Heat Wave!

Must be that hell-fire sermon the Pentecostals preached yesterday--I can feel the flames licking at my feet. The temperature for tomorrow is expected to hit 100º F! Hope the air conditioning and Ontario Hydro can keep up with it.

More comments on The Iliad. Even accounting for artistic licence, the descriptions of the noble soldier's battle armour sounds more like something we'd today expect to see displayed in an art gallery than on a field of battle. Shields, breast-plates, and greaves encrusted with precious stones, gold, and silver! No wonder attacking warriors stripped their opponents on the field of battle. Makes me wonder, wouldn't soft metals such as gold and silver weaken body armour?

Birthdays: the price of surviving another year.

How did I spend mine? Slept in until nearly 7:00 AM--well, that's sleeping in for me. Went into work to help my boss who's been off for six weeks after surgery get his office back in shape, then went to Oakville Place to pick up a few necessities. Saturday's are usual a day I spend catching up on my reading and web browsing and this day was no different. I did manage to catch up on my Tabloid reading and listen to podcasts and a book streamed online at CBC--Tom King's The Red Power Murders read by Graham Greene. It's good that CBC is finally streaming these books as 10:40 PM is not usually a time I manage to stay awake for long. Ended my day in front of the TV.

I've reached the halfway point in The Iliad. The Gods continue their meddlesome ways in this Trojan War. It's finally struck me that every time these Greeks pour themselves a libation of wine they tip a portion of their fast cup out onto the ground in honour of the Gods. Is it any coincidence that early Christians, when they met for their communal meals, used specially consecrated wine to honour the Christ? I do find it ironic that whereas the Greeks honoured their Gods by tipping wine unto the ground; the Catholic Church has long considered it an unforgivable sin to spill the consecrated "blood" of Christ. Of course this tradition of symbolically eating and drinking the body and blood also earned them the accusation of practising cannibalism on the part of non-believers.

On Birthdays & Other Rants

What to say about Birthdays and becoming another year older? I believe I'll spare my patient readers a lot of mushy moralizing and navel-gazing. Below you'll read a rant I sent to the publishers of Webshots. Here's feedback I'm sending the publishers of Maclean's Magazine:

As honourable an endeavour as it is to celebrate the lives of ordinary Canadians as you have been doing with your series of obituaries in the end-pages of Maclean's; I believe it would be even better to recognize the achievements of Canadians whose efforts don't usually make headlines while they are yet living. In particular, featuring articles on young Canadians would present positive role-models and serve to gain you new readers of that generation. I'm not sure how you find the stories for your obituary columns, but I'm sure you could use similar methods to find living subjects.

By the way, I'm enjoying the opportunity to read my subscription copy of Maclean's in Zinio Reader; I just wish there was some way I could configure it to bypass pages that contain nothing but advertising. For sure I've solved the problem of scented pages.


Don't know if my comments to either publication will have any effect, but for sure nothing will happen if no one makes any noise.

A Dirge for the WWW that was

I became a member of Webshots when I first went online in the fall of 2000. It would seem that I did so in the hey day of the Internet and things have slid steadily down hill since. I suppose I couldn't expect everything to remain free as it was back then but oh how the mighty have fallen.

So many little things have fallen by the wayside, such as the fact the Webshots didn't welcome me this morning with a happy birthday message on the home page. When I first joined I was able to customize the page to set how the page displayed on my screen, the features I wanted and in particular the features I didn't want to see. I was able to make Webshots a comprehensive homepage that had everything I needed. It showed me my local weather, world news--not just techie fluff, this day in history--with shortcuts to background information on that news, and advice on the best free software available anywhere.

The pictures available were superb and there wasn't a webshots watermark placed on all of them; even the ones I uploaded to the programme. Plus the best ones weren't reserved for an elite few that paid for premium subscriptions. And there weren't any of those infuriating ads.

Now I have no objection to paying for a service if there is something worthy of my hard-earned cash being provided; but given the present short-comings I'm at the point that I'm seriously considering terminating my daily visit to the page altogether. I can find virtually everything that's available here elsewhere on the web. Of course I also possess a great deal more computer savvy and don't need the likes of Webshots software to display wallpaper on my desktop.

One final comment. I began my baptism into the world of computers with a pivoting screen and as I have grown more sophisticated in my use of computers I find that I do almost everything in Portrait mode, save for a few cranky programmes that refuse to perform properly except in Landscape. One thing that would make me more interested in using Webshots would be the provision of more portrait shots. Obviously, under the circumstances, paying extra for ultra widescreen shots is a non-starter. I realize I may be in the elite few who have discovered the joys of using a computer in portrait mode and that catering to my special concerns may not be in the cards--but having become hooked on viewing the world wide web in this mode I'm spoiled and there's no going back. When my original IBM screen started failing I invested $600 in a ViewSonic Screen--that's a lot of money, but it's still 10% of what my original screen listed for.

One last thing, at least I should tell you that unlike so many websites the code you use does manage to display properly on my screen.

Dog Days of Summer

(Canis Major in the Morning Sky)

Did you know that the dog days of summer have nothing to do with dogs and everything to do with the stars in the heavens.

"The brightest of the stars in Canis Major (the big dog) is Sirius, which also happens to be the brightest star in the night sky. In fact, it is so bright that the ancient Romans thought that the earth received heat from it. Look for it in the southern sky (viewed from northern latitudes) during January.
In the summer, however, Sirius, the “dog star,” rises and sets with the sun. During late July Sirius is in conjunction with the sun, and the ancients believed that its heat added to the heat of the sun, creating a stretch of hot and sultry weather. They named this period of time, from 20 days before the conjunction to 20 days after, “dog days” after the dog star.
The conjunction of Sirius with the sun varies somewhat with latitude. And the “precession of the equinoxes” (a gradual drifting of the constellations over time) means that the constellations today are not in exactly the same place in the sky as they were in ancient Rome. Today, dog days occur during the period between July 3 and August 11. Although it is certainly the warmest period of the summer, the heat is not due to the added radiation from a far-away star, regardless of its brightness. No, the heat of summer is a direct result of the earth's tilt."
Jerry Wilson

The Gift of Giving

"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give."
- Winston Churchill

I had a chance to put this in practise today. One of my fellow workers is leaving to move to another office and I was pondering a going-away gift. Last night I heard about The Weekend Book, a compendium of useful tips, poetry, wisdom, recipes, and games to make for a perfect weekend written by Francis Meynell in the 1920ies.



It's just been reprinted and the description made it sound perfect for a friend who enjoys old things and attending flea markets. Went online and discovered the local Chapters had 24 copies so I went there this morning just after they opened and bought one even though the price is $5 above that online. I was gladdened to be able to make the gift and even more gratified to have my intuition confirmed when my friend expressed absolute delight with it.

The system is broke but it's the only system we've got?

Just went through the process of installing Microsoft's brand new .Net Framework 3. The process took half an hour including download, installation and reboot, then just before the process was to complete came the admonition to visit microsoft.com for updates and additional features. Remember, this new programme was released just days ago, if they thought it needed retooling why did they release it. You've got to love a company that is so sure their product is going to break down they build the update process directly into the installation process.

Work--the curse of the Drinking Class

I guess you could say I'm in a cranky mood today having been awakened at 2:30 AM by the roaring of supercharged car engines outside my window. Yes I was young once and yes I own a car; but I bought my first one for cash when I was 30--a Datsun B-210. It was followed by a Datsun 310 which drove 500,000 miles before I gave up on it. I paid cash for my present car as well--a Saturn ION 2. I learned to drive at age 25 having used a bicycle summer and winter to get to work for years. I've never been grabbed by the automobile ethos; for me they're a means of getting from point A to point B when walking isn't practical. I've never been tempted to see how fast I can get from a standstill to 60 mph or to determine just how fast my vehicle can go. In the first place I figure that kind of driving is too hard on the car and bad for gas mileage. Somehow I just don't equate engine power with my ego and my libido feels no need to have a crotch-rocket between my legs. But then I don't get pumped because my team won the latest tournament either--I don't follow sports.

Mother nature seems determined to continue her way with heat, humidity and thunderstorms; at the moment Southern Ontario is under a severe Thunderstorm Watch with a threat of damaging hale. At least we aren't being promised 5 inches of rain overnight as is expected in Nova Scotia. Unfortunately rain and hail isn't the only form of precipitation we've had at the Post Office of late. Summer is normally a time when mail volumes fall off and advertisers take a break from sending flyers; but not this year. In the past week I've processed 100,000 pieces of special third class,(Bulk Mail) per day--most people would call it junk mail.

When I left Nova Scotia in 1967--is that really nearly 40 years ago?--gasoline sold for 53 cents/gallon; on Weber Street in Waterloo, Ontario a gas station that had a Volkswagen with two front ends almost gave gas away for 39.9¢ a gallon. Today on Trafalgar Rd it's selling for $1.10.9/Litre; I really don't want to know what the conversion is but curiosity overcame and I find it's nearly $5.00 a Canadian Gallon. Perhaps it's time I returned to using my bicycle. Before someone offers me some cheese to got with this whine I suppose I'd better log off for today.

My Personal History with Thunderstorms

As I write this the sky is prematurely black as the result of yet another passing Thunderstorm. As I've written before, this appears to be the summer of the Thunderstorm here in Southern Ontario and Meteorologists are expecting the trend to continue. I enjoy a good thunderbanger as much as the next person but I'm ready to say enuf! A large mature tree was struck and spit in sprawling pieces overnight just a couple days ago right here in Oakville and the same storm left hundreds of thousands without power across Ontario.

I have a personal historical attachment to this weather phenomenon that goes back 57 years to the week before my birth in rural Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia. Apparently that was a bad summer for thunderstorms as well and about a week before the big day a massive storm blew through. It struck the birch tree that anchored the gate leading to the pasture behind the barn and followed the wires up to the driving shed in corner of which was a large pile of birch bark destined to become winter tinder. Alas the ensuing fire was fought by my father who ran to the barn well to get water and in his headlong effort to save his property struck his foot and broke his big toe, which foot I wasn't around to have remembered; but the remains of that birch tree remained in place throughout my childhood years.

During the same storm lightening struck the battery operated radio antenna, which had prudently been disconnected; but a ball of lightening exploded inside the house feet from my mother who was seated in the same room. A week later I was born. I've always gotten a charge out of watching a good thunderstorm and have always assumed that affinity began in the womb. Just for the record the big day was Friday at noon, July 29, 1949.

Doctor Zhivago

Decided to rewatch Doctor Zhivago last night. It's been 40 years since I originally read Boris Pasternak's book upon which it is based. I will always remember the first time I watched the movie in 1969 at the Fairview Cinema in Kitchener, Ontario. Seeing it on a big screen was a magnificent sight but the true adventure began when we went to go home. We'ed failed to reck the length of this presentation and when the bus got to the southern terminus of the KW Streetcar Line the transit system shut down for the night stranding us some 15 miles from home. Home furthermore was another mile and a half from the northern end of the line. There was nothing for it but to call a cab; something that, on a student's means, I really couldn't afford. I at least had the money but the welfare family, who were my fellow passengers, didn't. So I took the four of them in the cab to their home and then walked to my own.

There is no doubting, beginning with the title, who the principal character of this story is; nor is there much doubting that it is the poet who engages us, not the doctor. He is presented to us matter of factly, warts and all. However it is his adopted father, Alexander Gromeko, who provides us with a running commentary on events and the ordinary citzen's reactions to them--I cannot say common man because Gromeko was obviously a man of some wealth and position before the Revolution swept it all away. It is also made quite obvious that he was a lover of books. He comes particularly into his own when the family migrates to Verikino. Pedro, the old family retainer, who sees to their support at the estate is particularly priceless and the young colt, that gambols before and behind the wagon which his mother pulls is an inspired touch; whether intended or a serendipitous happenstance.

This is movie making in the old style where the movie begins with an Overture, has an actual Intermission and ends with Exit music. In the days before Computer Generated Images the attention to detail here is difficult to comprehend. In the feature disc we learn that the movie was shot predominantly in Spain in 100º heat. That the flowers at Verikino were "planted"; the leaves pinned to the trees to match the seasons. The winter scenes were created by laying out acres of cotton baton across the fields and the ice, icicles, and coatings of snow were created with paraffin. It's a tribute to the cinematography that we never suspect any of this. Only a Russian would recognize that these are not the Urals we see from the cattle car that is called a train.

I'll not comment on the political struggle that serves as backdrop for this story; somehow Yuri makes it seem inconsequential. I do wish, though, that I could read the Lara Poems!

Guess the heat is starting to get to me.

Turned on CBC's World at Six tonight after my afternoon nap and after 10 minutes of the war in Lebanon decided I'd heard enough. Lucky me, I can actually turn it off. For the people without water, electricity, and food who fear to even go outside their homes that possibility doesn't exist.

The heat outside my balcony window, however, is a reality my air conditioning unit is barely managing to hold back, my apartment isn't cooling down, just not getting any warmer. The temperature is billed as being 86º F but on my partially enclosed balcony with the slowly setting sun laying straight in it's closer to 100. I see that in Kansas the ambient temperature actually is 100. I don't want to think about that. We're in for a week of heat, smog, and humidity. And that moron in the White House still believes that the American Economy can't afford to do something about Global Warming. At least he's finally beginning to admit there might actually be such a thing as Global Warming.

Guess the heat is starting to get to me.

On the radio they're arguing over whether the City of Toronto should be declaring a heat alert. Me, I'm just thankful for air conditioning. The temperature today will rise to 36º C or, as I prefer to think, having never completely converted to metric, 87º F. The feds may legislate the official use of metric measures, but as long as most of the containers I buy food in retain the old avoirdupois equivalent sizes I'll not be converting my kitchen to metric. I still think in miles per gallon, gas mileage; my weight in pounds--kilos might sound better these days mind you; and inches of mercury for barometric pressure. This week we're destined to enjoy temperatures in the low 90ies. I guess I can be thankful I now have a job that keeps me inside the office and that the office is air conditioned. My car is air conditioned as well, though that first jolt when I get into it after it's been sitting in the hot sun for eight hours is a jolt. Automobile air conditioning used to be a luxury I forewent in honour of saving the environment but thanks to global warming I've become more interested in my personal environment. So as the compressor in the central air conditioning unit roars away in the corner of my dining room I'll try to tolerate the racket and be thankful I'm not baking in my own juices.

Slave to the Clock

Elsewhere in this blog I've referred to Indian Time. Even First Nations people joke about their lack of concern for timeliness. I, on the other hand, evince an almost Pavlovian sense of time. I set my alarm for insurance but 19 times out of 20 I'm awake before it goes off. Comes with almost 35 years of having to be on time for work, though in latter days the punch clock is not longer in use and we're more relaxed about timing. Most days I can tell you, without consulting the gold watch on my wrist--a gift for 25 years service from Mother Corp--within 15 minutes exactly what time it is. After all those years of getting up at an appointed time one's biological clock is set expect attention at certain intervals. Even when getting up isn't required by the constraints of the work day one's biological functions demand attention.

Progress?

All great truths begin as blasphemies, move on to become canon law and end their being as superstitions. Attributed to George Bernard Shaw. Today I had the last amalgam--silver+mercury--filling removed from my mouth. Had anyone told the back-country dentist who used a foot-peddled dental drill to prepare for my first dental fillings that someday a dentist would use an intense light to set a bonded acrylic filling he'd have said they were crazy. But then, back at the mid-point of the last century people still played with globules of mercury by rolling them around in their hands. That same dentist would probably have found it incredible to think that fifty years later we would be on the verge of eliminating dental decay altogether.

At this point I've finally regained sensation in that area of my mouth in which the dentist worked today and lost my fat lip. I believe I'll take this insult to my system as a valid excuse to go curl up in bed with a good book and vegetate until time to retire. That's my story for today and I'm sticking to it!

In a Snarky Mood

The bed threw me out on the wrong side this morning--trouble was there wasn't a right side this morning. Yesterday my afternoon nap was interrupted twice by thunderstorms and my night's sleep was disturbed by yet another one. Maybe it was the full moon, who knows but I felt out of sorts today.

Began reading Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden last night when Billy Bean just didn't cut it. More on Boyden later. I've reached the 1/3 point in the Iliad. Didn't know the degree to which the Gods on Olympus involved themselves in the Trojan War as told by Homer. It would seem, from this story, that they not only were involved in instigating this war, but also intervened and actually participated during its course. Interesting that this Pantheon of Gods that were once posited to have such an involvement in the affairs of man are no longer believed to exist by anyone now living.

Got my grocery shopping done today. I used to be able to get it in for $80 a week but I seem to have upped the ante to $100 of late. After living for over 55 years without an electric grill I've now decided that I don't know how I ever cooked without one. In part that's because I lost my grill pan when I converted to a flat-top stove and could no longer use my old cast iron pans designed to fit over a burner. Having bought commercially made kabobs I finally decided to put my own together today and as I write they're sitting marinating in my fridge while I write this and listen to podcasts on iTunes.

Boiled up potatoes yesterday so today I'll be making potato salad. Fear I don't have a theme today so I'll wrap it up and read my mail now.

Jurassic Disaster

Do you remember the hype that preceded the launch of these movies. The line-ups outside the theatres and the excitement the first one generated. The T-Rex doesn't look quite so terrifying on a small screen and it's bellows of rage are not as impressive on my home speakers. What I'm left with is sense of the hubris involved in the concept that man can control nature and that science is able to repair any damage man may do. I am reminded that although scientists were able to clone "Dolly" the sheep they could do nothing about the fact that her DNA was preset to auto-destruct after so many years and she inherited that aging DNA from her donor host. We can no more control nature than we can the thunder cell that just roared through my neighbourhood. Part of me is just as satisfied that this is so.

The Investigator

The following shortcut leads to a web page that enables one to stream a radio play called The Investigator written in 1954 by one Reuben Ship a Canadian who was a victim of McCarthy while in Hollywood. The play is an hour long and one of its cast is James Doohan--Mr. Scot of Star Trek fame. A retrospective was broadcast on the CBC this morning. If you intend to listen to the play skip the spoiler that follows:

http://www.albany.edu/jmmh/vol3/investigator/investigator.html

In the play McCarthy is killed in a plane crash and goes to heaven where he stages a revolt against St. Peter and takes over immigration to Heaven placing on trial a long list of present residents including Socrates, Jefferson, Marx, John Milton, William Lyon MacKenzie, Voltaire, Luther, Spinoza, Thomas Caine, Chopin. With all these persons sent below the Devil complains that they are organizing unions and disrupting Hell. McCarthy's investigations continue until he ultimately decides to put God on trial. With order restored in Heaven McCarthy is sent below where the Devil refuses him entry to Hell and insists he be sent back.

Mirvish's Lord of the Rings

Back in March, before I began this blog I went to see a preview of the Mirvish's Musical version of Lord of the Rings. I was on vacation and went into Toronto for the first time in years to brave busloads of high school students for a weekday matineé performance. All attempts to adapt J. R. R. Tolkien's 1500 page masterpiece suffer from the same problems--a story with over 150 characters; 9 orders of creatures who each have their own languages, customs, history, and living arrangements; an invented world that sprawls over hundreds of square miles under and above the earth and even in the trees; that takes place over the course of several years with flash backs to events thousands of years before. Every attempt at adaptation has had to face the same dilemma: only those who already know the storyline can hope to follow a plot this complicated; but Tolkien aficionados will always be disappointed by the number of their favourite scenes and plot-lines that are inevitably cut in order to make the result a workable length. Over the years I've seen several attempts; on stage, animated and live action movies; at adapting both the Ring Trilogy and it's prequel, The Hobbit. Of course anyone interested in attending the Mirvish Production will probably have seen Peter Jackson's 12 hour, $700,000,000 magnum opus. Modern computer techniques have made possible what previous versions couldn't possibly accomplish but even this version was forced to be selective about the plot lines it covered.

The first thing that strikes anyone who goes to the Princess of Wales theatre is the thirty-foot gold ring plunked in the centre of the security curtain onstage. Backed by scrim and surrounded by intertwining twigs which extend on all sides right to the first seats in the side balconies and the dome in the ceiling this ring dominated the theatre. Given the production's three and one-half hour running time with 2 intermissions the second impression is made upon the seat of one's pants. Thanks to battery packs, radio mikes, and a state of the art sound system no number of unruly students prevents one from hearing what happens onstage. As usual there is a live orchestra but only the conductor is visible to the audience. The action onstage begins immediately as the first audience members are admitted to the theatre with Hobbits wandering up the aisles and performing business onstage culminating in the chasing of laser fireflies with various sized nets; and continues unbroken as the house lights dim and the lights come up onstage.

This was, after all, a musical and musical numbers and choreographed business predominate. Enough 'smoke' is used during the course of 3 and a half hours that they must be buying the oil by the 45 gallon drum. When the balrog appears, just before the first intermission, smoke and fire in the form of black crepe are blown out over the audience in a 60 mph gale of hot air that could only have been created by firemen's smoke evacuators or a small jet engine. The bits of crepe reached our seats in the 'gods'. The revolving stage is sectioned into elements that can be raised up to 20 feet above stage level or dropped below it. The lighting effects boggle the mind. For $17,000,000, we get impressive set-piece highlights of the story but no sense of the whole.

At the time I wrote that as a musical this production was lacking in any memorable melodies, as a play the action was interrupted by too many extended periods of song and dance to be cohesive, and as a representation of Lord of the Rings the storyline didn't hold together. I was gratified to see that professional critics from Toronto to New York to London agreed with me. When less than a month later I was offered the opportunity to buy half-price tickets for myself and all my family and friends to come back to see it again it became obvious this production was in trouble. This past week it was announced that it is closing prematurely at the end of August for major retooling before a planned opening in London. As a production that had to run a minimum of 9 months just to break even, this gamble has definitely not paid off.

I will confess that as a genre musicals are not my thing. I love opera, but as musicals go I find that too often the action of the play is broken up by song and dance and as music too often the numbers are performed by actors whose musical ability is lacking or the play is performed by singers who can't act. That said I went to Lord of the Rings with hopes of seeing a reasonable adaptation of a story I love. That I and so many others were disappointed saddens me. The Mirvishes and their financial backers took a bath on this one and one can only hope their next production garners more success. Not even they can have pockets deep enough to weather too many flops such as this one.

Carnage in the Iliad

If it's graphic violence you want the Iliad has it covered in spades. The battle descriptions are about as visceral as it can get:

"Antilochus thrust first, speared the horsehair helmet
right at the ridge, and the bronze spearpoint lodged
in the man's forehead, smashing through his skull
and the dark came whirling down across his eyes--"

"the spearhead punched his back between the shoulders,
gouging his flesh and jutting out through his ribs--"

"flailed with a sword, slashed the Trojan's shoulder
and lopped away the massive bulk of Hypesonor's arm..."

"One he stabbed with a bronze lance above the nipple,
the other his heavy sword hacked at the collarbone,
right on the shoulder, cleaving the whole shoulder
clear of neck and back. "

It would seem Steven Spielberg didn't invent realism in the portrayal of war. What was different in Homer's day was that the combatants fought face to face, hand to hand.

Back to the Stone Age

My dissertation today will be about the dangers inherent in the hold technology has over our lives. Just ask the people of Louisiana about that one in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The more dependent we become upon technology over which we have no control and no ability to repair if it breaks down the more vulnerable we become. For two weeks we enjoyed almost daily thunderstorms and at some point a charge entered the electrical system of our building. It blew several fluorescent tubes, fried the PA System, and knocked out the office's connection to the trunk internet line. Several other systems were also affected.

The problem when you work for a nationwide bureaucracy is that you have no control over the repair process. All you can do is attempt to figure out who has to be called to report the problem and at that point you're at the mercy of the technical department's priorities and contracts. The fact that no one can get paid, no reports filed, no E-mail read, no customer complaints dealt with, no data up-linked or down-linked, no document printed is no concern of theirs. All you can do is wait and attempt to do what you can without the aid of 21st Century technology. I do find it ironic that an agency whose basic thrust is the delivery of mail door to door on foot is so tied to so many high tech devices that it can be paralyzed when they break down.

What Happened to Family Values?

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time you'd be right if you've gotten the impression that I don't have much time for current TV programming. I realize that I'm at present watching a programme that aired in the seventies and was set in the forties. Yes life was simpler back then, at least in hindsight, and the setting is backwoods rural. But at least those who watched this programme were given some idea of how a family with healthy relationships functioned.

I realize that having multi-generations of a family living under the same roof may no longer be practical in our modern lifestyle but if you look through the current TV schedule and remember that the average child spends more time in front of the TV than with its parents what kind of familial standard is being held up as the ideal given the programming available. Does our ideal family have a divorced, wise-cracking Mother, an older son who deals drugs and packs a gun, a daughter that hops in and out of her boyfriends' beds if they make it that far, live on social assistance, abuse drugs prescription or otherwise, use foul language, and display a total lack of respect for one another?

Does this profile reflect our concept of the ideal family? Is it necessary that TV play to the lowest common denominator? Don't get me wrong; I find Bible-thumping goodie-two shoes born-again programming as nauseating as anyone but I do long for programming that represents the 50% of the population that manage to stay married past 20 years, keep their kids off drugs, and stay on the right side of the law. Surely someone can come up with story-lines that make a family that actually functions look exciting. Surely programming can be interesting without a body count, kids on drugs, sexual impropriety, foul language, and bad manners.

How I spent my Long Weekend

A pipe organ with 30,000 pipes located in the grand court of a department store makes an interesting backdrop to reading a book about baseball. But then I suppose some ballparks actually have theatre organs so it's not as crazy as it sounds. I bought Billy Bean's Going the Other Way because of the gay angle but I'm surprised at myself that I'm more interested, in the first chapters at least, at how a small scrawny overactive kid threw himself into team sports despite the discouragement and derision of those around him. Having waited over a decade to top a yard stick and weighing all of 130 lbs when I joined the Post Office 34 years ago I can identify with the scrawny part, if not the athletic ability. I can also identify with being a lonely outsider who excelled in school and enjoyed reading and writing. The insight into the use of sports as a ticket to get out and the camaraderie of team participation even interest me though I can't in any way identify with either. I've even gotten interested in baseball though I won't be sitting down to watch a game on TV any time soon.

Denied a place to park by the cleaning of my underground garage I went out for early supper at a local pub called the Niblick on Friday. They served me Moosehead Lager--I prefer the ale mind you--and a mixture of chicken, cheese sauce and asparagus in a bed of Yorkshire Pudding. I spent Saturday reading, surfing the web, and watching TV. Guess I missed the episode in which John-Boy Walton acquired Blue, the white mule the first time round. Sunday I helped a friend, actually he's my immediate supervisor but I've always marched to my own drummer, move. Luckily there wasn't any particularly heavy furniture as the day hit over 30º C and the new house had some ugly stairs. Getting a king-sized mattress into the second storey would have been an impossibility. Today I should run the dishwasher, the vacuum, and think about baking muffins--though in this heat I may demure.

In the Iliad I've moved on to book 3, the duel between Meneleus and Paris. Yes, I ploughed through the muster of the troops in book 2. Before the invention of gunpowder invading armies laid siege to walled cities and fortresses. Troy's walls were apparently 60 to 70 feet thick therefore unless its defenders were inept enough to leave those walls the only means of defeating them was to encircle the walls and starve them out; hence the 10 year siege we read of. A city that had sufficient stores and an internal source of water could hold out for years particularly if it had access to water that enabled ships to run the blockade. Being under blockade may not have been comfortable but it was the countryside that suffered. If, as legend has it, 100,000 men arrived aboard 1000 ships and stayed for 10 years their campfires would have consumed every source of wood for hundreds of miles around along with every animal and other source of food. You may remember that Mount Calm lost the Battle of Quebec to James Wolf because he was imprudent enough to march his troops outside the walls of the Quebec Citadel. Whether he wished to spare his citizens a protracted siege, his city the damage from the cannon Wolf dragged up the cliff face, or pride demanded he meet his enemy on the Plains of Abraham neither combatant lived to explain his tactics. In the case of Troy, it was the Trojan Horse, which today lives on as a name for internet malware, that led to their eventual defeat.

Have Respect for Thunderstorms

Southern Ontario has experienced more than its share of thunderstorms in the last couple weeks. In fact, in the last two weeks they've been almost a daily occurrence. A single bolt of lightening can carry 10 million times the current that flows through the wires to power your home and enough energy to supply a small city for a month. Although thunder cells most commonly develop in the late afternoon, when conditions are right thunderstorms can occur any time of day any day of the year. A thunder snow storm is an unique sight but I've witnessed two.

With the ever increasing background noise we are accustomed to in our bustling cities thunderstorms often lack the impact they had in the rural Nova Scotia where I grew up in the 50ies and 60ies. There among the steep hillsides thunder rolled on and on as it echoed and re-echoed and homes built on hills were frequently struck by lightening along with lone trees, wash lines, telephone and power wires, and wire fences. TV aerials were common targets along with chimneys and stove pipes. Stories abound of kitchen stoves that popped open as a bolt of lightening headed for the nearest door or window.

With most of our telephone wires buried we don't observe my Mother's dictum that you don't go near the phone during a thunderstorm. Nor do we scurry round and unplug every major appliance at the first sign of thunder--reprogramming all those timers is too complicated. When power lines were struck lightening could course through a home and knock every fuse out of the panel and every light-bulb from its socket. Lightening struck my cousin's fence and for half a mile the wires hung loose as every staple had been driven from the fence posts to which they were attached. My Aunt Ruth discovered that her wash line had been struck when she was hanging her wash. The surging current had burnt out the wire inside but the plastic covering held until the weight of the wet clothes caused it to give way. While my father huddled under a road culvert a maple which stood on a nearby hill was struck and the trunk split four ways as if Paul Bunyon had attacked it with his axe and giant roots were knocked out of the ground for forty feet around its base.

City dwellers are more likely to scurry for cover from the rain but by the time the downpour arrives one has already been in mortal danger for some time. We've all heard about the herd of cows found huddled under a tree dead, but people are still dumb enough to shelter under a tree during a storm. I've been out riding a bike under a clear sky when I felt the hair on my head start to separate and stand on end. While delivering mail for the last 30 years I've frequently felt the hairs on my arms tingle and known it was time to seek shelter. Interesting the people you meet in such circumstances. A couple in Toronto the evening of July 1st are lucky to be alive after both were struck while waiting for fireworks to start in a local park. Lightening was attracted to their metal lawn chairs as they ran for cover. Mother Nature seems to have a way of letting us know that she's still in charge.

No Bull about Billy Bean

I won't insult baseball lovers by expanding upon my lack of interest in the boys of summer. My interest here is in the life of a muscular, athletic, macho sports figure who managed to survive in the big leagues without being outed. I've previously read Bob Paris' Straight from the Heart, which wasn't ghost written; and will probably read fellow Canadian Mark Tewksbury's Inside Out about the life of a gay Olympian. Ironic, given the historic Greek attitude toward sex that an Olympic athlete would feel forced to stay in the closet.

I find it sad that so many still believe that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice rather than an expression of the essence of an individual over which that individual has no control. It's also sad that so many are so insecure that they feel threatened by the idea of non-heterosexual relationships. Fundamentalists seem to forget that the reason the Bible proscribes any male sexual stimulation that would not lead to procreation was that it would not result in breeding of little Isrealites who would grow up to defend the Jewish cause. In a world that is rapidly becoming over-populated to the point that it no longer looks down on childless couples, it is hard to understand why other unions that will not lead to procreation are still looked down on by so many. The fact that there are gay sexual predators seems to grab headlines but those headlines seem to neglect the fact that there is even more sexual perversion in the straight world.

I feel sad for people who are so insecure that they feel compelled to define their self-worth in terms of the people to whom they feel superior. In the US South there are still vast pockets of people who mourn the economic engine that slavery provided and target people of colour with resentment for their continued reduced economic conditions. Another sector of the world population continues to scapegoat the Jews as the cause for their economic woes and either deny the Holocaust or claim that Hitler had the right idea. Wouldn't it be more productive if the people who expend so much energy resisting the idea of gay and lesbian unions concentrated their efforts on doing something about the fact that nearly 50% of marriages end in divorce?

The Iliad

I've finished the lengthy scholarly introduction to The Iliad and after that wade the actual poem is a pleasure to read. At the present time, however I happen to be negotiating the roster of the Greek Troops in Canto Two. Most of the place names no longer exist on a modern map of the Aegean and the names of both people and places are largely unpronounceable making this section about as exciting as the begats in Numbers in the Biblical Old Testament. I'm not moved to add up all the boats to see if they actually total a thousand ships but I would ask; if all those men sat around outside the walls of Troy for over ten years, who was minding the store back home?

Superman?

I've been watching Lois and Clark, Season Three. It's just coincidence that the new Superman Returns has just hit the theatres, as far as I'm concerned. Mind you the fact that this set of DVD's was released just before this big opening probably isn't coincidence. I don't seem to remember seeing most of these episodes the first time round and furthermore given my reaction to the weak plot lines and long-running will they, won't they scenario I'm not surprised.

Back with avengence

A Joke.

So you're the Congressional Chaplain, do you pray for the Republicans or the Democrats?

Neither, I pray for the people who elected them.

I've been neglecting my blog in the aftermath of my summer cold. The ending of the school term is also a busy time in the mail business as advertisers take this last opportunity to catch people's attention before they go off on summer holidays.