A Sign of Maturity

That's what I'd like to think, anyway. Because here I am to tell you how wrong I was. That's right, Fonz--I was WRONG and I can say the whole word.

In June, I posted about my irritation with irony. In it I said I disliked This American Life, a public radio program hosted by Ira Glass. And now I am here to take it all back.

While we were driving across several U.S. states, both red and blue (but mostly red), we heard a couple of different segments of This American Life that explained the housing market implosion and the credit crunch. They were informative and entertaining and only slightly voice-in-the-back-of-the-throat ironic.

You can listen to the first show here, and those who wrote that show have created updates you can find at that link, too.

I'm still no expert on the vagaries of money, and dealing in money that is only theoretical. I suppose money itself is theoretical, since the paper at one time represented a certain amount of gold hidden somewhere.

At the Shell Museum on Sanibel Island in Florida, there was a huge exhibit about the use of cowrie shells for money. Those days are gone and it makes life more convenient for people like me--I'm off to check my bank balances online, in two countries.

Losers and Losers

For those of you who haven't been reading between the lines, I'm back from a tour through the U.S. We saw friends in Florida and hit family in various spots.

As it happened, we were gone from Canada for the Canadian election; though present in the U.S. for the last of their debates, we are also back in time to miss their election. And of course, I already voted. Just the once, though, south of the border.

The U.S. rhetoric on TV stations--though possibly not from at least one of the candidates--is very divisive. There are winners and losers. There have been winners and losers in the past eight years, and those who were losers now want to be winners. On November 5, nearly half of the U.S. electorate will have lost. Just like on most Saturday afternoons, when college football teams play, or Sundays, when the pros do.

Things feel different up here. Perhaps it's just having been gone for the post-mortem of the election. However, in Canada, it seems that there are losers and there are losers.

The most visible loser is Stephen Harper. He didn't get his majority, his mandate to remake Canada in his smugly blue-sweatered, snipey image. Rumor has it that today he will create "junior" cabinet minister positions, to which he will appoint some women. Words fail me. Rona Ambrose, the Sarah Palin of environment ministers a couple of years ago, apparently did teach him a lesson. The wrong one, though. (The one he learned: women aren't competent. The one he should have learned: don't promote women before their time. You don't see him creating junior cabinet positions for men--though he experienced Maxime Bernier, too. But I digress.)

The second-most-visible loser is Stephane Dion. He was unable to connect to Canadians; his party was unable to inspire Canadians. He will be replaced as leader. If he's lucky, he'll attain the same status as Jimmy Carter did in the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, the buzzards are circling. The leadership race will be interesting to watch.

Jack Layton picked up at least two new seats, both of the ridings representing Thunder Bay. We'll see how that turns out--both for us and for him.

But the absolute most biggest and hugest and largest and most important loser of all is the Canadian voter. Five weeks of campaigning. And nothing much changed, except that it all cost money.

One can hope that the same won't be said of the U.S. in a week or so.

I wonder if "lose-lose" is part of the Canadian fabric in the same way that the "win-lose" dichotomy is American. Certainly Canadians understand winning; they play hockey.

But perhaps winning in hockey is different for Canadians than for Americans. For one thing, most Canadians are avid fans of teams in the U.S., though they might also support Canadian teams. They have to be ecumenical in their tastes--their hometown boys play all throughout North America. Therefore, a Canadian's success on any team, no matter what country it's in, can be construed as a win for Canada.

And the converse is also true--even if a Canadian team won the Stanley Cup, the players would include Americans (and those from other countries). And mostly it's not Canada-based teams that win. So any "win," even for a rabid Redwings or Avalanche fan, is shadowed with the knowledge that it's not a win they can exactly own.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., the attitude is largely "Hey, they're all Americans now. Or they want to be." Because everyone wants to be an American.

So what does this all mean? I don't know. But have I mentioned how good it is to be home?

How many Ls in "Unparallellellellelled"?

Today's bumper sticker: "NOBAMA." We did pass through Alabama today (just a teensy bit of it) so I first thought it was something related to sports and the Crimson Tide. But I think it was political. Yep. You have to admire cleverness even when you disagree with it.

Even driving on the Interstate, you still see occasional wildlife. Today I saw several egrets and a heron hunting in ditch water just off the side of the road. Also, raccoons seem to be traveling slowly this year. So I aver based on my unscientific observation of the number of mangled, stripe-tailed bodies on the pavement.

That's all I have today. Live and dead wildlife and bumper stickers.

(Unparallel) (but not Unparallelled) Notes from the Road

Homemade but professional-looking bumper sticker seen in the window of a car in a Venice, Florida parking lot: "McPain"

After last week's election up north, one news program ran a bumper across the bottom about Harper's conservative victory. One. Yep. One.

One pundit also tried to make something of this for McCain--see, Canada is turning rightward from its socialist tendencies. That bodes well for McCain. Two exiles snorted and said, "Harper couldn't get the majority he wanted when it was practically given to him with both hands."

What is with elections and candidates "debating" while sitting at a table? Whose idea was this? Weren't the Party Honchos watching the weird debate with the five of the Canadian candidates sitting at a triangular table? Oh wait, silly question. See, Party Honchos, there's this country called Canada. They had an election, too!

Today's weirdest moment: seeing the airfield where the 9/11 terrorists learned to fly planes. Across the street was a nondescript apartment building where they lived. My Aunt gets email at the public library--where they confiscated the hard drives because terrorists had also been emailing from the public library. OK, a few weird moments.

It's amazing how quickly I get used to using $1 bills as opposed to coins. My wallet is flatter and lighter, too. Getting lighter all the time, in fact.

Speaking of getting lighter, gas sits at $2.79 a gallon--slightly less than we paid at the border and less than through the middle of the country. And way less than its high of $4+ just about a month ago.

So far, so good with the "Tour de Hurricane." Back soon to the land of jackets, shoes, and socks.

One Down, One to Go

How do you say "colossal waste of time" in French?

That's what the Canadian election turned out to be. Prime Minister Harper must form a minority government. That's a good thing--he has to be nice to people.

The Liberals are the largest opposition party, though the NDP gained ground. They will likely pick a new leader. That could be really bad news for Stephen Harper, if they pick someone who "everybody knows" is a better leader. Last time, "everybody knew" Stephane Dion wasn't a good leader. He is now the Jimmy Carter of Canada--a good man and a smart who somehow doesn't come across.

Here's one thing about the U.S. electoral system in this century that is reassuring--eight years is all we can have of the exact same bozo. We can elect a wife or husband, a son or daughter, or an acolyte of the bozo. But thanks to the system, we won't be seeing "W" in office after January.

Up here, we now get to watch the same thing that we did two years ago. Harper taking office. A Liberal leadership election.

No wonder Canadians treat U.S. politics a little like a spectator sport. Different bozos win from time to time.

Pronouncements

A brief dispatch from the "People Talk Funny Around Here" department...

Up here, people pronounce the word "comfortable" with four syllables. In Oklahoma, it has three: COME-fter-bull.

Up here, people use the term "bush" as a synonym for "forest," in the sense of "the trees all around us." It's also used metaphorically, as someone in the southern U.S. might use "backwoods" to be polite about describing a hillbilly (bless his heart).

That's all. I'm cleaning little bits of crap out of the Department of Redundancy Department files and ran across these.

A previous dispatch in this vein is here.

Oh, that "a" sound that makes PAH-stuh into PASS-tuh up here also applies in the word "latte." So they sing of "Taylor the LATT-tay boy," while Kristen Chenoweth--incidentally, a good ol' Oklahoma gal and former beauty queen who is NOT running for Vice President--sings "Taylor the LAH-tay boy."

Feist Me No More

N.B. The subject line does not refer to the Canadian singer best known south of 49 for pushing iPods. ("One, two, three, four..."--yeah, that one. She's very bendy about the hips, isn't she?)

I want to take a term off the table for the rest of...for the rest of eternity, if I could. For the rest of 2009, for sure. And that term?

Feisty.

It's not just because "feisty" is often paired with "gal" to describe a female who's channelling Debbie Reynolds. (Nothing against Debbie Reynolds--I loved Singin' in the Rain, but c'mon: Molly Brown, Annie Getting Her Gun...could she play anything but feisty?)

It's not even because feisty gals wink at the camera. A LOT.

No. The word is anathema because "feisty" is really a contraction formed by combining "brash" and "ignorant" with "shameless" and hiding the hybrid behind new letters.

And you can even picture why feisty is not a good thing. Simply visualize a room with Palestinians sitting on one side of a table and Israelis on the other. By some miracle, they are actually talking to each other. Now mentally place Feisty Vice President Palin in the room with them. Nuclear weapons, people. Is that really a scenario in which we want some feisty?

Well, OK--maybe the one who sells iPods. But otherwise, no.

Yes, we've seen feisty (brash + ignorant + shameless) in the White House for the past eight years. And we have survived. But we don't know by what skin on whose teeth that has been possible. We can't take any more chances.

Crap-Free Jubilee: a Sermon

Brothers and sisters--or as my Uncle Allen would say, "brethren and cistern"--brothers and sisters, we gather today in celebration. And by "today," I mean whatever day it is you read this, from whatever computer located in whatever part of this beautiful blue marble we call Planet Earth, for this celebration is special.

This celebration is two-fold.

This celebration knows not the boundaries of time--except that the time for this celebration is now.

This celebration knows not the boundaries of space--except that space is running out.

Today marks Day One post-Crapture in this part of our world.

Yes, my friends--today we close the door on the Bin and open the door to a new, reduced-crap life.

As King James told us our brother Matthew once wrote that Jesus said (6:19) "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and dust doth corrupt and where thieves break through and steal." To Jesus, and Matthew and King James, I would say these things: you forgot to mention the rodents, and one might only wish that thieves wanted this crap, for insurance payments must follow and why else have we been paying premiums all these years?

However, the point is this: what we have been holding on to, my brothers and sisters, is the past. In the past, we have had visions of future projects for which we might need hundreds of metal lids from frozen juice containers and dozens of emptied margarine tubs. In the past, we have had hope that the leaks in our vessels for storing and dispensing water would heal themselves if we carefully labeled those vessels and left them in the basement. In the past, we have imagined setting aside time to re-read annotated devotion books from the 1990s.

But today, we have been freed from that past. We have been floundering in the Inland Sea of Life (the deeper part), weighted down with visions for the future that required keeping this crap. And today, we cut ourselves free. We no longer cling tight to those visions of the future that require that crap. And thus, we float to the surface, and we begin our swim anew.

Of course, our new life will have challenges of its own. As we celebrate our new existence, we must also bear in mind that this celebration has two parts. Yes, are free from the past--detritus from times past no longer holds us back.

But in our new life, we must also take up a new vision: we do not want future generations to hold fast to the burdens we have only recently cast off. Remember, this jubilee knows not the boundaries of space, for the Crapture can happen anywhere--but everywhere, space is running out. As the wise bumper sticker writer has said, most often in Santa Fe and Boulder, "Throw it away? There is no 'away.'"

Therefore, even in our new, reduced-crap state, we must exercise discipline. Yes, we need strategies to dispose of coffee cans once they are emptied of the fuel for our lives. We do not need to keep empty coffee cans in the basement. No, we do not! We are making headway on those strategies--sending five off with Gordon the handyman to line the bottom of his toolbox was a good beginning, and we can pat ourselves on the back for it.

But brothers and sisters, we need to continue. We need the discipline to pursue those strategies, even unto sorting our refuse before taking it to the recycle depot on the next day we combine errands in town.

And I say to you, even discipline is not enough. We need to do more. For, as those who have borrowed against the equity in their house to pay their credit card bills have discovered, some so-called "solutions" are temporary band-aids, completely ineffective against the spurting arteries of spending.

In the same vein--as my Uncle Allen would say--in the same vein, throwing crap away is a temporary solution at best. We need to do yet more. That's right, brothers and sisters: each of us, and all of us together, must take up a new attitude to match our new freedom in our new, reduced-crap life. We must think differently and do differently. Specifically, we must do our part to create less crap in the first place.

We can meet this challenge, yes we can. We can carry travel mugs with us as we trek from coffee shop to coffee shop, thereby avoiding the use of disposable cups. We can look on store shelves for products wrapped in less packaging. And those ready for the ultimate challenge can do this: we can think twice before buying new crap.

Oh, brothers and sisters. Can you hear the naysayers? I can! I can hear them now, saying "Nay! The economic engines of our countries will grind to a halt if we spend not!" But do not be persuaded by them. The reach of the spendthrift world is wide and its grip is mighty. But it clings to past economic indicators and tries to predict the future based on murky measures of consumer confidence.

We can, and must, live by other measures. As people in the reduced-crap world, we have a new outlook on business. Our business is to act responsibly today in a way that ensures for our own children, and our children's children, a crap-free tomorrow.

For what would we leave our grandchildren: a hundred metal lids from frozen orange juice cans, or a paradise in which to drink a locally produced, culturally appropriate beverage, by which I mean coffee? If we're lucky, and our own parents and grandparents were very lucky, we can do both. They did. And so I can, and do, bless them and their memories every day over my morning cup.

But we live in a different world, and our children and children's children will live in a still different one. For us, the time is now, and everywhere, space is running out. We must make a choice. Let's make the right choice. Let's choose crap-free.