Summer is here on Nexwlelexwm/Bowen Island. After some unsettled weather the annual summer high is doing its best to get established over the north east Pacific Ocean. That weather feature brings us long stretches of sunny, hot, and dry weather, usually starting in mid-July and going until mid-September with very little rain. It’s our drought season here on the edges of the temperate rainforest of the Pacific coast. We launched the kayak today, realizing that its a heavy beast and we’re probably going to need a little set of wheels to get it to and from the kayak rack by the beach where we store it.
Elon Musk wants to start a new political party. US politics is no longer amusing. I guarantee he will do none of the work required to create a democratic alternative. In starting his new party the richest man in the world said “When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste and graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy. Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.” The irony is at ridiculous levels, given Musk’s recent scraping of all kinds of the government data on its citizens and his own heavy reliance on government funding to keep his businesses solvent. Elon Musk is not likely to build a democratic alternative to the two parties of oligarchy in the US. When the biggest grifter of them all, who now knows your social security number, tells you you are getting your freedom back if only you will join his own charismatic movement, run in the opposite direction.
I got a new iPhone last week and set it up yesterday. It took all of 20 minutes of my phones sitting next to each other to transfer everything from my old phone to my new one with about five minutes of me tapping buttons and answering questions along the way. Once done, the new one looked exactly like the old. A very very nice user experience. No heavy lifting involved.
Not much going on today here on our little island. It’s a cool summer day, sunny and clear with a steady inflow wind. This evening we’ll probably head out for a paddle, but for now, here’s some music I’m enjoying this morning from my regular feed of music sites that feed me good stuff. If you’ve ever been in one of our Harvest Moon online courses, you’ll know that the music we play during the sessions is an important and curated part of the program. These are a few of the places I find that music.
- Samba Toure, a protégé of Ali Faraka Toure, has a profile of his career at World Music Central today. This might be the whole soundtrack for the weekend.
- Gillian Welch and David Rawlings released a beautiful album last year, and a couple of days ago they did a Tiny Desk Concert for NPR with four songs off the album. Gosh, Rawlings’ melodic lines are so very sweet on this whole record.
- Maria Popova posts a timely reflection on joy featuring a Nick Cave written after the death of his son.
- My favourite Canadian jazz guitarist, Reg Schwager, has just made all of his music available on Bandcamp for $63. I already have most of it, but his latest release there, In Between, features 8 original compositions in a classic jazz organ trio setting, with Michel Lambert on drums and Steve Amirault on organ. Beautifully produced to bring out the best of Reg’s tone and swing.
An old picture of my friend Corbin Keep reading the National Post, which I think he was doing for my amusement!
My sources for nuance in the current news desert are mostly living in the blogosphere (or it’s quasi equivalent in the public gardens of Medium and Substack). Here are the sites I read pretty much every time the publish something to dive deeper into the civic and policy issues that affect me.
Canadian issues
- Dougald Lamont’s Substack is the site of former Manitoba Liberal leader Dougald Lamont. He publishes incredibly detailed essays on current policy topics skewing towards economics and political history in Canada.
- The Tyee is a progressive news site covering British Columbia and Alberta politics. They often bring on journalists through grants and bursaries to cover issues in depth and their analysis is thoughtful, grounded and referenced. They also have whimsical pieces and great book recommendations.
- The Hub is a conservative site that has no RSS feed, so I have to manually check it every week or so. In a world in which I associate conservative politics with right wing bluster, culture war nonsense, populism and juvenile name calling, The Hub stands alone in Canada on its side of the political spectrum with thoughtful analysis on politics, housing, climate, and economy from a market-centric perspective. As a not-right-wing person, they manage to infuriate me in a way that causes me to look up why I think I’m correct in my opinions. I appreciate that.
- Policy Alternatives from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is the site that makes me pump my fist and say “right on!” CCPA is a well established left-wing policy institute that has been doing fantastic public policy analysis in Canada for decades. It would be fun to take one of their papers on one from The Hub and jam them into a ChatGPT thread to see what comes out.
Policy in other parts of the world
- Letters from an American is the newsletter of Heather Cox Richardson who has become a popular commentator on US politics. As a historian, she puts the events of the day in historical context, but does not hide her ire at what the current administration is doing to her country.
- Intercontinental Cry is the website of IC Magazine and reports on events around the world from the perspective of their impact on Indigenous peoples. There is lots of stuff here you will never hear about otherwise, and it’s not all grim news. There are brilliant pieces on resilience and resurgence and great film recommendations to boot.
- The Economist sees the world through a free market, classical liberal economics lens and that perspective is incredibly important for understanding the global trade world and the implications of political and policy decisions on everyday stuff like the prices we pay for the things we need. Another site that makes me rage sometimes, but I have to go look stuff up to understand why.
I’m curious what sources you read for good analysis of the events of the day, beyond news and daily reporting. I’m especially curious about the sites you read that challenge you. Leave them in the comments for us all to check out.
I can’t imagine life in Canada without the CBC. I recognize that makes me part of a particular demographic, but our national public broadcaster (and its French language service, Radio-Canada) are critical outlets for the ever evolving Canadian story. In the recent federal election, the Conservative Party threatened to eliminate public funding to the CBC. That is a bad idea. But talking about the CBC is a good idea, warts and all, and today the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has a very good set of discussions on renewing the CBC’s mandate. The piece on communications in the North is particularly good.
Bahamas is a good reason to keep the CBC. Not the country, the musician. Last night we saw Bahamas perform live at the Canada Day concert in Whistler. His music is familiar to me through the CBC, but I don’t know his stuff that well. His groove always reminds me of Feist, with whom he played for many years, but he has his own distinctive style. His characteristic staccato guitar work, jazzy chord progressions and beautiful rich voice make 90 live minutes of his music an absolute joy. His inspirations are varied, and his aspirations are noble. Bonus: his drummer last night was Don Kerr, a former member of my favourite Canadian band, Rheostatics.
Caving (not the spelunking kind). Yesterday, a day before our country commemorated Canada Day, Canada scrapped the implementation of the Digital Service Act intended to tax large tech companies on their commercial transactions. Today, while the country celebrates its “sovereignty” I’m mulling over the fact that we allowed another country’s irrational leader to dictate what domestic legislation we would enact or not. Blech. (Yes I shared a YouTube link, which made Google money).
The time for Liberatory Leadership is always now, so perhaps your own Canada Day activities might involve reflection on how we can help ourselves and others become more free. Non Profit Quarterly is publishing an ongoing series on Liberatory Leadership which is thought-provoking and practical and inspiring to me. At it’s best, Canada is as aspiration to explore what might be possible in spaces of relationship, peace, friendship and reciprocity. We need tools for that. All kinds.
Darn Folksinger. Bob Snider is out of retirement for a show at the Mariposa Folk Festival, and that’s the most Canadian thing I can leave you with today. If you lived in or around Toronto in the 1980s, and you followed a particular niche of what is probably now called “alt-folk” you knew Snider. He is the folksiest of folk poets, incisive with his insights and an absolute master of the word. Darn Folksinger is a pretty good song. So is What and Idiot He Is which was my favourite song of his back in the day and which might bring us full circle to the first item in this post. You can decide who I’m talking about, but it’s not just one person.