o is for otta-otta wa-wa

there really isn't enough internet ink to describe my "weekend" in ottawa. i was there for a mennonite central committee student seminar - pursuing security in an insecure world.

aside from the formal agenda, there was time to eat sushi with heather, look for a dress for corina's wedding (no luck!), gawk at ice sculptures, try my first beavertail, enjoy a good steak, and catch up with mel for the first time in nearly two years! the weekend was jam-packed and wonderful, apart from snow bullets, puddles, bitter wind, and the fact that the tv in our room stopped working after i watched american's best dance crew.

but back to the seminar... it covered food security, poverty in canada, principles of non-violence, and restorative justice. we ate butter chicken and shawarma and chatted about khadr, fair trade, and obamamania. i was offended by the candy sold at the war museum's gift shop and the elevator broke while we were in the peace tower on parliament hill. there was a lot in there to think about, but i'll just share three:

one: a long trek through the snow led us to the war museum, where we wandered independently, at our own pace. on the way to the four galleries, there's a display of photographs depicting battlefields from the first world war. they're downright brilliant - the colours, the clarity, the composition. and this deeply disturbed me. when i take photos of nancy, kevin, michael, and pat, they often don't turn out very well. it's hard to capture on (digital) film the beauty i see in my friends at l'arche, because that beauty isn't always aesthetic. by contrast, these battlefields - the sites of countless bloody, torturous deaths - were absolutely, even devastatingly, gorgeous. the irony was almost palpable.

two: finally, something occurred to me at the war museum as well as during the tour of parliament, after we'd spent a little time in the memorial chamber. my thought was, is there room for expansion? has the museum set aside space for a gallery devoted to future wars? where will the names of the 108 soldiers who have died in afghanistan go?

there's something deeply disturbing about the need to make room for reminders of future death and devestation. that question's been haunting me. maybe in a good way.

three: the last gallery in the museum is a catch-all, covering everything since world war ii. one creative display featured music videos of some songs addressing the cold war: genesis, u2, elton john, the scorpions, and so on. who knew that the final countdown was not so much about magic tricks as it was about mutually assured destruction? (wait... given gob's mad skillz, those two might not be so different.)



another of the songs on the list was nena's 99 luftballoons. the (english) lyrics are super - all the more so if you've read the backstory.