Boxing Week

Too Angry?
I may have to go off the polit­i­cal com­men­tary for a while. It’s just get­ting me furi­ous and there’s no point any more. I did what I could — more than most, I sup­pose — and it’s up to oth­ers to take on the fight. With any luck, Pam and I will have avoided the com­ing crash. Already I’ve seen some omi­nous signs of the US National Debt start­ing to appear in the news again. It’s unfor­tu­nate that Canada is still so depen­dent on the US as a trad­ing part­ner, but even they are wis­ing up and increas­ing oil exports to China, who I no longer have any doubt will be the dom­i­nant super­power in the com­ing decades. In the mean­time, I am going to have to just shake my head and hope that my fam­ily and friends are able to dodge the bul­lets as well.

Box­ing Week
You know that the hol­i­day sea­son has gained a larger foot­print when peo­ple start nam­ing the period between Christ­mas and New Year’s Day. With Christ­mas falling on a Sun­day this year, Box­ing Day fell on Mon­day. That meant that the entire rest of the week would be a down-time for a lot of com­pa­nies (includ­ing mine), and stores are run­ning post-Christmas/Year-end close­out sales to take advan­tage of so many peo­ple who now have time to shop. The result is that Box­ing Day has become an entire week. We’ve even seen signs on mer­chant win­dows around town that say ‘Box­ing Week Sale’ on them. I sup­pose that’s one way to avoid the crush of peo­ple all try­ing to take advan­tage of a one-day event.

A US Visit
Tomor­row, Pam and I are going to ven­ture back into the US. While I’ve already done this a few times since we moved here, Pam has not. I won­der if I’ll start to notice more dif­fer­ences between the US and Canada. It will also be inter­est­ing to use our pass­ports and my work per­mit when we re-enter Canada. I’m not expect­ing any trou­ble, but it will be yet another first.

Ah, I Remember that from French Class! Or was it Social Studies?

The Bush Administration’s arro­gance con­cern­ing eaves­drop­ping on cit­i­zens with­out even a momen­tary thought given to war­rants or any kind of civil lib­er­ties reminded me of another arro­gant dic­ta­tor (besides Big Brother):

And you thought it was just your library books they were look­ing at!

Update:
I also caught this choice quote from an incred­i­ble essay with the title: Fear destroys what bin Laden could not by Robert Stein­back of the Miami Herald:

Pres­i­dent Bush recently con­firmed that he has autho­rized wire­taps against U.S. cit­i­zens on at least 30 occa­sions and said he’ll con­tinue doing it. His jus­ti­fi­ca­tion? He, as pres­i­dent — or is that king? — has a right to dis­re­gard any law, con­sti­tu­tional tenet or con­gres­sional man­date to pro­tect the Amer­i­can peo­ple.
Is that America’s high­est goal — pre­vent­ing another ter­ror­ist attack? Are there no prin­ci­ples of law and lib­erty more impor­tant than this? Who would have remem­bered Patrick Henry had he writ­ten, “What’s wrong with giv­ing up a lit­tle lib­erty if it pro­tects me from death?”

There’s much more in this, and some of it is what I’ve been nearly scream­ing for the past 4 years, that Amer­ica is not the same coun­try that I knew. Stein­back also says earlier:

…I would have expected such actions to pro­voke — speak­ing metaphor­i­cally now — mobs with pitch­forks and torches at the White House gate. I would have expected proud defi­ance of any­one who would sug­gest that a mere ter­ror­ist threat could send this coun­try into spasms of despair and fright so pro­found that we’d fol­low a leader who con­sid­ers the law a nui­sance and per­fidy a priv­i­lege.
Never would I have expected this nation — which emerged stronger from a civil war and a civil rights move­ment, won two world wars, endured the Depres­sion, recov­ered from a dis­as­trous cam­paign in South­east Asia and still man­aged to lead the world in the prin­ci­ples of lib­erty — would cower behind any­one just for promis­ing to “pro­tect us”.

It’s a call to arms. Is it too late for any­one to hear it?

PS: I noticed that this is my 100^th post­ing in this blog. Guess I made it to triple dig­its by the end of the year!

Stille Tag, Eating Ballots and Uncle Edgar

A Few Crea­tures Stir­ring, but Not Many
Yes­ter­day was a very quiet day indeed. We took a walk along False Creek and saw a few dog-walkers, jog­gers and bicy­clists, but as we returned via Broad­way, the only places open were the Asian restau­rants, some of which were doing a brisk business.

Today, how­ever, is Box­ing Day (always the day after Christ­mas), a hol­i­day that I only got to cel­e­brate when I lived in Eng­land. Accord­ing to Wikipedia:

There is great dis­pute over the true ori­gins of Box­ing Day. The more com­mon sto­ries include:

• Cen­turies ago, mer­chants would present their ser­vants food and fruits as a form of Yule­tide tip. Nat­u­rally, the gifts of food and fruit were packed in boxes, hence the term “Box­ing Day”.
• In feu­dal times, Christ­mas was a rea­son for a gath­er­ing of extended fam­i­lies. All the serfs would gather their fam­i­lies in the manor of their lord, which makes it eas­ier for the lord of the estate to hand out annual stipends to the serfs. After all the Christ­mas par­ties on Decem­ber 25, the lord of the estate would give prac­ti­cal goods such as cloth, grains, and tools to the serfs who lived on his land. Each fam­ily would get a box full of such goods the day after Christ­mas. Under this expla­na­tion, there was noth­ing vol­un­tary about this trans­ac­tion; the lord of the manor was oblig­ated to sup­ply these goods. Because of the boxes being given out, the day was called Box­ing Day.
• In Britain many years ago, it was com­mon prac­tice for the ser­vants to carry boxes to their employ­ers when they arrive for their day’s work on the day after Christ­mas (26 Decem­ber). Their employ­ers would then put coins in the boxes as spe­cial end-of-year gifts. This can be com­pared with the mod­ern day con­cept of Christ­mas bonuses. The ser­vants car­ried boxes for the coins, hence the name Box­ing Day.
• In churches, it was tra­di­tion to open the church’s dona­tion box on Christ­mas day, and the money in the dona­tion box were to be dis­trib­uted to the poorer or lower class cit­i­zens on the next day. In this case, the “box” in “Box­ing Day” comes from that one gigan­tic lock­box in which the dona­tions were left.
• In Britain because many ser­vants had to work for their employ­ers on Christ­mas day they would instead open their presents (ie. boxes) the next day, which there­fore became known as box­ing day.

In fact, the way I heard it, because it was the ser­vants’ day off, meals would be a ‘box lunch’ or some­thing like that. Many of these sto­ries fol­low the same basic idea of giv­ing the work­ing classes a spe­cial hol­i­day of their own, which has since many on the Left to decry the hol­i­day as fur­ther per­pet­u­a­tion of the sep­a­ra­tion of the social classes (some­one had to serve the Christ­mas feast, so the ser­vants couldn’t have that day off, there­fore they had their own hol­i­day while the rich folks slept in and ate left­overs). It was inter­est­ing to see that Granville Mar­ket was open Christ­mas Eve, but was closed both Christ­mas Day and Box­ing Day, which lent fur­ther cre­dence to the ‘give The Help a day off’ expla­na­tion.

In the Putting Your Bal­lot Where Your Mouth Is Depart­ment
Saw a strange story about Cal­gary in Boing­bo­ing about eat­ing elec­tion bal­lots. Sure enough, it’s a kind of protest by the right-wing peo­ple there that there aren’t any choices that they approve of in the elec­tion (I’m going to assume that Steven Harper is not Con­ser­v­a­tive enough for them, since the protest is by fol­low­ers of Stock­well Day, who lost his post to Harper in 2002).

Good-bye to Uncle Edgar
We just got a phone call that Edgar John­ston, Pam’s Uncle on her father’s side of the fam­ily, died at 1 AM this morn­ing. Uncle Edgar, along with Aunt Mary and Uncle Jim, became what the rest of the fam­ily referred to as ‘The Trav­el­ing Trio’, when we found out that they had set off from Long Island, New York to Quincy, Mass­a­chu­setts via train, ferry, another train and finally the sub­way, with­out telling any­one, so that they could go on an exploratory trip to Quincy, Mass, where Mary and Edgar had pre­vi­ously lived before sell­ing their house and mov­ing in with Jim in Long Island. They had made plans for months, and we sus­pect that Jim went along with the whole expe­di­tion because he had lost his driver’s license (after 4 acci­dents in the period of a month or so) and thought that the State of Mass­a­chu­setts would give him a license if New York state would not. Their plan was to buy two small houses and ‘…live next door to each other’. We found out about all of this later but ini­tially we got a call from a hos­pi­tal in Quincy, at about 4 AM. The three of them had been found, exhausted and con­fused, in the Boston sub­way a few hours ear­lier. It was a pretty remark­able inci­dent, and if one of them hadn’t had Pam’s brother’s busi­ness card in their wal­let, they might very well have dis­ap­peared into the unseen world of the home­less in Boston. We scram­bled to get them taken care of, and Pam and her brother became legal guardians of all of them, as they entered a Nurs­ing Home in Wey­mouth, a nearby town. Uncle Jim died in Jan­u­ary before we moved here, and now with Edgar’s death at the age of 93, the sole mem­ber of the three trav­el­ers is Mary, who is mostly blind and no longer coher­ent.
When­ever we vis­ited Aunt Mary and Uncle Edgar in Quincy, she was the flam­boy­ant and styl­ish lady, and he was the absent-minded pro­fes­sor. He was obsessed with his time spent in the army dur­ing World War II and as time passed he retreated more and more into that period. I tried to find out why these events in his life seemed to over­shadow every­thing that had come before or since, but he had no expla­na­tion other than that was the way he felt. The last time we saw him, he had reverted to the state of an infant, per­ma­nently reclined, with soft hands and a vacant stare. He had been this way for months before then and con­tin­ued liv­ing that way for a year, at least, until he sim­ply stopped eat­ing a few days ago. The phrase from Shakespeare’s As You Like It about “All the world’s a stage”, etc. came to my mind — the bit at the end:

Last scene of all,
That ends this strange event­ful his­tory,
Is sec­ond child­ish­ness and mere obliv­ion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

I’m glad that Edgar finally made his exit, because he spent far too much time in that last scene.

An Interesting Question

Since I’m going to be a designer in Canada, I was curi­ous to see some­thing writ­ten on a web site for a design local design shop that I had not known of until recently, Indus­trial Brand Cre­ative.

The ques­tion was: Is There Any­thing Cana­dian About Our Design? It was raised dur­ing a Design Com­pe­ti­tion that was held here in Novem­ber (and I was unfor­tu­nately igno­rant of that as well, not because I wanted to enter, but I feel that I haven’t yet learned enough about the design com­mu­nity here. I do know there is a lot of tal­ent here. That’s pretty evi­dent wher­ever you look.)

The dis­cus­sion included some obser­va­tions that could apply to a num­ber of dis­ci­plines, design just being one of them:

Canada is a very big coun­try, but our pop­u­la­tion, just twice the size of most of the world’s major cities, is con­cen­trated pri­mar­ily in three urban cen­tres with vast bod­ies of water, prairies and moun­tain ranges sep­a­rat­ing them. Added to these fac­tors are the dizzy­ing array of cul­tures, reli­gions and lan­guages our mostly immi­grant pop­u­lace brought with them, it would be eas­ier to argue that these geo­graphic fac­tors would lead to region­al­ism within Canada more than pro­duc­ing any com­mon style. Per­haps any “Cana­dian style” is a direct result of post mod­ernism and the mix of these many back­grounds, per­spec­tives and cul­tural predilec­tion for travel and explo­ration which makes us flex­i­ble, skilled (if not rather under­paid) pro­duc­ers of high qual­ity design. This cel­e­bra­tion of diver­sity is our key strength, and is arguably the only real Cana­dian truism.

I guess I like every­thing about that quote, except for the word ‘under­paid’.
writ­ten while lis­ten­ing to: Carl Nielsen — Wind Quin­tet — iii. Prae­ludium: Ada­gio — Tema con variazioni’

The Blogger Meetup

Sun­rise, 8:05 AM, Sun­set 4:17 PM. The Win­ter Sol­stice has come and gone

Some of the Van­cou­ver blog­gers gath­ered together at Subeez, on Homer Street (I wish I could write that street name with­out hear­ing Marge Simpson’s voice, or rather, Julie Kavner’s voice, to be pre­cise) for a lit­tle get-together before the hol­i­days. I got there a lit­tle early, feel­ing a lit­tle weak as I’m just still get­ting over a lit­tle cold and flu. (I sus­pect I got it because I’m not used to the par­tic­u­lar bac­te­r­ial soup that is my new work­place. It’s not that the place is par­tic­u­larly dirty — it’s not — it’s that I haven’t yet devel­oped resis­tance to the bugs that are there yet. This is pretty com­mon.) Rather than go for a brew, I had to set­tle for some Chamomile tea and honey. It’s a bit of a relief when restau­rants can be under­stand­ing about these sorts of things. I felt bet­ter as peo­ple arrived.

It was a small crowd, but we all got com­fort­able and I think every­one was in a pretty good mood. Despite the lack of sun­light, we all seem to be cop­ing pretty well. The con­ver­sa­tions drifted from com­ing hol­i­day trips to the Van­cou­ver Coop­er­a­tive Auto Net­work (which I’ve writ­ten about before) — Susie Gard­ner and Travis Smith think it’s great, so I’m now more inclined to think more seri­ously about it, hav­ing known no one up to this point who had actu­ally joined it, much less rec­om­mended it.

For those who didn’t make it to Subeez, the report from here on the venue is: A lit­tle loud on the music, but great, funky decor, much bet­ter food than Steam­works (and I’m prob­a­bly not the only one to say that), and a more var­ied menu with bet­ter prices. The ser­vice was excel­lent and they dealt quite adroitly with all of the com­pli­ca­tions of stag­gered orders and mul­ti­ple cheques. We’ll be back there in Jan­u­ary. I wouldn’t give up on Calhoun’s, though. That might be good to try in February.

Here are the blogs of the Meetup attendees:

Wal­ter Selent’s Web Page
ono­matopeia
Web2
Buzz Mar­ket­ing witth Blogs
Unvar­nished
Mak­taaq
DaneBrown.org (in 2 weeks)

I uploaded a few hol­i­day snap­shots of us around the table to Meetup.com. The cam­era flash was pretty extreme, but there’s not much you can do in a dimly lit place. Besides, it was after all, the solstice.

Besides all of the hol­i­days and besides all of the dark­ness, it’s also that time of year when many of us (myself included) grin and say ‘See you next year!’ at the end of evenings. We aren’t being par­tic­u­larly clever, but it’s fun to say it all the same.