Deer Watching

Deer have been hanging out around here all winter. For the last couple of days, they show up at dusk or in the very early morning. Sometimes they lie down under the pines. You can watch them chewing their cud.

Yesterday we had the twins and mother. I swear the mother is pregnant, which makes me wonder why she still tolerates the twins--I thought deer parents cast off the yearlings before acquiring another load. However, these twins are still small, and we suspect they were late arrivals. And anyway, what do I know of deer.

More often than not these days, they're right up by the side of the house. The spot where they tend to be has a patch of rhubarb and some tiger lilies. Or perhaps I should say "had" some rhubarb and tiger lilies. They also like the cedar shrubs in front.

And that's about it. Just watchin' the deer, waitin' for spring.

Signs of Spring

As you recall, school children up here call their week off March break, not spring break. It's now been about two weeks since the end of March break, and I now see...dare I say it...a sign of spring.

Today I'm getting a pedicure, thereby demonstrating my faith that someday, my feet will be freed from snow boots and thick warm socks. Someone else will see my feet! I will even wear sandals again!! My feet and toes need to be cleaned of the detritus of winter. They need massage to dispel the lingering remnants of cold-weather chill.

Actually, I know that Sandal Day is coming--I'm visiting my sister in Tucson in a couple of weeks. This is actually a pre-emptive pedicure. I don't want the pedicure gal we're seeing in Tucson to recoil in horror at my heels and sole calluses, as she did last year.

And so, since I know I will be showing my feet in a couple of weeks and therefore have scheduled my pedicure on purpose, does the fact of a pedicure today really demonstrate the approach of spring?

I look out my office window at acres and acres of snow on top of frozen lake. This morning, the thermometer read 0 degrees F (or as we call it in this household, zero American). The driveway was plowed this week and the plow turned up grass that's straw-colored, dead. It also added bulk to snow that sits between two and three feet deep next to the driveway. Okay, so maybe signs of spring aren't really happening anywhere except in my head. Maybe I am creating this one, this pedicure, because I need it in my (still iPod-free) wintry state.

Or maybe, just maybe, my desire to create something that I call a sign of spring is itself a sign of faith, of belief that spring will indeed come. Perhaps I'm a believer, all right--simply an impatient one.

A believer with feet that feel fabulous.

Ooo, Shiny!

More snow this morning--an inch or two of the heavy kind that drags down the branches on all the evergreens and looks quite picturesque. But it has jump-started a dormant yearnin', burnin' in me. That's right, folks--I want something clean and new and shiny.

My car actually does okay because it sits outside. I do a lot of scraping (and swearing when I forget to allow time to scrape and am late getting into town), but each storm that dumps precipitation leaves the material for a "carwash." When the snow finally melts, presto! clean car. Roy's car, however, gets filthier and filthier from driving and then is parked in the garage, where it is protected from the elements but never gets cleaned.

But between storms, my car gets pretty gross with salt and dirt. So yeah, the urge for shiny started one afternoon when I was sick of trying to avoid even brushing up against the car, because that always leaves a stain on whatever I'm wearing, which means work. I had this momentary desire for a new car, but $anity returned.

Then I saw ads for iPods on sale and thought "Oooo, I want an iPod." They're such great colors, and I don't have all the music around I'm used to having, and replacing it all on CD seems like an expen$ive proposition, but if I got an iPod, I could download just the songs I want...you get the picture. (I'm excellent at rationalization; it's what's allowed me to live this long.)

What actually stopped the iPod purchase was the color choice. I got all hung up trying to decide between a fuschia one and a blue one (orange is OUT but yellow is still on the table, and an aqua one...well, who'd be able to resist that). And then I realized I don't really want one iPod; I want all the colors as displayed because they're cuter all together than separately. So I resisted the urge and turned on the TV.

On the TV, they were advertising this great sale on Blackberrys, and I thought "Oooo, I want a Blackberry."

And then, in a "wow I coulda had a V8" whack to the forehead, sanity prevailed. The last thing in the world I need is a Blackberry. With my father gone, the only person who ever needs to find me is my husband, and he enjoys the short walk downstairs. We have cell phones only because occasionally I drive to town without him and "everyone" needs one to call 911 if there's a problem. It's a miracle when I remember to turn the damn thing on.

Furthermore, I don't want a Blackberry. I don't want to be available 24/7 (though I basically am, even without my cell phone, because regular phones are in most places I am). I have never wanted a Blackberry and have only grudgingly accepted a cell phone. When I found myself wanting a Blackberry, I knew I was possessed by something--my own version of March Madness, Spring Fever, whatever you want to call it.

But I have to admit, I haven't completely ruled out an iPod. I was forcing myself to wait till the first day of Spring to see if I still wanted one. And now, with the new snowfall, it's not so much that I still want one as that I want one again.

Time to check the ads for Future Shop and Staples...

I Fragrance

...you fragrance; he, she, it fragrances. (Those are wind chimes, to the left. They have no relation to fragrance but it was a pretty blue sky.)

For some time, a commercial for Glade air fresheners has been bugging me. (Not again with the air fresheners! you cry. Yes, indeed, and sorry about that.) It advertises these plug-in whatevers as "a whole new idea in fragrancing." I'm bothered because I consider myself a fairly hip, happ'nin' kind of person, but I have no ideas at all about "fragrancing." "Fragrances," perhaps. "Adding fragrance to your house," possibly. But not "fragrancing." And now I discover there are old ideas about fragrancing, which puts me even farther behind.

Tell me, what's wrong with saying, "A whole new idea in fragrance," aside from the fact that fragrance really isn't an idea, but let's focus on my issue, OK?

I am writing about "fragrancing" today because of another commercial I heard last night. Safeway in Canada is running some kind of "collect cards and win" (yeah, right) contest. As the pleasant woman's voice reads the fine print (slowly, which is a nice change), she mentions that "millions in prizing are available to be won."

Now, I do understand that this is legal-hedge-speak for "we won't give out many prizes but you keep on buying our stuff, okay?" But what's with the "prizing" bit? "To prize" is actually a verb; as in, "I prize my collection of interesting coffee mugs." But "prize" is more often used as a noun, as in "The prize for playing our game is an interesting coffee mug!"

But anyway, these things--fragrances and prizes--are already nouns, why put -ings on them (pretending "fragrance" had spent time as a verb), and then use them as nouns again? I mean, "This freshener really fragrances the room" sounds ridiculous, but it is at least using the verb as a verb. So what's with the process of double-nouning? I don't get it.

Hey, wait a sec--I have an idea about "fragrancing" after all!! It's "Let's stop using the term 'fragrancing' altogether! And the same goes for 'prizing'!"

I think my fragrancing idea is newer than Glade's.

The Smugness of Hindsight

Five years ago yesterday, the U.S. invaded Iraq. It's an important event to remember. We can all learn lessons from it, that's for sure. We need to talk about it.

But come on--enough with the minute examination of the invasion, already. Could we now focus on what the U.S. doing there now and how to get out ASAP? You know, kind of like what Canadians should be discussing about Afghanistan, instead of blindly allowing their MPs to vote to stay until 2011?

As an American, I may be hypersensitive to the finger-pointing up here, all aimed at "Americans." We apparently all lay down and allowed ourselves to be steamrolled into a war. However, as an American who was against the Iraq war from since before Bush got the gleam in his eye (and before that, I was opposed to bombing Afghanistan after 9/11), and who at the time lived in a community that was hostile to my views on human rights, let alone war, I'm impatient with all the focus on the past. "Yeah, yeah, I was there in 2001 and 2002, forget about 2003," I feel like saying. "Now what do we do?"

Iraq coverage up here feels like that dreaded teenager's discussion you have with the parents after you've done something colossally stupid, have tried to make amends, are continuing to work on ongoing solutions and preventing it from happening again, and are trying to survive the fallout in your own life. But those 'rents just can't stop going over and over the fact that you had the party and kids you didn't know showed up and they broke into the liquor cabinet and puked everywhere and there are damages. Yeah, I know.

Here's a brief taste of what I'm talking about.

First, the CBC's discussion of border issues (a special two-part series on its nightly news that allowed the host to travel to green and balmy BC at a particularly snowy time of the year back in Ontario, hmm) focused on "changes since 9/11." To be fair, they also asked if Canada depends too much on the U.S. border patrol instead of beefing up the Canadian border services. The Candian answer to that question, which of course I read between the lines from my paranoid state, was "they're the ones paranoid about national security; let them hire 4000 people and patrol the damn thing." There were interviews with people who actually have to carry ID now. Wow.

Second, The Fifth Estate (CBC's investigative journalism program, think "60 Minutes" except devoted to one topic all hour) last night re-ran its year-four look at the war. Its breathless title: "The Lies that Led to War." They updated it a bit for the fifth anniversary, but it's mostly a rehash of what we all already know about the Iraq war--begun under false pretenses and mismanaged ever since, consequences ignored and spun falsely to this day. Et cetera.

It's old news, people. The terrorist attacks seven years ago changed how the U.S. views its security. As an example, U.S. paranoia allowed its commander-in-chief to start a war without checking facts, much less debating moral issues surrounding war, much less debating the relative likelihood of success against entrenched opposition in the Middle East. Stop the presses.

How about this: how about a show on CBC that focuses on both Afghanistan and Iraq, on the advisablity of meddling in what amounts to tribal warfare--about setting goals for getting out of that briar patch?

Now that's a Fifth Estate program I would watch. I'd even park my paranoia at the door.

The Power of a Name, Part Deux

This morning, Canada AM had a substitute weather guy on: Anwar. Sometimes they have a third-string substitute news guy named Omar (they use him if Marci and Jennifer are busy). One of my favo(u)rite CBC radio shows is Q, which is hosted every afternoon by Jian Gomeshi.

I mention this because I can't imagine a similar situation in the U.S. There, regular national broadcasters with names like these would not work without extensive commentary about "ground-breaking," tokenism, blah blah blah.

Sorta like yesterday, when Barak Obama had to address issues surrounding race yet again. Someday, I hope, the U.S. will close in on that dream of Dr. King's, the one in which a person is judged by the content of his (or her!) character instead of the color of his (or her!) skin. It's not a good sign when Senator Obama catches flak because of his name.

Oh sure, issues of race and religion simmer under the surface up here. I've heard my share of racist comments made by Canadians of English and Scottish descent, and not a few comments by those whose parents or grandparents were born in Scandinavia, mostly about aboriginals. Contrary to popular belief up here, the U.S. hasn't cornered the market on ignorance.

But meanwhile, north of 49, people of all backgrounds and faiths work everywhere, run for office, make mistakes, write songs, read the news, and even forecast the weather. All without particular comment. I have to say, it's restful.

The Power of a Name

Did the people at Bear Stearns, which sold yesterday in a frantic weekend deal for something like 1 percent of its value of a year ago, really think through the ramifications of their company name?

A bear market is a bad thing--it is not growing. A bull market is a good thing--it is growing.

So why name a financial company Bear Anything?

Roy happened on the news of the weekend deal last night and watched the Asian markets tizzify themselves, and we talked about what the Canadian and U.S. markets might do today. Then last night I dreamed he and I had had a pet beaver (Americans: symbol of Canadian industry) that fell nine stories to its death in a small pond in an atrium. We were on the balcony it fell from, and we couldn't save it.

And the moral of that story: add "discussions about falling stock markets" to "scary movies" on the "list of things not to not even THINK about at 10:30 p.m."

I Stand Corrected

You know, I really didn't think I could be sorrier about the whole "Canadian Patriotic Song" thing than I was yesterday. However....

At YouTube, you can see the modern equivalents of Canadian patriotic songs. This one is more of an anthem (hence its title). This one is definitely saucy, but it helps to know the song and associate it with that wacky movie, Benny and Joon.

For the ultimate in Canadian patriotism, you'll have to go to YouTube yourself and search for "I am Canadian!" because I can't get it to load properly.

And yes, here's the ironic twist you were waiting for: these videos are commercials from a beer company, Molson Canadian. Molson Canadian was recently purchased by Coors, an American company. Isn't that sorta just Yankee Doodle all over again?

And now, I can only hope I won't be writing about patriotic songs for awhile.

Sorry I Brought It Up!

Yankee Doodle--yeah, yeah, I'll call him macaroni.

It all started innocently. It's flu season, or at least it's the season in which ads for hand-washing abound. It all reminded me of some story or other I read or heard a couple of years ago, that most people don't wash their hands for a long enough time period to kill germs. According to this story, you're supposed to lather up and then rub your hands together (paying attention to fingers and nails and whatnot) for the length of time it takes to sing one verse and the chorus of "Yankee Doodle."

It occurred to me that, just as Uncle Sam has no real equivalent up here, neither does Yankee Doodle. Military bagpipers have many Scottish tunes at the ready, and they also pipe "Maple Leaf Forever," but it's a sentimental song, not a saucy one. Roy claims "Aloutte" counts, because it is sung in French Canada and English Canada and was a song of the voyageurs, designed to keep that paddle going. However, it wasn't a song of national identity, so it was a nice try, but no. (He also thinks that Canadians, not being saucy, of course wouldn't have an equivalent of Yankee Doodle, but this isn't his blog.)

Of course, then Roy had to find out more about the song, and now I am, as the title of this post says, sorry I brought it up in the first place. If you're interested, you can read the Wikipedia entry here. If you're a masochist, you can hear variations on the theme at the bottom of that entry. Seriously--it's one of the more annoying songs, no matter how you vary its tune. (It's a lovely version, well played.) You can even find out about that whole "macaroni" thing.

However, the part of the story that I found most interesting is also the part I find typically American, and I'm sorry I can't find the web site where all this came from. "Yankee" is apparently a corruption of a Dutch diminutive for "John" that you could roughly translate to late-20th-century pop culture as "Gomer." "Doodle," in early colonial times, meant roughly "numbskull," "nitwit," or something even less kind. We'll call it "Doofus." So when the Terribly Proper British sang about Yankee Doodle, it was the equivalent of calling colonials in the Americas "Gomer Doofus."

In other words, they weren't complimenting colonial Americans. Not even close.

Yet, those wacky Americans--typically, they welcomed Yankee Doodle with open arms, and I mean both the song and the identity. (It's still the state song of Connecticut.) A Canadian--possibly one of the descendants of those Terribly Proper British who meant to jeer--could conceivably claim that Americans stole Yankee Doodle and then corrupted it for their own purposes.

As was the case with so much else.

Bet you can't stop whistling it now, can you? (Argh.)

More Truth

An update to yesterday:

Here are the bucks sparring.

Yesterday we ended up skiing to the island--yes, it was as mind-boggling as walking. And today it's almost 40 degrees (American).

Truth in Advertising

We're at the beginning of the March Break week for Thunder Bay.

Note its name: March Break. Not Spring Break. That's because it's not spring here. Canadians are nothing if not honest.

But spring is on its way, and here's how I know. Some claim to have seen a newborn fawn recently (but it had no spots, hmm). During the past week sometime, two young bucks tested their fighting skills by butting antlers--really cool to see. And yesterday, a raven sat up in a bare poplar, wrestling with a long stick--but he (or she) was ultimately unsuccessful in creating the foundation for a nest. Finally: It's getting up to melting today.

Meanwhile, I scraped ice off the back windshield yesterday morning. Our driveway is snowpacked. Anywhere from six inches to two feet of snow cover the ground, except directly under some trees. Nope. Not spring. Not even spring-like.

And our fun for the day will be walking out to an island in the bay. Walking to an island. My mind boggles.

Lions and Tigers and Bribes, Oh My

Lots of stuff happening in the world, mostly in the land of Absurd-istan.

First, Conrad Black went to jail, an event covered breathlessly by the Canadian media. (Sheesh.) Lots of the live coverage included (to kill time) discussion of how an eight-foot cell, shared with a roommate, will be different from sharing a Florida mansion with Barbara Amiel. The media also covered the type and number of DOGS she has there to keep her company.

My opinion: Black will be OK--his ego is big enough to house the rest of him for whatever portion of 6.5 years he actually serves. Barbara too will be OK--she has a column in Maclean's, which Black apparently still owns, in which she writes of buying a new puppy to keep her company.... Yawn.

Then there's this thing that the Clinton campaign is calling "NAFTA-gate," in which Canadian government officials did, or did not, meddle in the U.S. presidential campaign by leaking information that the Obama campaign did, or did not, share with them about both candidates' recent rhetoric about NAFTA. And the Clinton campaign itself did, or did not, also contact Canadians but not through official channels.

My opinion: Tempest in a teapot. Threats to "re-negotiate" the terms of NAFTA were actually aimed at Mexico and immigration reform. Canada just happens to be extremely interested in the U.S. election, since we don't get one up here this spring, so the story got extensive coverage here. Especially because most up here who object to NAFTA feel it's screwing Canadian industry (for example, softwood lumber, in which the U.S. bullied Canada into forking over lots of money) and can't see giving up more ground.

Finally, and most recently, Prime Minister Stephen Harper may, or may not, have known of an offer to buy the vote of what the media always calls "a dying man," Chuck Cadman, back in the heady days of politics when Paul Martin was PM and Harper, as Opposition Leader, was trying to bring down the government. Chuck Cadman did indeed have inoperable cancer; he had left the Conservative party previously and was voting as an independent MP, and, whatever he was or wasn't offered (and he claimed on camera that nothing had been), he voted to maintain the government. He died a few months after this pivotal vote. It has been confirmed that two Conservative party operatives apparently met with him to offer something. His widow, who in a weird twist is now running for a seat as a Conservative, and his daughter and son-in-law all confirm that. But in another weird twist, the widow is sure that Harper didn't know of the bribe, in spite of an audiotape that appears to point to the contrary, because she looked into his eyes and believed him. Shades of Bush and Putin.

The most recent news on the situation is that Harper served the leaders of the Liberal party, who understandably pounced on this story, with notice that he will sue them for libel for the language that appeared on their web site describing the incident unless a two-language apology is forthcoming by his deadline.

My opinion, Part A: The whole "buying a vote" thing may come under the heading of "politics as usual" in Canada, as it would in the U.S. In fact, the same time the Conservatives may have been trying to buy Cadman's vote, the Liberal government was successful in luring a Conservative MP into the Liberal party by giving her a cabinet post. However, it shouldn't be politics as usual. Yes, I'm a naive idealist. I'm still right about this.

My opinion, Part B: This issue has at last given Opposition Leader Stephane Dion a backbone. Whether he has a leg to stand on (ha ha) as he calls for an investigation into this matter is something else again. I'm at least pleased to see him and the other Liberal leaders uncowed by threats of being sued.

My opinion, Part C: I'm not a big fan of Stephen Harper. Not only do I disagree with his principles, I detest the condescending smugness with which he propounds them. However, I would be surprised to learn he knew of, and authorized, a bribe for a vote. In other words, I had him pegged as a prig, not as a slimeball.

So that's what's in the news up here. Oh, and March break is next week, so much of my attention has been directed toward keeping snowmobiles off the driveways around here. Wish me luck on that one.