To make Comments write directly to Jim at jimt@quixotic.ca
11
Jun
2018
A poem about women who prefer to remain subservient to dominant men. Not necessarily about Melania.
Categories: Poetry
Tags: subservience, dominance
10
The flood danger seems to have passed, at least for this year. Okanagan Lake has peaked. Grand Forks is drying out. A half million people in the lower Fraser Valley, who had been bracing for the worst flooding since 1948, can relax.
But things could have been worse -- much worse -- if a couple of political ploys in history had been carried through.
The difficulty, you see, is that God -- or plate tectonics, if you prefer -- didn’t design the land west of the Rocky Mountains very efficiently. Highways, railways, and lines of communication run east/west. But the valleys and rivers mostly run north/south.
Only the Fraser and Skeena river systems lie entirely within B.C. Every other major river ignores national boundaries. Especially the Columbia.
In negotiating the Columbia River Treaty, General MacNaughton brought in diversion as a bargaining chip. Unless the Americans agreed to a fair deal for Canada, MacNaughton threatened, Canada could divert the Columbia into the Fraser, leaving three U.S. states high and very dry.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: floods, Columbia River, Columbia River Treaty, McNaughton, Kootenay, Creston, Canal Flats
9
Sometimes I don't know whose style has influenced me -- if this is mine at all. It might even be by Ogden Nash, or someone else. If you recognize it, please let me know.
Tags: separation, divorce, confusion, uncertainty
6
Last week, I attended my high school class reunion – 64 years after graduation. We didn’t bother with reunions for a long time. Perhaps we were too busy carving out careers for ourselves. Or rearing children. Or paying off mortgages.
We had our first reunion – if I remember correctly – in 2012, a multi-class reunion with several grades above and below us. We enjoyed that occasion enough that we have had a class reunion every two years since.
I’ve noticed something about the nature of our conversations.
The first couple of times, we talked about the old days. This time, though, the talk wasn’t as much about the distant past, but about current concerns. About how our lives are changing. About downsizing into smaller housing that requires less care. Into apartments or condominiums. About getting rid of a lifetime of accumulation that our children and grandchildren don’t need, don’t want, and won’t know what to do with anyway.
Tags: reunions, friendships
3
John Horgan and Rachel Notley, look what you’ve started!
Once, you were the kiddies having a spat in the sandbox. Horgan blocks Notley’s pipeline; Notley blocks B.C.’s wines. You hit me; I hit you back.
More recently, the sandbox has become the law courts. As an opinion piece in the Vancouver Sunnoted earlier this week, Horgan could have lawyers arguing two different sides of the same coin, in two side-by-side courtrooms. In one courtroom, that a province has a legal and constitutional right to restrict the shipment of petroleum products; next door, that a province does NOT have the right to restrict shipment of petroleum products.
But now the sandbox squabbling has escalated.
The laughing-stock president in the White House just dumped a big bucket of sand on Canada -- and on Mexico, though the Canadian media have largely ignored Mexico. Steel and aluminum imports into the United States are now subject to hefty tariffs.
Tags: pipelines, courts, Horgan, Notley, tariffs, steel. aluminum, maple syrup