jumpingfish › version 3.0

We’ll Be Home Soon

Sun, 12 Feb 2012, 08:15 PM (-06:00)

Rideau Center is just down the street from Chateau Laurier. There, we could catch the #7 or the #12 back to the condo.

Although it was late on a Friday night, the steets and sidewalks of downtown Ottawa were still busy. There was a crowd at the OC Transpo bus stop when we got there.

I don’t remember which bus we caught. We took the first one. It had been a long evening, and we had been on our feet most of the time. We didn’t particularly feel like standing outside in a Canadian winter (even though to the Canadians standing beside us the weather was undoubtedly mild).

Once on the bus, we sat down.

Trudy’s phone rang. It was Dad.

“Where are you?” he asked.

It is late on a Friday night. The kids are not home. They are taking public transportation in a strange town. They might be lost. Or they might be having trouble.

My father is an impeccable host. He thinks of his guests’ welfare with bottomless, endearing warmth. And he was worried about us. About his 52 year old son. About the fair and industrious Trudy.

“We’re on the bus,” Trudy said. “Don’t worry. We’ll be home soon.”

A Bus Across the River

Sun, 12 Feb 2012, 07:57 PM (-06:00)

The museum was free that evening. After the fireworks, we went inside to warm up, eat some of our snacks and rest our feet. There was an exhibit upstairs about the Canadian Arctic Expedition. We wandered thru and took our time.

At some point, the fair and industrious Trudy looked at me and said, “We probably should take the bus back to Ottawa now.”

There was supposed to be a Snow Bus taking people across the river for free during Winterlude, but the people at the front desk of the museum said that it had stopped running hours before.

“You can catch the 77,” they said, “Right outside. It comes in three minutes.”

We quickly pulled on our coats, mittens and backpacks and dashed out.

At the street, there was no sign of the 77. In fact, there was no sign of any OC Transpo buses, much less the 77. Just two Gatineau buses, and we didn’t know where they were going.

We turned and walked up the hill to where we saw another bus in the distance.

“Excuse me,” I said to a woman who was directing people onto what looked like a tour bus. She had a Winterlude logo on the back of her coat. “Excuse me, do you know where we can catch the 77 bus to Ottawa?”

She said, “I think you catch it down there,” she said, pointing vaguely downhill. “But I’m not sure. Where are you going?”

“Chateau Laurier.”

She stood silently for a moment and then said, “Take this bus,” pointing to the tour bus by the curb.

“Do we need tickets?”

“Just don’t ask,” she said with a smile on her face. “Get on.” And she turned around and walked away.

So we got in line behind a couple of people in black suits and black dresses with black winter coats and fancy black scarfs wrapped around their collars. They must have just come from the Taste of Winterlude wine tasting inside the museum—the gathering with candles and low lighting and a wine bar beside the immense two-story windows that looked out onto the lake. (What a view of the fireworks they must have had.)

We got on with our jeans and our down coats and our puffy mittens and our jeans and waffle-stomping boots. We followed the black-suiters toward the back of the bus. They all knew each other and were talking about business and about school years before in Toronto and about nightlife in Ottawa.

There were plenty of empty seats, so we sat down toward the back. Quietly, not asking questions.

And sure enough, the bus pulled away from the curb and drove along the river up Rue Laurier. It passed a bus stop which was lined with people. The sign said, 77. They were waiting for the bus we were supposed to take. On the other hand, the bus we did take turned onto the Pont Macdonald Cartier and drove across the Ottawa River where in a few minutes it dropped us all off at Chateau Laurier.

Fireworks Spectacle

Sun, 12 Feb 2012, 07:18 PM (-06:00)

On the evening before the Winterlude fireworks, Dad and Khadija took us to eat at Chez Fatima in Gatineau, Quebec, across the river from Ottawa. After the feast, they drove home, and we walked the few blocks to the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

There on sloping, snow-covered lawns leading to the edge of the Ottawa River, people were gathering to watch what what was supposed to be a spectacle.

There were black-hooded walkers on tall stilts draping red flowing flags over the heads of anyone passing by. And there were two fife-and-drum corps marching in the plaza. There were great spotlights shining thru the falling snow, lighting up the low clouds. And in the background across the river stood the many towers of Parliament Hill.

There were some welcoming speeches, and there was some music on a stage. Then (right on time), as the snow fell and the spotlights swept the sky, the show began.

There were greens and blues. There were whites and reds and oranges. There were great explosions that echoed off the shore and lit up the sky. There were fountains spouting upward and glowing tracers drifting downward all the way to the river’s ice. There were purple spikes launched from the bridge and twisting rocket contrails. There were spinning curlicues and jets of fire that flew out over the river.

There were columns of sparkling white light that exploded into mayhem.

And there was something that I’ve never imagined possible—a waterfall of white fire running off the edge of the bridge all the way across the frozen river from Ontario to Quebec.

After a while the crowd fell silent. The show just kept going. The fireworks just kept coming. Rockets kept exploding. Flares kept flying. It was indeed a spectacle, just as they had promised.

The Two-Hour Ice Sculpture Competition

Sun, 12 Feb 2012, 05:21 PM (-06:00)

The contestants in Ottawa’s Winterlude two-hour ice sculpture competition were arrayed around what in warmer times must be a bubbling-spraying fountain. There was ice on the sidewalks, snow on the lawn and white flakes falling from the sky.

View of the fountain

When we arrived, the artists the carving had begun. Hints of shape were beginning to emerge.

There were hand saws and chisels. There were Dremel tools with typical attachments and long, dangerous-looking attachments which you’d undoubtedly want to keep away from your kids. There were electric irons heating up rectangular plates of aluminum. And of course, there were chain saws.

The artists and their tools were kicking up clouds of powdery ice. It covered their snow pants. It covered their coats. It covered their hats. It caked to their eyebrows and mustaches.

Although each of them was working on his own, evidently the rules allowed some help from time to time. When they needed to mount portions of their work to the large ice pedestals, they would call to the judges who would come and help. Sometimes this involved pushing a hot aluminum plate against some part of the sculpture to make it smooth and flat. Sometimes this involved lifting a piece into the air. Sometimes this involved squirting water or pushing slushy snow at the artist’s direction into some crucial attachment point. When ice met ice, the surfaces would freeze, the wet interfaces instantly flashing to cloudy white as the ice bond hardened

The artists could also call for the blowtorch when they were almost finished.

“Stand back!” the judges would shout fired it up.

It blew an orange flame that they briefly passed over the surface of the sculptures. Smokey white melted into a translucent shine. Water dripped from edges and tips. Sharp corners softened. Clear, living shapes jumped from the chalky prototypes of just a few moments before.

The clock ticked down.

Some of the artists were calling for the torch. Others were frantically trying to finish.

The guy with the wide-winged goose never got beyond the general form of his bird. The guy with the butterfly had spent most of his time on the body and never got to the wings. The guy with the kneeling Inuit-pixie wasn’t able to get its wings to attach. And one of the guys who was sculpting an owl had a disaster, his owl falling to the ground and shattering into pieces at the very end.

Mind you these were amazing sculptures, all of them. But of course the most amazing ones where those that got finished.

There was a snow goose flying against a rising sun. There was a wolf howling at a crescent moon. There was a many-tentacled octopus twisting into the air.

And there were two snowy owls with outstretched wings, one flying over the other, fastened only at a single balancing point.

Time ran out. The judges called on the contestants to stop. The artists brushed the remaining ice dust from their creations, wiped the sweat from their faces, stepped back to look at their work, and turned to pack their tools.

Banks

Sun, 12 Feb 2012, 09:53 AM (-06:00)

Ever notice this?

I only say this as full disclosure. You see, I am not unbiased. With that said, here are some tools I’m using to understand the foreclosure fraud settlement deal…

1. The administration’s MO

In keeping with my disclaimer above, here’s Scarecrow at Firedog lake articulating a cynical view on how the administration approaches these things, an approach that seems to lean always to the financial industry while couching things in misleading hopey/changey spin.

2. Yves Smith

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism has long been one of the few voices pointing out the rampant fraud in the banking system and the back room accommodations that qualify as economic problem solving these days.

Here she is enumerating 12 specific reasons to doubt the legitimacy of the foreclosure deal.

3. Matt Taibbi

Then there’s Matt Taibbi, the unabashed caller-out of BS. His book, Griftopia, is a concrete introduction to just how complete the refashioning of the western political system has been. He doesn’t pull punches.

Here he is at Rolling Stone explaining why he is no longer optimistic about the deal and how he sees it mainly as a superficial, face-saving agreement that demonstrates the extent to which the financial industry has completely outgunned the American law enforcement system.

4. From a banker’s point of view

And lest you think that all I read is lefty blogs, consider this from American Banker in which they suggest that the complete absence of any public details is evidence that far from being a credible effort at law enforcement, the foreclosure deal amounts to putting the “press release cart in front of the settlement horse”.

Coffee Time

Sat, 11 Feb 2012, 08:58 PM (-06:00)

When you cross the border, you go from the Land of Starbucks to the Land of Tim Horton’s.

This isn’t a terribly original thought, nor is it entirely accurate, still there’s something here.

There’s something reassuring about a Tim Horton’s coffee shop, some kind of gemütlichkeit that you just don’t find in a Starbucks. Although arguments can be made that the coffee is indistinguishable, the essence of the two coffee shops is undeniably different.

Whereas Starbucks tend to be spacious and neat, when you’re in a Tim Horton’s, you feel like you’re in, well, a coffee shop. And whereas Starbucks feels modern and hip, Tim Horton’s feels like a place where real people go. And whereas (forgive me) Starbucks hipsters seem turned in on themselves, the people at Time Horton’s hold the door open for you.

Now without doubt this is making much of nothing. This might all be hooey, but I’m just sayin’ what I’m sayin’.

So I was not at all disappointed when the fair and industrious Trudy asked Khadija if she knew of a Tim Horton’s downtown. And I was not at all disappointed when Khadija directed Dad to a Tim Horton’s one block away from Confederation Park. And Trudy and I were quite content sitting in warmth in the corner of that place sipping our creamy coffees and gazing out the plate glass window as Ottawans started their winter Friday morning.

It was a perfect way to start the day, and I am certain it wouldn’t have felt quite the same if we had been sitting under the green mermaid.

Morning Luxuries

Sat, 11 Feb 2012, 04:44 PM (-06:00)

We shift now to our recent trip to Ottawa, a trip from which we recently returned. What follow are several stories of that vacation…

I suppose we should have been disappointed that we slept in. The two-hour Winterlude One-Block Challenge had started at 8:00am, and we would arrive an hour later. But no, we were not disappointed. What luscious luxury it was to sleep long.

After a breakfast of fried eggs and toast, Dad and Khadija drove us from their condo to downtown Ottawa. Our original plan was to take the bus, but what a lazy luxury it was to be chauffeured.

And it was yet another luxury when they drove right past Confederation Park (our nominal destination) and dropped us off instead at a Tim Horton’s.

We hopped out of the car, adjusted our hats and mittens and sinched up our backpacks, as they pulled away from the curb and merged back into the morning traffic.

And we stepped into the coffee shop to have two large cups with cream.

Great Horned Owls

Sat, 11 Feb 2012, 01:56 PM (-06:00)

When we got out of the car, Trudy want into the house, and I went around the side to drop some bottles into the recycling bin.

There was a hooting somewhere in the back. I mean a real hoo-hoo-hoo hooting. The kind of clichéd owl sound you might hear on a cartoon. I stood silently, listening in the dark.

“Hoo hoo.”

It was coming from one of the trees in our backyard.

Just then, the fair and industrious Trudy came rushing around the corner of the house.

“Come into the back,” she said, “there are owls!”

We walked thru the house and out the back patio door. She was holding a flashlight.

“There’s one in the pine tree and another one up there,” she said, pointing the flashlight at a telephone pole behind the back fence.

“Hoo hoo hoo!” from the top of the telephone pole.

“Hoo hoo,” came a reply from somewhere in the limbs of the Pecan tree next door.

I took the flashlight and shined it at the top of the telephone pole. There in the beam was the largest owl we have ever seen. No Eastern Screech Owl, this. It had a body at least two feet high and was perching on the top of the pole with eyes that blazed yellow in the light of the flashlight. And it hard “horns” on the top of its head.

This was a Great Horned Owl, and it was looking down at us.

No, that’s not right. When we got home, all the dogs in the neighborhood were making a racket, and Izzy and Guinness were in the backyard barking along. No, the owl wasn’t looking at the two of us at all. It was watching The Little One.

“Trudy,” I whispered. “Pick up Izzy.”

And we went back inside and shut the doggy door.

B

Fri, 10 Feb 2012, 11:22 PM (-06:00)

My story seems to be stuck in Kentucky even though I returned almost two months ago.

There’s so much other stuff to talk about—riots in Athens as the schemes of Euro-bosses and technocrats seems to wash up on the rocks week after week, political calculus and triangulation in the United State that makes concessions to religious institutions and their ability to trump the law, capitulation to the banks and an utter rejection of the notion that any of them should be held accountable in any fashion for housing fraud.

Yep, so much other stuff to talk about. So let’s get to the point of this Kentucky trip, shall we?

We were at Berea College to see my cousin walk across the stage. We were there—aunts, mothers, sisters, brothers, cousins—to see him sit up there under the lights, maybe to sweat a bit in anticipation, to stand at the podium and share some wise words with the graduates, to receive an honorary degree.

“Are you with the President’s party?” a man asked as we walked into the chapel.

Why yes, we were.

We sat in the audience as the faculty in their flowing gowns filed in with the winter graduates following behind. We sat as families and friends cheered the students and as the organist played Brahms chorales. We sat and listened to the President’s welcoming words and to the invocation. And we sat and listened to a medley of songs sung by the black music ensemble.

And then Mr. Burt Lauderdale (Yes that’s my cousin up there on the stage, do you see him?) was presented the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. At which point, he approached the podium with a damp forhead and addressed the graduates on the topic of community, organizing community.

That evening, we sat down to eat at the table. We sat there—aunts, mothers, sisters, brothers, cousins—tired but thrilled to be together with Dr. Burt Lauderdale at the head of the table.

“We have a card for you,” I said.

We passed it down the table to where he sat.

“It’s blue,” I said, “for Berea’s colors.”

“Ah,” he said (as he does). “Then the b must be for Berea.”

No, Burt, that wasn’t it. The b was for you.

Hockey

Tue, 31 Jan 2012, 11:12 PM (-06:00)

It was the end of the week. We were the only ones left in the lab. Steve was sitting at his computer. I was packing up for the long drive home. Somehow the conversation turned to hockey.

Don’t ask me how. But there we were late on a Friday afternoon in Houston, Texas talking about hockey.

He told me what a great game it was. I told him what I thought about the fights. He told me it was a lot like the Indy 500—you know what the fans come to see, right? I nodded but pointed out that as far as I know drivers don’t intentionally cause accidents.

He stood there in the middle of the lab for a moment, gathering his thoughts.

“Hockey,” he said, holding up his hand, “is about human interest.”

I looked at him and probably scowled. I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Let me explain,” he said.

And so he told me about a game that he had seen in Toronto. One of the coaches had been struggling with brain cancer. During a commercial break, they projected a picture of his face on the ice.

Steve stood silently, looking for the right words.

“They projected his picture on the ice, and…”

He had stopped talking and was looking down at the floor. His face was flushed, and his eyes were starting to tear.

“and…” he said, now barely able to get his words out.

“and… the players from both teams … stood around his picture … on the ice and … banged their sticks on the ice.”

He was barely able to get those last words out. As he sobbed the end of his sentence, he quickly turned back to his desk and sat down.

I stood there for a moment. He sat there looking at his keyboard. I walked over to him.

“You’re a good man, Steve,” I said, pushing my fist into his arm. “You’re a good man. And now you’ve got me teary.”