"There Will Be Some Consolation" - Making Dreams Come True: Daffodil Place Opens Its Doors

from VOCM

Doors are Open at Daffodil Place
June 12, 2009

Hundreds turned out for the grand opening of Daffodil Place. The building contains 24 suites, conference rooms and office space that was made possible through an agressive $7 million fundraising campaign, which saw donations from Steele Communications, the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, community groups, and individuals from all across the province. Chair of the Daffodil Place Campaign, John Steele gave Premier Danny Williams a personal tour of the facility which is warm, cozy and welcoming. Steele says that after the untimely passing of Ken Ash and Paul Magee, two friends and co-workers, the campaign was very personal for him. Williams on viewing the facility said it is five star all the way. The Chair of the Daffodil Campaign, John Steele became emotional when talking about why he became part of the Daffodil Place Campaign. He says he lost two good friends and co-workers, Ken Ash and Paul Magee in their 40's, and he was 41 when approached to get involved in the Daffodil Place Campaign.  He says that motivated him to do what he could. Premier Danny Williams says the provincial government contributed $500,000 to the campaign, and has introduced other initiatives to prevent and treat cancer in the province. Williams says government has enhanced two cancer care centres in central Newfoundland, and expanded the cervical and breast screening programs in the province. He says government has also invested in 12 new digital mammography units across the province

Pictures of the event can be seen here.

And because where Alan Doyle belongs - one of several places the Multi-faceted Man belongs - is in his rightful place in the midst of any celebration of the spectacular success of the Daffodil Place Campaign Cabinet, because his own diligent efforts played a continuing role in the reached-our-goal-a-full-year-ahead-of-schedule achievement of that spectacular success, here are two videos from last summer's Typically Canadian Tribute Tour ceremony on the steps of the Confederation Building in St. John's, honouring the completion of the TC cross-country bike ride to raise funds for and awareness of several charitable causes, including Newfoundland & Labrador's Daffodil Place.

This first (recently-flipped) video is even sweeter than it is short, a comment (one I don't agree with) inspired by specific geography: Alan had been sitting directly behind the bicyle-shorts-clad fellows while they made their own initial comments.

And then Alan got to the heart of the matter, including one particularly powerful moment when he directs his audience to look across town from the Confederation Building steps over to the construction site that is the dream Daffodil Place taking shape before our eyes.

On that day, when the Typically Canadian bicyclists presented Alan with his very own yellow jersey in honour of his own fundraising efforts on behalf of Daffodil Place, I wished for arms long enough to hug them all. Out of all the many opportunities Alan has given those who love hinm to be proud of him, this one ranks near the very top of the list.

This is the face - and what a dear face it is - of the man who, along with the other members of the fundaising committee, worked long and hard and diligently to turn the dream into a reality.

Today, because of all that hard work and diligent determination - because of hope and faith and belief that never wavered - the dream comes true.

Very well done, indeed. Danny said it best: Five star all the way.

(If I catch any more official video news footage and/or text articles of today's Grand Opening, I'll add it in here later - post-game, for sure - and the original blog entry for the day of the Typically Canadian ceremony can be found here)

Comments

[Ellen]

Yay Alan! Yay other members of the committee! Yay Newfoundland! What a great story and what a great man. <3 <3 <3

Thank YOU for sharing this with all of us who far away in body but there in heart. Just like Alan.

Ellen

[Annie]

*applauds loudly* Daffodill Place could wind up being what Alan's the most proud of out of all the good things he's done. It will do a whole lot of good for a whole lot of people in the years ahead. Too bad Alan couldn't have been there for the big opening, but he was there when it counted to make it happen. I like how you "included" him in the festivities. :-)

These are the stories that ought to get covered in so called entertainment news. It's always the dumb stuff and it should be this kid of stuff instead.

Annie

PS The expression on Alan's face in the picture is adorable.

[Laura]

Way to go, Sir Alan. He's gonna be rembered for this like how's he remembered for the music. If you must miss the grand opening of the project you've been working for a couple of years, missing it cause you're in England shooting a bookoo bucks flick with Russell Crowe and Kate Blanchett is a pretty good reason. :P

Meh about the GBS site. There's jerks pecking away at Sean for having an opinion of his own over there right now. I'll give gbs.com this much, the jerks don't get a rise out of anybody else anymore. The same old stupid stuff gets said but fans who are still there don't rise to the bait with an exception of one or two. That's better than it used to be but it's kinda sad if its as good as it gets dontcha think?

Didja hear about Trent Reznor, the guy from NIN? http://forum.nin.com/bb/read.php?9,731489 Ammunition for haters & Idiots rule. Whoa. Freakin fucked up fans everywhere, poor guy found out the hard way.

The front rows at his shows are gonna be oodles of fun now with him and the plump metal sludgers and the truest bluest fans. I guess its bad everywhere fanwise. :( Daffodil Place puts it back into perspective where the real world is and where it isn't.

L.

[Lynda]

Several others sent me that same link, Laura. I seem to have become a bit of a clearinghouse for Bad Fan Behaviour stories and examples.

I spent some time going back through the posts on NIN.com and over at Metal Sludge (I've met a few Sludge "Ho Board" posters over the years - they've been an interesting source of info on the topic of bimbodom), and "Whoa" describes it pretty well for me too, not so much in terms of behaviour that's beyond and below what's customary in context, but more so because of how Trent Reznor's committed what are probably the two biggest mistakes he could possibly make.

First, he let the assholes who live for doing whatever they have to do in order to get some kind of notice from him (from any celebrity) get just that and therefore "win"...he let them get to him. Second, and actually worse for his sake, he let them know it. It's like letting the sharks get scent of your blood; they'll get even more relentless now.

You just can't do that in his business, not without dragging yourself (and your loved ones) through so much unnecessary shit. Ask me how I know that, how I learned my own lower-level lesson about that. I would have thought Trent had learned those lessons even better and certainly longer ago.

As best as I can tell, in just about every fan group there's a subset of people who are going to do anything they can to make everything all be about themselves, regardless of what method they have to use in the attempt to steal the spotlight from where it belongs. If they can get themselves sufficient notice and attention by sucking up and being Bestest Fans, that'll do. But if the only way they can have a hope of any spotlight at all shining their way is to pour hate and abuse on the object of their obsession...that's just what they'll do. In spades.

Sounds like Trent's gotten himself way too entangled in a festering pack of "I'll Abuse You Into Noticing Me" haters. He should have a chat with Russell, who has a whole pack of his own hyenas.

At its worst, these twisted antifans defy comprehension by the sane. They claim (strenuously and stridently) to loathe the object of their obsession, they go on and on ripping and tearing at him or her, but at all times they're hoping and longing to hate "good" enough to be noticed by the person they insist they can't stand.

And if their best worst efforts aren't getting them that attention, they just start creating it in their minds - they become absolutely convinced that Russell (or Trent or whoever) is secretly lurking online and reading every single nasty thing they say, which gives them all the more motivation to keep on saying it, as well as to keep bragging about how this "horrible person" is as obsessed with them as they are with him.

To volitionally open yourself up to that kind of fucked-up person via "social interaction" on a message board or a Twitter account isn't all that comprehensible either, especially when it comes to someone you'd expect to be a bit more savvy about how the darker side of fandom - as well as of internet anonymity - works. I feel inexcusably stunned for being a clueless as I was to such unpleasantries, but I sure was forced to learn some hard lessons about how crazy and delusional and self-obsessed some can be. And I'm just a nobody, collateral damage at best. You'd think a fellow who's been on fandom's front lines - and in its target hairs - for as long as Trent Reznor has would have learned long ago not to let that shit get to him and, most of all, never to let it show when/if it does.

Several people who sent the links (thanks, to all) suggested it would be good material for a full blog entry. Part of me agrees - it especially goes well with a very powerful passage about the online experience that I recently came across in the opening pages of the book I'm reading now, Dirt Music - this is, after all, part and parcel of a sizeable portion what I've been around for the past seven years and if my own personal perspective still might not rise to the level of "unique," it is at least not run of the mill. I've got some pretty damn interesting (in the most ambivalent sense of that word) stories to tell about what I've seen and heard and experienced over those years.

But another part of me is hesitant, the same part that's recently come to ask tough questions about which topics are beneficial to those who matter to me and which might be much less so. No way do those stories get told at the expense - even the smallest expense - of someone I care about.

For that matter, speaking purely pragmatically, there's a question about whether anyone (or enough anyone's) really wants to look closely and unflinchingly at the fundamental components and assumptions of fandom in general. Especially since nearly everyone is, has been, or will be "a fan" at some point in their lives.

Everybody loves the stories about fans who climb in through the celebrity's bedroom window or dig through their trash because that's so cracked it's removed from nearly all listeners' experiences (and consciences). That's what makes it safe to laugh at and roll your eyes in response to. But how many people want to go eyeball-to-eyeball with the full impact and implications of the kind of stuff they themselves have done and/or the stuff they know they could wind up doing, given the right circumstances? The stuff that makes their own consciences cringe.

Then there's the larger matter of unbalanced perspective. I've been thinking about this one a lot lately. Just for the sake of argument, assume that, on average, 15% of the members of any fan group are cracked, 10% of those more or less harmlessly cracked and 5% of them malevolently so. Of the remaining 85% of the whole fan group, assume (again, just for the sake of argument) that another 15% are basically decent people for whom the effect of too much unaccustomed booze and/or the effect of celebrity proximity (or just celebrity notice) and/or the safety of internet anonymity results in them behaving in ways they'd never dream of acting/dare to act at work or home or school.

By those assumptions, that's less than a third of any given group of people at all likely to be the ones acting like fools or jerks or assholes, which means two thirds would be acting like reasonable, good folks. Not such bad odds, except for issues of distribution, or concentration of a particular population.

At shows - and before shows and after shows - the 15% of the cracked ones and the 15% who have fallen under the influence of Temporary Fan Insanity are the ones most likely to be as close to the "prize" as they can get. Which is not at all the same as saying that all who are equally close to the performers are part of that suspect 30%. What it is saying is that if that 15%, or that 30%, winds up being something like 80% of who a person sees and hears and encounters...then that person is getting an unbalanced perspective of the overall group.

Now that's just my own perspective, and that's even with the advantage I have of continuing to meet all kinds of people as I travel and go to shows. It's the perspective of Nobody, of someone who is not relentlessly pursued by and pressured by the most determined of the 15% (or the 30%) - the ones who are seek attention and notice like some self-validating trophy. How balanced a perspective is any person so pursued and pressured likely to wind up having after years and years and years?

Trent Reznor is dead right about the haters and the idiots. I just hope he never loses sight of the remaining 70% of good people. Same for all who have to deal with such shit for a living. And I hope I never lose sight of them either, especially since that would mean losing sight of some of the people I care most about.

And maybe when (if) the day comes when I get to a point where there's more balance in my own perspective, and most of all if there's ever a way to do it without doing any harm at all (and ideally even benefitting) the dear and the cared-about, I might take a chance on there being someone interested in hearing those stories.

That's probably it from me about this, except to agree with you that such fundamental realities as Daffodil Place - both the need for its existence and the kindness and generosity that have made it happen - do put such utter wastes of time and energy into their proper context. You're right again about Alan's having good reason to miss the big grand opening: The qualities that made Alan such an effective and successful fundraiser for Daffodil Place are the same ones that have now led him on his wonderful detour to this next grand adventure. He was being the man he is then, and he is being the man he is now. Always Alan, and who could possibly want him to be any other way?

[For clarity's sake, I should point out that the next topic refers back to a discussion in the comments on the prior entry] Maybe this really is as good as it gets with message boards. It's certainly better than it was, better than it still is in other places. Whatever the underlying reason, for the most part, people don't fight anymore. Someone says something argumentative - as in the case of what Sean wrote, those who can't or won't see the difference between talking about Americans (of whom many are great people...as Sean would surely know, seeing as how he married one) and America (which has, by nearly everyone's admission, indeed beein pooping whenever and wherever it wanted to for the past eight years, for sure) - others pretty much just let it go, and so it dies off instead of dragging on and on.

Yes, it means issues of substance rarely get discussed there, but it's a promotional website for a band - why should matters of substance need to be discussed there in the first place? I made the same mistake and it took me forever to get it - if it does not benefit the band, what's the point of it being on the band's official site?

Now that they have their own blogs going, that is enough to show that these are intelligent, thoughtful, real men. How the message board comes across is no longer any kind of reflection on them or even on the overall fan group. It's just the fans who choose to use the message board, and if they're OK with it and nobody's getting trashed, that doesn't seem like such a bad outcome to me. It could certainly be much worse. Just ask Trent Reznor.

Annie, I love the look on his face too. Such a sweet face. To be part of the lasting legacy of Daffodil Place is quite the honour, well-earned and well done. What you said applies to all news coverage, and the day more people want this kind of coverage instead of all the gossip, rumour, fake scandal, lies, and assorted bullshit is the day it will happen.

No way was Alan not going to "be there" when I wrote about Daffodil Place. He ran a great race along with all the others; he belonged at the finish line and in the Winner's Circle. I've been saving those flipped videos ever since I found out he couldn't be at the grand opening. It's not like being there in the flesh, but he sure was there in mind and heart.

Ellen, you are very welcome. I am always glad to share.

[Sara]

Lynda,

Have you ever thought of writing a book of your own? You are a gifted and thoughtful writer, and you often bring up points that never occurred to me (one of the many reasons I follow this blog; another is I just like to look at videos of the band, especially Alan, so shoot me), plus you have all these experiences and memories that many of us don't have. I for one would be interested in hearing whatever you wanted to say that you felt you could in conscience say. And I'm looking forward to seeing you in Vancouver, B.C.!