Americana: A Modern Celebration

Below is a link to a fabulous updated Web 2.0 celebration of American culture. I tried to embed it but it's too big for this page. But seriously. Click through.

Web Site Story

For Canadians, Pandora is one of the technical marvels that we don't have access to. Like Hulu. Or the Amazon Kindle.

I'm not really sure what the lesson is--perhaps "beware of expecting consumers to click through." But it's clever and fun. Much like some Americans.

Happy Patriotic Holiday Week

I've said before that Canada lacks patriotic songs, and I lived to regret saying it.

And yet, here's the topic again. And here's why: I've found what might serve as Canada's answer to the schlocky patriotic songs, most of which happen to be country music, that are played ad nauseum in the U.S. during the days leading up to July 4. Frankly, I consider these "my country, right or wrong" songs more than schlocky--I find them dangerously ignorant. Therefore, I won't be getting any more specific.

So, Canada's answer: Stompin' Tom Connors. He's "country," mostly in the sense of "folk," and "folk" in the sense of Pete Seeger. He's written about Canadian historic tragedies, about potatoes and tomatoes, and hockey. He received six Juno awards--Canada's version of the Grammy--and sent them back because Juno awards are now given to artists who may be Canadian but whose careers are American.

In other words, he's a bit of a contrarian. And he's not even from Alberta, which some call the Texas of Canada. He's from PEI, a cross between Maine (picturesque, Anne of Green Gables) and Idaho (potatoes).

In any case, here's what made me think of this:



But can I just say that I don't know of any American patriotic songs that mention Canada? Yes, I know, "Blame Canada," blah blah. But it's a novelty song. And it's not going to be played this coming week.

Insights (?) from International Travel

"They" say that there's nothing like a little international travel to broaden one's horizons.

I'm not sure that going from one's home in Canada to a sibling's home in the U.S. counts as "international travel," except in all the ways in which it does, which I have been blogging about here for a couple of years now. The two countries being different and all. Different cultures and whatnot.

However, it's true that changing one's routine can yield insights into one's self.

Here's mine: I drink a lot of coffee. I mean, a lot. At home, I share a coffeepot. Here, I'm the only one emptying it. And it empties, early and often. And thus, here's what I'm currently pondering. For what value of "how much" does "how much = "too much"?

Other tidbits. "Everyone" in the U.S. goes to a gym (or does some form of formal exercise) or seems to feel guilty about not going or doing it. "It's a dry heat" can truly be a meaningful statement; low humidity makes 100 degrees F bearable, especially when a swimming pool is available. The best way to watch a reality show is on a "marathon" weekend, when you know by 11 p.m. who America's next top model was, back in Season 6, whatever year that was.

The biggest question, though, is this: when one's normal life is pretty great, what does "vacation" mean?

I'll leave you to it. I'm taking my coffee (cold) down to the pool.

Two Moments

Well, three.

First, nobody at the border ordered me to smile. That's a victory. Actually, it was a new agent, so maybe they heard me. (Delusions of power.)

Second, you know you're in Texas when you hear someone behind you say "tin?" and you realize they're saying "ten." No question, just uptalking? You know?

Third, I had a little pang during the announcements on my two American Airlines flights. The main steward did his deal with the seat belts and oxygen masks and then added an admonishment. The "captain" came on to echo it: there is to be no standing in line for the washrooms. Before you get up from your seat, you are to check to be sure no one is already in line. Because you cannot stand in line.

I'm sure it's a response to concerns about in-flight turbulence but it's also a post-9/11 safety thing. And, unlike the taking-off-of-shoes, showing-of-three-bottles-in-a-zipped-plastic-bag, stripping-of-sweaters charades, it's something that feels like a meaningful request. To me, anyway.

Don't Mess With Him

Mr. In-Between, that is. (Youngsters, look it up.)

As I have said, being between things (seasons, say) is not my
favo(u)rite place to be.

I was relieved, over the weekend, to see the end of spring. Yes, we have toppled headlong, in just a day or two, into the next season.

And that season is...the election season!

Not really. I meant summer. But maybe the other, too.

Apparently Michael Ignatieff is considering making good on his threats, er, promises, to keep the Harper government on probation. Or even double secret probation.

So testosterone is a-flying in Ottawa.

Sometimes I think elections on a regular schedule are easier to take. Sometimes Harper thinks so, too, except when he doesn't.

These days, "everybody knows" that Canadians don't want an election this summer. They didn't want one last fall, either, or the one a couple of years ago.

So here's my question. When do Canadians ever want an election?

Scheduling. It has its merits. Just sayin'.

That Was Worth It

Sometimes the internet is a really useful thing.

Tonight I heard this strange sound, an electronic kind of tune-ish thing. By the time I figured out it was my cell phone ringing, whoever called hung up. I checked the number and didn't recognize it.

But I own a cell phone "in case of emergency." Because I'm easily trainable, I have learned to associate "cell phone ringing" with "emergency," and because I'm human, I haven't learned the exact nature of that association. At the moment, "cell phone ringing" and "emergency" are approximately equal. In truth, they are overlapping, but not identical, sets of events. I know this intellectually, but tell it to my internal alarm system.

So I checked the area code and it was Phoenix. I have a relative in Arizona, and although it's unlikely she'd be in trouble in Phoenix and the hospital would call my cell, it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility, so I couldn't quite relax about the whole emergency thing.

Et voila! The internet to the rescue!

A reverse lookup turned up some complaints about the number, mostly related to some contest scam. Not only could I relax about an emergency, I could also feel smart and relieved for not answering.

Sometimes the internet is a really useful thing.

They're Called Fawns

...because that's what we do when we see them.

And seeing them makes the allergies [wipes eyes, sniffs] easier to tolerate.

One Giant Leap Backward

I feel compelled to say something about the isotope shortage, the shutdown of the Chalk River facility, and the brouhaha about the evil quotient of the Natural Resources minister. I've tried to pretend these things are not happening, but they are not going away.

Here's what I have to say.

1. The Chalk River nuclear facility gets one year older every 365 days (366 days in a leap year). Time has operated in this way, according to our perception though possibly not Einstein's, for millennia. This is not news. Therefore, its age and the resulting issues with safety and production are also not news. So where have the governments been? Oh wait--that's right, the Harper government fired the woman in charge when she dared to mention safety issues.

2. Canada is getting out of the isotope business by 2016 (presumably after getting back into it somehow, through a too-little, too-late investment in Chalk River) (but I digress). This weakens Canada's much-adored healthcare system. Yes, isotopes presumably will be available for purchase from other countries. But if you're directly responsible for the health of your citizens (and permanent residents), and you have a capacity for providing a crucial diagnostic and treatment tool, you have both a vested interest in continuing to provide it AND the advantage of experience. Oh, wait: that assumes you learn from experience. Never mind.

3. Further, shutting down isotope production is a giant leap backward, technologically speaking, for the whole country. However, it is business as usual for this country, which tends to export its brains and great ideas to the U.S. for commercialization. The BlackBerry is a notable exception. Wouldn't it be nice if Canada embraced the areas in which it has experience--you might even say leadership--and invested there? I like to think of it as "logic."

4. The Natural Resources minister is guilty mostly of being a politician (possibly a not-too-effective one, but that's another matter). She is, however, also guilty of cowardice for allowing the Prime Minister's office to orchestrate her response to her comments. She would be a happier person and a much better public servant--though perhaps not a more effective politician--if she had the guts to respond like a human being to this situation. The problem is, it's the politicians who are in charge. Not public servants. And everyone in the House should really seriously re-think what it is they were elected to do.

If you're American and thus haven't heard about any of this, here's the CBC story about getting out of isotope production. Related articles are on the right. Here's an opinion about Lisa Raitt.

As you may have guessed, this kind of news and this particular story just make me tired. Maybe it's incipient allergies and lack of sleep when "night" includes about 3 hours of darkness and lots of twilight and dawn. Maybe I'm finally succumbing to apathy now that the workings of the Canadian government aren't alien and therefore fascinating.

But you know what? Maybe it's not me. Maybe, just maybe, I'm tired because of the bad behavio(u)r.

Grrr.

Sharing the Pain. Er, Joy. Amended.

Sundays are stressful for me--all that "getting to a prescribed place at a prescribed time" stuff, followed by a hefty helping of "being nice to other people." Afternoons, I often find a comfortable chair or couch, close my eyes, and meditate on the beauty of being alone.

Yesterday, however, Roy turned on the TV to discover an hour-long retrospective about Expo 67--"The hundredth anniversary of confederation," as the song says. History in lyrics, the forerunner of Schoolhouse Rock. Again, invented by Canadians and popularized by Americans.

But I digress. The point is this: what's stuck in my head?

See for yourself below. Do watch long enough to see the shot of the trumpet bell around 1:30.



The pied piper tour guide is Bobby Gimby, Canada's answer to Doc Severinsen.

The TV show also mentioned the movie about Ontario, introduced at Expo with split-screen technology. It won an Oscar, by the way. If the above isn't enough to keep you humming for hours, this should do it.



With hopes as high as the tallest tree, in my land of lakes and snow...Ontari-ari-ari-oooooooo.

Amended to add what I meant to say before I got sidetracked playing with YouTube. First of all, a quiz to see if you've been paying attention. What was the population of Canada in 1967? Answer: about 20 million. It's in the first video.

Second, my serious point (and of COURSE I have one, being "too serious") is that you can learn a lot about a country by their musical theatre.

In a life long ago and far away, I played in the pit orchestra of a production of "Oklahoma!" For a lot of reasons, participating in that show ranks as one of my all-time favo(u)rite experiences.

The music makes sense, for one thing. Yes, it's familiar--a Rodgers and Hammerstein classic. I've seen the movie a billion times. We had an LP of it when I was a kid. But beyond familiarity, the music makes sense. The harmonies make sense. If you have a bunch of measures of rest and lose count, it doesn't matter--you still know when to come in because it just sounds right.

So it was a pleasure to play. But beyond that, it's a show that can tell someone a lot about America and Americans. Not that "Oklahoma!" the show in any way resembles Oklahoma the state--but it's what Americans want to believe about themselves. Here's a quick list.

• In Kansas City, like other big cities, they've gone about as fur as they can go. We-uns prefer the simple life, where we don't get took by city slickers.
• The farmer and the cowman should be friends. We should all be friends because that way we get their women.
• It's OK to pretend to have a surrey you don't actually have if it gets you the girl, even temporarily. She's really in love with you even if she acts stupid. And shucks, that's true of boys acting stupid, too.
• The bad guys are not only dirty, they're bad because they live like hogs and thus want to be bad.
• If you're too stupid to live and thus don't understand your own life, fall asleep and you'll experience a frightening dream ballet, choreographed by Martha Graham (or someone like her), which will put all the pieces together for you.
• Not being able to say "no" is all fun and games till your father finds his shotgun. Then you have to marry whoever he says.
• Good guys may kill the bad guys, but only accidentally, when the bad guy falls on his own knife.
• We know we belong to the land, and the land we belong to is grand. Or maybe vice versa.
• And while nobody wants to break the law, it's just fine to bend it a little.

Oh, and by the way: there are good guys and bad guys. Even the peddler, who trades with anyone, has to decide become a good guy by the end of the show. At the end of a shotgun barrel, but still.

So my serious point was going to be this: Even though the above "Ca-na-da!" and "Place to Stand" clips aren't musical theatre, exactly, it's still interesting to see Canada's own stories about itself from 40 years ago. Here are some of the things I see.

• We're an optimistic people, with cheerful, obedient kids and clean cities.
• We're not ashamed to use "thee" in a song. And we speak a little French, too. But not enough to be intimidating. Heck, you probably know it, too--sing along!
• We're still building Ontario, even though Europeans have been living there as long as they have south of 49.

There's more, of course. But that's a start. Note: no good guys. No bad guys. The Soviet Union had a pavilion at Expo 67, as did Cuba. So did the U.S. See? We can all get along!

Thermometers Should Come With Disclaimers

The above shows what Wednesday morning looked like. Note the sparkling sun on the water and the blue of the sky. A summer day in June. Right?

That's what I thought. I decided it was the perfect morning to go out in the canoe for the first time. I did think to check the temperature.

The thermometer is mounted outside the kitchen window on the lake side of the house, which receives morning sun. The temperature was somewhere between 60 and 70. Apparently it didn't factor in the wind chill, or the fact that the lake's surface is always colder than the deck in the morning.

I should have done those computations. I should also have worn gloves, a cap, and earmuffs. We froze.

It was beautiful, though.

Later today I'll go back to a leaf-raking project. If I'm lucky and the rain stays away, I'll get to use the chainsaw this weekend to get rid of a couple of trees that have fallen over the roads and the septic field at the bigger camp.

I'll be the one in gloves.

Egg? Chicken? Egg?

Because I am pretty old, I remember when music videos were a big deal, a new thing. I thought the music video was a great idea--finally I'd get to see what the writer/singer thought she was doing when she wrote/sang the song. Because I don't really "get" poetry, and I am often baffled by popular culture, I need help. So hooray, a visual.

As is true with anything under the sun, music videos have detractors and admirers. Have videos killed the radio star? Do they change the listener into a viewer and thus divert attention from the musical integrity of the song to the size of the singer's thighs?

If not for music videos, would Susan Boyle even be a phenomenon? She might have had a singing career without requiring her recent "discovery." If nobody had ever felt the need to care about her eyebrow-waxing habits, we would never have had our recent epiphanies about the shallow nature of the entertainment business.

Speaking of brows: for those highbrows who wonder whether the term "musical integrity" can be applied to popular music--well, if you recuse yourself from participating in the party, sure you'll miss a lot of angst and hand-wringing. But if if you allow people to try to nail down distinctions between "art" and "commerce," you have time to actually eat something and drink your drink while their noses are either in the air or out of joint.

Anyway, I have always found music videos entertaining. I also enjoyed the riffs on music videos, like VH1's "pop-up videos," because I could not only watch the music video, I could learn something relatively useless.

And now, thanks to YouTube, we have something called a "literal video"--a video in which the lyrics to the song reflect what is happening in the video.

Here's a funny one.



If you search on YouTube, you can also see versions of REM's "Losing My Religion" and The Beatles's "Penny Lane."

Aren't humans are amazingly inventive beings? What's next--a new tune to go with the new lyrics that describe the video representation of the old tune and lyrics? I can't wait to see.