Who wallpapered the Art Gallery?

Public art and other very appealing outdoors beautifications have been done in Vancouver for the Olympic games that are about to start.

Unfortunately, someone seems to have wallpapered the outside north wall of the Art Gallery with chintzy pink and red flowered paper.

I had heard there was an interesting flower display on the outside of the Art Gallery, so I went over to take a look. Oh dear. I thought it would be one big flower. Or a big bouquet of flowers. Or something really spectacular. It isn't.

I know art is a personal matter of taste, but that seems to be a cheap cop-out rather than a challenge that an artist took to heart and worked hard on. So does the pattern repeat every 10 metres? Or does it repeat every 15 metres? What kind of material did they print it on?

The Art Gallery is a very architecturally interesting building with pillars and carvings. It looked better without the latest art installation attached to it.

How long has it been since I saw a "Made in U.S.A." tag?

An early Spring cleaning and a massive de-cluttering effort has been going on in our apartment in the past 2 months.

We have made at least 2 runs to our local Value Village drop off centers to donate things that still have some life left in them - and we will be doing more. We have also made good use of the dumpster downstairs for worn-out clothing, etc.

After living together for 21 years, it's amazing what kinds of stuff we have accumulated!

Some items really made us stop and think. When was the last time we saw a tag that said "Made in U.S.A."? We had some, on thermos bags and a scarf or two. But that was all. Nothing even remotely "new" had a tag like that.

So when did the U.S. give up on making things?

"Made in China" is what everything says nowadays. We actively try to buy things that say "Made in Canada" whenever we can - but that's not too often. It seems the only place that makes things anymore is China.

I find it odd that the dominant capitalist country in the world (U.S.A.) is making the largest communist country in the world (China) the dominant provider of goods for the capitalists. Is this a bit of a hole in the capitalist system? What happens if the U.S. pisses-off China? How would the U.S. survive, now that they don't "make" physical items for themselves anymore? How would the rest of us survive?

We seem to be in an odd position here. A bit of a vulnerable position, I'd say.

Should we be concerned about our sovereignty?

A big part of the Olympic Games that are about to happen here in Vancouver is security. Lots of people will be here to keep people safe and terrorist-types stopped.

From what we've heard, the hotel right across the street from us will be full of RCMP officers for the duration of the games.

The Canadian army has set up camps here and in and around Whistler so scores of armed people will stay close to the games.

And I recently saw a news item that said that the American military will be camping out in Washington State, just south of our border, ready to help if we need them...

Oh, isn't that nice of the Americans.

Well, that's a Canadian response if ever we heard one! And it's the response most of us give when we hear it.

In ancient Rome the Roman military was not allowed to march into Rome because that would be considered a military offensive against Rome, even if it was just all the soldiers coming home. They were that uneasy about armed people taking over their city.

Fast forward to today, and Canadians are quite happy about Americans being ready to flood over the border to help us in the event of a terrorist attack. They have a bloody huge, well financed, gung-ho group of people ready to invade (sorry, I mean help), and we'd be happy to have them come for a while. We just assume they will leave.

Well, they will, won't they? Leave? It won't be an invasion by a foreign army that we didn't think to stop, will it?

It's not like the Americans invade other countries and then refuse to leave... uh oh. This could make the future very interesting.

Who are all those people?

While sitting in my local coffee shop, having my morning latte and reading a magazine, I saw a large group of people. They were wandering around looking rather aimless.

Eventually they came into the coffee shop, I supposed to get some coffee. This could have been a problem, because it's a small shop and most of the tables are for 2 people, and I would have felt the need to move if they were going to all try to sit down. I was almost finished my coffee, so, sigh, I prepared to vacate.

And then they were gone.

Wait a minute, where did they go? Did they all take their coffees outside? It's not bad out there today - it's about 8 or 9 degrees Celsius and not raining - but it's not really sit outside time yet - it's only January! But yes, they all went and sat outside.

A while later it donned on me... oh, it's Olympic time already! These must have been people who help the Olympic teams. I expect there are already some athletes here getting used to the time, the atmosphere, and the coffee in Vancouver. I can see non-locals thinking it's a good time to sit outside. These people did not strike me as athletes, but they were probably part of the team!

Wow! It's already started then! The pretty banners and the art installations are all set, so let's have some tourists!

Winter? What winter?

Yesterday I saw my first 2 trees with pink blossoms on my way to my yoga class. That was January 21, 2010!

What happened to winter?

The Winter Olympics start in about 3 weeks here. Unfortunately, up on one of the local mountains - Cyprus Mountain - they are going to hold some of the competitions. There really isn't any snow up there anymore. We're doing spring now, everyone! So there is a movement to save up shavings of ice from freezers and ice cream storage to collect enough to put on the mountain for the events. Actually, the organizing committee is fully prepared to air-lift in snow from other mountains for the events - that should cost a mint.

So where did the winter get to? Well, Europe is getting a wallop of winter. They aren't used to the amounts of snow they are getting. And the Sierra Mountains in California seems to be getting the snow we are supposed to get. (Yes, that would be in a region generally, typically, normally called the dessert.) So anyone want to dispute global climate change?

So what do we call that decade?

It's now 2010, so we've left "that decade" and are on to the next, which will soon be called "the Teens", even though that won't be completely accurate for another 3 years... but what do we call "that decade"? The '80s and '90s were easy enough, but no one thought through what we would call the next decade.

We've all managed to stumble through a decade without a name now. In a few years a name will ultimately be assigned by general use as the masses agree on what to call it, but are we still too close to name it?

Some options:

• "the turn of the century" - yes, this would be a good one, but people still refer to the first decade of the 1900s as this, so it may be confusing
• "the turn of the millennium" - as if people will be able to spell that one, even if they can handle the enormity of the thought (disaster movies for everyone!)
• "the Os" - this could get confusing "Oh what?"
• "the Uh-Os" - this one has a grasp of current events backing it, but I can't think of a decade that hasn't had it's problems, so this can only get more depressing as the next few decades also have their problems
• "the nots" - a British term for zeros is "nots" (or is that spelled "knots"?) which can confuse all other people on the planet, but it has a good negative connotation that everyone seems to be feeling
• "the 2000s to 2010s" - well, this is certainly descriptive, but it's a mouthful, so it probably won't catch on, and what is the appropriate placement of those s s?
• "the first decade of the century" - easy to say, but still a bit long
• "the first decade" TFD could catch on, but it kinda ignores a huge number of decades that came before it
• "the 2000s decade" - sounds like a movie, and the 2000s will have a lot of decades, so it's not that specific
• "the first decade of the XXI century" - yes, let's get some roman numerals into the game to confuse everyone. I have seen this used, so we may finally go with mass inappropriate labeling, it's been done before ("hydro" means water... not electricity, but people do talk about their "hydro bills" - sorry, pet peeve).

And then... what about those 3 years before we can call the decade "the Teens", that's a no-man's land of descriptive hell too.

So do I fly from here?

On the weekend my spouse and I went exploring with my power wheelchair using the new Sky Train transit line. The stations, subway cars, and elevators are marvelous. A great deal of thought was put into the design, and it shows.

Unfortunately, when you get out of the station nearest Granville Island - the Olympic Village Station - the path to get to Granville Island is much less appealing.

The path down to the seawall is long and winding. The path we figured would be the shortest route went down a sidewalk that goes over train tracks (for the new, old, trying-to-revive-it-again street car to Granville Island). That was a first for me - I didn't know if the wheelchair would make it over the tracks - but the sidewalk paving was good, so it did fine. Then a short trip down a winding ramp let out into a parking lot. Carefully making our way out of the parking lot, crossing the road to get into the residential housing area between us and the seawall was a bit nerve racking.

From that point, it was relatively easy to get to the seawall, but the seawall between there and Granville Island is paved with paving stones. Large rocks with lots of thick grout lines between them. It looks very nice, and is probably very good for drainage, but the vibrations it caused for the wheelchair were numbing.

On the way back to the Sky Train station we decided to try the road that leads fairly directly to it. The sidewalks along this road were not the most wheelchair friendly. The bushes in several areas were encroaching on the sidewalk space, and some of those bushes were raspberry canes - read OUCH, those have thorns! Thankfully, it's January and not the summer when they are growing!

So taking the Sky Train to get out of downtown and most of the way to Granville Island looks good on paper... but do I need to put wings on the wheelchair and fly from the station to the island?

I've likened the joy-stick I use to drive the wheelchair to a controller for a video game. The control is pretty much the same. We've been playing Rabbids Go Home on the Wii quite a bit in the last month. I drive the shopping cart in the game, and my spouse shoots a rabbid out to collect stuff to put in the shopping cart. If you steer that shopping cart in a circle quickly it generates sparks, and then if you press the right button you can boost the shopping cart and drive up walls... so if I do the same when I'm in the wheelchair... hmmmm