On our first full day of this year’s Spring Break vacation, our jet-lagged bodies obviously still required their normal complement of sleep because we didn’t actually wake up until what would have been 11:30 am at home (but was conveniently only 8:30 in Las Vegas).
Our hotel deal included breakfast in the accommodation price. Being an American institution, they offered enough food to stoke a good-sized field hand for a solid day’s work loading hay bales. And being typical vacationers, we not only ate to that standard, we quietly wrapped up a moderate quantity of fresh fruit in napkins to bolster us on the coming day’s drive to the Grand Canyon.
(As they say in the House of Commons, Point of Order. This year, we traveled as a quartet – Offspring was with best friend and it turned out to be an inspired decision. Having someone your own age immediately to hand meant that 14-year old impressions could be both immediate and shared, instead of having to wait until we arrived back home and recollections cobbled together piecemeal. I suspect we’re going to try to make that a regular practice. But for purposes of this blog’s recounting of the trip, please take “We” to mean “We four…” unless otherwise specified.)
The route we took to get to the Grand Canyon was by way of Hoover Dam.
Two words: Hoover Dam. You probably picture a pretty big wall of concrete backed up by a sizeable lake. And you’re quite right – as far as it goes. But Hoover Dam is the largest dam of its kind (called a “gravity arch” dam) in the United States. Its “pretty big wall” consists of 119 million (!!) cubic feet of concrete and its “sizeable lake”, Lake Mead, is actually a 250 square mile body of water fed by feeder rivers and streams whose collective geography covers almost 170,000 square miles of that part of the country. The dam tops out at 726 feet high, and spans the gorge over a 1244-foot length at the top, about half that wide at its base.
Even the Dam’s visitors’ parking garage was impressive. Its concrete has been coloured the same hue as the surrounding rock to minimize its visual intrusion into the setting. And in what is a first in my experience, I found we were driving across a garage floor that was polished to the consistency of a basketball court. As we drove slowly through it looking for a space, our tires squeaked and squealed at every little turn.
Once out of the car, we strolled along a roadside walkway, and partway out onto the dam itself. Leaning over the rail to let your eyes flow from its top to the base of the gorge far below is a sure-fire exercise in induced vertigo, I don’t care how comfortable you are with heights!
What makes the structure even more impressive – at least to me – is the fact that it was built over a period of six years during the depths of the Great Depression, from 1931 to 1937. Many elements of its design, especially in its finishing touches, are beautiful monumental works of art deco.
There is also a very nice contemporary tribute to the dam’s “high scalers” at, appropriately enough, the entrance to the High Scaler Café. High scalers were workers whose jobs consisted of swinging down on ropes over the sheer face of the gorge, first of all to drill deep holes, then to fill those holes with dynamite in order to blast out a smooth rock face against which the dam’s concrete would be joined. A high scaler was just about the highest paid job one could hold among the construction workers. It paid $5.60 per day. Of the 94 workers who were killed during the dam’s construction, 24 were high scalers who fell to their deaths; another ten workers died in the explosions.
The Discovery Channel on TV occasionally repeats a National Geographic series entitled “Frontiers of Construction”, and I have seen the episode devoted to the building of this Dam. Even on the small screen, it makes for awe-inspiring viewing. At the actual site, looking out over the terrain into which the Dam has been built, my impression of the planners, designers and builders begins to lean more toward words like “superhuman”.
Several pieces of the Dam’s artwork, including the bronze of the high scaler, are pictured in this article: http://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/History/essays/artwork.html
Because of the afternoon time we spent at Hoover Dam, it meant that we eventually arrived at the Grand Canyon’s South Rim Village only after dark.
I do not recommend doing this.
Despite the high tourist traffic in the area, there are obvious efforts being made to avoid over-lighting the property. That’s a wonderful thought when you’ve checked in, familiarized yourself with the property and actually know where you’re going. But rolling slowly along the Village Drive, peering at every vague landmark that the car’s headlights managed to illuminate in search of a sign – either directional or actually stuck on a building – to identify “Kachina Lodge”, was an exercise in considerable frustration, not to mention a real test of the limited human capacity for night vision. Finally, we found a spot to park that, as we discovered after prowling about in the dark as pedestrians, was no more than a hundred yards from the entrance to Kachina Lodge. Given the premium on parking spaces in the Village, we nailed the tires to the curb. That car was not going to move until we departed the Grand Canyon.
A sign on the door to Kachina Lodge informed us that actual check-in took place at a building that was roughly the distance of two city blocks away, so we headed off in that that direction. The night was astonishing. The surroundings were dim enough to allow the overhead stars to flood the night sky, even to the extent of rendering the Milky Way clearly visible. Orion, which in Ottawa is easily identifiable, was quite difficult to find in this sky, so filled-in were its famous four corners and belt line with countless other stars not visible in a sky awash in a city’s light glow.
Along the darkened sidewalk, we nearly collided with two people who were standing stock-still, silently looking uphill to the right of the path. As we slowed to work our way around them, we turned our heads and tried to distinguish some sort of defined object in the darkness. Suddenly we became aware that standing not more than about 15 feet away – visible as faintly less dark lumps in the blackness of their background – and apparently looking right back at us, was an indeterminate number of mule deer.
Most Canyon-related brochures include mule deer – so named because of their overlong ears – as being among the most prominent of the area’s wildlife. It was, nonetheless, somewhat startling to encounter several of the timid ruminants right in the core of such a tourist-populated area. That one quiet encounter in the dark turned out to be our only meeting with them, despite a subsequent night’s stroll around the grounds in an effort to rediscover them.
The building where one checked in turned out to be the hub of the South Rim Village. A helpful clerk told us that, if we were hungry (we were), we might want to get our names on the dining room waiting list because he estimated the wait would be about an hour. While my wife checked in, I high-tailed it down the hallway where the entrance to the dining room could be found. After giving them my name, I was handed a thick strip of clear plastic about six inches long. At one end was a rectangular box, which showed a mess of electronics under its cover. That, I was told, was a beeper that would notify me when our table was ready. “Well, does it beep, or buzz, or flash, or vibrate?” I asked, wondering if I could pocket it or would I have to keep it in sight. “Yes,” was the reply. We were also told to be roughly within a 50-foot radius of the restaurant entrance in about 45 minutes to an hour from now when we could expect our table to be ready, because these things had a very limited range.
We had time to unload the car, carry our stuff to our room, then come back to prowl around the gift shop. As I was scanning the t-shirts, trying to decide whether to go dignified with an earth-tone Navajo theme, or opt for a cartoon mule with an “I rode into the Grand Canyon on my ass!” caption, suddenly all hell broke loose deep in my pants pocket. I yanked the device out of my pants (Oh, don’t even GO there!) and sure enough, it was vibrating, buzzing, beeping and flashing a yellow blinking light buried somewhere among the visible electronics. “Yes”, it seems, was not intended to have been a sarcastic reply to my multiple-choice query about how it worked.
After a dinner of near gluttonous volume (we had decided we really had to experience a full scope of appetizer, entrée and dessert), we ambled back to Kachina Lodge. In darkness punctuated only by the occasional softly glowing pathside light, we walked out to a low stone wall no more than 15 yards from the Lodge’s back door. Standing at the wall, we stared off into a void of complete darkness. Thinking I only needed a few seconds to let my eyes adjust to the change from the dining room’s lights, I waited. But the darkness got no lighter. Neither did any distant lights appear anywhere along any sector of about a 180 degree field of view in front of me and off to either side.
As the kids headed back indoors to determine whether the TV in our room pulled in The Cartoon Network, I stood and gaped into the void, trying to imagine what was out there.
Such was my first actual onsite encounter with just one portion of the 277-mile long, five to 18-mile wide (10 at the point where I stood), 5,000-foot deep etching carved over the past five to six million years by the 1,450-mile long Colorado River, known by the (woefully inadequate, as I would discover at first light the next morning) name, Grand Canyon.
Up next: Our Canyon stay
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Spring break this year was an occasion for another family vacation to parts strange and unknown. This year, we traveled to the southwest United States, and its canyon and desert country to view some of the world’s great signature sites of natural wonder – the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley among them, and a signature site of most unnatural wonder – the Las Vegas strip.
= = = = = = = = = =
The next few posts will use this year’s Spring break family trip as their launch pad. But being me, of course, rest assured I will trundle off onto digressionary paths as they occur. Because the trip also occasioned not a few musings – on things like, for example, the nature of US patriotism vs its form in Canada, if it exists at all up here, and why exterior house paint seems to be so far beyond the budget of the ordinary Navajo homeowner.
The acquisition of a wonderful map of “Indian country” will also trigger a few musings about political correctness. As will the consumption of a bottle of “Polygamy Porter”, and the purchase of a t-shirt commemorating same in Utah, home of the Mormons.
So with those caveats firmly in place, read on at your peril. For heare there be dragonnes; abandon hope all ye who enter here; proceed at your own risk; I’d turn back if I were you…
= = = = = = = = = =
Spring Break 2005: Las Vegas, The Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon, back to Las Vegas and the Cirque de Soleil’s show, Ka.
So… 1. First of many (Seven of nine… tertiary adjunct of uni-matrix zero-one… oh, never mind.)
Here’s to you, Horace Greeley! You said go; we went.
“Together we will go our way, together we will leave some day.
Together your hand in my hand, together we will make the plans.
Together we will fly so high, together tell our friends goodbye.
Together we will start life new, together this is what we'll do.
Go west, life is peaceful there.
Go west, lots of open air.
Go west to begin life new.
Go west, this is what we'll do.
Go west, sun in winter time.
Go west, we will do just fine.
Go west where the skies are blue.
Go west, this and more we'll do.
Together we will love the beach, together we will learn and teach.
Together change our pace of life, together we will work and strive.
I love you, I know you love me; I want you happy and carefree.
So that's why I have no protest when you say you want to go west.
Go west, life is peaceful there.
Go west, lots of open air.
Go west to begin life new.
Go west, this is what we'll do.
Go west, sun in winter time.
Go west, we will do just fine.
Go west where the skies are blue.
Go west, this and more we'll do.
I know that there are many ways to live there in the sun or shade.
Together we will find a place to settle down and live with the space
without the busy pace back east, the hustling, rustling of the feet,
I know I'm ready to leave too, so this is what we're going to do,
Go west, life is peaceful there.
Go west, lots of open air.
Go west to begin life new.
Go west, this is what we'll do.
Go west, sun in winter time.
Go west, we will do just fine.
Go west where the skies are blue.
Go west, this and more we'll do.
Go west...” (repeat and fade)
-- “Go West”, by The Village People (Horace Greeley was the Indian Chief)
= = = = = = = = = =
Our trip began with an overnight in Las Vegas, whose airport was the most convenient point of arrival for our planned weeklong driving tour.
Getting there involved flying via Air Canada to Chicago, then changing to a really stupid bit of marketing by United Airlines called simply “Ted”. Not “Air Ted” or “Ted Airlines”, just “Ted”. They could have opted for “Uni”, and declared themselves to be flying in tribute to Unity Valkyrie Mitford (Ms Mitford – “Baa-baa” to her family and reportedly either conceived in Swastika, Ontario or born in Swastika, Alaska [?] depending on which meticulously accurate internet-based biography you buy into – is noted for 1. being a wealthy and attractive English woman who, before the Second World War, had way too much time on her hands and was romantically linked to that famous Bavarian playboy, Adolf Hitler; 2. having shot herself in the head about the same time her alleged boyfriend invaded Poland, but who only succeeded in simultaneously wounding and depressing herself. You’ll just have to Google her. We have other stories to tell here.)
But no, eschewing the “Uni” in their name, they had to be “Ted”.
The growing practice of naming businesses with casual men’s names is completely lost on me. Ottawa and Winnipeg and Eugene Oregon, to name just three, are all home to radio stations called “Bob-FM” Similarly-named radio stations have apparently sprouted like fungus across the continent. Atlanta has “Dave-FM”, New York – “Jack-FM”. And of course there’s “Spike-TV”.
But “Ted”? It’s actually painted in huge blue letters on the side of the aircraft! Somehow, boarding an airline named “Ted” doesn’t do a whole lot for me. I want a little more formality from someone about to lift me 40 or 50,000 feet into the air, launch me most of the way across the continent and bring me back down safely. It recalls an old Steve Martin comment from his long-ago days as a stand-up comic when he asked, “Where would you put your money, into ‘Security First Mortgage and National Trust’, or ‘Fred’s Bank’?”
I much prefer a carrier named confidently with a term like “Trans-Continental”, “Pan-American”, or “Cathay-Pacific” (“Yes, we can actually fly that far!”), than hearing an excessively casual, “Thanks for flying Ted this evening” from someone who then proceeds to deliver the instructions for safely reaching the nearest exit “in the event of an unscheduled landing”, surely one of the most beautiful euphemisms of all time for a process that generally involves unexpectedly and abruptly meeting the ground at about 500 miles per hour.
But I digress.
Because we arrived so late in the day after our two flights totaling about six hours in the air, our sole purpose this night was to claim our rental car, a wonderfully large boat of an automobile called a Kia Amanti, get to our hotel and capture a reasonable night’s sleep. As we departed the airport, I noticed that several US Marines in full desert camouflage were standing at an adjacent luggage carousel, each in turn picking up a locked metal suitcase about the size and shape of an electric guitar carrying case. Quiet memo to self: make no comments about the absence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq and the (so far) mistake of that little adventure. Those cases didn’t hold electric guitars.
Considering my general fatigue and unfamiliarity with the terrain, coupled with the fact that our hotel was, in fact, the second of two of the same name -- The Embassy Suites -- about a mile apart on an avenue – the only difference being that ours included “and Convention Centre” in its name – we in fact executed only one wrong turn en route and managed to tuck ourselves in rather swiftly at the local time of midnight. (Biologically for us, this was about 3 am.)
Our hotel was actually off that part of the city known as “The Strip” and our window view was of a railroad shunting yard and a pretty placid little run of small businesses, including the “Westward Ho” casino. The latter’s neon sign rendered “Westward” in minuscule lettering, but flashed “Ho” out in letters big enough to be read from several miles distant. When my daughter several times announced that our view included the “Ho Casino”, I had to quietly inculcate in her the significance of the label “Ho” in North American slang. At the same time, I couldn’t help but admire her remarkable ability at capturing an essential Las Vegas element in her two-word description of the centrepiece of our window view.
Up next: Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon.
= = = = = = = = = =
The next few posts will use this year’s Spring break family trip as their launch pad. But being me, of course, rest assured I will trundle off onto digressionary paths as they occur. Because the trip also occasioned not a few musings – on things like, for example, the nature of US patriotism vs its form in Canada, if it exists at all up here, and why exterior house paint seems to be so far beyond the budget of the ordinary Navajo homeowner.
The acquisition of a wonderful map of “Indian country” will also trigger a few musings about political correctness. As will the consumption of a bottle of “Polygamy Porter”, and the purchase of a t-shirt commemorating same in Utah, home of the Mormons.
So with those caveats firmly in place, read on at your peril. For heare there be dragonnes; abandon hope all ye who enter here; proceed at your own risk; I’d turn back if I were you…
= = = = = = = = = =
Spring Break 2005: Las Vegas, The Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon, back to Las Vegas and the Cirque de Soleil’s show, Ka.
So… 1. First of many (Seven of nine… tertiary adjunct of uni-matrix zero-one… oh, never mind.)
Here’s to you, Horace Greeley! You said go; we went.
“Together we will go our way, together we will leave some day.
Together your hand in my hand, together we will make the plans.
Together we will fly so high, together tell our friends goodbye.
Together we will start life new, together this is what we'll do.
Go west, life is peaceful there.
Go west, lots of open air.
Go west to begin life new.
Go west, this is what we'll do.
Go west, sun in winter time.
Go west, we will do just fine.
Go west where the skies are blue.
Go west, this and more we'll do.
Together we will love the beach, together we will learn and teach.
Together change our pace of life, together we will work and strive.
I love you, I know you love me; I want you happy and carefree.
So that's why I have no protest when you say you want to go west.
Go west, life is peaceful there.
Go west, lots of open air.
Go west to begin life new.
Go west, this is what we'll do.
Go west, sun in winter time.
Go west, we will do just fine.
Go west where the skies are blue.
Go west, this and more we'll do.
I know that there are many ways to live there in the sun or shade.
Together we will find a place to settle down and live with the space
without the busy pace back east, the hustling, rustling of the feet,
I know I'm ready to leave too, so this is what we're going to do,
Go west, life is peaceful there.
Go west, lots of open air.
Go west to begin life new.
Go west, this is what we'll do.
Go west, sun in winter time.
Go west, we will do just fine.
Go west where the skies are blue.
Go west, this and more we'll do.
Go west...” (repeat and fade)
-- “Go West”, by The Village People (Horace Greeley was the Indian Chief)
= = = = = = = = = =
Our trip began with an overnight in Las Vegas, whose airport was the most convenient point of arrival for our planned weeklong driving tour.
Getting there involved flying via Air Canada to Chicago, then changing to a really stupid bit of marketing by United Airlines called simply “Ted”. Not “Air Ted” or “Ted Airlines”, just “Ted”. They could have opted for “Uni”, and declared themselves to be flying in tribute to Unity Valkyrie Mitford (Ms Mitford – “Baa-baa” to her family and reportedly either conceived in Swastika, Ontario or born in Swastika, Alaska [?] depending on which meticulously accurate internet-based biography you buy into – is noted for 1. being a wealthy and attractive English woman who, before the Second World War, had way too much time on her hands and was romantically linked to that famous Bavarian playboy, Adolf Hitler; 2. having shot herself in the head about the same time her alleged boyfriend invaded Poland, but who only succeeded in simultaneously wounding and depressing herself. You’ll just have to Google her. We have other stories to tell here.)
But no, eschewing the “Uni” in their name, they had to be “Ted”.
The growing practice of naming businesses with casual men’s names is completely lost on me. Ottawa and Winnipeg and Eugene Oregon, to name just three, are all home to radio stations called “Bob-FM” Similarly-named radio stations have apparently sprouted like fungus across the continent. Atlanta has “Dave-FM”, New York – “Jack-FM”. And of course there’s “Spike-TV”.
But “Ted”? It’s actually painted in huge blue letters on the side of the aircraft! Somehow, boarding an airline named “Ted” doesn’t do a whole lot for me. I want a little more formality from someone about to lift me 40 or 50,000 feet into the air, launch me most of the way across the continent and bring me back down safely. It recalls an old Steve Martin comment from his long-ago days as a stand-up comic when he asked, “Where would you put your money, into ‘Security First Mortgage and National Trust’, or ‘Fred’s Bank’?”
I much prefer a carrier named confidently with a term like “Trans-Continental”, “Pan-American”, or “Cathay-Pacific” (“Yes, we can actually fly that far!”), than hearing an excessively casual, “Thanks for flying Ted this evening” from someone who then proceeds to deliver the instructions for safely reaching the nearest exit “in the event of an unscheduled landing”, surely one of the most beautiful euphemisms of all time for a process that generally involves unexpectedly and abruptly meeting the ground at about 500 miles per hour.
But I digress.
Because we arrived so late in the day after our two flights totaling about six hours in the air, our sole purpose this night was to claim our rental car, a wonderfully large boat of an automobile called a Kia Amanti, get to our hotel and capture a reasonable night’s sleep. As we departed the airport, I noticed that several US Marines in full desert camouflage were standing at an adjacent luggage carousel, each in turn picking up a locked metal suitcase about the size and shape of an electric guitar carrying case. Quiet memo to self: make no comments about the absence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq and the (so far) mistake of that little adventure. Those cases didn’t hold electric guitars.
Considering my general fatigue and unfamiliarity with the terrain, coupled with the fact that our hotel was, in fact, the second of two of the same name -- The Embassy Suites -- about a mile apart on an avenue – the only difference being that ours included “and Convention Centre” in its name – we in fact executed only one wrong turn en route and managed to tuck ourselves in rather swiftly at the local time of midnight. (Biologically for us, this was about 3 am.)
Our hotel was actually off that part of the city known as “The Strip” and our window view was of a railroad shunting yard and a pretty placid little run of small businesses, including the “Westward Ho” casino. The latter’s neon sign rendered “Westward” in minuscule lettering, but flashed “Ho” out in letters big enough to be read from several miles distant. When my daughter several times announced that our view included the “Ho Casino”, I had to quietly inculcate in her the significance of the label “Ho” in North American slang. At the same time, I couldn’t help but admire her remarkable ability at capturing an essential Las Vegas element in her two-word description of the centrepiece of our window view.
Up next: Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon.
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
When computers take things waaaay too literally…
In conjunction with that part of my life that keeps chocolate chip cookies in the pantry, I am a new subscriber to what I am told is the Cadillac of news monitoring services. The first and most immediate outcome is that my morning e-mail has taken a huge quantity leap from its 8-10 new messages waiting for me when I arrive at work each day, to upwards of 40 or 50 new messages, courtesy of all the news clippings, “Media Advisory Alert”s and scheduled photo-op notices that I apparently am now receiving.
An indication of just how thorough they are going to be was provided by the example of a spring training camp baseball game result that showed up in a recent e-mail. I was completely baffled until I read the following:
“Although they've got two cities in their name now, the Angels seem determined to seem homeless to fans attending their games. Just as they did last season in Anaheim, the Angels made no reference to a city of origin in their public announcements or promotional materials.”
One of the files I am tasked with watching is coverage of issues related to the nation’s homeless. Thus, someone has advised this service to send me anything referring to “homeless” and its noun form, “homelessness”. That reference to the vagrancy effect of the recent location of the now-unspecified (formerly the Anaheim formerly the California formerly the Los Angeles) Angels baseball team earned this sports story a trip to my work-related e-mailbox.
And even more recently, I received a breathless announcement from the Associated Press of several upcoming new book releases. The headline keyed on two new books about convicted murderer Scott Peterson. But the reason I received the mailing at all could only be found well down the list in this note: “Empire Rising (FSG) by Thomas Kelly takes place in 1930s New York, where an Irish immigrant construction worker becomes involved with an artist who is an underworld figure's paramour.” Another of my responsibilities is the Temporary Foreign Workers file (home of the ever more notorious Exotic Dancer saga) and it was the three-word phrase “immigrant construction worker” that triggered that clipping’s dispatch to my e-mailbox.
= = = = = = = = = =
“Petals Around the Rose”
I’m still trying to figure out if this puzzle in logical thinking is ridiculously simple, or mind-numbingly difficult. As you will note when you link to it, it has frustrated the likes of Bill Gates, which suggests that it tilts toward “difficult”. But you should also know that after about two hours of wrestling with it, I solved it. Clearly, that tilts the balance back past equilibrium way over to the “ridiculously simple” end of the scale. (My family will all too happily affirm this. I am someone who cannot play “Mastermind” because my mind doesn’t work that way. Both my wife and daughter can whip my butt at that game. Needless to say, they play most often against each other. I can only watch in envy at the logical leaps they are able to make as each new clue line reveals important information to them that, for me, might as well be cast in Linear B. But I digress.)
“Petals Around the Rose” has been called an exercise in “thinking outside the box”, an example of a conundrum that requires “lateral thinking”, and a whole lot of four-letter names by people either in the throes of trying to solve it, or who have knocked themselves unconscious after whacking their own foreheads when the light finally went on.
There are a couple hints which are permitted in passing it along. (Note: Apparently those who have solved it under no circumstances are allowed to reveal the answer.)
1. At each throw of the dice, the answer to the question, “How many petals around the rose are there?” will be either 0 (zero) or an even number.
2. An important clue to the puzzle’s solution lies in its name.
3. The vast majority of people who tackle it greatly overthink it.
Have fun.
http://www.borrett.id.au/computing/petals-bg.htm
Let me know how many neurons you kill in your quest to solve this thing.
= = = = = = = = = =
And here I’ve been thinking that regardless of how I feel personally about the current resident of the Oval Office, I can’t deny the man’s power. Well, it would seem it doesn’t hold a candle to that of businessman, adventurer and camera-not shy gadabout Richard Branson, if this clip from a recent report of enormous demonstrations in Beirut is anything to go by:
“[Globe and Mail reporter Mark] MacKinnon said that some of the soldiers seemed primarily concerned about stopping looting and that a number of them had fallen back to protect a Virgin Records store.”
That should tell you something about the importance of Avril Lavigne CD sales to the economy of Lebanon.
= = = = = = = = = =
What can we say? You all look the same to us!
The following lead appeared in a story at an online news site for the India sub-continent, keralanext.com
“A month after their arguments failed to budge John Gomery from the helm of the sponsorship inquiry, lawyers for former prime minister Jean Chretien are asking the courts to intervene.”
The story was featured under “US News”.
= = = = = = = = = =
Old Home Week Deluxe!
In one of those little series of coincidences that usually sends me off humming The Lion King theme, “The Circle of Life”, recently I wound up in a brief e-mail exchange that had me visiting a website dedicated to preserving the domestic memories of life at the Royal Canadian Air Force base in France where, as an Air Force “brat”, I spent four years of my childhood.
I was stunned the first time I browsed the site to discover my forty-years younger face staring out of at least two photos that appear on the site – one an official class photo of my Grade 2 class, all of gathered on the front steps of the school and ranked tallest to shortest, and the other a group shot of the Silver Falcon Wolf Cub Pack to which I belonged, and my Dad was a cub leader.
We bore the same name as the RCAF squadron based there and, as a result, got to sew the official squadron crest on our cub uniforms. It was a gorgeous profile of (what are the odds?) a silver falcon, its entire countenance reflecting the “Don’t mess with me” message that, now that I think of it, an attacking squadron of CF-86 Sabre jets at full afterburner could probably manage to convey just fine without the bird. But it was pretty damned cool, and much more appealing to a young boy than the placid and environmentally friendly names and logos adopted by most scouting organizations, especially the European ones. (The Edelweiss Troop; The Woodpecker Tribe; Rowan’s Sherpas) I recall that the badges were much sought-after whenever we went to gatherings of other cub and scout groups.
But about a week before that, I had also heard from a former Little Brother that a family celebration was being held to celebrate his Mom’s 70th birthday, and I was invited. I hadn’t heard from him for almost 15 years.
Then we heard from a young woman we had billeted for a week some 14 years ago as a part of the Rotary Club’s “Adventures in Citizenship” program. She was just calling to say hello.
And just a couple days ago I received a bolt-out-of-the-blue e-mail from a guy who was one of my best friends in the mid-1960s, on a different air force base. It turns out that he actually works in the same department I do. The fact that we never bumped into each other is not as amazing as it might sound. Our “department” is actually part of two separate complexes of six office towers in two separate locations in Ottawa and Hull, whose daytime population is probably on the order of 40,000 people. He had stumbled over my name in the computer e-mail directory while looking for someone else, and basically sent me an “Is that you?” greeting, using a nickname I hadn’t heard for about 40 years.
So that’s no fewer than four separate major flashbacks over a period of about two weeks, which might explain why I’m quietly humming the theme from The Lion King a lot these days.
= = = = = = = = = =
And finally… I think I might have found the perfect short-term antidote to the late winter blahs… The past couple days here in Ottawa, the temperature has had the gawdfersaken temerity to sink to Minus (multiple adjectives) 30 with the windchill! And it’s a damp cold!
So late one recent evening, after returning home with a cup of far-too-steeped Tim Horton’s Steeped Tea (probably tm reg Pat Pend), and browsing a few favourite blogsites, I suddenly realized that the TV, which sits not too far away as a minor distraction (Multi-media R-Us) was presenting the startling newscast images of a farmers’ demonstration today on the front snowpacked lawn of Queen’s Park, the home of the Government of Ontario. “Startling” because this particular demonstration was crashed, literally, by an obviously suicidal man driving a Budget Rent-a-Van (probably the last publicity that Budget wanted). Over the course of about half an hour, he apparently leapt from the driver’s seat several different times to pour gasoline all over himself. Finally, after racing his van back and forth obviously one too many times for the many police officers surrounding him, several police cars were employed to ram the van front and back, effectively shutting down his ability to move and, in consequence, possibly run someone over in the ever more crowded area.
At which point he ignited himself and I watched in horror as police and firefighters swiftly smashed the driver’s side window, dragged this now burning being out onto the ground and smothered the flames.
Which led me to seek some other distraction.
Enter a hopelessly shallow video collection of every last one of the hits of a group who were everywhere in the 1970s, and whose name derives from the first initials of its four principal members: Agnetha, Benny, Bjorn and Anni-Frid.
Yep, ABBA. “The Definitive Collection” (It says so on the box.)
This stuff is howlingly mesmerizing, from the garish outfits they wear, to every visual trick in the book (that’d be the pre-computer graphics 1972 book) employed by the producer to provide a camera break from simply watching them perform – Vaseline on the camera lens, splitscreen – sometimes split into 16 separate frames, and lyrics which, if cast in the role of filling a swimming pool, would not provide sufficient depth to moisten one’s ankles.
But for all that, enormously catchy, unignorable and I dare you not to find yourself singing along with such great ABBA couplets as:
“You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen
Dancing queen, feel the beat from the tambourine
You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene, dig in the dancing queen.”
(I suspect that last one should be “diggin’ the dancing queen”, unless it’s a hitherto unsuspected paean to ritualistic cannibalism.)
and
“There was something in the air that night
The stars were bright, Fernando
They were shining there for you and me
For liberty, Fernando
Though I never thought that we could lose
There's no regret
If I had to do the same again
I would, my friend, Fernando.”
and
“Super Trouper lights are gonna find me
Shining like the sun
(Sup-p-per Troup-p-per)
Smiling, having fun
(Sup-p-per Troup-p-per)
Feeling like a number one.”
and of course:
“Mamma mia, here I go again
My my, how can I resist you?
Mamma mia, does it show again?
My my, just how much I've missed you
Yes, I've been brokenhearted
Blue since the day we parted
Why, why did I ever let you go?
Mamma mia, now I really know,
My my, I could never let you go.”
(There. I feel less blah-y already!)
Not so long ago, I discovered there is a dark side to one of the quartet. Anni-Frid (the brunette) was the love child of a Nazi soldier who sired her during a night of passion with her mother, a young Norwegian, during the German occupation of Norway in WWII.
The soldier was transferred to another post, and eventually presumed to have been killed later in the war. Anni-Frid, meanwhile, grew up under the hating eyes of many of her peers and their parents, eventually becoming a poster child for campaigns aimed at wiping out the stigma attached to these “war children”, who were brought into this life through neither politics nor passions of their own. (Along with, I was surprised to discover, guitarist Eric Clapton, whose mother was British and whose father was a Canadian soldier from Montreal).
Anni-Frid’s parentage suddenly exploded in her face in 1977 when a young lady in Germany was reading some just-released biographical information about the band and realized to her shock that Anni-Frid’s illegitimacy was due to a man very much alive – her uncle.
A reunion followed, 32 years of history was awkwardly recounted over a period of three days and a gap in the young entertainer’s life restored.
Surely there’s an ABBA song in there somewhere…
= = = = = = = = = =
I’ll be offline for a while. It’s spring break time and we’ve decided to leave electronics behind as we head off to the daytime distractions of nature and eventide in the company of – well, books, I seem to remember they’re called.
Descriptions and impressions of the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley and the Cirque de Soleil’s show, Ka, next time.
In conjunction with that part of my life that keeps chocolate chip cookies in the pantry, I am a new subscriber to what I am told is the Cadillac of news monitoring services. The first and most immediate outcome is that my morning e-mail has taken a huge quantity leap from its 8-10 new messages waiting for me when I arrive at work each day, to upwards of 40 or 50 new messages, courtesy of all the news clippings, “Media Advisory Alert”s and scheduled photo-op notices that I apparently am now receiving.
An indication of just how thorough they are going to be was provided by the example of a spring training camp baseball game result that showed up in a recent e-mail. I was completely baffled until I read the following:
“Although they've got two cities in their name now, the Angels seem determined to seem homeless to fans attending their games. Just as they did last season in Anaheim, the Angels made no reference to a city of origin in their public announcements or promotional materials.”
One of the files I am tasked with watching is coverage of issues related to the nation’s homeless. Thus, someone has advised this service to send me anything referring to “homeless” and its noun form, “homelessness”. That reference to the vagrancy effect of the recent location of the now-unspecified (formerly the Anaheim formerly the California formerly the Los Angeles) Angels baseball team earned this sports story a trip to my work-related e-mailbox.
And even more recently, I received a breathless announcement from the Associated Press of several upcoming new book releases. The headline keyed on two new books about convicted murderer Scott Peterson. But the reason I received the mailing at all could only be found well down the list in this note: “Empire Rising (FSG) by Thomas Kelly takes place in 1930s New York, where an Irish immigrant construction worker becomes involved with an artist who is an underworld figure's paramour.” Another of my responsibilities is the Temporary Foreign Workers file (home of the ever more notorious Exotic Dancer saga) and it was the three-word phrase “immigrant construction worker” that triggered that clipping’s dispatch to my e-mailbox.
= = = = = = = = = =
“Petals Around the Rose”
I’m still trying to figure out if this puzzle in logical thinking is ridiculously simple, or mind-numbingly difficult. As you will note when you link to it, it has frustrated the likes of Bill Gates, which suggests that it tilts toward “difficult”. But you should also know that after about two hours of wrestling with it, I solved it. Clearly, that tilts the balance back past equilibrium way over to the “ridiculously simple” end of the scale. (My family will all too happily affirm this. I am someone who cannot play “Mastermind” because my mind doesn’t work that way. Both my wife and daughter can whip my butt at that game. Needless to say, they play most often against each other. I can only watch in envy at the logical leaps they are able to make as each new clue line reveals important information to them that, for me, might as well be cast in Linear B. But I digress.)
“Petals Around the Rose” has been called an exercise in “thinking outside the box”, an example of a conundrum that requires “lateral thinking”, and a whole lot of four-letter names by people either in the throes of trying to solve it, or who have knocked themselves unconscious after whacking their own foreheads when the light finally went on.
There are a couple hints which are permitted in passing it along. (Note: Apparently those who have solved it under no circumstances are allowed to reveal the answer.)
1. At each throw of the dice, the answer to the question, “How many petals around the rose are there?” will be either 0 (zero) or an even number.
2. An important clue to the puzzle’s solution lies in its name.
3. The vast majority of people who tackle it greatly overthink it.
Have fun.
http://www.borrett.id.au/computing/petals-bg.htm
Let me know how many neurons you kill in your quest to solve this thing.
= = = = = = = = = =
And here I’ve been thinking that regardless of how I feel personally about the current resident of the Oval Office, I can’t deny the man’s power. Well, it would seem it doesn’t hold a candle to that of businessman, adventurer and camera-not shy gadabout Richard Branson, if this clip from a recent report of enormous demonstrations in Beirut is anything to go by:
“[Globe and Mail reporter Mark] MacKinnon said that some of the soldiers seemed primarily concerned about stopping looting and that a number of them had fallen back to protect a Virgin Records store.”
That should tell you something about the importance of Avril Lavigne CD sales to the economy of Lebanon.
= = = = = = = = = =
What can we say? You all look the same to us!
The following lead appeared in a story at an online news site for the India sub-continent, keralanext.com
“A month after their arguments failed to budge John Gomery from the helm of the sponsorship inquiry, lawyers for former prime minister Jean Chretien are asking the courts to intervene.”
The story was featured under “US News”.
= = = = = = = = = =
Old Home Week Deluxe!
In one of those little series of coincidences that usually sends me off humming The Lion King theme, “The Circle of Life”, recently I wound up in a brief e-mail exchange that had me visiting a website dedicated to preserving the domestic memories of life at the Royal Canadian Air Force base in France where, as an Air Force “brat”, I spent four years of my childhood.
I was stunned the first time I browsed the site to discover my forty-years younger face staring out of at least two photos that appear on the site – one an official class photo of my Grade 2 class, all of gathered on the front steps of the school and ranked tallest to shortest, and the other a group shot of the Silver Falcon Wolf Cub Pack to which I belonged, and my Dad was a cub leader.
We bore the same name as the RCAF squadron based there and, as a result, got to sew the official squadron crest on our cub uniforms. It was a gorgeous profile of (what are the odds?) a silver falcon, its entire countenance reflecting the “Don’t mess with me” message that, now that I think of it, an attacking squadron of CF-86 Sabre jets at full afterburner could probably manage to convey just fine without the bird. But it was pretty damned cool, and much more appealing to a young boy than the placid and environmentally friendly names and logos adopted by most scouting organizations, especially the European ones. (The Edelweiss Troop; The Woodpecker Tribe; Rowan’s Sherpas) I recall that the badges were much sought-after whenever we went to gatherings of other cub and scout groups.
But about a week before that, I had also heard from a former Little Brother that a family celebration was being held to celebrate his Mom’s 70th birthday, and I was invited. I hadn’t heard from him for almost 15 years.
Then we heard from a young woman we had billeted for a week some 14 years ago as a part of the Rotary Club’s “Adventures in Citizenship” program. She was just calling to say hello.
And just a couple days ago I received a bolt-out-of-the-blue e-mail from a guy who was one of my best friends in the mid-1960s, on a different air force base. It turns out that he actually works in the same department I do. The fact that we never bumped into each other is not as amazing as it might sound. Our “department” is actually part of two separate complexes of six office towers in two separate locations in Ottawa and Hull, whose daytime population is probably on the order of 40,000 people. He had stumbled over my name in the computer e-mail directory while looking for someone else, and basically sent me an “Is that you?” greeting, using a nickname I hadn’t heard for about 40 years.
So that’s no fewer than four separate major flashbacks over a period of about two weeks, which might explain why I’m quietly humming the theme from The Lion King a lot these days.
= = = = = = = = = =
And finally… I think I might have found the perfect short-term antidote to the late winter blahs… The past couple days here in Ottawa, the temperature has had the gawdfersaken temerity to sink to Minus (multiple adjectives) 30 with the windchill! And it’s a damp cold!
So late one recent evening, after returning home with a cup of far-too-steeped Tim Horton’s Steeped Tea (probably tm reg Pat Pend), and browsing a few favourite blogsites, I suddenly realized that the TV, which sits not too far away as a minor distraction (Multi-media R-Us) was presenting the startling newscast images of a farmers’ demonstration today on the front snowpacked lawn of Queen’s Park, the home of the Government of Ontario. “Startling” because this particular demonstration was crashed, literally, by an obviously suicidal man driving a Budget Rent-a-Van (probably the last publicity that Budget wanted). Over the course of about half an hour, he apparently leapt from the driver’s seat several different times to pour gasoline all over himself. Finally, after racing his van back and forth obviously one too many times for the many police officers surrounding him, several police cars were employed to ram the van front and back, effectively shutting down his ability to move and, in consequence, possibly run someone over in the ever more crowded area.
At which point he ignited himself and I watched in horror as police and firefighters swiftly smashed the driver’s side window, dragged this now burning being out onto the ground and smothered the flames.
Which led me to seek some other distraction.
Enter a hopelessly shallow video collection of every last one of the hits of a group who were everywhere in the 1970s, and whose name derives from the first initials of its four principal members: Agnetha, Benny, Bjorn and Anni-Frid.
Yep, ABBA. “The Definitive Collection” (It says so on the box.)
This stuff is howlingly mesmerizing, from the garish outfits they wear, to every visual trick in the book (that’d be the pre-computer graphics 1972 book) employed by the producer to provide a camera break from simply watching them perform – Vaseline on the camera lens, splitscreen – sometimes split into 16 separate frames, and lyrics which, if cast in the role of filling a swimming pool, would not provide sufficient depth to moisten one’s ankles.
But for all that, enormously catchy, unignorable and I dare you not to find yourself singing along with such great ABBA couplets as:
“You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen
Dancing queen, feel the beat from the tambourine
You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene, dig in the dancing queen.”
(I suspect that last one should be “diggin’ the dancing queen”, unless it’s a hitherto unsuspected paean to ritualistic cannibalism.)
and
“There was something in the air that night
The stars were bright, Fernando
They were shining there for you and me
For liberty, Fernando
Though I never thought that we could lose
There's no regret
If I had to do the same again
I would, my friend, Fernando.”
and
“Super Trouper lights are gonna find me
Shining like the sun
(Sup-p-per Troup-p-per)
Smiling, having fun
(Sup-p-per Troup-p-per)
Feeling like a number one.”
and of course:
“Mamma mia, here I go again
My my, how can I resist you?
Mamma mia, does it show again?
My my, just how much I've missed you
Yes, I've been brokenhearted
Blue since the day we parted
Why, why did I ever let you go?
Mamma mia, now I really know,
My my, I could never let you go.”
(There. I feel less blah-y already!)
Not so long ago, I discovered there is a dark side to one of the quartet. Anni-Frid (the brunette) was the love child of a Nazi soldier who sired her during a night of passion with her mother, a young Norwegian, during the German occupation of Norway in WWII.
The soldier was transferred to another post, and eventually presumed to have been killed later in the war. Anni-Frid, meanwhile, grew up under the hating eyes of many of her peers and their parents, eventually becoming a poster child for campaigns aimed at wiping out the stigma attached to these “war children”, who were brought into this life through neither politics nor passions of their own. (Along with, I was surprised to discover, guitarist Eric Clapton, whose mother was British and whose father was a Canadian soldier from Montreal).
Anni-Frid’s parentage suddenly exploded in her face in 1977 when a young lady in Germany was reading some just-released biographical information about the band and realized to her shock that Anni-Frid’s illegitimacy was due to a man very much alive – her uncle.
A reunion followed, 32 years of history was awkwardly recounted over a period of three days and a gap in the young entertainer’s life restored.
Surely there’s an ABBA song in there somewhere…
= = = = = = = = = =
I’ll be offline for a while. It’s spring break time and we’ve decided to leave electronics behind as we head off to the daytime distractions of nature and eventide in the company of – well, books, I seem to remember they’re called.
Descriptions and impressions of the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley and the Cirque de Soleil’s show, Ka, next time.
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