Month: May 2007

Planted So Far This Weekend

This is the first spring with a yard since 2002 and – even though the property is about a tenth of the size of the 165 by 600 foot patch remaining around the old farmhouse in PEI – I seem to be working, which was never really the plan. I got collard greens, purple potatoes, yellow onions and even yellow beets in the ground out at the borrowed plot north of the 401. That certainly added unexpected labour. Here in town I am working more on pots and seed starting, though the sugar snap peas have joined the radishes.

The pear tree and the apple tree we inherited are in bloom, likely in vain both starved though bad planning of the right sort of companionship. I should especially find the pear a companion seeing as they only pollinate off of another variety but, as we all know, he who plants pears plants for his heirs and I’ve only so much time.

A Tiny Bit Of Hope For The Yankees

You know it must be bad when the good news for the Yankees is that they avoided a sweep. The real news for them, however, is that they discovered that they discovered they have a pitcher called Tyler Clippard, a 22-year-old right-hander throwing down in triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. He was on fire and even hit a bunt and double in his own cause. Funny seeing someone with bad acne playing baseball – something you see in soccer or hockey all the time given how quickly kids are promoted.

But they now have to get back to reality and play the Sox for the next three evenings. It will be interesting to see if Johnny Damon can turn making yesterday’s catch at the wall (as opposed to Saturday night when he just helped it on its way over the wall) and that bloop single into the start of turning his year around. So far on the Coco v. Damon trade, the Soxs are looking very clever. Both have underperformed expectations but Coco has done it for far less – and has maintained his position as a positive force on the team though his attitude and effort. Coco has also added to his average in the last month, outbatting Damon .261 to .250 during that stretch.

D’oh!….Howdja Like My Tie?


Howdja Like The Tie…I’ll Be Here All This Week…Thank you…You’ve Been Great…
…Have You Ever Heard The One About The Commons Committee…

No wonder it’s all gone goofy on Parliament Hill. It’s the Prime Minister’s brilliant plan:

The handbook, obtained by National Post columnist Don Martin, reportedly advises chairs on how to promote the government’s agenda, select witnesses friendly to the Conservative party and coach them to give favourable testimony. It also reportedly instructs them on how to filibuster and otherwise disrupt committee proceedings and, if all else fails, how to shut committees down entirely.

Please note: leaked by the National Post, the closest thing to a conservative paper outside of Alberta. Please also note folks like poster boy Andrew Coyne and independent non-posterly yet more right than me guy Jay Currie and a whack of others natural ethical conservatives of many stripes are not surprised but are appalled. The guys are nuts…yet they are also reinventing the concept of two-bit.

To review: this party came out of the Reform movement to improve democracy in Canada.

Standard Form A-137: Bulletted Chat (Friday)

In this edition, I review what I did this week and find it lacking. After being confused and disappointed by Twitter, I was simultaneously invited to Facebook by men in Alberta and Norway and I took the bait. Now I have 18 friends. I wonder whether I really had friends at all before that point. Then I wonder what I am supposed to do with the thing now that I have 18 friends.

  • Update: What I believe.
  • Update: continue to pray as we plan for MaineCanoe 2007 next week. Note for future google searches, you can find Kingston Canoe events and opportunities here.
  • Back in the days before I had a blog, I used to buy the Economist quite regularly. I mainly liked the graphs and the funny captions under the photos of world leaders. Their essay on the fate of Paul Wolfowitz avoids much of the gobbledegook related to the cause:

    On May 14th, a report written by seven of the bank’s directors concluded that in the summer of 2005 he had broken the institution’s rules, breached his contract and fallen short of the high ethical standards of his office. All of this in an effort to appease Shaha Riza, his romantic partner, who was outraged that she would have to leave her job in the bank when he took his. He went to huge lengths to smooth his girlfriend’s exit, bowing to her demand for a substantial rise in pay, sharp annual increases and a big promotion (or two) on her return. He should never have put himself in the middle of the dispute, the report argued. He was only following the directors’ sketchy advice as he had understood it, Mr Wolfowitz insisted in reply.

    You got to hand it to the man. He has had two tasks in my experience of him, totally blew both and displayed an utterly pathetic understanding of both geo-politics and personal ethics, leaving nothing but disorder in his wake. Not bad.

  • Is it possible that the Canadian Parliament is in disarray because not one party and not one leader has one decent idea to latch on to?
  • A great day for the Sox and a great second game of the double header for former Jays starter and Sox benchman Eric Hinske. I’ve never seen a man happier to hit a home run, the two run tater that gave the win, and I have never seen a man hold on to a baseball for an out while slamming his face into the warning track and eating half a pound of dirt. Good to see.
  • What else does this list of nations have in common other than filtering internet use? Bad at ice hockey – some good at field hockey, though. More English colonies than French, oddly enough.

More later at the breaks no doubt. If it is warm somewhere, please waft the air our way. I am sick of the cold and dreary.

GM Decisions

A tough but perhaps telling comparison of neighbouring economies as GM pulls out of Massena, NY about two hours to the east but plans to expand in Niagara Falls, Ontario about the same distance as the crow flies to the west. The two plans are not related directly but we often assume that Canada is not in a competitive position in these sorts of things. But it takes doing as grannie might have said:

At GM’s massive assembly operations in Oshawa, workers agreed to outsource janitorial operations and eliminate an in-house construction crew in order to win investment. The Ontario and federal governments also backstopped the plan by providing $435-million (Canadian) for the project, which included investments at other GM operations in Ontario and several research and development projects at universities throughout the country.

Tough decisions in a shakey market. But at least get the spelling right, wouldja.

Fixing Something

If this were actually to come to pass, my estimation of the current government would greatly change:

Sources have told The Globe and Mail that the government’s Minister of Indian Affairs, Jim Prentice, is working on a plan that would give the Indian Claims Commission independent power to make legal rulings. The minister promised Tuesday that an announcement on land-claims policy will be made in the next few weeks. The ICC, which is mandated to deal with the sorts of claims that are at the heart of several controversies, has the right to investigate complaints about treaty violations that have been rejected by Canada, but can only make recommendations to government as to how the dispute should be resolved. The government itself decides whether it agrees it is at fault and whether negotiations should take place.

Imagine taking a significant decision to fix a problem that has been around for well over a century. Will a wave of settlements follow? Will it please the conservative grassroots?

Share Your Regret

Sometimes there is nothing as dreary – or is it dour – as being Canadian and I think this featurette from the newly minted “Life” section in now extraordinarily baldy laid out national newspaper of Toronto The Globe and Mail yesterday exemplifies the point neatly:

Big or small, life altering or seemingly insignificant, lasting or fleeting – our regrets are a part of who we are.

Share your regret…

Why don’t they just ask people to count the number of pens almost out of ink in the kitchen drawer and share that, too. Maybe that one is being held in reserve for a bit of punch for the slow news dog days of summer.