LEFTOVER. A FEW RANDOM THOUGHTS

None of these items is big enough for a whole blog. Like the latest on the august CBC News. A news reporter on the CBC Evening News did a “stand-up on the new and renovated Bloor Street West sidewalk. It’s wider and there are hot dog wagons. And the surface is made of “granite.” Except she pronounced it as if she had never seen it written before: “Gran-Eyt” I suppose she was thinking of other "ite" words like lucite and calcite. Almost as good as the other reporter who referred to the river that runs through Budapest as the Dah-Noob. (Accent on the first syllable.)Accent on the first syllable.

Maybe this next thing is worth a blog. I have to explain. I left the tender embrace of the NDP several years ago. I didn’t abandon my left-leaning social, political, and financial ideas. I left because they were in lockstep over issues. They were stuck in an ideological straight jacket. Every position had to “fit” the ideology.

I think it is fair to assume that the official Left takes the position, in support of all those environmentalists who say they are part of the Left, that nuclear power is bad. It is bad because of Chernobyl and bad because no one knows what to do with the accumulation of spent fuel rods. So the Japanese disaster offered a perfect chance for the ant-nukes to come flooding out of the woodwork. Everyone from the President of Germany to Ontario Power Generation went on high alert after the still unresolved nuclear power problem hit Japan. We are pushing the panic button. Instead of learning from the mistakes the Japanese made, and who could have predicted the horrible tsunami, we have pressed the emergency signal.

I still believe in the future of clean power from nuclear. I also believe in wind and biomass power. But for now, nothing does it like nuclear. Many of those who have risen up against the nukes have always opposed them, The Japanese crisis adds fuel.

As for the spent fuel rods, I understand the Chinese are very close to finding a way to use those “spent” rods to create more energy. In the face of opposition, do not curl up and die.

I went to a fabulous concert with pianist Marc Andre Hamelin. I so love music that unless it is very obviously badly performed, I am enraptured. Hamelin gave it to me. Sitting in front of me was a woman who, the last time I saw her at a concert, literally did not applaud. On leaving, she commented that the performance was “dilettantish.” How she managed to sit through it I don't know. I suspected that she had reservations about Hamelin. I wanted to say to her” Why don’t you save yourself the misery and not go to concerts?”

I was reminded of my father and his brother, the once-eminent Maurice Solway, who never went to a concert they liked, unless it was Heifetz of Horowitz. They carped and complained. I have notice that classical musicians tend to be less than generous to some of their colleagues. It isn’t that was with jazz.

A few random items.