The Ephemeral Tourist

What is Industrial Ecology?

2010-01-05T23:31:57Z

It's kind of hard to believe that I haven't written about this before:

I have an ambition for us. And by us, I don't just mean me and my friends, and my LiveJournal FriendsList. By us, I mean all of us. Our species.

Our species must be for something that is greater than the joys and pleasures of the biological imperative. While I do not know myself how wonderful it is to have children, I do have the distinct impression that my life means something despite my not being a parent. From this, I extrapolate that the uncontrolled propagation our species beyond the carrying capacity of planet Earth, and the consequential cascading ecological systems failure leading to the loss of most of its biological diversity, is not necessarily what humans have to do. Human existence must have meaning even when we reach the point of zero population growth. It is not possible for everyone to derive meaning from having children.

Our species must be for something because we might be the only species in the universe capable of our level of intelligence, as suggested by Fermi's Paradox.

Recycled from: http://mylesk.livejournal.com/31043.html
While Carl Sagan argued that it's folly to believe humans are the only intelligent life in the universe, Fermi's Paradox suggests the opposite. If technological advancement is a common feature of intelligence, and other intelligent species develop at a rate similar to humans, given the age and size of the universe, there should be many other intelligent species populating, overlapping, and generally making themselves apparent to us. The fact that we have had no contact with extra-terrestrial life has some implications.

1. That interstellar travel is impossible, which based on reasonable human forecasting is probably not true.
2. That aliens don't want to be apparent to us, for inscrutable reasons.
3. That there is no other intelligent life in the universe.

Option 3 is intriguing to me because it means that humanity is the universe's only chance at self-awareness. If we think about the different forms of life in functional terms - forests are the lungs of the Earth, oceans are the blood of the Earth, animals are it's genetic pool - then humans are the Earth's consciousness, and perhaps the Universe's consciousness. The 4-lb consciousness-machine that resides in each of our skull-bones, which is over-designed for the mere animal functions of survival and reproduction, has some cumulative, species-wide purpose of enabling the universe to learn about itself. And destroying this function, either through war or triggering a cascade systems failure of the global eco-system is a sin of grand magnitude.

My ambition is for our species to avoid destruction and become what we are supposed to be.

The current apocalypse narrative that we are laboring under is ecological overshoot where human population and consumption patterns exhaust the Earth's productive capacity and ability to sustain human life. The current salvation narrative, where we will avoid destruction and become what we are supposed to be, is sustainability.

I imagine sustainability in 5 parts:

1. permaculture
2. industrial ecology
3. net zero energy buildings
4. electrified transportation
5. place-based culture

Industrial ecology is industrial design based on the efficiency of nature. In nature there is no waste. Materials move through ecosystems in continuous and interlocking cycles where the by-products of one community of organisms are the feed-stocks for another community.

Current industrial design is linear where natural resources enter ~ extracted from the environment ~ and products and waste are emitted. Industrial ecology matches and clusters industrial facilities so that the waste products of one process are the feedstocks of another.

In this conceptual schematic, materials move through an eco-industrial system to produce bread, beer, bacon, mushrooms, fish, and electricity.

In this flow diagram of an existing eco-industrial park, the main message is that old engineering axiom, if it exists, then it is possible!

More on the 5-points in future posts.

An Attitude is a Hypothetical Construct

2010-01-04T04:58:20Z

An attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's degree of like or dislike for an item. ... They develop on the ABC model (affect, behavior, and cognition). The affective response is an emotional response that expresses an individual's degree of preference for an entity. The behavioral intention is a verbal indication or typical behavioral tendency of an individual. The cognitive response is a cognitive evaluation of the entity that constitutes an individual's beliefs about the object. http://ow.ly/SlZN

That doesn't sound far off from a "...complex of ego, memories, and values which governs the relationships between me and everything that is not me." http://ow.ly/S9BN

Wikipedia's definition, with its explicit recognition of an affective/emotional component, is more precise, but the model appears more linear than it is in reality. By calling attitude a 'complex', it allows for circularity in instances where the manner in which a person thinks (cognition - C) influences how they feel (affect - A).

Over the fourth quarter of 2009 I was feeling a lot about climate change deniers and the Alberta Environmental Network. In fact, I think that my "hypothetical construct" was getting the best of me all too often, and I'm not sure why this started to happen.

It's true that the population of my social world changed to include persons whose analytical approach to the problem of climate change differs from mine, and others whose use of expense account guidelines doesn't reflect my sense of fiscal restraint. But for some reason, I've become a someone preoccupied with the people who challenge me, rather than minimizing the attention paid to them and focussing on the people who generate happiness in my life.

I'd thought that the Christmas break was going to be enough for me to turn this around, but I read an e-mail this evening which started me churning again. There is going to be a conference on the report, 0ffsett1ing Res1stence (http://ow.ly/Sqzb) on January 14th, and, having read the report when it was released last year, I was interested to hear the discourse around its allegations. But this is very much different from the thoughtful analysis of the Nordhaus/Shellenberger paper, The Death of Environmentalism. 0ffsett1ing Res1stence is a kind of strategic shot in the foot, peppered with rhetoric, and co-written by someone who is dangerously close to being a pot calling the kettle black (assuming he has the same funding arrangement that his predecessor enjoyed). Imagining being at this session provoked the same kind of intense frustration that has kept me from writing out my chemical/ecological argument for why climate change is a problem. Dealing with other people just feels too painful. I'm not sure I want to do it.

2010 So Far

2010-01-01T02:43:50Z

I like 2010 so far.

It's kind of cliched and mundane, but I spent a few hours yesterday, New Year's Day, reorganizing the kitchen cupboards. One shelf had devolved into a jam-hole for zip-lock bags and plastic yoghurt containers, and Hannah has been vowing to fix it for months now. But in the momentum of my re-setting the Great Room following the New Year's Celebration by the Edmonton Buddhist Meditation group, I sorted our mini-dump-zone of plastic tubs and zip-lock bags, and created a new "food storage station" by relocating all these items in a cupboard alongside the aluminum foil and microwaveable glassware. One cupboard followed another, and now our kitchen is ergonomically reorganized into functional zones. My favourite is "Barista's Corner" where all our teas and mugs, and the kettle, bodum, coffee maker, and coffees are conveniently located within easy reach of the kitchen sink. I feel renewed.

We had 11 people, nine Buddhists and two husbands of Buddhists, dining in the Great Room on New Year's Eve. Everyone had plenty to eat, including traditional new year's soba noodles and grilled rice cakes called mochi. It was a fine way to welcome the new year.

Following the renewal theme, today's multi-hour project was making the Great Room into an ad hoc robotics lab. I've noticed that the iRobot website (http://ow.ly/S8ZQ) doesn't list the Roomba 415 anymore. It goes straight from the 400 model to the 435, then the 500 Series. I have two 415s; both with major malfunctions and both outside the warrantee period.

This is a picture of "Walt", Roomba 415 #2, lying on the operating table with his guts exposed like a belly-slit fish. Sad. The yellow part in Walt's centre is his brush deck (a Roomba is really a combination dust-buster/carpet sweeper). Walt's brushes didn't work due to a malfunctioning brush motor.

Not pictured is "Wilson", Roomba 415 #1, whose right wheel motor didn't work. It might not be obvious from the photo, but swapping out a brush deck was was easier for a Comp. Lit. graduate equipped with screwdrivers, pliers, poster gum, and a paper clip than swapping out a wheel motor, so Wilson got cannibalized for Walt rather than vice-versa. Now, Walt and me are happy because there is a noisy, vacuum-cleaning robot in the house again, and Hannah is less happy because there is a noisy, vacuum-cleaning robot in the house again.

So, I've taken things that I've had for a long time and didn't work very well and made adjustments so that they work much better.

I'm also trying to do this to my attitude. My mental geography, I like to say - that complex of ego, memories, and values which governs the relationships between me and everything that is not me.

The Last Weedgeek Post of 2009

2009-12-31T02:53:51Z

There is a new top weed at the weedgeek's house! Sorry Chenopodium album, a.k.a. Lamb's Quarters, but Helianthus tuberosus is the new king weed with me!

In last night's micro-bloggery I posted about eating yardfood in December in the form of a Japanese-ish pickle & jerusalem artichoke salad, but didn't blog post it due to lack of visual aids. I was thinking that I shouldn't have it two nights in a row, but suddenly realized that I'm a grown-up. I could eat licorice all-sorts for dinner if I wanted to, so of course I can have the same salad two nights in a row!

The botanical name for jerusalem artichoke, Helianthus tuberosus, is better than the common name. While it's likely unfamiliar to people, at least it's not deceptive. Helianthus has nothing to do with artichokes as the common name implies.

The edible part of this sunflower-like weed are the tubers which grow like tiny potatoes on the root system. There are several recipes in my weed-bible, Edible Garden Weeds of Canada, but Japanese-ish Pickle & Helianthus Salad is my own creation.

The tubers.

Slice equal parts dill pickles and Helianthus tubers.

Combine and add soy sauce and black sesame seeds. (That's what makes it Japanese-ish.)

Serve.

The tubers are wonderfully crisp and have a mild sunflower seed-like flavour.

This fall, only a few of my helianthus plants did really well so I kept only a few of the tubers to eat and re-planted the rest in various parts of my yard to find the best spot for them. I'm looking forward to a forest of them next year!

Conceiving a new memory palace for 2010

2009-12-30T06:22:00Z

We lived in Calgary from 1968 to 1975 and while there, my father took some kind of new age course in personal development. He would return home from these sessions and relate to me ideas and exercises in mnemonics and astral projection. He thought that a 10-year old would be more capable of utilizing these techniques than a grown adult whose mind was more fettered by social conditioning.

Dad didn't call it the "memory palace mnemonic technique", but subsequent readings of Thomas Harris' Hannibal have taught me that when I was a kid, this is exactly what my father was teaching me. He talked me through the visualization of a comfortable room and asked me to furnish it with memorable versions of specific types of objects (a desk, a screen, a projector), and I remember Dad was a little disappointed in my choices. By 10 I'd already been to Disneyland twice and my imagination had been permanently imprinted by the "emotional architecture" of that place such that the things I could most easily imagine were things already imagined by Walt Disney and his design team. Indeed to this day, within the expansions on my memory palace done according to the instructions found in Hannibal and The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci by Jonathan Spence, at the core is that same purple and gold room with a decor reminiscent of the Mainstreet USA Opera House, with Steamboat Willie and Sorcerer Mickey painted on the walls. But now, the purple room is going to be in the memory palace equivalent of an archive.

Conceiving a new memory palace is about me becoming comfortable in my mind again. The radio silence at the Ephemeral Tourist over the last quarter of 2009 wasn't just about repetitive strain injury in my wrists (which, incidentally, is being mitigated by a regimen of new, twitchy I/O peripherals, a night-time wrist splint, and a 10% diclofenac cream). It was also due to the sudden on-set of an unease with my imaginary world.

I got a bit spooked that I was living too much in my head.

While being the 'moderately priced' restaurant at the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, The Meadows is still kind of expensive for my cash flow. But for the duration of the September planning retreat of Alberta's recycling management board, it was the breakfast spot for Amandi Khera and me. Their eggs benedict is excellent so long as you order it off the menu instead of opting for the breakfast buffet.

Our primary topics of conversation on the morning of September 14th were the BBC's Big Read list - a list of 100 books that some folks across the pond say that good readers should have worked their way through by now - and the inscrutable criteria by which works made this list and which did not. Eventually, we were discussing the Spanish-speaking writers and noted that Gabriel Garcia Marquez made the list twice (Love in the Time of Cholera, and 100 Years of Solitude) which didn't seem fair.

"They could've included Mario Vargas Llosa's Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter in one of those spots," I posed. Amandi didn't know the novel so I explained that it's the story of a young man working at a radio station in Peru who falls in love with his divorced aunt (by marriage) and becomes best friends with the radio drama playwright who gradually descends into madness. We get to witness the scriptwriter's mental deterioration from two perspectives. The odd numbered chapters tell the story of the young man (whose name is also Mario), his aunt, and the unstable scriptwriter, and the even numbered chapters are the stories that the scriptwriter writes. The early even numbered chapters (2,4,6) tell coherent, though conventionally trite, soap-opera stories, but the later even numbered chapters begin to take bizarre turns as characters get switched between stories, and the reality of the odd numbered chapters bleeds into his fiction. In other words, the scriptwriter starts to confuse his real and his imaginary lives.

Llosa's novel reminds me of my life. My life unfolds from day-to-day and I mine my real experience for material that I intend to utilize in my imaginary world. It is this psychological thing; an enmeshed complex of ego and memory which is the infrastructure of an idiosyncratic mental space where I semi-exist and run the chronic risk of disappearing up my own brain-stem. And my journals/this blog occasionally serve as the nexus that bridges these two worlds. Ensuring the integrity of this bridge is important because it is both a bridge and a barrier.

Mitch Miyagawa's article in The Walrus was also published in the fourth quarter of 2009. His piece, The Sorry State impressed me for its insight into its subject matter, but it took my breath away for what was, to me, Mitch's daring use of character. The Sorry State is about the history of government apologies to wronged demographic groups: the interned Japanese-Canadians, the head-taxed immigrant Chinese, students of the Indian residential schools. Due to the divorce of his biological parents, followed by subsequent re-marriages, Mitch's extended family includes all these demographics making his the most apologized-to family in Canadian history. But he starts his article with his parent's divorce. The first paragraph at http://ow.ly/QwuZ ends with:

At my dad’s retirement dinner the year before, his boss at the Alberta Forest Service had handed him a silver-plated pulaski, a stuffed Bertie the Fire Beaver, and a rocking chair. My mom, Carol — barely forty years old and chafing for new adventures — took one look at the rocking chair and knew the end was near.

These sentences gave me a lump in my throat. I think because I know Bob and Carol in real life; Bob and Carol are their real names; and that I was reading a story that purported to explicate, in detail, something about a person's real, inner experience about a real outer event ~ all of which is scary stuff to me.

In contrast, I've followed Richard Bach's advice from Illusions: the adventures of a reluctant messiah to "practice being fictional for a while...". And not just myself, but anyone that I import into my inner world. Bach's advice might not sound like such a bad thing, but as I said, in September I got a little spooked by what this fictionalizing could do to the fictionalizer.

On September 2, 2009, I blogged at http://ow.ly/QwQl, "...if Amandi Khera were just a character in stories that I made up, I’m not sure I’d write her quitting smoking. I’d probably keep it as a character-tag; a signature action that she always did to help cement her image in the reader’s mind."

The person that Amandi Khera is based on must, certainly, one day, hopefully soon, quit smoking. I want this to happen as much as anyone in this person (that Amandi Khera is based on)'s life.

But I discovered that I have this emotional investment in the integrity of the character "Amandi Khera" ~ which includes her being a smoker. If that sounds weird and convoluted to you, it's the same kind of emotional investment that I have in Dexter Morgan not getting caught and keeping his family intact, and for James T. Kirk to retain his command of the Starship Enterprise. You can identify with that, right? It's only weird and convoluted because the character "Amandi Khera" purports to explicate, in some fashion, something true about the person she's based on.

If there is both emotional investment in, and divergence between, the person and the character ~ well, what does that mean to the fictionalizer?

When the September retreat of the Alberta recycling board concluded, Amandi and I hit the road home to Edmonton, taking in scenic points of interest along the way including a ride up Whistler's Summit via the Jasper Tramway.

Our Budget rental car had the now standard auxiliary jack for an iPod, so our music home was the soundtrack to the trip to Las Vegas we'd taken two weeks earlier and included Poker Face by Lady Gaga, Kate Perry's Waking Up in Vegas, and a cover of Elvis' A Little Less Conversation.

There is another rhythm to road trips with Amandi Khera apart from the music; a beat that's based on when it's time to stop for a smoke, and the last beat before Edmonton hit just outside of Entwistle.

I pulled onto a service road and searched for a comfortable place to sit and stretch. Amandi was telling the story of the Great Falls leg of a trip she'd taken through Montana with Montcalm. They were touring the state to meet with potential allies in an international fight against controversial new transmission lines when they stopped at a bar called the Sip n' Dip, which is famous for its mermaid displays.

The view from a comfortable place to sit and stretch. Entwistle, Alberta.

In 1977 my family took our first month-long, December road trip to Florida, traveling in a mid-sized recreational vehicle that Dad bought from my grandmother after my grandfather died in a car accident. Because Donna-lee and I would be missing almost three weeks of school, we were assigned special projects from our teachers to complete on the trip. For that 1977 trip, I was to purchase newspapers from everywhere we visited and track a single news story. The assignment was from a student teacher whose practicum finished before I returned so the fact that my assignment devolved into simply saving the front page of every newspaper I bought, accompanied by a box of tourist-trap brochures, did not impact my academic career in any way.

The pinnacle of kitschy, road-side Americana can be found west of Tampa, Florida at a place called Weeki Wachee Springs where young women trained in the free breathing-tube scuba technique and dressed in mermaid costumes perform underwater pageants based on seasonal themes. I remember visiting the Weeki Wachee gift shop and examining the dried and lacquered puffer fish, spherical and spiky like some grotesque Christmas tree ornament. I bought a poster of staff mermaid, Pat Cleveland, which was in my possession until it was stolen from my apartment hallway wall in 1988.

The 1976 promotional brochure from my box of tourist-trap brochures.

I think that my childhood notion of female pulchritude evolved between ages 4 to 12, based on Playboy Bunnies, Marilyn Monroe, Orion Slave Girls, and Weeki Watchee mermaids.

Thinking back on the drive down a service road on the outskirts of Entwistle, Alberta, my memory hears Amandi saying that there is this bar in Missoula she wants to take me to.

"This guy has built a bar with a big tank in it and he hires girls to dress up as mermaids and swim in it," she says. Google says that the Sip&Dip is in Great Falls, Montana. Memory is fallible. I think it impressed Amandi for being unimaginably surreal: a tiki bar, in Montana, with girls pretending to be mermaids.

Google file photo of the Sip&Dip, Great Falls, Montana.

Amandi and Montcalm wound up in the Sip&Dip, drinking beers at the bar along side what must have been an empty tank because an old timer who was also sitting at the bar looks up at her and asks, "are you going to be the new mermaid?"

As Amandi told her story, it was effortless for me to shoot the movie in my mind: her and Montcalm roaring down the highways of the wide open State of Montana in a 1976 Cadillac Eldorado gunship, meeting with grizzled local activists in log cabin bars with deer heads mounted on the walls, and randomly winding up in a tiki bar with a big tank and a "help wanted - mermaid" sign hanging on the door. And then Amandi Khera, who never quits smoking, ponders the question of whether to audition or not.

The clarity and the falsehood of that movie spooked me a bit.

My new memory palace is about feeling comfortable in my mind.

Updated: What happens in Las Vegas...

2009-12-29T18:33:19Z

I'm recycling this post from May 18, 2009 because I'm repairing some of the broken picture links, and because the World Financial Group representative called to say it's time to apply to recover my status as a non-smoker.

For over a year now, Hannah and I have been meeting with two representatives of World Financial Group. WFG is the Avon of financial services. They pitch their product at home visits. They host cultish, motivational parties for their associates. They employ a multi-level marketing compensation scheme. Much about the organization offends my sensibilities, but one of the two representatives we’ve been meeting with is a long-time associate of mine through many years of volunteering for the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, so giving her some business seems like a friendly thing to do. And they make house calls.

The product we have applied for is term life insurance to replace the unimaginably revolting mortgage insurance Hannah and I have been carrying since we financed The Suite.

Mortgage insurance is such a scam. For a premium of $80 per month, our mortgage provider promises that, in the event of either of our deaths, the mortgage will be paid-off – basically, written off by the institution. It’s scam-ish because the potential award of this insurance is determined by the amount owing on the mortgage. So if you owe $100,000.00 on your mortgage you’re paying for a $100,000.00 insurance policy.

But that same $80 per month premium would buy about $225,000.00 in term life insurance. In the event of either of our deaths, the survivor could pay-off the mortgage amount owing and still have $125,000.00 remaining for other expenses. Furthermore, as your mortgage is paid off over time, the value of your potential award declines while the premiums stay the same! Replacing our mortgage insurance with term-life insurance is our course of action.

Welcome to this post’s ellipse.

“I figured you’d write one post about the trip,” Amandi Khera commented, not long after we had returned from the New Year’s in Las Vegas trip with Carlos Montoya and Prairie Jamie. “But it’s like this on-going series of stories.”

On January 24, 2009 I left the story at:

After 'Mamma Mia', Jamie, Amandi, Carlo and I returned to our Strip-side hotel room at the Monte Carlo to do a health assessment. Jamie was at the end of her stamina for the day so she and Carlo decided to return to their room at the Red Rock, and Amandi and I changed clothes for the nightclubs.

There is a black&white photograph of me at age 4 taken by my mother. In it, I am sitting on our family couch, looking up at the camera with an expression of clear surprise. There is a Playboy magazine across my lap, open at the centerfold.

It’s not likely that my awareness of Playboy Clubs began in that fraction of a second in 1969, but it was definitely in my childhood that I began creating mental models of what the places must be like. They were as fantastical as castles. And Playboy Bunnies occupied the same domain of rarified existence as Disney Princesses. It was impossible to believe that I would ever set foot in a Playboy Club.

So, I’ve been [thinking about] them for almost forty years.

It had taken some negotiation with Amandi for her to agree to visit the Playboy Club at the Palms Casino with me. I trust that patronizing an institution so closely associated with our culture’s objectification of women underlay Amandi’s objections, but we worked out the deal that she would accompany me to the club and I would accompany her to MOON, one of Las Vegas’ best dance clubs, conveniently located one story higher in the Palms Tower.

Amandi and I each geared up in our night-club finery, and Carlos dropped us off at the Palms as he and Prairie Jamie headed back to their room at the Red Rock Casino.

The line behind the velvet ropes leading to the Playboy elevators was about two-hours long, time enough for us to have another losing bout at the craps tables before we were able to enter the elevator car and visit the legendary environ of the world’s only remaining Playboy Club.

It was kitchy and modern at the same time. The hostesses and blackjack dealers wore the classic, bunny uniforms, and one of the hostess bunnies asked us if we needed anything once we’d sat down in a pair of zebra-skinned armchairs.

“There!” Amandi noted in a congratulatory tone. “Now you’ve talked with a real Playboy Bunny!” I was pretty pleased about that, and with the irony that Amandi had discovered herself more displeased by the other female patrons whose skanky-manner-of-dress was more revealing than that of the Playboy Bunnies.

Amandi drew a cigarette. And though I’m a non-smoker, I suggested that sitting in a zebra-skinned armchair in a 60’s reminiscent Playboy Club would be the most fitting circumstances for me to have a smoke. Amandi agreed, passed me one, and offered me a light. She asked if I wanted inhalation instructions, but I didn’t take her up on them.

We each had a drink. I played five $25 hands of Bunny-dealt blackjack (the minimum bet at the club). She dealt herself three 21s, pushed my 20, and beat my 19. So, down another $100, Amandi and I finished off the night upstairs at MOON. Amandi said MOON was a great dance club, and its views of the Las Vegas Strip were spectacular.

The World Financial Group advisors rattled through our health questionnaires quickly. After meeting with us bimonthly throughout 2008, they had a pretty good impression of our lifestyles.

“… and you’re both non-smokers,” one of them said as she sped through the checklist of lifestyle habits.

“That’s right,” Hannah answered quickly.

The advisor seemed to take notice at my pause.

“I had one cigarette on December 30th, 2008,” I reported, dutifully.

“What?” Hannah exclaimed. The advisor sat back in her chair and exhaled.

“I have to report that as ‘smoker’,” the advisor explained, as it was within one year of the date of application. “This might change the premium from what I’ve quoted you.” She offered that she would submit the application to the insurance underwriters with a cover letter explaining the circumstances of the single cigarette, hopefully nullifying its financial impact, but she could not promise anything.

It’s true, you know: what happens in Vegas really should stay in Vegas.

We who love dioramas

2009-12-21T02:04:28Z

I'm still trying to get back in the swing of writing in my blog.

At a meeting of the Theatre YES board of directors I learned that my fellow board member, Amanda Hedden, loves dioramas.

I love dioramas. Ever since my grade school teacher taught me to punch a hole in the end of a shoe-box and populated it with toy soldiers and barnyard animals, I've been enchanted by them. So when the Edmonton Art Gallery curated a show featuring David Hoffos, who creates the most mind-blowing dioramas ever, well, I was absolutely blown away.

Here is my recycled post from 2004, and a link to David Hoffo's website.

January 3, 2004

Despite the cold, -26 degrees C, Hannah and I took a bus trip downtown to see the Kim Adams/David Hoffos exhibit at the EAG. The Edmonton Art Gallery is now handing out the circular metal clips with admission, very like the kind the Metroplitan Museum of Art in New York uses. The EAG logo reminds be of the background of the Met logo, too.

The Adams/Hoffos exhibit is the most fun art show I’ve seen in a long time.

Hannah and I had a fun time together. The Hoffos display was as much a fun house as it was a diorama exhibit. In addition to his ingenious use of mirrors to create infinite space in his dioramas, Hoffos projects lifesize images of people onto cut-outs making it look like the gallery is populated with people.

The diorama above, Another City, is no bigger than a cupboard, but with the use of lights and mirrors it appears to be a window onto a Bladerunner-like city, right down to a flying car.

Kim Adams works are festive, sometimes life-size, sometimes HO scale, sometimes both at the same time, depictions of univironments – vehicles or shacks apparently designed as self-sufficient homes, or for specific-non-vehicular purposes. One plastic model of a motorized tricycle seems to be a Buddhist shrine on wheels.

Adams use of dioramas depicting crowded amusement parks was particularly engaging.

Afterwards, we walked to City Centre East, previously known as Edmonton Centre, for a spot of lunch. We used two more Entertainment coupons (we used a 2-for-1 to get into the EAG), and bought 2-for-1 burritos at Taco Bell, and 2-for-1 drinks at Orange Julius. All told, it made for a cheap date.

In addition to the Adams/Hoffos exhibits, EAG was also showing Other Landscapes, a curation of works depicting Canada’s impacted natural world: forests being logged, minerals being mined; the sort of images that used to grace Canadian paper money before the environmental impact of these industries became popularly known. Hannah and I were both captivated by a group of seven painter’s canvass, Prairie Road, by Charles Comfort. His depiction of a prairie road at sunset, under a vast purple sky evoked that synthethesia that I associate with the great paintings and poetry. We felt as if we could feel the sun beating down on the landscape. The reproductions in the exhibit guide, and the digital image below, fail to do the work any justice at all.

Link: http://davidhoffos.com/?page_id=10

Also mentioned at: http://mylesk.livejournal.com/70954.html

In honor of Copenhagen

2009-12-14T04:05:16Z

I promised myself that I would write a blog post today, and a confluence of events – the current UNFCC conference unfolding in Copenhagen, and some recent e-mail correspondence – has determined that the subject of this post shall be climate change.

There seem to be two dominant modes of engaging in this issue: political and scientific; albeit, these certainly do not seem to be at all exclusive. But when I consider how I’ve been thinking, it occurs to me that I do not parallel how governments or scientists approach the matter of climate change, rather, my thoughts are more informed by the approach utilized by multi-national corporations and the military. In other words, it is a strategic approach. In fact, the most compelling speech I’ve ever heard about global climate change was at the Strategic Foresight Conference 2008, delivered by Gwynne Dyer to an audience of government and military officials, and oil company executives.

Long-lasting institutions like governments, multi-national organizations, and armies succeed based on their levels of preparedness which is informed by strategic analysts who specialize in guessing about the future. My calling their work “guessing” is a disservice, I know. The methodology they employ is rigorous and thoughtful, and has proven its value over the decades, and will undoubtedly prove itself again.

My personal version of strategic forecasting is based roughly on the work of Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May described in their book Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers and relies on careful assessment of three sets of factors: what is known, what is not known, and what is assumed. And I apply it to the climate change issue this way:

Part One
It is known that:
The ecological carrying capacity of the Earth is finite.
Human population and consumption patterns already exceed the sustainable carrying capacity of the Earth's global ecological system.
The global ecological system in question evolved following the carbon sequestration of the Carboniferous Period 286 million years ago.
Carbon dioxide has specific chemical properties, which include absorption of long-wave radiation and solubility in water.
Carbon dioxide affects all ecological processes upon which human life depends in both physical and chemical ways.
Every year, human activity liberates an additional 6 gigatonnes of carbon (25 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide) from the lithosphere that would otherwise be unavailable to the biosphere.
Since 1832, there has been a 35% increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
When you alter the physical and chemical properties of an ecological system, something will happen.

What is unknown:
Whether the “something” will be to increase the Earth’s capacity to support human life, or decrease it.

What is assumed:
That the “something” will decrease the Earth’s capacity to support human life.

Conclusion:
Increasing CO2 concentrations in the Earth’s atmosphere probably means that humanity has even less time to transform our consumption patterns to fit within the Earth’s carrying capacity than otherwise would be the case.

Part Two
It is known that:
To live within the absolute limits of the Earth’s carrying capacity, humanity must improve the material and energy efficiency of everything we do.
Humans will only change their behavior if there is direct benefit to changing, or direct cost to not changing. (In other words, "to make the world a better place for your children and your grandchildren" just isn't going to cut it.)
Many changes that reduce carbon-intensity also increase material and energy efficiency.
A direct cost that many humans try to avoid are taxes.

It is not known whether there is political leadership and integrity to design and implement a just and effective carbon taxation regime. (Cap and trade is a financial scheme that will primarily create a new tradable commodity at great cost for much less reliable benefit.)

It is assumed that with sufficient levels of public involvement, the right carbon taxation scheme can be designed and implemented.

There is a lot of unspoken detail and argument subsumed within this ideological construct which I'm looking forward to debating.

@LuxorLV Twitter

2009-11-20T22:20:38Z

RT @501Places: What is the soundtrack to your travel memories? http://bit.ly/1tqeFM #travel #vegas For me, Beautiful Life by Ace of Base!
about 4 hours ago from web

Excerpt from the Draft CASA 3-Year Business Plan

2009-10-26T03:41:14Z

K from the Alberta Capital Airshed Alliance asked me to "say good things about airsheds" when working on the proposed new CASA business plan.

I'm posting this here because, darn it, sometimes 140 characters just isn't enough.

2.1 Review and asses the roles and responsibilities of CASA and existing and future airshed zones. Explore the role of CASA in supporting airshed zones to undertake management roles and align with regional planning through a multi-stakeholder process.

Two Things Have Been Going On

2009-10-18T23:33:23Z

It actually pains me that I haven't posted in over a month. Paradoxically.

About a month ago, I started feeling symmetrical sensations in both my hands. Never in the same place two days in a row. I think it was the backs of my hands on the first day, but I can't remember the order over the weeks. Every day I've felt some sensation - tingling, ache, numbness, stiffness - somewhere - in the fingers, the wrist, the thumb, the knuckles. And usually symmetrical; on the same spot in the left hand as the right, on the same day.

I haven't been to a doctor yet, but have acquired a now complete collection of input devices for my MacBook - two ergonomic USB keyboards, a tablet, a track-ball mouse, a touchpad (plus gel-pads) - that I rotate through every work day to keep from over using any single part of my hands. This system probably explains why the sensations seem to move around every day.

Hannah brought The Carpal Tunnel Self-Help Handbook home for me from the Edmonton Public Library and I learned that this kind of repetitive strain injury is either caused by inflammation of the tissue surrounding the arm/wrist/hand nerves; or by the buildup of scarred connective tissue on the nerves themselves. And that pretty much everything is good for treating carpal tunnel syndrome from asprin, Percodan, beer, table wine, meditation, yoga, ice packs, heating pads, Valium, steroids. Pretty much everything except work, and fibre.

In addition to my new zoo of peripheral input devices, I've been making great use of my Skype account's phone-out feature and calling people when I'd have otherwise e-mailed them. When I do type, I try to slow down and press the keys rather than striking them.

Expedia Report

2009-10-09T21:19:30Z

Dear Expedia and Ramada Hotel Downtown Calgary,

In response to your e-mailed invitation of October 7th to provide customer feedback, please accept the following report on my recent experience with the services of your organizations under Expedia Itinerary #129410729766 for two rooms at the Ramada Downtown Calgary on September 22, 2009.

This was a business trip for a September 23rd board meeting of a policy development group made up of industry, government, and non-government organizations called the Clean Air Strategic Alliance (http://www.casahome.org/?page_id=10) of which I am vice-president and co-chair. The two reserved rooms were for myself and for a fellow board member, Ms. Nashina Shariff, who was also attending this meeting in downtown Calgary. Ms. Shariff is a regular guest of the Ramada Downtown Calgary and we are both frequent users of on-line booking services, though this was our first reservation using Expedia.

Despite holding e-mailed travel confirmation from Expedia, we were advised by reception upon arrival there were no reservations for us. The duty-manager (Wayne) further explained that we were among a 3-day cluster of customers who had been sold rooms at the Ramada that were not in fact available and that the Ramada was working with Expedia to resolve these situations. No other rooms in downtown Calgary were available and my colleague and I ultimately imposed on some relatives of mine who live in convenient proximity to downtown at 9:30pm that night.

On September 25th I spoke with Eric of Expedia about the status of refunding to me the cost of the two rooms. I was assigned Case ID #54247290 and instructed that I was to secure faxed confirmation from the Ramada that the two rooms were not available to us. I spoke again with Wayne, Ramada duty-manager, who advised that such documentation had to be issued by General Manager Frank Stewart, and that this would be done when next Mr. Stewart was available.

During the week of September 28th I inquired again with Expedia to confirm that the fax from Ramada had been received. Expedia could not confirm this. I immediately left a voice mail for Mr. Stewart asking for confirmation that the fax had been sent, but received no response.

On October 7th I spoke with Jane of Expedia who advised that no fax from the Ramada had yet been received and that I needed to continue efforts to acquire this documentation. Given the frustration I’d experienced to that point, I asked Jane to call Ramada. She put me on hold and acquired the required information by phone within 15 minutes. She then advised that the next steps for Expedia processing my refund may take up to 30 days! (Jane, herself, was the most helpful person to deal with in this entire transaction.)

The cumulative effect of:
- arriving at Ramada reception with a colleague and having apparently mismanaged our reservations
- relying on relatives late at night for accommodations
- the administrative work that was asked of me between Expedia and Ramada; and
- the length of time that returning my money is expected to take

leaves me with a profound and unresolved dissatisfaction with this situation.

Sincerely yours,
Myles Kitagawa
http://mylesk.livejournal.com/256987.html

Ranking: Jokes

2009-09-13T16:37:16Z

I like ranked lists. Sometimes I'll participate in conversations with, "my third favourite [movie] is [Jaws]..."

My least favourite pop musical is Queen: We Will Rock You. My least favourite vacation was China.

Favourite jokes get listed in chronological order rather than ranks.

1. How many hipsters does it take to change a lightbulb?

2. What's the difference between a ten story fall and a one story fall?

3. The joke about the old farmer, his wife, and the 747.

4. Knock, knock. Who's there? Banana. Banana who?

5. Habia una vez un perro llamado chiste. Se murió el perro y se acabó el chiste.

6. How many surrealist painters does it take to change a lightbulb?

Just reading this list makes me laugh.

Museums

2009-09-11T05:24:40Z

In the last eleven days, I have been to three museums. Not a usual occurrence.

Labour Day was the closing day of the Ron Mueck show at the Alberta Art Gallery. Ron Mueck is a hyperrealist sculptor from Australia who renders human subjects in silicon and fibre-glass in detail right down to the hair follicles, but changes the scale dramatically. Hyperrealism is one of my favourite modern art forms as it utilizes the best aspects of art and craft and also manages to avoid the awful deficiencies of most other modern art forms. (Please click the hyperlink for exposition of these deficiencies.)

Mueck sculpted a giant baby.

Though I’m pleased to have been able to see a Ron Mueck “show”, why is it that two pieces constitutes an art show these days?

Amandi and I didn’t spend all our time in Las Vegas gambling and visiting slimy bars. Some of the bars were very nice.

And on Sunday, August 30, having woken up to the sounds of the Luxor slot machines penetrating our hotel room (sufficiently distressing as to motivate a move from the 3rd floor to the 23rd), we decided to seek breakfast beyond earshot of a casino. Unfortunately, our south-Strip location meant that stand-alone restaurants were a grueling hike away, and when we finally did arrive at the closest Denny’s Restaurant, the wait for a table was so long that we decided to eat at the Harrah’s coffee-shop anyways.

After breakfast, we discussed some options for non-gambling activities. I pitched the pop-musical Jersey Boys.

“What’s it about?” Amandi asked as we lined up to pay our breakfast bill.

“It’s the story of Frankie Vali and the Four Seasons; this boy-band that was popular in the late-50s, early 60s,” I explained. “Did you see the movie Grease?”

“Yea,” Amandi said. “When I was a kid.”

“You know that song at the end-credits? Grease is the word…? That’s Frankie Valli.” My explanation did not inspire Amandi, and we decided to see the Bodies exhibit instead.

On our last day in Vegas we thought we’d visit the Guggenheim Museum at the Venetian, but as we passed the Bellagio aboard one of the Citizens Area Transit (CAT) double decker buses, we saw the sign advertising the Lichtenstein/Warhol exhibit at the Bellagio Museum of Fine Art and opted for that instead.

The exhibit featured Warhol’s Soup Cans, and Flowers. Why is it that two pieces constitutes an art show these days?

Too soon, we were walking through McCarran airport towards Gate B14 to board Westjet 955 bound for Edmonton, Alberta.

As we walked, Amandi was singing something.

“What song is that?” I asked. She added some volume her voice so I could make out the lyrics.

You're just too good to be true.
Can't take my eyes off of you.
You'd be like heaven to touch.
I wanna hold you so much.

“I love that song,” Amandi added.

“That’s what Jersey Boys is about,” I said. “It’s about everything it took for Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons to produce that song.”

Shout out to my community league

2009-09-08T01:03:42Z

As you might recall, the Edmonton neighborhood that I live in, Queen Alexandra, is named either for Alexandra of Denmark, Queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Empress of India from 1901 to 1910, queen-empress consort of Edward VII. Or for Salome Alexandra, the only Jewish regnant queen, last woman ruler of Judaea, the last ruler of ancient Judaea to die as the ruler of an independent kingdom, and grand-niece of the great warrior, Judah "The Hammer" Maccabee.

I prefer to think of the latter.

On August 7th and 8th, the Queen Alexandra Community League held its 2009 casino fundraiser to support the on-going delivery of the organization's programs including playground re-development as well as operating and maintaining the community league hall.

On behalf of the QACL Board and all of the Queen Alexandra residents who enjoy these programs, I'd like to extend our thanks to the following community league members who worked the casino:

Doug Bailie
Lisa Watson
Iga Speur
Helen McLean
Judy Troyer
Shirley Lowe
Ann Brown
Norm Shandro
Nona German
Russ Miyagawa
Sharon Skwarchuk
Lindsay Telfer
Marco Campana
Tracy Kitagawa
Will Jang
David Crowther
Ken Mah
Helen Wong
Kim Sanderson
Janet Schwegel
Suzanne Cook

Special thanks goes out to those people from outside our community who helped with the fundraiser:

Vicky Beauchamp
Gerry Beauchamp
Marianne Garley
Doreen Almonitis
Tom Olenuk
Estefani Fujita
Kory Lowden

And extra-special thanks to those who came in from out-of-town to help:

Jolene Shannon
Betty Brown

a large, ad hoc editorial board

2009-09-06T18:17:51Z

Brace yourselves: some of the characters in my stories are based on real people.

This means that my social circle is, at times, a large, ad hoc editorial board whose members occasionally advise on matters of accuracy, content, censorship, and application of editorial policy rules. One of the principle editorial policies of The Ephemeral Tourist is Policy 6: What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.

Today's story has been scrutinized by three editorial policy group (EPG) members: Mom, Donna-lee (my sister), and Amandi Khera; each of whom (initially, at least), advised fairly strict application of Policy 6.

"Don't be stubborn," EPG Member Mom, said as she, Donna-lee, and myself met for dinner and assorted ales upstairs at O'Byrne's Irish Pub. "You've got your mind set on telling this story."

"Well, that's essentially what I feel like my life is for," I explained, feeling more like a writer than I ever have. "My life is about experiencing things for stories. What I think I need to write this story is the right frame." Mom didn't know what I meant by "the right frame".

"He's going to make it about the dancing," Donna-lee explained. "He'll tell the main story up to [this point], and then end it today with the dancing. That way he leaves out the bad stuff and keeps all the funny stuff."

It was exactly what I was thinking about. I've felt like a writer for less than a minute and I'm already being told that I'm formulaic.

Earlier this year, Mom acquired a Dodge mini-van whose utility has been capitalized on by every member of our family in very short order. Mom has been in Edmonton with her van for the entire month of August to both help Donna-lee move into her new duplex unit and to nurse my sister as she recovers from her August 12th surgery.

Mom's van was very helpful to me on the morning of Saturday, August 29th when we took an original painting that is in my possession to the Edmonton Art Gallery's professional art conservator for cleaning before Amandi and I departed for a 4-day, 3-night vacation at the Luxor Casino and Resort in Las Vegas.

The painting was ready for pick-up by Mom and me Friday evening. Donna-lee came along for the van-ride to the conservator's home office and the three of us planned to go for dinner at O'Byrne's Irish Pub after completing the errand.

"Did you and Amandi have fun in Vegas?" Mom asked as she drove the mini-van through Edmonton's downtown.

"Oh, yea," I reported. "Though the overall effect of everything that happened feels kind of surreal to me. For example, last Saturday began here with this novel experience: I've never been to an art conservator before; which reminded me of visiting a veterinarian ~ the two of us discussing the health and longevity of this beloved, non-human thing. Then in the afternoon, I was at the memorial service of my neighbor who died of cancer. And that night I was in Las Vegas dancing at Dick's Last Resort at the Excalibur. Overall, it all felt kind of surreal.

"So, Amandi and I are at Dick's," I continued "and their house band is playing raunchy rock & roll versions of popular songs." You may recall that we previously visited Dick's Last Resort on our earlier Vegas trip in December last year. It's the place whose motto is you can't kill a man born to hang and has made being crude and obnoxious its service standard. I think of it as a fun place. Amandi thinks of it as that "slimy bar filled with skanky girls."

"They're playing cover songs like I Love Rock & Roll and Blister in the Sun, and when they play Michael Jackson's Billie Jean, Amandi and I get up and join the dance floor.

"So, we're dancing ~ and you know how when you're on a crowded dance floor people can sometimes mix it up? This girl with black hair and a black party dress and a blue drink turns and joins us and, for a moment, we're dancing in this triangle. Then Black & Blue Girl leans over to Amandi and asks, 'Are you together?'. Amandi says no. Then Black & Blue Girl turns back and dances up to me and makes her play."

"What?!" Donna-lee exclaimed with absolute astonishment. "Get OUT!". After a moment, she added, "You must be a good dancer!" with residual skepticism and amazement.

The bad stuff which was cut out of that story is this: when I tensed and leaned slightly away as Black & Blue Girl draped her arm around my neck, which body-language signaled rejection of her advance, my brain was not thinking "NO WAY! I'm married!". Instead, I was bewildered and thinking, "How can anyone make this kind of decision based on 15 seconds of information?".

This post has been reviewed and determined funny by Hannah, E.P.G.

Character Tags

2009-09-03T03:40:19Z

It seems like everyone in Amandi Khera's life takes turns telling her she should quit smoking. Contracts have been negotiated on napkins and promises made to persuade her to quit. I know that she knows she should quit. I think I’ve told her she should quit maybe three times, but not too many times considering that we’ve known each other for going on eight years.

But if Amandi Khera were just a character in stories that I made up, I’m not sure I’d write her quitting smoking. I’d probably keep it as a character-tag; a signature action that she always did to help cement her image in the reader’s mind. There is a media-file photo of her in the files at the saffron office from a set of pictures shot on Edmonton’s Walterdale Bridge with the Epcor Unit 11 power plant in the background. Amandi is leaning against the green bridge rail in her denim jacket, looking slightly side-long at the camera. Between the fingers of her right hand hangs a cigarette ~ held with neither affectation or remorse. Just matter-of-factly there, as though it were an inseparable element of her character.

On August 29, Amandi and I took a four-day, three-night trip to Las Vegas as a kind of relief reward for spending the summer of 2009 doing too much work. The idea was floating around that Amandi might quit smoking on the trip. My Mom, who doesn’t know Amandi very well, but likes her (so much so that she made a point of telling me, “I don’t know Amandi very well, but I like her”) agreed to give us a ride out to the Edmonton International Airport. Donna-lee came along for the ride as well.

With our suitcases off-loaded on to the airport curbside, we waved farewell to my mom and sister as they prepared to drive away. The passenger side window rolled down and my mom leaned over to say, “Don’t smoke while you’re down there, or you’re grounded!”

“Okay, okay,” Amandi said, smiling, and holding up her hand, as though playfully placating my mother.

“I’m talking to him!” Mom said.

Other Moments

2009-09-03T01:53:04Z

When Hannah laughs really hard, tears well in her eyes, she wrinkles the bridge of her nose, and she hangs her head, leaning against something solid like the kitchen counters.

A bit of dialogue that we repeat often goes like this:

Myles: You sure laugh a lot.

Hannah: You make me laugh.

Something I've said only once: When I die, if I go to heaven I think it will be like this ~ I get to re-live all of the times that I've made you laugh.

One evening a few weeks ago, Hannah spotted a shred of newsprint that was stuck to the back of our living room couch. She picked it off the couch with her fingers and started to carry it in the palm of her hand to the kitchen waste pail. The scrap of newsprint, which was actually a moth, fluttered up from her hand into the air before her and she hopped backwards, making a surprised squeak sound.

"When I die, if I go to heaven I get to re-live all the moments I've made you laugh - and that one."

Theatre YES Doctrine MKV1

2009-08-26T15:17:14Z

Following the tried and true corporate practice of interlocking boards, I serve on the board of directors of an Edmonton theatre company whose principals are also board members of the Toxics Watch Society of Alberta.

Last night, the board of Theatre YES convened on the patio of the Hotel MacDonald for a meeting to, among other things, review the mission and mandate of the company.

The people serving on the Theatre YES board bring a variety of ambitions and expectations to the organization. Synthesizing these interests into a coherent expression of purpose requires first that they all are articulated in some form so that the group can understand the range of their scope and overlap. Board members were assigned the exercise to draft a mission/mandate statement for the company from their own perspective, as though the company existed only for their own personal ambitions.

My current thinking is this:

At Theatre YES, we believe:

1. Our world is complicated, and media that attempts to simplify makes the problems of a complicated world worse.

2. Better solutions to our problems are possible where people have the benefit of many perspectives.

3. Perspective is built on powerful stories shared with empathy.

Theatre YES artists tell these stories. Our goals are:

1. To identify and grow the Edmonton audience that is searching for stories that are both relevant to the real world and different from their own.

2. To present stories - classic or modern, from around the world and around the block - that will affect the perspectives of this audience.

3. To connect this audience with non-theatre communities that are working on real solutions in a complicated world.

Theatre YES. Expect Affect.

Partially Recycled Post on Backyard Life

2009-08-23T05:18:01Z

On August 24, 2003, I wrote:
The dark green, 1999 Toyota Tercel looks pretty much like any other of its popular make and model in the City of Edmonton, but it is unique. The silver disk next to the trunk lock is a subtle clue, the cap to the ignition key lock box. The Car Sharing Cooperative of Edmonton is the only organization providing mobility service to Edmontonians without the burdens and liabilities of private vehicle ownership.

Hannah and I took the Tercel through the unfamiliar suburbs of Riverbend yesterday afternoon, investigating the hypothesis that upper middle class garage sales are qualitatively different from those “downtown”. (I still find it difficult to consider Queen Alexandra “downtown” but people call it that.) Riverbend garage sales are dominated with children’s goods – outgrown clothes and toys, Happy Meal promotionals and books. It wasn’t until we moved to Aspen Gardens did we have a find: a 1/4 sized ping pong table.

Our driveway at the 1912 is a grass, gravel and dandelion space with the decaying garage on one side and the parked Festiva on the other. We set up the ping pong table and played about ten games with a final count of Myles 9, Hannah 1. Hannah took to ping pong enthusiastically.

“I’m glad we got the ping pong table,” she said after we packed it up for the day.

On Friday evening, August 22, 2009, five years and 363 days later, Gil, Amandi and I were relaxing on the deck and the 1/4 sized ping pong table happened to come up. Old Strathcona is crowded with Fringe Festival goers and we had decided to meet for beers at The Suite rather than brave the patios of O'byrne's Irish Pub or another Whyte Avenue Bar. I was very pleased by Gil's comment about my prostrate knapweed crop as he biked into the Vacant Lot of Eden.

"It looks like a lawn," he said.

"Awesome! Thanks!" I replied. "It's my weed topiary." Wikipedia says, topiary is the art of creating sculptures in the medium of clipped trees, shrubs and sub-shrubs. The word derives from the Latin word for an ornamental landscape gardener, topiarius, creator of topia or "places". I am sculpting a lawn-shaped patch of knapweed.

Hannah just read the nearly six-year old text over my shoulder and declared that she doesn't trust my writing because I don't remember things accurately. I pressed her about which part wasn't right: that I won nine out of ten ping pong games? That she said, "I'm glad we got the ping pong table"? It was the line, Hannah took to ping pong enthusiastically.

Yes ~ I can see the problem with writing about another person's subjective experience. Hannah isn't just a character that I'm making up, whose feelings about something I simply declare.

Coincidentally though, remembering things is actually what I want to post about this morning. Earlier this week I woke with with an interesting epistemological issue.

"I either couldn't sleep last night because my back hurt," I told Hannah. "Or I dreamed I couldn't sleep because my back hurt."

I'm finding it an unsolvable question.

Sometime between August 24, 2003 and the demolition of the 1912, on that patch of gravel and dandelions between our sagging old garage and the parked Ford Festiva, Gil, Amandi, Shipman, and I played each other in a round-robin tournament of 1/4 scale ping pong. We either did this, or I dreamed we did this. In the dream, there are Christmas lights strung overhead, adding colour to the night sky.

As we chatted on Friday evening, I asked Gil and Amandi if they remembered playing 1/4 scale ping pong one summer night.

"We played ping pong, and we burned old raspberry canes in your chiminea," Gil reported. The image of Shipman, lit with flickering orange light and poking the fire with a stick, flashed in my mind and I felt a measure of assurance ~ a bit of peace that comes with affirmation.

A Sketch of Morning Coffee

2009-08-16T17:14:31Z

The weather for the summer of 2009 has been poor. The spring was cold and long and consumed some of July. Only its last weeks and some of August felt like summer. And now as the eighth month is ending, the air cools and I already have yellowed and crisp leaves littering my deck.

August 2009 means that we have lived in The Suite for two years now. The cool sunshine outside our back windows invited me to take my coffee out onto the deck this Sunday morning, wearing still my pajamas, with gumboots on my feet. I do not sit here often, and never before at this hour of the morning. And I am struck by how the time of day and perspective makes this place so wholly new.

Our yard is lit from the east, as though I’m sitting on the deck of a houseboat that has turned in its moorings. Sunday traffic on 109th street, beyond our wall of spruce and ash trees, is intermittent so the whooshing sound of tires on asphalt resembles tumbling waves. Crows and songbirds sound. A diesel horn.

Note to Long-time Readers

2009-08-15T18:12:57Z

Please take note that due to increasing work-related traffic to this site, there will be a slight increase in the use of 'Friends Only" post filtering. Please comment to be added.

Facebook Link Test

2009-08-15T16:27:00Z

Can Facebook be used as an image storage site?

From Wikipedia's Buddhism Entry

2009-08-11T06:08:33Z

Just as it is difficult to obtain birth as a human, it is also difficult to be born at the time when a Buddha's teaching is still available. Out of the infinite kalpas (incredibly long periods) in time, most have no Buddhas appearing in them at all. The present kalpa is called "Fortunate" because it is said that 1,000 Buddhas will appear in it, something that is very unusual.

For this reason, Buddhist teachers say that one's present condition as a human being should be valued very highly, and not allowed to slide by, as the combination of existence as a human and the presence of a Buddha's teaching may not come again for a very long time. Any human, in this view, who finds himself or herself in a position to learn the Dharma, would be remiss if he or she did not take advantage of it. This view also stands in contrast to those who would claim that, if one is to be reborn multiple times, there is no need to worry about one's actions in this life as they can always be amended in the future; rather, there is no assurance that in a long series of lives one will ever obtain the right circumstances for enlightenment, so it is important to seize the day.

With regard to a fortunate human life, Pabongka Rinpoche said: "Instead of feeling so much regret when we lose our money, we should develop regret when we waste our human life."

Casinos and Community Values

2009-08-10T17:13:22Z

I have to do some writing today, which means a blog post warm-up is in order.

On August 7th and 8th, members and supporters of the Queen Alexandra Community League worked its 2009 fundraising event at the Palace Casino, West Edmonton Mall. Alberta employs a “charity partnership” model where a crew of charity volunteers provides labour at a privately owned gambling facility and the night’s proceeds are shared among the government, the facility, and the club. The tasks are simple, but the hours can be gruelling. Ephemeral Tourist cast-members who worked the event were Hannah, Kari Anderson, Gil, Prairie Jamie, and Carlo Montoya. Lise Ellyhin came down with the flu, and we didn’t have to call in Amandi for emergency back-up.

The event connects in my mind with another conversation I had recently (with whom currently escapes me) regarding the contrast between “family values” and “community values”. The speaker was explaining how the term “family values” refers to the largely suburban population that prioritizes individual or narrowly-focused responses to social and economic problems - the people who live in gated communities and shop at WalMart as the primary means of coping with crime and enhancing prosperity. This contrasts with the idea of “community values” where the general welfare and solutions to social and economic problems are a shared responsibility. Primarily found in urban communities, these people favour more systemic approaches to issues.

Of course, no one is purely one or the other, but it occurred to me as I considered the list of people who were working at this event ~ which is the single largest revenue source to support the programming, overhead, and infrastructure of the league ~ in comparison with the number of people who live within the four-corners of this neighborhood ....

... well, I won’t draw any conclusions just yet.