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 3^rd 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.