It's that time again. With just a hint of chill in the air, with leaves swirling in the grips of gusts of bluster wind, with darkness eating daylight by degrees we close in upon the scariest time of the year - Municipal Elections!
Our little township (municipalities across our province, for that matter) is in the grip of that every four year ritual. Usually, municipal elections in this neck of the woods are a civil affair. Two or more fairly decent, well-meaning folks square off for a voice on our local council to direct the growth of our community for the new four years.
I like municipal politics. I like municipal politics far more than I like provincial or federal politics. There are a few reasons.
The first is impact. The impact of decisions made at my local council are felt much more profoundly than are those at other levels of government, and by that I mean in my day to day dealings and those of all members of my family.
The second is accessibility. I happen to be fortunate when it comes to accessibility for all levels of government. My local MP shops at the same grocery store as me and rents his videos at the same place. My local MPP lives one street up and a couple of streets over from me. His kids treat-or-treat at my house and I know that I can stop him any time to bend his ear. My local councillors and mayor are freely available to me.
The third is transparency and decency achieved through the lack of party politics. There are no political parties at the municipal level of government. I think this leads to better representational government where an elected councillor is accountable to his or her constituents and not to a political machine or party platform or philosophy.
In my municipality, unfortunately, a quartet of candidates have banded together to form what I have dubbed, "The Coalition of the Damned". I figure it's a nice scary name so close to Hallowe'en. They are four men (no ladies, thanks) who are running on a platform of hiring freezes, spending cuts and no new projects. Now, fiscal responsibility is important - very important - but I have yet to hear a single word about how any of these four will maintain core services (water, sewage, keeping the roads plowed etc) while keeping our community's very active sports and arts programs operating at levels which will support a growing population. If these four men (did I mention that they were unable or perhaps unwilling, to get a female recruit to run?) are elected my vibrant, active community will see four years of drudgery and stagnation under the unimaginative leadership of a quartet of Fox News Wannabes.
I think I find the whole thing bothersome because this kind of combined platform candidacy - where people run in wards in which they do not live - is not and should not be welcomed into the civil discourse which usually is found in our most local politics. I look for committed members of the community who will make informed, rational and comprehensive decisions that take into account the spirit of the community and not simply the dollars and cents.
I don't know how my little local election will pan out, but I have faith in my community. I am hopeful that the moderate, thoughtful and rational people will take the time to cast a ballot and make their voices heard. What worries me is that they won't. It worries me because I know with a cold grim certainty that the irrational, frightened people always find the time to vote.
Wednesday, 20 October 2010
Friday, 15 October 2010
T.V. Vacation continued...
Well, here it is over a month without the satellite signal streaming into the house and we're none the worse for wear. I imagine the vacation notification I sent to Shaw is about to expire on Monday and we'll once more have the lulling, magical warmth of broadcast TV coming once more into our home.
But not for long.
We've decided to cancel our subscription to satellite TV. We've come to realize, through its absence, that we have better (and less expensive) ways to fill our evenings than to sit and bath in the TV's warming glow. Oh, we've watched movies and some on-demand TV (via the internet) but no where near the volume as before.
We've been doing a lot more reading, individually and as a family. We're two thirds of the way through the last Harry Potter book. JK Rowling is a masterful storyteller but you don't appreciate how clunky her writing can be until you attempt to read some of her twelve line sentences aloud to your kids. Try it - you'll see.
What else?
Summer has bled away into Autumn with the chilly mornings, great sunsets and changing leaves. The days grow shorter and shorter and I haven't a clue anymore when we'll see daylight savings slip back to standard time. The bounty of our little garden has been harvested and mostly eaten, but a few vegetables lurk in the root cellar waiting for just the right meal.
Writing goes well. My vampire story is finished and submitted - waiting for feedback from the editor. A while back I was doing a little research into early onset Alzheimer's. I came across an article and video of Terry Pratchett who presented one million dollars to the Alzheimer's society. I followed a link to his official website and came across this.
This is what Terry Pratchett has to say about The Pratchett Prize over on his website:
Anywhere but here, anywhen but now. Which means we are after stories set on Earth, although it may be an Earth that might have been, or might yet be, one that has gone down a different leg of the famous trousers of time (see the illustration in almost every book about quantum theory).
We will be looking for books set at any time, perhaps today, perhaps in the Rome of today but in a world where 2000 years ago the crowd shouted for Jesus Christ to be spared, or where in 1962, John F Kennedy's game of chicken with the Russians went horribly wrong. It might be one day in the life of an ordinary person. It could be a love story, an old story, a war story, a story set in a world where Leonardo da Vinci turned out to be a lot better at Aeronautics. But it won't be a story about being in an alternate Earth because the people in an alternate Earth don't know that they are; after all, you don't.
But this might just be the start. The wonderful Peter Dickinson once wrote a book that could convince you that flying dragons might have existed on Earth. Perhaps in the seething mass of alternate worlds humanity didn't survive, or never evolved -- but other things did, and they would have seen the world in a different way. The possibilities are literally endless, but remember, it's all on Earth. Maybe the continents will be different and the climate unfamiliar, but the physics will be the same as ours. What goes up must come down, ants are ant-sized because if they were any bigger their legs wouldn't carry them. In short, the story must be theoretically possible on some version of the past, present or future of a planet Earth.
I read the above and thought immediately of The Platinum Ticket, a story where a brown-skied world about to be abandoned by humanity is transformed into a green one by a well-meaning time traveler and the problems that arise. The Platinum Ticket is a novella - around 25,000 words. As it stands, it is the barest skeleton of the novel it can be. I have started to add flesh to that skeleton and am pleased with how it is beginning to fill out. The contest's deadline is the end of December. I honestly don't know if I can be done by then, but the novel is worth the effort either way.
Back to work....
But not for long.
We've decided to cancel our subscription to satellite TV. We've come to realize, through its absence, that we have better (and less expensive) ways to fill our evenings than to sit and bath in the TV's warming glow. Oh, we've watched movies and some on-demand TV (via the internet) but no where near the volume as before.
We've been doing a lot more reading, individually and as a family. We're two thirds of the way through the last Harry Potter book. JK Rowling is a masterful storyteller but you don't appreciate how clunky her writing can be until you attempt to read some of her twelve line sentences aloud to your kids. Try it - you'll see.
What else?
Summer has bled away into Autumn with the chilly mornings, great sunsets and changing leaves. The days grow shorter and shorter and I haven't a clue anymore when we'll see daylight savings slip back to standard time. The bounty of our little garden has been harvested and mostly eaten, but a few vegetables lurk in the root cellar waiting for just the right meal.
Writing goes well. My vampire story is finished and submitted - waiting for feedback from the editor. A while back I was doing a little research into early onset Alzheimer's. I came across an article and video of Terry Pratchett who presented one million dollars to the Alzheimer's society. I followed a link to his official website and came across this.
This is what Terry Pratchett has to say about The Pratchett Prize over on his website:
Anywhere but here, anywhen but now. Which means we are after stories set on Earth, although it may be an Earth that might have been, or might yet be, one that has gone down a different leg of the famous trousers of time (see the illustration in almost every book about quantum theory).
We will be looking for books set at any time, perhaps today, perhaps in the Rome of today but in a world where 2000 years ago the crowd shouted for Jesus Christ to be spared, or where in 1962, John F Kennedy's game of chicken with the Russians went horribly wrong. It might be one day in the life of an ordinary person. It could be a love story, an old story, a war story, a story set in a world where Leonardo da Vinci turned out to be a lot better at Aeronautics. But it won't be a story about being in an alternate Earth because the people in an alternate Earth don't know that they are; after all, you don't.
But this might just be the start. The wonderful Peter Dickinson once wrote a book that could convince you that flying dragons might have existed on Earth. Perhaps in the seething mass of alternate worlds humanity didn't survive, or never evolved -- but other things did, and they would have seen the world in a different way. The possibilities are literally endless, but remember, it's all on Earth. Maybe the continents will be different and the climate unfamiliar, but the physics will be the same as ours. What goes up must come down, ants are ant-sized because if they were any bigger their legs wouldn't carry them. In short, the story must be theoretically possible on some version of the past, present or future of a planet Earth.
I read the above and thought immediately of The Platinum Ticket, a story where a brown-skied world about to be abandoned by humanity is transformed into a green one by a well-meaning time traveler and the problems that arise. The Platinum Ticket is a novella - around 25,000 words. As it stands, it is the barest skeleton of the novel it can be. I have started to add flesh to that skeleton and am pleased with how it is beginning to fill out. The contest's deadline is the end of December. I honestly don't know if I can be done by then, but the novel is worth the effort either way.
Back to work....
Thursday, 23 September 2010
Symbiosis
Well, I just finished the story I've been working on this week. The printer is stuttering it out as I type.
My initial feeling is that it's a pretty good story, but I'll give it a couple of days to germinate before I attack the printout with an editing pencil.
In the meantime, I need to get outside. It is a beautiful day out there beyond the basement window and there's fall clean-up to be done. I can call it fall clean up now because the season is officially upon us. With fairly clear skies and a full moon forecast for tonight it might be time to take the boy's telescope to the backyard.
My initial feeling is that it's a pretty good story, but I'll give it a couple of days to germinate before I attack the printout with an editing pencil.
In the meantime, I need to get outside. It is a beautiful day out there beyond the basement window and there's fall clean-up to be done. I can call it fall clean up now because the season is officially upon us. With fairly clear skies and a full moon forecast for tonight it might be time to take the boy's telescope to the backyard.
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