If Only…

I couldn’t help noticing an editorial in the St. Petersburg Times by Robyn Blumner that dared utter the words “Gore” and “Democrats should enlist in 2008″ in the same paragraph. Ms. Blumner voiced what I’ve been feeling for quite some time; that there are no good Democratic candidates willing to run for the Presidency in 2008. Gore, unlike the drooling idiot who sits in the White House, would be “an Adult”, and like Ms. Blumner, I believe that these days the US needs an Adult at the helm pretty badly. The editorial says:

America is ready for an adult like Gore to take charge and put the nation back on sensible footing: a footing where deficits do matter, where energy conservation is not sneered at as a “personal virtue” but is an aggressive national policy, and where science, facts and reality drive public policy, not the Christian Right’s neo-medieval agenda.

My other favourite quote from the editorial is from Gore himself, who said in a Rolling Stone interview:

“Right now we are borrowing huge amounts of money from China to buy huge amounts of oil from the most unstable region of the world, and to bring it here and burn it in ways that destroy the habitability of the planet. That is nuts! We have to change every aspect of that.”

Ms. Blumner mentions the “Draft Gore” movement on the Internet (www.draftgore.com) that’s trying to get him to reconsider running (he has no plans, and has made this clear).

While I wish Mr. Gore were a candidate, I’m also realistic about his chances, which are next to none (although that’s better than Hillary Clinton, who would be a disaster). Until he can get past the Republican control of the voting machines, drawing up of districts, and judicial branch if there are disputes about the voting, the outcome is still going to be a Republican victory. With a press largely controlled by corporate interests who only want the image of an exciting contest but the outcome of their choice (i.e., a candidate friendlier to corporations. which is usually a Republican), the best a candidate who tells the truth about Global Warming and what the US must change can do, is scream into the wind. Then they’ll be dismissed as crazy and having ‘the wrong temperament’ to lead by the press, as they did with Howard Dean. Another bit in Blumner’s piece talks about how Gore knows this all too well:

As reported by the American Prospect in April, Gore feels strongly that today’s media is failing in its duty to inform the public. Former FCC chairman and longtime Gore friend Reed Hundt summed it up like this: “Gore’s own view is that he sighed noisily in the debate and used the wrong telephone line to ask for money and the media said these are momentous events. Meanwhile, they ignore global warming and the failure to catch Osama and the destruction of the safety net.”

If only circumstances were different. If only the tables weren’t rigged. I see our move here as a bit of pessimism (or is it realism?) about what could but won’t change in the US in our lifetimes. While I would certainly approve of a presidency (and government) reclaimed from the Proto-fascists (as John Dean referred to them a couple of weeks ago), I don’t see it coming to pass, unless their Iraq/Katrina-style incompetency finally bleeds over into the one thing they seem to be able to do consistently well time after time: mess with elections.

Waiting for the FBI and the Fireworks Competition

It’s been a longer than we expected wait for any response regarding our paperwork for Landed Immigrant status. This week, I decided to call the lawyer we’ve dealt with during the whole process to find out if he knew anything more than we did (or perhaps he could find a way to expedite matters). After a little phone tag, I found out yesterday that the hold-up has been Pam’s fingerprints. It’s not that she’s on any watch-list, but that the prints just don’t come out well enough. Apparently years of washing dishes, dry hands, and other wear and tear have left her with fingers that just don’t offer much in the way of a well-defined print. She’s had them done twice, and the second time, the fellow doing the prints looked at the first set (which had come back with the ‘Rejected’ stamp on them) and declared “I could read these!”. He explained that the FBI requires prints that are readable by a machine rather than a human. So, we find ourselves in limbo, ironically because the FBI won’t clear Pam’s fingerprints. This is particularly irksome, as so much of our future decisions are on hold because of this (and even the ability for us to stay here). Our lawyer said that there’s really nothing we can do, and that we’ll just have to wait while the prints and Pam’s records make their way through the FBI’s labyrinthine bureaucracy. I’m hoping that the wait won’t be much longer, but there’s no telling how much longer this will take. It’s a good thing that my work permit didn’t depend on this!

If it’s Saturday, Then This Must be China
Last year we very much enjoyed watching not one night of fireworks, but 3 of them. Each year, Vancouver hosts a Fireworks competition in late July to early August. Last year, 3 countries, including Canada, China and Sweden were the participating countries (Sweden won). This year, it’s 4 : Italy, China, the Czech Republic, and Mexico. We saw Italy’s performance last Wednesday from Vanier Park. Tonight it will be China, who will open their display with the music of ‘The Yellow River Concerto’, a piece that has the dubious distinction of being the only fairly well known piece of concert music that was written by a committee, (the Yellow River Composers’ Committee, of course), although there is an article in Wikipedia that attributes it as an arrangement of music from The Yellow River Cantata by Yin Chengzong. The Yellow River Cantata is attributed to Xian Xinghai (1905?1945), so I’m not sure where the Committee attribution on so many recordings (including the one I heard a few times when I was a kid) came from. Next Wednesday it will be the Czech Republic, and the following Saturday, Mexico followed by the ‘Grand Finale’. I remember how I was sad that we’d leave the Fourth of July Fireworks behind, but they seem to be replaced nicely with more than enough pyrotechnics, although without all of the kitschy Americana we indulged in on the Banks of the Charles.

My Office’s Starring Role

Some months ago we all had a day off from work because a television crew was using our offices to shoot a mini-series for ABC called “Kyle XY” . A couple of weeks ago, that episode aired on the ABC Family Channel, and a digitized version showed up on the Internet. Without too much trouble, I was able to get a DivX version that I can easily play (and even grab the odd screen from). What is particularly humorous to me now, is that it seems ludicrous to have the office (in the show) with all of those exposed beams and wood ceiling on the fifth floor of a six story building (We’re on the 3rd floor, but the rickety elevator just didn’t suit, so they used a stock shot). Nevertheless, the show is mildly diverting. (The plot in a nutshell: A foundling teenager with no memory, no belly button, and extraordinary talents for mathematics and computer hardware/software is either an alien or escaped lab experiment. He teaches his adoptive family of 2 parents and 2 teens valuable lessons in togetherness, honesty, tolerance, etc.) Oh, and the lead, Matt Dallas, who plays Kyle, manages to be both a hunk, and dewy at the same time.

If You Can’t Stand the Heat…

Oddly enough, some of the biggest changes we felt moving to Vancouver from Boston were the weather.

First it was the weather patterns themselves. Boston’s weather was mercurial - not in terms of moving the mercury of the thermometer around a lot (although it did, to a degree), but in the true sense of the word. The days were changeable, constantly varying, unpredictable. The old joke went: If you don’t like the weather in Boston, wait 5 minutes. Vancouver introduced us to the meteorological equivalent of the long now. Is today sunny and pleasant? Then that’s how it will be outside, for a couple of weeks. Is it dark and rainy? Then expect the same for the rest of the month. Weather here doesn’t really change here; it slowly morphs from one steady state to another. If climate could be say, musical styles, then Boston weather was Miles Davis doing be-bop. Vancouver weather is Bruckner, or perhaps Philip Glass.

The second change was, of course, the different winters. In Boston, December through March was snowy, cold, and dark, with occasional invigorating, bright white days. Here, it is milder, rarely getting below freezing for more than a dozen hours, but accompanied by nearly constant rain and darkness. I thought that the latter might bring back my Seasonal Affective Disorder, which (I now know in retrospect) doomed much of the time I lived in Rochester, New York years ago to endless depression. Fortunately, I seem to have avoided a relapse, at least this year. (We’ll have to see about next year).

The third big difference has been this week. It’s not really the weather, but peoples’ reaction to it. For a few days now, the temperature has been in the mid to upper 20’s (Centigrade - that would be high 70s to low 80s in Fahrenheit). Everyone I’ve talked to here has been acting as if it was an oven out there. In Boston, these days would be the relief, not the punishment. The low humidity as well as cool breezes off the ocean make for utterly pleasant days, but to talk to some in my office or neighbors, you’d think we’re spending a week in Hades. I’ve been accused of being a bit fussy about temperature (Pam insists on the ‘Mind over Matter’), but sometimes I wonder if anyone here (except those from back East, of course), really knows what hot truly is.

True, there is less air conditioning here, although Pam and I both experience it at work. Here at home, we face north, and get no direct sun, so we no longer experience the sieges we used to have when we’d get one of those Boston heat waves (and our poor air conditioner couldn’t get the cold air to the top floor, where we tried to sleep.) I have no doubts whatsoever that Global Warming will be in effect for the rest of my life, regardless of any changes in the use of fossil fuels or other activities that might turn things around some day. If this was a hot summer, and the next decades will make them hotter still, I’m glad that I’ve at least moved northward. Who knows, in 20 years, the new temperate zone that we move to for retirement may be the Nunavut Territory.

This Year has 400 Days

For those not in Canada, there is a popular television program on the CBC called ‘This Hour Has 22 Minutes‘, which is actually a parody on another, earlier TV Program called ‘This Hour has Seven Days’, a hard-hitting CBC news magazine from the mid-1960s (which some have said inspired the US program “60 Minutes”). The “22 Minutes” bit refers to the fact that a half-hour television program is actually 22 minutes long to make room for commercials. Why am I referring to a Canadian reference which is in turn, upon another Canadian reference? Because today, in Calendar or Clock-time, we’ve been here for exactly one year. It sure feels like longer, so I’m estimating, for a nice, round number, an extra 35 days.
In this year we:

• Sold our house and bought a condo
• Sold our car
• Packed up and moved all of our possessions
• Got to know a new city
• Set up a new home network
• Got new bank accounts, credit cards and ATM cards
• Got Work Permits, Medical Care Cards and Social Insurance Numbers
• Got New Driver’s Licenses
• Got a new Job (David) and 3 Contract engagements (Pam)
• Met some new friends and acquaintances
• Applied for Landed Immigrant Status (Permanent Residency)
• Hosted friends and family who came to visit on several occasions
• Had friends over for dinner, and went to more than a few picnics and parties
• Joined a Gamelan (David) and ran a Documentation Competition (Pam)

That’s only part of what we did in the past year. It does feel longer, but on the other hand, I could have also said that this year contains 300 days, because it also feels like it has gone by very quickly. That’s what a major change to one’s life will do.

Today, maybe partly to celebrate this anniversary, I took a ride around the city. Pam was feeling like she was coming down with a cold, so I went out by myself and rented an electric scooter. I drove all around, from due east of our place for some errands, then back across the Burrard Bridge, to Sunset Beach, and then across town (north) on Chillco Street, where I connected up with the route around Stanley Park. I went all the way around the Park, and then returned across the bridge, meeting Pam at Granville Island. Now, there are probably some who are wondering “Are you allowed to take an electric scooter all the way around Stanley Park?” To this I have to answer: Apparently, No (Oops). I was misinformed, but nobody told me to get off the path. The next time I do this, I won’t be able to feign ignorance. Anyway, no one (including me) was harmed by my little jaunt around the seawall, and the trip, which took about an hour, was a blast. The weather was perfect, and I must have seen a million people at every point, on the beaches, the parks, the bridges and streets. I got several great views of the city, as well as the mountains (wish my camera were working, but that’s another story). This truly is one of the most gorgeous spots on the planet, and year later or not, I’m still in awe of just how beautiful it is.

So it’s been a year. Tonight, Pam and I will sit down to another meal of good, healthy food, nearly all from the market at Granville Island. She is right now doing a little tidying up on the terrace. which continues to bloom (roses and hostas at the moment). I read some of my old entries from a year ago, and although I do recognize the writing and the person behind them, I’m not entirely sure whether they and I are the same. It will take a bit more time (but probably less than another 400 days) to know for sure. What I do know, is that we’re now settled and content, and that is a far nicer place to be than ‘about to move’ and anxious.