A Brief Reflection on the 9/11 Memorial

 Around The World
Apr 102012
 

  The cab driver, the one who nabbed you near the Empire State Building, he barely turns around. “Where on Wall Street you want to go?”  he asks. You pause to consider. You’re not going to Wall Street, not really. But as for where you’re really going, it sounds so crass, so voyeuristic and banal — even after all these years, you’re chasing those pictures seared into your skull. So “take me to Wall Street,” you said, because you want to see it anyway. Asked now to specify, you are at a loss in this overgrown city. “I don’t know,” [...click for more...]

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The Portland Diaries, Part II: Shining City On The Hill

 Around The World
Dec 042011
 

This is part II of my series of trying to convince Winnipeggers that we need to look to Portland, Oregon as a model for our future. Part I is here. I am no synaesthete, but when I think of Portland, the word is green. Oregon looks like what I imagine the Cretaceous looked like: huge and deep and dense with life, but somehow just a touch unfinished. Like some cosmic painter decided to go big or go home, but then — when the job was nearly done — packed up his paintbrush and hit the pub instead. At least he [...click for more...]

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The Portland Diaries, Part I: Street Eat Supreme

 Around The World
Dec 012011
 

On a crisp November day, paradise descends, somewhat unexpectedly, onto a Portland park bench. It’s near to 3 p.m, and the Willamette Valley skies are dried into a blank eggshell slate. Underneath the metal lip of a cluttered red-and-yellow food truck, a Thai woman hauls a portable heater from her kitchen shelves. “For your hands!” she says, smile breaking wider than the Columbia River.  “It’s so cold.” This little Canadian doesn’t break it to her that the 10 C weather feels balmy. But this is what really warms my heart: there are but a handful of surface parking lots in [...click for more...]

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The Reporter Who Broke The Law

 Around The World, This Is Why The World Sucks
Jun 262011
 

After days of watching a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist be grilled by lesser personalities — by journalists who will never come close enough to a Pulitzer to preen in its reflection — a thought. Last week, Jose Antonio Vargas published a passionate and frankly honest essay in the New York Times: My Life as An Undocumented Immigrant. It’s an important and courageous piece, and one that deserves to spur important dialogues about the diverse experience of the millions of people living and working in the United States without documentation, and what should be done to address that. But the media (oh [...click for more...]

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In Defense of the Royal Wedding

 Around The World, Musings
Apr 292011
 

Haters to the left. No, seriously. I understand why many loathed the royal wedding. I understand why so many were sick of the dress, the dress, the details and all the press. I get it. But some of those might not get me, and why I waited for this, and why I watched and waited and sighed. In defense of the royal wedding — it was a joy.

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Stories That Just Won’t Go Away

 Around The World, Here's Your Local News
Apr 182011
 

Because I’m musing some things, and wondering some things, today, a discussion post! Here, intrepid readers, is your topic: What story, or stories, do you desperately hope you never have to see, hear or read about, ever again? It could be local, national, or international. It could be frivolous or serious, sad or scary. All that matters is that it is a story in the media that makes the little ball of perpetual annoyance in your chest (admit it, we all have one) throb mercilessly whenever you see it in the headlines, yet again. It would be improper for me [...click for more...]

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The Serious Business of Burgers

 Around The World, Odes to Winnipeg
Apr 092011
 

Since approximately 90% of my recent blog traffic has been people searching Google for “Unburger,” and landing on my last musing about its impending arrival, I come bearing a gift. That’s right, it’s the Unburger menu, posted on their window on Stradbrook Avenue!     Apologies for the horrendous quality. I need a real camera. But you can mostly make-out the ingredients, which pledge fresh, never-frozen beef and all other sorts of burger-related goodness. They also are planning to serve some big salads and intriguing sides, including edamame. My hungry-heart highlights: BEEF: The Drunken Aussie: Golden pineapple, Balsamic onion & tomat relish, [...click for more...]

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In The Streets of San Francisco

 Around The World
Mar 302011
 

At the top of sloping streets, the bay windows of pastel Victorians wink down on the Haight. There is a vintage store on the raggedy end of the street, a real vintage store with real vintage things, prim 1950s swing jackets and Jackie Kennedy pillboxes and square wartime pumps. Those things, and a $40 purple velvet blazer that skims my wrists, just how I like it. I am waiting to pay when the radio, all oldies all the time, eases into a familiar refrain. If you’re going… to Saaan… Fraaan… cisco… At the cash desk, the little brunette with the flowers in her hair [...click for more...]

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Lede With The Latte – Plus, a Bonus CNN Rant

 Around The World, Musings
Feb 092011
 

Coming in a little late — due to lingering surgery-blahs, and general malaise over my life  – but as many have seen, the Free Press is taking an apparently unconventional step and opening a News Cafe. But is it really so unconventional? I’ve known of the idea for months now, though I was privy to few details other than dreams. The first time I heard of it was on an early episode of John White’s and my now-defunct radio show, when Bob Cox phoned in live from Ink and Beyond. I think the shape of it eluded me then. I’m a muller. [...click for more...]

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A Dire (Straits) Debate

 Around The World, Musings
Jan 152011
 

I could subtitle this post “this ain’t bloggin’,” because a penny for my thoughts, in this case, would drastically overvalue them. My thoughts on this issue are cautious and knotted and not at all leading to a clear bottom line, but whatever, I’m motivated to put fingers to keyboard on it, and this is my space to do that, goshdarnit. As we’ve all heard, the CBSC has ruled that Dire Straits’ song Money For Nothing’s use of the word “faggot” contravenes Canadian broadcast standards. This isn’t really breaking news: the word “fag” or “faggot” has been cut from songs for radio use for ages — [...click for more...]

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