Category: Uncategorized

The Government Said The Public Wasn’t Ready

I didn’t realize I wasn’t ready. Do you have to be a libertarian wing nut to pause and shake your head?

The system would be more open, flexible and convenient for consumers, the panel concluded. The government could restrict the number of stores and their hours, and also retain the current $24-a-case minimum price, to discourage excessive drinking. And it could focus on enforcing existing laws preventing the sale of booze to minors. The government said the public wasn’t ready.

I can drive 45 minutes to New York state and be ready. I can drive two hours to Quebec and be ready, too. Heck, I can go to a small town 30 minutes outside of the city and be ready at an agency store, too. Can anyone explain how I was assessed as not being ready?

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Friday Bullets For The Greatest Weekend Of Your Life

Happy Fourth of July to our American Readers! I am doing a bit of research that points to our fair town being something of the refuge of the first terrorists of your fair land. Bands of Tory and Mohawk Loyalists in the 1780s left here, for example, to destroy all before them led by John Johnson, step-son of Molly Brant. Somewhere I read that of the 100 flour mills between Albany and Syracuse NY only one was left in operation that fall. These efforts kept the US army out of northern NY through lack of supplies and, hence, made a buffer that kept our small Loyalist fringe alive. In many ways, Kingston is Ontario’s Plymouth Rock but also factually related to New York. We should celebrate our own Ontarian (and therefore western Canadian) survival on this day as much as our southern pals do.

  • Speaking of our near neighbours, I came across this website of abandoned buildings of northern New York. Note LaFarge mansion to the lower left.
  • Two archeology blogs.
  • I have negotiated a 8000 character limit for blog comments. Please use these wisely as there us a character limit globally being studied by the UN.
  • I think it is time to agree with Harper’s point made yesterday – the founding of Quebec is a founding moment in Canadian history. We suffer from divisions that really are only in the mind. The idea now that there are two solitudes should be strange to us all – we have that egality now that was missing. Canada needs to understand itself to be French and English as well as First Nation, Scot and those who came after as well – not as 1970s multiculturalism but just as neighbours together. We need to find our own haka, remember and play baseball, cricket and rugby as well as lacrosse and snowshowing. And be thankful for Halifax, Quebec and Kingston, the three citadels that protected one young nation.
  • Darcey notes the passing of Bozo.
  • Wine is being grown by Lake Huron. What’s so wrong with global warming?
  • Gee, I sure hope the rude stuff I looked at on YouTube when it started up doesn’t come out in court documents.

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I Think This May Encapsulate The Whole Question Nicely

We are a people in need. It is sad but this always comes up – why aren’t Canadians as outwardly loyal as others allegedly are to their nations. The Globe and Mail thinks we need a little re-education on this point. A little time out from the family for a nature lesson:

On this Canada Day, I wonder: How do you instill a love of country in your children that isn’t hand-over-heart rote patriotism? How do you help them understand they are living in a paradise of benefits and beauty? Or make them want to, as grown-ups, become good citizens and give back to their country? You start by stepping outside. American psychologist and author Mary Pipher (The Shelter of Each Other) says that as grown-ups we tend to remember three things about our childhood: special meals, vacations and time spent outdoors…

It just sad. Can’t find a Canadian authority on point to make your argument about Canadian-ness. Then use that non-national authority to make a point that applies everywhere. Having only lived in areas Canuckian settled before, say, 1830 and for the most part before 1785, I can only say that anyone who hasn’t got special local food, interesting trips to local areas of importance or trips into the bush to to the beach must be bubble babies. Isn’t that what everyone does in Canada? Go to the cottage, the camp or the cottage or camp of the neighbour or relative?

No, I think they are making that point to miss the point. The real point is that we want to be jingoistic about something but don’t have it in us, literally. We have not been educated about the important stuff that is laying around us – unless you are lucky enough to be Newf, Bluenose or Quebecois. In his speech yesterday, Harper resorted to a call to “greatness” – which is like a call to tallness. A call to nothing. Greatness is a result not a goal. Patriotism is something that arises from pride, not from rote. So while you are at the beach or the camp, how about telling the kids why they are at that beach or camp and how folks got there Everyone’s pines are tall and lands are vast. But everyone’s history lessons and lessons from history are different. Start with who lived where you were first and go from there.

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Happy Canada Day!

What joy! A stranded Tuesday off – even though I took Monday off, too, to smoke a chunk of pork for five hours. This morning I was asked what smells like bacon. Me, I replied. More great Canada Day photos here from three years ago when I was a much more clever blogger. We are off to be in a canoe at someone else’s cottage, there being no truer Canadian activity.

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Following My Bliss In Oswego, New York

Have I mentioned I really dislike the idea of following your passion? It’s so much based on the immediate and the result. “Follow your passion” is what people are told to entice them into entry position IT jobs that never pan out or pull out the credit card to act on the next spontaneous urge. And it smacks of no respect for idleness. No, bliss is the thing. That cooler draw on the heart. The stuff of naps and toes playing in the tidal zone. The part of you that puts mild ahead of extreme double imperial IPA every time. It was a big day. Out the door at eight with one kid to collect another after their first stay-over. The promise of treats for all was a key leverage tactic. I felt like Ron dragging the kids around – but instead of Brussels, I got to go to Oswego, NY, home of C’s Farm Market and King Arthur’s brewpub.

When we got to C’s a little past eleven, I finally got to meet the blissed out (and maybe, OK, even passionate about beer) Dave and Maria who I have been emailing but missing the face to face on for a few years now. A while ago, they have taken the family fruit market and added a beer selection – then they discovered craft and have kept discovering. What I saw yesterday was easily a doubling of shelf space to fine beer with more focus compared to 2006 on US craft than imports. Peaches were placed in the hands of kids as we talked about the trade and their market. They were happy to report that they have seen a matching increase in sales and even mentioned that there was a happy gang from the Ottawa area that seemed to make the trip two or three times a year to full up the trunk. I left with 54 bottles of various sizes and strengths to replenish the stash including the new-to-me brews like Collaboration not Litigation as well as Old Ploughshare Stout and Red Sky At Night saison from Baltimore’s Clipper City. Future plans include tasting sessions starting in the fall. Sadly, under NY state law you need a special license for growler pours and they don’t issue them any more so that dream may have to wait for a while.

Also maybe a little sadly, things looked like they were not as busy over at King Arthur’s, one of my favorite brewpubs in terms of comfortable design, river mouth location and in-house micro-brew selection. Their dream location near the banks of the river in this historic downtown seem to have been undermined lately by a complete rebuild of the Bridge Street bridge. They are now disconnected from the hotel guests a few hundred feet away on the other bank. This may be compounding the pressures on all small brewers as there were only five beers on offer, three of which were flavoured wheats and none of which offered any level of hoppy bite. With my BBQ burger, I tried their 5% Summer Brown which promised a touch of coriander. I thought this was a great twist on a malty mahogany ale with a bit of licorice and treacle coming through the rich nutty graininess. If I say this had shades of HP sauce you need to understand that in the most positive of terms. Very nice beer.

More Testing

There is much to learn with the new and beautiful administration system that my blog masters have blessed me with today. I am now able to manage comments with four status levels which are selectable specifically for each comment. I can set a time for a post to appear later. I have a specific podcast file upload display as well as the ability to select from among different visual themes for the blog. I also upload photos per post and not first to a folder tree from which I then associate it with a post. This is excellent. I have to learn the XHTML tags finally, my use of 2001 era tags now being out dated. Bear with me.

David, there is an RRS comments feed to the lower right. Look between the archives and the search.

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Group Project: McCain’s Visit To Ottawa

I don’t usually get caught up in the bashing of various news sources. The Toronto Star gets its share of grief from folks with a variety of levels with incoherent thought – leaving the brighter stuttering when they see the error of their ways. But this column/article/piece, for me, is worth a bit of finger pointery:

He brings to Canada his message that Barack Obama’s desire to unilaterally renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement damages relations between steadfast allies and he will highlight the benefits of the trilateral deal in his speech Friday at an Ottawa hotel. The Conservative government in Ottawa and the Canadian Embassy in Washington are seeking as much cover as possible from the McCain visit, but the optics hurt Prime Minister Stephen Harper and everyone around him. Having the man most Canadians would see as the embodiment of the third George W. Bush term extolling your policies is no favour for the Conservative government.

Most Canadians?!? First, I would think most Canadians really have no opinion on McCain and his position on Canadian policy. Most Canadians think BBQ is a chicken wiener on a hibachi. We like to talk up how much we know about the US but most Canadians are fairly ignorant generally of our neighbour’s governance and specifically who John McCain is. Second, Canadians will gush because US breakfast TV shows may be broadcasting from Canada. Nothing excites Canucks as much as being noticed by US media. Canada could be on fire from coast-to-coast but, as long as there were US camera crews up here, there would be a silver lining. Third, Canada has done very well under trade agreements – as long as we didn’t have an artificially inflated dollar primed by speculators pumping up the cost of a barrel of oil to the benefit of the few.

So why do the optics hurt – why would Harper hide? – well, you know other than he seems to always hide as a first tactic. Sure his policies are a bit anti-trade, ensuring the short term gains for commodity vendors are undermining the solid economic gains made for twenty years in the 80 cent dollar world. Even if you aren’t conservative don’t you like your conservatives standing up for themselves proudly?

Or maybe it’s because McCain was an activist for funding reform and bipartisan cooperation. Maybe it’s because McCain is the sort of politician who Canadians want – engaging and fiscally conservative but a bit of a red Tory in some areas social and libertarian in others. Maybe it’s because McCain knows how to smile. Maybe because side-by-side Harper does not look as good to Canadians as his putative US right-wing counterpart.

We Live in George Carlin’s Joke

About 35 years ago when George Carlin used to appear on TV’s Sonny and Cher Show and things like that, he used to pretend he was doing a TV news anchor man reporting on quirky items – the sort of thing SNL ripped off a few years later. Once he told this joke: “Scientists have discovered that saliva causes cancer – but fortunately only when taken in small amounts over a long period of time.”