I Still Love Vermont

This just in from the Asso­ci­ated Press:

Ver­mont Town Calls For Bush Impeach­ment
POSTED: 9:06 pm EST March 7, 2006

NEWFANE, Vt. — A small town is urg­ing Vermont’s only con­gress­man to file arti­cles of impeach­ment against Pres­i­dent George W. Bush.

Vot­ers gath­ered for Newfane’s annual town meet­ing Tues­day to con­duct rou­tine busi­ness and vote on the impeach­ment call, which passed 121–29.

The impeach­ment item says Bush mis­led the nation into the Iraq war and engaged in ille­gal domes­tic spying.

A jus­tice of the peace said that the town is run by what he calls the “far-left.”

But a local teacher said she can’t tell stu­dents “that what hap­pens on the national level doesn’t affect us at the local level.”

U.S. Rep. Bernie Sanders, an inde­pen­dent who gen­er­ally votes with the Democ­rats and is run­ning for the Sen­ate, issued a state­ment that says Bush “has been a dis­as­ter for our coun­try” and may have bro­ken the law.

But since Repub­li­cans con­trol Con­gress “it would be imprac­ti­cal to talk about impeach­ment,” Sanders said.

I know there was news last week of young peo­ple leav­ing Ver­mont, so I worry a lit­tle about the future of that won­der­ful place. Nev­er­the­less, every time I hear a story like this about those old-fashioned town hall meet­ings, it rein­forces my view that the Green Moun­tain State is one of the sav­ing graces of the US. Some­times I feel like it’s one of the last.

Accord­ing to Google maps, New­fane is about 103 miles (or about 161 kilo­me­ters) south of our lit­tle plot of land in Wait­s­field. Here are both. From an almost-Vermonter (in an alter­nate real­ity — one of the ones where Bush never made it to the White House, Pam and I are liv­ing there) to the folks in New­fane, thanks. I’m sure that you make at least some Amer­i­cans like me, all over the world, proud.

Follow-up on Fashion, Kathmandu, Oscar, and The Vancouver Movie Drinking Game

Based on some facts I learned today, fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion is needed on Van­cou­ver Fash­ion. First of all, my notion that there are 4 dif­fer­ent sea­sons, and that you need dif­fer­ent clothes for them is incor­rect. Here, there are really 2 sea­sons. 2 1/2 if you want to be char­i­ta­ble; cold and rainy, and warm and dry. You can get away with one rain jacket year-round if you layer other items of cloth­ing (sweaters, fleece, other jack­ets(!)) under it. That explains the ‘no leather jack­ets invited’ ele­ment of fash­ion here. As for the rest, I chock it up to West Coast vs. East Coast. Nev­er­the­less, Matt and I both sus­pect that there will be a back­lash against the ‘every day is casual day’ atti­tude in the local work force. That said, he thinks it will just be for Telus employ­ees where he works; I think it could be a move province-wide, but don’t quote me on it.

Great Food on The Drive
Speak­ing of Matt, last night he and Oana intro­duced us to one of the best lit­tle restau­rants I’ve been in since we got here, the Nepali Restau­rant, Café Kath­mandu. How to describe Nepali cui­sine for the unini­ti­ated? It’s kind of like Indian, but lighter and with many sub­tle and fresh ingre­di­ents, like mus­tard greens, or fenu­greek. There was a melt­ingly tasty cur­ried goat, some fiery hot sauces (as condi­ments) as well as tooth­some lit­tle veg­etable dumplings, which you could dip in either a corian­der sauce, or a tomato-based sauce. It was a real treat, and another rea­son to return to the multi-cultural culi­nary strip of Com­mer­cial Drive (or ‘The Drive’, as it’s some­times called here). We’d been to a pretty good Viet­namese restau­rant when we vis­ited a year ago, and I’d had a nice meal at the bohemian ‘Wasubeez’ Café, but Kath­mandu is def­i­nitely a rea­son to return to The Drive again and again. I can’t wait to see what we’ll dis­cover there next time.

The Oscars, West Coast Style
This was my first Acad­emy Awards Tele­cast that I’d ever seen from this side of North Amer­ica. Since it is broad­cast live, the show starts here at 5 on Sun­day, and ends around 9:30. Apart from Jon Stew­art doing a fine job (although I’ve noticed that crit­ics seem to already be pil­ing on their cries of dis­ap­point­ment — gee, that didn’t take long), the biggest impres­sion this time shift made on the whole affair was that it felt far more like another big tele­cast that takes place on a Win­ter Sun­day, roughly from 5 to 9, has a lot of guess­ing about who the win­ners would be and has expen­sive com­mer­cials: The Super Bowl! Next year, I think I want to do an Oscar party. Espe­cially if I’ve seen any of the films that were nom­i­nated or won (which I hadn’t, this year), and espe­cially if one of the nom­i­nees was shot in Van­cou­ver. Sta­tis­ti­cally, there’s a good chance of that, since so many movies are shot here.

This leads me to my last thought: Is there a Van­cou­ver Movie Drink­ing Game? (i.e. If you rec­og­nize and get agree­ment that the cur­rent shot is from North Van­cou­ver look­ing at the sky­line, take one shot, etc.) Help me folks, because I’d hate to be the one who came up with that one. Thank good­ness that office cen­tre (the con­verted cathe­dral) in Toronto that shows up in every mid to low bud­get Sci­ence Fic­tion (Tek­war, Land of the Dead, Mutant X) movie and series since 1985 is not not here or we’d all end up with alco­hol poisoning.

What Not to Wear (in Vancouver)

This is what to wear…

Pam has become a real fan of the Learn­ing Chan­nel pro­gram ‘What Not to Wear’. It’s a show in the mold of ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’, only this time it’s Fashion-Eye for the Clue­less Girl. Stacy Lon­don and Clin­ton Kelly take some woman who has no fash­ion sense and maybe a lot of poten­tial, give them a $5,000 credit card shop­ping spree in NYC, and throw away all of their old clothes (while tak­ing them to task in all man­ner of zingers as they do so). After a new hairdo and makeup ses­sion, the trans­formed vic­tim arrives to cheers of friends, cowork­ers and fam­ily (this part is the most staged and feels very much like the show is a rip-off of Queer Eye). Unlike the other show, it does not seem to me to have quite as much of a ‘good heart’, but Pam feels she is learn­ing lots of good tips and rules of thumb along the way.
Fast for­ward to dress­ing here. All of the rules are back­wards. In the world of fash­ion, Van­cou­ver is Bizarro World (for the non-Superman or Seinfeld-savvy, Biz­zaro world is the inven­tion of the afore­men­tioned comics, a place where up is down, good-bye is hello, and wrong is right. You get the idea.

Dress­ing up in Van­cou­ver is wear­ing some­thing that isn’t falling apart. As a friend of Matt’s exclaimed dur­ing a recent visit, “Every­one looks like they’re about an hour away from snow­board­ing.” (Which tech­ni­cally we are, if you fac­tor in the drive to Grouse and line for lift tick­ets). When I go into work, which is in Gas­town (a slightly seedy and touristy area that has many pan­han­dlers) and hap­pened to be dressed a lit­tle nicer, I stand out, in a way that’s prob­a­bly not so good (i.e. , I’m approached by more pan­han­dlers, who assume I’m a rich tourist). We’re talk­ing khaki pants, but­ton down shirt and leather jacket here; that’s overdressed.

In prac­ti­cal terms, a leather jacket is fairly use­less around here, any­way. When it’s dry and the leather jacket would be safe to wear, it’s too warm. When it’s cold enough for the leather jacket, it’s usu­ally too wet.

The stan­dard jacket here is a wind­breaker or alpine jacket, , made of GORE-TEX. usu­ally with a hood, (see above pic­ture) obtained at a Moun­taineer­ing or Sports store (The MEC is renowned here.) As for pants, it’s denim, or per­haps cargo pants. The shirt? Long-sleeved or short-sleeved T, sweat­shirt (prefer­ably also hooded). To top it all off, if it’s cold out­side, fin­ish the whole ensem­ble with a Toque (the Cana­dian term for knit­ted cap, often, but now always with a lit­tle pom-pom at the top). Colours can match, but don’t have to. Shoes are Doc Martens, jog­ging shoes, or those bowl­ing shoes that went in style a few years ago (which I wish I could wear, but can never get in a width that is nar­row enough).

So my dif­fi­culty here is that much of my Bostonian-centric wardrobe, includ­ing half a dozen white button-down shirts, some fancy wool trousers and assorted cardi­gans and cash­mere sweaters is what the fish out of water is wear­ing here. Today I went out in some old jeans, a grey t-shirt topped with a choco­late brown shirt that has no col­lar, and wore a hooded fleece sweat­shirt. Walk­ing back from the local caf�, I said to Pam “Today, I finally feel like I look like the every­one else.”

The Dollar Also Falls, So-called First Amendment, and Canadian Media

The US dol­lar hit 1.135 Cana­dian today. It’s been hov­er­ing around the 1.13 mark. Gee, I used to get excited when it went below 1.15.

There are other things descend­ing besides Bush’s poll num­bers. Appar­ently the free­dom of speech is descend­ing as well. From the web site of ABC News’s Good Morn­ing Amer­ica today:

A Col­orado teacher who was sus­pended after mak­ing con­tro­ver­sial com­ments about Pres­i­dent Bush — which were recorded by a stu­dent dur­ing class — is fil­ing a law­suit against the school dis­trict in Aurora, Colo., this morning.

On the tape, the stu­dent, Sean Allen, repeat­edly asks ques­tions, and teacher Jay Ben­nish actu­ally com­pli­ments him. But that may not be good enough for school offi­cials, who will con­clude their inves­ti­ga­tion within the week.

The dis­trict says the key ques­tion is whether Ben­nish vio­lated pol­icy by fail­ing to allow ample oppor­tu­nity for oppos­ing views.

On Thurs­day, dozens of stu­dents walked out of class at Over­land High School, pick­ing sides in the debate between the geog­ra­phy teacher and Allen. The con­tro­versy started Feb. 1, the day after Bush’s State of the Union address.

“Who is prob­a­bly the sin­gle most vio­lent nation on planet Earth?” Ben­nish asked his class. “The United States of America.”

He went even fur­ther, com­par­ing Bush to Adolf Hitler.

“I’m not say­ing that Bush and Hitler are exactly the same, obvi­ously they’re not,” Ben­nish said. “But there are some eerie sim­i­lar­i­ties to the tones that they use.”

Ben­nish told the class he was only express­ing his opinions.

“I’m not in any way imply­ing that you should agree with me,” he said. “What I’m try­ing to get you to do is to think, right, about these issues more in depth.”

Fur­ther searches on the Inter­net reveal that what Ben­nish claimed, was that dur­ing the last State of the Union Address, Bush said: “It is our duty as Amer­i­cans to use the mil­i­tary to go out in the world and make the world like us.” Ben­nish con­tin­ues (on the tape): “Sounds a lot like what Adolph Hilter used to say.” It turns out that he was para­phras­ing Bush, and that those exact words weren’t said per se. At any rate, that’s what’ll get you fired these days in Col­orado. Ben­nish had been teach­ing at that school since 2000.

By Way of Con­trast
I’m con­tin­u­ally sur­prised at how most of the big local news sto­ries here (radio and TV) are usu­ally about the dif­fi­cul­ties with try­ing to fix one of society’s ills. Two recent cases have been:

• The inquest into the death by abuse of a poor abo­rig­i­nal child, Sherry Char­lie in 2002, who basi­cally fell through the cracks in the Social Wel­fare sys­tem, and
• The death a few weeks ago of a frail, 91-year old woman, Fanny Albo, from her hus­band of 70 years just 48 hours after she was moved against her will (and his sub­se­quent death 2 weeks later — he was 96).

Both sto­ries have received a lot of atten­tion as of late, but I doubt they would have even made page 2 or 3 in papers back in the US. They share the aspects of being about unknown, unglam­orous, tragic deaths, per­haps pre­ventable. No sen­sa­tional tabloid mate­r­ial, no gun vio­lence or pro­nounce­ments by pun­dits, just an out­cry over some­thing that went wrong, either through fund­ing cuts or bureau­cracy. I notice the dis­tinct dif­fer­ence when I unwit­tingly tune into the news broad­casts of KOMO or KING in Seat­tle and start to hear about car-jackings, kid­nap­pings or gang attacks. It’s remark­able how the media just across the bor­der can be so dif­fer­ent — and it’s becom­ing more dif­fer­ent every day, it seems, slid­ing away just like the decent of the currency.

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 33^rd 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