Posted on by David Drucker

Dear March, Come In!

For those not famil­iar with the poet­ry of Emi­ly Dick­en­son (or the song cycle by Aaron Cop­land that my par­ents record­ed for the com­pos­er back in the 70’s), the rest of it goes:

Dear March, come in!
How glad I am!
I looked for you before.
Put down your hat—
You must have walked—
How out of breath you are!
Dear March, how are you?
And the rest?
Did you leave Nature well?
Oh, March, come right upstairs with me,
I have so much to tell!

I got your let­ter, and the bird’s;
The maples nev­er knew
That you were coming,—I declare,
How red their faces grew!
But, March, for­give me—
And all those hills
You left for me to hue;
There was no pur­ple suitable,
You took it all with you.

Who knocks? That April!
Lock the door!
I will not be pursued!
He stayed away a year, to call
When I am occupied.
But tri­fles look so trivial
As soon as you have come,
That blame is just as dear as praise
And praise as mere as blame.

It’s a sweet lit­tle poem, and as a kid I was tick­led at the thought of some­one talk­ing to a month like a long-lost friend at their door.

With the new month has come a bunch of new oppor­tu­ni­ties for Pam, and I’m glad that she is prob­a­bly going to be busy with work for the next few months, at the very least. As for me, I’m final­ly feel­ing ful­ly recov­ered from the exer­tions of the Game­lan con­cert at the Muse­um of Anthro­pol­o­gy. We’ve both got bus pass­es now, and we’re not afraid to use them! With Spring indeed arriv­ing (flow­ers and bud­ding trees show­ing up every­where), I’m hop­ing we’ll get a cloud­less week­end day to take a trip to one of the gar­dens south of us (the Van­dusen Botan­i­cal Gar­den on 33rd Avenue or Queen Eliz­a­beth Park, which is near­by there just to the East).

I’m pleased to see that some­one final­ly did a bit of a Google Mashup with some of the major bus stops and lines for Van­cou­ver. Too bad it does­n’t do any of the locals, but it is nice to see where the Sky­train inter­sects with the oth­er lines to the east of us, as well as where the Canada­Line (Rapid Tran­sit sys­tem going in for the Olympics with a great deal of cries of pain and gnash­ing of teeth) will be in 2010.

writ­ten while lis­ten­ing to:
Tubin — Three Pieces for Vio­lin and Piano (1933) — i. Sostenu­to ” by Arvo Leibur, Vio­lin, Var­do Rumessen, piano 

3 Replies to “Dear March, Come In!”

  1. David thanks for the Google mashup of tran­sit routes. I read recent­ly that Translink is pur­chas­ing GPS sys­tems for their bus­es. The prob­lem with the sys­tem is though you can quick­ly get on the Sky­train to get around when you need to con­nect with the bus you need the sched­ule and invari­ably you end up wait­ing longer than you want­ed. It would be ide­al to get some idea at each bus stop when the approx­i­mate time the bus will appear. Or be able to get text mes­sages for spe­cif­ic timeta­bles. In this day and age it should­n’t take a rock­et sci­en­tist to fig­ure this out. I am sure they could increase rid­er­ship by mak­ing it eas­i­er to make sched­ules rel­e­vant to each user.
    Only 3 weeks to spring!! You are going to enjoy this time of year. Make sure you get down to Lum­ber­man’s Arch ( just south of the arch up the hill a lit­tle) when the cher­ry blos­soms come out. On a clear day with the moun­tains show­ing in the back­ground it is beau­ti­ful. And the Japan­ese mon­u­ment there is inter­est­ing. It is in Stan­ley Park (the same per­son the hock­ey cup is named after). Take care.

  2. Con­grats on the gig out at the muse­um. I made it out there for the very first time a few weeks ago. What a great place! Would be a great venue for a con­cert like that for sure.

    I will say that the “Cana­da Line” just does­n’t roll off the tounge. Back when it was known as the RAV Line seemed much more fit­ting, but such is the way that the Olympics will have. Went to the light­ing of the Inuk­shuk last night. Very cool stuff. Can’t wait for 2010!

    John
    http://www.audihertz.net/

  3. Hi Gene — I know what you mean about the GPS. I’ve often been impa­tient why it’s tak­ing so long to get to a real­ly good lev­el of knowl­edge about when the next train/bus is due. The Sky­train does run very often, but the busses are indeed real­ly hard to catch. I have noticed some elec­tron­ic signs at the 5th Avenue stop that say things like “4 min­utes till next B‑Line”, but I won­der how accu­rate they are.

    Giv­en what GPS offers, this can’t be that hard to do. I won­der if it’s a knowl­edge (Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy, that is) issue or a mon­ey issue. Per­haps there is an inter­im step: send­ing to peo­ple’s cell phones the loca­tion of the bus (say, the next stop on their route) when they dial a par­tic­u­lar SMS address (say trlnk-‘route #’). It’s true that it would make this knowl­edge less avail­able to the peo­ple who don’t have SMS-capa­ble cell phones (or no cell phones at all, for that mat­ter), but it would be a start, and would prob­a­bly cost less than the weath­er-resis­tant dis­plays at each bus stop (and the pow­er need­ed for them, main­te­nance, etc.)

    We were in Stan­ley park just about a year ago when the cher­ry blos­soms were out. It was amaz­ing. Will def­i­nite­ly have to check out Lum­ber­man’s Arch this time.

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