I’m not saying that how one person interacts with people is precisely how he or she would interact with a books, but it’s a fascinating way of thinking to see the pattern:

Reading books can be very similar to meeting people — and to some degree, the similarity is brought to light through the frequently-used expression and analogy “don’t judge a book by its cover”.

More importantly, books and people, have influence over your thinking (even the most absolutely boring ones) and have an impact on your life.  How many books have you read that have changed your life or the way you think?  Similarly, how many people have you met that have made an impact on you?  How have they influenced the way you live and think?

To some degree, books have a life-span (not age wise) that is very similar to individual people.  Just as we read books and gain knowledge or understanding, we also gain to some degree — almost the same from a particular perspective — from interacting with other people.

In terms of differences, the content of books rarely change — only the interpretations change; while people are pretty dynamic — our opinions change — what we think of an issue, how we feel about one another, where we want to be in the future, etc.

What we find in books is very much what we discover hidden in every individual — both require time to unravel and unveil.  Perhaps one (of the many proposed) future of books is not just simply bringing content electronically and allowing universal access regardless of device, but providing a platform where the content can become dynamic … a story with characters that change not just across pages, but over time with a reader’s interaction.

Just for the record, I’m not suggesting a form of Wikipedia or anything that currently exists.  I just wanted to muse about the similarities between books and people.

Having had the opportunity to work at Dundurn for nearly three years has been both challenging and a pleasure.  With the help and support of the many people I’ve been lucky enough to work with from day to day; share ideas and enthusiasm with, and learn so much from — it has almost always been a pleasure.  Thank you.  Unfortunately, this will be my final blog post here at Defining Canada.  I will be passing the torch over to Erin Winzer when it comes to the matters of blogging.  She blogs more than I do these days anyways…

Thank you as always for dropping by.  I’ll be watching from the sidelines (with a little online participation) as the evolution of  the book continues to occur around the world.

My father came to Canada from Holland in the early 1950s at the age of twenty-three. His origins were lower middle class (at a time when class mattered to the Dutch), and Europe was still recovering from the war. Not surprisingly, his pockets were empty when he stepped onto Canadian soil.

His first years as an immigrant were tough. He worked at various jobs – baker’s assistant, milkman, stock-boy — and was barely able to make ends meet. He was fortunate that his neighbours refused to eat an animal’s soft parts, because butchers at that time would sell the liver and kidneys for next to nothing. My father lived in a claustrophobic room, walked to work to save himself the bus-fare, and treated himself to a movie once a month. And always, unfailingly, he set a dollar aside from his salary each week.

“You were poor,” I told him, when he regaled me with these stories from his past. This was fifteen years later, when he was working as a well-paid accountant. His response amazed me.

“I was never poor,” he insisted, “I was broke, that’s all. Being broke is one thing; poverty is much more difficult.”

When I pressed him to explain the difference, he told me that ‘broke’ people have the resources to recover from their bad luck – they have tangible skills, education and, most important, the belief that if their former prosperity has eluded them, it can be retrieved. The poor, he went on, have not been granted such blessings. True poverty has no visible exit, no skills that the world is willing to reward, and no self-image that a population will respect or admire. Worse, it provides no vision of happier days when the necessities of life, as well as its pleasures, were there for the asking.

He almost trembled when he launched this explanation, as if poverty were one of the worst afflictions he could think of, as if it were a chronic state of ‘brokeness’ impervious to cheerful thoughts and the hardest of efforts.

“That’s why I set aside a dollar from my salary each week,” he concluded.

“To save up for the future?” I asked.

“No,” he replied, giving me a look that suggested I had missed his point, “To provide for people who were genuinely poor.”

Nicholas Maes is a high-school history teacher and teaches classics at the University of Waterloo. His adult novel Dead Man’s Float was published in 2006, and he has published several short stories and reviews in a variety of journals. He lives with his wife, three children, and a rabbit in Toronto.

Today’s poverty is commonly defined as a person surviving on less than a dollar a day, which applies to one-quarter of the world’s population, or roughly one billion people. This is beyond gravely concerning, it is inhumane. Some 20,000 people die every day because they are too hungry, too sick, and just too poor to live.

The United Nations Development Programme, which assists the developing world with issues that are impeding their social, economic and political growth, has identified through its Millennium Development Goal (MDG) twenty-one priorities that need to be addressed. Number one is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Eight of the twenty-one goals include the provision of universal primary education, gender equality, combating disease, the environment, among them, and all twenty-one are targeted for major improvements by 2015. Poverty is identified to be cut in half.

Most heartening is the fact that eradicating extreme poverty has met with a modicum of success, especially in China and India. In September 2008, a report presented to the UN on the progress of the MDGs noted that the number of people considered very poor has dropped from 1.9 billion in 1981 to 1.4 million.

It was also announced that the MDG had received some $16 billion in new funding from governments, foundations, philanthropists, business groups and various civic societies around the world.

Thirty-five years ago, rich countries pledged to set aside .07 percent of GDP for development aid. This was renewed in 2002 to support the MDG priorities of helping the developing world eliminate its crippling, widespread problems that precludes many countries from competing fairly in the global market economy. Yet numerous governments have not met their monetary pledges, including Canada. A call for leadership is required to achieve the MDG targets. To address this shortfall, an interim meeting is planned for 2010 to hold governments accountable.

Meanwhile, savvy, charismatic individuals rush in where governments fail to tread.

One of them, Jeffrey Sachs, past director of the Millennium Project and special advisor to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, remains a strong advocate of the MDG and its objectives. Futurist, economist and author, most recently in 2005 with his publication of The End of Poverty, Sachs has inspired millions of individuals to join in the universal goal of ending poverty.

When political leadership falters and as one country’s crisis has a widespread, exponential effect, increasingly its cause is taken up by super-stars. Whether economists or rock stars, they are able to attract adherents to causes as powerful as their personas.

There is much evidence to support the notion that a new world order has been championed, in large measure, by rock stars.

When ex-Beatle George Harrison learned from India’s acclaimed musician Ravi Shankar about the poverty facing people in Bangladesh, Harrison felt deep sympathy for them, lacking life’s essentials of food and shelter. In 1971, he produced two rock concerts in Madison Square Garden in New York with guest stars Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan. The concerts raised more than $10 million in aid for Bangladesh. (Worth $122.5 million in 2007, using relative share of GDP.)*

Harrison inspired others, such as the Bee Gees, who donated all proceeds of their rendition of the Beatles’ music “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Band” to UNICEF. This raised $10 million for hunger programs.

Then in 1985, when Bob Geldof organized his “Live Aid” concert for feminine relief in Ethiopia, the $100 million that poured in astounded even the most optimistic observer. Geldof still fights the battle of hunger with music.

Poverty and its dire consequences of hunger, infectious diseases, illiteracy, joblessness, substandard wages, uninhabitable shelter, unsafe water, polluted air, environmental degradation —the breeding ground for abject despair and, many claim, political upheaval that incites terrorism—are attracting passionate celebrities to these issues.

There would be far less recognition of and significantly less research in the funding for HIV/AIDS without personal initiatives powered by a handful of celebrities who helped de-stigmatize AIDS and raise funds for finding a cure. Notable among them are U2’s Bono, Elizabeth Taylor, Elton John and Diana, Princess of Wales.

Currently in the philanthropic spotlight for their commitment to various social issues in developing countries are Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Richard Branson and many super-rich philanthropists who work quietly to support the world’s calamities.

A huge philanthropic donation rocked the not-for-profit sector in 2006 when Warren Buffet announced he was giving away 85% of his wealth to five foundations. The foremost recipient, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (with an endowment of $38.7 billion in 2007), received shares of Berkshire Hathaway in 2006 valued at about $30 billion. According to Forbes magazine, in 2008 Buffet dethroned Gates as the richest man in the world, by virtue of his $62-billion pile. Gates dropped to third, with a mere $52 billion.

The Gates Foundation donates some $500 million annually to the Global Health Initiative for AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria programs, a critical factor in worldwide poverty.

The signals are clear. If not arrested, the damage wreaked by poverty that is killing millions of people annually will continue to kill millions more, with the prospect of there becoming significantly increasing numbers of “us” of the haves, who will join “them” of the have-nots.

*www.measuringworth.com

A certain amount of material from the foregoing is adapted from my book, Generation Deluxe: Consumerism and Philanthropy of the New Super-rich, 2004, The Dundurn Group.

Iris Nowell is the author of five books. Writing her 1996 book, Women Who Give Away Millions, has given her a solid foundation of philanthropy, the not-for-profit sector, and the wealthy. She has also written a memoir of Canadian artist Harold Town, and a biography of artist, filmmaker, and impassioned feminist, Joyce Wieland.

What if we could connect people to books via a salad dressing that they enjoyed? Just for fun, I took a look at office fridge and this is what I found:

Renne’s Gourmet Vinaigrette: Spring Herb Italian

Kraft Signature Balsamic Vinaigrette

Kraft Signature Greek with Feta & Oregano

Kraft Italian

Newman’s Own Low Fat Balsamic Vinaigrette

Litehouse Organic Raspberry Lime Vinaigrette

I then asked people around the office what book, that we publish, they would associate with each particular salad dressing and here are a few results:

Renne’s Gourmet Vinaigrette: Spring Herb Italian -> Suggestions: Canadians at Table and For the Record

Kraft Signature Balsamic Vinaigrette -> Suggestions: To Timbuktu for a Haircut, and The Dells

Kraft Signature Greek with Feta & Oregano -> Suggestions: The Footstop Cafe

Kraft Italian -> Suggestion: Angel in the Full Moon

Newman’s Own Low Fat Balsamic Vinaigrette -> Suggestions: Doug Lennox’s Now You Know and To Timbuktu for a Haircut

Litehouse Organic Raspberry Lime Vinaigreete -> Suggestions: Porcelain Moon and Pomegranates

Perhaps at another time, we’ll take a more in-depth look at how our tastebuds just might be connected to what we read.

We originally formed the blog as a way that we could communicate with the public and our authors while our website was being redeveloped. What we discovered was that the blog was as much of an entity as was the website — they co-exist. Personally, I love to see people comment on our blog — telling us what they think (giving us a piece of their mind).

Maple Leaf Mosaic by Chris Darling

A Look at the Past Year

After a year, we’ve blogged over 400 different posts — not bad for a first year. Let’s take a look at ten posts from Dundurn that changed the way we blog — starting from the earliest.

1. No this wasn’t our first blog post, this was our second one! We announced a chat that took place last year with Maureen Jennings about her first Christine Morris mystery, Does Your Mother Know?

2. We tried to introduce new books that came in hot off the press, but it didn’t work out so well. But we did learn a lot in the process — especially when it came to playing with photography. Take Don Easton’s second Jack Taggart mystery as an example — Above Ground worked brilliantly for the photo shoot — and the book is awesome for those who love gritty mystery novels involving undercover mounties. Stay tuned for a third book in the series.

3. There’s (almost) nothing better than posting up great reviews on a consistent basis of the books you publish. This was one of our first round ups. It just so happened to also be another staffer’s earlier blog postings.

4. It’s always fun to get to listen to audio interviews online. Especially when you don’t have the opportunity to tune in on the radio. Robert Hoshowsky, author of The Last to Die, had the opportunity to chat with Peter Anthony Holder. Peter provided us with the audio file and we posted it up right away! You can still listen to it… thanks again Peter.

5. If you can remember when the first CD-ROM encyclopedia first arrived in the early 90s, then you can remember how amazing it was to be able to view tiny movie clips direct from your computer. Fast forward to 2007 and we’ve got YouTube. Lance Goddard, author of Hell and High Water, provided us with some amazing video interviews with the Canadian veterans who fought in the Italian Campaign of World War II — YouTube let us share the first of many videos here.

6. After the Quill and Quire posted an article about the future of bookchat, I decided to run our own internal poll. This was vital blog post as it quantified and provided a visual manner of interpreting how people really felt about different mediums and their impact on our individual daily lives. To this day, it still fascinates me how people regard newspapers and blogs. Perhaps we’ll do a follow up study — another time.

7. The first author to start blogging on Defining Canada. J.D. Carpenter, author of mystery novel 74 Miles Away, and forthcoming Twelve Trees — went on a one month tour around the United States to do research on a book he is working on. While J.D. was initially a little hesistant, he turned out to be a brilliant blogger. He blogged daily about his adventures and provides some interesting side stories. This one was a favourite of mine. Make sure you check out his American Odyssey (you may need to work your way backwards).

8. Believe it or not, the Amazon Kindle ebook reader continues to be of interest to many many Canadians. They just keep searching for it and they arrive here. Sorry folks, but the Kindle just hasn’t arrived yet in Canada.

9. Just for fun around the time of the holidays. We polled ourselves and the public about whether or not they enjoyed fruitcake. By no means is this an accurate poll but — the no side wins — for now…

10. This may seem like a normal post and it is. It was a great review of Caroline Rennie Pattison’s The Law of Three. However it was also the beginning of you hearing less from me and more from others here at Dundurn.

Mind you there are so many notable posts that I can’t list them all (it is over 400 after all), so I encourage you to explore.

Just to give you a brief idea of how we’ve been doing — this is a graph of the number of posts we make per month from beginning to the present.

Now what? The future!

Look out for some upcoming changes to our blog. Some big and some small. We hope to serve up a nice new and fresh platter of variety to suit your taste buds. More voices and more interesting tales to tell.

Thanks for visiting us over and over again for the first year — let us know if there’s something you want to see more of!