Hold This Thread As I Walk Away

Scotiabank has been promoting a new book they're sponsoring, called The Hockey Jersey. The commercials make the point that it's to promote inclusion and tolerance. That's something everyone in hockey agrees is important,  but isn't too good at actually doing. And although Scotiabank are selling physical copies of the book, you can also download a digital copy for free from their website, which is the nicest thing a bank has done since, well, ever. 

It's about a bunch of young girls who come together as a team after they get their own hockey jerseys, which somehow look better than at least half of NHL uniforms. Of course, that title is similar to The Hockey Sweater, the classic story by Roch Carrier, about a boy in Quebec who is mistakenly given a sweater of the hated rival Toronto Maple Leafs, not the Montreal Canadiens sweater he wanted. There is also an animated version from the National Film Board available for streaming.

(As an aside, I love that in the middle of the Wikipedia synopsis of the story, they point out the plot hole: the fateful sweater was ordered from Eaton’s, and Eaton’s pioneered the money-back guarantee, so the mother could easily have returned or exchanged the sweater. Don’t ever change, Wikipedia.)

This being hockey, a lot of people will surely resent something new piggybacking on something old. But I think it gives us an opportunity. Can we finally give The Hockey Sweater a rest? When I was a kid it was really over-used in school. The story was drilled into us so much, one time in junior high, when the teacher announced that we’d be reading a wonderful new story called The Hockey Sweater, the whole class groaned. She was honestly surprised we had not only heard of it but were already sick of it. Now, I find out it was only written in 1979, and thus was a little less than a decade old at the time, so I can understand her not realizing how fast it had saturated the school system.

But it's easy to get why teachers were eager to use it: it's a perfect storm of sports, Canadiana, and situations relatable to kids. Also, looking back, I can appreciate how much of mid-twentieth-century Quebec life he squeezed in: People forced to do business in English, the towering authority of the church, the place of Maurice Richard as a hero. In the eternal quest to find things that will engage students, it sounds like quite a find. 

But there's a problem with The Hockey Sweater that really bugged me - I mean besides it being overused. I've been carrying this around with me ever since, so get comfortable.

It's not really a kids' story. Yes, I know, it's about children, but that doesn't mean they're the target audience. A story can be about children or through the eyes of children without being intended for them. To Kill a Mockingbird, Angela’s Ashes, Lord of the Flies, etc.

Like those books, The Hockey Sweater is pretty dark, when you look at it. The main character doesn't do anything wrong, but ends up a social pariah. His mother doesn't care about his situation. His religion blames him for his problems. And then there's the subtext that his people are trapped in a system rigged against them. Add a murder and it would be hailed as a classic of existentialism. 

An adult can appreciate a story of frustration and futility, but at the time, I found it really depressing. At a young age, children are still expecting stories to have a moral, or at least, to not be a nihilistic commentary of on the futility of life. 

That recounting of unfair situations is also the kind of thing that is best appreciated with a buffer of a few decades to protect you from the raw reality. Sure, now I can read a story about a kid ostracized for wearing the wrong clothes. That’s a common trope of stories about young people. But back then, it was your average weekday. Seeing that happen in a story, with no comeuppance for the bullies or actions by the adults in charge was, well, again: your average weekday. When his only hope for justice is divine-intervention moths, and that’s presented as the punchline, it just seemed hopeless.

So let's retire the Hockey Sweater. Print it on a Syl Apps jersey and lift it into the Bell Centre rafters beside Richard's number 9. That girl in the Scotiabank book can annoy future generations.

All Your Life Is Channel 13

There's been a lot of talk about how Sesame Street is introducing a muppet character with autism. That fits the strategy they often use, of demonstrating something from the real world using their characters.

I was thinking that's a pretty good idea; its a concept that kids won't know very well, and this will help them to understand it and learn how to deal with people with autism.  Of course, then I realized, that's actually a lesson most of us in society need to learn.  This isn't a case of teaching kids how to cross the street, which the rest of us learned a long time ago.  In this case, it's something everyone should have learned, but we grew up before they invented empathy.

So perhaps we need a sort of Sesame Street for adults. Okay, that sentence probably took you to a very strange place that I did not intend, and I apologize. What I mean is, we need a show that explains the modern world to us in the same simple way. There could be a trans muppet, a millennial muppet, senior muppet, poor muppet, Trump-voter muppet. We'd learn about everyone in society, and the proper way a mature adult behaves towards them.

Yes, I guess our actual TV shows occasionally do this very thing, usually during A Very Special Episode.  But we need something faster and more direct.  And perhaps teach people other basic things, from balancing a bank account to downloading apps. Hmm, what else to people need help with...learning that the Earth is round?  Okay, maybe we all need to go back to watching the actual Sesame Street instead.

I Wanna Grok

There's a principle you may have heard of that if you truly understand something, you should be able to explain it to a six-year-old. If you can't, then you don't really understand it as well as you think you do.

Personally, I think that's a bit harsh. After all, if it were true, we'd have much more educated six-year-olds. It would be more accurate to say that you should be able to explain something to another adult. Of course, that doesn't reflect well on our university professors: Their job is essentially to understand things and explain them to others. Given their success at the latter, it doesn't give me confidence to the former.

That brings me to a sudden realization: I don't believe in String Theory. No, it’s not based on emperical evidence or esoteric mathematics. It's because I don't believe anyone really understands it, because no one seems to be able to explain it.

I know, it's complicated, it's hard to wrap your head around. But there are lots of things that are hard to understand. The Theory of Relativity, Quantum Mechanics: those are also hard to explain. But it can be done; I've seen people do it. But not String Theory. I've seen and read dozens of explanations, and here's what I've learned:

• All the fundamental particles in the universe are actually strings.
• The strings vibrate.
• Somehow this means that there are lots of other dimensions, but they're really small.

That's it! That's not an explanation. If you were explaining it, you'd also tell us things like:

• How does this help us understand how particles behave?
• What do the vibrations do?
• Okay smartass, what are the strings made of?
• For that matter, why are you explaining something simple (particles that are just little points) with something more complicated (strings)?

Science is all about figuring out how the world works. So the joy of learning about science is to gain a greater understanding of our surroundings. I don't want to hear a few disjointed facts; I want to acquire a mental model of the processes of nature. For whatever reason, String Theory proponents haven't put much effort into this. It's probably just that there isn't much incentive for explaining bleeding-edge physics well. But until someone puts some effort into it, I'm going to assume that String Theory is a massive Emperor's New Clothes situation, where no one wants to admit that none of them get it.

Unfortunately, this kind of explanation-that-isn't seems all too common these days. There's an assumption that if you give the context of a thing, together with some ideas you can drop at parties, that's considered explaining it. But really you haven't learned anything useful: you just know enough to sound intellectual during a superficial discussion, assuming you're talking with other people who don't understand it either. It's really unfortunate that in a society where we can communicate information so easily, we're still not good at spreading understanding.

Sesame Street Has Been Brought To You Today By Selling Out To The Man

When the news came out that Sesame Street had a deal to go on HBO, this surprising news was received rather matter-of-factly. Some journalists just said vague things about income and downloading. Others joked about the incongruity of Sesame Street and HBO's other properties. Honestly, there are thousands of Muppet/Game of Thrones jokes to be made.

Apparently the show's finances weren't strong, since they were getting less money from PBS, and DVD sales have declined. Interesting fact I learned this week: currently, more kids watch the show online than on TV. As part of the agreement, it will still be available both on PBS and online, though only nine-months after its been on HBO.

I'm still uncomfortable with this. Yes, I've always been quick to say that progressives should be willing to use imperfect solutions to get real change in the world. This is using a disproportionately upper-class audience to pay for education that's accessible to all, which I would generally endorse. After all, Sesame Street isn't about current affairs, so showing your kids nine-months old episodes should really put them at a disadvantage. Having said that, the website Boing Boing points out that if getting the new episodes first wasn't an advantage, HBO wouldn't be paying so much for it.

What bugs me is that Sesame Street's raison d'etre was to level the playing field by making an avenue for education that everyone had equal access to. Even if it's a minor factor, it's sad that such a principle can't be maintained. For instance, the "street" in the show is portrayed as an urban street to career to poorer viewers that wouldn't normally see their lives on kids shows. Now we're entering a situation where largely suburban viewership will be funding a show set in an urban world they won't recognize.