test blog #10

Two nights ago, I did a stupid thing. I read about something very disturbing right before going to bed. Allan, D and I had been talking about trying to keep what we know about players' personal lives out of our enjoyment of sports. D mentioned Michael Vick. I had heard about it, but hadn't read any details. D said the details were too horrible to talk about. I decided it was one of those things I had to know, even though knowing would upset me. So I read about it. That's OK. But anyone with sleep issues should know better than to do that before bed. I woke up at 2:00 a.m., crying. In my dream, we were at the vet's office where we had Buster put down. I saw our last moments with him, the same as they occurred. But in the dream, after we left the room, the doctor injected Buster with another drug that revived him. He wasn't really dead. Then Buster was taken to a pit where other dogs would attack him. (That is likely what happened to him in real life, and why our boy ...

After finishing A Complicated Kindness , I struck out on the next two novels, The Darling , by Russell Banks, whose work I normally love, and War Trash , by Ha Jin. Both very good books, I'd be thrilled to write half as well as either of the authors. Just not for me, at least not now. But I just started a book that has grabbed me from the first words: Crossing , by Deirdre McCloskey. I read a review of this book when it came out in 1992, put it on my List, then happened upon it when Allan and I were at The Strand last September. Here's the preface, which I scanned so you can read it, too. I want to tell you the story of a crossing from fifty-two-year-old man to fifty-five-year-old woman. Donald to Deirdre. "A strange story," you say. Yes, it is strange, statistically. All the instruments agree that what's usually called "transsexuality," permanently crossing the gender boundary, is rare. (The Latin in "transsexuality" makes it sound sexual, wh...

I started my new weekend job last night. So far, so good. For various boring reasons, the Friday afternoon commute sucks, but it's only once a week and hopefully only for six weeks. After the end of August, I'm hoping they will let me drop Friday evenings but keep Saturday and Sunday. I have lots to write about but no time this weekend, so expect an overload on Monday.

Our dogs always get us cards for our birthdays and anniversaries. They are so thoughtful that way. Allan and I don't usually go for cards with messages; we usually buy blank cards and write our own. So this one surprised me. (Uh, even though it wasn't "from" Allan.) I really love it. Every dog lover should know his dog's birthsign; leave phone messages for the dog; get birthday gifts from the dog; consider getting a cat for the dog; see babies and think puppies; have a near-miss in traffic because a dog was walking by; have stepped in some, barefoot, in the dark; know better than to leave a closet open; know all dogs by name, if not all owners; be pleased to learn that 63% of you sleep with them; buy anything a dog is selling; should be counted on to ask, no matter what other awful things are reported, Was the dog ok; understand they are never replaced; and you will fall in love again... Oh no, I teared up this time, too.

I belong to the YMCA of Mississauga , a beautiful facility right next to the Square One mall and the central branch of the Mississauga Library. I joined for swimming. They have a great pool, I'm a 5-minute drive away, and it's only $50 a month for a basic membership. In New York, because we didn't live in an upscale neighbourhood, I either walked - not a pleasant walk, but a congested, annoying walk - to a low-budget, low-service gym, or schlepped on the subway to swim in an overpriced basement - and paid well for the privilege. The Mississauga Y is nicer than any health club I could afford in New York City, and half the cost. Of course, that means you're living in Mississauga, not New York City, which for most of my life was not a tradeoff I would have chosen. When co-workers would come back from vacation extolling the low rents or housing prices in Houston, or Atlanta, or Cleveland, I'd think, Yes, rents are low, but you have to live in Cleveland. I didn't mo...

New Yorkers, former New Yorkers, and everyone afraid of the Bush agenda: quick, run out and buy the current issue of Harper's . The terrific New York writer (and my email friend) Kevin Baker has this cover story: " A Fate Worse Than Bush : Rudolph Giuliani and the politics of personality". The first sentence: Rudolph Giuliani has, by far, the most dubious known personal history of any major presidential candidate in American history, what with his three marriages and his open affairs and his almost total estrangement from his grown children, not to mention the startling frequency with which he finds excuses to dress in women's clothing. There's tons of other worthwhile stuff in this issue, including Jonathan Kozol (another favourite writer of mine) on US education, Benjamin DeMott on addiction to violence, and fiction by Alice Munro. Go for it.

Our next stop was in Northampton, near Amherst, in western Massachusetts. It's an artsy, organic, progressive area, with a lot of college (meaning university) students, activism, music, art, good food, used bookstores and all the rest. Our friend and nephew D has lived there off and on for many years. He's about to pull up stakes to re-join his partner in acupuncture school in New Mexico. They met in a bodywork and holistic healing institute . She is also an herbalist, and with acupuncture added to their repertoire they will one day have a holistic practice together. This was an opportunity to see D before he heads back out west. D is a great friend of ours, and had a great time talking, eating, drinking, and seeing a bit of his community. We even got in a small dog fix, taking a walk in the woods with "his" dog, a border collie he has taken care of and spends time with. D is also an avid sports fan, mostly football but also baseball, and we're pretty much the onl...

We took Betty out for dinner on Sunday night, and she suggested going to Stowe, the huge ski resort area on the other side of the mountain from her place. This is called "driving through The Notch," a narrow mountain pass, from which Smuggler's Notch gets its name. The road is completely closed in winter - and jammed with tourists in autumn. Neither of us had ever done this before. It was a spectacular winding drive through dense forest. As you near Stowe, a tall, white steeple comes into view: it's the archetypal Vermont postcard. It's actually the church that you always see in photographs. At dinner, somehow the subject of the Shelburne Museum came up. When I used to visit Allan in Vermont, we were always supposed to go to this Museum but somehow never did, even though it was minutes from where he lived. Then he moved to New York and I forgot all about it. When Betty mentioned it, I realized this was our opportunity. Since I never seemed to be able to plan t...

Sunday was a family day, not a common occurrence on Allan's side, but always very pleasant. It's also pretty superficial, which keeps it pleasant - but this is not a bad thing. Allan doesn't keep up with these relatives in his daily life, but when he touches down, he's always made to feel welcome, and I am too, when I'm there. There's a lot of warmth and good feeling, and there's no tension, no prying, no obligations. Allan has no parents and is estranged from his siblings, but this family connection has slowly strengthened over the years. It's nice. We spent time with great-aunt Betty, some of her children (who are a little older than us), their children (who are young adults and doing interesting things), and a newly adopted kitten. We also visited Mary, Allan's grandmother, who is doing much better than she was a few years ago. That's always a little tough, but it means a tremendous amount to her to see Allan, so it's worth the effort. Bet...

I wasn't able to write on this trip, but I need a journal of all my travels, no matter how short or seemingly ordinary. I'm sure this will make for completely boring reading; you know what to do. The drive through eastern Ontario to northern Vermont was stressful and annoying. It rained almost the whole way, we hit rush-hour traffic around Montreal and then missed a turn before the border, adding an hour to our trip at the very end. Bah. We didn't pull into Betty's until around 9:30, a good 3 hours later than we were expected. We sat and talked with Betty for a while before bed. More on Betty later. The rain was worrisome, because the wedding was outdoors, but RFV and L lucked out - Saturday was a perfect blue-sky day. We found a roadside motel not far from their home by rural standards, telling Betty we were staying at RFV's, and RFV we were staying at Betty's. That way no one felt obligated to put us up, and we (especially me) could have a little privacy and q...

We're back. We had a great little trip and I'll be blogging tomorrow. I know the wmtc banner has disappeared. The entire directory it was living in seems to have vanished. I'll sort it out. For now we'll all use our imaginations. I'm imagining a comfortable bed with a two dogs curled up beside it.

We're off to Vermont - a great way to spend one of the five major Kaminker-Wood stat holidays. Allan and I met on July 20 , a million years ago. Plus , I just wrote a cheque to our dogsitter, and the date on the cheque comes out like this: 20 07 2007 Nice! Have a great week, everyone. See you soon.

You may remember my asking about your produce and food buying habits - organic vs local vs what's available. I took advantage of not working weekends for a while to shop at Mississauga's farmers' market . It was a great treat for me. I tried to remember to bring a fabric shopping bag or two, and I bought corn, berries, cherries, tomatoes and nectarines. The quality was excellent, the atmosphere friendly and it's very nearby. Much to my surprise, however, most of the produce sold there was not grown in Ontario! When I asked about that, vendors told me that their growing season is so short, if they only sold their own produce, they could participate in the market for only a month or two. But they are still local farmers, and I think it must be better to buy from them than from Loblaws. The quality was certainly better. So when I saw Ontario-grown produce - tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries, raspberries and cherries - I bought it. But I also bought corn, nectarines and pl...

I think Tala may be obsessive compulsive, or at least could easily become so if we encouraged her. Which we won't. She's always been fascinated when our neighbours water their gardens. She runs alongside the fence, trying to get wet. Some folks will play with her - spray her - and then she's in heaven. We don't water our lawn (what a waste!), so it took Tala a while to realize that she could actually get sprayed in her own yard. But now that she's discovered it, she loves it. She craves it. She's obsessed with it. To do this post justice, I would really need to post a video, but a description will have to suffice. Tala has two favourite modes of spray. If you set the nozzle to mist, she closes her eyes, holds her face up into the spray, and simply basks . If you set it to jet, she runs face-first into the spray with her mouth wide open. We were afraid she would drown, but she must be closing her throat in some way, because she doesn't even cough. The jet is...

Especially since I got out at 4 every day. Training was excruciatingly boring, but the trainer was good, we took lots of breaks, and best of all, we ended early and were paid for the full day. Working downtown for three days, I was asked for directions seven times, all when there were tons of other people around. And I work three blocks from Union Station. (Last week I took a long walk around Mississauga Valley Boulevard, and was asked for directions twice - by people driving past, who pulled over when they spotted me.) New Firm seems good so far. I think the job may last for a while, as I'm filling in for someone is seriously ill. Weird, isn't it, to benefit from someone else's misfortune?

Tomorrow I start a three-day training for the new part-time/contract job . For once I won't complain about training, because no matter how boring it may be, I'm paid by the hour and can use the bucks. After that, I have one day of appointments and busy-ness, then Friday we leave for a brief road trip. First we head to Vermont for our friend Ray's wedding, a Hawaiian luau in a northern Vermont backyard. In Vermont we visit Allan's grandmother and some other relatives he has reconnected with. (Although the man has very little family, we have managed to see them - and stay with them - in three different states, including Alaska, plus one province.) From Vermont we'll drive slightly south into western Massachusetts, to spend some time with nephew D before he moves back to New Mexico. A five-day Allan-and-Laura road trip is always fun, especially since I feel like I haven't left my house except for job interviews and the gym in months! So that's the week ahead,...

Amy Goodman has an inspiring story about some young US activists: Young Scholars Tell the President 'No' on Torture .

The story starts here. (Well, actually the story starts a long time ago, but the immediate story at hand starts there.) Michael Moore writes: 7/14/07 Dear CNN, Well, the week is over — and still no apology, no retraction, no correction of your glaring mistakes. I bet you thought my dust-up with Wolf Blitzer was just a cool ratings coup, that you really wouldn’t have to correct the false statements you made about "Sicko." I bet you thought I was just going to go quietly away. Think again. I'm about to become your worst nightmare. 'Cause I ain't ever going away. Not until you set the record straight, and apologize to your viewers. "The Most Trusted Name in News?" I think it's safe to say you can retire that slogan. You have an occasional segment called "Keeping Them Honest." But who keeps you honest? After what the public saw with your report on "Sicko," and how many inaccuracies that report contained, how can anyone believe anythi...

Memo to Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and the rest of the propagandists: just because we progressives say the Democrats are as bad as the Republicans, doesn't mean you have to label them all the same! From the inimitable Joseph Cannon of Cannonfire , via you-know-who : more disgraced Republicans identified as Democrats in the mainstream media. Click here for the story , 'cause you've got to see the screen shots.

If you can sit through CNN's lies and distortions about the Canadian health care system, you'll enjoy watching Michael Moore slice and dice Wolf Blitzer. (Yes, Canadians access health care outside the system, because the system doesn't cover dental care or prescriptions. Not because of wait-times, and not because the system fails us! And maybe some Americans have a shorter wait for hip replacements, but how many can afford them?) Many thanks to my researcher-in-chief.

It seems our family has been adopted by some neighbourhood kids. It started when our doorbell rang on Thursday afternoon. Allan told me there were kids at the door with a petition about animal cruelty. The petition was a little vague, but they were going door-to-door for signatures to give to our MPP . I was impressed. Besides signing, I went to the door to tell them what a good thing they were doing, and to chat with them about animals and activism. Any young person with an impulse to activism deserves encouragement. An hour later, our doorbell rang again. The two girls were back. They said, "You were the only person who told us we were doing a good thing and actually talked to us. You were so nice and your dogs are so great and we were wondering, could we walk your dogs or come over and play with them sometime?" I was friendly, but skeptical, as they're only 11. They both have dogs of their own, and one of them is very mature for her age. And of course, 11-year-olds are...

Stephen Harper recently announced that the federal government will buy eight new Arctic patrol ships . This will supposedly help Canada "reassert sovereignty" over the far North. There are a lot of things wrong with this, in my opinion. While I've been thinking about it - and while I wasn't blogging - for the last few days, two letter writers in the Toronto Star voiced my opinion for me, and better than I would have. Here they are. Stephen Harper is astute to recognize our need to invest in Canada's Arctic, but his plan is embarrassingly misguided and far from prudent. The matter for true concern is not the condition of Canadian icebreakers and patrol vessels. For Harper to casually admit that Arctic waters will be navigable by 2015 is reason enough to puncture the veneer of his environmental concern. Does he not recognize the sheer ludicrousness of such a statement, or the sense of urgency that it elicits? Harper is telling us that when the planet has been altere...

A friend sent me this astounding video of a British man who is an autistic savant. Check it out. Sometimes I think the human mind is the greatest mystery of the universe. PS: I'm using Blogger's new video upload function, which you can find at Draft Blogger .

In a couple of hours we'll drive my mother to the airport. We've had a lovely visit. We haven't done much of anything except enjoy each other's company. She wasn't able to walk much because of an ankle injury, so we didn't go to the ROM or into Toronto at all. We had dim sum, played with the dogs, grilled dinner and ate in the backyard every night - good (coincidental) timing with the All Star break, so there were no baseball games, thus no reason to go inside - and mostly just sat and talked for hours. I had purposely saved a few errands so I could take my mom on a drive and show her a little bit of Mississauga. On her previous visits, she only saw Port Credit - the village, the mom-and-pop stores and family restaurants on the lakeshore strip, the gorgeous stretch of waterfront trail - each an anomaly. As we drove around this time, my mom was amazed at the dozens of huge high-rises, the endless townhouse tracts, the vast acres of big-box stores. Granted, my mot...

My mom arrives today, staying until Thursday morning. We have a few things planned, like the ancient Peru exhibit at the ROM, but she's been having some trouble with an injured ankle, so we'll have to play that by ear. She's excited to see our new place and meet the new member of our family . (All our dogs have known her a "Grandma".) Dim Sum in Mississauga and grilling in the backyard are definitely on the agenda. And endless talking, of course. I can't wait to see her! Now off to clean.

Here's another find from my friend AW1L, who keeps me posted on so many things of great interest to me that I would otherwise miss. The stones at Machu Picchu seem almost alive. They may be alive, if you credit the religious beliefs of the ruler Pachacuti Yupanqui, whose subjects in the early 15th century constructed the granite Inca complex, high above a curling river and nestled among jagged green peaks. To honor the spirits that take form as mountains, the Inca stoneworkers carved rock outcrops to replicate their shapes. Doorways and windows of sublimely precise masonry frame exquisite views. . . . . Imposingly tall and strong-minded, [Hiram] Bingham was the grandson of a famous missionary who took Christianity to the Hawaiian islanders. In his efforts to locate lost places of legend, the younger Bingham proved to be as resourceful. Bolstered by the fortune of his wife, who was a Tiffany heiress, and a faculty position at Yale University, where he taught South American history,...

The Toronto Star recently ran a series they called "Uneasy Mosaic," purportedly examining the state of multiculturalism in Canada today. Most of the issues they highlighted were the ordinary growing pains of any society with a diverse population: intermarriage , gender equality in religion , assimilation vs ethnic identity . To my mind, none of it showed Canada's mosaic as especially "uneasy". Multiculturalism and diversity bring all sorts of tensions and challenges. And a majoritarian society - where minorities are second-class citizens and conformity is required - does not? In today's Star , Haroon Siddiqui offers a good perspective. Canada Day brought with it the usual hand-wringing about Canada. Are we too multicultural? Do we have enough common values? Are too many immigrants importing alien values and contaminating ours? Are too many of them clustering in "ethnic ghettoes" and not learning enough about Canada and other Canadians? Such discus...

How's that for an egocentric headline? While Allan and I are sipping wine in our suburban backyard, and most of our friends are hanging out in Toronto, New York, London and similarly urban places, one friend of wmtc is living in a tent and clearing land to build her own house. And now I've learned that the only person I know north of latitude 60 met the White Stripes on their Yukon swing! That's right, Dogsled_Stacie, friend of wmtc from back before we actually did the m-t-C part, met the White Stripes on their recent visit to Whitehorse . She hung out with them - demonstrated spear-throwing, I believe - and they put her on the guestlist for their instantly sold-out show, which she watched from the front row. Because a lot of people in the area couldn't get tickets, the White Stripes also played a free concert in a local park . I am not a White Stripes fan, but if I were, I'd be freaking out over how they've embraced Canada. Even without loving their music, I a...

As I may be doing some ESL tutoring this year, my friend AW1L thought of me when he saw this story in The Economist . " We are addressing the bottom of the pyramid ," says Krishnan Ganesh, an Indian entrepreneur, of his latest venture, TutorVista . It is a phrase that cheekily calls to mind the mass poor in his native country—but TutorVista, an online tuition service, is aimed squarely at customers in the developed world. Mr Ganesh founded the company in late 2005 after spotting that personal tutoring for American schoolchildren was unaffordable for most parents. His solution is to use tutors in India to teach Western students over the internet. The teachers all work from home, which means that the company is better able to avoid India's high-wage employment hotspots. TutorVista further hammers home its labour-cost advantage through its pricing model. It offers unlimited tuition in a range of subjects for a subscription fee of $100 per month in America (and £50 a month in...

07.07.07! A great date. It's not that I think sevens are lucky. Last year I liked June 6.

I hesitated to blog about this, but it's just too bizarre to ignore. What is up with wingnuts blaming Michael Moore for the recent bombings in the UK? I really have to wonder if Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, Humana and the like are behind this. (If those names don't mean anything to you, feel lucky. Feel Canadian.) Could any ordinary citizen who was not an insurance industry lobbyist be so in love profit-driven health care that he would resort to such lunacy to defend it?

Obsidian Wings: "Which Of These Things Is Not Like The Other?" Great stuff. Thanks to Allan for passing it along.

Many people have mentioned that they've had a difficult time leaving comments - that Google won't let them log in, or the comments wouldn't take, or other issues. I have only two suggestions, which are not guaranteed to work, by any means. One, log in to your Google/Blogger account before coming to wmtc. That seems to help. And two, try using the "ghost" address of www.wmtc.blogspot.com. That's the URL before it's forwarded to wmtc.ca. I'm sorry to hear that Blogger has been strangling our conversations, however unintentionally. Annoying!

Loblaws, where we do most of our food shopping, is selling these reusable bags for 99 cents each. They're made of 85% post-consumer recycled materials, they're big and they seem very strong. I've only seen a few people at the store using these bags for their entire shopping. I'd like to do that, both for the plastic bag replacement itself, and for the visibility, to encourage other to do the same. As I've mentioned before , we re-use all our plastic grocery bags. One use is for household trash, but there are always bags from the LCBO (which are sturdier) or Canadian Tire to use for that. With diligent recycling, we only have two or three small bags of trash each week. The real issue is dog poop. We save all our grocery bags for dog poop cleanup, and with two dogs, we go through a lot of bags. Unlike Toronto, Mississauga doesn't want dog waste in the green bin - we have to throw it in the trash. In New York, we used newspaper to clean up after our dogs. But in ...

While we're thinking about Canada treading a path independent of the United States, we should take a careful look at what road the US is actually on. If you haven't seen this column by Scott Horton in Harper's , and the Andrew Sullivan post it references, please read both. They've been sitting in my inbox for more than a month, but it's never too late to see clearly. Thanks to both James and Allan for sending this on the same day. One of the truly disturbing aspects of the Bush Administration's program of "enhanced interrogation techniques" is that there's nothing new about them. Each of the techniques is well known; each has a very long legacy. The practice of waterboarding, for instance, was closely associated with the Spanish Inquisition, and appears diagramed and explained in woodcut prints from the early sixteenth century. Similarly, the practice we know as the "cold cell" – or hypothermia – was carefully developed by the Soviet N...

Among the ubiquitous what-Canada-means-to-me stories papering the landscape last week, I read this essay in the Toronto Star by Michael Byers, a political science scholar. Byers praises Canada's current status: We have the world's second largest expanse of real estate , a population of 32 million well-educated, globally connected people, a strong infrastructure and good public services. We have abundant natural resources and vast tracts of farmland. Our location, halfway between Europe and Asia and next door to the United States, gives us easy access to the world's largest markets. We have the eighth largest economy and are the only G-8 country (apart from oil- and gas-rich Russia) with balanced books. We have no sworn enemies and remain well regarded for our contributions – mostly during the 1950s, '60s and '70s – to United Nations peacekeeping, multilateral diplomacy and international law. But he cautions Canada to follow its own path, distinct from that of the U...