Did She Just Say That?

Happy July 4^th to all of my friends and rel­a­tives back in the US. Pam and I tuned in this morn­ing to the news and polit­i­cal talk shows, expect­ing a pretty unevent­ful roundup of pre-Fireworks chat­ter, and were sur­prised to see some news­wor­thy items. One was a final reac­tion by pun­dits to the Repub­li­can National Committee’s head, Michael Steele. For the past cou­ple of years, Steele has been ‘the gift that keeps on giv­ing’ to Lib­er­als like myself, and it was always hys­ter­i­cal when he came out with one of his either undig­ni­fied or ridicu­lous state­ments. The lat­est one, how­ever, seemed to go over the line. At a fundraiser in Noank, Con­necti­cut, some­one caught Steele in the fol­low­ing video that became one of those gaffes heard round the world:

Tran­script:
“The [Gen­eral] McChrys­tal inci­dent, to me, was very com­i­cal. I think it’s a reflec­tion of the frus­tra­tion that a lot of our mil­i­tary lead­ers has with this Admin­is­tra­tion and their pros­e­cu­tion of the war in Afghanistan. Keep in mind again, fed­eral can­di­dates, this was a war of Obama’s choos­ing. This was not some­thing that the United States had actively pros­e­cuted or wanted to engage in. It was one of those areas of the total board of for­eign pol­icy [that was at least?] that we would be in the back­ground sort of shap­ing the changes that were nec­es­sary in Afghanistan as opposed to directly engag­ing troops. But it was the Pres­i­dent who was try­ing to be cute by half by flip­ping a script demo­niz­ing Iraq, while say­ing the bat­tle really should in Afghanistan. Well, if he is such a stu­dent of his­tory, has he not under­stood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? Alright, because every­one who has tried over a thou­sand years of his­tory has failed, and there are rea­sons for that. There are other ways to engage in Afghanistan…”

Now I won’t go too much into how wrong that is on so many lev­els (not the least of which is that it’s his­tor­i­cally inac­cu­rate — there was no ‘choice’ involved and the US, led by George W. Bush, attacked Afghanistan after the ter­ror­ist attack on the World Trade Cen­ter and the Pen­ta­gon on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001), but the con­dem­na­tion from Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans has been pretty severe, with the excep­tion of the always-surprising Ron Paul, who said that Steele, “has it right and Repub­li­cans should stick by him.”
At any rate, we did a double-take when we heard this from Cyn­thia Tucker, the Pulitzer prize win­ning reporter of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Wow! It’s not often you hear some­one deliver as blis­ter­ing a cri­tique as that. In fact, I dare say if any­one else had said what she said, (par­tic­u­larly some­one who wasn’t also black) they might have been accused of being racist.

It’s pretty clear that Steele is toast. As I hinted ear­lier, that’s a shame for Democ­rats (Al Hunt a few moments before this clip sug­gested that Steele was actu­ally a Demo­c­ra­tic Mole). How­ever, he (and Ms. Tucker) did pro­vide some early fire­works for this July 4 morning.

Tomor­row

July 5 is also a big date, at least for Pam and me. On this date, 5 years ago, we left Cam­bridge, MA and began our jour­ney to Canada. While I’m always a lit­tle pen­sive on the 4^th, remem­ber­ing those long after­noons on the bank of the Charles river get­ting ready for the fire­works and singing patri­otic songs, I also remem­ber how excited we were to be start­ing a new chap­ter in our lives. These days, I don’t intro­duce myself as a ‘new Van­cou­verite’ any more. I now con­sider the lower Main­land my home, and despite more than a few glances back at the US, we have no plans to return to liv­ing there. The July 4 of 2005 will prob­a­bly be the last one we spent as US residents.

Happy Canada Day 2010!

It’s that day of the  year again, when we all wear red and white T-shirts with Canada on them, head down to Granville Island to get tem­po­rary maple leaf tat­toos and cel­e­brate Canada Day (or as it was orig­i­nally called, Domin­ion Day).

Thanks to Heather for some pho­tos of us in our regalia (well, the T-shirts any­way). The island was jammed, despite less-than-perfect weather. It sprin­kled on and off all day, but that didn’t dampen the spir­its (and appetite) of peo­ple, who chowed down on all sorts of good­ies: we got some oh-so-traditional bar­be­cued squid and tofu and bub­ble tea; oth­ers had Chow Mein noo­dles and Pork Dumplings, Viet­namese cof­fee, hot dogs, shaved ice and But­ter Chicken. I’m always thrilled at how so many peo­ple born in Canada and  immi­grants like us cel­e­brate and share in the good fel­low­ship of ‘Our Home and (nearly) Native Land.‘

A Bit of an Ode to Granville Island

I often tell peo­ple that liv­ing near and shop­ping reg­u­larly for food at Granville Island has ‘changed my life’. It’s true, and I thought I’d spend a lit­tle time try­ing to explain how and why.

First of all, it’s changed the food that I buy. I rarely get food that comes in a box or is pre-processed, and get mostly fresh meat and veg­eta­bles. The things I do buy that are cooked or pre­pared include sausages and other meats and paté from Oyama Sausage com­pany, soup from the Stock Mar­ket soup kitchen, the occa­sional pie (dessert or entree) from À la Mode, and bread from any of the 3 bak­eries (French — La Baguette & L’Echalote, Arti­sanal — Terra Breads, or English/North Amer­i­can — Stu­arts). I try to buy what’s in sea­son (although that can be hard in Jan­u­ary or Feb­ru­ary), and look for­ward to cer­tain months when I know some­thing will be appear­ing and grad­u­ally (or swiftly) going down in price. We are about to hit the sum­mer fruit sea­son, and I love see­ing the arrival of peaches, apri­cots, plums and blue­ber­ries. Because of this, I’ve learned which ven­dors have the best of each vari­ety of fruit, veg­etable or meat. While I do get some organic veg­eta­bles (onions and pota­toes), I also try to buy things that are grown locally. Again, this makes the win­ter months a time when I have to com­pro­mise a bit, but most of the year it’s quite possible.

We are very lucky in that we live a short walk from the mar­ket, and I quite frankly can’t imag­ine liv­ing far­ther away from it. The fact that we walk there and carry our gro­ceries back adds just a lit­tle bit of exer­cise (or at least the excuse to go out­side and get some air, even if the weather is rainy or sim­ply dreary.) For the vast major­ity of vis­i­tors to Granville Island, the mar­ket is a curios­ity, a kind of liv­ing museum of the way peo­ple used to shop for food (and still do in many other coun­tries out­side of North Amer­ica). I’m always amused to see some­one tak­ing a pho­to­graph of a stack of cher­ries or straw­ber­ries (although they are pretty); They’re get­ting a snap­shot of my gro­cery store, and in a few cases where they flood the aisle and are obliv­i­ous to the rest of us, I wish they’d just get out of the way and let me get on my shop­ping. That doesn’t hap­pen too often, but some days, when a tourist bus lets off, the mar­ket has to walk the thin line between attrac­tion and gro­cery store.

I shop at the mar­ket often, and nearly always bring a sack. Since I’m there so much, I’m rec­og­nized by nearly all of the mer­chants, and am on a first name basis with sev­eral of them. I’ve also learned about their fam­i­lies, heard some sto­ries, found out their likes and dis­likes, and think of them as peo­ple, not just some­one at a cash reg­is­ter. I’m impressed with the close-knit fam­i­lies who work in the Mar­ket, and am often been cheered up (or calmed down) by sim­ply enter­ing the mar­ket, espe­cially when it’s not crowded with tourists, which unlike a Super­mar­ket, is not lit solely by flu­o­res­cents. (I should add that on Foursquare, the social media ‘game’, I’m the mayor of Granville Island Mar­ket, and have yet to be replaced by some­one who checks-in there more.)

Speak­ing of Super­mar­kets, I do go to Costco about once every 2 months or so for a few items (olive oil, paper goods, maple syrup), and also go to an organic gro­cer on Broad­way (who used to be the Dan-De-Pak home office, or so it seemed) for rice, the odd box of break­fast cereal or crack­ers, etc.) I always feel kind of dis­ap­pointed and maybe even a lit­tle depressed when I walk into a cav­ernous Safe­way, IGA or Save-On Foods, all lit by those flu­o­res­cent lights, and very cold from the frozen aisles.

Back to the Granville Mar­ket: In addi­tion to the peo­ple, the food and the light, there are the smells. I can nearly nav­i­gate the mar­ket by my nose. In the fish mar­ket, I can smell the brine of today’s catch. There’s fre­quently the aroma of freshly baked bread by the bak­eries (and La Baguette has that mar­velous yeasty smell of pain de mie nearly all of the time). The food court (which I must con­fess, I some­times go to first, in order to eat before I shop, which helps stop larger pur­chases made when hun­gry), there are areas where you smell pizza, curry, or falafel. In sev­eral spots in the build­ing, the smell of cof­fee and tea wafts out into the aisle, and you can under­stand why there’s such a line at J J Bean.

In the sum­mer, there is the extra treat of Thurs­days, par­tic­u­larly in the morn­ing, when local farm­ers truck in their pro­duce, and sell some of it out­side, next to the Mar­ket. In recent years, some farm­ers have spe­cial­ized in Heir­loom Toma­toes, and I’ve actu­ally tasted cel­ery (yes, cel­ery!) that is actu­ally mind-blowingly sweet and tasty. Some of the farm­ers stay all day, but most of them are there mainly in the morn­ing, so Thurs­days are par­tic­u­larly good to get early and get the best produce.

I’ve dis­cov­ered new fruits and veg­eta­bles at the mar­ket. We’ve tried Sting­ing Net­tles as a side dish, and boiled down elder­ber­ries into syrup. I’ve cooked sour cherry soup, and after our trip to South­east Asia, have made Ataulfo Man­goes (Manila Honey Man­goes), Drag­on­fruit, Rambu­tans, Lon­gans, Lychees, Pom­leos and Pas­sion­fruits a treat for break­fast or dessert. Nearly all are avail­able (although not cheaply most of the time) at the mar­ket. I’ve fre­quented the Asian Food spe­cialty shop in the mar­ket, The South China Seas Trad­ing Com­pany, where I’ve finally learned to appre­ci­ate the finer points of coconut milk, fresh tamarind, lit­tle red chiles, lemon­grass, galan­gal, and even fish sauce. I’m thrilled to have found great fish that is cheap (Rock­fish — big, red, and ugly, but they’ll filet it for you for free, so you have a lovely, firm white flesh for curry or soup), and am sur­prised at how good the turkey is. I’ve cheated a lit­tle, and got­ten pre-marinated Maui Ribs, as well as Cor­nish Game Hens, and one of these days this sum­mer we’ll make a Caribbean Goat stew with the fresh goat meat we some­times see them cart in. The spot prawns are in this week, and every year I look for fid­dle­head ferns (in the Spring) and Okana­gan pears (in the Autumn).

All in all, Granville Mar­ket has expanded my diet, made me more in tune with the pas­sage of the sea­sons, low­ered my blood pres­sure (at least when I’m vis­it­ing, I think), and pro­vided me with a sense of con­nec­tion to my food with the peo­ple who grow it and sell it. It’s helped me learn to cook new and more com­pli­cated dishes, and also let me off the hook when I’m stumped and just get a home­made turkey pie or soup. I feel as if I’m richer and my life is health­ier and fuller with the mar­ket in it, which is about the most one can say about any activ­ity, espe­cially one as mun­dane as food shopping.

Joe Wong Slays 'em at the Annual RTCA Dinner

Pres­i­dent Obama made the news for doing some standup the other night at the Annual Radio and Tele­vi­sion Cor­re­spon­dents’ Din­ner in Wash­ing­ton, DC, but I think the real news was some­one else on the pro­gram. I’d never seen this come­dian before,  but I was absolutely blown away by how funny he was and how good his tim­ing and deliv­ery were. If this is any indi­ca­tion of his tal­ent, I hope we’ll be see­ing more of Joe Wong:

I also hope he tours Canada soon. How about a dou­ble bill with Rus­sell Peters?

All the Emotions Fit To Broadcast

Pam and I still try and keep our eyes on the US, at least through the media that we get here in Canada, and there’s plenty of it, despite Can­con. So we have our TiVO set to record the evening news­casts of ABC, NBC and CBS. We also record the Van­cou­ver CBC report. We don’t watch all of that recorded news each and every night; we usu­ally pick one of those 3 or 4 and try and move around a lot (actu­ally, we’ve recently stopped record­ing ABC as Pam felt that Diane Sawyer was such a dis­ap­point­ment as a News Anchor that she can’t bear to watch that news­cast).
Maybe it has just crept in over time, per­haps it’s because I’m becom­ing more of an out­sider and view­ing media more as an observer, but I’ve noticed a change in the way news is reported in the US in the evening. There seems to a small and smaller por­tion of the news­cast devoted to facts and more and more involv­ing emo­tion. Nearly every story is about con­flict or a strug­gle, a cri­sis or a tragedy. Even the sto­ries that are com­plex and affect many dif­fer­ent things end up con­cen­trat­ing on one per­son about to lose their job (as the cov­er­age of that dis­as­trous and com­plex oil spill off the Louisiana Gulf Coast did) or search out the vio­lent edge of con­flict, (as the cov­er­age of the also dis­as­trous Ari­zona Immi­gra­tion Law).  In these cases, it’s clear that they are try­ing to per­son­al­ize the prob­lem or sim­ply make it more dra­matic. This isn’t just mil­lions of gal­lons of oil head­ing for the coast, it’s a Portly Shrimp Farmer about to lose his liveli­hood, it isn’t just a new law about to take in effect in the Ari­zona State Leg­is­la­ture, but a vio­lent clash between immi­grants and police.

I can’t help check off the scenes we will no doubt see as if I’m play­ing a drink­ing game:

• Some­one cry­ing or break­ing down dur­ing a speech or interview.
• Some­one look­ing into the cam­era and say­ing how they don’t know what they’ll do now.
• Some­one declar­ing that ‘It’s all in God’s hands, now.’
• A group of peo­ple fight­ing or running.
• Some­one declar­ing that some­thing was ‘A Miracle!’
• Peo­ple hug­ging, or an adult lift­ing a child in their arms.
• A gov­ern­ment offi­cial being grilled in a meet­ing room or besieged in front of a build­ing by an angry mob (to be sure, that was more often seen last summer)
• A crim­i­nal of some sort walk­ing try­ing to hide their face with either some papers or a hood.
• A short and chop­pily edited inter­view with a per­son who is quirky and ‘Mak­ing a Dif­fer­ence’ — as a cou­ple of the net­works call them out.*
• (Add your own stock sit­u­a­tion or dra­matic exclamation.)

My friends and I used to joke back when I was going to school in Cincin­nati that the evening news they always showed the same still snap­shot of a car in a ditch in Nor­wood (a still snap­shot? Hey, it was the early 80s, OK?), even if it was a dif­fer­ent acci­dent some­where else — they all looked the same. Now, every­thing is the same; it’s con­flict, it’s emo­tional, it’s extreme and some­how a deity is involved.

What’s going on now, is that because news is part of the bud­get for the net­works that involves enter­tain­ment, by golly, it bet­ter be enter­tain­ing. I’d like to know the exact amount of oil that is gush­ing out, what that num­ber means in terms of envi­ron­men­tal dam­age, how long it takes for oil to get from the ocean floor to the sur­face. I want to know the specifics of what the new law in Ari­zona will deal with some­one wrongly accused of being an immi­grant; Can they sue? Can an employer fire a worker for miss­ing work because of being picked up for false charges? I don’t know these things, how­ever, and I’m not likely to learn them from the Evening Newscast.

I can see why most peo­ple are get­ting their news through the Inter­net these days, as the TV news has shrunken into a drama­ti­za­tion of the events of the day, done in broad strokes with an empha­sis on the sim­plest rep­e­ti­tious images and scenes. The net­works have decided that their audi­ences want their news a dumbed down as pos­si­ble. There is no point in pro­vid­ing much in the way of facts. And that’s for the net­works. Cable News, like Fox… I won’t even go there. (CNN’s also slip­ping into propaganda-laced sto­ries as well. I can only assume this is because their rat­ings have been so bad that they are emu­lat­ing Fox. )

Rather than com­plain about the way the news is pre­sented, most view­ers either take it at face value and aren’t aware of what’s miss­ing, or they are adapt­ing, by mov­ing to the Web.  I’n fact, I’m pre­dict­ing that there will even­tu­ally be an iPad app for delv­ing into facts (on an Inter­net site) dur­ing the broad­cast. The main facts of the news will be in someone’s lap, while they see the drama on the big­ger screen.

Per­haps we’ll some­day see the kind of news­cast that they sim­u­lated in the future depicted by the movie Star­ship Troop­ers, where each set of State Pro­pa­ganda fas­cist slo­gans is fol­lowed by a screen that looks like a but­ton and a voiceover that asks: ‘Would you like to know more?’

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*I must con­fess that I’m get­ting really to loathe these ‘human inter­est’ pieces, because they are always cut and pre­sented the same way and try so hard to appeal. Harry Smith, who some­times is a guest Anchor on CBS is one of the worst offend­ers in this regard. Nearly every­thing he does smacks of that ‘human inter­est’ treacle.