SAINTS PRESERVE US

A Page Ripped from History

If a province could express its innermost thoughts…

Dear Diary,

Woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. I can’t remember the good side though, the left or the right? Definitely not feeling strong and free today. Not exactly at my best what with the election coming up next week.

There’s no weed left in the pot shops. Not that I could afford any since Quebec stole all my money. Maybe I should cut back on the stuff? It makes me feel alienated and paranoid. That’s probably why Baby Trudeau legalized it; weed’s just another Ottawa-led conspiracy. Think there’s a couple of bottles of British Columbia wine in the cellar but I’ll be damned if I even use that swill for drain cleaner. Probably laced with strychnine anyway.

Enemies, shadowy forces, are everywhere. I feel like Julius Caesar or Macbeth or somebody. Maybe not, is the Bard even in the K-12 curriculum anymore? Too many triggers for the namby-pamby socialists, I guess. And don’t start me talking about those foreign-funded climate change activists, a fifth column of agitators. That reminds me: I should open a couple of windows and change the air in here.

Jesus, my Lord and Saviour, I feel like crap. How old am I? That’s right, 114 now. Been doing the same thing over and over for too many years to count and I keep expecting a different result. The definition of insanity, they say. Who are they, I’d like to know? They know who they are though. Watching every move I make, everything I do, casting stones in my passage. Maybe I should see a doctor? Nah, it could take months to get in.

Oh, lordy, I’ve never felt so low. What do I have to do today? Better snap a Klondike Days garter, give ‘er, get ‘er done. Is it too early for a shot of orange juice with my eponymous vodka? Chase it with a craft brew. I better make a list. Got to follow up those quotes for the new refinery; note to self: Do not hire workers from Saskatchewan! Wonder if I was drunk-shopping when I bought all those tanker cars? There’s only so much track capacity. Too late now, as long as they get over the Rockies without derailing, it’s all good.

What else? ‘Lake of fire’ social issues; for God’s sake, it’s century 21, get a grip. First Nations, alas I can’t be as glib about something equally complex but I do know that public and patronizing references to Treaty Six land ain’t getting the job done. Jobs, Diary, I’ve got to diversify the economy, change my routine, ditch the boom and bust cycles that never fail to drag me down when the wheel turns. Got to admit, that rush, wow, those highs are pretty high even if Quebec and lazy Maritimers get all the money. That place, the East, I don’t know, makes me feel like a rube at its poker table, you know? Instead of betting the house on a pipeline, perhaps I should introduce a modest harmonized sales tax? Christ. Maybe I should see a skull doctor about that bogeyman in my closet? It’s possible he’s one of them, works for Trudeau.

I must confess, Diary, sometimes when I play an Ian Tyson album I get nostalgic for the good old days. Sure a depression was sandwiched between two world wars but we all pulled together. We knew who they were back then even if we couldn’t recognize ourselves. Whereas on a day like today I just feel like quitting, packing it in. But you know me, gung-ho, can-do. I’ll power through this blue phase as I’ve done so many times before. Anyway, if you live in the past you just end up coyote carrion.

Thanks for listening, Diary. Time to jump in the shower, clean up, reset my head and get on with things. I can do this. See you tomorrow.

Alberta

XOX

SAINTS PRESERVE US

All the World (and the Community League Hall) Is a (Political) Stage

Word spread through the neighbourhood like orange sparks leaping a boreal firebreak. Eyebrows were raised at the Crooked 9. Alberta’s premier, Rachel Notley, was due to speak in an hour’s time at our community league hall on this final day of March, a lazy Sunday. Ann and I decided to stroll over and listen; we were expecting a town hall discussion: questions and on-message answers.

The province’s spring election is slated for the third Tuesday in April, about two weeks from now. This one doesn’t feel like a dutiful exercise, a mere democratic drill. The good old days, whatever they were, will not return and the future, of Alberta and perhaps even Confederation, decades’ hence, does not bode well should the present be mismanaged. Fossil fuels, carbon levies and climate change mix like oil and water. There’s a lot on the line in this province at the moment and the question is which way we will teeter-totter on our buckling sawhorse, regression or progression?

Our community hall because of its ease of accessibility and surrounding landscaping has multiple entrances. Ann and I went in through a rear door, inadvertently circumventing a screening by New Democratic Party (NDP) operatives. Neighbours inside said they’d been quizzed as to whether or not they were “friends of Rachel.” Looking around, I immediately understood why.

The front of the room was occupied by the press, newspapers and networks. Ms Notley’s mark was taped on the floor, a narrow T of green. Teleprompters were positioned to its left and right. The back of the room was the choir the premier was to preach to though she’d be facing the media’s cameras and iPhones. Her backdrop was a diverse and inclusive central casting crowd three or four deep, some of whom held orange campaign signs, just so.

The middle of the room was just a little too precious. Four Friendly Giant tables seated maybe two dozen children. They were hard at work with coloured pencils and felt markers. The 11”x17” sheets they filled in were not pictures but large type: FIGHTING FOR ALBERTANS; FIGHTING FOR OUR SCHOOLS; FIGHTING FOR OUR KIDS. RACHEL NOTLEY FIGHTING FOR YOU. Party minions clad in orange NOTLEY CRUE t-shirts then taped the finished masterpieces to the painted drywall. Beyond the calculated campaign imagery there’s a whiff of Big Tobacco and Big Booze: Get ‘em young.

Considering the often hysterical tone of what passes for political discourse in Alberta, especially on social media, security was surprisingly light. Two uniformed police constables were stationed outside the hall. They easily outnumbered the lone protester. The premier’s personal bodyguard was a stern looking fellow who resembled the actor in those ‘Transporter’ action flicks. His gaze swept over me a few times and he talked into his hand. I felt that irrational and sarcastic panic I get at airports when I’m randomly selected for extra frisking wash over me: “Of course I have Semtex residue on my fingertips. Who doesn’t?”

The event, well-timed for the start of the new week’s news cycle, was the release of the NDP’s complete election platform. Fighting words. When the party obtained power four years ago the NDP was handed four decades’ worth of shredded Tory documents and the devastating wildfire up north in Fort McMurray. Oh, and the House of Saud left the tap running. Contrary to the fears of the lunatic fringe the Notley government has not devolved Alberta into a failed, socialist state. The premier is principled and pragmatic. Ms Notley has always struck Ann and me as person who views public service as a calling rather than a career despite the manipulative trappings of modern politics. We admire her; Ms Notley won’t pick a fight but nor will she back down from one.

In my view, it takes two consecutive majority terms for any one party to put its ideological stamp on its realm. Aside from the global crisis of climate change, Alberta has a major problem: one resource and a single customer whose demand for our resource is rapidly declining. The conundrum is that the exploitation of our main resource, while great for the economy, accelerates climate change.

In its bid for re-election the NDP promises Albertans decency and common sense. Times are hard but spending on daycare, health care, education and infrastructure must continue. The provincial economy desperately needs to diversify in order to extract Alberta from the ever spinning hamster wheel of the boom-and-bust energy industry. Meanwhile, the mixed blessing of the tar sands must be leveraged in a responsible manner. No argument here.

Every detail was orchestrated to feel oh so right in our modest community league hall last Sunday. And why shouldn’t the most capable politician in Alberta control her message and her image? It’s all in the game. Yet public opinion polls suggest the Notley regime is doomed come election day. Catastrophe in its many backward forms looms even as the future hangs in the balance. The kids with their coloured pencils need to gestate for another 10 or 15 years before they can help turn this whole damn thing around.

A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

Portland, Oregon

Ann sat at the kitchen counter contemplating the daily squares of the More Time Moms Family Organizer calendar on the wall above the erasable magnetic bulletin board. Outside, February was crawling over shards of shattered ice into its fifth week.

She said, “We’ve got to get out of this place.” I agreed. I thought travelling for an early and extra week of spring was a great notion. Ann asked me where we might like to go, somewhere close, somewhere south and west of Edmonton. Ann flung a figurative dart at a mental map: “Portland?”

Powell’s City of Books, I thought, the mother overload. I once spent a lot of time and money at the Powell’s on the south side of Chicago by the university, a multi-level warren of shelves, but I’d heard shoppers required a map for the mother store in Portland because it’s storeys of stories, an entire city block of books. Certain niggling gaps in our library needed to be plugged. It occurred to me too that possibly, maybe I could shopput a copy of my latest novel onto Powell’s shelves and wouldn’t hilarity ensue if I got caught doing that?

I said, “Let’s.”

The unofficial motto of the actual city is Keep Portland Weird. That pithy tourist t-shirt slogan while true is also something of a slight as it suggests a laissez-faire attitude on the part of Portland’s civic administration which pretty much seems to have got things right for its 650,000 citizens. The inland port, once the terminus of the Pioneer Trail, is divided east and west by the Willamette River which meets the Columbia about ten miles downstream. The Pacific coast is another 50 miles distant. Downtown is on the west bank of the Willamette. By my calculation its core stretches from the Portland State University campus in the south north to the funkier Pearl District. The scale is human and the place is designed for people.

For a pedestrian Portland is Nancy Sinatra’s boots. The west waterfront is an extensive and scenic ribbon of manicured green. The core is peppered with parks or greenways, some of which extend for blocks, and public squares. Bike lanes are painted on the roads and green signs indicate skateboard routes. Commuters are served by three trams which run in loops, light rail MAX trains which reach all quadrants of the city and extend to the airport. All these tracks are criss-crossed by busses. Visiting riders can utilize the entire system all day long for just $5.

Ann and I stayed downtown on Clay Street, steps away from Portland State, the city’s arts district and the great stone edifice that is City Hall. The Hotel Modera is retro-hip, a refurbished travel lodge evoking the days of land yachts with fly-away fins and lots of chrome. Its earthy two-tone hallways were dimly lit. The carpet pattern suggested enlarged fragments of broken records. From time to time we felt as if we’d walked into the nightmare sequence of a German silent film.

That disorienting cinematic effect was often enhanced by extensive sampling of local micro-brews. On our second visit to the Yard House on Fifth Avenue, I was cavalier, I ordered a Proletariat Red. The establishment’s literature boasts its collection of beers on tap is the world’s largest. The bartender said they didn’t have that one. I was mildly mystified because I knew I’d enjoyed a couple somewhere in the vicinity, somewhere within staggering distance.

Ann and I were enchanted by the barroom of Jake’s Famous Crawfish. The fridges were wood framed with see-through doors, misty with condensation. We were detective noir characters, me and my moll. A man wearing a mesh ball cap who was part of a party of three waiting for a table in the restaurant ordered a Bud Light. The bartender straightened his two-button white waistcoat and stared at his customer; eventually he sneered, “Really.” The blue tap was at hand but swill was not served. About 15 minutes later another drinker sidled into the recently evacuated space beside Ann and me. He couldn’t decide what he wanted. I suggested a Bud Light.

Years ago when I was a university student the syllabus for one of my English courses included two works by James Joyce: ‘Stephen Hero’ and ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,’ the former being a first draft of the latter. The professor noted that the main character also appears in the pub scene in Joyce’s masterpiece ‘Ulysses.’ He said ‘Ulysses’ was a problematic book: “I either mention it in passing or we devote an entire semester to it.” I cannot remember the gentleman’s name but I could picture him as we stood before 1005 West Burnside. Powell’s is problematic: you either walk on by like Dionne Warwick or like the Rolling Stones on the Ed Sullivan Show, you spend some time together.

Ann had a list on her iPhone. I had a paper list in my pocket and a second one from an envious friend. We browsed the green, blue and gold rooms before agreeing to split up. I went upstairs into the red room and then like a magpie in the land of shiny objects wandered into the purple room to examine the books about baseball. Immersed in that aisle I remembered what it was like to collect O-Pee-Chee cards: “Got it. Got it. Got it.” I did eventually purchase a Modern Library edition of Raymond Chandler whose prose both created and transcended his genre of detective noir. My other find was a Library of America collection of Philip K. Dick whose groundbreaking short stories and novels introduced an everyman, workaday element to science fiction. I purposely avoided Powell’s orange room where the music books are shelved.

Down by the river in a neighbourhood promoted as historic called Yamhill, Ann and I stumbled upon Second Avenue Records. We flipped through the bins of new and used vinyl. I was a Bruce Springsteen character in the shop, not a boy prophet walking handsome and hot so much as wanting it all or nothing at all. I didn’t possess the pre-scribbled constraint of a list nor did I ask the two hipsters behind the counter if they, like Powell’s, shipped large orders. I was afraid the answer might be yes. Ann and I lingered but not for very long.

When we travel Ann and I habitually establish an unofficial headquarters outside of our accommodations. Riding the B tram we spotted an inviting dive on Montgomery, a short walk from our hotel, where the tracks begin to twist down toward the Willamette and the bridge over to its industrialized east bank. Schmizza Pub & Grub had picnic tables outside arrayed by the rails and they were rife with drinkers, smokers and dog owners. We visited three times. The craft beer was palatable and the pizza was delicious.

But something was bugging me. I’d noticed a corporate lunch hour Schmizza sign downtown on a street named for a dead president near the Court House. I collared our Montgomery manager and asked him if there was a legal conflict what with two such disparate pizza parlours using the same name. He said, “It’s a franchise.” I’d already investigated the borderline sanitary toilets; I looked around at the shabby décor and at the regulars, skaters under slouch toques, eccentrics under fedoras or baseball caps, who owned their barstools. I said, “Really?” I thought, ‘The franchise fee must run around $5 and the brand manager is either a burnt-out case or dead.’ He swept his arm toward the beer taps and the shelves of liquor, “My difference is the wall. I don’t really pay attention to head office, they leave me alone.”

Unfortunately, a couple of more important things are neglected in Portland. Nestled between Chinatown and the Old Town and within a triangle whose vague points are the Greyhound station, the University of Oregon team store and Voodoo Doughnut (sweet-toothed doughphiles swear Blue Star Donuts is better) is a skid row the likes of which I’ve never before encountered where I’ve lived or visited. Portland’s homeless population, some of it nomadic given the temperate climate, seems alarmingly disproportionate to the city’s size. People wrapped in crusty tarps and filthy sleeping bags live under bridges, on sidewalk corners, on the greenways and in central Pioneer Square. Portland is justifiably renowned for its food truck scene and vibrant weekend market but eating and drinking on the street in front of the hungry and the desperate strikes me as inadvertent taunting.

If the homeless are invisible to locals, so too is life in the state prior to the United States of America’s westward expansion, its manifest destiny. The various public statues and especially their inscriptions constitute something of a whitewash of history; the first settlers seemingly encountered nothing and no one in the timber except critters. Those curious about First Nations’ history in the territory will have to dig a little deeper than the Wells Fargo museum – which was closed during our stay but apparently still tallying up visitors. The Oregon Historical Society’s main exhibit examined the wondrous legacy of beer.

SAINTS PRESERVE US

Big Old Jet Airliners

The following is a transcript of a telephone call that may have been recorded for training purposes.

Boeing: Good afternoon, Boeing Aerospace internal sales, how may I help you?

meGeoff: Hello, I’m the CFO of meGeoff Air. I wish to purchase a schwack of planes, please, an entire fleet.

Boeing: We’re currently running a special on our 737 Max 8s, factory pricing this week only and easy terms.

meGeoff: Great! I’ll take two, please.

Boeing: I thought you said you wanted a fleet?

meGeoff: I do and two jets should suffice.

Boeing: I’m not sure I understand.

meGeoff: We’re a startup, an ultra low cost carrier. Our business model is simple. We offer tourists one way trips to sun destinations but only during hurricane season or times of extreme civil unrest. Then we hand things over to the Canadian government to extract its citizens from disaster zones.

Boeing: I see… so, two Max 8s then.

meGeoff: That’ll do it. When can I expect delivery?

Boeing: We happen to have a few on the lot at the moment, so immediately.

meGeoff: Great! Let’s get this deal done!

Boeing: You’ll be wanting wings with those Max 8s?

meGeoff: Erm, you mean like hot wings, bar food?

Boeing: No, no, actual wings for lift and flight. They’re extra.

meGeoff: Erm, yes, I suppose I’ll need four of them because meGeoff Air won’t fly on a wing and a prayer! Get it?

Boeing: Very clever, sir. Ailerons with those?

meGeoff: Ailerons? What are those? Are they essential?

Boeing: Sort of, yes. I don’t mean to overwhelm you with jargon but ailerons are those flap thingys, very handy for banking and turning.

meGeoff: Are they extra?

Boeing: Yes. It’s normal too for wings to have turbines, engines. Shall I put you down for four of those as well? They pair well with ailerons.

meGeoff: Erm, ah, I guess so. Oh! I just remembered! Can you remove the toilets and cram as many inhumanly narrow seats as possible into the cabin? I'll forego the legroom.

Boeing: Of course sir, that’s standard.

meGeoff: It’s been a pleasure doing business with you!

Boeing: Oh, we’re not quite done yet, sir. I suspect you’ll want landing gear? Wheels, the whole works?

meGeoff: Is all that stuff extra?

Boeing: Yes, but they do facilitate take off and touchdown.

meGeoff: Better put me down for two sets.

Boeing: Nose wheels too? They’re extra.

meGeoff: Of course they are. Throw them in. Is that it?

Boeing: Some airlines find the operator’s manual handy.

meGeoff: Don’t tell me, they cost extra.

Boeing: They do. But honestly, sir, I counsel my customers not to bother with that additional expense as it’s significant. Max 8s pretty much fly themselves and anyway, nobody ever reads the instructions for anything.

meGeoff: Isn’t that the truth? I can barely turn on the television at home. So, yeah, let’s skip the manuals.

Boeing: I’ll complete the paperwork and forward it on to you for your signature. Boeing Aerospace thanks you for your business. Good luck with meGeoff Air! And as we like to say around here, ‘Safe travels!’