aronowitz, a professor of sociology at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York, writes that today's school systems, led by educators who measure students' progress by administering more and more tests, have snuffed out the joy of learning. "Students are discouraged from becoming seekers for vocation in the religious sense of life-forming activity," he writes, and instead are encouraged to "follow the money". Of the ACT, SAT, and GRE exams that are so crucial in making the "mad climb" to college and graduate-school entrance, he says, "What counts is that the student has demonstrated his/her capacity for subordination" by ingesting material just long enough to be able to "regurgitate it" for the test. He laments that the "testing regime" of the last decade has destroyed the counter-cultural traditions of middle-class youth. "Even the elite secondary school is no longer understood to provide a space/time for exploration, creativity or dissent." The very idea of youth is now suspect, he says. He notes that some parents and school reformers have already recognized "the brutality of the standards movement". The article is not online, but information about the magazine is available at
www.firstofthemonth.org
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A PROMINENT ISLAMIC ORGANIZATION in Indonesia has overseen the creation of an Internet-based virtual university in Jakarta, the nation's capital. Source:
http://chronicle.com/free/2001/09/2001090401u.htm
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A CONFIDENTIAL LIST of students admitted to the prestigious Shanghai Communications University, along with information about their qualifications and the influential people who pushed for their admission, has been circulating on the Internet in China. The leaked list has renewed public debate over allegations of corruption in university admissions. Source:
http://chronicle.com/daily/2001/08/2001082805n.htm
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