Happy 250th, Wolfgang

I know the perfect way to celebrate, but I don't have a copy of Amadeus handy.

What we want, or, Election Day

I want justice. I want peace, order, and good government. I want not to fear injury or illness because we have doctors and medicine to banish sickness, nor to fear living because we have poets and art to dream everything between heaven and earth. I want good schools so that people may see what we've learned about man and the world -- "he who cannot draw on three thousand years..." -- and good academics so that we may know what world we can have and what world we want -- "wir muessen wissen, wir werden wissen" (we must know, we shall know) -- and good government so that we may build it. I want society to make us think it is not so bad to be human. I just wish I knew how to pay for all of it.

Election day comes but once a year. Have you voted? (I did. Last week.)

I'll be watching it on-line, starting from ten o'clock Eastern, live on cbc.ca. They say they'll be streaming their 'election special' video live again, an excellent practice which I commend. It is a little sad that it starts so late. In fact it begins before the polls close on the East Coast, but it cannot be broadcast to those on the West until polls there have closed due to local laws. Probably this is a good law but it makes things a little less dramatic. Instead of hearing about it while there's still a sliver of day's light (there, I mean, not here) we wait until the stars are out to find what kind of government we get. Care to guess?

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In the meantime, a pair of pretty pictures for us, just because I said I would.

Last view of Vancouver: twenty-six consecutive rainy days



"Look, Sulu: the sun's come out" no rain above the clouds as the wind brushes the windows clean

Arrival redux: "here we are!"

Once again we've arrived largely without incident. I'm beginning to forget the bittersweet memory of connections barely made and connections missed, multiple delays on Toronto Pearson tarmac leading to missing the bus and adventuring on the New Jersey transit system.

Indeed, the largest vexation of the day was my camera's batteries giving out very quickly. I swear every time I go out those things don't work and I come home and recharge them, both pairs, and then they also fail to work the next time. But I guess it's more likely I only plan to recharge them each time but upon arriving home put it low on the priority list, my initial fury faded, and thereafter remember only the fierce conviction that this travesty not be repeated. Trying all (6 = 4 choose 2) combinations bought me a handful of stills of the first minutes on the plane. For the first time yet I had a window seat on the Vancouver-Toronto leg and was looking forward to some scenic mountain-watching over the Rockies. It was scenic indeed, a classic tableau of foothills and peaks, rolled and cragged, donning white caps of snow and gray cloaks of fog. Alas we will have to wait until this time next year, I suppose, to get the photographic evidence (from my camera, anyway), and for the meagre pickings we did get, until tomorrow, since I can't download anything until I get some batteries with gusto in them.

Vancouver-Toronto was slightly bumpy at the two ends with the strong weather; in Toronto, too, it was raining, reinforcing the slight solipsistic feeling I get with this modern travel business. I dozed a little and listened to Turandot on the handy portable mp3-playing device Craig bought me and read a little and stared into space a little. Complimentary meals were not served, so sad. We touched down a few minutes ahead of schedule, which just meant I got to spend time sitting at the next gate instead of on the plane -- a minor boon.

Toronto-Newark was a little longer than it should have been, which could have cost me semi-dearly, but we made it with ninety seconds or so to spare. Many months ago (November) I made a reservation with the shuttle bus company for both legs of my vacation journey. At the last minute (two days ago) I was informed that my reservation this go around would have to be moved. It had been at 8:15, a safe time with the flight ostensibly landing at 6:45 and in fact being a precious quarter-hour late. At a guess I'd say I was the only person with a ticket for that bus, since there were just three on the 7:15, which I scarcely made, (apparently they categorically refuse to allow someone to confirm their booking unless they have baggage in hand at the time of the call), and of which I was the sole student. I would stop using these people after the dreadful service they've displayed (last time they lost my reservation altogether, I might have mentioned at polemic length and bombastic temper about three months or so ago) but there's really no alternative. One can only hope such an administrative error does not benight one of the reservations which really matter, say for a bus the day after classes end. On the bus I listened to The Original Three Tenors Concert.

I stopped off at the pad just long enough to drop the luggage and deploy the very essentials (laptop e-mail), since this was now eleven and a half hours after egress in the morning: nine o'clock, Eastern time, and quite late in the evening by this town's standards. I took a page from last March and went to a nice Italian place which I knew closes at eleven o'clock -- you may recall why I remember that. This was slightly hasty, since it did start to rain, twice, briefly.

So: vini, vidi, alea iacta est, -- vici. I believe I'll spend the rest of the evening catching up with the news and then reading quietly. I'd say I have an "early day" tomorrow, "six o'clock" rising, but in truth the hours back home in Vancouver I kept were so blastedly irregular (after the first week I knew I needed to shift things around so as not to collapse on the bus ride home New Year's morning, and thereafter things got out of hand) I'm not really converting back to West Coast time, which I wasn't on anyway.


Postscript. By the by, those who gave me breakable things this holiday will be relieved to know that once again the worst damage to my luggage was some fierce wrinkling to my shirts.