Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I was looking at the BBC News website yesterday. Their story on today's Canadian elections had links to all the major parties (and even the Green Party of Canada [1]). I noticed that the URLs were all of the form $party.ca except the Bloc Quebecois, who are in .org. Makes a certain sort of sense. For no obvious reason, I clicked the Bloc link. To my surprise, tucked in among all the French was a pointer, en anglais, to an English summary of the party platform.

The BQ platform has several items, each of which talks about a reasonably sensible goal like making sure that everyone gets health care, or the importance of the St. Lawrence River, and then ends with an out-of-the-blue assertion that sovereignty would help with this goal.

Not only does this make little sense for some of the policy positions--in particular, I can't see how an independent Quebec would be in a better position to convince Ottawa to protect the St. Lawrence River and shipping thereon--but I think they're misjudging their audience. I don't know what the chances are of Anglophones, and specifically those who aren't comfortable reading the French-language material, voting for the Bloc, but those who do are likely to be doing so because they like specific policies, or because there isn't a viable NDP candidate in their riding, rather than because they're in favor of Quebec independence.

[1] Who are not what Europeans, or even most North Americans, expect a Green Party to be.

So, after giving myself a day off, I set myself up for failure on Sunday by creating over-ambitious plans. I won't just go to a reading: I'll go to the gym first, and then buy a couple of sweaters somewhere, and then I'll go to the reading.

Just for good measure, in parallel I figured that if I stayed home I would make chicken soup, and maybe chocolate truffles.

There's no way that I could do all of those. The problem was, as I did what I usually do when I'm home alone on a weekend morning--more or less what I did Saturday--I reached the point where I couldn't even do most of those. And then found myself thinking it wouldn't be worth it to go out, because it's a long way down to Allen Street for a short event.

I talked myself out of that one by remembering that leaving the house wouldn't commit me to anything. I took the gym gear, in case, and headed toward the train.

As soon as I got outside, I felt more energetic. I've thus set the goal of going outside any day that neither my doctor nor the National Weather Service has explicitly said not to, even if I'm sick or it's cold and I only go downstairs for seltzer.

Subway. Got thoroughly turned around when I got out, and walked a half mile in the wrong direction, in the cold. And back. Call that the exercise for the day.

I walked into Bluestockings Books, got a cup of tea, said hello to Candas--who recognized me, a good thing as I didn't recognize her--and Nalo, and chatted a bit before Candas got up to read. While I was waiting, in the bookstore with the tea, I realized happily "I'm surrounded by smiling Canadians." Not entirely true, but a pleasant thought.

The readings were good--Candas Jane Dorsey and her partner Timothy (whose last name I can't seem to retrieve) each read from their new books, to a small but appreciative audience, then signed the books we bought. Eventually, half a dozen of us--Candas, Timothy, Nalo, two other friends of Candas's, and I--went next door for a quick dinner, and talked about theatre of various sorts.

Nalo surprised me by inviting me back to her B&B with Candas and Timothy, to hang out a while. I happily accepted. She's staying in a place whose rules are "no children, no pets, no art dealers," because the owner got tired of requests to sell the art on the walls of the rooms. Having seen the art, I'm unsurprised, by the dealers and by the owner's reaction to the repeated questions.

The conversation turned to politics, but not American electoral politics. Rather, who counts as "queer enough" for certain purposes, and the way Toronto newspapers ignore anything happening elsewhere in Canada, and some of the ways race affects how we live, and what people do and don't see.

It was a delightful evening, and I'm very glad I didn't talk myself into staying home.