Ripples in the Pond

The LA Times keeps a dis­cus­sion board of sorts that cross-references all of the Op Eds. I chuck­led as Tim Cavanaugh posted most of the lib­eral clichés that I missed:

Op Ed: Stephen Harper for­ever!
David Drucker, a lib­eral who headed to Canada after the 2004 elec­tion, pulls over his Volvo, turns down NPR, takes a sip of latté, and rolls up his Utne Reader to announce that even a Demo­c­ra­tic con­gress can’t bring him back from the Great White North.
(dis­cuss…)

It doesn’t sur­prise me how my lit­tle piece of humour seemed to inspire every­thing from more of the same (as above), an angry rant from South Dakota, some really great emails from old friends and com­plete strangers, men­tions in some great blogs writ­ten by friends in San Fran­cisco and Boston, and a few snarky com­ments. I was, how­ever, sur­prised to see that for a short while, the ‘most emailed’ list to the right of the site’s page for a while looked like this:


Most emailed? Gee… Look, Ma, I was a Meme!

Update: More blog men­tions in Boston, and here and here in Van­cou­ver. Cool.

Crazy Weather Continues

First it was the rain. We expected that. Then the mud­slides that turned the water brown. OK, we’ve had bad tap water before in Cam­bridge. But one thing we thought we’d left behind in New Eng­land was snow. Lots of it. Big, fluffy, wet flakes that are sticking.

Pam really had her heart set on the Cul­ture Crawl, but I’m sure that the orga­niz­ers of the event (which is essen­tially walk­ing through a neigh­bor­hood where a lot of artists and crafts­peo­ple live and work, and whose stu­dios are open) are won­der­ing why it always takes place dur­ing the worst sin­gle patch of weather of the year.

No mat­ter, we are home and warm, with plans to cook a Pheas­ant tonight. Pam spied one at the mar­ket the other day and decided that a plump game bird was just the ticket for a cold Novem­ber night. Don’t know if we are going to serve it ‘under glass’, but I think some other del­i­ca­cies are in order. Let’s see: Chest­nuts, wild rice, per­haps some more exotic green vegetables?

The LA Times Op Ed

Right on sched­ule (at about mid­night, PST), the LA Times put up my Op Ed. It’s a pretty dull head­line (In fact, it reminds me of some of those you see in The Onion, like Local Man Inspires 14^th Off­beat News Story ) The title I had writ­ten as a slug was The Coun­try is Always Bluer on the Other Side. Yeah, I know, too ‘clever’.

I was told that it was also picked up on the LA Times Wire, and have since found out that it has appeared on one of my favourite lib­eral news aggre­ga­tors, Com­mon Dreams. Holy cow! 4^th from the top this morn­ing, 2 away from (Oh crap!) Ralph Where-the-whole-mess-started Nader.

So, with­out fur­ther ado, I post it here, for that day when it scrolls off the cur­rent news and I may want to refer to it:

Dems in Con­trol? We’re Still Stay­ing in Canada
by David Drucker

My wife and I awoke, as usual, to NPR. Before polit­i­cal cor­re­spon­dent Mara Lias­son got to the end of her first sen­tence, I knew the news was dis­as­trous. George W. Bush had been reelected.

“Honey,” I said, “remem­ber when we talked about mov­ing to Canada?”

I’m sure a lot of other dyed-in-the-organic-wool lib­er­als mut­tered some­thing sim­i­lar that dark morn­ing in 2004, but unlike most of them, we meant it. Plan A: John Kerry wins, we build that dream ski house in Ver­mont. Plan B: Move to Van­cou­ver, Canada.

So, Plan B it was. We’d had enough of Bush, the direc­tion the United States was going, and this was the last straw. Never mind that we lived in Cam­bridge, Mass., arguably the most lib­eral city in the bluest of the blue states. We were pack­ing our bulk gra­nola into our diesel Bee­tle and head­ing out.

Eight months later, we were set­tling into a new home and jobs in British Colum­bia, when Canada had its own elec­tion. For those unfa­mil­iar with the Cana­dian sys­tem of gov­ern­ment, the prime min­is­ter is elected by par­lia­ment — not every four years but after los­ing a no-confidence vote. After a few of those there was a par­lia­men­tary elec­tion in Jan­u­ary, which led to the elec­tion of a new prime min­is­ter, Stephen Harper, of Canada’s Con­ser­v­a­tive Party.

Harper ran on cut­ting taxes and turn­ing a fed­eral child-care pro­gram into a monthly pay­ment per child. The opposition’s neg­a­tive cam­paign ads sounded eerily famil­iar: He sup­ported Bush’s war in Iraq, was against sign­ing the Kyoto envi­ron­men­tal accord and wanted to “reex­am­ine” gay mar­riage (which is legal in Canada). A shiver rip­pled down from our berets to our Birkenstocks.

Then, a few weeks ago, we awoke, as usual, to the Cana­dian Broad­cast­ing Corp. Before CBC morn­ing show host Tom Allen got to the end of his first sen­tence, I knew: Back in the United States, the Demo­c­ra­tic Party had won con­trol of the House and the Senate.

“Honey, did we make a big mistake?”

By “big mis­take,” I mean, not the kind in which you switch lines at Whole Foods and the line you’d been in sud­denly starts to move. We’re talk­ing big mis­take like sell­ing all of your stock in Ben & Jerry’s the day before Unilever buys the company.

But it turns out that Cana­dian con­ser­vatism can look awfully lib­eral. So far, Harper — derided as “Bush lite” — has, for instance, intro­duced a par­tial tax credit for monthly tran­sit passes. The Con­ser­v­a­tives have pro­posed a Clean Air Act for Canada, and although it’s not ideal, it’s still some­thing. Harper said that these new laws would “insti­tute a holis­tic approach that doesn’t treat the related issues of pol­lu­tants and green­house gas emis­sions in iso­la­tion.” When was the last time you heard any U.S. politi­cian utter the word “holistic”?

Did I men­tion uni­ver­sal health­care? Even Harper seems com­mit­ted to keep­ing that.

We’ve come to the con­clu­sion that the United States has drifted so far to the right that any self-respecting Cana­dian Con­ser­v­a­tive would be con­sid­ered a rav­ing lib­eral in Wash­ing­ton. Stephen Harper is no George W. Bush. We may not agree with him, but we don’t feel ashamed every time he opens his mouth. We might yawn, though.

So we’re stay­ing in Canada. But good luck with that new Con­gress, eh?

They cut a few items here and there, includ­ing a ‘cheap shot’ accord­ing to one edi­tor, that I took at Bush.

In the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure, we did, in fact, leave Boston in a Diesel Bee­tle, but there wasn’t any bulk gra­nola in it (but we have been known to eat, and even make gra­nola. Seri­ously, if you’ve never made it from scratch, it’s worth a try, at least once.) We sold the car and dropped it off in Wash­ing­ton D.C. . While Pam has been known to wear a beret (and Birken­stocks), I don’t own any (with these oddly shaped feet, fugged­aboutit!). We do lis­ten to Tom Allen, the host of Music and Com­pany, but I can’t remem­ber if it was he or Judy Mad­dren in the World Report on the hour that had the news. I guess I just wanted to give a plug to Allen, since I’m a huge fan of his show and him. Finally, I make no claims about get­ting the whole Cana­dian par­lia­men­tary sys­tem and elec­tion process 100% right. We’ve only been here a rel­a­tively short time and I’m only just start­ing to learn how it all works. I’ll get it down even­tu­ally, in prepa­ra­tion for citizenship.

My Newest Writing Assignment

I men­tioned in my last post­ing that I was work­ing on a ‘writ­ing project’. I no longer have to be vague and/or mys­te­ri­ous about it. Through a series of refer­rals (Thanks very much, Mak­taaq and Travis), I was put in touch with an edi­tor at the LA Times, who hap­pens to be an old friend of Travis.

It seems that the LA Times Edi­to­r­ial Dept. was kick­ing around the idea early last week that an Amer­i­can who had left the coun­try for Canada due in some part to the reelec­tion of Bush in 2004 might have some poten­tially humor­ous com­men­tary on the fact that that they now live in a coun­try with a Con­ser­v­a­tive Prime Min­is­ter while the US has since elected a Demo­c­ra­tic major­ity in Con­gress. So with three degrees of sep­a­ra­tion tra­versed, I offered to try to write the Op Ed, know­ing full well that if they didn’t like it, my efforts would be up on this blog and that would be that.

I gave it my best shot, spend­ing a three-day hol­i­day week­end holed up in my office at the key­board writ­ing drafts and run­ning them by friends and fam­ily (Thanks also to Pam, Sooz and Matt), try­ing to get the jokes right, and try­ing to get it down to between 500 and 800 words. (it’s always easy to write more, harder to write tighter).

The result is…tomorrow I’ll be pub­lished in the LA Times! As soon as the URL goes live, I’ll blast out an email announce­ment to every­one I know, and will copy the text to this blog, since the link will go dark after about 30 days, and I can’t very well pla­gia­rize myself.

Do I like the piece? Well, it’s prob­a­bly a bit more inten­tion­ally humor­ous than I typ­i­cally write, and there was one joke in par­tic­u­lar that was pulled by the edi­tors because it was a ‘cheap shot’. No mat­ter. Like most writ­ing projects (and I can now say this with con­vic­tion), the best part is now, when it’s over and done with. Just as I was happy a decade ago to get to say “I’ve writ­ten a cou­ple of books”, I’m also pleased that after tomor­row, I’ll be able to say “I’ve writ­ten for the LA Times”.

The Grey Cup and Cassoulet

I spent most of the week­end work­ing on a writ­ing project that may bear some fruit one way or another. In either case, I’ll note it here when I know for sure. I did break for a few diver­sions, includ­ing the Cheese Cel­e­bra­tion and Stu­dent Art Sale at the Emily Carr Insti­tute on Sat­ur­day. We picked up some nice local Caer­philly (a Welsh miner’s cheese that I’m very fond of). It’s one of the best cheeses I know with fruit. No art, though.

We Are the Cham­pi­ons!
Today I spent a some time watch­ing the BC Lions play the Mon­treal Alou­ettes in The Grey Cup, the Cana­dian Foot­ball League Cham­pi­onship. It’s kind of like the Super­Bowl for Canada, only instead of Janet Jack­son at half-time, it was Nelly Fur­tado, who was bun­dled from head to toe in black leather and a white scarf (so no chance of any ‘wardrobe mal­func­tion’) The fact that it was near freez­ing for most of the game, which they played in Win­nipeg, Man­i­toba, made warm dress for every­one a necessity.

The tem­per­a­ture had no effect on the BC Lions’ Paul McCal­lum, who kicked a record-tying 6 field goals (I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than 3 in any game I’ve watched). The most amaz­ing moment (and prob­a­bly heart­break­ing for Mon­treal fans) was when the Alou­ettes fum­bled the ball on the Lions 1-yard line, which stopped them from get­ting within strik­ing dis­tance of a win, and led to a final score of 25 for the Lions, 14 for the Alouettes.

While foot­ball is clearly not as near and dear to Cana­di­ans’ hearts as hockey, I’m still thrilled to be in a town with a win­ning sports team. The years of bit­ter­ness and nos­tal­gia for sea­sons past in Boston was some­thing I’d pre­fer not to expe­ri­ence here. Like it or not, when the team wins, more money comes in, and casual con­ver­sa­tion with cowork­ers, neigh­bors and even strangers on the street is easier.

Cas­soulet II, The Return of the Bean
The Oyama Sausage Com­pany of the Pub­lic Mar­ket on Granville Island is hav­ing their Cas­soulet Fes­ti­val, and we picked up ours today, along with some Duck Con­fit, a Duck sausage and a Veni­son Sausage. Tonight we had some of it, and it was still as good as it was last year, bub­bling hot, with ten­der white beans stud­ded with chunks of the most deli­cious spiced lamb and pork. Topped with bread-crumbs, a few slices of orange, and sprigs of fresh thyme, it’s a sub­lime treat. We ate it with some aspara­gus and some nice french bread. Our lit­tle feast almost makes up for the damp cold (and cloudy brown water caused by 37 land­slides into our reser­voirs in a space of 24 hours) of these inter­minable Novem­ber storms. Almost.