Dunbar's Panhandler Woes...uh, dot, dot, dot

A stink has stunk up the air above pre-Olympics Vancouver by the sea. Effluent spewing from one affluent nook on the west side. From pleasant Dunbar. From a vocal pack of elitists who presume to speak for all Dunbar.

The story, Thursday. Vocal pack of local elitists advise area businesses to call 9-1-1, the police emergency line, to have panhandlers moved along...somewhere else, obviously. Vocal pack claim the police recommend this action. Police are quick to deny it. There is much outcry...waste of police resources...nimbyism...from the general public, and saner Dunbar residents the vocal pack apparently do not speak for.

Friday, afternoon: the story changed. Corrections. Clarifications. Disclaimers. Water on the fire.

From the police: "This is a mistake..." — whatever mistake means. Their reminder the public should only ever call the non-emergency line in regard to non-emergency situations.

A somebody on the vocal pack's unmoderated online forum now pointed at for the inflammatory description of panhandlers as undesirables and certainly non-residents who, if not shooed away, will "...multiply like cockroaches". Simply, the vocal pack distancing themselves, and I'm guessing in a buzz over what all this unwanted attention might do to area business. CBC's online comments filling by the hour with public vows to never again shop in Dunbar. Hotter heads comparing the mind that dehumanizes, sees a person as vermin, as no different than the Nazi who might concentrate them all in camps.

Such a kerfuffle!, they must've thought. They weren't presuming to do the government's job. They weren't trying to fix a social problem. They were only trying to keep their neighbourhood as they like it.

Sloppy as news services can be, possibly CBC got enough of the thing wrong to warrant the rewrite. I must say I barely recognized the gutted thing when I went online to re-read it and its comments Friday night. You can have a go yourself, read between the sanitized lines. Here's the story: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/04/23/bc-dunbar-panhandlers-email.html

Sorry, Earth

Drove today. Ain't that ironic? Didn't take the bus, because the two-zone fare costs more than driving my pick-up truck. Weather cold front blew in overnight and Vancouver woke to high winds warning. Westerlies, 50 kph...gusting to 70. Sunny.

Powerlines down, here, there.

Westerlies, as in headwinds for usually-cyclist me, going to work...well, just didn't feel like it today, frankly. Westerlies hit as a crosswind when I'm climbing the Arthur Laing Bridge. Tries to blow me over into the technicolored tailgating steel careering past my elbow. Going home, a westerly would only blow me into the railing, against my other elbow. Perhaps two and a half feet wide, the implied bike lane on that bridge. It does double-duty as the emergency lane. Triple-duty, as the oopsie lane: for those motorists who wander all over the road. But most cyclists don't much like the rollercoastering up and down the rain catchment basins in that two and a half feet between railing and traffic, so useful bike lane width actually is about one foot. And average bike and rider spans two feet across...so I drove today.

Singlehandedly did poor old Earth irreparable harm today. Of course, I'm only being facetious. Also, I might strike yoga positions...or poses, some might darkly call them...during those moments traffic's stopped for pedestrians. When traffic stops for pedestrians. A local buncha yoga enthusiasts did that at chosen crosswalks in town today. Take care of Mother Earth, Take Care of Yourself, their lesson for the day.

I decided to take care of myself: I drove.

Yesterday, I had a Green experiment going. Got home too late, couldn't satisfyingly write it up, feeling groggy-headed as I was. I hadn't anything ready for Protag either. Staying in the Green spirit, tho, figured it didn't make sense idling my pc all night. Guess I'm not so evil after all.

Photovoltaic solar cells were a sci-fi dream when I was growing up. And I'd have had to be an engineer to build my own solar farm. Now, I can practically buy a kit from Canadian Tire...if it's in stock. Curious about realworld useful results and power yields, however facing budget restraints, and feeling a hankering for doing something I could find useful, yesterday I carried out a small scale experiment using one solar-powered floating pool light.

Lay it out like a flower drinking up all that sunshine. At dusk, it switched itself on. Certainly brighter than one candle. But only for a couple hours. Then for almost another hour only just glowing, feebly, like the life going out of it. Went away, to jot down an idea that feeble dimming glow sparked. Dying spaceship sketch. Plus the tea I needed: maybe fifteen minutes away. Only a dark flower on my windowsill, when I returned.

Learning to Crawl

Chatting with Craziantix over on Protag. He'd been away a while. He asked about TAS, and had anyone added yet to GodSeed Vector.

Right right...not chatting...though that's how leaving little notes for each other feels. Middle of workday was when I lifted my head, spit out the bit, gobbled my bread, saw his note. Yup, one of those work days.

TAS has been away doing that bread n'butter writing that pays the bills. That would've been simple enough to tell. Then I got to thinking about GodSeed, about Craziantix's being away some time, and perhaps needing some kind of summary. And so came the idea for ...a story summary so far.

He didn't need some rambling synopsis, I figured. TAS's tone, throughout his chapters, has that Saturday cinema serial feel. I've seen bits of a few of those glorious half-hour black-and-white adventures. Buck Rogers. Flash Gordon. Recalled their brilliantly concise prologues before every episode. And that iconic Star Wars prologue: that heart swelling overture, and that crawl starting almost all those grand adventures. That, I figured the best example for GodSeed, if I could emulate it.

For the rest of that work day, concise little possibilities to'd and fro'd in my head. Something I felt I needed to do, for exercise's sake, as well. Feeling some days like I'm a one-trick pony. I love describing in my writing. And exploring character. I probably scribble longer than the thing should be.

Well, then. Long story short: By day's end, posted my exercise. Chapter Sixteen, The Story So Far. Came out like a movie intermission. And it was fun!

Earth Day...Counting Down...One Week

Every Earth Day, I gripe. About the hypocrisy. About how far we still have to go, we clever monkeys. About the strange business Going Green has become.

Sure, I'm opinionated. Doesn't make me any less right than some of my fellow monkeys who've tried to steer this spaceship Earth. In a world where credentials often seem to matter more than common sense, others more...sensible than I regularly are discounted. No expert, merely opinionated me.

But here's the thing no more vocal semi-evolved simian can ever take from me: this is my world — and I've been doing my caring bit for it long enough that I've grown possessive about the place — and don't feel like shutting up about it.

Just wrapping up, that Summit o'the Americas. Another Must Get Together. Another pack jetting to essential rendezevous...to discuss what could've been discussed as easily, more greenly, the marketing term, via teleconference. I'm not forgetting the supporting entourage jetting along with them. And the jetset media. Charging-up battery packs for powering all those cameras, laptops, and satellite phones. Imagine the generating stations working overtime. Extra tiki torches smoking the beaches for all those extra guests. You see, it's...Port o'Spain, Trinidad. Sun, sand, sea.

Funny...no, not really...that these summits aren't as frequent in the dreary cold north. Meeting halfway...was that the idea?

Trade...or Free Trade...or Protectionism...whatever their word o'the day.
Another giant's dirty footprints stamped deeply in Caribbean sands. Talking heads burbling on...like the sea shhhussshhhing back down the beach.

Untitled re Legal Farce

News blurb today.
Very dangerous parolee loose...somewhere.
Violent tendencies. Violent crimes synopsized...if that's a word.
Mister Very Dangerous Parolee has breached the terms of his...blah blah. Didn't return to the halfway house. The Public cautioned not to approach. The usual. The sickeningly usual.
All of which begs the obvious question: Why?...!!!...and eccentric triple apostrophes really only fitting here...why not?...and capital letters...nothing more fearsome than the irate public armed with non-standard punctuation and big bold letters.
WHY ARE THE VERY DANGEROUS LET LOOSE?...CONSISTENTLY LET LOOSE!

Did some word-slinger wrongly tack on one too many adjectives? Was the parolee only Very?
We know the problem stems from words.

We cannot blame the police. Some police, sometimes, may behave little more disciplined, we'll call it, than a gang; even still, they are the gang we'll cry out for when things go wrong in the night. Police regularly express through local media they'd be only too happy to re-lock-up the dangerous, even the very.

No...the words that endanger more our vast and lawfilled land burble over us from the dominion where legalese is spoken, a jurisdiction fantastical as the moon...or Ottawa. Whimsical, this legalese, and a most precise language. Once, its precision and care were our safeguard.

Its whimsy, though, a dark well from which rises with every re-offending parolee that recurring nightmare I wish were only like that legal farce Charles Dickens gutted most eloquently in his Bleak House. But I haven't his sharp wit; I might only add coarse vitriol.

And this isn't a story founded on Dickens' London. We're stuck with this reality, with sentences for heinous crimes that include seemingly automatic eligibility for parole.

--

That was a bit dark. A bit too hopeless sounding.
I'll just plop in a giggle...
Time to go clean my unregistered stapler.

Shadow on the Grass

It's only me,
pausing,
taking one breath in sunlight.
Shadow on the grass.
Only passing by.

Just...There

Homeward bound, a moment stopped at a red light, and Cypress Mountain caught my eye. Just beyond reach.

Work's always busy after a holiday. This Easter Monday...was something else.

No matter, that.

Had a story idea about fully formed at breakfast. A 'just for fun' short I figured should've been easy enough to jot away at in a few minutes at work before the workday built up a full head of steam. I should've jotted at home, of course. Though it would've made me late, I should've.

Well, it was late day, alone at work after everyone else had gone home before I could even attempt to jot down the thing so clear at breakfast. Working it. Sticking word after word. Building something ugly and contrived.

Saturday Driver, Supermarket Parking, A Study

Only scribbling. Rather than rant, figuring I'll create a character suitable for mocking, which will do me double duty as some writing exercise.

--


Outta my way. I'm busy. Why are supermarket parking lots so big anyway? All these empty spots...what a waste. Lousy automatic transmission...takes forever to rocket up the lot.

[Jabbering on cel phone: its use that moment possible, because of his lousy automatic transmission] "You're supervisor, you're getting more than minimum wage outta me, you get those guys to do it and get 'em out, so I don't haveta pay them more than four hours. I want it done by the time I'm back from golf."

And why all these Stop signs? — Dammit! Idiots backing outta parking stalls...when I'm flying by! Gonna miss my tee-off time! Gotta park at the front — right in front — right by the front doors.
NO PARKING...yeah, doesn't apply to me...and I'm only gonna be a minute. Drop her off here and wait. Can't miss my tee-off time. What're you looking at?...Hey, I'm not the only one parking in the NO PARKING zone. I'm not right in front anyway...I'm not the problem. She hadta walk fifty feet to the doors. Fifty feet's as far as a mile when you're busy as I am.
Maaan, see that idiot...almost clipped her backing herself out. Maaan, why're there so many bad drivers?...Oughtta be a law.

CHIRRRUPP! "Y'Hello. Yada yada blah important new putter blah. "

She's done. Can't get through there...Maaan, no one's got common sense...I'll go that way, wrong way, but it's only for a sec, I'm quick. I'm good...I should drive race cars.

If I blow this Stop sign, I'm across before that guy...done. Exit's over there. No cars parked here...I'll just cut across all this. DAMMIT! — and she's on a cel phone — she didn't even look!...Oughtta be a law. No, maybe not. But then I'm not like these idiots, I'm no bad driver, I can drive and use my cel at the same time. Not like I'm talking about nothing...not like some people I really should call the cops on. I only talk when it's important. And I'm busy. I've got a business to run...they better have that job done by the time I'm back from golf. Need this phone. Great calling plan...unlimited blahing. Eyesight's gone a little blurry lately...just my right eye...what's that about?

Pick-up truck. Ugly old thing. He'll be there...block my exit. I'll take his lane...muscle by.
CHIRRRUPP..."Y'ello...Can't talk...cutting off someone...I'll make tee-off."

Steiffa Saves Her SchoolBuddies...Redux

I joked that my penmanship won't win me any gold star.
Really, though, a mindmap only decipherable to me isn't all too useful an example then, is it?
A translation, then.
In future, when it's for public viewing, I will tryyy to scribble between the lines.

Steiffa Saves School...Alone: A Mind Map

My liking for mapping stuff wants just a tad clarifying. Drawing maps, mountain and forest here, town here, etc, oh'yesss.

Are you familiar with mind mapping?
Some call it clustering.
Scribbling and drawing over paper...uh, thought balloons!...just like...no, not like in a comic.

Say you're working out story plot. Start with the idea, the character, the situation, that you want to explore. That's your main thought balloon. Jot down around it ideas that come, briefly: each idea in its own thought balloon, and however it's linked to the idea that sparked it. You're not writing yet, only mapping out how you might write.

Some thought balloons go nowhere. Some finish looking like a buncha carnival balloons. They might pick you up, take you anywhere...I like that image!

This mindmapping's as useful when it's time to fit together story puzzle pieces already written. Seeing how it all fits. Or doesn't, and needs...something. And it's freeform, so you can try new directions, play with it however you like.

Protag's comments box ain't config'd for me to paste in a tiny descriptive drawing. Why should it be, eh? If you go to my blog, you'll see a map of Steiffa Saves Her School :)

[The above, an excerpted conversation from Bolsheviki's Mage Hunting, appearing at Protagonize...THE collaborative writing site...You really should visit.]
--
I've been mind mapping so long...almost forgotten where I first heard of it...years ago.
Then, a study tool recommended for college students. Mapping a thesis. Making notes easily during long lectures. This was before laptops. Even using a micro-cassette recorder, notes still had to be jotted out after.
Tony Buzan.
Just love Google...Many thanks, Mister Buzan!

Priorities

Okay.
So it's those Olympics rings.
It's not like I'm snapping their beauty shot.
I have my priorities in order.
Snapped a true beauty shot late day, homeward bound.

Spring's Sprung...at long last...maybe

A fine, fine Saturday, this. Even a Saturday for overused expressions o'the season that's trying to be, after a very long winter that was...and hasn't quite left us humans yet. Sun's shining. I've time enough for walking about beneath it, returning home after Saturday shopping through the sunshiny neighbourhood, and snapping pix.

Cherry's in bloom, pinking just the east sides of these streets, and just across the bottom of the hill. The little sun we've had has managed that degree of warming.

Lotsa folks I should in my sunshiny mood probably call neighbours were also about, taking the early April sun this Saturday. Kids playing across Marpole Park. A young couple stepping along, hand in hand.

Overnight temperatures have been hovering just above freezing. Everyone knows higher ground caught snow only days ago.