Beauty and the Musician

Below is a tweet by Kevin Michael Grace on Liszt's musical education and the legacy of tutorship and instruction he left his students. In this world where money rules, Liszt left an immeasurable amount of wealth in beauty and art to our world, giving us a superior legacy of Western Civilization's riches .

The boy Liszt was taught by the great virtuoso Carl Czerny without charge. This was a particular gift, as he otherwise earned a fortune teaching, but Liszt took it as a commandment. He never charged his hundreds of students & introduced them to all that culture had to offer, free

— Kevin Michael Grace🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇮🇪⚜🇳🇴 (@KMGVictoria) December 6, 2018

Square One Holidays

There are plenty of decorated fir trees, like a forest of trees. But no Big Tree, and no "christmas" mentioned anywhere.

Santa is here, in the "enchanted forest"!

Here's what the Square One Shopping Centre's website says about the event:

Snap a photo with Santa at our NEW LOCATION (Level 2, near Holt Renfrew), amid a magical backdrop of gorgeous trees adorned in pops of gold and silver, alongside whimsical woodland creatures. While in line, say hello to Santa’s helpers, who will arrive in the form of sharply-dressed nutcrackers. And, receive a complimentary Lindor chocolate provided by Lindt. In addition, partial proceeds from every photo package sold will be contributed towards Autism Ontario’s Peel Chapter.

And Santa comes at a cost:

PHOTO PACKAGES
Package A … $45
Four 5×7s
Four 4×6s
Eight wallet size
Digital copy

Package B … $40
Two 5×7s
Two 4×6s
Eight wallet size

Package C … $30
One 5×7
Two 4×6s
Four wallet size

Package D … $20
Two 4×6s

Whatever happened to a Santa where you just sat on his lap and whispered your Christmas wish?

Email Interaction on Publishing a Book on Mississauga

Spikey Non-Christmas Tree outside of Holts Luxury Department store
at the main entrance of the Square One Mississauga Mall
the hub of activity in Mississauga
[Photo By: KPA, December 4, 2018]

---

On Thursday Nov 29, 2018, at 12:10 PM
To: Ricardo Duchesne
Kidist Paulos Asrat wrote:

Dear Dr. Duchesne,

I frequently read the articles on the website Council of European Canadians, and I have read your book Canada in Decay.

I have been collecting and filing data on Mississauga, Ontario, for about three years now, to publish a book on the city.

I have been living in Mississauga for about five years, having lived in Toronto before that.

My years in Mississauga exposed me to multiculturalism and it steady and nefarious progression into the Canadian life and landscape. Mississauga is conveniently ignored by major cities like Toronto and Ottawa, and is a destination for Third World immigrants who flock here looking for cheaper housing and a safe suburban life, away from the "big city" problems of Toronto. Mississauga now has one of the largest non-white population in all of Canada.

Mississauga's leaders' intentions are starkly displayed at the Art Gallery of Mississauga, where I was a frequent visitor and recorder of the art and artistic activities promoted and programed by the gallery.

About a year ago, I asked one too many controversial question at an AGM gallery event about the lack of Western art on display at the gallery, and subsequently, I received an email from the galley's (still current) director, Mandy Slater, a white woman, to cease my "antagonistic" behavior and not to frequent gallery any more, with my name submitted to the Peel Region Police and the Mississauga Security division, should I not comply. I haven't entered the gallery since then. But the AGM's prolific website provides me with all the information I require on the gallery's exhibitions and programming to follow and monitor their activities. As well, most of the staff post photographs and commentary on their various social media sites.

Since then, the AGM has been making progressive changes in the gallery's structure and organization, and especially so in the past few months. One of the dramatic changes has been the removal of Kendra Ainsworth, its one (of two) white staff. The other is Mandy Salter, the gallery's director, recently hired only about a year ago. All the other administrative and curatorial positions are [KPA edit: since] filled with non-white, mostly Indian (Asian) and Muslim staff. Most are also relatively new to these posts, stretching back about two years for the most senior.

The AGM's purpose of this newly restructured gallery is is to "build a whole new kind of art institution" as I wrote to a correspondent recently. What I mean by this is a gallery that exhibits and promotes works by non-white, non-Western artists.

I have a background in the arts both as a practitioner and as a researcher. I studied photography at Ryerson University, and painting and textile design through various courses and workshops in Toronto, including the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto.

I started a blog called Camera Lucida in 2005 to "explore and shed light on how art, and culture and society converge."

Several years later in 2013, I started a blog I titled Reclaiming Beauty "to document the contribution that beauty had made toward our Western Civilization," where I still continue to blog.

I believe that the AGM is building an institution that can expand into other regions in the province and the country, as a successful example of an art institution that reflects multicultural and ethnic art, and a gallery which has pushed to the sidelines, and even out of the gallery, works by what now Canadians are being regularly told "racist" white artists, and especially those which reflect a Canada of half a century to a century ago, which of course are almost exclusively white artists.

Mississauga's history originates as a "new city" built around the 1970s, as an ambitious vision by a white Canadian, Bruce McLaughlin, to separate this already existing small town from the influences of Toronto, and to build self-sufficient and independent city. Immigration and non-Canadian residents were far from his, and his colleagues' minds. The AGM itself was established in 1987, as a separate gallery, independent from big-city influences, or even the then encroaching multiculturalism, and its inauguration was celebrated with the visit of the Duke and Duchess of York in July 1987.

I will present this historical material in my book on how a once confident city, with confident citizens, now has devolved into this multicultural outpost, almost forgotten by other regional centres, but which is quietly restructuring society and culture.

At some point it will gain some power and start to promote successful and prosperous multiculturalism as an example for other Canadian cities to follow.

The reality, though, is that Mississauga is far from success and prosperity, with some of the highest poverty rates in Ontario recorded in the city's non-white ethnic neighbourhoods, and a non-existent, true, "mosaic" of mixed multiculturalism, with an increasingly self-segregating population separating itself by race, ethnicity and religion. And the various socio-ethnic groups do not work together, in art or other cultural and social programs, especially where their "identities" are involved, and some are even antagonistic towards each other (Indian Hindu and Muslims, for example).

And the AGM would not exist were it not for the close to the third of a billion of dollars in governmental grants it receives annually to promote this artificial mosaic of integrated multiculturalism through its art exhibitions and art programming.

I propose that we co-author such a book, perhaps as part of a larger subject of the practical realities of multiculturalism in Canada, and use Mississauga as one (perhaps the most important) example of how things really do function when multiculturalism is the Canadian government's policy.

Sincerely,
Kidist Paulos Asrat

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Monday, December 3, 2018, 11:11:24 AM
Ricardo Duchesne <...@unb.ca> wrote:

Hello,

Why not turn this into an article for CEC? You already have a good draft, and need to have an introduction, and a few other revisions to make it into an article. This is a topic I am interested in, and would like to see this developed into article.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Monday, December 3, 2018, at 6:09:37 PM
Kidist Paulos Asrat wrote:

Thank you for your suggestion.

KPA
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Wednesday, Dec 5 2018, at 6:47 AM
reclaimbeauty@gmail.com
To: Ricardo Duchesne


Dear Dr. Duchesne,

Thanks once again for your helpful comments.

Nonetheless, I will independently write and publish the book on Mississauga rather than produce a very much condensed article.

Mississauga is a unique place. It warrants a full book: a demonstration of how society devovles as rulers and leaders lose confidence in themselves and a government-mandated plan (Multiculturalism) to change society is forced on all policy makers, which they have to comply with if they want to keep their jobs and have some future to look forward to (retirement, children well-educated, mortgages paid off, etc.).

There was something exciting and fresh about Mississauga when it started out as a city built from the ground up - literally.

The saddest part of this bright history is the current demoralized population, both white and nonwhite.

For example, non-white residents and immigrants relate to their ancestral countries much more so now than a decade or two ago. Most of them are bitterly disappointed in Canada, where they have been unable to "integrate," despite tremendous efforts by government officials and policies to assist them to do so. And their children, the Canadian-born second generation, who are experiencing the same lack of integration, are militant in blaming the "racist" white culture that they fervently believe is denying them their "rights." Thus there is no integration, but increasing ethnic and racial self-segregation. And there is also a new (albeit weak) trend of a repatriation and return "home" by some.

But I believe all this is a good thing, a good sign, demonstrating the failures (and cruelty) of multiculturalism, not just to critics like me, but to ordinary people, which is forcing them to search for, and discover, authentic ways of living.

Here is where I can show systematically how we can all salvage what we have. Those who return to their countries of origin can reclaim their ancestry and abandoned homes. And those like me can reclaim the city as it was once envisioned by its pioneers.

I believe that Mississauga, because of its strange "outlier" geographical position, is a perfect blueprint to demonstrate all these points.

Thank you once again for your communication. All the best in your projects.

Sincerely,

Kidist Paulos Asrat

"Bless her little louboutins. Long may Flotus reign."

Letter from a reader on my Melania Trump attire post, who has his own fashion sense ("cardigan draped over the shoulders":

Your dress recommendations, are great...I normally don't care for
pants-suits on women as it makes them look masculine - which I suppose is
the whole point why the sisterhood embrace them - but I give Melania a
pass. With those lines, there's certainly no mistaking Melania for a man.

She looks like a whole different species to Hillary.

Bless her little louboutins. Long may Flotus reign.

I've noticed Melania's signature fashion look, (apart from the high heels),
is a cardigan or coat draped over her shoulders. I find that look very
fetching but don't know why it works. Perhaps it is the pairing of classic
high-fashion garments with a touch of insouciance.
Regards, to you.
Stephen

Regards,
Stephen Ippolito

Perhaps the reason why the cardigan draped over the shoulders works is that it implies that someone helped place it there, and clearly a male partner who gently puts the garment on the female's shoulder.

I personally prefer the full assistance: helping the lady actually put on the jacket or coat. But in this modern era of borrowed femininity, I will settle for the "assisted" draped over the shoulder look.

And there is no doubt that Melania is feminine. Even her pantsuits showcase her (sexy) femininity.

The Flawless First Lady

The Conservative Treehouse updates us on the activities of POTUS, but rarely on FLOTUS, so here is his post today on Mrs. Trump herself, Melania, on a "First Lady's" mission to make America Great Again.

When I read TCT's blog post title for today: Melania Trump Liberty University Convocation and Town Hall Discussion on Opioid Crisis… I thought we would see a subdued Melania with less emphasis on her femaleness and more on her femininity coming across perhaps as a good aunt giving advice on her life experiences and how to try to stay on the right track.

And then I saw these photos:







Hillary wore her pantsuits, I'm sure, to cover her thick legs (calves especially). But what about wearing dresses and skirts which go down further than the knees? Not all the way down to the ankles like a 19th historical revival (which would not work anyway without the social and cultural revival of feminine modesty that the era practiced, and which would take a whole revolution to promote in our immodest times), but elegant dresses and skirts which go halfway down those "heavy" calves, which was Hillary's problem but certainly not Melania's? Many stores do carry such clothes and many can be elegant with the right combination of jacket and shoes.

I think Melania wears these thigh-hugging pants to show off her long legs, and to showcase her slim behind.

What does she think people look at when she crosses her legs as she sits down for the interview and exposes more thigh and upper-leg body?

Odd.

Serious conversation is lost and everything is focused on her, and specifically her body.

Maybe she just wants to look sexy?

Well yes, of course.

I googled "Melania Trump Liberty University Convocation and Town Hall Discussion on Opioid Crisis…" without quotations, and sure enough here is The Daily Caller who posts this more close-up photo of her (below) with her makeup masked face which he aptly titles: Melania Wows in Charcoal Grey Pant Suit During Trip to Liberty University, and gives us a rundown of Flotus' wardrobe:

Melania Trump absolutely shined Wednesday when she showed up wearing a striking charcoal grey pant suit during her trip to Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.

The first lady looked flawless as ever during a town hall meeting about the country’s opioid epidemic, as she took the stage in the long sleeve jacket and pants that she paired with a scoop neck black top. (RELATED: Ivanka Turns Heads In Gorgeous Yellow Plaid Skirt Suit)

She completed the fantastic look with loose hair and black and grey snakeskin high-heels.

How about this for Melania? A dress in brighter colors with print that is not too overpowering. Something elegant, serious and feminine.

I found it by googling "A mid-calf dress with long sleeves" (no quotes).

Maybe those desperate young men might just listen to her then.

Diversity in Writers: Will the Real Jeeves Please Stand?

The article below is from my Camera Lucida blog posted on December 7, 2005 (twelve years ago).

Then, I started to examine what multiculturalism meant to non-White Canadians (Americans, British etc.) and my views have remained exactly the same today as shows my article a couple of days ago Thanksgiving.

Note: The links to the Amazon.com book lists are not current. Ishiguro, Smith and Rushdie are prolific and have produced books through 2018, and they continue to write in the dystopian style they adopted early in their careers. I recommend changing the Amazon.com search by "publication date" to see their current activities, and the rave reviews all round, including:

- Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant, published in 2015:

Ishiguro has created a fantastical alternate reality in which, in spite of the extremity of its setting and because of its integrity and emotional truth, you believe unhesitatingly. - The Financial Times, February 2015

- Salman Rushdie's 2017 The Golden House, published in 2017:

The Golden House” has been billed by its publisher as Rushdie’s return to realism. Yet the New York City on offer is so gilded and remote that the novel reads like what one’s impressions would be if all one knew of it came from back issues of Vanity Fair magazine. - The New York Times, September 2017

- Zadie Smith's Feel Free:

“…You will have to take liberties, you will have to feel free to write as you like…even if it is irresponsible. - Zadiesmith.com

(Note: Rather than use "truth" as the target, Smith, like all dislocated people, who gravitate towards dystopia - and violence - choses "irresponsible" instead. She knows words and her word choice is not an error.)

All have won various prizes and perhaps the most prestigious is Ishiguro's Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017:

Kazuo Ishiguro
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2017
[...]
Prize motivation: "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world." - The Nobel Prize in Literature 2017

Jeeves of course died in 1975 (born in 1881), and his ghost did not write the 2018 listed books. Rather, they are contemporary reprints which probably do not do the aesthetic credit that the older versions did to his craft.

First edition
Author: P. G. Wodehouse
Publisher: George Newnes
Publication date: May 1919 [Source]

---

Diversity in Writers: Will the Real Jeeves Please Stand?

England has witnessed several years of non-English authors who keep winning literary prizes, or just literary acclaim. Zadie Smith was recently in the headlines, Salman Rushdie has managed to outlive his fatwa, and another less famous but prolific writer, Kazuo Ishiguro, has written yet another book from those fair British Isles.
I’ve read books by all three, even tried more than one of each. And all leave me less than enthralled, slightly confused, and struck by a lack of authenticity. I find their characters to be caricatures. Both Rushdie and Smith go for hyperbole, while Ishiguro goes for exactly the opposite.

I’m beginning to wonder if non-British writers, however much they were born on the Island, can really capture the spirit of the land.

“Remains of the Day” by Ishiguro has a gloomy, undecipherable, remorseful butler try to recapture something of what he’s lost during all those years of selfless service. Actually, I recant my observation about Ishiguro’s understatement. What could be more of a hyperbole than this?

Then there is P.G. Wodehouse, with the inimitable Jeeves. His adroit butler who really always does save the day, after a lot of scampers and near-disasters along the way. And he does get to have his day at the sea-side also, and quite frequently.

I think Wodehouse captured his character with affection as a butler who certainly is not going to be bossed around by any Lord! No remains for him to collect.

Sometimes I wonder; if you don’t have your full emotions invested in a place, how can you write positive things about it? Like Rushdie, Smith and Ishiguro, who seem to deny a possibility for a future in their books, and press on with their circular exaggerations trying to find meanings for themselves.

Ishiguro’s 2001 book “When we were orphans” is about an Englishman who mysteriously lost his parents as a young boy in Shanghai. He returns as a professional detective to solve that ultimate mystery. It reminds me of these writers, trying to find clues about their past by digging into words.

Ishiguro’s latest book forfeited the unapproachable Far East, and his ancestral home, for something even more alien. It seems like he’s completely given up on ‘his’ England. “Never let me go” is about a Utopia (or a dystopia) on cloning. No more real people, real places or real stories for Ishiguro in the advent of the 21st century.

Why doesn’t this progression of his thoughts and stories not surprise me?

Quote from an interview with Ishiguro on "When we were Orphans":

There's a certain kind of branded, packaged atmosphere of Shanghai: this exotic, mysterious, decadent place. The same in Remains of the Day. It was a case of manipulating certain stereotypical images of a certain kind of classical England. Butlers and tea and scones: it's not really about describing a world that you know well and firsthand. It's about describing stereotypes that exist in people's heads all around the world and manipulating them engagingly.

The Best of East and West

[Updated with links to Asma Arshad Mahmood's postings (KPA October 28, 2022). The original article was on November 2018. I recently discovered the title "Thanksgiving" was posted on Mahmood's website, with a link to my posting here on my long-running website Reclaiming Beauty: Saving Our Western Civilization. I am not sure why she posted it. Perhaps it was to show her followers that she IS indeed "home" in Canada, contrary to my]: 

Apart from the usual "Canada is multiculturalism" and "We're Canadians," non-White immigrants have spent their residence in Canada adapting Canada to the lands they left behind. They were never "home."  ] 

 

I am updating this article, with more current, more detailed information on this clever woman who has convinced the Mississaugan, and Canadian, community that she IS "home" here, even as she left her Pakistani home behind.

I contend that she never did, and that my assessment of four years ago was correct. If anything, Mahmood is even more "back home" in Pakistan than she was a few years ago. 

Here are my more recent posts on Mahmood, with some updated commentary.

The "Thanksgiving article is linked here (this webpage),  as well as directed via Mahmood's webpage.

1. Art Sabotage (November 9, 2021) - Article excerpt: 

a youngish girl slurping blood through her hand, while holding a goat (a lamb?) on the other.

After the initial horror - blood, and young animals - I realized that this is clearly a "Christian" theme of the Lamb of God, the sacrificial lamb of God, surrounded by a halo, which Mahmood has translated into her own fetish. And hers is a kid (a goat) not the sacrificial lamb that Abraham offered to God.]

2. Traumas and Multiculturalism (May 2, 2022) - Article excerpt:

Mahmood appears in [a] video, where she shockingly reveals how she herself was molested, by unidentified male family member, when she was also a very young girl.

This molestation was known by the family at large, including Abu's wife, but was kept hidden, and quiet, to prevent public humiliations of these seemingly upstanding members of the Pakistani community. 

I wrote of Mahomod's strange paintings, with unidentifiable figures, their faces muted and "hidden."

Surely, this is a reaction to her trauma.

And I wonder in what other ways this trauma manifests itself, besides her frenzied activities to bring "art" to Mississauga: the art and culture she left behind in the country that betrayed her.

This multi-culti depository that Canada has become brings us such people as Mahmood, whose inner turmoils we can only begin to fathom as they are (may be) revealed in discreet confessionals meant for minuscule audiences. I happened to be on of the tiny percentage who caught her words.

I was not wrong about my assessment of her paintings:

Mahmood's paintings are ephemeral sketches of barely-there people.

 

3. Asma Arshad Mahmood: Art Gallery of Mississauga Curator Contender (April 3, 2022) - Article Excerpt:

The Art Gallery of Mississauga has sent out a memo to advertise that they are looking for a new curator of contemporary art.

 

The Art Gallery of Mississauga has tried for years now to present the wishful thinking multiculturalism in its programming, and all it has really done is to showcase individual cultures. 

One would think by now that multiculturalism would really be that, multiculturalism: a blend of cultures.

Of course this is not possible. How do blend together Indian, Chinese, various African cultures, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, etc., etc.?

The fact is that multiculturalism is really appendages onto a historical, traditional culture of the country. There is no blending, but a tenuous coexistence.

There seems to be one contender for this position. 

 

The CBC recently interviewed Asma Arshad Mahmood (which aired in mid-March 2022). Mahmood curated a series of exhibitions which just wrapped at the Art Gallery of Mississauga. The interviewer introduces Mahmood as: "Celebrated Mississauga curator."

Mahmood's four-part exhibition which she titled "...till all are healed," is  on now at the AGM, and works in the series Flowing River, Lotus of Thanks are by local artists whom she asked to paint thanking frontline workers. These works were up for auction to raise money for the pandemic's frontline workers: "to both say a broader thanks and provide income for local artists." 

[...]

The majority of the entries, 20 of the 27 (74%), of the works exhibited were by South Asians, with two white women who have South Asian last names - and are South Asian by extension.

"Lotus of Thanks" is an odd choice for a title. But while Mahmood is Muslim, she interacts with the Indian subcontinent's general culture, where the lotus flower is important (here is a photo of her and her husband after the Hindu festival Holi). 

[...] 

 

So, Mahmood's affiliation to the lotus flower could be for a number of reasons, including to cleverly use its pronunciation to create her message: "Lots of Thanks." 

4. Asma Arshad Mahmood: Art Gallery of Mississauga Curator Contender Staking Out the Territory - (April 8, 2022) - Article Excerpt:

I went to the 2018 Fine Arts Auction in Mississauga, before the big auction gala (I wasn't willing to pay $80 just to attend). Square One was the locale where the AGM attempted to bring art to the masses (if you have $80, that is), but they cleverly had the works on display about a week before the event, and you could bid online.

I took photos of some works, and also downloaded all the artists' works from various sites (the AGM Facebook page, the auction's ticket purchase page, the auction site, etc.).

Mahmood presented her work Whispers in Theatre, and was also part of the literati that attended the gala.

The going price for Whispers in Theatre was $800-900, but it doesn't appear to have sold at the auction.

Whsipers in Theatre has that same ephemeral quality that I described in another of Mahmood's piece here as  "an ephemera, a wisp of unidentified/unidentifiable human forms."

But that is neither here nor there. Mahmood has been staking out her territory in Mississauga from way back. She was Board of Director of the Mississauga Arts Council in 2012, but her main activity has been to promote ethnic-based art and culture events which focus on her own background from the Indian sub-continent, going as far back as 2003. 

Mahmood is not new at this. And Mississauga's arts culture is part of her stake out.

5. Recent Developments: The Art Gallery of Mississauga's Annual Benefit Auction - From the Art Gallery of Mississauga's Facebook page:

From the AGM Facebook page:

 

LOT 08

ASMA MAHMOUD (KPA - Spelling?]

Water carriers of Sindh, 2018 Oil on paper

61 x 76.2 cm

Estimate: $800.00 CDN

Have your chance to bid on this piece at the Art Gallery of Mississauga's Annual Benefit Auction

October 26, 2022 | 6:30pm | Small Arms Inspection Building

Buy your tickets now at  bit.ly/AGM35 (link in bio)

 

The same "an ephemera, a wisp of unidentified/unidentifiable human forms," that I described another of Mahmood's work here (also linked to in post 4 above).

And another of the AGM's "...wishful thinking multiculturalism in its programming, and all it has really done is to showcase individual cultures." which I write in post 3 above, with link to article posted here).

This piece is especially evolved. There are no discernible faces, but blobs of oval/circles - eye-openings and niqabed women covering their mouths and noses.

This is certainly part of the reason that Mahmood revived this 4-year-old piece for this auction, since Mississauga's multi-culti residents are all about covering up for this fake-demic, and why not through "art?"

The niqab, which these women are certainly wearing, is described thus:

...a veil for covering the hair and face except for the eyes that is worn by some Muslim women [Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary]

And the Sindh (administrative unit) in Pakistan:

...the historical home to the Sindhi people is the second most populated administrative unit of Pakistan after Punjab...Sindh is known as Bab-ul-Islam (the gateway of Islam), as it saw the first spread of Islam into South Asia. It has...its roots in one of the world's oldest civilizations, the Indus Valley Civilisation...

Sindh is endowed with coastal access, and is a major centre of economic activity in Pakistan. Karachi, the country's largest city at the southwestern tip of Sindh, is the main financial hub of the country as well one of the most populous cities in the world and has both the country's largest airport and largest seaport. [Source: Wikivoyage]

Mahmood doesn't shy away from updating her Facebook and Twitter pages with the various Islamic holidays that she celebrates (although, with the multi-culti magnanimity of one who have nothing to lose (and has indeed gained a lot) she will reference Christmas with a shiny Christmas Tree and "Happy Holidays." Never Easter, though, that unconditional Christian event. How do you Happy Holidays the cross? Once in a while, the paint-splashing Diwali Hindu holiday appears on her tweets.

And Mahmood is serious about Islam.

Here, in the final installment of this update (below), I discuss Mahmood's connections with her native Pakistan, and where she cleverly uses her influence (it is not as extensive as she and media/cultural outlets make out to be), to program events and collaborations with Pakistan.

This was posted in Mahmood's Facebook page on October 12, 2022:

Call For Applications:

BNU MDSVAD, in collaboration with Canadian Community Arts Initiative, presents Be(Coming) the Museum, a research-based project that aims to build stronger relationships between creative practitioners and museums in Pakistan. The project is envisioned as a catalyst to inspire emerging artists to build a sense of connection with museums and their historical collections of art and artifacts.

We will also consider the question, "What is the museum of the future?"

Seminar Dates: 5th and 6th November 2022

Deadline to Apply: 26th October 2022

This open call is open to emerging creative practitioners across Pakistan.

For full application details: Link in Bio

Project Partners: BNU SVAD, CCAI, Lord Cultural Resources and Lahore Museum.

This project is lead by @asmamahmood and @shellybahl

About the institutions cited in this announcement:

- Lord Cultural Resources [link]:

Lord Cultural Resources is the global practice leader in cultural sector planning. Since 1981, we have helped to create, plan, and operate cultural spaces and places in more than 460 cities, in 57 countries and six continents. [Source: Lord.ca]

Gail Dexter Lord...co-founded Lord Cultural Resources with her husband Barry Lord in 1981. [Source - Gail Lord LinkedIn]  

Lord Cultural Resources is a Canadian organization, but they are opaque about their financial arrangements. My conclusion is that museums and other cultural organizations obtain governmental funds, which they then use to pay for the museum consultations services provided by Lord Cultural Resources.
- Canadian Community Arts Initiative [link]:
The clever (or finely tuned "multiculturalist") Mahmood the Canadian Cultural Arts Initiative's Board Member and Senior Artistic Director where she "represents the organization on various international forums."

Canadian Community Arts Initiative regularly presents visual arts, literary, dance, theatre, film and other artistic events for the enjoyment and education of the community. CCAI regularly collaborates with artists and organizations to support artistic activities in and around Mississauga and GTA. 

A more interesting description is [link]:

CCAI is a not for profit organization registered under the laws of the province of Ontario to promote effective role of arts and artists in Canadian community.

 

And especially this part:

CCAI aims to enhance the community's awareness of the many arts and cultural practices in Canada and encourages expansion of the arts by creating opportunities for practicing local artists.

 

What does "local artists" mean? What are "the many arts and cultural practices in Canada"?

These are code words for "multiculturalism."  Mahmood uses her Pakistani influence in Canada, as well as expanding it ("expansion" from her CCAI description) to her native Pakistan. Conveniently, she identifies herself as Canadian/Pakistani. But Pakistan is the core of her activities.

   

And all this leads to:

- BNU MDSVAD - Beaconhouse National University Mariam Dawood School of Visual Arts & Design - Lahore Pakistan, Mahmood's current, perhaps most important, project in Pakistan (and in Canada), where a variety of Canadian monies are used to fund a project, a NATIONAL, Pakistani, project, in Lahore Pakistan.

This might yet be Mahmood's Swan Song. I thought previously she was vying for the AGM's director position in the future. But I doubt it. She is too old to scuffle with the multi-culti-literati of Mississauga, young or youngish hyphenated-Canadians; Arabs, Chinese, Blacks, and her fellow non-Muslim Indians.

She has come full circle, getting the best of all worlds: living in a Western society, with all its moneys, expertise, modern systems, and creativity, to shuttle back and forth to her native Pakistan to assist in building its institutions. All at her schedule, and all fees paid.

Lahore Museum, Lahore, Pakistan

This image is also on the Facebook page "Asma Mahmood" which Mahmood has used for the poster to announce the "open call" for applicants for this grant. 

-----------------------

This is the original article posted here, as well as linked to via Asmamahmood.com

Apart from the usual "Canada is multiculturalism" and "We're Canadians," non-White immigrants have spent their residence in Canada adapting Canada to the lands they left behind. They were never "home."

And, these many years later, they realize that they have FAILED in building this "home."

So what are they going to do about it?

Here is a "South Asian" couple which lives a seemingly "westernized" life in the Mississauga area. But they never mentioned the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday this past October 8th on their otherwise prolific Facebook sites.


Arshad and Asma Mahmood
Celebration Square, before of the Mississauga City Hall
TD (Toronto Dominion Bank) Mosaic Outdoor Festival, August 2018
Posted in Facebook

The couple posts extensively on Mosaic - The South Asian Festival of Mississauga, and in the photo above, they are in front of Mississauga's City Hall, before a full crowd which came out for the Mosaic festival on the Celebration Square mall, in August 2018.

The Mosaic Festival of Mississauga, with a major sponsorship by the Toronto Dominion Bank of Canada,

brings together South Asian and Fusion dance, music, and art performances in a mosaic of culture and talent. The two-day event features both local and international acts...

Here's what Arshad Mahmood posted this past October 8 (Thanksgiving):


And Asma Mahmood, an artist who participated in the April 2018 Fine Art Auction by The Art Gallery of Mississauga, and not as prolific a Facebook poster as her husband, also made no mention of Thanksgiving. But she did "update" her Facebook photo a couple of days later, on October 11.




Asma Mahmood
Whispers in theatre, 2018
Acrylic on canvas board
29.9 ins x 24 ins 76 cms x 61 cms
Auction work
Estimate: $800–900

Below is an excerpt from an interview in View the Vibe of the couple, and how they founded the Mosaic festival in 2006.

This year's event took place on August 3 and August 4, 2018

...Arshad and Asma Mahmood decided it was high time Mississauga had more high-profile arts and cultural events that reflected the backgrounds and interests of the city’s inhabitants. Along with a group of like minded friends they established the Canadian Community Arts Initiative (CCAI), and, soon after, Mosaic, a SouthAsian multidisciplinary arts festival, was born [in 2006].
[Source: Tastemakers: Ashad and Asma Mahmood, View the Vibe Magazine, July 21, 2014

From TD Mosaic web page:

Mosaic is supported by the City of Mississauga and has received funding from Department of Canadian Heritage, Ontario Trillium Foundation, Province of Ontario, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Tourism.

Beauty and Aesthetics Matter Quite a Bit

Church of the Holy Innocents
128 West 37th Street
New York

---

Ms. Asrat,

I really enjoy your blog. It’s changed how I think and that doesn’t happen
every day. I’ve begun drawing and pl[a]ying music again after a long hiatus
because you’ve convinced me that beauty and aesthetics do matter, and they
matter quite a bit. I’ve been back in school for civil engineering for a
year now, I was hoping to find out what makes these people tick, these
people who make these hideous things, and to see if there was anything I
could do about it.

[...]

Have you been to a traditional Latin high mass at the Church of the Holy
Innocents in Midtown Manhattan?

Thanks for making so much grist for the mill,

D...

------------

Dear D...

Thanks so much for your encouraging words. Yes beauty and aesthetics matter quite a bit!

[...]

I haven't been to the Church of the Holy Innocents, although I am sure I have walked past it. I'm sure I remember seeing the beautiful exterior and walking up to have a closer look. And the name sounds very familiar.

[...]

Keep up the studies. Despite all the ugly buildings, there is a wealth of information available through schools and libraries, and we can make our own creations. Don't be discouraged by the direction your professors will undoubtedly take, which is to teach you how to build those ugly buildings (you might even get some Fs!). But once you're done, you can forge ahead and build those beautiful buildings.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Kidist

Non-Festive Copper

Simons Department Store, Mississauga
Main Entrance With Christmas Decorations
[Photo By: KPA]

The Square One Mall is slowly getting its X-Mas decorations up. So far, there is plenty of gold and yellow and red and green.

But there is a trend in dark copper.

I've never seen a full-on copper only decoration. Even when mixed with other metallic colors, it is usually very subdued (and minimal), and with a tint of gold rather than the red I'm seeing.

Here's someone who purposefully decorated in copper, but toned it down wth gold and silver.


Why the dark copper in Simons' display window? And notice the burgundy background, and the mannequins in non-festive drab metal grey, lusterless white, and black.

The contemporary world started off by denouncing Christmas ("holiday" became the go-to word). But now Christmas is back.You cannot change the calendar. December 25 is still Christmas. But what contemporary culture has done is to remove as much of the religious and christian celebration that surrounds Christmas to make it into another event, another "holiday," on the calendar.

And who can refuse a glass of eggnog, or a twinkling Christmas tree, or carols about snow and sleighs (or even baby Jesus)?

But the importance of Christmas is still viscerally felt, and it is palpable wherever we go. Christ doesn't disappear by a wave of a wand (or the ordinance of City Hall). We will feel his presence even if the mall decides to give us dark copper instead of shining gold.

And besides, not ALL the mall is doom and gloom. There are still plenty of places to get the spirit of the holiday. And a beautiful carol does sneak through the censors and programmers, and we can hear "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" on the speakers, which we can hum to as we go through shops drinking a Starbucks eggnog latte.

It came upon a midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold:
“Peace on the earth, goodwill to men,
From heaven’s all-gracious King.”
The world in solemn stillness lay,
To hear the angels sing.

Still through the cloven skies they come,
With peaceful wings unfurled,
And still their heavenly music floats
O’er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains,
They bend on hovering wing,
And ever o’er its Babel sounds
The blessèd angels sing.

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.

And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing!

For lo!, the days are hastening on,
By prophet bards foretold,
When with the ever-circling years
Comes round the age of gold
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world give back the song
Which now the angels sing.

Clock Tower

Mississauga City Hall Clock Tower
(9am November 20, 2018)
[Photo By: KPA]

Entry Into Winter

Glass wall at the entrance to the Jubilee Garden, Mississauga
November 20, 2018
[Photo By: KPA]

Winter Entrance

Glass wall at the entrance to the Jubilee Garden, Mississauga
November, 20 2018
[Photo By: KPA]

"Help Ethiopia in her renaissance"

Addis Ababa

An email I sent to my brother who is now visiting Ethiopia along with my parents:

M---, you should observe and study very carefully what the Chinese are up to. Their economy is on shaky grounds. They are using Ethiopia as launching ground for their cheap labour and cheap manufacturing plans into the African continent. They are militarily threatening nearby Asian countries which don't follow their lead. We mustn't let Ethiopia, and its intelligent and industrious people, become one of the "satellite" countries from where they build their African manufacturing and geopolitical base.

Here in Mississauga (and of course in Toronto) they have their "billionaires" (from cheap goods manufactured in countries like Ethiopia) invest in the condo real estate market at million-dollar auctions, and thereby artificially skewing (up) housing prices.

There are other allies Ethiopia can pursue and establish: Germans, French, Americans, Canadians. The possibilities are endless.

Help Ethiopia in her renaissance.

K---

French Patisserie

I finished baking these late last night. It didn't take long: about 20 minutes for preparation and another 15 for baking. They are supposed to be turnovers but I can't quite get the shape right so I just "turn over" the pastry to adequately cover the mixture inside.

And the inside is:
- Thinly sliced pears
- Lindt hazelnut chocolate
- Liqueur St-Germain, an elderflower liqueur from France.
I got a 50ml bottle at the liquor store for about $5. They often put items at 50-60% sale which they want to get rid off (sitting in their stock room for too long?) In any case it has a slightly pear/citrusy taste.
- The juice of one clementine
- Sugar

I mixed the pears, clementine juice, two teaspoons of the liquor and the chocolate and the sugar in a bowl and heated the mixture for about 1 minute in the microwave.

I mixed the heated mixture well and put about a tablespoon in a triangular piece of puff pastry and "turned over" the dough to cover the mixture. Then into the oven for 15 minutes (until golden brown).

The house smells like a French patisserie!

And the pastry? Delicious!