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musings of mark since 2001

The rain showed up in these parts finally, it was a very dry June and July was looking like a pretty bad fire season coming up for the interior of the Province; not too good for the weekenders visiting the island either. Nothing in the way of big events, it was JP (the guy with the 70’s Led Zepplin hairdo) cooking the same ones that the Paradise grill does, (they’re good though, I had one anyways!) down at Dallas Dock and the Sugar Shack.
   Moritz Behm was playing the fiddle with a couple friends, there was some nice music to munch by! Got lucky, no rain for me and a nice walk there and back with a stop at the Snug for a coffee and reading the weekend newspaper colour comics and editorials. Another stop to watch the Bowen girls baseball team score a couple runs on the visitors and then an afternoon nap with coffee and smokes at the farmhouse late in the afternoon with the rain drizzling down, nice day for me

Brother David’s latest band is doing well on the traditional jazz charts, number 16 with a bullet! Check out the Billboard link feed about the middle of the right hand side of the page at ropeadope.com and download a sample from the upper left hand corner containing the Skerik’s Syncopated Taint Septet box. They have some touring to do later this summer too from the sounds of it, looking forward to supplying some more links for them

   If the spin that Fox News generated didn’t have such serious consequences, it would be funny. Bush is making his African rounds again today, no doubt to stay out of the flack about the lack of WMD, and his insistence of such in the state of the union address and the call to war. Now the spin is that America is “willing” to put up the resources to fight AIDS in Africa. What a crock, as it’s well documented that the USA contributes much less than it’s share as a percentage of it’s GDP to world aid let alone Africa and it is dead last in the aid category. The amount of it’s GDP devoted to keeping the oil flowing from the Middle East is staggering as Rummy admitted that the occupation will probably cost double the original estimates.
   Meanwhile back in Africa, rewriting history a bit and forgetting USAID Adminstrator Andrew Natsios in an interview with the Boston Globe said antiretroviral treatment for AIDS was not practical in Africa because ‘Africans don’t know what Western time is’. Bush’s speech on slavery has to be the biggest spin of the trip so far though, as the population of the island that he made his speech on was rounded up at six am and held in a football at stadium until he was done with his photo opportunity and speech and had left the island. Of course you won’t get this on Fox News, too bad Americans don’t tune in to Reuters or the BBC instead and see what is really going on in the world beyond their television screens.

   A great hike up the southern “Skid Trail” of Mt. Gardner this weekend. Along the way are views up the north arm of the Fraser River and if you bushwhack off the trail a bit and aren’t worried about sudden cliffs, the southern flank shows off Mt. Baker as well. It’s the long way around to the north summit where the antennas are, but strolling past the almost dried up ponds left over from the winter makes it worth it. I stopped for a while on the southern peak, and a new friend named Amber came by and we kept each other company for the rest of the afternoon. It’s not far from the southern peak to the northern, and we soon found ourselves on the view platforms (there’s 2 of ‘em!) with a few other intrepid hikers enjoying a sunny Bowen afternoon.
   Amber did a sketch with her pastels of the snowcapped mountains and the bays and inlets looking northwest, while I soaked up the sun and listened to the conversation around me. One fellow I listened to was visiting from the Middle East, on his first hike ever and seeing the trees and mountains of the Pacific northwest coastline. Reminded me of how overwhelming our scenery can be here, it’s so easy to be an ambassador for British Columbia eh
   Found the alternate trail return to the bottom of the mountain with Amber, even more views towards the north with spectacular drop-offs and a real nice easy walk down. Not sure if it would be so nice going up the same route we went down though, it’s mostly gravel road and the going would not be nearly as nice as the soft forest floor along the Skid Trail, so probably take the long way the next time too.

   It’s the 136th time this country has celebrated a birthday under some version of the name of “Canada” and it’s also a Thanksgiving time for me and others as we celebrate the fact that this is a Country that values the diversity of it’s citizens and steadfastly refuses to become a “melting pot”.
   Our local news channel did a cross country tour of all the celebrations taking place in the major cities of our nation, and I’m proud to say that every race and ethnic group on earth was represented as they said Happy Birthday, eh!