Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
vote with rocks! (errr – at the ballot box?)
well, it seems i may have been wrong in my prediction there would not be an election this summer – the fallacy of course being my optimistic view that no politician would be so disrespectful of the voting public as to call an election for mid-summer. ha! was i ever wrong. but we shall have to wait unto the 19th to see whether parliament is dissolved or not, and then it is likely the canadian public will be dragged (kicking and screaming) into another election campaign. it’s all very unreasonable, and likely to produce another minority government that produces another minority government that produces another minority government – and so on. this is how little the public trusts either dominant political party: we are terrified of having either get a majority even if that makes the system unworkable, and so condemned to an infinite loop of failed budget bills and intercine bickering.
i’m pretty sure my outrage due to the federal situation has not been exhausted yet and won’t be until sometime this summer. the lack of democracy! the cost! the idiocy! the failed political reforms! it’s all too much to bear.
fortunately the provincial situation will be resolved much sooner, and with a clear majority for one of the two contending parties (notwithstanding some marginal possibility for a minority government if the greens rally at the nth hour). in my riding i am betting on the ndp candidate nicholas simons against adrianne carr – simons apparently polled at the top of each station on the sunshine coast when he ran for the ndp federally last summer, and the liberals don’t appear to be going so strong on the sunshine coast this time around – so i think there’s a good chance the seat will revert back to the ndp. it’s hard to say though, and definitely one of the more interesting races going at the moment.
my current plan is to spend election night at the WISE watching the results come in with other friends and allies (as per tradition) – but if my father is still on the coast then i won’t be doing that (he’s arriving today). i have to somehow co-ordinate voting and commuting, which may mean advance polling tomorrow or taking the legally mandated four-hours off work to vote so i can go to the polls tuesday morning. i am actually looking forward to election night this time around, curious more than anything.
funny – how that training is ingrained – i don’t believe in the bourgeois democracy in which we live, i often rail about the lack of true representation and local power at the provincial and federal levels – and yet i keep voting, election after election. no matter how fed up i am. no matter how little faith or trust i have in the system. only one time have i failed to vote in a provincial election (when the ndp did so many awful things i decided to vote for no one) and i have never failed to vote in a federal election. i’m not sure why that is, why i keep going out as if it matters, why i keep paying attention to the antics of the elites who surely don’t share any interests of mine (as they have proven over and over again).
during the american presidental election, my friend laughing meme posted a link to a new yorker article on how people choose their leaders which i found fascinating at the time. i have re-located the link to post here, because even though it refers to the us political system, i’m pretty sure that this type of thinking dominates most canadian elections too. i find it pretty frightening that such a high percentage of people seem to choose their leaders based on highly irrational ideas rather than a cohesive vision for what they want society to be. just something to think about in the endless election treadmill we seem to be stuck on at the moment
elections bc yesterday said that blogs endorsing a political candidate were to be considered “election advertising” and thus must be registered with elections bc. am i breaking the law now to say i am voting ndp without registering with elections bc? only time will tell.
in the meantime i say: a vote with a slingshot is worth two ballots in the box. time to start collecting rocks.
dave's theory
some years ago, my friend dave (joffe – who incidentally was the best man at my wedding), postulated that the weekly world news was most certainly a set-up – a rag written by left-wingers posing as right-wingers with the purpose of making the right look so totally ridiculous that they would be thoroughly discredited in the eyes of the underclass that makes up the weekly’s reader-base. remember ed anger? pig-biting made about everything from the right to kill children to the teaching of evolution in schools… no doubt some of the most inane ramblings to ever reach the printed page. there’s no way that anyone could be that ignorant – right?
dave’s theory often comes to mind these days when i happen to stumble across right-wing blogs, espousing the most baseline and uncompassionate opinions about others – so much so that i can’t imagine these people existing in real life, seeming to be more carciature than honest representation – so rabid, so hateful. most recently i have reflected on this while reading about the vigilante border-patrol group the minutemen who refer to mexican immigrants as “invading forces”, and seek to terroroize those who they see as illegal in their workplaces. unabashedly racist, shotgun-toting, easily excitable and uncomprehending of their own immigrant backgrounds, can these people be for real? are they not just a set-up to expose right-wing america for what it is?
no matter how much i wanted dave’s theory to be the truth (that really there was this seething hotbed of radicalism out there, a secret army of radicals whose only job it was to parody the right), i always knew it wasn’t – and that rather than look ridiculous to its readership, the weekly world news actually makes sense to millions of americans. so does the minuteman project despite its rather hateful and stupid nature – because the bottom line is that some people just aren’t melting fast enough into the pot for those who want whites to remain the dominant force in america. too bad it’s not a parody, because then it might be funny.
anniversary
oh my! i just realized that today is the one-year anniversary of the beginnings of this blog. in the past year i have posted 331 times – not quite an average of once a day but almost!
happy anniversary red cedar blog!
more living, more doing
there isn’t enough time in a day-a week-a month for all the things i feel like doing right now. i’m not talking here about things i have to do – but want to do… read more, go for walks and hikes more, get the big and small stitching projects finished, set up my house, play more music, have more social time, have more quiet time, get more letters written….. the list goes on and on. it feels like magic, this new life of being undepressed again…. of actually wanting to do things rather than simply going through the motions in order to keep myself in the flow.
and herein lies the tendency to get over-booked. i had forgotten all about that busy-life i had before, but it has come upon me again and i’ve got most of this month full up with commitments in the city, on vancouver island and in seattle. i am trying to keep my time on the sunshine coast unbooked so i have an excuse to stay home and be a hermit when i feel like it.
this weekend my father is coming to help me with some household chores like steam- cleaning the rugs, painting the outside trim, and cleaning the moss off the roof (there isn’t much on there, but it needs to be done). once we get the rugs done i can move the rest of my stuff in properly. i currently have several boxes that either need to be stored in the small room downstairs or unpacked, but have been trying to leave the carpets free of clutter to facilitate the cleaning. this means that everytime i need something i have to root through boxes to find it – and that box-room has become a giant mess in the process.
on monday i ran up and down the coast in my little tercel burning gas on errands, but i managed to not only put in an order for 2 loveseats (first time i’ve ever bought new furniture that wasn’t a futon or an ikea table) but picked up a flat of plants for my deck. i still need to get some more dirt and plant pots to fit them all in, but i’m going to have gorgeous tomatoes and peppers and basil and lavender and bay leaf and curry plant and oregano all basking in the sun on the deck in no time. i haven’t put this much into plants since i moved out of the house on kitchener street and had to leave the garden and the greenhouse we built behind. finally i feel rooted enough (and with space) that i can make things grow again. once i am done with the house and deck, i will start on the small garden bed below to prepare it for fall and winter vegetables.
i promise updated pictures of my house will come soon – i just need to get a few more things done before i am ready to show it off. i am not sure whether the loveseats will be delivered in time for my housewarming party (on the 11th of june), because they take 4-6 weeks, but i did convince the people at the furniture store to ask for a rush job on them so maybe they will be ready on time. who knows? it’s not that much of an issue in any case – since if the weather is good people will want to be hanging out on the deck anyhow.
stitch projects this month
perhaps the beginning of may is busy for almost everyone, as most of my friends with blogs don’t seem to be updating much these days. i’ve been too busy the past couple of days to write much, but on the weekend i took pictures of some stitching projects to share since it’s been ages since i’ve posted on what creative projects i’m working on.
this is a small bookmark i made on sunday. i decided it was high time i learn more than just the traditional cross stitch because i am interested in stitching more freeform on linen and other fabrics. this is my first freeform stitching project and it utilizes four different types of stitches. it’s somewhat rough… but it does the job of holding my book place and it was fun to experiment with a nice simple pattern like this. i’m working on making simple hankerchiefs at the moment with butterflies and flowers in the corner, just to practice my stitches.
this is the large project i’m working on at the moment – a pillow front that is about 2 feet across and will eventually be 1.5 feet down. because it is long and thin at the moment, it is hard to get a good picture of, so i just focused on one third of the stitching near the end. the design is taken from an indian embroidery pattern meant for a handbag. it seems to be working quite well as a large canvas and wool project. i’ve been working on this since i finished the rug back in january.
Red Cedar 