The allusion may be a little vague. I take it from “September Song.” While I am not writing about a May-September romance, I am taking yet another perhaps too long, perhaps too self-indulgent look at getting older.
Perhaps I was spurred by Andy Barrie's farewell to his rating-leading morning show on CBC Radio in Toronto. Andy announced some time ago that he has Parkinson’s disease. I saw him in a TV News item announcing his final goodbye. He looked like the Andy I knew, but I could see the trembling, the slight twitch, the growing loss of muscular control. And I thought: “Isn’t this what getting older is all about?” In “Don’t Be Blindsided by Retirement,” I (and my writing partner Andy) wrote about planning for retirement. Not financial planning, but life planning. One of the items on the check list is a full physical assessment. You are ready, you think, to enjoy the fruits of your labour, but are you well enough to make it work?
Which brings me to my own struggle to keep looking ahead. On Tuesday I did what many older people do: just a second of failing reflex (and a very slippery road) and I plowed into the back of a big SUV. Naturally, my car slid under his rear bumper and, even though I may not have been doing more than 5 KPH I really wrecked the front end of my car. Only today did I learn that, because it was very low mileage and “clean” it would be repaired and not written off.
The next day I visited my urologist at Toronto General. I needed his OK before I bought our tickets for Paris. I’d had the second of two CT scans to discover the source of chronic lower abdomen pain. (Like all cancer survivors, I worry.) He said there was nothing new and that I would have to have an injection of two but I was free to go to Paris.
So I can continue to “Look Ahead.” I can continue to anticipate those three months. (It was supposed to have been four months, but I would have needed a visa and that spells lots of red tape.) I am writing this piece before dawn on Friday, three days after my car crash, and two days after good health news. I am awake partly because I find myself musing about the pleasures of Paris. More than just thinking about improving my fluency in French, I lay awake thinking about finding the “local.” (Apparently the word is similar in French – denoting the corner pub/café/bistro where the locals hang out.) I want this time to be a resident. I want this time to spend more time chatting (bavarder) with the locals. I want to repeat experiences like I had last time in Paris sitting in a sidewalk café on Rue Mouffetard and having a small talk conversation with a couple and their dog. Dogs, for all who know Paris, are ubiquitous – tolerated everywhere, even at the table of a restaurant.
(If anyone reading this knows a good "local" near Rue Guersant in the Porte Maillot district, let me know.)
So perhaps looking at Andy saying goodbye but promising to maintain a presence with “an office just down the hall,” I promise myself that I shall keep finding way to feel alive.
I’m already planning September when a home exchanger from Mexico comes to stay with us. We’ll go to him during the winter.
But, as a recent column in the Globe and Mail about the “other” side of retirement wrote: after you take that month-long trip – then what? Life can’t be an endless game of golf.
So good luck to all of us who sing the song of September. Let it ring out.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
HEWERS OF WOOD REDUX
I am re-visiting one of my favourite hobbyhorses: Canada’s utter lack of an industrial policy. Fear of stuff like “too much government” which dominates the American psyche, is not absent in this country, presumably a “liberal” democracy where we all understand government’s role in making life better for everyone. Enough pomposity. We enjoy congratulating ourselves about how much more socially conscious and caring we are than our neighbours, what with (notwithstanding Danny Williams) Health Care and government participation in enterprise.
In the final analysis, Adam Smith’s Hidden Hand dominates.The market, if left to its own devices, will be self-regulating and will take the path best for everyone. For which we can thank that Ayn Rand devotee, Alan Greenspan, whose flawed policies help precipitate the worst financial crisis since 1929.
The latest stab in the economic back comes from the players in the Oil Sands. An announcement from one of them that it will not spend millions on an upgrader, but will join others in the oil sands “play” in exporting raw bitumen to feed the refineries of the U.S. They say it is where the profit is. That’s true. And if your entire raison d’etre is:”show me the money” you will act for short term gain. The entire notion of “good corporate citizenship” is another of those sanctimonious clichés that business trots out for its own aggrandizement. But when push comes to shove, they go to where the money is.
It is a few years ago since I wrote: “When I heard that Dick Cheney was coming to meet with Ralph Klein, my first thought was about mustard.” I knew then, and so should every thinking Canadian have known, that what would follow the meeting would be some kind of scheme for America to get its hands on our oil resources. Even then there was new technology to allow the pipeline to send “slurry” to refineries in the U.S. That slurry is how to semi-liquefy the bitumen so it can be sent by pipeline. Destination: U.S. refineries.
Now it will be a fact. In spite of Alberta’s wish to create more jobs in refining, they will lose. It all comes back to the “mustard” quote. Saskatchewan is the world’s largest single producers of mustard seed. How much mustard diodes it produce? Zilch!
Where are our lily-livered politicians? Where are they when on the one hand we are fighting an absurd “buy American” policy which would hurt what remains of our industry, and on the other hand sitting silent while resources are exported in their rawest form – a policy which denies us thousands of jobs, jobs that are created by value-added production?
All of this is so old it is boring. We will not, as long as we seem to have unlimited resources, oblige the countries buying those resources, to do some refining and production here where the raw materials are.
Ghana exports cocoa and makes no chocolate. Trinidad exports bauxite but makes no aluminum. But it has always been so. Did the original Hudson’s Bay Company, which became wealthy on furs, ever make one fur coat in Canada?
Finally, and forgive me for repeating myself: how long before Canada stops fighting to export finished lumber and simply sends raw logs to American sawmills? New Zealand ships logs to Japan. They have virtually no finished lumber industry.
In the final analysis, Adam Smith’s Hidden Hand dominates.The market, if left to its own devices, will be self-regulating and will take the path best for everyone. For which we can thank that Ayn Rand devotee, Alan Greenspan, whose flawed policies help precipitate the worst financial crisis since 1929.
The latest stab in the economic back comes from the players in the Oil Sands. An announcement from one of them that it will not spend millions on an upgrader, but will join others in the oil sands “play” in exporting raw bitumen to feed the refineries of the U.S. They say it is where the profit is. That’s true. And if your entire raison d’etre is:”show me the money” you will act for short term gain. The entire notion of “good corporate citizenship” is another of those sanctimonious clichés that business trots out for its own aggrandizement. But when push comes to shove, they go to where the money is.
It is a few years ago since I wrote: “When I heard that Dick Cheney was coming to meet with Ralph Klein, my first thought was about mustard.” I knew then, and so should every thinking Canadian have known, that what would follow the meeting would be some kind of scheme for America to get its hands on our oil resources. Even then there was new technology to allow the pipeline to send “slurry” to refineries in the U.S. That slurry is how to semi-liquefy the bitumen so it can be sent by pipeline. Destination: U.S. refineries.
Now it will be a fact. In spite of Alberta’s wish to create more jobs in refining, they will lose. It all comes back to the “mustard” quote. Saskatchewan is the world’s largest single producers of mustard seed. How much mustard diodes it produce? Zilch!
Where are our lily-livered politicians? Where are they when on the one hand we are fighting an absurd “buy American” policy which would hurt what remains of our industry, and on the other hand sitting silent while resources are exported in their rawest form – a policy which denies us thousands of jobs, jobs that are created by value-added production?
All of this is so old it is boring. We will not, as long as we seem to have unlimited resources, oblige the countries buying those resources, to do some refining and production here where the raw materials are.
Ghana exports cocoa and makes no chocolate. Trinidad exports bauxite but makes no aluminum. But it has always been so. Did the original Hudson’s Bay Company, which became wealthy on furs, ever make one fur coat in Canada?
Finally, and forgive me for repeating myself: how long before Canada stops fighting to export finished lumber and simply sends raw logs to American sawmills? New Zealand ships logs to Japan. They have virtually no finished lumber industry.
Friday, February 19, 2010
SOME TIGER!!
Along with many millions of curiosity seekers, I watched the Tiger Woods press conference. Not much of a “conference,” since no questions were allowed. It was a non-event. It was Tiger being Tiger. He wants to be in control at all times. So far, all his efforts in that direction have been flawed. This one was no better.
I am more than a little tired of people in the public eye asking for privacy. He should have though of all that while he was shamelessly and publicly misbehaving. He was out there where everyone could see him.
Hey – he is a golfer! He is not a touchstone of humility, decency, or any other qualities. Those are qualities that we assign to him that we assign to so many celebrities. They become what we want them to be, and cash in on our gullibility.
Perhaps my favourite, when it comes to misguided adulation, is the shrine that has been erected around the life and times of “The Duke” John Wayne. In Orange County, not America’s most liberal place, the airport is named after him. He represents, and this is the secret behind misguided hero worship, part of the national mythology. Because I watch Turner Classics, I often see him, square jaw pointing into the wind, as a war hero. The other day I watched him in “They were Expendable” a movie based on the battle for Bataan during WW2. There he was – all done up in patriotic red white and blue. With all these roles, plus so many of those “winning the west” genre of films, he became associated with the indomitable American spirit, the spirit that opened up the west, the spirit that survived the Battler of The Bulge.
The facts are not important. The fact is that when his colleagues were off fighting the war – Clark Gable as a Flying Fortress gunner, Gregory Peck as a bomber pilot, and dozens more, Wayne was back home, along with Ronald Reagan, making patriotic movies. He didn’t serve. It is rumoured that he had some kind of medical exemption. It is also rumoured, although more quietly, that he managed to elude the draft board.
Not to make a big point of scraping the gold dust of idols, just to illustrate that we all need idols, however fallen they may be. Tiger is one such idol. Yes, he was not shy of allowing himself to be portrayed as a paragon of family virtue and it is only in hindsight that we see the hypocrisy of it all. But it is a hypocrisy in which all of us are complicit. We want heroes, stained or otherwise. We want our Hollywood stars to be the people they are on the screen. We need Robert Young to be a saintly father figure (Father Knows Best) even though he was an unregenerate drunk. We wanted Ingrid Bergman to be the epitome of purity. And – we wanted Tiger to be what he is not and never was.
To put a finer point on it: if Tiger had really wanted to make it up to his millions of fans, he should have returned to the course as soon as the scars from his beating had healed. If he wanted to re-unite with all of us, he should have had a real press conference with questions, no matter how obvious or embarrassing the questions might be.
Tiger has played peek-a-boo with all of us. And he did it again.
Frankly, I don’t much care whether he turns back to Buddhism or re-unites with his wife, or succeeds in getting reporters to stay away. He is the premier figure in golf – not a leader in social reform. Let him play. Whether I or you forgive him or not really doesn’t matter.
I am more than a little tired of people in the public eye asking for privacy. He should have though of all that while he was shamelessly and publicly misbehaving. He was out there where everyone could see him.
Hey – he is a golfer! He is not a touchstone of humility, decency, or any other qualities. Those are qualities that we assign to him that we assign to so many celebrities. They become what we want them to be, and cash in on our gullibility.
Perhaps my favourite, when it comes to misguided adulation, is the shrine that has been erected around the life and times of “The Duke” John Wayne. In Orange County, not America’s most liberal place, the airport is named after him. He represents, and this is the secret behind misguided hero worship, part of the national mythology. Because I watch Turner Classics, I often see him, square jaw pointing into the wind, as a war hero. The other day I watched him in “They were Expendable” a movie based on the battle for Bataan during WW2. There he was – all done up in patriotic red white and blue. With all these roles, plus so many of those “winning the west” genre of films, he became associated with the indomitable American spirit, the spirit that opened up the west, the spirit that survived the Battler of The Bulge.
The facts are not important. The fact is that when his colleagues were off fighting the war – Clark Gable as a Flying Fortress gunner, Gregory Peck as a bomber pilot, and dozens more, Wayne was back home, along with Ronald Reagan, making patriotic movies. He didn’t serve. It is rumoured that he had some kind of medical exemption. It is also rumoured, although more quietly, that he managed to elude the draft board.
Not to make a big point of scraping the gold dust of idols, just to illustrate that we all need idols, however fallen they may be. Tiger is one such idol. Yes, he was not shy of allowing himself to be portrayed as a paragon of family virtue and it is only in hindsight that we see the hypocrisy of it all. But it is a hypocrisy in which all of us are complicit. We want heroes, stained or otherwise. We want our Hollywood stars to be the people they are on the screen. We need Robert Young to be a saintly father figure (Father Knows Best) even though he was an unregenerate drunk. We wanted Ingrid Bergman to be the epitome of purity. And – we wanted Tiger to be what he is not and never was.
To put a finer point on it: if Tiger had really wanted to make it up to his millions of fans, he should have returned to the course as soon as the scars from his beating had healed. If he wanted to re-unite with all of us, he should have had a real press conference with questions, no matter how obvious or embarrassing the questions might be.
Tiger has played peek-a-boo with all of us. And he did it again.
Frankly, I don’t much care whether he turns back to Buddhism or re-unites with his wife, or succeeds in getting reporters to stay away. He is the premier figure in golf – not a leader in social reform. Let him play. Whether I or you forgive him or not really doesn’t matter.
LOOKING AHEAD - TO MORE CHAOS
I can’t get off my soapbox. I can promise myself and my readers that I will seek a more positive path; that I will share topics that are of positive benefits to all, especially the slowly and inevitably aging among us. I totter. I teeter. I waver. I cannot abandon my liberal roots, even though I have long since abandoned my membership in a party that espouses liberal causes but is mired in an ideological straightjacket. Enough philosophizing.
I noticed, with a mixture of alarm and amusement, that the Fed decided it had to raise the rate it charges banks to borrow money. They hiked it a whole QUARTER OF ONE PERCENT! Twenty-five basis points. So, instead of Goldman Sachs being able to borrow at one half of one percent to “invest” the money not only in “safe” investments like Treasuries, which yield around 3%, but to venture once again into all the minefields that nearly brought the economy down. But that’s all old hat.
You may understand my own mindset a little more by reading the response I sent to David Plouffe. During the presidential elections, I was one of millions pulling for Obama so I got on their “mailing” (pronounced “give money”) list. The latest news release told me how Obama was going to help homeowners save themselves. I wrote this back:
“It matters little to you what any Canadian has to say. You will always be at an ideological disadvantage. Bound as so much of American politics seems to be, to the primacy of the market system, no deviation can be tolerated. However "liberal" you will presume to be, you cannot make change without changing. "Stimulus," within the American frame of reference always means something like tax breaks. You do not understand the utter futility of the idea that only the private sector creates jobs. The private sector creates jobs when it is in their profitable best interest to do so. For that I can't blame them. So, to offer tax credits is meaningless. Employers will hire only if they need to, otherwise hiring more is old-fashioned "featherbedding." The government must be the employer of last resort. There are projects that private capital won't go into because they lack the profit profile. Those projects are uniquely the government's. You can offer all the tax credits you want, but as long as oil and coal remain cheaper, no one will build alternate energy sources. It is only one example of ventures where the costs are high and the profits are small. Only government can do it. The notion of "public enterprise" so horrifies you that you shrink away from anything that looks like "socialism." You are following the Bush policy of privatizing tens of thousands of jobs that should have been done by the military by giving them to private contractors.
I am beyond disappointed that the system cannot truly make any fundamental changes in the American mindset. You have flunked out on health care for all the reasons shown above.”
Perhaps I should have added that in Canada, despite protests to the contrary, we live in a liberal democracy. Government does not shy away from participation in enterprise. Our aerospace industry owes its success to government participation e.g. Bombardier, Pratt-Whitney. Our Finance Minister, as right-leaning as you can get, intrudes on the private sector by slowing down real estate speculation. Money is given directly to public enterprise like municipal transit systems. I could go on and on.
What makes Canada is great is that no government can spoil it, although Mike Harris tried his hardest in Ontario. We genuinely understand what government can do, should do, and must do. Americans simply don’t get it.
I noticed, with a mixture of alarm and amusement, that the Fed decided it had to raise the rate it charges banks to borrow money. They hiked it a whole QUARTER OF ONE PERCENT! Twenty-five basis points. So, instead of Goldman Sachs being able to borrow at one half of one percent to “invest” the money not only in “safe” investments like Treasuries, which yield around 3%, but to venture once again into all the minefields that nearly brought the economy down. But that’s all old hat.
You may understand my own mindset a little more by reading the response I sent to David Plouffe. During the presidential elections, I was one of millions pulling for Obama so I got on their “mailing” (pronounced “give money”) list. The latest news release told me how Obama was going to help homeowners save themselves. I wrote this back:
“It matters little to you what any Canadian has to say. You will always be at an ideological disadvantage. Bound as so much of American politics seems to be, to the primacy of the market system, no deviation can be tolerated. However "liberal" you will presume to be, you cannot make change without changing. "Stimulus," within the American frame of reference always means something like tax breaks. You do not understand the utter futility of the idea that only the private sector creates jobs. The private sector creates jobs when it is in their profitable best interest to do so. For that I can't blame them. So, to offer tax credits is meaningless. Employers will hire only if they need to, otherwise hiring more is old-fashioned "featherbedding." The government must be the employer of last resort. There are projects that private capital won't go into because they lack the profit profile. Those projects are uniquely the government's. You can offer all the tax credits you want, but as long as oil and coal remain cheaper, no one will build alternate energy sources. It is only one example of ventures where the costs are high and the profits are small. Only government can do it. The notion of "public enterprise" so horrifies you that you shrink away from anything that looks like "socialism." You are following the Bush policy of privatizing tens of thousands of jobs that should have been done by the military by giving them to private contractors.
I am beyond disappointed that the system cannot truly make any fundamental changes in the American mindset. You have flunked out on health care for all the reasons shown above.”
Perhaps I should have added that in Canada, despite protests to the contrary, we live in a liberal democracy. Government does not shy away from participation in enterprise. Our aerospace industry owes its success to government participation e.g. Bombardier, Pratt-Whitney. Our Finance Minister, as right-leaning as you can get, intrudes on the private sector by slowing down real estate speculation. Money is given directly to public enterprise like municipal transit systems. I could go on and on.
What makes Canada is great is that no government can spoil it, although Mike Harris tried his hardest in Ontario. We genuinely understand what government can do, should do, and must do. Americans simply don’t get it.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
IS ANYONE LOOKING AHEAD
Reading a few weeks ago about university professors lamenting about the practically non-existent grasp of English language and English usage – grammar, syntax etc , I paused to ponder how we are either afflicted with a generation of “don’t care,” or we are being carped at by too-finicky academics. Somewhere in between lies another truth: the failure to look outside the present.
As the self-anointed seer of forward thinking, I am entitled to stand it on its end. Here goes: the principle of Looking Ahead was, as it says here on my blog page, to help people retired or about to retire, to be forward-looking. That idea is based on the assumption that too many of us spend time living in the past and not nearly enough developing new skills and pursuing new ideas. Of course there are many who do, but I suspect just as many who don’t. They are the kinds of people they make Miami Beach jokes about. Get up in the morning conversation: so what’ll we have for breakfast? Breakfast table conversation: so what’ll be for lunch? Lunchtime conversation – well you get the idea.
Enough backing and filling. There is another aspect of Looking Ahead: how much of it does the generation with the world in front of them do? We all grew up believing in our twenties that we were immortal and bulletproof. The idea of planning for retirement was a remote as proposing an intense study of calculus for dummies. Even in thirties and forties, there is a kind of reluctance to plan ahead. Life is here today. Pleasure is in the here and now. Eat, drink and be merry….
At the simplest level: language. The academics complain that a generation educated mainly by television and the internet and text messaging and the bumper-sticker profundities of Twitter, see no reason to include language as a part of communication. I sent off a copy of an Op-Ed piece from the N, .Y. Times to a younger relative. I got an answer – sent of course by Blackberry: “Thks 4 the pce.” This horrible shorthand is not language. We may as well be grunting instead of speaking. It has its comic moments. Someone on TV promoting service on a product: “We’re at your disposal 24 hours a day seven days a week 24/7. They used them both, apparently having forgotten what “24/7” stands for. My piano teacher, who does not represent himself as a scholar (he’s a superb jazz pianist) laments that his kids now call their mother Mom – with the “O” rhyming with the O in bomb, as compared to what we always used to say: Mum. They get it from TV. Another one he quotes is that his kids, Canadian to the core, have dropped the long “e’ as in “thee edge” and have Americanized themselves with “thuh edge.”
Education by TV should be considered a form of child abuse. In the word “mush” the “u” is pronounced to rhyme with slush. Right? Wrong. Wrong if you watch TV shows like The Food Network. An entirely new a totally illogical Americanization of English has happened. In the word “mush” the “u” is pronounced like the “u” in “push.”
But when it comes to the middle eastern favourite hummus – when there “u” should be pronounced like the “u” in “push” it is pronounced like the “u” in “rush.”
I giggle at it, but I worry that this misuse will be engraved on the minds of more people and will become part of what I hate to call “the evolution” of language. We can all look ahead to people who don’t know how to spell and don’t know the difference between Aphrodite and apostrophe.
Taking just one more look at the failure to look ahead. The fine art if self-decoration has reached epidemic proportions, exceeding, I believe the ritual tattooing common among Polynesians. It is a decoration for the “here and now.” Get something colourful at 25 and by the time you are 45 all the colours have faded, and the lines have started to bleed. That’s the way I remember old tattoos. Maybe the techniques have changed and the coiled multi-coloured sea monster will still be as radiant thirty years from now as it is today. Then of course, the failure to look ahead is just as evident that a 22 year old who branded him/herself today may find that the fashions dies in 20 years and they’re stuck looking like a relic of the first decade of the crazy 21st century. It’s a bit like the 60 year old guys who are totally bald on top for still wear the ponytail labeling them forever as members of the Woodstock/protest generation.
I’m still looking ahead. Despite aches and pains and the imminence of more declines, the 4 month trip to Paris is still on. The work toward fluency is still in place. And I still practice the piano every day – well nearly.
By the way, an “anonymous” comment on my blog suggested I should make myself visible on Twitter. I can’t get it all said in ten words or less. What do you think?
As the self-anointed seer of forward thinking, I am entitled to stand it on its end. Here goes: the principle of Looking Ahead was, as it says here on my blog page, to help people retired or about to retire, to be forward-looking. That idea is based on the assumption that too many of us spend time living in the past and not nearly enough developing new skills and pursuing new ideas. Of course there are many who do, but I suspect just as many who don’t. They are the kinds of people they make Miami Beach jokes about. Get up in the morning conversation: so what’ll we have for breakfast? Breakfast table conversation: so what’ll be for lunch? Lunchtime conversation – well you get the idea.
Enough backing and filling. There is another aspect of Looking Ahead: how much of it does the generation with the world in front of them do? We all grew up believing in our twenties that we were immortal and bulletproof. The idea of planning for retirement was a remote as proposing an intense study of calculus for dummies. Even in thirties and forties, there is a kind of reluctance to plan ahead. Life is here today. Pleasure is in the here and now. Eat, drink and be merry….
At the simplest level: language. The academics complain that a generation educated mainly by television and the internet and text messaging and the bumper-sticker profundities of Twitter, see no reason to include language as a part of communication. I sent off a copy of an Op-Ed piece from the N, .Y. Times to a younger relative. I got an answer – sent of course by Blackberry: “Thks 4 the pce.” This horrible shorthand is not language. We may as well be grunting instead of speaking. It has its comic moments. Someone on TV promoting service on a product: “We’re at your disposal 24 hours a day seven days a week 24/7. They used them both, apparently having forgotten what “24/7” stands for. My piano teacher, who does not represent himself as a scholar (he’s a superb jazz pianist) laments that his kids now call their mother Mom – with the “O” rhyming with the O in bomb, as compared to what we always used to say: Mum. They get it from TV. Another one he quotes is that his kids, Canadian to the core, have dropped the long “e’ as in “thee edge” and have Americanized themselves with “thuh edge.”
Education by TV should be considered a form of child abuse. In the word “mush” the “u” is pronounced to rhyme with slush. Right? Wrong. Wrong if you watch TV shows like The Food Network. An entirely new a totally illogical Americanization of English has happened. In the word “mush” the “u” is pronounced like the “u” in “push.”
But when it comes to the middle eastern favourite hummus – when there “u” should be pronounced like the “u” in “push” it is pronounced like the “u” in “rush.”
I giggle at it, but I worry that this misuse will be engraved on the minds of more people and will become part of what I hate to call “the evolution” of language. We can all look ahead to people who don’t know how to spell and don’t know the difference between Aphrodite and apostrophe.
Taking just one more look at the failure to look ahead. The fine art if self-decoration has reached epidemic proportions, exceeding, I believe the ritual tattooing common among Polynesians. It is a decoration for the “here and now.” Get something colourful at 25 and by the time you are 45 all the colours have faded, and the lines have started to bleed. That’s the way I remember old tattoos. Maybe the techniques have changed and the coiled multi-coloured sea monster will still be as radiant thirty years from now as it is today. Then of course, the failure to look ahead is just as evident that a 22 year old who branded him/herself today may find that the fashions dies in 20 years and they’re stuck looking like a relic of the first decade of the crazy 21st century. It’s a bit like the 60 year old guys who are totally bald on top for still wear the ponytail labeling them forever as members of the Woodstock/protest generation.
I’m still looking ahead. Despite aches and pains and the imminence of more declines, the 4 month trip to Paris is still on. The work toward fluency is still in place. And I still practice the piano every day – well nearly.
By the way, an “anonymous” comment on my blog suggested I should make myself visible on Twitter. I can’t get it all said in ten words or less. What do you think?
Monday, February 15, 2010
OH CANADA!
We are a modest people, slow to anger, hesitant to flag-wave, and bragging is considered “putting on airs.” The Olympics have turned it all around. We began with a promise to sweep more medals, to lead the parade, to excel in our big sports. Very un-Canadian hubris. The results are not yet in, but as of today, Monday, we rank third behind Germany. France and the U.S.
The television experience has been electrifying. Once you get used to putting up with the commentary which seems to be more to fill time than illuminate, you find yourself in the spirit of being Canadian. Are these, I ask, the same people who will say “I’m sorry” when someone mindlessly bumps into them on the sidewalk? Are these the same people who openly deride American jingoism while at the same time wish we were more nation-conscious, and that we had wonderful myths like The Alamo, and Davey Crocket, and Daniel Boone and the guy who chopped down the cherry tree. We have none of them. We don’t even get upset when we discover that most Americans think the Yukon is part of America.
I loved it all – almost. I loved the commercial for British Columbia with its lakes and mountains and beautiful Vancouver. Like everything about the Olympics, even the commercials are great. Except one: one of the major sponsors, VISA, has as its spokesman the gravelly voiced charmer Morgan Freeman. I like Freeman. He is a superb performer. I recall that in one of the awards galas, someone made a snide comment about how many voice-overs he was doing. For the uninformed, that is, the narrative voice of a television commercial. Morgan has every right to make a living. But not please, not as a spokesperson for Canada’s Olympics. I am irritated enough by the barefaced lack of taste, this insult to our sovereignty, that I AM ready to cancel by VISA card. No Canadian pronounces the same of the host city “Vancouvah.”
It is a small thing. Just as the uproar over Arnold Schwartzenagger lighting the torch near the end of the ceremony, rumoured to be a demand by NBC to make their Olympic coverage more palatable to Americans with “star power!" Once again, we apologize for being Canadian. But the overwhelming reality is still that this is our time, these are out people, and this is our pride. Go Canada!
The television experience has been electrifying. Once you get used to putting up with the commentary which seems to be more to fill time than illuminate, you find yourself in the spirit of being Canadian. Are these, I ask, the same people who will say “I’m sorry” when someone mindlessly bumps into them on the sidewalk? Are these the same people who openly deride American jingoism while at the same time wish we were more nation-conscious, and that we had wonderful myths like The Alamo, and Davey Crocket, and Daniel Boone and the guy who chopped down the cherry tree. We have none of them. We don’t even get upset when we discover that most Americans think the Yukon is part of America.
I loved it all – almost. I loved the commercial for British Columbia with its lakes and mountains and beautiful Vancouver. Like everything about the Olympics, even the commercials are great. Except one: one of the major sponsors, VISA, has as its spokesman the gravelly voiced charmer Morgan Freeman. I like Freeman. He is a superb performer. I recall that in one of the awards galas, someone made a snide comment about how many voice-overs he was doing. For the uninformed, that is, the narrative voice of a television commercial. Morgan has every right to make a living. But not please, not as a spokesperson for Canada’s Olympics. I am irritated enough by the barefaced lack of taste, this insult to our sovereignty, that I AM ready to cancel by VISA card. No Canadian pronounces the same of the host city “Vancouvah.”
It is a small thing. Just as the uproar over Arnold Schwartzenagger lighting the torch near the end of the ceremony, rumoured to be a demand by NBC to make their Olympic coverage more palatable to Americans with “star power!" Once again, we apologize for being Canadian. But the overwhelming reality is still that this is our time, these are out people, and this is our pride. Go Canada!
Sunday, February 7, 2010
I TOLD YOU SO
There is nothing like feeling vindicated. There is nothing like seeing what you have been saying for months appear in black and white on the front page of the New York Times. It would be silly of me to suggest that I pioneered the talk about banks profiting from A.I.G.'s near collapse. Perhaps people are suffering from bailout fatigue. Perhaps I am being naive to believe that anyone really cares about who did what to whom when the banking system in the U.S. hovered over the chasm of insolvency.
There has been so much prattle about "Main Street vs Wall Street" that it is almost to easy to revisit the subject. To the average American, stirred by the nitwits of the Tea Party, the bailout of the banks was a waste of taxpayer's money. I watched amused, but saddened, by an interview with two women who were attending the Tea Party convention or conference or whatever, where Sarah Palin spoke twaddle to cheering masses. I have never been a big fan of CNN with its breathless form of doom journalism and its often uninformed "experts" - but I salute the poor guy who was trying o get these two women to make sense. One was a small business person who said she didn't know anyone who had been helped by the stimulus program. The other was an African-American trying for a congressional seat in Tennessee. She was a "spokesperson" and she had yet to win the primary. Both were full of all the "talking points" which they clearly did not understand: no more big government, no more bailouts, no more waste of taxpayers money etc. etc. Nothing new, but it seems to be working - which proves once again that many people prefer the bumper sticker approach to well thought out reasoning, which tends to take a little more than five words.
But I digress. The Sunday New York Times front paged an issue that has been there all along; an issue that I have had a rant about; an issue that seems to be missing whenever the special committee to examine the causes of the financial crash questions bankers.
The Times story says that Goldman Sachs (and there are many others) took billions from A.I.G. even before that company staggered into insolvency and billions more after the Troubled Asset Recovery Program (or is it "plan") or TARP doled out about 180 billion to save A.I.G. Being an insurance company, among other things, they issued those absurd Credit Default Swaps which were supposed to protect investors (specifically big guys like Goldman)) from losses should their "carefully" bought Mortgage backed Securities go for a dive. You know the rest. A.I.G had to pony up. The government had to prop them up. People like Merrill and Goldman collected.
There is no better illustration of the collusive atmosphere that exists in the world of high finance. There is absolutely no question that the main part of Bush's TARP and succeeding bailout money from the Obama administration, went to the banks. And there is no question that without that bailout the world's entire banking system would have been in jeopardy.
Now that the Times has added more legitimacy to the case against bankers' greed, is there any reason why they should finally get to work to stop the madness with re-regulation. Don't hold your breath.
Frankly, I'm tired of being cranky. I think I'll go back topics like what to do with retirement, and how to live better by knowing how to cook.
There has been so much prattle about "Main Street vs Wall Street" that it is almost to easy to revisit the subject. To the average American, stirred by the nitwits of the Tea Party, the bailout of the banks was a waste of taxpayer's money. I watched amused, but saddened, by an interview with two women who were attending the Tea Party convention or conference or whatever, where Sarah Palin spoke twaddle to cheering masses. I have never been a big fan of CNN with its breathless form of doom journalism and its often uninformed "experts" - but I salute the poor guy who was trying o get these two women to make sense. One was a small business person who said she didn't know anyone who had been helped by the stimulus program. The other was an African-American trying for a congressional seat in Tennessee. She was a "spokesperson" and she had yet to win the primary. Both were full of all the "talking points" which they clearly did not understand: no more big government, no more bailouts, no more waste of taxpayers money etc. etc. Nothing new, but it seems to be working - which proves once again that many people prefer the bumper sticker approach to well thought out reasoning, which tends to take a little more than five words.
But I digress. The Sunday New York Times front paged an issue that has been there all along; an issue that I have had a rant about; an issue that seems to be missing whenever the special committee to examine the causes of the financial crash questions bankers.
The Times story says that Goldman Sachs (and there are many others) took billions from A.I.G. even before that company staggered into insolvency and billions more after the Troubled Asset Recovery Program (or is it "plan") or TARP doled out about 180 billion to save A.I.G. Being an insurance company, among other things, they issued those absurd Credit Default Swaps which were supposed to protect investors (specifically big guys like Goldman)) from losses should their "carefully" bought Mortgage backed Securities go for a dive. You know the rest. A.I.G had to pony up. The government had to prop them up. People like Merrill and Goldman collected.
There is no better illustration of the collusive atmosphere that exists in the world of high finance. There is absolutely no question that the main part of Bush's TARP and succeeding bailout money from the Obama administration, went to the banks. And there is no question that without that bailout the world's entire banking system would have been in jeopardy.
Now that the Times has added more legitimacy to the case against bankers' greed, is there any reason why they should finally get to work to stop the madness with re-regulation. Don't hold your breath.
Frankly, I'm tired of being cranky. I think I'll go back topics like what to do with retirement, and how to live better by knowing how to cook.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
IN PRAISE OF GLUTTONY
It is not easy to be a “foodie” these days. I am one, and nothing will stop me watching the Food Channel for my daily fix. But something evil has crept in: gluttony. Lucullan indulgence. Gustatory hell. Madness in the kitchen.
I am visiting in Austin, Texas and spending more time than I should watching food on TV. Even at the Fitness Centre, where my son-in-law bought a month-long package for me and my wife, I watch Food Network while I walk off the pounds on the treadmill.
But this week food soared to new highs, or more correctly descended to new lows. Not on the Food Network, but on the Travel Channel, which seems to have plugged into America’s passion for eating. Notice – I didn’t say “fine dining” or “gourmet pleasures,” I said “eating” and I mean EATING!!
I was drawn to a new show called “101 Best Places to Chow Down,” naively believing I was in for gourmet foods in ascending order of quality from one hundred and one to number one. I was only partly right. It was in ascending order, but the climb to number one was defined by the size of the portions! They grew with every number.
It was a pig-out. It was the exemplification of what the U.S. Surgeon General and every health service in America cries out against: an epidemic of gluttony leading to an even more perilous epidemic of diabetes, heart disease and childhood obesity. Perhaps it is the recession that has triggered this praise of quantity, obscene, table-sagging, belly-bursting quantity. (Those who remember the Monty Python sketch where the man asks for “just one more tiny little mint” will understand.)
I watched, fascinated by the level of gluttony, as the program took us up the scale of heavy hitting to its ultimate number one. (I haven’t watched that yet.) I recall a few of the more gluttonous ones: a restaurant in New Orleans where thousands of clams are sold every week. There is a wall with the names of their food heroes, led by the first man to down fifteen dozen oysters at a sitting. Many more names have been added as other gourmands have matched and exceeded his record. There were others featuring one pound hot dogs in a huge bun laced with onions, chili, and a forgettable number of other “garnishes.” There were five pound tamales. There was one ice cream place that specialized in a 3 gallon sundae that was supposed to be shared by a group. I watched as they dug at huge mounds of ice cream topped with cascades of whipped cream, and as they ate the “sundae” melted, sending long streams of goo down the sides. There were four pound T bone steaks, There were one pound hamburgers that could be stacked four high. There were restaurants specializing in “sliders,” bite-sized burgers downed in quantities of dozens at a sitting. (The same night we had eaten in a restaurant where sliders were appetizers. Three dainty Moroccan lamb sliders. I ate two and was satisfied.) In many of these places, eating was turned into a kind of marathon where if you could finish, say a three foot diameter pizza you got it free. Or you dug into a five pound burrito stuffed with about ten Mexican ingredients.
Just to add a little zest to this gorge-a-thon, during the commercial breaks there were promos for a special two hour “Man vs Food” show that would take place in Miami during Super Bowl weekend. This guy, whom I have seen before, is a limited talent, except for his determination to out-eat any glutton in the world.
I could go off on a harangue, like the one I went on after visiting another of those all-you-can-eat places where the habitués seem to be almost all morbidly obese.
Watching these people gorge themselves is enough to put anyone off eating entirely. Do I forgive myself for watching because I am a real foodie who loves to see fine food, well made? You decide.
I am visiting in Austin, Texas and spending more time than I should watching food on TV. Even at the Fitness Centre, where my son-in-law bought a month-long package for me and my wife, I watch Food Network while I walk off the pounds on the treadmill.
But this week food soared to new highs, or more correctly descended to new lows. Not on the Food Network, but on the Travel Channel, which seems to have plugged into America’s passion for eating. Notice – I didn’t say “fine dining” or “gourmet pleasures,” I said “eating” and I mean EATING!!
I was drawn to a new show called “101 Best Places to Chow Down,” naively believing I was in for gourmet foods in ascending order of quality from one hundred and one to number one. I was only partly right. It was in ascending order, but the climb to number one was defined by the size of the portions! They grew with every number.
It was a pig-out. It was the exemplification of what the U.S. Surgeon General and every health service in America cries out against: an epidemic of gluttony leading to an even more perilous epidemic of diabetes, heart disease and childhood obesity. Perhaps it is the recession that has triggered this praise of quantity, obscene, table-sagging, belly-bursting quantity. (Those who remember the Monty Python sketch where the man asks for “just one more tiny little mint” will understand.)
I watched, fascinated by the level of gluttony, as the program took us up the scale of heavy hitting to its ultimate number one. (I haven’t watched that yet.) I recall a few of the more gluttonous ones: a restaurant in New Orleans where thousands of clams are sold every week. There is a wall with the names of their food heroes, led by the first man to down fifteen dozen oysters at a sitting. Many more names have been added as other gourmands have matched and exceeded his record. There were others featuring one pound hot dogs in a huge bun laced with onions, chili, and a forgettable number of other “garnishes.” There were five pound tamales. There was one ice cream place that specialized in a 3 gallon sundae that was supposed to be shared by a group. I watched as they dug at huge mounds of ice cream topped with cascades of whipped cream, and as they ate the “sundae” melted, sending long streams of goo down the sides. There were four pound T bone steaks, There were one pound hamburgers that could be stacked four high. There were restaurants specializing in “sliders,” bite-sized burgers downed in quantities of dozens at a sitting. (The same night we had eaten in a restaurant where sliders were appetizers. Three dainty Moroccan lamb sliders. I ate two and was satisfied.) In many of these places, eating was turned into a kind of marathon where if you could finish, say a three foot diameter pizza you got it free. Or you dug into a five pound burrito stuffed with about ten Mexican ingredients.
Just to add a little zest to this gorge-a-thon, during the commercial breaks there were promos for a special two hour “Man vs Food” show that would take place in Miami during Super Bowl weekend. This guy, whom I have seen before, is a limited talent, except for his determination to out-eat any glutton in the world.
I could go off on a harangue, like the one I went on after visiting another of those all-you-can-eat places where the habitués seem to be almost all morbidly obese.
Watching these people gorge themselves is enough to put anyone off eating entirely. Do I forgive myself for watching because I am a real foodie who loves to see fine food, well made? You decide.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
THE MYTH OF CONVENTIONAL WISDOM AND GROWING OLD
It may have been Canadian-born Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith who coined the expression “Conventional wisdom.” It is really nothing more than a belief that enough people share to make it “conventional.” How it gets to be “wisdom” is the biggest mystery. All it is, is a large number of people agreeing about something.
I used to play the game of “duelling aphorisms.” I was led back to one of my favourites after reading an Op Ed piece by David Brooks in the New York Times about the rise of older people. It reminded me of my adages and homiletic “truths,” or to return to “conventional wisdom”: “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” juxtaposed to “you’re never too old to learn.”Or perhaps “Nothing ventured nothing gained,” against only a fool does not “look before he leaps.”
It is of the slogans and aphorisms that we build a storehouse of common knowledge, or common sense, which is often common but not sensible. People tend to hide behind what we think are common truths. I’ll agree that we should agree that murder is bad and theft is unwelcome, but beyond that there is always room for discussion.
I watch with alarm the rise of “populism,” It is supposed to be an appeal to basic “truths” and again, “conventional wisdom.” Populism has become and perhaps always was, a form of demagoguery, an appeal to the most basic instinctive, often thoughtless beliefs. And it sells. It rallies people who want, not change, but reassurance. It reminds me of the old “Know Nothing” party of the 19th century.
So I take a deep breath, with David Brooks’ words about the wisdom of age echoing in my brain, and wonder at the herd mentality; the clamouring for the heads of anyone who the demogogues say is “threatening their way of life.” And so the “Tea Party” supporters clamour for the scalp of the man some of them so recently took to their hearts; the man who promised “change” and is now realizing that millions of people fear change and will fight to maintain the status quo.
Just to keep the record straight – I know that the opponents of Barack Obama hoped for something to rally around, and the Tea Party was their touchstone. Most of them did not vote for him. Most of them did not want change. Most of them subscribe to the rubbish about less government and at the same time clamour for government intervention, often in the form of no intervention, (try to square that contradiction) so that employment will rise, money will flow, and apple pie will once more be at the heart of American reality.
I feel for the millions of Americans who invested their passions and hopes in a transformative president. It’s almost like believing in Santa Claus. Few Americans (and Canadians are not free of this fault) really understand how their three levels of government work and that the executive is not all powerful.
But I carp. What I liked best perhaps about Brooks’ piece about older people is the recognition that many of us still do pursue goals and learn new things. He also repeated the old psychological saw about how, as we get older, our character does not change, but we become more of what we were. From that you can infer that if at 40 you were shy at 80 you will be a recluse. If at 40 you were adventurous at 80 you would be feckless.
But against all that is the reigning conventional knowledge that “age mellow you.” It hasn’t mellowed me. Just made my footstep a little slower. And new stuff? Bring it on.
I used to play the game of “duelling aphorisms.” I was led back to one of my favourites after reading an Op Ed piece by David Brooks in the New York Times about the rise of older people. It reminded me of my adages and homiletic “truths,” or to return to “conventional wisdom”: “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” juxtaposed to “you’re never too old to learn.”Or perhaps “Nothing ventured nothing gained,” against only a fool does not “look before he leaps.”
It is of the slogans and aphorisms that we build a storehouse of common knowledge, or common sense, which is often common but not sensible. People tend to hide behind what we think are common truths. I’ll agree that we should agree that murder is bad and theft is unwelcome, but beyond that there is always room for discussion.
I watch with alarm the rise of “populism,” It is supposed to be an appeal to basic “truths” and again, “conventional wisdom.” Populism has become and perhaps always was, a form of demagoguery, an appeal to the most basic instinctive, often thoughtless beliefs. And it sells. It rallies people who want, not change, but reassurance. It reminds me of the old “Know Nothing” party of the 19th century.
So I take a deep breath, with David Brooks’ words about the wisdom of age echoing in my brain, and wonder at the herd mentality; the clamouring for the heads of anyone who the demogogues say is “threatening their way of life.” And so the “Tea Party” supporters clamour for the scalp of the man some of them so recently took to their hearts; the man who promised “change” and is now realizing that millions of people fear change and will fight to maintain the status quo.
Just to keep the record straight – I know that the opponents of Barack Obama hoped for something to rally around, and the Tea Party was their touchstone. Most of them did not vote for him. Most of them did not want change. Most of them subscribe to the rubbish about less government and at the same time clamour for government intervention, often in the form of no intervention, (try to square that contradiction) so that employment will rise, money will flow, and apple pie will once more be at the heart of American reality.
I feel for the millions of Americans who invested their passions and hopes in a transformative president. It’s almost like believing in Santa Claus. Few Americans (and Canadians are not free of this fault) really understand how their three levels of government work and that the executive is not all powerful.
But I carp. What I liked best perhaps about Brooks’ piece about older people is the recognition that many of us still do pursue goals and learn new things. He also repeated the old psychological saw about how, as we get older, our character does not change, but we become more of what we were. From that you can infer that if at 40 you were shy at 80 you will be a recluse. If at 40 you were adventurous at 80 you would be feckless.
But against all that is the reigning conventional knowledge that “age mellow you.” It hasn’t mellowed me. Just made my footstep a little slower. And new stuff? Bring it on.
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