Author Archives: David Truss

Everything is so political

I’ve got the song ‘Political‘ by Spirit of the West going through my head, even though this song is about a relationship breakup and not politics.

Chris Kennedy’s recent post, ‘My “Top 3” List for 2022‘ on his blog, Culture of Yes, got me thinking about being political. Here is the section that inspired my thoughts:

Top 3 Issues that I see in US media that I am keeping an eye on (and worried about):

  1. Book bans

  2. Limits on classroom discussions

  3.  ‘Parents Rights’ push

I know there are some, largely isolated for now, examples of these topics in Canada, but we see them regularly in our news feeds with the constant volume of US media.  The book banners are back, taking on many of the classics again.  There are many lists that circulate, including this one from CBS News of the 50 most banned books in the United States.  Also in the news a lot is discussion over what topics teachers can and can’t talk about.  Here is an article from earlier this year indicating 1/4 of all teachers were in positions where they were being asked to limit discussions on certain topics.  Finally, the parents rights push is one that gives parents greater control over what their children are taught.  It is actually related to the other two issues, as all three are coming out of a conservative legislators in the United States.  I am always hesitant to write about what is happening in the US, as I find some people are already believing we are in the same position.  We have very different systems, but it is regularly on our televisions and in our social media feeds so it is worth following.

I commented:

Season’s greetings Chris!

Like you I’m always hesitant to share US concerns, but there has been a definite creep of bad ideas into our country. Example: I’ve chosen every election since becoming an educator to be non-partisan and just promote voting, but this year I openly spoke out against a very conservative and dishonest group of candidates for Board of Education Trustees in our district. It seems we only have two choices these days, allow bad ideas to seep in, or be openly political and speak up before those ideas take hold. The coming year is not one to wait and watch what happens without participating in the conversations of ideas that concern us. We can not be a silent majority, we can not be apolitical. We must be active participants in a system that, while better than the one south of the border, is not immune to the influences of a very dichotomous and politically charged neighbouring country.

It’s not fair to say that this is just a US issue. Italy has a new far-right government, and nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment can be felt in many other countries. The reality is that there is a very vocal minority who seem to garner too much attention and interest because the counter opinion is either silent, or an equally small opposing minority that are extreme in their opposing views. In fact some of the views coming from the far left are actually more fascist than the views on the right. For example, choosing violence to combat opposing views to a point where free speech is no longer truly free. 

2023 will be a year to speak up and speak out. You don’t have to support a political party, but if you think you can be vocal and not also be political, you are probably mistaken. Your politics will permeate your point of view, and choosing to be silent is no longer just non-partisan or apolitical; it’s choosing to allow lesser, more biased people to share their minority points of view as if they are the majority. The silent majority can be silent no more.

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If you are interested in education, it’s worth taking the time to read Chris’ post, ‘My “Top 3” List for 2022‘, especially these three sections, ‘Top 3 Shifts in BC Education in 2022’, ‘Top 3 Education Topics We Should Talk More about in 2023’, and ‘Top 3 Education Topics from 2022 that need long-term fixes’. And while you are at it, subscribe to his blog.

Vertical panaramas

I like taking panarama shots. I love the look of them (although the rest of my family does not). I think they give a good feel for what the visual experience was like beyond the view from a camera lens.

But I also like taking vertical panaramas. And while like the horizontal ones, they can distort the view, like in this square courtyard:

And they aren’t always needed like in this case (first image is an unneeded vertical panarama):

Here it is again without using the panarama:

… But sometimes I really get a kick out of them. Here are a few to enjoy:

La Sagrada Família, Barcelona

Monserrat, Spain

Royal Palace, Madrid

And just an hour ago I took this one from a ferris wheel in Bordeaux, France

I’ve never printed them, and so it’s not like I do anything special with them. Also they can be hard to find on my camera roll because when you take them vertically they don’t always show up in the phone’s panarama folder. But I really like them. I enjoy taking them, and sharing them… even if my family doesn’t enjoy them as much as me.

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A final shot, Wells Cathedral in England, taken back in the summer of 2018:

More than a facade

There is a concerted effort in Spain to create intricate facades not just on public buildings but on apartment buildings as well. I love the architecture here. Decorative railings, shutters on windows, ornate doors, all contribute to a look that is so different than anything I’ve seen in Canada or the U.S. But it’s not just a facade, it’s a vibe. It’s a flavour. It’s warm and cozy.

Combine this with streets designed for pedestrians and no matter where I turned in Barcelona and Madrid, I felt like I was in a neighbourhood. Not just on a city street, but in a community. In cooler temperatures that would usually send me looking for a seat inside of a restaurant, I’ve found myself wanting to be on the patio here. I want to be part of the street life. I also want to be in the city and not just in my apartment. In Canada our homes are a respite, here the place to feel at home is out and about, on the streets. Here the living room is outside, and the decorative facades are your living room’s decor.

Crowds at Christmas

Spending Christmas Day in Madrid, my family expected to spend a lot of time in our AirBNB. We figured that in a very Christian state most restaurants and stores would be closed and the city would be a bit of a ghost town with everyone spending time in their homes or in the homes of their families. And yes, while most stores and many restaurants were closed, my expectations of quiet streets was very wrong.

First, our day started slow, since there was no rush to wake up. At about 10:15am I went out looking for an open pastry shop and not 1/2 a block from our apartment was a bustling outdoor Sunday market that went on for about half a kilometre. And it was jam packed with people!

We spent hours there. My wife and daughters shopping to their hearts content and me tagging along listening to a audiobook. The crowd was filled with both locals and tourists and it stayed busy right up until some of the vendors started packing up at 2pm.

We went for a late lunch (3:30), a reservation one of the parents at my school, who used to live in Madrid, organized for us knowing that finding a seat at a nice restaurant on Christmas Day would be challenging. Then upon leaving the restaurant we could see that the streets were still bustling with people. So after a quick stop at home we went exploring.

We headed out and it seemed so did half of the city. The downtown area was just packed with people!

Every store, pub, and restaurant open had people in them. We had a drink in an outdoor patio and enjoyed an evening out along with over 100,000 other people filling the streets of Madrid. This was so different than what we expected, and it was a truly unique and wonderful Christmas Day.

I hope everyone is enjoying their holidays. Best wishes to your family from ours!

Graffiti everywhere

In both Barcelona and Madrid there are no pull-down security shutters or blank walls that don’t adorn some graffiti. While a lot of it is just tags and initials, there are also some cute characters as well.

I find myself walking down old neighbourhoods covered in graffiti that would make me nervous to walk down in Vancouver, but that are just a natural part of any neighbourhood here. There is no connection between graffiti and bad areas to walk here, the street art is part of every community.

It’s Christmas Day and we are walking down a crowded outdoor Sunday market in Madrid. I’m surprised to so many people out and about here, tourists and locals alike.

When we reached the bottom of a long hill we took a small detour along a typical side street and in a matter of 5 minutes I took the following photos:

Any other street would have provided just as much to share. It seems that in the big cities of Spain there is graffiti, graffiti everywhere.

Somewhere in between

I really like this video of Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about how our brain wants to put things in dichotomous bins rather than recognizing that ideas sit on a spectrum.

It reminds me of my post, Ideas on a spectrum, that I wrote back in 2019. In this post i shared a quote…

As I said in My one ‘ism’:

“We want to live, thrive, and love in a pluralistic society. We just need to recognize that in such a society we must be tolerant and accepting of opposing views, unaccepting of hateful and hurtful acts, and smart enough to understand the difference.”

As deGrasse Tyson says, “The world is not gonna change to fit your inability to recognize how it’s actually manifesting.” That seems to be what people think should happen… the world ‘should’ change to fit ‘my beliefs’. What we really need is more tolerance and acceptance. ‘Somewhere in between’ opposing extreme views is where that tolerance can be found. It’s not hard to find, it’s already manifesting… The problem is that the people who most need to see it are blind to it.

Content trumps people

Social media has changed. Whether it’s Instagram or Facebook Reels, Youtube Shorts, or TikTok’s ‘For You’ page, we no longer follow people, we follow viral videos. Content trumps people. Trends and clicks determine our feed, not who we know; who we choose to follow. And for things we share, our followers are less likely to see this and more likely to Like and Share something from people we don’t know.

Algorithms, not our online community, determine what we see, what we relate to, and what consumes our attention. I’m in Spain and now every one in four TikTok videos on my page are in Spanish, I’ve seen a mom of a young child sharing what her life is like after moving from America to Spain twice now. Not because I follow her, but because the TikTok algorithm thinks this is what I want to see.

What does this mean for us? Social media influencers will be less influential… probably a good thing. But this will also mean we are more distracted and less connected. How this changes the landscape of our digital lives is likely to be an overall negative in the short term, and ‘to be determined’ in the long term. Time will tell.

Churches, followers, and the future

We visited another church today, the Abbey at Montserrat, an hour bus ride from Barcelona.

People who are religious might come to see the black Madonna statue, but I honestly didn’t even know about this when we booked the trip.

It just seemed like a fun half-day trip with my family and also included a wine tasting. And some beautiful views.

This is the second church I’ve recently visited for reasons other than religious, and this has me thinking about people who do go to church for religious reasons. Walking around Barcelona I have seen a lot of churches. But, I can’t imagine that they are filled with parishioners today like they used to be in the past.

What’s the future of these churches? Sure the ones that are tourist attractions will survive, but what about the rest of them? The number one way that churches ‘recruit’ new members is through the birth of children whose parents are members, but in many societies the birth rate is decreasing and as a total percentage of the population most religions have seen their peak. Furthermore people practicing their faith in churches is decreasing.

What will happen to many of these churches in 50 years? For that matter, what will the religious landscape look like in 50 years? I can see two possibilities, both unlikely on the extreme ends, but more like directions. I can see a religious revival where churches are focused on building tight, closed communities, or I can see organized religion fading and dwindling. Which direction we are headed in I’m really not sure? Perhaps we will see both with a revival in rural areas where remote workers ‘flock’ to join a fold, and a demise in diverse cities where religion fades in importance. I think the US has already started this trend, and it’s one that could spread elsewhere.

Unfortunately this split can have dramatic consequences when the urban/rural divide also has a significant division in beliefs and ideals. It makes me wonder about how this can influence the future of countries. There are already talks about separation in Canada, both Alberta and Quebec, and here in Spain with Catalan. What about Texas or Ireland? And so will religious beliefs and ideals cause greater rifts in our nations? I think this is likely. It seems to me religions will continue to pull our world apart, even as their popularity dwindles.

La Sagrada Família

The work of architect Antoni Gaudí is something you will probably have an opinion on, but I think that opinion can vary significantly thinking him a creative designer or a wacky artist. It’s easy to wonder if he every did hallucinogenic drugs when looking at some of his work.

When we saw one of his buildings last night, Casa Batlló, my daughters said it reminded them of Whoville, from Horton Hears a Who.

Today we visited La Sangrada Família, the church that Guadí dedicated most of his life to building and that is still being constructed today. An interesting thing about this church is that the intricate decorations and religious reliefs are all outside to appeal to the masses to come to church.

Inside is grand with vastly open ceiling space, and columns that resemble trees.

And beautiful stained glass windows.

I’m a fan of unconventional design. I love the merger between art and life, pillars like trees, uniquely shaped spaces, and the blend of curves integrated neatly with straight lines. I think Gaudi was brilliant and wish that his architecture had a greater influence on buildings designed today.

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One more shot, taken later after a tapas tour.

Pulse of a city

Today we took a tram ride that gave us a nice view of Barcelona. On a bus tour I heard that many areas of the city have maximum height restrictions for buildings that are under 20 metres, with a floor zero at the bottom and then 5 floors above that are for residential apartments. So, overall the city does not have many tall buildings. This was made very obvious by the way La Sagrada Famíliai, architect Guadi’s famous church, sticks out in the skyline.

We have a guided tour of the church planned for tomorrow, followed by a walking tapas tour in the evening. But we have already done a lot of walking around the city and have had a good ‘taste and feel’ of city life here.

It’s fascinating to see how the city is designed for pedestrians. Many roads are single lane and one-way with wide walkways, rather than two-way with little room for a walkway since buildings were originally built on foundations too close for both modern cars and roomy sidewalks.

Outdoor eating spaces are everywhere, and if there is a gap in the buildings, there is a courtyard with tables and/or benches.

The city is made for people to be outside, which makes sense when there are only apartments in tight spaces as opposed to single dwelling homes with back yards. Where the design falters a little is that many of these homes were original laid out with nice courtyards which made sense when they were on a single floor, but now with 5-level apartments these spaces seem to be devoured by multilevel private and semiprivate balconies and terraces. So the public outdoor spaces become even more important.

Barcelona has a pulse of people living outside their homes. Coffee and pastry shops are seen everywhere, and what looks like a back alley is also a place with storefronts and restaurants. The city is designed for people first and cars afterwards. Mopeds line the walkways, and there is a blend of bikes and scooters both electric and not, as well as skateboards making their way around pedestrians. Even as I was walking and editing this post, a car and moped came down what I thought was a sidewalk, but was actually a one-way road with a street light at the end of it. But both vehicles were going very slow and accommodating, the pedestrians walking past in both directions.

A city for people first, then cars.