Author: Alan

Dryden Explained

I like to read Living in Dryden but had thought it was the work of a crazy old guy sitting on a sofa screaming at the authorities alone in the room dressed in what he is comfortable calling his pajamas. I have found I was wrong as I have come across this explanation of its focus on a small community east of Ithaca, New York:

A blog about Dryden has a naturally limited audience, but at the same time, the people who are in that audience likely have a thorough knowledge of the place. They drive its roads, pay its taxes, and hear its stories. Because of Cornell, there’s a large population just passing through, but even some of those people are likely interested in figuring out where they are at the moment.

The blog I started has a definite political angle (“One Democrat’s perspective”), and I started it after an election that didn’t go the way I’d hoped, but I don’t think there’s any reason that focusing a blog locally should condemn it to being less opinionated than blogs which look out on a larger world. Local politics is tricky, though – simple platitudes about “those who deserve work will find it” or “everyone deserves to get a good start in life” are hard to sustain when you’re writing at this level. People don’t necessarily know everyone, but alliances shift, ideology is frequently less important than communications, and the flow of news is irregular at best, making it hard to pick and choose stories.

It’s been difficult staying inside the town borders, and I’ve occasionally strayed elsewhere in the county when it seemed relevant, though I’ve tried hard not to discuss issues outside of Dryden unless they had a direct impact here. “Think global, but stick to local” might well be the motto for this kind of blogging.

This is good. Too much activity in Pajamastan is about what you do not know, blabbosity about someone else’s belief systems of politics and corporate consumerism abstracted from the author by many degrees. In my current hunt for good Upstate New York bloggers, having exhausted my eastern Ontario searching perhaps too quickly, Living in Dryden joins NYCO, Brian (who is away in Iraq) and Linda as do-ers, observers and reporters. For me that is the best sort of writing. For all the hype, they are few. Any recommendations for other first person writers of quality would be gratefully received.

This Universe

I am sure what this means yet but it is cool. If you load your URL into the TouchGraph widget, it creates a graphical representation of your links universe. It is also dynamic so if you click on your link, more pings go out, adding to the complexity of information represented. If you click on the link for another blog, the whole graph moves to rearrange the universe to that blog’s perspective.

Large neato factor.

I Get Questions

In the email this evening was this crisis of the soul:

I’m participating in a disc golf tournament tomorrow at Jacques
Cartier Park in Gatineau and one of the side contests is a closest to the pin contest. Since disc golf is for hippies and hooligans who don’t like the cost and snobbery of “real golf” (refered to by disc golfers as”‘whiteball” whereas disc golf is “flatball”) the closest to the pin contest involes beer. Basically, everyone who wants to participate chips in a can or bottle of decent beer (it can’t be anything from a twelve pack or a domestic 6 pack) and the person who lands the closest shot to the designated hole/basket during the day takes home all the beer. There are 72 people playing and I suspect at least half will donating beer for the cause.

This is the long way of saying that when I was at the LCBO this evening I was looking for a beer to donate and a couple to try and couldn’t recall any of your reviews. I wanted something novel for the contest so I grabbed something I hadn’t seen before: Monty Python’s Holy Grail which is “tempered over burning witches.” Have you ever heard of it? It’s approved by Monty Python and friends and is brewed by the Black Sheep Brewery in Masham, Yorkshire. My second choice was fairly safe because I’ve heard a friend describe it as his favourite European beer- Czechvar. Any thoughts? My third was based on packaging as much as anything and I had a vague feeling you’d reviewed it recently, or at least something by the company. I grabbed a bottle of St Peter’s Summer Ale (strong ale, 6.5%). the flask shaped bottle and simple label sold me. Have you had it?

I suppose the most important question is, which are worth sipping this evening and which should be given away. The Monty Python beer is a great novelty contribution but I’m tempted to try it myself. Of course if I win the whole lot of beer tomorrow it won’t matter.

I am honoured to be asked and advised to move on the St. Peter’s. Quality. I am a little less than a fan of the Monty Python – balance lacking as I recall. I also recommended the Fuller’s 1845 and got this response right back:

The 1845 was right beside the St Peter’s. I almost got it instead.
I’ll put it on my list for next time. Thanks. Go Sox!

I am verklempt. Helping others is what I do. Helping others with beer decisions is what I was born to do. Three university degrees and 24 years of schooling and I know my strengths, my bliss. Go Sox indeed.

At the ICU

Things seen and heard in the ICU:

  • Visitor:”How will it be when he wakes”
    Nurse: “Is he a smoker?”
    Visitor: “No”
    Nurse: “Then he’ll be fine.“
  • It is a little odd to see your Dad happily snoozing on morphine. All non-emerg and going well, thanks.
  • After seeing cops and corrections guys sitting around drinking coffee, I figure pretty much every day must land some prisoner in ICU after getting the hell beaten out of him given our nine or so Federal penitentiaries.
  • It is nice to see a crap restaurant in a hospital where there are very good medical resources. Priorities.
  • Queen’s has got the best designed multi-story car park I have ever seen. It is under a sports field and you wouldn’t know it is there if you were not within 50 feet of the entrance.

Up In The Night

A family member goes for a fairly routine by-pass, meaning non-emergency with little down-side potential, this morning and it has raised an odd story out of fifty years. Apparently my father’s aunt in the 50s was facing a diagnosis of blocked up arteries and was told there was nothing to be done. No accepting that, she heard of a surgeon in another part of Scotland who was doing something experimental and signed right up. She lived another eight years after. Apparently the guy decided it would be interesting to try something basic and, for a lack of a better way of describing, used his finger to scoop out the blockages – kind of like a mechanic might deal with a gunked up engine or a cook undoing chicken Kiev. There is something odd about Scottish humour that the moments that you realize that you are little more that an animate steak and kidney pie in some ways is entertaining and even comforting rather than disconcerting. We are assured that things are a bit more dignified these days but are a bit surprised how casual it all is – be there at 6:30 am for a 7:30 am start. Sounds like drinks before dinner.

So far the Canadian system, much maligned, has been fast, friendly and capable not to mention not devastatingly expensive. But it did take moving, moving 1500 km to another province and moving to a town with a medical school. If there are two tiers, it is definitely based on geography not personal wealth, though enough of that will get you much in any system.

Will the Ensign Guys Still Let Me Play?

I placed the image on the left I guess for a reason. Via Boing, here is a gallery of great 1940s war effort posters reworked by neutral objective political observers anti-Bush activists. My pal to the left being shut up is from the freedom of thought related section. This one is very effective. I quite like this one, too. Buy me the mug.