Don't know whether this is complete or not. For now, it's a short story. From across the cove he watched her, a vision in green, skin gleaming under the hot sun. She stood at the edge of the little cliff like a statue, gazing into the deep, calm blueness. It was a scene of such serenity, Joe couldn't help but stare, like a captivated movie-goer, as her finely toned arms rose above her head and she balanced for an instant on the balls of her feet before diving effortlessly into the water. He watched the surface, eyes waiting to worship her sleek, glistening form as it re-emerged from the placid deep. He became slightly alarmed as the moments passed, and he searched the breadth of the cove for a sign of her. The water was quite deep here, and the cliff not high enough for a diver to hit the rocks at the bottom. Where was-- Joe heard a faint splash and, as he looked, a dark arm flailed above the surface for a moment before noisily submerging again. Instinctively, Joe jumped into the water and, kicking off his sandals as he stroked, swam towards the churning froth where the flailing arms surfaced once again and then decidedly disappeared. * * * (... more to be typed...) Written Feb 2003 Headline: The �ism� schism Deck: Fine then, if we can�t join your club, we�ll just make our own! A friend of mine was looking through the Globe and Mail recently, and at one point during his perusal, he glanced up with a look of mild bemusement � �They�re having a black news channel,� he said, as his eyes returned to scanning the page. Alarm bells went off in my head � black news? But� it�s news! The things that occur in the world on a daily basis don�t have a solid borderline of effect. They don�t stop at the edge of black and leave white untouched, or vice versa. Events don�t care where your ancestors lived, who you love, or how many X-chromosomes you have. They happen, they affect you, and you need to know about it. Okay, maybe you don�t see where I�m coming from on this, so let me try and evoke for you the images that such �specialized� organizations as �black news channels� and �feminist social services� bring to my mind. Remember with me, back to the days of backyard forts and treehouses. If you can�t remember that far back, think for a moment of the kids in your neighbourhood, or even on television. One of the fave pass-times of my, and many people�s, childhood, was building clubhouses. You remember the days! It didn�t matter if it was a three-story structure in the branches of the old oak tree, or a blanket stretched over the dining-room chairs. Your clubhouse was your domain, your castle. You ruled over all you saw, and only those whom you saw fit to grant your exclusive blessing could be permitted to enter in. Or perhaps you didn�t have a clubhouse. Perhaps you were the other kid. The youngest rugrat on the block, you always got the short end of the stick � the crappy second-hand marbles that nobody wanted to play you for, the yucky purple freezie after all the red ones were gone, the role of the villain�s stupid sidekick in every action-adventure role-play. And to top it all off, you weren�t allowed in the big kids� clubhouse! Well being shunted to the sidelines while everyone else gets in on the action will get anyone mad, so predictably, you were mightily miffed at being excluded. So perhaps you, with infallible kiddie logic, reasoned that you would make a clubhouse of your own! You�d show them, you could do just fine without their help! But when all was said and done, when the blanket was draped meticulously over the chairs and you stared across at the other fort through your peephole, you realized something. Your club sucked. It sucked crap. Why? Because only members were allowed in, and you were the only member. And to add insult to injury, the other kids couldn�t have cared less. But let�s come back to the present. We�re all grown up now, long past the clubhouse phase� Or are we? Ladies and gentlemen, I would contend that many of us still live firmly within the confines of the club mentality. The problem is, now it extends out beyond the neighbourhood block, to shape how we see ourselves in society. Many of these exclusive groups, which come into being as a result of various social �isms� (racism, sexism, etc.), are angry that their constituencies are not represented well among the nation�s established institutions. And so these groups and their constituents try, and rightly so, to remedy the situation. The trouble is, many of them don�t do this by enthusiastically encouraging their constituents to break out of �ism� stereotypes and branch into new fields, or by pushing them to achieve the places they want for themselves in society. Instead, much time and energy is spent filling heads with the negativity of the mainstream and the institution, and creating separate, smaller, ism-centric institutions of their own. This is insulting (dare I say �conciliatory�?), and furthermore, the top players, whose club we really wanted to join in the first place, just don�t care. If we want to bring down barriers, what sense does it make to put more up? Cutting ourselves off from society�s negatives effectively bars us from the positive aspects as well. If you can�t outgrow the clubhouse mentality, you�re always going to get the purple freezie. And what�s more, you deserve it.