I have been supporting HaidaBucks in Masset BC. They are being threatened with legal action by Starbucks. I wrote to Starbucks telling them that I thought they should lay off. Michael, from Customer Relations, wrote me back. Here is my reply to his note, with some html added: Dear Michael: Okay…replying to a form letter may be the height of folly, but I’ll be sure to post this correspondence on my weblog at https://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot so it doesn’t seem like I’m completely tilting at windmills… > Dear Mr. Corrigan: > > Thank you for contacting Starbucks Coffee Company. Thank you for …
Yesterday I was walking with my two year old son. We were coming home from the coffee shop where we had been drinking coffee (me) and apple juice (him). A propos of nothing he looked up at me and said: “Is that your tea cup shirt?” I was wearing a t-shirt with a South African cricket logo on it. “Uh, no,” I said. “Is it your water shirt?” “No.” He looked perplexed. “Is it a coffee shirt?” “No.” Then I got it. “Ah Finn,” I said. “It’s a t-shirt, not a tea shirt.” “Oh right,” he said. ” A t-shirt.” …
From the Ends to the Beginning is an online bilingual anthology of Russian poetry. Here is a Pasternak poem, about blogging I suppose… Let’s scatter our words… by Boris Pasternak My friend, you will ask, who ordains that the speech of a blessed fool should burn? Let’s scatter our words As the garden scatters amber zest, Absentmindedly and generously Bit by bit by bit. Let’s not discuss Why the leaves are patterned So formally With ruby and lemon. Who welled up with needles And gushed through the slats, The floodgate blinds, Onto the music books in the shelf. Who dyed …
There seems to be a major disconnect taking place here. Because is it possible to imagine two more mutually exclusionary representations of both a country and a land mass? The one on the left from outside Canada, and specifically from the United States. And the one on the right from inside Canada, as a country whose sense of “identity” has, since the end of the American Revolution in 1783, been based largely on distinguishing itself from the much more populous, powerful, and frequently expansionist nation state to the south. This does seem a bit ridiculous. As well as a little …