Week 10

May 25, 2020

 I was thinking about all the folks who are now working home, plugging away on their keyboards and doing ZOOM conference calls with cats, dogs and kids in the background. I remembered one of the neat jobs I had for over 5 years starting in 2005 in Inuvik, Northwest Territories and ending here in Centrelea in 2010. I was the editor of PermaFrost Media, a news aggregator for the oil and gas industry which was making a pitch to run a pipeline along the Mackenzie River in the Northwest Territories. The reason I thought of this was the conversation going on about the internet services in rural Canada. When I started in Inuvik, the local cable/internet provider was my boss so I got the best service available - it was slow but manageable. When I moved back to rural Nova Scotia I had Bell (very slow and intermittent), then I had Xplornet (which didn't like the rain and cost a fortune), then I had Eastlink (which died periodically) and finally I have a small Nova Scotia company called NCS Network which works like a charm. Working from home suited me just fine. I did get to travel back up North a few times plus got to Alaska for a conference. I learned lots and "met" some really interesting folks. Thanks, Tom!

I watched PBS yesterday. I saw the last part of Yo Yo Ma performing J.S. Bach's six cello suites in the afternoon. It was quite wonderful. And then I tuned in to the Memorial Day Concert. I have mixed feelings about the militaristic nature of the day. However, in a rather odd way it was a glimpse into what the U.S. used to have a worldwide reputation for being - a people who were proud of their country and were almost childlike in their devotion to their military personnel. The patriotic music was stirring, as it was meant to be. In contrast, seeing the front page of The New York Times was journalism at its finest. It's hard to distinguish the different faces of this complicated country to our South. It's hard to distinguish between the way it was and the way it was imagined it was. Is the way it is now, the way it has always been and we just didn't want to see it?

On a lighter note, we have a clever raccoon raiding the bird feeder at night. S/he climbs up the so-called squirrel-proof metal-clad pole, flips out the plexiglass windows and eats all the black-hulled sunflower seeds. Nothing like feeding all the local creatures - squirrel, groundhog, skunk and now raccoon. Oh yes, then there are all the birds!

Onwards!