This Is My Country

If you simply saw me sitting listening to the radio in Shelagh's car in the IGA parking lot this afternoon, sitting there with a full propane tank on the front seat and an empty one in the back, shoppers coming and going, there would be no way into the story of that moment. I suppose that's why the modality of the visual doesn't get much at all.

The previous hour had been small-stuff frustrating. It started as I waved the white flag in my battle against the University of Alberta's research approval website. I don't have the keenest online instincts and I tend to panic when counterintuitive obstacles arise, but that site is byzantine in its corridors and complexity. For a change of pace, I went to get some propane for a barbecue. Online man, pass the torch to caveman.

I stopped to get money on the way and got to the Hughes on 178 St. just in time to realize I had left the propane tank at home. Perfect. Back home, back to Hughes only to be told "your tank can't be filled, sir, because it expired in 2003."

Why at those precise moments do you feel wickedly hungry?

You ask, did I have enough money to buy a new tank? As if you somehow thought that was a real question?  Of course, I was $20 short. Back to the bank. (My credit card is lost again, and I am experimenting with not replacing it. Just to make my life easier.)

At this point, I am about an hour into the comedy of errors. And increasingly hungry. So I headed for Andy's IGA, but for whatever reason drove directly to Safeway, where I parked and realized through some syllogistic reasoning that I was at Safeway.

So, then I drove to IGA. I got ready to take out more money, noting that my decision not to reactivate my debit card to allow point-of-sale purchases (Shelagh had put the PIN in wrong three times and frozen it a couple of weeks ago) was a solid move. But before I headed to the bank I for some reason turned on Baba's Grooves on CKUA. Randy Newman's My Country was playing.

If we had something to say we'd bounce it off the screen/
We were watching and we couldn't look away./
We all know what we look like, you know what I mean?

Radio

And then:

Now, your children are your children/
Even when they're grown./
When they speak to you/
You go to listen to what they have to say.

His piano, his voice. I just sat there and listened and my rhizomatic thoughts went to Alex, who is in Rome, and Michael, who is in The Gorge at the Sasquatch Festival. And to Alec Baldwin who told Billy Joel he would throw away the screen for the gift of being a singer.

And I sat and waited until the last note. And then the spell broke and I walked into the IGA singing: This is my country. 

The Question For Alistair MacLeod I Didn't Ask

Shelagh Rogers had just finished interviewing Alistair MacLeod. Their conversation, which (false :) ranged from his driving an N.A.D.P. milk wagon in young Edmonton, through his thoughts about a chandelier's point of view and on to his sense of the vanished in our interior and exterior landscapes, kicked off the Words In 3D Conference happening this weekend at MacEwan.

Alistair MacLeod

It was an enjoyable chat to listen in on. Two people who know about words written (MacLeod) and breathed (Rogers) talking about the literary sensibility, the changed perspectives that time delivers, the mystery of metaphor.

And then it was time for the punctuation mark on the evening: questions from the audience.

The questions, as Rogers graciously acknowledged, promising them a home in an upcoming CBC The Next Chapter podcast, were good. Was MacLeod a writer who teaches or a teacher who writes? What did he learn from his students? Can creative writing be taught? A question about the horses on the milk wagon. And more along this vein.

As sometimes happens, my question didn't happen until the event was over and Shelagh (Kubish, that is) and I were walking back to the car.

Shelagh Rogers

First, though, a short rewind to the start of the evening:

Shelagh (Rogers, that is) started her time at the mic by welcoming the audience and reminding them she was proud to be here in Edmonton on Treaty 6 lands. It was an unexpected and effective way to remind us of the territorial plateaus we live and move in, whether recalled or unrecalled.

And that observation, rhizomatic thought being what it is, sent me to another space we are now in in parts of Alberta, that smokestacked landscape where the liberal arts tradition that has nurtured MacLeod and Rogers is under attack by the technocratically formed. And, so, my question that I didn't ask comes from that space:

Alistair MacLeod, Shelagh Rogers, welcome back and welcome to Alberta. It is good to have you here.  I can't help but think that your very presence is a contradiction to the emerging argument of what higher education is supposed to be about. But here is my question: In 2013, in Alberta, where the endless talk is of pipelines, why read literature in university?

Can I ask Shelagh Rogers to get that question to Alistair MacLeod the next time their paths cross in front of an audience? :)

Canadian Literature Centre in action: MacLeod and Rogers

It Wasn't A News Story

My bicycle handlebar video will never make the wild and extreme Go Pro video of the week. It's not shot down the side of a volcano or beside a coral reef. And it will never rise to the level of the Russian Dashboard Masters whose fixed cameras cams routinely capture meteors and crashing planes. The scenes I am interested in recording are more mundane. The sun in the east as I roll up to 124 Street, for one.

But the more I record my rides the more I have developed an almost actuarial sense of the dangers out there. Or the dangers in there. Like the scene that presented itself in slo-motion this morning as a young girl intent on getting to her school bus on time got to her school bus on time. She is alive tonight because the car driver hit the brakes. What didn't become a news story starts at about the seven-second mark as she runs out from the left part of the frame.

That was too close. And then the morning went on.

Mandel

Here is what Mayor Stephen Mandel has taught me about political leadership: arrive in your own vehicle.  Here is what I mean. 

A few years ago, when I was still working at CTV, our newsroom had a travelling slo-pitch team. The idea was we would get a side together and travel out to your community diamond, bring a news camera along, shoot some "highlights" (usually Dan Kobe making a good play) and plug your neighbourhood or agency initiative in the process. It was a lot of fun.

But that's not the item.

One evening we were playing the good people at the Mustard Seed Church on the inner-city ball field in Boyle Street. Shopping cart poverty pushed past. There was some despair sitting in a small circle in right field. I removed a couple of hypodermic needles from the base path between first and second base. We had invited the mayor to join us and, with the warmup under way, he roared into the parking lot in his late-model Mercedes Benz and jumped out. 

That's not really the item, either. The item was me.

What I remember is my reaction, or, to be more accurate, the muddle of my reaction. Really? I thought for just a second. Driving your Mercedes into Boyle Street? That's kinda rich. But on further thought what did I expect? That he would arrive by public transit or ride a bike over just to somehow "fit in?"

That scene replayed in my memory a few weeks ago when Mandel let loose on the ruling provincial Tories, some of whom were in the Shaw Centre ballroom in front of him, for political budget crimes against the University of Alberta and the citizens of Edmonton.

A great pic by The Edmonton Journal

Mandel was criticized for being mercurial and, what's worse in the age of modern software politics, unpredictable. To which, predictably, he responded: "I have been a great friend, but I can also be not a great friend."

(As an aside, that might be the best description ever of Mandel's style. Typically, it was uttered about him by him. Meta mayor. There should be an adjective. Mandellevian, maybe.) 

Here's the thing. I don't think I have ever heard Mandel play the listener card. You know, the bluff that would have voters believe that the greatest virtue of a politician is to listen to them or to convene an important conversation with them or some version of that participatory ploy. 

Yes, voters want to be listened to, but there are all kinds of problems with just listening, not the least of which is you can hear only those who speak up while having to also represent those who don't. And that some voters also expect you to listen to things that others can't hear yet. And that listening isn't the same as acting or building bridges between those you listen to.

It seems to me that Mandel didn't really give a shit about what others thought about him. He didn't spend a lot of time listening in that non-listening sense. He wasn't a career politician. He didn't need the dough. He made some miscalculations and errors along the way but not because he was beholden in a dangerous way to what others thought or said about him. 

Today: Me, chief of staff Patricia and the mayor

Today, Stephen Mandel announced three terms as mayor is enough, and that he will not run for re-election in the fall. He made the announcement in the Art Gallery of Alberta, an idea captured in architecture that simply would not have happened if all we listened to were voices that counselled pothole repair above all. 

Mandel fixed a lot of potholes. He did a lot for inner city Edmonton and her citizens. 

But he kept driving that fancy car to where he wanted to take us, too.

CyclingShorts

Yesterday as I was cycling to work east down 102 Ave. a motorist in the lane to my left slowed down, rolled down his passenger-side window and yelled out:

"Hey, is that a video camera on your bike?"
"Yeah," I said. "It's my Go Pro."
"Wow, that's pretty cool. So, like, you're getting video when you ride?
"I am," I said. "Not all the time, but it kinda keeps me safer."
"Right on. Ride safe, man."
"See ya!"

The rolling encounter reinforced my feeling that, yes, inside that engineering marvel is a cyborg and inside that cyborg is just another guy, in this case a guy who cares either about cyclists or video, or both. But it also made me realize again that that route to safety via video is a convoluted path. Does it really make me safer?

Not in that moment, I admit.

But studying the video afterwards does help prepare me to notice patterns and anticipate dangers. And being able to share what I find does get that word (that picture) out to others in my riding circles.

I have nothing against individual drivers of the automobile. I just think some of what they can do with all that power can corrupt their better judgment.

All of this as a preamble to the first edition of my CyclingShorts:

Pumped Up, Ready To Show!

There is a lot you can say about the couple, Will and Monifa Sims, shown in this video. And there is a lot the couple in this video can show us about ourselves. Things like what makes us smile and share and maybe wish we could be like more often.

I love the fact that this video is set in that most ambiguous of locations: the gas station. Because it's there that we are alternatively reminded of the freedom that waits down the road, and the price of that four-wheeled, fuel-injected liberty. There we contemplate, even as the dollars-and-cents numbers contort their way up in an abracadabra-like cardinal value march, how, simultaneously, we are drawing down both our disposable income and our stores of the non-renewable resource in that very same act of  filling up.  And, so, to witness joy and song and love in a setting that is the natural backdrop for none of those renewable resources is incongruity at its surprising best.

I love how rock star Will transforms the nozzle and hose into a mic and cord. Or into a telephone.

I love how seamlessly they move from being each other's lead to backup singers.

I love how the creepy surveillance aspect of it all is undone by a story song. And no less a boy-girl song than one programmed to hit the cheesy-couplet truth that, in the end, it doesn't make a difference if we make it or not/We've got each other and that's a lot.

And I love how that couple hit their solos. I mean, how much of life is a silent, grinding complaint that if we just got the chance, then we could show everyone what we've got? How much of life is a careful, methodical planning for what could go wrong and a calculus of how we would respond in each contingency? How little time do we spend contemplating what we would actually do if fortune smiled on us, and the unlikely sources those smiles could shine from? You gotta admit, editing aside, Will and Monifa nailed it and they nailed it when they had to. And that will always be two different things.

Pumpcast News is a feature on Jay Leno's Tonight Show. The producers have insisted the Sims's performance was not planted, even though the couple are no strangers to the stage in Chicago, where they used to live. I love to believe they are telling the truth.

Science? Check✓

Today, Hockey Alberta's science, or its marketing instincts, finally caught up to common sense as the organization announced, come fall, bodychecking will be illegal in peewee hockey.

A comprehensive study of concussion rates conducted by the University of Calgary was highlighted and celebrated as the impetus for the policy change. So, congratulations and thank you to the academics involved. But you also get the sense this wasn't just a triumph for post-secondary research. It was also driven by the need to retain young athletes in the sport and the need to keep lawsuits away.

But whatever the real motivation, it's a good move. It's good to remove hitting in an age group characterized by wild discrepancies in skill and body size and ability to hurt a fellow hockey player.

And it's a good move because it runs counter to the cruel streak in some hockey parents. (Trust me, you don't know who you are!) They'll counter today's move by saying things like: you gotta learn to give a hit and take a hit right from the beginning. And: hitting is part of the game. And: it's not figure skating. And some version of this is Canada. In these and other arguments, these sportsmanship deep thinkers demonstrate not a love of the game, but an obsession with the NHL and its marketing engine.

It troubles me that it has taken this long to remove bodychecking from peewee hockey. And that it took brilliant research to coax some movement on the issue.

I remember coaching a peewee game in Beaumont where a very talented forward, himself the product of natural skill, a drive to stand out, and a driving father, crushed an opposing defenceman into the boards on a violent but clean, as the then-rules defined the move, bodycheck. Full speed on the forecheck. Tattooed. It was ugly. He could have held up. He heard another voice.

What was most troubling was the reaction of the father, who made it clear he would have none of my contention that a clean check wasn't always the right check if a player of lesser talent was in a vulnerable position. Bullshit, I was told. Don't tell my son to hold up. That's too confusing. That makes him less of a player. He has a future. There was no concern for the opposing defenceman.

Why is hitting allowed in the low levels of minor hockey? Really? All of the talk about its being part of the game blah blah blah is just that. Sound. Hitting is kept in minor hockey so that players who show potential to make it in the game can develop their skills at a young age. They won't have a chance to make junior or get a scholarship or make the NHL if they can't crush someone legally.

I met a lot of the opposite opinion in my years coaching minor hockey. They were wrong then, they are wrong now. Good move, Hockey Alberta.

It's just too bad we need science to tell us what we know in our hearts. Some of our hearts.