Olympic curmudgeonry

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Let me start by saying that I don’t get spectator sports and I don’t really understand why anyone would want to be an Olympic athlete. Let me continue by saying my heart sank when I heard Vancouver had won the 2010 Winter Olympics. Let me finish this portion of my post by saying one of the reasons I left BC in 2009 was because I don’t want to live in an Olympic host venue.

My worst fears have been confirmed, and the 2010 Olympics aren’t even over. So far we have had:

• one Georgian luge athlete killed.
• Two female Canadian luge athletes bitching about the fact that the course was changed (to make it safer for all) after the death of the Norwegian, thus impairing their performance.
• Allegations that we have been stingy with the training time we’ve allowed other athletes at the facilities we’ve constructed.
• As of Tuesday, February 16, 2010, CBC News reported that 28,000 ticket holders have been told they can’t use their standing room only tickets at Cypress Mountain for two days in a row because it’s unsafe – and there may be more cancellations of these tickets as more warm weather is expected this week.
• Horrendous lineups for concession stands and washrooms, also at Cypress.
• Delays, delays, delays and postponements due to weather. There’s a reason Whistler is no longer part of the FIS circuit – uncertain weather conditions, making it an unsuitable venue.
• Delays due to malfunctioning equipment at the Richmond Oval. Malfunctioning equipment at the Richmond Oval, which was one of the first new facilities finished for the 2010 Winter Olympics. We’ve been building skating rinks for how many years in this country? And somehow we can’t find rink maintenance machines that don’t ruin the ice and don't break down? Never fear, Calgary is now shipping its Zamboni by flatbed truck to the Richmond Oval, because theirs works.

The weather delays have caused serious problems for ticket holders who are now unable to get transportation to Whistler. Some people have had to leave town without seeing the events for which they bought tickets well over a year ago in an expensive lottery.

And then there’s the coverage by CTV, who outbid CBC for the right to be the official broadcaster. Not having watched much Olympic coverage in the past, perhaps I’m not in a position to judge. I’ve been astonished to discover that CTV isn’t interested in interviewing the gold medal winners at the Olympics – merely the Canadian participants, regardless of where they’ve placed in competition. I’ve also been astonished to discover that they’re showing snowboarding events three times in a single day (without benefit of a time stamp indicating that, contrary to what the announcer says, this is NOT a live event). Due to the delays at the Richmond Oval, CTV arbitrarily decided it wasn’t going to broadcast the pairs figure skating live program in its entirety and would stick to the speed skating events instead. The announcement was made long after it was possible to arrange to view on TSN at a friend’s house. I contemplated going to a bar to watch. And then I had to laugh at myself. What are the chances of getting to watch pairs figure skating at a sports bar? Yeah, right. Dream on.

As for the CTV web site: I have to download some Microsoft product in order to view archived footage on the site. And Chrome, the browser I use, isn’t mentioned as being compatible with the software. Oh – and only the gold and silver medal-winning pairs figure skating performances are up on the site.

And then there’s the truly inane filler. Saturday night (Feb. 13) CTV aired a piece on Whistler’s most eligible bachelor. Who wasn’t an athlete. Or an Olympian. Or even available – he’s having his first child with his partner. What does this have to do with the Olympics? Meanwhile, I watched three hours of CTV coverage Monday night (Feb. 15, 2010, from 11:30PM to 2:30AM) in an attempt to see some clips – or even hear the announcement – of who had won the pairs figure skating gold medal. Not one mention that the event had even taken place. Now I’m mad. Now I don’t just want to make sure CTV never gets the right to broadcast the Olympics again – I want their license to broadcast anything yanked.

CTV seems too lazy or too inept to even run a chart of events held and medals won as part of its news broadcasts – something the CBC excels at doing. Hire a computer graphics person and make use of them, CTV.

Let me make my position crystal clear here: if the Olympics are a competition amongst the world’s best athletes, patriotic boosterism is sadly misguided. And yet that’s what we’re getting. When I finally got to watch to the men’s short figure skating program Tuesday night, I was thrilled to see Canadians holding Canadian flags and cheering for American and Czech skaters who gave great, clean performances – and a Canadian journalist interviewing the Russian skater who’s leading after the short program. Finally – a celebration of the world’s best! I’m also glad a panel on CBC Radio One in Calgary this morning publicly decried the ‘own the podium’ mantra of the – well, I don’t know where it comes from – surely not the Canadian Olympic Committee? I certainly hope not. ‘Earn the podium’ is what it’s all about. Peter Mansbridge said last night on CBC TV news, 'Downtown [Vancouver] is a flowing river of patriotism.’ I think every Canadian should visit Vancouver if they get the chance. I think we should support our athletes too. Along with our writers, our scientists, our actors, our farmers, our intellectuals and our innovators. Let’s not break our arms patting ourselves on the back though.

For a brilliant suggestion on how to reduce the carbon footprint of the Olympics and perhaps help the events get back to the fundamentals of what they’re supposed to be about, read Jonathan Hiskes of Grist’s great article on greening the Olympics. Because winning the Olympics shouldn’t be what it takes to effect infrastructure improvements in our major urban centres, whether it’s transportation upgrades, badly needed facilities, or affordable housing.

Update: and for another perspective on what's going wrong, see The Guardian's Lawrence Donegan's round-up of coverage. Just ignore that bit about what you learn your first day in PR school - he's wrong on that front.

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

Auld - and new - acquaintance

puzzle peace by Barb Symons

Regardless of what you do on New Year's Eve (or whether you manage to stay up till midnight), I'm glad there isn't the same controversy about the commercialization of New Year's that so often swirls and threatens to subsume Christmas. It doesn't matter whether you consider yourself a Christian, a Jew, a Moslem, a Buddhist, a pagan, a nerd or a Luddite, whether Jesus was actually born on December 25 or some other date, or whether you consider him your saviour or not.

What's important is that we, as social animals, stop our ceaseless motion for a while and spend some time thinking about our lives, our world, our accomplishments, our failures, our hopes, dreams, and fears, and try to make some sort of plan to learn from both our triumphs and our disasters.

As we think about the beginning of a new (calendar) year and as we're bombarded with (and busy creating) our own 'best [and worst] of' lists for the year that's ending, I find myself thinking at this time of year about what really matters.

The illustration for this blog post is a print done by one of my oldest friends, Barb Symons. I met her when I was 19 and working in a bookstore. That was the year I read 300 books. Oh to have that kind of energy again - because lest you think I did nothing but work from 9 to 5 and read, I'll just point out that I worked pretty much every hour the store was open (including showing up on most of my days off, making it a 60-hour work week), partied heartily at least four nights a week, and was seeing someone at the time.

We have kept in touch sporadically throughout the years, and I am thrilled that I have been able to buy a couple of her best paintings. I'm even more thrilled that I finally got around to giving them the frames they deserve, despite the conundrum of having to pay almost as much for decent frames as one does for the art itself.

I spent this Christmas in Calgary with my cousin who has always been like a brother to me, and despite the horrific journey (I do know better than to travel at Christmas time), I will always be glad I did so. The wonderful thing about family is that it continues to expand, not only through the usual reproductive means, but also by marriage. I have acquired a whole new set of cousins with wonderfully diverse skill sets and personalities: nursing, flying, painting, fitness experts, and of course, several more musicians.

Since it took me more than 28 hours to get from Vancouver to Calgary and about 50 hours to get back, I missed seeing my friend Allen Gibson while in Alberta. I had taken a printout of my seminar, Social Media for Luddites, with me to give to and discuss with Allen. I'll have to email or print out another copy for him when we finally get together in Vancouver in mid-January. I gave it instead to my cousin, and had the pleasure not only of setting up a blog for his band, but of getting a follow-up phone call from him asking me to explain the difference between a widget and an application.

I think my explanation was about as convincing as my assertion that Einstein had invented the lightbulb. My familial reputation as one of the smart ones is on the decline, I'm afraid. Hopefully what I'm losing in that category is outpaced by gains I'm making in the 'one of the funny ones' category. Sigh. Still, it made for some good debate about whether Edison was a real prick or whether he was, rather, one of those managers who has the good sense to surround himself with the best and the brightest (no pun intended).

There was a lightbulb theme to this Christmas, as my cousin good-humouredly responded when addressed as 'The Green Bastard,' a Trailer Park Boys reference I didn't quite get, not having memorized every episode. My new cousins by marriage hail from Nova Scotia, and must therefore be excused for not acknowledging the superiority of the Monty Python crew. :) The Ottawa contingent of the family demonstrated a certain lack of physical grace as we were responsible for several clean-ups on aisle three: first when coffee sprayed all over the front hallway as we attempted to get out of the house, and then when an old fluorescent light for the laundry room was stored somewhere it shouldn't have been. Kudos to Mary for breaking one of the old bulbs rather than one of the new ones, which had to be exchanged as they were too short - that was clever, and it was also stellar of you to spend part of Christmas Eve vacuuming up its remains so no one got cut - that can't have been fun, even for someone who likes to clean.

I was touched by my second cousin's tracking the progress of my flight(s) from Vancouver to Calgary and by my new cousin, Mike's, expertise when my escape from Calgary/return to Vancouver went awry. He was able to explain the mysteries of the airport landing protocols in a way that made sense. I was also touched by the helpfulness of the Australian couple I met at the Calgary airport who were on the same flight to Vancouver as me. That was the one that took off, got to the BC border, turned back, circled the Calgary airport, landed, sat around for a while, and was then cancelled when the Vancouver airport was closed. I got more information from fellow passengers about what the hell was going on than I did from the airline, and there will be a blog post on the No Spin PR site about why companies need crisis communications plans more now than ever.

The Australian couple helped me find the airline number so I could do my bit to ease congestion in the line up to rebook a flight back to Vancouver. It was sweltering in the airport by this point, and I selfishly wanted to spend my extra time in Calgary with my family, not in a line up. I would like to think that if I am ever travelling with that much luggage, that great a distance (since they'd been skiing at Fernie over Christmas, were going to spend some time in Vancouver, and then head back to Oz), and with two children, that I could be as gracious, lively, and amusing as they were, but I think it's highly unlikely.

I loved the woman's suggestion that the Telus store was missing a huge business opportunity by not letting folks in the mile-long line up access the internet to rebook their flights. I felt amazingly handicapped with only a cell phone, having decided to have a low-tech Christmas and leave the laptop at home. It was a wacky time at Canadian airports. I didn't tell my fellow passengers about Air Canada's having held passengers on a Toronto-Vancouver flight hostage on the plane for 24 hours just before Christmas until after they let us off our plane - discretion still is the better part of valour, and I knew it was better to frame that discussion in terms of our having made a lucky escape rather than fear mongering while still on the plane, whose air rather quickly became stuffy in the half hour or so we spent on it after our surprising return to Calgary.

I was also completely charmed by the warm welcome I received from new cousin Heather, a Nikon girl who nonetheless not only gave her sister a Canon lens for her birthday (which falls on Christmas Day), but also tackled the dreaded Canon Rebel XT manual when Error Message 05 showed up on Mary's camera. Outnumbered as she was 2:1 by Canon women, she made a valiant attempt to search the index. In yet another absurdity in the quest for information, Heather looked up 'troubleshooting' in the manual and found nothing. Not sure why or how I thought to look up 'error messages' instead, but there were many moments of hilarity when it turned out the answer was 'turn the camera off, then turn it on again.' I was also greatly amused to see that the error messages listed were 01, 03, 04, 05, 06, and 99 - I guess if you get error messages 02 or 07-98, you're just plain out of luck. Just in case though, try turning the camera off and on again. :)

This year, we decided to do a fun but complicated one-present gift exchange that goes by various names (I was introduced to it by Heather as a Chinese gift exchange, but in talking to a First Nations friend it turns out there's an aboriginal version that involves dice as well - I doubt we could have managed that one). We had all agreed to buy/recycle/regift one present, maximum value $25. We then picked numbers and chose a gift, and had the right to choose someone else's gift (once). It was hilarious to see a group of so-called adults participate in this game.

My cousin and I started off the cheating by showing each other the presents we'd bought several days before Christmas (is blood really thicker than everything else? Or do old habits just die hard?). I know he spent considerably more than $25, and I also know he bought three presents, not one. Ahem. I had cheated too, of course, since the gorgeous little Bill Reid print of two copper frogs had cost more than $25 (although not a LOT more). Reluctant though I was to part with it, it was the perfect gift, and it was fun to watch the vigour with which various people tried to get their hands on it.

I'm not sure why I went for the biggest and most swellegantly wrapped present (I'll have to remember that green garbage bag wrapping technique, Ashley), but I was delighted with my foot spa and hope it wends its way to Vancouver one of these years (I was not about to try to take it on the plane after my home-made port got confiscated on my first attempt to get out of Calgary and I got a little lecture on the size of my plastic bag - by the time we got to the 'your foundation needs to go in the liquids bag' I was yelling, but it's a powder foundation! and brandishing the brush at the male security guard, asking him if he wanted to try some. This had the unusual effect of making him feel sorry for me, and he actually offered to leave his post to try to track down my friends so he could at least return the port to someone who could drink it rather than just get dumped).

I was also touched by second cousin Brendon's present, a copy of the Harrison Ford film The Mosquito Coast, based on Paul Theroux's book. I think that one ended up in the right hands, after hearing about the trip to Thailand. When the fair-skinned get sunburned, the medical professionals get going. :)

To friends and family, real and virtual, met and yet-to-meet, my wish for 2009:

May this year be one of hope, love, laughter, and, as always, spirited debate.

10 best things about 2008

Like most people at this time of year, I have 10 million, 427 thousand, 968 things I should be doing right now. The muse struck, though (this explains why the dishes never get done), and I find myself back at the computer so I don't forget some of the charitable thoughts I've just been having.

In the order in which they're occurring to me, here are the 10 best things that I've done, found, read, seen, participated in, or encountered in 2008:

1. Northern Voice 2008

My second year attending the Vancouver bloggers' and new media 'unconference.' This year I arranged to attend with my friend and neighbour Colleen, which meant I actually went to the dinner that kicked off the unconference, got there on time for both the Friday and Saturday sessions, had someone to compare notes with, and enjoyed the commute. Not to mention the environmental correctness of car pooling. Oh and the fact that I got to drink because for once, I wasn't driving!

Benefits of attending: far too numerous to list, despite the fact that I was still in quite a state and not feeling terribly sociable due to a bizarre and delayed form of grief after my mother's death on June 26, 2007.  With my usual beginner's luck, the first new person I met was Kris Krug, one of the driving forces behind the unconference. The second was Mhairi Petrovic, who's become a good friend and my strategic partner. Oh and Colleen won one of the big doorprizes, about $400 worth of Mac cosmetics, which made her day (and that of her two teenage daughters)..

2. Living Through Loss Counselling, a non-profit organization that provides both drop-in, group, and 1:1 counselling for people who are having difficulty dealing with grief of all sorts. Again thanks to my friend Colleen for suggesting that I get some bereavement counselling. To Judy, the group facilitator, and to all the members of my group, thank you for your support, your kindness, and the absolutely non-judgmental caring you displayed. Bizarre though I found it, traipsing off to what I came to think of as 'the room where the sad people meet' every Wednesday night for six weeks, I loved the fact that we were able to laugh amongst our tears and during the breaks at the strange thoughts, dreams, feelings, and ideas we had. I hope you are all able to approach the winter solstice and the festive season with lighter hearts and that your memories of your lost loved ones have turned that ineffable corner so you can think of those who are gone with smiles rather than tears (she says, as she finds tears pouring down her face while typing). What can I say - at least the memory of physical pain doesn't hurt the same way reliving emotional pain does. 

3. Fridays at Tinseltown with the principal of Happy Flower Research (you know who you are) (web site NOT under construction). While this theatre has occasionally disappointed by showing nothing but the kind of Hollywood blockbuster I'm happy to watch only on late night TV when I can't sleep, there is almost always one film I want to see, something sufficiently offbeat like the wonderful Turkish film we saw whose name I won't remember till I find the ticket stub, the truly horrific Atonement that I waited months and months to see and then hated; The Women from which I learned the lesson: read the reviews before you go and if they're all bad, see something else; and the surprisingly good The Duchess, also starring scenery-chewer Keira Knightley.

Of the first-run films I saw in 2008 (off to see Frost/Nixon tomorrow), Brick Lane was far and away the best, despite the bizarrely uncharitable reviews it got from the local mainstream Vancouver media (WestEnder, you should be ashamed of yourself - if you don't know enough about traditional Islamic beliefs and cultures to realize that when a woman allows a man other than her husband or son to see her without her headscarf on, you need a compulsory world religions course. And shame on you for having no search function on your site and for not archiving your old reviews). I am always highly critical of films made from books I've read, but I found no fault with this adaptation. While the portrait of Nazneen's husband is much thinner than in the novel, it was an amazingly subtle, complex, and moving film. But then I love those very slow-moving French and Italian movies where nothing much happens.

As a recovering workaholic, going to Tinseltown on Fridays does indeed mark the end of the week, and I am grateful for not only the films but also for the free parking. To the man at the ticket booth who never hesitates to let me out of the lot without paying despite the fact that I am not always able to find the parking ticket I've so carefully had validated at the movie theatre - thank you for trusting me. Thank you also for suppressing your laughter at my inability to make the turn and still hand you my ticket without getting out of car, week after week, until after I've driven off. :)

4. Todd Sieling's Slow Blog Manifesto, which, in @2020science's words, is 'A wonderful antithesis of the Twitter experiment!' I look forward to meeting this lovely young man at Northern Voice 2009, when I promise I will be more sociable.

5. The Twitterverse, the blogosphere, and flickr, which has introduced me to incredible gems of people like Michelle Sullivan (I deliberately linked to the two-part movie she made about Twitter rather than her main blog site because if you don't yet Twitter, you MUST view this to get a sense of how simultaneously silly and delightful Twittering can be - oh Michelle, are you going to volunteer to do the French translation of the Slow Blogging Manifesto? My tweet earlier today was obviously far too subtle); Denise Caruso of The Hybrid Vigor Institute, a woman after my own heart, to whom I have barely spoken but with whom I have this bizarre psychic connection (how did I know she knew how to tap dance? I can't explain it), and of course, Andrew Maynard, another in a long line of cross-platform talented people and beneficiaries of a British educational system that seems to routinely produce people who acquire PhDs in scientific disciplines and yet write beautifully lucid, explanatory, and compelling prose.

And then there's the cheeky Dr. Ben Goldacre of Bad Science fame. I should put out the call now for volunteers to do security when the publicity tour for the North American version of his book hits sometime in 2009 - let's just say that Duthie's on West Fourth in Vancouver (you know, the one practically next door to the Capers with its extensive collection of homeopathic remedies) would not be the best venue for a reading.

The British Boy Toy from the long-ago days of Yahoo! Books and Literature chat, who still calls and emails me, although now it's from places in Africa I'm not sure exist. 

Last but never least, the continuing virtual friendship with the amazingly prolific and talented Paul Jackson/Art Nahpro. I am doing my best to persuade him to enter the short film contest at Sundance this year, and have every confidence that if he enters, he will win. If you don't fall in love with his collages, his paintings, or his photos, you will at least appreciate the gems he finds, like this Eddie Izzard - Death Star Canteen video.

6. My quilting instructor, Beau Gabiniewicz, and her wonderfully calm and reassuring approach to teaching and to quilting. Since I never got around to spending time in New Brunswick so Aunt May could teach me how to quilt, taking this class was really important to me. It was really lovely to spend six Monday evenings in a row with a group of women whose ages spanned five decades. It was also heartwarming to see two different mother-daughter teams in the class, and to meet Barb, an avid quilter who brought in a book with an amazing line drawing of women quilting at the beginning of the 20th Century. It reminded her, she said, of learning to quilt at her grandmother's house. A couple of weeks ago I saw a vanity license plate in my neighbourhood, I QUILT. Wish I'd had the camera with me.

Much to my surprise, quilting is challenging on many different levels. Not least of which is trying to figure out how much fabric to buy. To my eternal chagrin, I am still as arrogant as ever about reading instructions - I don't actually read them, I glance at them and then forge ahead. Sometimes this works. Other times it doesn't, as when I failed to notice the instructions for one of my quilts said to sew two A pieces together, then two Bs, then sew the A blocks to the B blocks. No wonder I wasn't getting rectangles by creating blocks of AB, AB combos. It's ok, I've got a good seam ripper.

One of the nicest things about starting to quilt was the quest for fabrics - I've made the rounds of most of the remaining fabric stores in the Metro Vancouver area. Much to my surprise, they've all got strengths and weaknesses, even when the stores are members of the same chain. Some have great prices, some have great selections in particular colour ranges (not so great in others), and some have great staff. To Betty at Fabricana, whose advice was invaluable when I was first purchasing the tools I'd need, and to Cara at Birkeland Bros., where I purchased the wool batting for my first quilt, thank you. Your enthusiasm was inspiring, and your patience with my stupid questions was exemplary.

7. Finally spending a week at Diane Thompson and Dan Workman's cashmere goat farm in beautiful Nazko, BC. What on earth could I have been looking for on the internet four years ago when I discovered cashmere came from goats and that, unlike sheep, the goats don't have to be sheared, just combed? After meeting an amazing woman who raised milk goats in the Eastern Townships of Quebec - and also designed the curtain for the National Arts Centre in Ottawa - at a writing workshop 20 years ago, raising goats has always been a strange little fantasy of mine. It took me a while to get there, but I'll always be glad I went.

Two scientists turned farmers, Diane and Dan were incredibly stimulating conversationalists, even at breakfast (I had to get up a couple of hours early and pre-caffeinate in order to be able to hold  my own). I learned so much from both of them: how to milk a goat, how fundraising really works in a community setting, and, most important, how to follow your dream. I like to think that if I lived in the area, I too could be one of the Bad Women of Nazko. Sort of the same way I got to be an honourary Newfie without having to drink Screech. :)

8. Of the books I read this year, Helen Humphreys' Wild Dogs, Elizabeth Hay's Late Nights on Air, Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, Tomson Highway's Kiss of the Fur Queen and the Kazuo Ishiguro I was persuaded to read (against my better judgment after the horrific disappointment of The Unconsoled), Never Let Me Go, were the fiction standouts.

9. Non-fiction is either a lot better written than it used to be or something in my brain has actually changed, as 2008 found me reading almost as much non-fiction as fiction (ordinarily the ratio is 1:100; suddenly this year it was more like 1:3). Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle, Alan Weisman's The World Without Us, Simon Winchester's The Map That Changed the World, John Vaillancourt's The  Golden Spruce, and, of course, Gabor Mate's moving study of addiction, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, were the ones I'd recommend. Poverty, the natural world, geology, foresty, the human condition....

10. The  birth of my third cousin (or first cousin twice removed), Ava Abigail Grace, at 4:27PM on Tuesday, November 25, 2008. Have yet to see a picture, but having known your mother, your grandmother, and your great-grandmother, there is no doubt in my mind, my dear, that you will be a beauty, inside and out.

What's really funny about Twitter

Having entered the Twitterverse a few months ago, I now think I'm sufficiently well informed to make a few observations about it. In the spirit of social media, I won't hesitate to do so.

Twitter's a lot like chat, except for the fact that it lacks a lot of chat's real-time functionality and the 140-character limit is a very real limitation (even though you can expand it to 240-characters using Big Tweet, which splits your posts into two but at least labels them 1/2, 2/2). The other very real limitation is the fact that you're forced to read from bottom to top, which is unnatural and disconcerting. The really positive trends though are that fewer folks on Twitter are hiding behind anonymous screennames, the discourse is - for the most part - highly civilized, and much of the information provided is not only timely, it's extremely valuable.

Many of the Twitterati (shall I define this term as Twitter stars? the most ubiquitous Twitter users?) are precisely those who were most disdainful of chat and most dismissive of its potential as a business app: geeks, journalists, and PR folks. Having attended a few moderated sessions on AOL, I've known since 1996 that the ability to bring people from around the world together to learn, comment and brainstorm in a text-based format was not only a cost effective but also a brilliant idea. Glad the rest of you are catching up. :)

But some of the Twitterati seem to have missed the point of social media entirely. For these folks, it's all about who's following them, not about the two-way exchange of information and ideas and the wonderful things that can result from the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. A respected British tech journalist Tweeted this morning that he had reached the 2000-followers mark, and seemed very pleased about it. Four hours later, he had 2009 followers - and was following a mere 145 people. I think we probably have to pardon him for not quite getting it: in his business, it's still all about having an audience and a following.

Some of the social media evangelists who update everyone on every cup of coffee they drink, every plane they catch, and every meeting they have, have revealed a fundamental lack of understanding of what should underly the use of social media tools: a solid grounding in what constitutes effective public relations - and marketing. One in particular seems to believe the old adage that all publicity is good publicity, and when he found himself at the centre of a controversy, continued to fan the flames by posting everything said about him and rallying his acolytes to do the same. The good news is that this will make an excellent case study in social media crisis communications. The bad news is that the discerning will have decided the effort of weeding out his wheat from his chaff is not worth it, which is a pity, because there's actually quite a bit of wheat there.

Others have demonstrated real leadership in the social media space, as well as a fundamental understanding of how important it is to take the high road in issues management and crisis communications. It's not fair that people say nasty things about you, blame you for things you haven't done, and supply their own interpretations of the facts. The sad truth is that if you engage on the mud-slinging level and repeat negative allegations in an attempt to refute them, you will only reinforce the negative things being said about you, appear to be whining, and, ultimately, alienate your supporters as you keep flogging that dead horse.  

Here's another perspective and someone else's tips on how not to use Twitter.

And here's a question: if you delete your Twitter account, will all your Tweets vanish? Or will they linger forever in the cyberverse?

Why must boys be such - boys?

The current controversy about Jonathon Narvey's Best of 604 nomination for best political blog is starting to remind me of working in the composing room at The Financial Post and watching three grown men hip butt each other as they tried to persuade the compositors to put their story on the front page above the fold. As if, snort. (Yes, I am that old - The Financial Post was a weekly when I worked there, and not part of the National Post, but co-owned by Maclean Hunter and the Toronto Sun. At least the Sun still exists as a corporate entity. And that's why the National Post has survived; it bought FP's subscriber base that had cost the Sun so much to build over the course of 10 years as a daily).

And to think I was so very flattered by Dave Olson's articulate assessment of my questioning what constitutes 'real' media versus 'unreal' media just a week or so ago (will have to look up the link for that one later; I've got photos to pick up). Update: photos not yet ready so I had time to look up the link.

Who's the jackass who complained about Narvey writing about his iPhone? Newsflash, you jostling bloggers, you: if a blog's nominated in a category, that's the category in which it belongs. Newsflash #2: most bloggers don't write about just a single subject. Check out Technorati's State of the Blogosphere 2008 if you don't believe me. And who's the other jackass who thinks the blog should be disqualified because it's 'called' Currents but is viewed at http://jnarvey.com? Give me a break.

But I'm thinking in all this that Dave Olson must be Bob Rae, Jonathon would then have to be Michael Ignatieff. Which leaves Raul, whose Twitter post first alerted me to the whole controversy, as Dion. I like it. It fits.

My only question is, where's my favourite candidate for the Liberal leadership in all of this, the adorably baby-faced Dominic LeBlanc?

Finisterre: A Film by Paul Jackson

Paul Jackson is one of the best flickr friends anyone could ever have. He blogs (de temps en temps) here.

Things I wish I'd said (2)

Looking up, originally uploaded by The River Thief.  Copyright Ruth Seeley 2008.

In the aboriginal cemetery in Nazko, BC.

I am surprised to find that I experience the disappointment of a hope I never knew I harbored.

Louise Erdrich, The Bingo Palace

Stonehenge kept coming into my mind, making me feel our lives are short and small.... Strange how pleasure is sometimes the prelude to melancholy.

Sara George, The Journal of Mrs. Pepys: Portrait of a Marriage

The language that I have now is not adequate to the feelings that I had then.

There is sometimes no reward for patience. If hunger is the engine, life is only either underway or stalled; and desire is just a watered-down version of hunger, a poor copy.

Helen Humpheys, Wild Dogs

It's not Bob Rae's ability to lead we should be questioning

Reading about the leaked Innovative Research Group survey that found Canadians question Bob Rae's ability to lead during a financial crisis and/or recession brought back a lot of bad memories for me.

I had forgotten all about the 'Rae Days' - forced unpaid leave imposed on Ontario's civil servants as part of his futile attempt and misguided strategy to cope with a deficit he inherited and then proceeded to allow to balloon totally out of control. Someone who actually knew how to run an organization would, instead, have come up with a more creative plan to cut costs through attrition, rationalization, and by investing in technology that would have made it possible for people to work smarter rather than harder.

Rae's election as Ontario Premier was something I thought I'd never live to see. An NDP landslide, it was, after decades of Progressive Conservative rule and then a brief interlude of David Peterson's Liberals. I even recall voting in that election, and that the polling station was incredibly remote and almost impossible to reach via transit. And I voted for him - well, not for him, but for whoever was the NDP in the riding in which I lived in Toronto's Annex.

He had been in power for less than a year when he started to take away the right to strike from those who had supported - and funded - the NDP for decades, the unions. He also enacted legislation that made it legal to hire replacement workers - scabs, they used to be called. My political love affair with the NDP ended before it ever really began.

And then there was his appearance on the Ralph Benmurgui show, Friday Night with Ralph Benmurgui, which I blogged about shortly after the Liberal leadership convention that led to Stephane Dion's victory. Forget that it was a ridiculously bad show (how could it not have been? when CBC launched the new show, instead of giving them a budget for costumes, they apparently suggested the series just use the leftovers from the old Tommy Hunter show - vintage at its most eccentric).

What Canadians in general - and Liberals in particular - need to question is what, exactly, Bob Rae stands for. Given the way he behaved when he finally became premier of Ontario, it's obvious his belief system is elastic at best and totally self-serving at worst. Since then, of course, he's decided he's not an NDP kinda guy at all anymore, he's actually a Liberal. I wonder if that will ultimately turn out to have been a bad move for him. Because if he continues to seek power at the expense of rebuilding the Liberal party, he'll ensure its ruin. And the federal Liberals are already teetering on the brink of financial disaster as it is. Perhaps that's been the master plan all along and he's secretly still an NDP candidate at heart. Somehow I doubt Jack Layton will step aside for him though if he decides to cross the floor yet again.

It's so much fun being a Sagittarian

Nazko columbines, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley 2008.

My (at times) uncertain sense of direction has got me lost and made me late on more than one occasion. I find it odd that there are times when I can both navigate and tell time by the sun, but this doesn't always work - I've missed planes and been late more times than I care to remember. So when I have to be somewhere I've never been before, I try to make allowances for my own navigational arrogance and at least MapQuest my destination.

My first trip to a Lower Mainland Ikea was an exercise in sheer persistence - I'm still not sure what I did wrong (and I defy anyone who doesn't live there to tell me where Coquitlam ends and Port Coquitlam begins). I was living in Lions Bay at the time and everything went smoothly till I got off the highway. A nightmare then ensued in which I kept following United Boulevard and circling the large blue and yellow Ikea sign without ever actually being able to get to it. I persisted and eventually got to Ikea, but I was in a sufficiently foul mood by the time I arrived that even the Swedish meatballs and lingonberry juice didn't quite mollify me. Fortunately it's not all that tough to get there from where I now live [although if you aren't in the right lane on Columbia Street at rush hour, good luck getting into it to make that turn onto the completely unmarked Brunette (look for Royal City Autobody when heading east - that's Brunette) that leads you to the Ikea in Coquitlam].

So in preparation for a meeting Tuesday at the Libra Room, I went to their web site to make sure I knew exactly where it was (The Drive can be a bit overwhelming at times - so many neat little shops and restaurants and such a high turnover that you're never sure whether a place you visited on your last visit will still be there, or whether it's moved a couple of doors down, or just vanished).

Something about the web site made me wonder whether they were, in fact, open for lunch or not, and so I called them to find out. Having been lost and/or separated from my companions many many times at both Expo 67 (those folks at the British Pavilion were truly wonderful - they took me down the back stairs at least four times to help me get out of there) and Toronto's Caribana parades, I didn't want to be wandering around The Drive in the rain looking for my lunch companion (although we're both pretty good about calling when we're late or lost - I guess I'm just not over the trauma of having once asked someone to meet me at the intersection of two parallel streets). And they're not, so we'll have lunch somewhere else.

But I had to laugh when I read their take on the various astrological signs. And I can't argue with any item in this description of Sagittarians. All I'll add is: 'that's childish in a GOOD way.'

SAGITTARIUS - The Promiscuous One Spontaneous. High appeal. Rare to find. Great when found. Loves being in long relationships. So much love to give. A loner most of the time. Loses patience easily and will not take crap. If in a bad mood stay FAR away. Gets offended easily and remembers the offense forever. Loves deeply but at times will not show it feels it is a sign of weakness. Has many fears but will not show it. VERY private person. Defends loved ones will all their abilities. Can be childish often. Not one to mess with. Very pretty. Very romantic. Nice to everyone they meet. Their Love is one of a kind. Silly, fun and sweet. Have own unique appeal. Most caring person you will ever meet! Amazing in bed..!!! Not the kind of person you want to mess with- you might end up crying.