A war of attrition and punitive regulation

Thomas Pawlick's The War in the Country is an important book, despite its flaws. In fact, it's an inspiring book, and I find myself compelled to blog about it.

I also find myself wanting to follow his suggestion that more urbanites should join the National Farmers Union (if they're Canadians). Associate membership is only $50 per year.

The Globe and Mail's reviewer didn't much care for the book, and there's no doubt it's flawed - perhaps even deeply flawed. If I, as an editor, had seen this book as a draft, my advice to Pawlick would have been to come back to me with a second draft in which he extrapolated more from his Eastern Ontario rural base (Belleville to Ottawa, basically), paraphrased his conversations and actually told the story himself rather than quoting the individuals he interviewed at such great length, while providing some real figures on how the war in the country is going on everywhere rather than leave readers with the impression that it's happening primarily in Eastern Ontario. An appendix with that information would have been nice.

But essentially this is nitpicking. I heard Pawlick interviewed on CBC radio's The Current and was interested enough by what he said to look for The War in the Country. One of the reasons I recently relocated to Lethbridge, AB, was because of what a friend said to me about the city (pop. approx 85,000): "It's the centre of a farming community, not an oil and gas exploration and development community."

It's not that I don't think we need energy as well as food - it's just that, of the two, food is more important. The Inuit have survived without central heating for centuries, after all, and if we had to, us non-Inuit could too, with or without technical fibres.

In the last couple of years, the world's population balance has tipped from predominantly rural to predominantly urban, and much of the focus of Pawlick's book is the disconnect we experience with the food we eat. He points out that most people are now two generations removed from ancestors who actually tilled the fields or raised livestock. What's truly scary about this is that most urban dwellers don't have the faintest idea where - or how - the food they eat is produced.

There are, of course, exceptions. Local farmers' markets are in vogue, and some of them are huge. I used to love, in the early 90s, wandering through Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto during the summer and just browsing through the wondrous things on offer at the farmers' market there, returning at lunchtime or after work to make some purchases. The 100-mile diet and the (buy) and eat local movements have driven awareness of what we're putting on our plates and in our mouths. I'm encouraged to hear people in large cities like Calgary say things like, 'you know, I don't want to eat fresh peaches in January - I think that's wrong.'

There's lots of information in Pawlick's book that should make you stop and think: statistics on how the actual nutritional content of meat in particular has declined; an explanation that makes sense of the fact that when you eat an animal raised on corn, you are basically eating corn - whether you want to or not; an analysis of factory farming and the quota system, both of which represent serious barriers to the survival of small farmers - and the fact that invariably, smaller farms truly are more productive, more efficient, and far more eco-friendly than larger ones. That shouldn't really have been a surprise to me - when I visited a privately managed woodlot in Wisconsin a few years ago I realized that of course someone who has to make the income from the trees he's harvesting last at least his own lifetime is going to be a better steward of the forest than a multinational who can afford to move on to the next stand after clear cutting this one.

But perhaps the single most chilling feature of The War in the Country is Pawlick's description of the way the relentless drive to factory farming and the onerous regulations imposed on small farmers is driving not only them out of business, but is also killing small businesses in towns that have traditionally serviced rural areas. And he's right - it's hard not to believe it isn't the result of deliberate implementation of federal and provincial government policies concocted as a result of lobbying by agribusinesses. The question is - what are we going to do about it?

When heartbreak surfaces: Lisa Moore's February

Daughter, sister, lover, wife, mother, widow, grandmother, lover, wife – the phases of female life cycle rapidly in Lisa Moore’s February, the story of Helen O’Mara, whose husband Cal is killed when the offshore oil rig Ocean Ranger sinks off the coast of Newfoundland in 1982, leaving her with three children, pregnant with their fourth.

The novel weaves back and forth in time between 2008 and the late 1970s, from the time Helen first met and married Cal to her current life as a grandmother of two, running a dressmaking business and having finally achieved peace of a sort. There is still gnawing grief over what could have been, anger at the fact that she was denied closure since her husband’s body was never recovered, and a yearning for what could have been in an alternate universe, a universe in which men don’t leave home to take dangerous jobs to support their growing families, a world where unemployment isn’t systemic and the struggle to survive emotionally and economically doesn’t always seem epic.

Several years ago (I think it was in July 2002) I attended an amazing seminar that was part of Simon Fraser University’s Summer Publishing Workshop. Six authors and six critics formed the panel, talking mainly about the trend to – and redefinition of - historical fiction as a genre. No longer merely bodice rippers or period romance novels, authors like Wayne Johnston, Michael Crummey, Guy Vanderhaeghe and Jack Hodgins had all recently published works of historical fiction.

That seminar was my introduction to Lisa Moore and her work. She told a charming story about the response she’d received to her second collection of short stories, Open. She said that one of the stories in the collection dealt with a philandering husband. And that after Open was published, her own husband had been upbraided on more than one occasion at the mall in St. John’s, Nfld., for being unfaithful to her, by readers who couldn’t – or wouldn’t – believe that art wasn’t thinly disguised life with only the names changed. So I leapt at the chance to read February when House of Anansi offered advance review copies (publication date is June 27, 2009) on Twitter.

Moore is a force to be reckoned with on the literary scene – a writer who has by no means reached the peak of her literary abilities and who continues to grow from book to book. I hear echoes of many other women writers in her work: A.S. Byatt, Fay Weldon, Margaret Atwood, Carol Shields (Republic of Love and Unless), Anita Brookner, the two Janes (Hamilton and Smiley), a touch of Sue Miller (The Good Mother) and, if not Sylvia Plath, then certainly Anne Sexton. This passage immediately reminded me of Sexton’s poem “Clothes,” and its inimitable line about being still ‘sixteen in the pants.’

She watches Barry’s thumb press the caulking into the crack and she thinks again the thing every adult woman thinks of herself—that she is still her sixteen-year-old self.

It is not a thought. Helen becomes sixteen; she is sixteen: the shyness and wonder. It comes over her briefly. And then it is gone. She is forty-nine, fifty, she is fifty-two. Fifty-six. The world has betrayed her, arthritis in her wrists.

How deeply she craves to be touched. Because what follows not being touched, Helen has discovered, is more of the same—not being touched. And what follows a lack of touching is the dirtiest secret of all, the most profane: forgetting to want it.

You forget, she thinks. You forget so deeply, desire is obliterated. A profound and altering chill befalls.

The only cure is to chant: I want, I want.

I also see Moore writing in very much the same vein as Roddy Doyle in his Barrytown Trilogy (The Snapper, The Van, The Commitments). One of the responses to her first novel, Alligator, was surprise that St. John’s was portrayed as a metropolis with its share of grit, including vandalism, eco-terrorism, and infiltration by the Russian mafia rather than the happenstance capital of a province that specializes in quaint. More than anything, Moore’s Helen O’Mara is a woman who endures. In the face of blinding, unexpected grief, she concludes her role is to be there for her children – and that part of being there means teaching them that life is tough. By the time she’s a grandparent, after the sheer routine of 25 years of getting on with it, putting one foot in front of the other whether she wants to or not – her style has changed, and she finds herself wanting to indulge and pamper her grandchildren.

Moore was interviewed briefly on Canada AM this morning. During the interview she spoke of how little had been written about the sinking of the Ocean Ranger, what a closed and unknowable environment it was, particularly to women. There were no women working on the rig that was declared ‘unsinkable’ and few visits from anyone not working on the rig were allowed due to the potential for industrial espionage. Not many of the bodies were recovered, and the lack of closure that resulted means the event is still alive for Newfoundlanders who lost loved ones. “The heartbreak comes to the surface,” when it’s mentioned, Moore said.

As long ago as Open, Moore’s verbal dexterity was evident. (“A woman with a toddler in a convenience store during a hold-up. I am an obdurate subplot, stubbornly present. How did I get here?” from “Natural Parents.”)

She’s only getting better, as you can see from this passage from February:

England looked like England rolling past the tinted windows. It was lush and green and there was a field of sheep. It was as if Thomas Hardy and D.H. Lawrence had written down exactly what they’d seen and it had all stayed that way, or as if everybody here had read those books and made the landscape look like it was in the novels. There were trees and hedges and stone walls and sheep. The sheep, scattered here and there on the green hills, were an authentic touch.

Moore’s an author who never disappoints and February is no exception. My only regret is that we’ll probably have to wait another year or two for her next novel.

Restaging the Two Cultures test

I'm rushing so don't have time to go into a lot of detail, but at Dr. Andrew Maynard's request, I've created a 'competing' poll in the leadup to the 50th anniversary of C.P. Snow's The Two Cultures lecture originally delivered in 1959. For some background on the importance of this work, here you go.

Andrew has created a poll of his own on his site. Here's mine:

Marie Curie 2.0: the greatest woman scientist in history

 

The year was 2009; the month, March; the place, Cyberspace.

Men and women, blue eyed, blond haired or dark eyed, dark haired (or any combination of three of the above) worked in taut silence (or while listening to their iPods) to fulfill the pledge they'd made to blog about a woman in technology as a tribute to Ada Lovelace.

Ada Lovelace Day, the brainchild of Suw Charman-Anderson, is a truly successful viral campaign, launched, from what I could see, almost entirely on Twitter with blog back-up. I'm blown away by this engraving of Ada done by Jake von Slatt - surely he doesn't need to blog, having already created a piece of art?

For a relatively accurate account of Marie Curie's life, the Wikipedia article does well enough. I don't think it captures the romanticism of her life, her heroism, or what must have been her passion. I cannot imagine the kind of dedication it would take to win not one, but two Nobel Prizes, in two different disciplines.

The parody in the first paragraph of the Monday, July 16, 1934, Time obit entitled 'Death of Mme Curie' wasn't meant to be disrespectful. Marie Curie 2.0 could exist - may even exist, although hopefully she's learned to minimize risk in this iteration. MC2.0 would be considered both a homewrecker and a cougar, it seems, since the original had conducted an affair of about a year's duration with physicist Paul Langevin, an ex-student of her late husband.

I don't remember that part of the story from the Greer Garson/Walter Pidgeon film Madame Curie.

Nor do I remember the speech she delivered in the film, 'expressing her belief that science is the path to a better world.' But I know that she was one of my heroines, and that her courage and tenacity paved the way for women like me, who chose briefly to work in the field of nuclear energy and had no fear because of the work begun by Dr. Curie.

While you may quibble (I certainly do) with some of the overly romantic wording of the Wikipedia entry for Marie Skłodowska Curie ('Maria had found a new love, a partner and scientific collaborator that she could depend on.'), it's hard to quibble with this statement: 'She was ahead of her time, emancipated [and]  independent.... Albert Einstein is supposed to have remarked that she was probably the only person who was not corrupted by the fame that she had won.'

Not your usual blog post - help Ben Goldacre fight ignorant talk radio

It's highly unlikely that the readers of If Not Now, When? have been following the furore set off when British doctor Ben Goldacre posted the talk radio show episode in which an irresponsible and seemingly not very bright female British broadcaster ranted at great length about the 'dangers' of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination, citing a study by another doctor that was never credible in the first place, in my view, since it seems to have only surveyed 12 children, and has been further discredited to the point of 10 out of 12 others involved with the 'study' removing their name from it while the doctor who made the claims now admits he fudged the so-called data. What his motivation as a doctor for so doing could have been I am not sure (it doesn't seem to fit into the 'do no harm' category, does it, or have I been watching too many episodes of House?), although it seems he was funded to do so by an anti-vaccination group. (The original Ben Goldacre post linked to above seems rather messed up, not sure what's going on there, but here's a link to the Times Online article about the issue.)

What I am sure of is this. The benefits of vaccination in this instance far outweigh the risks. I am lucky that I only ever had one of those three childhood diseases, measles. In the late 50s and early 60s these were commonly called the 'red measles' as opposed to the slightly less severe form known as the "German measles" (rubella). What I can tell you is that spending two weeks in a darkened room running a high fever and itching like mad was no fun, forbidden to read and in a household that wasn't about to make exceptions for strictly regulated TV watching just because its offspring was sick. At the time, it was believed that one's eyesight could be damaged if one tried to read while sick with the measles, not sure if that's true or not.

It was an uncomfortable and boring two weeks. I wasn't sick enough to just sleep, and there was no excitement as a result of coughing up blood clots the size of quarters as there was later when I had scarlet fever, or of a whole household having to be quarantined, which at least had the effect of making me feel like a VIP (albeit a very feverish VIP who could no longer babble at will because her throat was so sore). The other thing I'll tell you is that even though I may not have had my 'share' of childhood diseases, having avoided getting mumps and the German measles, until I finally had my tonsils removed the summer I was eight, I was missing up to six weeks' school a year. I realize tonsillectomy is another 'hot button' issue - but given that at age 53 I get a virus maybe once every four years and perhaps one cold in 10 to which I'm exposed, in my case getting rid of those tonsils was the right thing to do. And no, I don't take the benefit of having an extremely sturdy immune system for granted - I'm grateful for whatever it is I'm doing right and for my good genes each and every day. And no, I don't get flu shots (because 'flu' is a catchall term for a whole bunch of different viruses, and usually the shots are prepared far in advance of the strains of flu actually making the rounds and are therefore not as effective as they could/should be - comparing annual flu vaccines to the MMR vaccine is, however, a case of comparing apples to pears - similar but different).

I find it very strange in a world that so readily accepts an outright ban on peanut products being brought into schools because a small proportion of children (one per cent!) suffer from an allergy that resistance to a vaccination that has clinically proven to control outbreaks of diseases mistakenly labelled 'childhood diseases' (since there is nothing 'childish' about the consequences that can result from measles, mumps, and rubella, including retardation and sterility) is so entrenched. Many of you have never known anyone who contracted smallpox - or polio. Here's a list of some people of whom you may have heard who suffered from polio, having had the misfortune to be born just before the vaccine came into widespread use. Included on that list are Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and Ian Dury. My maternal grandmother (born in 1896) 'didn't believe' in the smallpox vaccine. If she were still alive I would ask her if she had changed her mind after she and two of her children contracted a mild dose of smallpox. I had assumed the scars on my uncle's face were from acne, but in fact they were smallpox scars.

So if you're in the UK, get on the phone and on the email trail as Dr. Ben suggests (I know it's a long blog post). And if you're not, please educate yourself about what the word 'endemic' means. We have bigger issues to deal with, as world citizens, than this nonsense of the ignorant being given platforms to spout their dangerous psycho babble and their wealthy corporate media backers launching law suits over 'intellectual property infringement' when the informed try to set the record straight.

Update: While I think it would be wonderful to live in a country where the media aren't all owned by a single company, it's hard for me to tell if Melanie Phillips of The Spectator actually has some valid points to make, or if her motivation is merely to take on The Times. Witch hunt is pretty strong language, under the circumstances.

Disclosure: I am allergic to peanuts myself; it's the one food allergy I've had my entire life.

Metro Vancouver needs to get a grip on the snow

Tipperary Tomb and snow, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley 2007.

Let me make myself perfectly clear: I love snow. It is, in fact, one of the things I miss most about Ontario. But as Kirk LaPointe, managing editor of the Vancouver Sun, said on Twitter last night, he moved to Vancouver to get away from this kind of weather nonsense. (He's now wondering if he should start applying for newspaper jobs in Hawaii.) Last year, when we had snow in late November, early December, I was out in Tipperary Park in New Westminster rejoicing in it and taking photos. This year, however, has been unseasonably cold and snowy, and Metro Vancouver has failed abysmally to deal with this combination.

Let's not forget, folks, that we're hosting the Winter Olympics in 2010. If this sort of weather system prevails next year and if the Vancouver Airport (with its grand total of two runways) is closed as often as it has been this year, there are going to be a lot of very angry people who've paid a lot of money for tickets reflecting internationally on our inability to get it together. There may even be some athletes who don't get to compete. (I have no worries about the Jamaican bobsled team; they'll undoubtedly be happily ensconced in Pemberton for the entire winter once again, ensuring they'll take the gold – and more power to them.)

I’m going to leave aside the issue of civic amalgamation for the moment – that’s a whole other series of blog posts. I’m hoping the economic downturn will make it abundantly clear that it’s ludicrous for Metro Vancouver to continue with its mayoral and civic redundancies, and ensure that at some point in the very near future we no longer have separate cities of Vancouver, Richmond, Burnaby, New Westminster, and Surrey (not to mention the insanity of having both a City of North Vancouver and a District of North Vancouver). Metro Vancouver needs to get with the always initially unpopular program of regional amalgamation in the same way Ottawa and Toronto did many years ago, consolidate its services and service deliveries, and put a lot of politicians and bureaucrats out to pasture.

So let’s look at some of the facts – and some of the responses to unusual weather.

Fact: Coastal British Columbia has, at points this fall and winter, had more snow dumped on it than any other part of Canada.

Fact: We don’t have a lot of snowplows, and we don’t usually need them.

Fact: The unusually hilly terrain of the Metro Vancouver area creates unique challenges not only for drivers (whose cars may or may not be equipped with snow tires), but also for public transit. I’ve got one friend who was kicked off a bus yesterday because it couldn’t make it up the hill. One of the family cars is snowed in and the other’s been towed. It’s a long, wet and slushy slog to the grocery store. I’ve got another friend with mobility challenges (she’s not supposed to walk more than three blocks without her cane) who’s started getting off the bus a mile from her house because it’s not worth the stress of worrying about whether the packed bus is going to make it up the hill or just slide gently back down it. She's also religiously shovelling the snow in front of her house in accordance with civic regulations. What's the city doing for her? Well, not a whole lot - she's starting to get cabin fever from having been snowed in for so long, and is strategically plotting when folks can visit her based on parking regulations, because her street hasn't been plowed in a month.

Fact: This means, when we get unusual weather systems, we’ve got an emergency on our hands. A crisis, even.

The brilliant mayor of Burnaby, Derek Corrigan, shot his mouth off on New Year’s Eve in an interview with CBC Online. I was so angry I drafted (but didn't send) this email to him in response to his pronouncement that we should all adjust our expectations regarding snow removal:

• 'You don’t even mention shoveling, but seem to think that professional snow removal and salt are the answers to the gridlock that’s resulted from all the snow that has accumulated in the Metro Vancouver area over the past month. Perhaps you’re aware, as I am, that there isn’t a snow shovel to be had for love or money in this area until approximately January 9, 2009. Yesterday I drove to the Rona store in Burnaby to try to buy one and then called four different Canadian Tire stores on my return home to see if they had any. I have seen hundreds of cars blocked in by snow plows in Burnaby and New West. Perhaps you should consider outreach to some of the hardware stores as part of your community education and awareness program. The ice accumulates as a result of plowing. By shoveling it out and onto the streets, much of it would have melted by now if we could get our hands on snow shovels. Instead, I am witnessing people doing extremely foolhardy things in attempts to free their vehicles, and, while I am more than willing to help out with snow removal, I am unable to do so. Is there any particular reason hardware stores can’t use couriers to get a supply of snow shovels to the places they’re most needed? Victoria and Vancouver Island have had more snow than any other place in the entire country this year to date, and while a cold winter was, indeed, predicted, I don’t recall seeing you quoted in October or November advising folks to invest in salt, shovels, or snow tires. You were, of course, busy getting re-elected during those months. And you still don’t seem to think that shoveling is part of the solution.
  
• While I understand – and agree – that greater investment in plowing equipment doesn’t make a lot of sense, perhaps cities in the Metro Vancouver area should instead come to a standing agreement with the army to help out in unusual circumstances such as those we’re experiencing this winter. I have had very grave doubts about both the wisdom of Vancouver’s seeking to host the 2010 Olympics and its ability to do so; with an attitude like yours I’m now convinced they will be a complete and utter disaster if heavy snowfall occurs in January or February of 2010. When the athletes can’t land at the Vancouver airport, we can just divert them to Calgary so they can use the facilities Calgary already has and let them participate in the ‘unOlympics.’
  
• Judging from the (to date) 73 negative comments posted, I am not alone in being annoyed by your confrontational attitude rather than problem-solving approach. I guess we’re both glad I live in New Westminster rather than Burnaby. [Within hours of my drafting this email the comments were up to 96, and they were all negative.]
  
• Perhaps you should adjust your expectations regarding re-election. I'll be moving to Burnaby to ensure I can vote for ANYONE BUT YOU.'

Then there was the brilliance of advice from Murray Wightman, City of Vancouver's manager of street operations, ‘do a rain dance.’

This was the point at which I saw red. Having been away at Christmas time, it didn’t occur to me to stock up on food that would rot while I was away. Obviously I made a huge mistake there. I’d happily stay home and pray for rain, if it weren’t for the fact that I need to make the occasional foray out for food. And if it weren’t for the fact that the people who deliver food to the grocery stores and sell the food to those able to get out, need to be able to do their jobs and get to work in order to do so.

Today I did venture out. I saw a mixture of heartwarming and ludicrous sights.

First, I noticed that the New Westminster Chamber of Commerce, which occupies a corner lot on Queens Avenue and Sixth Street, had shoveled its walkway – but not the sidewalks surrounding the building. You should be evicted from the premises for this misdemeanour, not merely fined. Second, on the block between Seventh and Sixth on Queens Avenue, only one townhouse homeowner had bothered to shovel the sidewalk in front of their house. Again – shame on you. Civic by-laws state that you must shovel your walk and have it clear by 10AM. You should not only be fined, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

Things improved once I got to the bus stop. I saw many pickup trucks without municipal logos filling their truck beds with snow to haul it away. I thought perhaps the City of New Westminster had hired contract labour to aid in badly needed snow removal, especially the spots where four-foot tall snow- and icepacks have been created by plowing. (This is causing absolute chaos because it means there’s no place left on the street to park in front of stores that sell those quaint things like fresh fruits and vegetables – I’m about ready to kill for a head of red romaine and a cucumber about now.) But after I spoke to Blair Fryer, Communications Manager for the City of New Westminster, it seems these were just Good Samaritans. It was a reassuring conversation, by the way: New West has a clear list of completely understandable priorities for clearing roads (starting with hospitals and schools), has seven snow plows that have been in constant use since this weather system began, and has fitted three additional municipal vehicles with plows and pressed them into service to clear the sidewalks.

Oh, and the first thing you see on the City of New Westminster's web site these days is a link to snow removal - an explanation of how the snow is impacting garbage pick-up - and the number to call if you're having a snow-removal related problem. That's what's called being proactive. The City of Burnaby's priorities seem to be a little whacked: yes, main arterial roads are important. But clearing a path to the hospitals, not all of which are on those main arterial roads, might be an idea too, no? And there's no invitation to call. And the City of Vancouver also features important info on garbage collection and snow removal on its home page - although by providing a nameless corporate communications phone number after you've clicked on a link listed as 'road clearing' rather than 'snow removal' you might conclude they don't really want you to call.

Here’s a little info, by the way, on the rate at which snow and ice melt. Please note: the kind of rain you’d need to melt a hard-packed four foot by four foot snowpack is the kind of deluge that will make you wish you’d built an ark. Get real, folks, a little rain is not going to solve this problem any time soon. The snow needs to be either hauled away or broken up with shovels and thrown out onto the streets to melt. Otherwise the parking and driving problems are going to persist for weeks.

Then there was the police car that parked in the laneway by the TD Bank at 6th and 6th. I saw two officers get out of the car and proceed at a pace that was both leisurely and gingerly (through the slush) towards the building that houses the bank, a London Drugs, and a Starbucks. They left their amber lights flashing, but I have a funny feeling they weren’t entering the building on official business. I could be wrong, of course. What was the result of this? Well, all the cars that tried to turn into the lane to access the parking lot were unable to get down the lane. So instead they did U-turns in the middle of the street. Luckily the little old lady in her motorized scooter shooting up the middle of the street into the oncoming traffic hadn’t yet arrived on the scene, or she would have been squashed like a bug. A third police offer came out of the Blenz on the corner and looked askance at the parked police car, so I’m thinking this was a bit of a no no. Especially since there was a parking space available on the actual street. Maybe use a little common sense before you park illegally when it isn’t an emergency.

Finally, Gregor Robertson, Vancouver’s new mayor, has  taken charge of communications on this issue, and today has asked for suggestions on how the city should deal with snow removal.

So here are a few:

• See above email to Derek Corrigan re availability of snow shovels. You need to get local merchants organized to deliver them to folks who need them. I don’t ever again want to see a grown man and two seven-year-old boys shoveling out a car that’s been buried under two weeks’ worth of snow while they were away over the festive season with tiny plastic beach shovels.
• Hire a streets manager from a part of the province that actually knows how to deal with snow removal – or from out of province. And then media train him so he doesn’t make the whole city look foolish.
• Consult with places like Owen Sound, Ontario, which is extremely hilly, and six years ago was pioneering a road coating that would melt snow as it falls, thus obviating the need for plowing and salt distribution. You can’t sell an Ontario car for love or money in British Columbia because rumour has it that they’re all rusted out from the amount of salt used in Ontario. Get over yourselves: Ontarians want their cars to last just as long as British Columbians do, and have been working hard to minimize the amount of salt used on roads.
• Synchronize the budgets for parking offenses and snow removal, and use the revenues from the former to subsidize the latter. I can’t help but be offended at the fact that my car was towed when the streets were dry because my bumper cast a shadow on the six-foot-wide crosswalk, but the cars that drove into snowbanks at Christmas time and angle parked in loading zones were allowed to stay there for up to 96 hours.
• Tap into the Good Samaritan in all of us by making it possible for us to help. I actually like shoveling snow. If I could actually get my car to the Home Hardware at Graveley and Commercial Drive that has a stash of snow shovels, I’d be helping out. But I’m not taking two buses uphill the entire way and a Skytrain that may or may not be working in order to do so.
• Finally, post a list of food delivery services on city web sites. If you’re asking us to stay home, accept that sooner or later we’re going to need to replenish our food supplies. There ARE grocery delivery services. Remind us we can use them rather than endanger our lives.
  

This blog's Wordle

I played with the colours a bit - I just love this:

Spiderman at last!

With a little data manipulation and many thanks to Jonathon Narvey (I'm wondering what he answered to the question, 'do you ever wear a push-up bra?' but I don't really want to know the answer - perhaps that should be, I really don't want to know the answer - this may be the only thing you ever see in bold italic on this blog), I am Spiderman. First test results indicated I was The Hulk. Fond though I am of green, since I wanted to be Catwoman, I had to redo the test. Thrice may be the charm, but I'm bored with answering questions now, so I'll just accept that I'm Spiderman - I'll settle for 'intelligent, witty, and a bit geeky.' Not so sure about having great responsibility and power though.

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 100% Hulk 90% Robin 70% Supergirl 70% Catwoman 60% Iron Man 60% Green Lantern 60% Wonder Woman 60% Superman 60% The Flash 40% Batman 40%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz