Yellow

When I was driving around on Sunday, I was listening to a composite of my Coldplay albums. At one point, the song Yellow came on, and I stilled my automatic tendency to shoot past it. It's not that I hate the song; far from it. It might be the most beautiful song I've ever heard. It's a song that makes me want to believe in God.

I first heard it in the summer of 2004, shortly after a friend I'd known for ten years died, far, far too young, of cancer. The song tore my heart out every time I heard it, but not so much because it made me sad, but because it seemed to offer so much impossible hope. I don't listen to it often. I don't want to become jaded; for it to become just another song. It has the power, when I'm alone, to cause me not just to weep but actually to blubber, stone cold sober. And to me, that's a wonderful thing I'd be loathe to lose. So I leave the song alone, except…

It's been a year or two since I've indulged, and I wondered if it would still have that same power over me. Yeah. By the time the song arrived at its first chorus, I was in tears. And I remembered my friend.

Now I've heard the songwriter's official version of what the song means. If I recall correctly, it's about the love of a man for a woman. Pretty standard interpretation. But in university, I become convinced of the merits of deconstructionism, and so I know that meaning is not in the text. It's in what we bring to the text. It's in our personal experience and our understanding of the words themselves. Communication is an approximation at best; it happens inside the mind of each of us, and not so much between us. And so, without fear of contradiction, I can say that to me, the song means something else.

To me, this is the voice of some loving creator, declaring his love to every sentient being in his creation. Then the voice of that being made savior through his own actions and sacrifice in the world itself. The promise of life after death, of greater things than even this world. The melody of the song begins in turmoil, and alternates between peace and strife, finally ending with the most sublime stillness and intimacy. To me, this song is a masterpiece that humbles anything ponderous and circumspect by Bach or Handel. This is a depiction of a humble, loving, understanding God, speaking to the heart and soul of every creature with any kind of a mind…

Look at the stars:
Look how they shine for you
And everything you do
Yeah they were all yellow

I came along
I wrote a song for you
And all the things you do
And it was called 'Yellow'

So then I took my turn
Oh what a thing to've done
And it was all yellow

Your skin
Oh yeah your skin and bones
Turn into something beautiful
D'you know you know I love you so
You know I love you so

I swam across
I jumped across for you
Oh what a thing to do
Cause you were all yellow

I drew a line
I drew a line for you
Oh what a thing to do
And it was all yellow

Your skin
Oh yeah your skin and bones
Turn into something beautiful
D'you know for you I bleed myself dry
For you I bleed myself dry

Its true:
Look how they shine for you
Look how they shine for you
Look how they shine for you
Look how they shine for you
Look how they shine for you
Look how they shine for...

Look how they shine for you
Look how they shine for you
Look how they shine.

Look at the stars:
Look how they shine for you
And everything you do.

In my mind, I envision the video as formed by animations of simple children's drawings in crayon… bright splashes of waxy colour that shimmy and tremble with life, but dart around as though under the gaze of God. Souls in yellow, shining brightly and leaping free of tired, corrupt bodies they've enjoyed but no longer need; moving together, joining the stars of the song, and the brightest light of all.

It's not that I believe these things. Ultimately, I don't. I just yearn for them, dearly, to be true. This is how I want the world to be, though I know it isn't. But that I can derive such joy from the song just contemplating what could be is a wonder to me.

More dead in Afghanistan...

I was going to start off by mentioning that what prompted this entry was recent the death of Pte. Kevin McKay in Afghanistan, and his homecoming down the 'Highway of Heroes' on the weekend. It looks like another Canadian soldier,  however, was killed in Afghanistan just today. I honestly don't know how many that makes now... somewhere between 140 and 150?

I never approved of Canada taking part in the invasion of Afghanistan, not even at the beginning. I had an argument with my dad about it. He's not a big jingoistic warhead or anything, but he did spend over 20 years in the service and so he has his own perspective about the place and uses of the military that differs from mine – I will quite freely admit here that I've never had to serve the country in that capacity. But that in and of itself doesn't invalidate my opinion... or shouldn't, anyway.

In what I've heard referred to as "mission drift", a lot of people have forgotten why Canada took part in the invasion of Afghanistan in October, 2001. It wasn't to get rid of the Taliban, although that's become the standard line the "truth" has morphed into. No, we entered Afghanistan to aid in apprehending Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda agents suspected to be responsible for the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001, about a month earlier (and I will admit, as much as I opposed it, that standing on principle and saying "no" to the US at that moment in time was nearly impossible — look at the scorn heaped on France two years later over Iraq — and the world of Realpolitik has taken us someplace we really shouldn't have gone). What actually happened, if you recall, was that the US demanded of the Afghan government the handover of these people. The Afghans responded by saying first that they did not know the whereabouts of these people, and that secondly, even if they did, they would have to be shown the evidence in order to extradite them under international law. The United States and its blue-eyed posse basically replied, "Badges? We don't need no steenking badges!" and off we all went; due process and respect for the sovereignty of (non-Western, non-nuclear) nations be damned. Well, Osama's still out there, somewhere, so I guess the Afghans weren't lying about not knowing where the guy is, because after eight and half years, we don't know, either. And so we've conveniently put that out of our minds and the war in Afghanistan has become about liberating the place and instilling democracy. You know, for its own good... the way we used to force Christianity on other countries for their own good. But of course, that was wrong. What we're doing now couldn't possibly be wrong... because it's good, right?...

We come to these questions of absolutes. And I've heard people say that there are some ways of living that are inherently better than others. I heard it from Churchill with his crack about democracy being the worst form of government except for all the others. I heard it recently during a rum-fueled debate I had with a friend about our role in Afghanistan (and its original reason had apparently slipped his mind, too; he was under the misapprehension that we were "peacekeeping" there – a very recent, and very wrong, misuse of a valued term for a beautiful idea). It's unquestionable that there are things that human beings in general naturally find more agreeable; the problem comes in assuming that everything one happens to find agreeable or valuable is therefore desirable for all humanity, at all times, and in all circumstances. It also ignores that fact that there is no society human beings can forge in which everyone is happy, in which no one is disadvantaged, in which there are no winners and losers, no parasitism and no victims. They exist in our own culture, though we, naturally, wave them off blithely as ragged ends to an otherwise perfect tapestry we can't remedy, or whose fault is in themselves rather than the nature of our society. But we're all too eager to point to the faults and monstrousness of other societies as endemic and curable... by us.

The obvious example here is the Taliban. Are the Taliban bad guys? Do they do awful things? Would I want to live in a country run by people like them? Well, to answer the last question, no, I wouldn't. I wasn't brought up in a country like that. But that's the point: for people who were, that's the norm; indeed, it may even be to them a sensible and desirable way to live. There are myriad ways for human beings to group themselves and govern themselves in societies, and people triumph, progress, fail, and suffer in different ways in all of them. I can have my own preferences for how to live, and wish for others to share it, without granting myself the right to bring that about by force. Those are not the same things.

Consider the virtual miracle of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. It seemed to happen so suddenly that we could hardly believe it. Victor Hugo's immortal words, " Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come" were never more blazingly illustrated. But I would remind champions of spreading democracy at the point of a bayonet that Eastern Europe was not "liberated" by the Western world bombing it back to the Stone Age. What the Western world provided was an example, a measure of success, and a standard of conduct that people could point to and aspire to; in the long run, a sea the apparatchiks could not hold back. But we didn't liberate Eastern Europe: the peoples of Eastern Europe did: slowly at first – risings in East Germany, a failed revolution in Hungary, the Prague Spring – but later, with increasing speed, as Eastern economies ossified and labour movements like Solidary sprang up that could not be countered without fear of more revolution. The idea's time had come. They were persuaded of the merits of our system, and acted to adopt them, and in the end they joined us. But the peoples of those countries did it themselves.

What I mean by this is that we have no more right to impose what we believe to be good, right, and just on Afghanistan than we did in Eastern Europe. If our way of life and our values are attractive to the people of Afghanistan, then they will take root there. But it will be the right, and the duty, of Afghans to bring that change about; it is neither our right nor our duty to insist from behind rifles, naval bombardment, or dropped from 50,000 feet. The corollary of this is to simply imagine the shoe being on the other foot. If it were the Taliban (who, after all, are certainly as convinced of the correctness of their values and their inherent superiority to those of ours) who were possessed of nuclear weapons, supersonic aircraft, and deep blue navies capable of arriving at our shores, would they then be right to invade us and instill their values here for "our own good"? If that idea makes you uncomfortable, then so should the idea that it's right when we do it.

There are other examples. The British Empire dispensed with slavery without a civil war, and over a generation before the United States finally undertook to do so. During the mid-19th century, it's unquestionable that the British Empire was powerful enough to have militarily enforced that moral on the United States – or at least, certainly have given it a damn good try. But they didn't. Why not? Because there existed a respect for similarly-complexioned country; one that caused them to agree to disagree. In the end, the appeal to what people felt to be true, deep down, about doing unto others won out, though it took four years of terrible war. If you don't think the British would have been justified in invading the United States to force an end to slavery, how can you justify the invasion of Afghanistan on the basis that it will, supposedly, end discrimination against women?

Similarly, the former dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet, was recently in Britain for medical care. During his stay there, a crusading judge in Spain issued a warrant for his arrest and extradition to Spain on the basis of crimes against humanity, for which the man has immunity at home. The British squirmed, hummed and hawed, but in the end, denied the request and let the man go home. This was almost certainly the wrong thing to do, but the British had their (cynical) reasons, and did what they did. It was their right as a sovereign state. Even if it were possible, would Spain have been justified in simply bombing London flat and demanding the British hand over Pinochet, simply because they said so? If you don't think so, then ask yourself how doing exactly the same thing to Afghanistan over Osama bin Laden can be right.

We have now been in Afghanistan longer than we were in the Second World War. Half again as long, in fact. We are "successful" only where Allied boots are actually on the ground. The moment they move on, that part of Afghanistan reverts to being whatever it is that Afghanistan is meant to be, by the will of the people who actually live there. This lesson has been learned time and time again in the modern age, and yet, somehow, forgotten time and time again. It's as though each generation has to learn it over again, but still won't credit it, thinking instead that the previous generation simply got something wrong, and that this time, it'll be different...

We can't "win" in Afghanistan because there's nothing to win. Canadian and Allied soldiers will continue to die in their hundreds and thousands fighting for a catch-22 — forcing democracy on someone — until we finally swallow our pride, admit that it was a fool's errand, and give the country back to the people who own it – to decide for themselves, among themselves, what it will and will not be – to make it in their own image, whatever that might be. That's exactly the same right we claim for ourselves, and it's the one we really do have a duty to provide.

Too soon!

Whoops, Montreal's just in the Eastern finals. Called that one way too soon. Forgot that the Stanley Cup's not awarded till sometime around the second heat wave of the summer...

Can't believe it/Je ne le peux pas y croire

So the Canadiens are going to the Stanley Cup finals. I can't believe it. Just a few weeks ago I watched the Washington Capitals beat them in a tough game I personally felt the Canadiens deserved to win. And then, the Habs went on to actually win the series! Now, if I'm not mistaken, they've come back from being down three games to one to beat the Pittsburgh Penguins... and they're going on to play for the Cup against either the Philadelphia Flyers or the Boston Bruins.

Personally, I hope it's the Bruins. I would love to see Montreal face off against another Original Six team. Now that there are, like, what? 46,271 teams in the NHL or something... doesn't Rio de Janeiro have a team yet?... how often do Original Six teams get to play each other for the Cup?

Naturally, I'm pulling for Montreal. It would be nice to see a Canadian team actually win the trophy our governor-general, Lord Stanley, presented the country with in 1893, at least a little more often than Halley's comet comes around. Forgive me, but I've always felt NHL teams in the southern US were an anathema (fortunately, they're all out of the running this year!). If you're living someplace where kids can't lace up their skates and chase a puck around a pond in the great outdoors, then you have no business having an NHL team. Period, full stop, the end. That's just how I feel. I'd much rather see Prague and Amsterdam, Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen and Moscow in the NHL than Los Angeles, Phoenix, Florida, San Jose, Dallas, etc., etc. Washington gets snow... I can respect that. Phoenix doesn't. Get lost.

So if can't be the Leafs... and let's face it, boys, it can't... I'm pulling for the Canadiens. I think they've got a chance. As far as the Leafs go, I wouldn't be surprised to see them lose four hockey games straight to the Boston Bruins. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Leafs lose four hockey games straight to the Boston Red Sox.

An Original Six playoff series... that'd be nice to see. Even nicer: the Cup back home... at least for a little while. :) Here's to Montreal and a 25th championship!

The passing of time

I spent lunch down in the food court we have in the building here where I'm working now, eating half a turkey sub, drinking Coke Zero, and poring over old and recent poetry of my own composition. Red pen I'd just bought at the drug store in hand, I crossed out the ones that made my eyes roll, and kept the others. The project is to update a body of creative work for a man I haven't seen in nearly 20 years.

When I was in university I was blessed, in my junior year, to take part in a writing course with one of this country's premier authors; a man who's won the Governor-General's Award for writing and who was short-listed for the Nobel Prize once; and who knows what else. I had no idea who he was when I sent in my portfolio to get into the class… if I had, I'm reasonably sure I would have chickened out. It was over the course of the year that I came to understand the privilege I'd been given to study with this man. It was his retirement year, and in his closing interview with me (he had one with every student who made it to the end; somewhere just over a dozen, as I recall), he said some very kind and very encouraging things to me. He made me feel like I had a future. It was maybe my proudest moment.

Two decades on or so, I've pretty much given up the idea of ever being a real "published" author, and I'm largely okay with that. I've made my peace with it and I'm just happy to amuse myself with what I can do. The only regret I have is that I feel like I let him down a little… the investment he put into me and all those other students, and the things he said to me at the end of the course. I'm probably blowing it way out of proportion; by now, he probably barely remembers me. But I can't help feeling the way I do.

There's a book store here in the building and a few days ago, I picked up the latest novel by this man. It's heavily focused on nostalgia, semi-autobiographical (as much of his work is). He prefaced the story with comments about feeling he had to tell the story now, because having reached his 80s, he wasn't sure how much time he had left. That line has filled me with a terrible longing and a barely-controllable sense of urgency.

And so, I'm trying to put together some of my efforts that don't make me blush too much. I've ordered a toner cartridge for my long-neglected laser printer. I'm working out in my mind how to set the poetry in FrameMaker… should it be part of the volumes of short stories, or something separate? (I'm leaning towards separate.) My intention is to put it all together next week, put it in a binder, and FedEx it to him. He lives in town here, and though we exchanged a handful of letters early in the decade, I just cannot barge up after what's really 20 years and knock on his door. I just could not do that, much as I'd like to. Besides, it would put him on the spot. This way, if he gets two pages in and dumps it in the recycling box, shaking his head, well… I'll likely never know. But I feel I owe it to him to show him how much his opinion meant to me, how much it made writing a joy for me, even if it never took me anywhere special in the world. Even if he never reads it, I want him to know that much and just be able to hold it in his hands. And if he should take the time to read some of it, and find some merit in it and maybe even see something of himself in it, so much the better.

Anyway, this is where I'm at today. I always hope I'll remember how special this day feels right now.

The Law of USB Inversion

The first attempt to plug any USB device into a port will result in a fumbled mismatch of the elements such as to lead the user to conclude he or she has attempted to insert the device upside down. This will result in the user turning the device over and attempting to insert it while it actually is upside down. Finally the user will conclude that he or she had the device aligned correctly in the first place and will flip it back over to its original orientation, at which point it will be successfully mated to the port.

Am I Blue (...why?)

It's strange. I'm now working up in the sky in a building almost in the heart of the biggest city in my country… okay, it's not Queen and Bay but it's only a few miles from there. I'm earning more than I ever have, and my commute is down to a single subway ride. But as I stand here in the light of the early dawn looking down on busy intersections where six-laned thoroughfares meet, I find myself pining for days when I was down there walking streets like that in my mid-20s, making so little I had to linger on for years living with my folks. But there was something about those days. They were fresh and new, full of promise, hope, adventure. I felt free. Now I'm in my early 40s and it's all about just holding on, and somehow it's making me a little blue. The thing is, I wasn't happy back then, either, and no doubt would have given an eye tooth for what I have now. What is it about human beings? It's a rare thing indeed for any of us to be content.

Sens go golfing

I'm no big hockey fan but I've watched some of the playoffs with my dad and my uncle over the last little while. They're from northern Ontario so their team is the Ottawa Senators. I kind of adopted the team for the playoffs for that reason (hey, it's not like the Leafs are ever gonna make the playoffs)... as well as the idea that it might be nice to see a Canadian team win the Stanley Cup once every million years or so.

Last night my folks called me and my dad reminded me the game was already on. The Sens were already winning 3-0. I would have tuned in even if it weren't so great, but to be honest, the idea of watching them coast to game 7 after being down 3-1 in the series had its appeal. Anyway, I tuned in.

Now, I don't know how the Ottawa Senators got three unanswered goals up on the Pittsburgh Penguins, because the team I saw from the middle of the second period on in couldn't have organized a peanut butter sandwich. One of them would have just hurt himself on the butter knife. There was no guts at all left in their play... whether that was due to complacency or simple weariness, I don't know; but their offence was lackluster and their stickhandling and passing were sloppy. They looked like a team that had given up. Even the one "goal" I did see them score, which ended up with more people than pucks in the net, was such a Keystone Kops blunderfest that the officials took ten minutes just deciding whether it was actually a goal or not (it wasn't.... and in my experience, The Disallowed Goal is usually the kiss of death for a team. It sure turned out to be this time.). None of them seemed to have any idea what to do in the rare occasion that they found themselves in control (and I use the term loosely) of the puck in Pittsburgh's end. I think everyone who's ever watched hockey knows that when you make it to the other end, you put a couple of guys in front of the opposition net; one right in front, and one deep on the other side in the hopes of catching a free puck and dumping it behind the goalie. I saw two or three chances for Ottawa to advance doing that, but every time, the puck just drifted by to the boards with no one there to stop it. It's like the Sens all decided it was someone else's responsibility or something.

On the other hand, the Penguins were all over these guys. Most of the remainder of the game was spent down in Ottawa's end with the Penguins pounding away at the Sens' goalie and the Sens getting more than a few defensive breaks. But, as it turned out, not nearly enough. The Penguins played circles around them, ate up the 'field goal' deficit, and forced the game into overtime, where they won it, 4-3. What can I say? I don't know what happened to the Senators; maybe some Penguins fan used a time machine to transport their hockey skills back to junior high school or something. Whatever it was, I just can't begrudge Pittsburgh advancing, much as I'd like to be petty. They fought bloody hard and they earned it. They deserved to win. And ultimately, geography and patriotism notwithstanding, even a fair-weather fan like me knows that's what the game is all about. Kudos to the Penguins. Sens: tee-off time's at 9; we wuz robbed, just wait'll next year, etc., etc.

P.S. I'm sure glad I wasn't in the same room with my dad last night. :)

Ontario, Canada

.

A snapshot of the national and provincial flags flying together.

Addendum: I never noticed before that the red of the Red Ensign is a little more maroon than the red of the Maple Leaf flag. Funny that it took digital photography to bring it to my notice.

Reflections in transition, redux

Yesterday was my last day at the company I've worked at for over four years. Technically it's next Thursday, but I'm taking my vacation time next week in order not to have to deal with the person they've hired to head my department. It's a long story, but I guess it can be condensed to the following... my manager resigned last May, recommended me to succeed her to a guy the company parachuted in from England to oversee a restructuring of our office. He dithered, listened to armchair quarterbacks and took their advice where our department was concerned. He let me work all summer completing projects of once-in-a-decade importance to our company and left me hanging on my status. When it was out of the way, he told me I wasn't getting the management position. A couple of months later, he gave the title to someone in the company with a department head title but no departments to head. Still, I was the effective day-to-day manager, setting deadlines for my junior and myself and tracking our tasks. I kept things on course, even when this fellow interfered with his "good" ideas for documentation. Apparently, he was ineffective, because the fellow from England decided to replace him... not with me, but with a junior writer who bailed from our company just after I started. It was the last straw. It took me four weeks, but I found a slightly better-paying job elsewhere, and now I'm out.

This is weird for me. I spent the last ten years of my life in that building, working for two different companies on two different floors. I've been amusing myself looking over my comments from THAT transition, here on this very blog. It's funny how little difference there is in some respects. I chickened out on walking the floor and saying good-bye, same as last time, and for the same reasons. I also don't have that bright, happy "bang, zoom!" feeling in taking this new job, either... it was a matter of survival and salvaging a little professional pride, not seizing a great opportunity. But this time, I'm not driving to the same building, parking in the same spot. Those days are over. This is a bigger adjustment.

Ten years. I was in that building on 9/11 when my friend Jody in Texas paged me over ICQ and told me the first tower had been hit... and then the second. I was in the place when, about a year later, his dad called me up to tell me Jody had cancer... and in the building two years later when he told me that, during a meeting I was in, Jody had died. I was there two years after that when I was told the father himself had also died of cancer. I spent weekend mornings and afternoons in that place alone, doing some of my most productive, satisfying work, feeling like I belonged and was really contributing. I feel like I really matured in my job and was rightly on the verge of something better, but at the last moment, it was denied to me, and with this insult in terms of the choice of the person to whom I would be reporting. After spending three years documenting a new product, getting the suite of manuals created, reviewed, and correcting them – when the hard work was done, that's when the English guy saw fit to hand all my work over to some half-experienced girl to simply maintain... a shopkeeper. Yeah, you could say I'm a little bitter about this. Stepped over twice, and never told why. Never told the issues, given the challenge, afforded the chance to right whatever was supposedly wrong.

But what can you do.

Well, you can email everyone in the office with a pointed, but professional, exit note, like I did...

Hi, everyone,

I know I should have come around and said this in person, but I’m really awkward at this kind of thing, so I hope you’ll forgive me for wimping out. Today’s my last day at [company name]. I’m not happy to be leaving, but recent decisions about the management of my department have made it plain to me the future of my professional career lies elsewhere. I’ve enjoyed my four years here. I’m proud of what I’ve been able to achieve, and I’m better for having worked and learned here. I would have liked for it to have gone on for years to come, and I worked hard to make that happen over the past year since [previous manager's name] left, but that’s not how it’s panned out.

To those of you who were subject matter experts for me: my sincere thanks. I literally could not have completed the tasks that I did, without your indispensable help. Some of you came through for me at times when you yourselves were under the gun with your own projects, and for that in particular I’m especially grateful. If I failed to say so then, and I hope I didn’t, well, I’m saying it now. Thank you.

I really do wish you success in your endeavours, here and elsewhere, as your own careers progress. I can be reached at...

So, anyway, the new job will be at the other end of the subway line I live on. A bit more expensive than just gas, and longer than my comfy 15-minute drive, but on the other hand, I won't have to face all that nerve-wracking traffic in the winter. And the subway leads directly into the building, which, I admit, really does kind of jazz me as very cool and very cosmo.

Not sure what else to say. This just seemed like the kind of thing you really have to blog about, if you're going to have a blog at all.

The Dream @ Vic Park & Sheppard

A heavily-reworked view looking northwest across Sheppard Avenue from the east side of Victoria Park Avenue. Largely an experiment in lens blurring with a depth mask and selective saturation and desaturation.

3D Fluffy Jr. detail

3D Fluffy Jr. detail, originally uploaded by Lone Primate.

And so here we have a nice daddy bunny offering up his son to you voracious omnivorous primates. Isn't it great to be an apex predator? :)

Just kidding. I think this is a really sweet (pun intended) packaging design, and it's clever how it incorporates the product as part of the artwork. I don't think I could eat this Easter bunny... I'd want to put on the mantle or something. :)

For you folks in the States... 85g is 3 oz.

I ♥ PANTS (50% off)

I ♥ PANTS (50% off), originally uploaded by Lone Primate.

I think this is funny on a couple of levels. First of all... "I love pants". Sounds like something you'd see on engrish.com or something. :)

Secondly, "I love pants 50% off". I, personally, like 'em 100% off. :) How about you? :D

Also, I don't think I've ever seen "pant" used in the singular before... aside from something a dog does on a warm day.

In Washington, 2010 is just 1939...

In recent years there’s been a lot of loose talk about far-flung former Soviet republics joining NATO. The idea is that once you’re in the club, you’re guaranteed protection from the Russians. Anyone who believes that need look no further than what’s going on with the Falkland Islands... again.

When Argentina invaded the Falklands in 1982, the British got the rude awakening of discovering what a fair weather friend the US is. The so-called “special relationship” was revealed to be a British pipedream as the US State Department refused to back Britain. That this was clearly a matter of central importance to the British meant nothing.

Fast forward 19 years. Terrorists attack New York and Washington. The US is determined to kick in doors in Afghanistan and Iraq. They beg for allies, moral and military. Amazingly, the British rise to the occasion. Both times. Regardless of whether I agree with that or not, it certainly shows that the British are to be depended upon.

Fast forward again 9 years. Argentina, again, is raising the issue, gathering allies in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Falkland Islanders are British citizens; none of them consider themselves Argentinian, or occupied, or in need of liberation (indeed, they celebrate June 14, 1982, the day the British retook the islands, as "Liberation Day"). The British fought, and won, a costly war on their behalf. Again, this is clearly central to the British people. Again, the US clearly demonstrates that only 1941 is their problem. 1939 is forever someone else’s. British newspapers sigh their disappointment; perhaps the lesson will sink in with the British this time. But they shouldn’t be the only ones.

Does this speak well of US commitments in Europe, or to its allies elsewhere, anywhere? Is NATO anything more than an excuse for the US to butt in on European affairs? When even Britain is shut out in the cold, can any other country on Earth really believe the US will go to bat for them when push comes to shove?

Georgia, Ukraine, et al.: take note.

Next camera for the mission

Back in November I achieved the long-sought goal of acquiring the means to capture a scene in three dimensions for real. Given the nature of the weather, I haven't been able to put it to much good use yet, but I'm intending to put it through its paces once the temperature is routinely in the positive numbers again... moreso when it's double digits.

As much as I've always wanted to shoot scenes in 3D without having to worry about whether or not a leaf moved in between exposures – much less anything larger (which has meant that 3D photograph in an urban environment was essentially impossible for me previously), it was never my intention to use the medium exclusively. Frankly, I don't think we're there yet. The facilities for people to routinely view things in three dimensions are probably still years away, and it's a difficult medium to work in (how do you stitch together three or four 3D images into a coherent panorama, for example?). I've continued to carry the G9 with me alongside the W1, and most of the time, I've preferred the G9. The W1 comes out for the icing-on-the-cake shots. This is particularly true since the image quality on the W1 is relatively poor... I don't say that with an air of disappointment; I knew that before I bought it. This is the state of the art, such as it is; it was either this or I waited years to start capturing views in 3D. But when capturing the volume of a view isn't crucial, I tend to prefer the G9. I don't now, and didn't last November, imagine I'd be leaving the G9 on the shelf with the W1 doing it all. It does what it does; the G9 does the rest.

Still, times change, and technology moves on. I've had the G9 for two years now and it's been excellent. But I have my eye on another camera now, one that will provide both new abilities and a streamline workflow for the Millennium Project of recording the here-and-now for posterity. The camera is the Cyber-shot DCS HX5V, one of Sony's two new entries with pretty much the same abilities (the other being the slightly more expensive TX7). There are some cutesy features about the new pair that I wouldn't miss if they weren't there; wireless transfer to certain devices, face recognition, cropping images inside the camera, etc. But they do have some abilities that make me reach for the HX5V.

 

What it won't do

The G9 shoots RAW. That was important to me when I got it, principally because it meant I would have the ability to squeeze shadow and highlight information out of the sensor's recorded data and form a single, wide-ranged HDR image without having to shoot multiple exposures and, again, worry about what moved in between. Like the old S80 I carried around for nearly three years, the HX5V does not record in a RAW format. Strangely enough, when I read that, I didn't have the reaction I would have anticipated. It wasn't so much a turn-off as it was a liberation. One of the things about having the ability to shoot RAW has been the sense of obligation it's imposed on me. For years I've vacillated back and forth using the XT and G9, shooting RAW to get the best image, and then remembering what a huge pain in the ass it is having to process every single image just to get something I can post on Flickr, and going back to shooting JPGs... then looking at all these 'compromise' images and cursing myself for not shooting them RAW... you see what I mean. Combine that with the fact that RAW tends to take up three or four times the space on a drive as the equivalent JPG image and it's been kind of a headache. If technology dealt with RAW images as readily as it does with JPGs and a 12MB file size weren't an issue, I'd shoot RAW all the time. But it doesn't, and it is, so having that decision taken out of my hands is, strangely, sort of a relief. I didn't think I'd see it that way.

The HX5V also doesn't have in-camera controls for sharpness, saturation, contrast, and the like. I'm not overly bothered about that because I never messed with that stuff in the camera anyway. Sharpness? Either a shot's clear or it's not; if it is, I'm certainly capable of improving it in Photoshop. Ditto the colour.

The G9 has a time-lapse video feature that's kind of kicky, fun to use experimentally, but really, hasn't amounted to much for me. I know how to do the same thing with far more compelling results using real-time video and Premiere. So that's not something I'll miss day-to-day either.

The HX5V doesn't have an optical view finder. Now, even though I haven't used a view finder on any camera but my XT since about two weeks into owning the S80 (got tired of nose smudges on the LCD), it kind of bugs me that I'm forced to depend on a battery-powered technology to compose shots. I shouldn't be; it's been how I've been doing it for about five years now, but... I just don't like not having the option. Still, obviously, it's not central to my concerns.

What it will do (why I'm interested)

The thing that led me to discovering this camera was that I'm increasingly fed up with the way I have to embed GPS data in my photographs. The process is cumbersome and cranky at every turn. First, there's the PhotoTrackr itself. When it works, it works pretty well, but there are times when it completely fails to bring up a signal. Secondly, it's often out of sync with the camera(s) in question, and when you're moving in a car, even six or seven seconds makes a difference that could, one day, be really misleading to someone without the same visual references that exist today (I mean, that's why they enabled GPS in EXIF in the first place). Sometimes the battery runs out. The software for transferring and applying the log files, not infrequently, can't find the PhotoTrackr on the COM port it's expecting to find it. All told, it works, but not as well as I'd like. Honestly, it's like working with 1990 technology in 2010.

The HX5V has GPS built into it; it's among the first cameras that do (there have been others over the past two or three years, but surprisingly, not that many). I think soon, this will be the norm, but for now, it's rare. Now, I don't know the HX5V will be any better at acquiring and keeping a signal than the PhotoTrackr. But even if it isn't, it eliminates the concern about a separate battery dying (if I run out of juice on the camera, I don't NEED the GPS facility anyway), and the rigmarole of uploading log files, matching them to photos, and having to overwrite the metadata.

Relatedly, the HX5V also has a compass, and can not only record where the photo was taken, but in which direction the camera was oriented. This is actually something I can't do now, and have been waiting to see for over a year. Someone has finally done it. I can't tell you the number of times I've looked at old photos – and not just those taken by others 50 year ago, but my own from unfamiliar places just a summer or two in the past – and spent ages arguing with myself as to which way I was looking. This facility will, hopefully, spare people in the future that kind of head scratching. Even if those "people" turn out only to be me!

The HX5V also has a couple of new facilities that will save someone like me a lot of time in post-processing. First of all, it has what Sony calls "Intelligent Sweep Panorama". That is, the camera itself has the ability to generate a panorama simply by the user sweeping it through (approx.) 130, 180, and 270 degree sweeps. The camera, which can take 10 10MP photos per second, does the work to sew the view together. Apparently, it even compensates for moving objects in the scene, though I'm not expecting great things from that. Basically, if I can stand on a hilltop or a sleepy rural intersection and get a lovely pano of what it looks like today in three or four seconds, without having to spend 15 minutes finding the photos and dragging them into another application that, as often as not, ignores half of them or craps out when the memory ceilings, that'll be just fine with me.

Another thing that will save time, if it works as advertized, is what Sony calls "Backlight Correction HDR". One of the things I've always hated about digital photography is how it never seems to represent the range of shading you remember having seen with your eye... a blue sky and details in the medium shadows. Probably it's an illusion, a trick of the mind in retrospect, but nevertheless, that's how we're used to thinking we remember seeing something, and how we expect to see it represented. The HX5V has the ability to take two different exposures in a faction of a second and merge them into an HDR shot that extends the range of detail, so that highlights and colours are preserved and shadow detail is recorded, all in the same shot. That's something that used to require a lot of work in Photoshop and, realistically, a RAW exposure (or three rock-steady AEB shots across two seconds and change). If I can routinely have pleasing shots of earth and sky together, right out of the camera, that will be gratifying.

The camera also has an image stabilization system that seems to have come from Sony's camcorder line. I gather Sony has only recently gotten over its fear of cannibalizing sales by porting its good ideas from camcorders to point-and-shoots; the facilities they've given the $450 (CDN) HX5V were features of Sony's $1000 HDRTG5V camcorder just last year. Among them is a gyro-managed optical stabilization system that, I'm hoping, will make for better road videos as we record the roads of the rural fringe that will one day be the wide boulevards of shopping malls, condo complexes, and housing tracts. The camera also records in full HD, though given the memory and speed requirements, I'm expecting to use that rather sparingly.

There are down sides to it. I don't think the battery usage is as robust as it is on the G9, for one thing. I'm concerned that the only format for images is JPG, because it's a lossy format, though if they're using minimal compression and the optics are good that shouldn't turn out to be a big concern; after all, the idea is to record something that will be informative 25, 50, or 100 years from now, with as little overhead on my end as possible. I believe this camera will do that and be the workhorse for the next two or three years of the project. Hoping to get hold of one within the month. Stay tuned.

Canada In My Pocket

Sweet song performed during a ceremony of the celebration of the 45th anniversary of the Canadian flag (Feb. 15) on Valentine's Day, 2010, in the centre court of Markville Mall near Unionville in Markham, Ontario.

The song is called Canada In My Pocket, and these are the lyrics:

Chorus:
I've got Canada in my pocket
A little bit of history
A penny, and a nickel
And a quarter and a dime
Mean a lot to you and me
It's more than pocket money
They're the symbols of our land
They're pictures of important things
For which this country stands

The maple leaf, the maple leaf
Is a beautiful sight to see
It waves 'hello'' to us below
From the top of a maple tree
And with every year that passes
It grows like you and me
So should we all grow straight and tall
Like the lovely maple tree

The beaver, oh the beaver
Is a beautiful sight to see
He's a happy, furry animal
Like a teddy bear with teeth
He's never ever lazy
He works all night and day
Building houses for his family
He's got no time to play

The schooner, oh the schooner
Is a beautiful sight to see
It's a great big wooden sailing ship
That can sail across the sea
It brings to other countries
The things their people need
And brings back things
Like chocolate bars
And books for us to read

The caribou, the caribou
Is a beautiful sight to see
He's a really big strong animal
I'm sure you'll all agree
He looks like Santa's reindeer
And he loves it when
The wind blows cold
So he lives up north
With the polar bears
'Cause he likes the ice and snow

The Photographer's Ephemeris

Last weekend I was at the library to photograph photographs by Ted Chirnside, an amateur who recorded much about the rural fringe of Metro in transition in the 1950s and 1960s, and then donated much of that to the city. A couple of the shots I was able to capture for myself purport to show the old narrow bridge that once carried Finch Avenue East over the East Don River just a little west of Leslie Street. I was delighted to find them because I know the place well.

(Incidentally, the above shots, today, look something like this.)

But when I was looking at them, a couple of things bothered me. First, the hill leading up from the bridge towards Leslie seemed away too abrupt. There's nothing like that there now. Even taking into account that the newer bridge is probably set higher from the river, it didn't jibe with me. But when I checked the single aerial photo I have of the area from the late 1950s, sure enough, there's steep incline suggested on the east end of the bridge, and a fence line that's visible on the crest in the shots. I'm at a loss to explain the difference in topography today, but there's no denying them's the facts. Things change. A few of the trees still give me pause, but I'm more convinced now than I was.

But the other contra-indicator, and this was a big one for me, was the shadow angles. They fall across Finch Avenue from the north side, which I considered impossible. The sun, I told myself, is always in the southern sky if you're north of the Tropic of Cancer, so the shadows can't fall southerly. Yet that's what I was seeing. Long sunset (or, I suppose, sunrise) shadows across Finch Avenue from the north. Impossible! The photographer, I mused, must have gotten confused over the years as to the location of which particular little tree-lined bridge (and there were dozens of them around northern Toronto and beyond) he was looking at.

But the more I thought about it, the more I started second-guessing myself. I remembered sunsets in the summer, and the angle of them over scenes I knew well, and it struck me that those angles might have been possible by very late in the day. But how could I check? I thought, there must be some resource on the net that will tell you the angle of sunset on a given day at a given latitude. So I went looking.

I found a fantastic new application called The Photographer's Ephemeris. It's freeware, and it runs on Adobe AIR (which is also freeware). It overlays rays showing sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset on a GoogleMaps map set to the location you choose, and is phenomenal for planning dramatic shots. If you know where you want to be standing and where you want to be looking, this thing can tell you down to the minute when you're going to see that. Apparently, with a little bit of work, it can even take the elevation of the horizon into account. This thing is wholly amazing! And it looks cool, too. :)

If you want to see the sun setting over SkyDome (sorry, "The Rogers Centre") from the shore of Algonquin Island, set your camera up just before 9 p.m. on June 17th. :)

Oh, and as for my "impossible" summertime shadows at the Finch Avenue bridge? Oh, yeah. They were possible, alright. Which means I'm cool to go ahead and shoot the "now" scene there with confidence. East Don River, here I come. :)

Evolution of a cat's nickname

Cat's name: Max

Nickname history

Wee Fellah/The Wee Fellah
Wee (Maxy-Wee)
Weasel
Wheezy
Squeezy
Squeezle
Squeeze
Squeezicus
Squeezicus Rex
Squeezicus Max/Maxicus
Squeezorama
Squeezetastic

Now I Am Become Snake Princess, Composer of Dreams

So I had this interesting dream this morning. I won't call this one "weird" because it wasn't. It was just interesting.

I was driving with P-Doug somewhere and we were passing a public institution of some sort — a high school or community centre or something — and a sign said they were having a book sale, so he urged me to stop. We went in and among the people, we started looking around.

I happened across this one book, a hardcover in white, that was supposedly an anthology of some Canadian writer's work. It was about 10"x8" and a little over an inch thick, and looked just like the kind of thing I used to have to buy in university. It was written by a woman and the back of the book was covered with the usual quotes of praise; the front listed some Ontarian literary awards she'd won. I started flipping through it and found it was nicely laid out; the first section was short stories, another was poetry, and then there seemed to be more stories beyond that. Many pieces were accompanied by these intriguing, scribbly little illustrations... the kind of thing you'd see in cartoons in The New Yorker or something (one that I recall, accompanying a story, featured a devastated-looking little satyr man sitting in a fountain and staring out of the page). I was delighted and I just shook my head and said, "Sold!"

There was one poem that had this line that really caught my attention. It went:

I transformed, by necessity, from murderer to snake princess.

...and there was this funny little drawing accompanying the poem of a rail-thin snake with dot eyes and a little smile, crawling to the left, wearing a tiny three-pointed crown. The snake was distended with the vague shape of a human inside. It all seemed extremely profound and I rushed to the foyer to buy the book at once.

I awoke with the line still fresh in my mind because my cat, Bonnie, was poking me in the back with one claw, trying to get me to wake up, roll over, and pay attention to her (this is not uncommon). I grabbed the writing pad in the night table and scribbled down the line. Bonnie got offended and left.

I felt let down that I wasn't going to get to read this book that had so excited me in the dream. On the other hand, I guess the odd little line that so impressed me actually belongs to me. :)

More pix, more heroes

Friday I happened to be looking around on the TPL's site and I came across a list of indexes for some very interesting photos. None of them were scanned and online, unfortunately, but they were well-described and really made me sit up and take notice. They were shot by a man named Ted Chirnside in the 50s and 60s, and it looked as though the North York Central Library kept the index.

Saturday I got up and headed over there. They had six binders of photocopied images to be used as a reference, and just like with James Salmon relative to the cards in the TRL, Ted Chirnside's collection seemed to take up half the space. The index they'd put together was terrific... it was arranged by subject and by number. I found the number index far more useful because Chirnside's images were largely in two sections, and so it was a simple matter to flip through them, wonder what the subject was, and look it up.

It was like finding James Salmon's collection all over again (indeed, it was suggested to me that they knew one another and may have even have shot subjects together; one of Chirnside's photos includes Salmon's wife and daughters taken nearly two years after he died). The unbelievable images just washed over me. Things that I never expected to see. It was weird. It was like he knew I'd be along someday, and what I'd like to see, and he shot it. A couple of shots of Old Bayview bridge over the West Don, one looking southward up the hill and showing the road still clearly visible, the other capturing both the old bridge and the current one high above it through bare trees. The intersection of Finch and Woodbine, which no longer exists. Shots of Sheppard and Woodbine (which, again, no longer exists). The drive-in theatre on Sheppard, closed in 1976 and long gone. Steeles and Victoria Park as a dead-end rural T-junction intersection; a one-lane bridge carrying Finch over the Don just west of Leslie; a weird curve in Finch Avenue near Page Avenue... even a photo of what is now Old Cummer Avenue bridge over the Don, back when it was still open to traffic and the road running up the hill beyond was clearly visible! A first; other than my own shots, I've never seen a picture of that bridge till now.

Unfortunately, as I said, his brilliant collection is not digitized and not online. Getting reproductions for comparison work is going to be expensive. Digitized copies are about $20 a pop. Getting colour photocopies (of black and white photos) at a little over $5 each might be my best solution for now. I can use the indexes to careful select photos that have "wow" power and then show what those locations look like now. It would make an interesting ongoing project.

Anyway, I'm also doing my bit for the future; paying it forward. Yesterday (Sunday) P-Doug came out with me and we fixed the G9 to my car and videoed the roads, bridges, and level crossings in what is (unofficially) Rouge Park in the northeast of Scarborough. I handed off the W1 to him and every so often we would stop and he would leap out and photograph level crossings and one-lane bridges that may not be long for this world. We have them in 3D now, and I can only hope that will really be of value to researchers someday.

Afterwards we went to a pub in the area called The Fossil and Haggis. The wings P-Doug had were REAL wings; not those tiny things you get in most restaurants. It was two-for-one day and he got two pounds of wings for about eleven bucks. Wow! I had a roast beef dip and it was nicely done. The beef was thoroughly cooked but it wasn't dry. We need to back there. It was a good spot.