Tag: Travels and Other Places

Election 2012: While I Still Have The Power To Blog….

I better make some comment on this election, make some statement given the history around here even if the digital world has deemed blogs to commentary what 8-tracks are to fine audio media.

I was over in the states yesterday and found an active economy. My favorite lunch spot, the Fairgrounds Inn where I have been going for at least six years now was hopping on a Friday lunch. I had the Italian Combo, thanks for asking. And I got my hair cut. The guy getting sheered next to me went on about the Biden debate. Unhappy but a bit shallow. Was there really cause to gripe? Businesses were expanding. On the way out of town, my rear passenger side wheel just about seized and we were lucky to come over the hill on #37 and see Frenchy’s Auto Repair right there. An hour was all it took to get a part delivered and see us back heading to the border. We lapped up the warm late late summer air on a gorgeous rural vista out back of the repair ship. Everyone in the place was happy and busy and working. Some were having a beer. One of my favorite things about the slice of the USA I get to see is how it is both so similar to the Maritimes as a bit of a hard luck corner of the nation but also how frankly cheerful and confident folk are. The restaurant was at a dull roar of conversation the whole time we were there. It was hard to tell if the auto repair was a place of work or a fairly hearty social club given all the people coming and going while we were there.

What will America do on 6 November? My take is that Obama has not been passed, the Federal Senate will not budge and a number of member of the House will move to the left, not the right. There will not be a throw the bums out movement. I don’t think Mitt Romney would be a catastrophe any more than four more years would. No wave of nuttin’. But the next four years one way or another will be about managing recovery. Whammo. Not sure the will be a WHAMMO!!! but there will be a Whammo.

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Friday Bullets For Getting Up At 6:43 AM

I don’t set the alarm as the house lives on the rhythm of pre-schoolers. If I am up at 5:15 am, that is life and if the stars align like last week and there is quiet well past a sensible hour, that is life, too. Like last week. When I get a string of good sleeps I start to ask why there isn’t more activism for early to bed, early to rise. Government programs. That sort of thing. I mean of we can get tax breaks for kids activities, why not for jammies if both are key to good health? What else? I am not against taxing soda pop like cigarettes but I would rather see it extend to the prepared food aisle. If you can’t cut a carrot and put it is a pot as part of making something, you should pay the same premium for health that a ciggie toker pays.

  1. • Wed Design History Update: Where have all the .gif files gone… long time ago…
  2. • I would not exactly use the words royal newlyweds parasites but a do see a glimmer of the point. I pay for my own holidays. And I do appreciate that the young couple facing a life of nationals service does try live a relatively “go to worky” life. But I pay for my own holidays.
  3. • Holy Division of Powers Action, Batman! I want a Supreme Court ruling on the meaning of the Senate as well as the role of the provinces in defining the Constitution.
  4. • It’s not that I don’t care about a postal strike so much as I am surprised by the extent of my not needing to care. No one sends me cheques I have to have by mail. No one sends me chatty letters. I wonder if there is a twitter hashtag to follow the strike.
  5. • Dear Ratko. Rot in hell.
  6. • 2,197 calories for nachos? I went to a US somewhat fast foodie place that had calories listed the other week and found that I paid more attention to that than the prices. I was stunned that equally priced and relatively equally interesting alternatives ranged from 400 to 1,000 a sandwich. But 2,197 calories for a plate of nachos?

There. Posted early. Before I was awake last week. No rushing. Why don’t I do this all the time?

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Friday Bullets for 01 22 10

I missed yesterday. I can’t be tied to your incessant demands for content yet when was the last time I missed a Thursday post. Remember when I posted more than once a day? Remember when I had 12,000 readers a day? We have to face facts: blogging has become like home recording on 8 track tapes. I am off on a shopping exploration of Syracuse. Need me a Jets hat. Kids need multi-coloured goldfish crackers. Why can’t Canadians get multi-coloured goldfish crackers? Why is that the cultural divide?

  • More A. A. Gill goodness.
  • Are US conservative Tea Party types expressing a coherent political point of view? Interesting to hear new Republican darling Scott Brown saying after his election (and riding their wave) that they need to work within the party – and presumably mind their betters. Far too much can be read into anything.
  • Nice to see the NYTs point out what a car crash Conan has become: “…it turns out that the cliché that comics are angry, bitter people deep down is true.” Odd that it is the top headline on the web version of the paper today.
  • I have an Omega 3 drip. Have for years. Soon I will be 17 again.
  • Class speaks to cheater pants: “Ferguson Jenkins says Mark McGwire owes an apology to all those pitchers who gave up his home runs.” Amen.
  • Joel from NCPR just sent me this link to a northern NY folk music project. Where are the traditional folk music and folk tales of my town? Were we not folk?

Is that enough? Is that not enough? Off to find a Wegmans.

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Where The Heck Did That Deer Come From?

Nature can be surprising.

The animal will be watched over by veterinarians and then likely given to the Toronto Zoo, police said. Still, no one knows where it came from. “Obviously, it made its way from Rouge Valley, Humber Valley,” said Supt. Hugh Ferguson. “How? God only knows … GO Train, maybe.”

How odd being a few blogs for Deer-Gate, the great question of how the heck a deer got into Toronto. Funny. When I look out the window of the 26th story where I am sitting, I see woods. And on the map nearby I see ravines and woods and I bet that deer is a downtown Toronto deer of long standing.

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Big Easlakia Base Ball News Circa 1874

While I was over hobnobbing with the shaken and moved of the southern part of our Easlakian neighbo(u)rhood, I have actual stuff to do. Base ball stuff as I wanted to research the Watertown tournament of 1874 given that there were references to it in the Kingston papers of the time. I had thought that they went to play but in fact it appears that they went to watch as they are not listed as a team in the schedule.

Kingston’s rivals of the day, the Guelph Maple Leaf, win the event held in late June and early July over eight days before pop up here after for a game on 7 July 1874. But there are other notes that make it very curious:

  • There is a first and second class tournaments being played side by side making for a total of 14 teams. I do not know why you would have seven teams per class but there you have it.
  • Being or rather not being “daunted” meant something in the mid-1870s as there is a second class team called “The Undaunted” of La Fargeville, NY and another second class team called “The Dauntless of Watertown, NY. Careful readers will know that there was also a team called Dauntless of Ogdensburg, NY which the Kingston St. Lawrence played on Friday 8 August 1874 in Ogdensburg as well as the Dauntless Club of Toronto that Kingston played in 1872 and 1873 .
  • One team in the first class group was the Ku-Klux of Oneida, NY described as “the acknowledged champion club of Northern and Central New York” in the 29 June issue of the The Daily Times of Watertown. You will be comforted to know that the Maples Leaf of Guelph thumped them 13-4 and that the team was slagged in the paper as “the negro haters” who scored a “usual whitewash,” a “goose egg, ” a “cipher” and “skunked” in various innings.
  • Certain players of the Nassaus of Brooklyn, NY and some Eastons of Easton, Pennsylvania were reported in the 6 July issue as having taken a wagon to Sackets Harbor on Sunday 4 July and returning in quite a state: “It would have been proper if the whole crowd could have been unloaded at the jail.” They apparently were driven through Public Square as they sand “Mulligan Guards” and kindred songs.

Thrilling stuff. Need to do a little cross referencing but it looks like the Eastons of the 1870s may have been a rival to the Philadelphia Athletics which are now the Oakland A’s.

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Friday Bullets For The Week At The Beach

Not so much bullets as things noted:

  • Chowder is something to do when it rains.
  • That guy in Double A baseball who is the next big thing may well not be.
  • Banjos can be valued for their good trade-in potential.
  • My feet will freckle if I just give them the chance.
  • Those screams you hear at waterslide amusement parks include the sounds of terrified 46 year olds.

Links? Maybe next week. It’s not like I looked at the internet much this week.

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The Downside Of That Job Abroad

I hadn’t heard things were not going so well in Dubai. We have extended family in the Gulf – as apparently everyone one does – but hadn’t heard a peep about charms like debtors prison:

Now, like many of the foreign workers who make up 90 percent of the population here, she has been laid off and faces the prospect of being forced to leave this Persian Gulf city — or worse. “I’m really scared of what could happen, because I bought property here,” said Sofia, who asked that her last name be withheld because she is still hunting for a new job. “If I can’t pay it off, I was told I could end up in debtors’ prison.” With Dubai’s economy in free fall, newspapers have reported that more than 3,000 cars sit abandoned in the parking lot at the Dubai Airport, left by fleeing, debt-ridden foreigners (who could in fact be imprisoned if they failed to pay their bills). Some are said to have maxed-out credit cards inside and notes of apology taped to the windshield.

Wowie-kazowie! But we still have certain types of jailings for debts, though they are rarely used. Deadbeat parents who don’t pay support might be hoozegowed. It was more common a few decades ago, though. PEI had another approach historically that was still in effect when I took the bar exam there: if someone thought you might skip off, they could seize your stuff based only on making a claim in court. Pre-trial garnishment. Court released the goods after the trial. You no show, it’s gone. Neat and handy.

But who knew? I thought it was all golfing off skyscrapers and making islands shaped like trees in the Emirates. And who knew 90% of the population were auslanders? But no wonder I didn’t know: “…a new draft media law would make it a crime to damage the country’s reputation or economy…” Remind me to stay home.

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Isn’t It Time To Decriminalize Low Level “Smuggling”?

An interesting story in the Toronto Star about how Canadian border guards suspect the new Nexus fast-track ID card is a conduit for smuggling:

The cards, along with so-called Fast cards used by truckers, are issued by both American and Canadian authorities to travellers who are deemed low-risk after screening. But an internal evaluation by the Canada Border Services Agency found that front-line officers have seen too many card-carrying travellers cheating. As a result, they’ve lost faith in the system. “There is a common perception among BSOs (border services officers) that individuals in the trusted traveller programs are not low risk and that they are not more compliant than others,” says the study.

I cross the border a lot because I like to go beer and hoodie shopping, I like to weekend in upstate New York when there is enough money in the piggy bank and I like to go to Maine in the summer to see friends. That means we bring back stuff and we declare everything. But sometimes I have declared 12 beer and been asked to pay $3.57. On other occasions, we have brought back 500 buck worth of beer, a canoe, bags of LLB clothes or sacks of groceries and paid nothing because of the number of people in the car and that we stayed over 48 hours.

Why? There is nothing tied to my time in the US that makes an economic impact in Canada – unless we are a country that imposes tax on me to keep me from traveling. The 48 hour rule actually keeps me in the states longer. And I have a mobility right in the constitution. And I am a free person. Ought I not be able to travel as I wish and ought not border guards be freed up to fight terrorism and not count the number of 6-packs and ham sandwiches in mini-vans? Time to change.

This move might be a start but who the heck goes to duty free stores?

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Maine Update #1: Poor Hans – Nothing To Read

I feel badly for Hans. I even drove near Heuvleton, NY on the way here so the whole family could wave at the ancestral home of Hans. But I have to get to the South Portland library to post this week, it was closed yesterday and, frankly, there is sea life to consume instead of blogging. Notes so far:

  • Hotels with no free breakfast are not good. I had to hunt for groceries at 10 pm on Friday instead of waking up to someone else’s work of making me faux scrabled eggs and “breakfast links.” Oddly, Double Tree with no breakfast is part of the same hotel group as the much preferred, feast o’breakfasting (yet cheaper) Homestead Suites.
  • The smoked chowder at 3 Dollar Dooies is still great.
  • Get to the South Portland Library early as there is already only one computer free. People do not whisper here, either, which is good. No library nazis.
  • Gas is not as expensive here as in NY state. We went from 4.09 a gallon upstate to 3.69 here.
  • Renting a cottage in a normal neighbourhood is a great thing. My neighbour came over to help with the garbage. My kids are among families with kids. I walk to ice cream.
  • I am going to kick the second annual 35 yard field goal in America as part of my continuing “Glory Years” project – this time with a 19.99 NFL sized Wilson. Last year was celebrated in Ithaca NY with a CFL ball. When I kick my 35 yard kick, my kids will shout “you still got it, Dad” because I am going to give them ice cream if they do.

That is it for now. The Olympics are on the radar but not too much. Nice to see Canada got some medals so far – nice to see we kick ass at trampoline and female wrestling. I hope Ottawa is now being praised for its support.

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