Sick With Constitution

Home sick for another day, I am reading a book called On Reading the Constitution by Lawrence Tribe, an author recommended to me by a NYC lawyer recommended to me by a now blogging former-classmate of his as well as a collection of essays on the founding of the USA called To Begin The World Anew by Bernard Bailyn. With the concurrent debate on same-sex marriage as well as my recent spate of trips south, I thought it was time to get some sense of the difference between the US and Canadian constitution and I already am very surprised by a few:

  • The inordinate respect given to the USA’s Founding Fathers and what they must have meant when they penning this or that clause in this or that sentence. In Canada, it is sometimes said that the 1981 patriation of the constitution and the Charter moved us to an American style “written constitution” but this is incorrect as we have a constitution of hundreds of documents from 1700s governor’s letters of instruction to recent agreements on off-shore oil revenue. What we do not have is an uber-text and any care for those who wrote it. The words have to live and die on their own.
  • The misrepresentation of the original intention for separation of church and state seems to contradict the interest in understanding the Founding Fathers. From the outset, ministers of the faith were barred from sitting in a legislature as the rules of the faith had no place in the civic law. Nowadays, there is this idea that the morality and perception of Christianity in the late-eighteenth century was exactly as red staters would wish were the case today. Nothing could be further from the truth and is factually demonstrable. If such an analysis were imported in the Canadian discourse, we would think Sir John A. was a T-totaller.
  • There are no constitutional lawyers in the USA in the same sense as in Canada as the Constitution down south serves as almost an everyday interpretive tool for all law. In Canada, you default to constitutional interpretation when other analyses fail to provide an answer and when applied it is a special case often handled by specializing counsel.
  • That the phenomena of the USA was as much or more in its recreation of the state as it is in its identification of the rights of humans. It was envisaged by fairly ordinary folk like Roger Sherman as much as Thomas Jeffersons and George Washingtons. The concurrent divided jurisdiction of federal and state government being one example of this rethinking of government. The idealism is almost embarassing if it were not actually effective. It makes me wonder that if Napoleon had not emerged in France at the same time as the early USA was trying to get a start whether the War of 1812 may have had a different outcome and we would now, throughout the greater British North America, all have thought what a nutty idea those fellers had way back then.

In Canada our law and history is not a morality play, a battle of good over the void. It is a bargain, an agreement to get along peacefully. The USA is a very different place.

Awful Al’s, Syracuse, New York

Never was a beer from Stone so appropriate…
 

We only stopped in Awful Al’s briefly when walking between Clark’s and the Blue Tusk. Two reasons. I was told to stop taking photos and it is a reminder of how great the anti-smoking laws are for the consumption of fine beers. It is, however, the dimmest lit bar I think I have ever been in and as a result the doctored photos give you the sense of the place as cross between photographer’s dark room, a 1970s era Soviet submarine and a very merry upper level of Hell.

One kind correspondent, Jim of Maltblog, has written me:

Awful Al’s is the place to go for whiskeys and bottled beers. They have a very good selection and a hip atmosphere and clientele. It’s a bit of a meat market, so be warned – it can be very crowded and is filled with the yuppies that you didn’t find at Clark’s. But if you are looking for a dram of Balvenie PortWood or a Laphroaig, this is your place. It’s also the only place I know of in Syracuse that have a waiver from the smoking ban in bars and restaurants – it’s very smoky as a result.

Very smoky as the streets by dark industrial mills at midnight in 1840 were smoky. The ever excellent Lew Bryson is warmer to this particular flame to the moth in his ever informing book New York Breweries (1st ed, p. 205):

…walk over to Awful Al’s Whiskey and Cigar Bar (321 South Clinton Street, 315-472-4427), across from the Suds Factory and lose yourself in contemplation of hundreds of bottles of spirits. Come back to your senses and realize there are some great taps of beer here as well, a big old humidor, and big couches and armchairs to relax in while you enjoy your smoke whiskey. This is civilization….

Look – he’s right. The wall of wickedness. You know, you really ought to buy Lew’s books if you have any interest in ales and find yourself in New York or Pennsylvania or coming soon Delaware, Virginia and Maryland. You can’t be relying on us for every good opinion. Sure I am looking for a signed copy to review…but I will pay. The piper is due his wages.

 

 

 

 

 

So in the end I did not have a dram or a drop in Awful Al’s, driven by oxygen deficit syndrome as well as my fear of such a complete temple to appetite and someone’s reasonable sensitivity to having your face on the internet. I think that I would have to get to know it better, drop the residual asthma and have a change of clothes so that I could burn the nicotine soaked ones I would be leaving in. And buy those spy camera glasses everyone is talking about. But that is just me. Every heaven is not the same heaven and you might like Lou’s better than mine. I know I found mine at the Blue Tusk which I will report on anon.

It is, in reflection, interesting that Al’s, Clarks, the Blue Tusk and even the hotel bar at the Marx where we stayed each suited a different definition of comfort-and-joy and God-rest-ye-merry-gentlemanliness. All distinct from the Maritime and New England taverns of benches and heavy wood tables like those of Halifax or Portland Maine’s Gritty McDuff’s and Three Dollar Dooies, again, despite the shared goal. Speaks to the differences in local culture as much as anything I suppose.

Watertown Daily Times

While over in the States on the weekend, I picked up a copy of the Watertown Daily Times the excellent paper that is published out of our smaller neighbouring city in Jefferson Co., NY. As an artifact, it is especially interesting to read the “Northern New York” section on issues that are important to the community that is so close geographically across the river but so subtly different in so many ways and unknown in so many others…and not just why grown men wear red Dale Earnhardt NASCAR jackets in public?

  • The strong interest in US high school sports never ceases to amaze me. You can watch the local Watertown TV and get the local footage, interviews and scores before the pros – you can also follow it on the webs news service of the competing TV station. You can listen to a high school or junior college basketball game on 620 WHEN. In the WDT and you can read pages of articles right now on the local northern New York school championships in wrestling, basketball and volleyball trying to figure out where all these small school are located and how the sectional and divisional structure works. What it helps foster is that legitimacy in the local as well as that thing you can only describe in somewhat cloying terms, a positive image for (or at least of) teens. We could do with more of that local coverage here.
  • You find out about similar initiatives. We have some interest in wind power here in Kingston and so I was surprised to learn from page B4 that a $380 million (USD of course) 190 turbine wind farm is being built and finished this year on Tug Hill, called the Flat Rock Wind Project, in Lewis County about 75 miles to the SSE of here. I may be able to see it from the roof on a clear day. Such a project on PEI would provide 200% of local needs and create an exportable resource yet the local goals in PEI have been puny and plans are for less than 10% of the imaginations of our local US neighbours.
  • I also read about a copyright law suit involving a blog and St. Lawrence University in St. Lawrence Co. I can’t comment on US copyright law and the WDT gives only passing mention at the bottom of B6 to the case in a larger article on university issues:

    The change allows SLU’s Information Technology office to review and monitor files transmitted or stored on the university’s computers. The change was made in the wake of a copyright infringement suit SLU has brought against Interet Web log Take Back Our Campus. SLU is suing to stop the administrators of the Web log, or blog, from using university photos. The suit could reveal who is running the blog, which ridicules SLU administrators, staff and students.

    But for a smaller-town paper, the sussinct characterization of blogging and the related issues is quite neatly done, though I think the days of the capitalization of “Internet” and “Web” are long gone. The case potentially covers any number of interesting concepts including free speech, copyright, education law and technology law so I hope to figure out how to follow it.

I wish the WDT had free web service but, given the real reporting that it is doing on a local basis, someone has to pay the piper and I can’t really justify about $100 CND for a year’s subscription for this hobby interest. But what a great way to get to know a community.

What Starts In 10 Minutes in Newfoundland?

It’s already March in the UK and in a couple of minutes it hits Canada. It’s not that I disliked February. I travelled a little. I laughed. I cried. If it became a part of you, relive my February any time you want. But it is now eleven months to the next February and I am not saddened by that. Who likes February the best? The month of no sports, no vegetation, vitamin D deprivation and false thaws. Wouldn’t the preference for February before all other months be an indicator of some mild form of manic disorder? Other months push it around. No Day 30. Loser month. Go away February. People call you “Febooary”…did you know that? They don’t even care to say it right. Can’t say March wrong.

Clark’s Ale House, Syracuse, New York

Click above for bigger beauty

I came away from a visit to Clark’s Ale House knowing I should visit it again in a different circumstance. In the middle of a semi-sub-roaring tour of the town with friends, the quiet of Clark’s was a little disconcerting and, given a wrong moment, felt like pretense…but I figure it was me. It has no TV, no music, no bellowing bartendings shouting to be heard. It is also smaller than I had expected with a few tables up on a second level above the bar.

 

 

 

 

Clark’s famous roast beef sandwich on an onion bun. Dapper gents neatly sliced beef and pulled pints behind the bar. I had an excellent Armory Ale, a Middle Ages brew only available at Clark’s. Every brew I’ve had from Middle Ages is so well done, I should have expected this American pale ale to be as good as it was but well-made and well-handled beers are actually so rare that you have to note when you are in their presence.

The reviewers over at the Beer Advocate are far more certain and with a return visit maybe on a Sunday afternoon as opposed to after the game on Saturday night I would also write as does one from Michigan:

From the outside Clark’s is mighty inviting when your walking about the streets of downtown Syracuse on a biting cold late Autumn evening. You can see the jovial patrons, their heads reared back with laughter, through the large paned glass front. The warmth draws you in. The beer keeps you there. A pint of Middle Ages and a warm roast beef sandwich amid the chatter of beer lovers melts the icicles fixed to your eyebrows. Nifty layout holds pockets of seating, against the bar, under a window, in the back room with your best buddy, even an upper level I didn’t explore. Dark stained woods around and ivyed trellis above. Cozy.

Go to Clark’s and know a quiet night with their beers.