the official grace & cello blog

an ominous title, i know … although the answer is pretty straight forward. i mean, c’mon, we all love electricity! among many other perks, it allows us the luxury of staying up late into the night reading our favourite vassanji novels!

but seriously, even though certain “pragmatists” assert that reducing our energy consumption won’t ever give us enough savings to avert the need for nuclear, the fact remains that we waste almost as much energy as we use. nothing “conservative” about that.

slate offers a list of simple ideas on how to save electricity at home painlessly.

c.

i am a torn individual … i love the city, but yearn for the country. and at no other time of year is this tension more pronounced than it is during the spring when all the patios bloom and flourish, the flowering trees erupt in gay and frivolous attire, and everyone seems to have crawled out from under their grumpy rugs (not that everyone necessarily seemed overly grumpy all winter, but just that everyone seems so happy come spring!).

all the smiles, the lazy afternoons sipping cold drinks, and all the lightness and laughter that pervades most conservations; the city just seems so brilliantly alive, and exciting.

where else could you find so many possibilities for exploration … and c’mon let’s face it: where else could you find so many people?

and i like people. i like watching them, listening to them, sometimes even talking to them …

but at the same time, when spring arrives i also experience this overwhelming desire to be immersed in lovely forested glades, or to be traipsing through prairie grasslands, into sandstone badlands, or along the fresh periphery of gurgling mountain streams.

i want to chase every butterfly i see, and i want to search under moss-covered logs in damp, mature forests for salamanders so brightfully adorned you’d think you’d stumbled into some trippy little cartoon world, full of fantasy and whimsy!

why can’t these two worlds co-exist, i wonder? should it be so impossible that our cities - those places where people, art, culture and enterprise come together - also be full of all the biological diversity imaginable?

i mean, yesterday while i was walking to work in the morning i heard a black-throated green warbler, which is cool in itself … don’t get me wrong. hearing it immediately put my racing brain at ease, because it reminded me of those field seasons working as a biological technician, walking relatively aimlessly through early morning singing frenzies (of migratory birds, not me) in the middle of hundreds of miles of nothing but stunning canadian boreal forest …

hearing that warbler set me in a dream state, really, and put me in the exact frame of mind i needed for the day. i mean, truly, there is nothing so grounding as the realization that there are some realities on this planet, no matter how hard we try to imagine otherwise.

but it suddenly made me yearn for a clear stream flowing by, full of colourful minnows and amphibians. where were the blue ridge two-lined salamanders for example? or the praire warblers? why not invite in all the pine elfins, and shiners, daces and darters we can get our hands on, and make a city that doesn’t just talk diversity, but lives it? and in it …

and believe me, this is no simple biocentrism. if anything, i think it might be a mad dose of selfish individualism, mixed with a healthy serving of anthropomorphism. i mean, could you imagine the creative pulse of energy that our cities would receive surrounded by such an abundance of biodiversity in the urban core? it would be phenomenal.

i believe that living in places that are living would make us healthier, happier and more creative. and all these things would make our cities more prosperous for so many reasons. streets would be gardened pathways, where water and people travelled merrily along, side by side, the one accompanying the other. and all the diversity that flourishes where there is water would provide the reality we build our dreams by …

i say before we chuck this line of thinking out of the window of common sense and economic prosperity, we should at least give free reign to our imaginations. ask why not? ask how much? ask, what if … ?

c.

hey, this fella is pretty fun — check him out!

c.

do you realize that there are groups of collared (often tied) men and women out there, in stuffy boardrooms and poorly thought out corporate cafeterias, trying to get a hold on where we (as a society, country, world) are going so that they can better situate their particular interests to take advantage of trends (and as a direct counterpoint, so that the trends don’t roll them under). this is true of the world’s biggest and brightest stars (Disney, Mac, Ford), as well as those governmental and strategic organizations (such as National Defence, political parties, and other lobbyists).

i guess there is nothing so surprising about this; it’s just that sometimes i get the feeling that these people are kind of sinister. i do like the idea of keeping up with ideas, following the progression of thought and thinking, trying to get a take on who we really are and where we are going. but i have to admit that it makes me uncomfortable when certain people make this their life’s work.

large corporations, departments of defence, political parties: i don’t like that these groups expend so much effort keeping tabs on us. there is nothing i can do about it, i know, but still it bothers me. on the one hand, i should probably be happy that these powerful groups should concern their important selves with lil’ol’ me and lil’ol’ you (i.e., lil’ol’ us) – in theory this could bode well; in theory this should lead to them providing more of what we are searching and working for.

but somehow i’m left feeling ill at ease; feeling that my privacy is being monitored for the benefit of others.

take defence, for instance; or political parties: i can’t help but feel that their interest in me is not going to serve my interests, nor the interests of those i take interest in. wrong or right, i am left with the impression that these folks are trend mining in bad faith.

what to do? probably nothing. i should probably just take some solace in the fact that those trying to keep up with the trends are clearly not those who are setting them…although, this probably isn’t entirely true either.

corporations, defence, politics: all of these manage to push us in profound directions that might not be the direction we’d have chosen if left to our own devices. look at the iraq war, for instance, or the widespread use of fertilizers and pesticides: without the concerted prodding of political will and industry (working in cahoots in both examples), neither of these realities would have necessarily transpired.

what’s my point? i’m not sure, really; except to say that i wish less power and influence on certain groups: large corporations, national defence, political parties, and other institutions of renown. yes, that is what i am saying: i frown on renown. down with renown and all the stuffy thinkers who try to pillage our society’s innovations for their personal gain. because our society’s truest innovations come not from these stale elite, but from the marginalized fringe, n’est-ce pas? true innovation doesn’t come from the boardroom – the boardroom just picks up on innovation and runs with it to make millions. political parties don’t set trends, they track them to better plan how to sell their preconceived agendas, which today boil down to: 1) create an environment conducive to maximizing money-making opportunities for large business while at the same time lowering taxes because taxes suck, or 2) create an environment conducive to maximizing money-making opportunities for large business while at the same time using taxes to advance some socially-attractive notions, such as the abolishment of poverty, universal health care, and accessible high quality education.

all partianship aside: political parties are horribly disappointing, except sometimes for those that we know will never win. i don’t really know what to make of that.

a closing thought: all these groups (read: Wal-mart, the Conservative Party of Canada, the military-industrial complex) have noted dutifully through their trend-tracking that the environment is increasingly a topic of interest to the masses of all stripes, colours and denominations. all of these groups that ultimately care very little (read: not at all) for the environment are searching for how to turn this tendency to their advantage.

my questions are: 1) how can we trick these opportunists into actually doing something useful and good (for once), and 2) in what ways should we be vigilant to ensure that their greed doesn’t compromise our societal will?

bye for now,

c.

all this past week i have been listening to one playlist over and over and over at cbc radio 3 (although i can’t remember what it’s called, so you’ll have to search out a playlist that you like on your own!) … i was listening to it so much in fact that just yesterday i decided i had to break free, and search out something else to accompany me on my daily ritual of waking, moving myself around, moving other things around, and then going back to sleep again. lo and behold, in my quest for something to colour my sonic-sphere i ended up at the last show of the rheostatics, which took place on march 30, 2007 at massey hall in toronto (canada!) — my jaw dropped to the ground!

the rheostatics broke up!? why didn’t anyone tell me? where was i? was the world of making fair-trade, eco-friendly clothes so all-consuming that i could have missed such a monumental event? i felt alone … sad. i still feel a little bit alone, and sad.

being the quintessential canadian superstars that they are, nobody really knows them. (that’s not true, actually … they are true canadian icons … it just so happens that the vast majority of canadians have never heard of them, and no one outside of canada has heard of them, and oddly enough this is kind of the natural state of affairs when it comes to canadian superstars … except for those who’ve moved to the states to make it big … ).

i first heard of the rheotatics while working in the wilderness ‘badlands’ of alberta (situated not at drumheller like some of you might think, but a couple hours further south near patricia, alberta), through a zany little leperchaun of a man named jed jenkins … jarrid, really, but he liked being called jed … jed used to play ’record body count’ by the fire, and when bill was in the area he and jed would do a stirring rendition of  ’self serve gas station’ that gave me goose-bumps.

that’s how the little band that could, from etobicoke, ontario, has become for me an emblem of starry nights perched cosily around a fire in the middle of the grasslands.

i am sad to see them dis-band, but i guess it was time. they formed in 1980, which means they’ve been together for 27 years! crazy for a band that never really stopped touring or making music, and crazy for a bunch of guys who seem so young to me. (to be precise, however, martin tielli is a kind of a newby, since he joined in 1981 … ).

oh well, it turns out tim vesely wanted to pursue his side project, the band called the violet archers (who are tour right now, i believe … i’ll have to make that show at least.)

here’s me tipping my hat to the most inventive band i’ve come across …. and not only in terms of the eerily dissonant melodies they’ve managed to weave together over the years, but also all the art martin tielli provided for covers, and all the kooky hockey-smithing and russia-vagabonding that dave bidini engaged in and ranted and raved about … truly a band to write home about.

or sing-a-long to below northern lights in the quietest, most stunning corner of alberta … the badlands, tree crickets, small-footed bats, common nighthawks … and the best of friends and ‘the king of the past’. 

c.