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The Liberal leader Stephane Dion and Jack Layton of the NDP have today signed an agreement to form a coalition government with the support (for 18 months at least) of Gilles Duceppe of the Bloc Quebecois. Needless to say, conservatives across the country, but most emphatically from the West, are up in arms. The title of this piece was taken from a posting on CBC.CA*****/display/ShowImage?imageUrl=%2Fstorage%2Fphotos%2FIrate%20Post.jpg%3F_***** by a person who is so incensed that he is ready to take up arms against whomever he feels is responsible for this "coup", as another poster has called it. I'm not sure how many of these irate citizens are aware that first the Harper government must lose a vote of confidence in the House, so the ousting is not yet a fait accompli. Needless to say, the Conservatives will be trying a few tactics to get around this setback, tactics which may buy them time while they do their damnedest to convince the public that what the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc are doing is treasonous, illegal, undemocratic, etc... In fact, they can gather all the rhetoric they need from the posts at CBC if their own spin doctors should tire of the task.
But it seems inevitable that the first piece of business brought forth in the House will result in that no-confidence tally, and that means that as many as one fifth of the population will be up in arms, at least verbally for the foreseeable future, and Stephane Dion will actually be the Prime Minister, at least until May 2 of '09 when the Liberals choose a new leader. But by the same count, over 60% of Canadians will be somewhere between mildly pleased and wildly ecstatic that Harper and the Conservatives won't get any further with their agenda, at least in the short term.
This situation, which is by no means a done deal, has more to do with Harper's miscalculations than any real will to change the government. There wasn't much enthusiasm out there during the election to make great changes, and when all was said and done, it looked pretty much like the status quo until the Cons tried to take the $1.95 per vote allowance given all federal parties, and went after federal employees' right to strike. Whether you're for or against either one of these bills, the point is this has not proven an auspicious time to unveil these policies.
Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of this whole conflict is the seeming hatred that some Canadians have for their fellows. It seems so un-Canadian that at least some people are so angry they want to get verbally and even physically abusive with each other. But then, in Thailand today, people who have been known around the world for their peaceful demeanor are even now at the point of open violence because one group, (the PAD would probably look more like the Conservatives than not) don't think their opponents possess the intelligence to know what they're voting for, and are attempting to overthrow their elected government by civil disobedience or even armed insurrection. Let's hope this change of character, both here and abroad, proves to be a phase that will soon end. But in these times of global financial confusion and turmoil, maybe this is a harbinger of troubled days ahead.
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I often wonder if the people who post comments on news sites are by and large the same guys who swear blue murder at each other from the protected environment of their cars when convinced that no one else deserves to have a license. Yet, after all the racial slurs they've hurled at, well, nobody, because the other driver can't actually hear them, they can walk into a convenience store and be not only civil, but even cordial to the clerk, even though he visibly shares certain genes with that clown back there who can't drive.
Does a post-writing guy (or gal) really hate french-speaking people enough to take up arms against them, but only when hiding behind the cloak of anonymity provided by the internet? And just maybe this guy actually likes Jean-Guy down at the job site when push comes to shove, maybe he's even had beers with the guy. Maybe they're both Canucks fans!
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We've been creating music in a rules/no rules sort of way since we first met. And I've been sneaking around the rules since my first recorder class at age 5, where I'd fake reading the sheet music and play by ear, earning myself an early release from the torture of 12 children playing Mary Had A Little Lamb very badly, over and over and over.
Upstairs from my recorder class was a room full of harps of all sizes, and this was where I'd escape, where mom would find me, strumming and plucking, making up my own way to play music. Thinking back, it amazes me that that room existed and that I found it, and was able to spend so much unsupervised time there. The rest of what we call structure was absorbed through osmosis.Osmosis is a fine teacher, but creating without an agenda, like that 5 year old in a room full of harps, earnestly making music just for the pleasure of it, and that's where it's at. Around the same time period as the recorder lessons, we would go together to the train station and wait for dad's commuter train to arrive. While waiting, my mother would yodel inside the tin shack which was the "train station". She could seriously yodel (she'd smoke Heidi), and the reverb inside the tin shack was incredible. Consciously, or unconsciously, she taught me that voice was something to play with, she taught me to throw my wee voice all over the inside of that shack. Melody, pure and sweet and fun. Sooner or later the train would come and all the men dressed in the 60's same businessman suits would flood off the train and head for their individual stationwagons/wives/2.2 children/suburban homes. I realize that these memories represent the first building blocks of my quirky foundation in music. Thanks mom, you own the yo in yodel! | |
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