Author: Alan

My Leonard Cohen

It was quite sad to hear about Leonard Cohen finding himself in something approaching a view of the poor house due to a legal dispute in this era when he should be being dipped in gold as a national treasure. And I don’t even like his songs that much. I do like, however, what he stands for as a symbol of individual autonomy to make the world the poem that you see it to be. So it was good to read this in the Globe this morning:

A judge with Los Angeles County Superior Court has granted Leonard Cohen a default judgment of $9-million (U.S.) against the Canadian singer-songwriter’s former manager. Judge Kenneth Freeman made the ruling earlier this week in response to a civil suit Cohen filed last August alleging fraud, negligence and breaches of contract and fiduciary duty on the part of Kelley Lynch, who served as his business manager from early 1988 through October, 2004…The Montreal-born Cohen, 71, has alleged that Lynch over eight years had siphoned off more than $5-million of his savings, so that by late 2004 his retirement nest egg had been reduced to about $150,000. Westin, now teaching law at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, was named in the claim because Cohen alleged that Westin helped Lynch with the $12-million sale of both Cohen’s music-publishing company and artist royalties. Most of these proceeds went into a Lynch-created company, Traditional Holdings, of which Lynch had 99.5 per cent ownership.

Apparently he has settled out of court with other money grubbers. Good. But why do I like him so much but not really his music? I do recall a documentary on his likely 20 years ago when he was having new fame with the Famous Blue Raincoat CD and it was done in his apartment in Montreal that looked like a normal sort of apartment except that everything was white. He said something to the effect it made the outside more a part of the inside. Then I got to like him more when he won a Juno for singer of the year and he said only in Canada could his voice win singer of the year. But best of all was his stumping of Gzowsky the ultimate but early beacon of political correctness and all that is wrong with that when Cohen said he was stopping his European tour early. Why, says, Gzowsky. Can’t afford the wine. Gzowsky stammered. When you drink 3 or 4 bottles a day, Cohen goes on, you need to buy the increasingly really good stuff and as this tour was so much longer than he had done before he was buying bottles now each worth thousands and that was costing more than the tour was bringing in. Gzowsky stammered some more.

When I was a kid in the poorer and plainer Maritimes you assumed everyone in Montreal was like Cohen – cooler, smarter and looking better in black while knowing where the best window to look out of while drinking coffee could be found. You felt that your friends from Nova Scotia who got jobs or went to university in Toronto sold their soul; people from Nova Scotia who got to Montreal would wind up like or even be pals with Leonard Cohen. His expression of that sort of style of the international man was something that added to Canadian-ness in a way that equalled all the canoes. Good to see that he will now have his wine and black turtleneck expenses covered off in his reclining years.

Child Care Math

I am still trying to figure out the Harper plan for child care and, without getting political just now, just want to make sure I have the math right. So this is what I understand today:

32,805,041 Canadians
2,057,848 Canadians 5 and under
6.27% of Canadian population is under six and eligible
There are roughly 116,000 people in Kingston
6.27% x 116,000 = 7,273 people in Kingston 5 and under
7,273 x 1,200 per year per child 5 and under = $8,607,600 per year

Is that right? I keep doing the math and it seems to be. While I do understand (though do not agree with) the policy of stopping public child care expansion, the new evil for our new rural overlords’ social theorists, but I do not understand doing so at a cost of around 400% the cost of that increased public child care, as this morning’s Whig-Standard illustrates for Kingston:

Under the scheme, Kingston and Frontenac County were to get millions annually in federal money to create new child care spaces, improve services in schools and provide more early intervention programs for children in need. The city has the first-year funding, $2.32 million, in the bank, but has not yet spent any of the cash. We’ve got the money and we’re not giving it back,” Lance Thurston, Kingston’s commissioner of community development services, said in an interview yesterday. Thurston said the outgoing Liberal administration knew that a policy shift might come after the election, so they passed on the cash some time ago.

So if the Federal Government’s plan costs four times as much and takes away the realistic ability to provide more child care spaces – what does it actually provide? It doesn’t create a level playing field as the people that don’t need it still don’t get it – only those that do need it lose. In return every little kid gets some money in pocket that will not add up to child care or any thing else other than 25 bucks more a week for groceries for toddlers. Was there a suffering in the nation? Was there a mischief to be corrected through increasing spending 400%? Did every toddler need 25 bucks more? How is this not like a promise of free mustard for all when some people need food? Keep you danged mustard. Any why should I pay for the mustard of others through my tax dollars anyway? Let folks buy their own mustard. Except if you can’t afford mustard. But our new rural overlords do not like that idea so much. Prairie mustard farmers vote conservative for the most part.

So please correct me if you can but I still just don’t get this at all. And saying Tory bad or Liberal bad is not helping anything.

Trinidaaaaaaaaad!!!

TNT rule. Well, at least they rule over Iceland. Dwight Yorke (leaping right) but not seven guys called Desmond and a bunch of others called Dennis now heads to Sydney for the A-league final.

I reiterate. I will change my name to Clive Desmond…or Desmond Clive…if they win the World Cup. Note: new website for the team…or the Department of Tourism and the team.

Last Day Of Winter

Today is really the last day of winter. It is the last day like Labour Day is the last day of summer. The weather is not necessarily going to tell you but its days are numbered even with the sharp spell we face for a few days.

The days lengthen. Somewhere in the month that begins tomorrow there will be a day that will be shorts weather and there will be more green around the foundations of buildings. The day after tomorrow the Red Sox play the Twins in the beginning of the graprefruit league. Tomorrow, February will be eleven months away.

Soon No More Home And Garden TV

As the new ditigal TV world starts to nudge above the horizon, it is good to see the CTRC do something useful short of the dream of its own extinguishment. As some point before I leave this mortal coil, I may be able to buy cable TV without the 34 channels I never never never watch:

As the industry shifts from analog to digital transmission, which provides a high-definition TV signal through a set-top box, cable companies have sought to sell channels individually. However, in a show of support for analog cable networks concerned that their audiences may plunge, the CRTC said the tiered system must be kept in place on digital cable until 2013. If cable providers have transferred more than 85 per cent of their subscribers to digital after 2010, that system can be dropped. The tiers have often frustrated consumers who would like certain stations but do not want to be pay for those they don’t want…While Canadian regulators are making the shift from analog to digital cable over a broader period of time, the U.S. government has more aggressive plans, setting a Feb. 17, 2009, deadline to end analog TV broadcasts.

The next step of course is allowing any channel broadcast anywhere in the world to be available to me. All I want is the right to watch TV from India or Fiji as I have been able to listen to their radio through the miracle of the international broadcast bands of shortwave radio. You can tell by my internationalist style around these parts.

The Five Dollar Station

One of the reasons radio is so good is radio is extremely cheap:

The transmission equipment, costing just over $1, may be the cheapest in the world. But the local people definitely love it. On a balmy morning in India’s northern state of Bihar, young Raghav Mahato gets ready to fire up his home-grown FM radio station. Thousands of villagers, living in a 20km (12 miles) radius of Raghav’s small repair shop and radio station in Mansoorpur village in Vaishali district, tune their $5 radio sets to catch their favourite station.

The real problem radio (and broadcast TV) faces is there are only so many spots on the dial. There is already talk in the US about how switching to digital TV is going cost homeowners masses of money to replace perfectly good TV sets but it is moving ahead in under 3 years:

Manufacturers, broadcasters, cable and satellite companies and accessory developers are rushing to complete the transition to digital high definition before Feb. 17, 2009, the date the U.S. government has set for termination of all analog broadcasts. In January 2008, about a year before the HDTV transition takes place, the analog channels will be auctioned to the highest bidders. Proceeds from the sales are expected to top $10 billion, with $7.3 billion going to the U.S. Treasury. For those who haven’t bought an HDTV set by the 2009 deadline, the government plans to provide $1.5 billion in subsidies to owners of older sets for converter boxes that will transform the digital signals to analog.

All to avoid a crackle or a shadow on the screen and maybe squeeze more onto the broadcast band. But it is to be seen whether the public reception of digital TV will be the same as digital radio. If over the next three years the 20 year promise of convergence gets a little more traction, there may be a significant sector who won’t make the leap. Interesting to note that my favorite media source these days runs on something like 2 bucks a year per listener. Not that far off young Raghav Mahato’s business model.

What To Do, Ralph?

What to do when your surplus reaches 10 billion? If it is in Federal coffers everyone says it’s not government money – give it to me, pay the debt, do this, do that. But when it is in Alberta’s hands it is not ours. It doesn’t really seem to be Albertans given the lack of public use the windfall from we buyers of fuel. Given that the price will only keep going up and given there is anywhere from a 50 to 200 year supply needing digging up…what to do with it all? Harper appears intent on removing that wealth from the equalization formula, too, while others foot the bill. Maybe they could create the Arctic navy.

String Fever

The Rukster has reminded me of my early steps into bluegrass. I wrote a brief summary of my place in my pickin’ and grinnin’ edjification:

I am following a similar path in bluegrass discovery, Peter, and I can heartily recommend String Fever on NCPR Thursdays 4 to 6 your time. It’s a local show on my local NPR station with an excellent name which it has inspired me to declare 2006 the year of the mandolin, but only if I learn ten licks on the guitar. All very diddly-diddly. Perhaps you now need to pick yourself a bluegrass name like “Slim” or “Del” if only to keep it private in your own thoughts.

I daydream now of mandolins and imagine myself like these folk in a future I am not certain can be attained. The other day I learned of the existence of the mandocellos and other points on the mandolin sliding scale. I have bought books of tablature with titles like Hot Licks for Bluegrass Guitar. I have a plan. I will go to Old Forge on the way home from Easter in Portland. I will pick up a mandolin and play a lick and say “that is one sweet mandolin” and I will buy it. How better to welcome my 43rd year later that week.

This all, however, may go off the rails as I learned last evening that I am going to see Queen in Toronto in three weeks with the brothers to renew our periodic rocking out as with Elvis Costello in July 2003 and the Pixies in November 2004.