Nine Days in America

Denise and I just returned from a nine day work/vacation road trip through the north eastern states -- mostly D.C., Virginia and North Carolina. Apart from doing our part to help deplete the world's supply of oil (we burned up 3,000 KM worth), our plan was to make a kind of pilgrimage to Washington, explore the Great Dismal Swamp and visit some of the wildlife refuge areas in the N.C. Outer Banks.

Despite its name, the Great Dismal Swamp is a spectacular place to visit, both for its strange and sad history and its rebirth as a "managed" natural habitat. The Swamp's place in American capital-H-History was cemented in 1763 when George Washington formed a company to purchase the area for logging. The founding father surveyed the Dismal Swamp and employed his own slaves to dig a series of 4 1/2-mile ditches. These waterways were used to drain the wetland and provide canal transport for the logging operation. Washington evenutally sold his share, but logging continued into the 1970's until the Union Camp Company donated the land to the Nature Conservancy.

The old-growth forest is long gone, but there is still a lot of life in the old Swamp. During our two days in the area we tallied over 50 bird species, including numerous Prothonotary and Hooded warblers. We came across several deer and a large bobcat that was slouching across the trail a few hundred yards in front of us. Even in the afternoon heat, the air was ringing with the birdsong of spring migrants and nesting species.

While walking along the Washington Ditch, I kept thinking about our time in D.C. from the previous day. We spent hours trapsing around the National Mall, gawking at monuments and statues. Take the 555-foot Washington Monument, for instance. For a man who started out chopping down cherry trees, and who then moved on to begin the wholesale deforestation of a thriving wetland, it seems entirely fitting that his monument rises like an upraised middle finger from a treeless field of well-worn sod. Does that sound a little bitter? I shouldn't be too hard on that George. After all, for him the American Dream was a vivid waking dream. He couldn't turn away from his destiny and any of us might have done exactly the same thing. I'm sure George wasn't flipping the bird, but I think someone was. Or perhaps Robert Mills, the Monument's designer, has unwittingly built the world's tallest Viagra ad. A terrible way to end this, but there it is. I have more respectful things to say about Washington and the National Mall in the days to come.

Coopers Hawk at York U

I took a walk around a woodlot at York U today and tried out a borrowed Minolta Dimage camera. I was hoping for a good shot of a Cardinal since they have been singing up a storm around the university. Instead I stumbled upon a Coopers Hawk that was glaring at me with a big red eye from a tree branch. We stared at each other for a few minutes until he hopped down onto a log and did a little line dance.

We see plenty of Turkey Vultures arcing above the Ross Building. Hadn't seen a Coopers at York before, though. Beautiful plummage!

Opticons and HOV dummies

Tired of stop and go traffic and all those red lights? You could do what Jason Niccum did. The Longmont, Colorado resident purchased an "Opticon*" from eBay for $100 (US) in order speed up his commute. The device emits the same kind of infra-red pulses that fire trucks and rescue vehicles use to make stop lights change during emergencies. Niccum was busted recently for interfering with traffic lights, but, after using the Opticon for 2 years, he may have gotten his money out of it -- even with the $50 fine. His excuse, as reported by the police: "I'm always running late". Aren't we all, Jason?

If you are still in a hurry, you could try propping up a HOV dummy in the front seat, although that approach didn't work out well for Susan Aeschliman-Hill last month on Interstate 405 in Seattle. When she and her mannequin friend barged into the HOV lane by swerving in front of a school bus, they caused a multi-vehicle accident that injured 12 people. Yikes.

Perhaps Jason and Susan should think about car-pooling. Who knows? It could be a match made in heaven. And if it doesn't work out, they can always opt for 'his and hers' flying scooters. Even that sounds safer than driving with a dummy in the front seat. Me? I'm still getting around on my trusty VIVA bus (my million dollar limo) and bicycles (when the legs feel up to it).

The PenOpticon Limo!

* N.B. This PenOpticon has nothing to do with the "Opticon" that Jason Niccum was using.

Organized Crime and the Midnight Tow Truck

This week's Toronto-area crime news has been dominated by front page pictures of eight murdered Bandidos motorcycle gang members and related stories of gang activities within the GTA. It turns out that the Bandidos and other gangs have been using tow trucks to haul drugs around the city. In fact, the Toronto Star reported that on the night of the Shedden massacre, police tailed a tow truck along highway 401, but were unaware that the car in tow was weighed down with 200 KG of cocaine. The three men in the truck were gunned down after entering a farmhouse owned by Bandido member, Wayne Kellestine.

The tow-truck connection made me re-think an old children's story called Matthew and the Midnight Tow Truck. After losing a favourite toy car, young Matthew goes to bed and dreams he sees the flashing lights of a tow truck outside his bedroom window. When the Midnight Tow Truck Driver calls up for help, Matthew sneaks out of the house and the two of them cruise through the night, hauling vehicles to a special car wash facility that shrinks them down to pocket size. The drivers seem to eat nothing but "red licorice" and they even give some to Matthew for helping out. When he wakes up, he finds his favorite toy truck in his shirt pocket and insists that his mother buy lots of red licorice. He tells here to leave some on the windshield of her car so that it will never be towed away. It was a fun story and both of our kids enjoyed it 14+ years ago, but shrinking cars and red licorice pay offs? Were the Bandidos already involved in the murky underworld of children's literature? Such meta-narratives! It's all too much for my small brain!

Time to legalize red licorice?
Now I personally am not big on the stuff, but I do believe it may be time to legalize "red licorice" so that society is no longer held hostage by these midnight tow trucks. Imagine if you could walk into any LCBO -- Licorice Control Board of Ontario -- outlet to purchase enough for your own use? It just might take a little business away from the Bandidos and tow truck drivers of the world. Perhaps this was the unspoken message that Michel Auger, a Montreal crime reporter, had for CBC's The Current last Wednesday. Auger, who took six bullets in the back from a Quebec-based motorcycle gang in 2000, spoke of the futility of expensive police stings and undercover operations. He told The Current's Gary Simmons:

"It's too easy for the criminals to profit from the millions they are making with drug trafficking and if there is trafficking it's because there are customers. So it's the citizens who are complaining about the violence and activities of organized crime, but they are buying the cocaine and hashish and marijuana... so there is no way to succeed against organized crime because society is the customer. They are supplying what society needs."

Hmm. What society needs? It's hard to say. In developed societies, where the basic needs of most are easily met, many people struggle with individual wants and desires. But perhaps collectively, we really can't function unless a certain percentage of the population has regular access to psychoactive drugs. Maybe those who sing the Ramones signature song: "I Wanna Be Sedated" really need to be sedated. If that is the case, better they should buy their stuff from a surly civil servant than a burly guy on a Harley. If nothing else, at least recreational drug tax revenues could be used to fund drug rehab programs -- just as a percentage of state gambling revenues are funneled into gambling addiction programs.

Guitar Gods

A friend sent this and I had to blog it because I love this piece of music and this kid is an awsome player. And to think I had the nerve to post a few of my own MP3s (though I posted them on April Fools!) Click and enjoy:

And still the birds fly...

In spite of global warming, the war in Iraq, multiple murders and assorted mayhem, da boids are doing that crazy migration thing that they do. The Redwing black birds have been back for a while. We've seen a few Great Blue Herons and some have seen Egrets. Today we took a walk at Thickson Woods in Whitby, and found returning Phoebes, Golden Crown Kinglets and Winter Wrens. The woods were waking up with Northern Flickers, Sapsuckers and Downy woodpeckers hammering away. A Great Horned Owl -- a regular at Thickson's -- dosed high up in the canopy (I included a pic of two babies from a few years ago). It was a pretty good show, a warm up act for the return of the warblers in May.

Last weekend, we headed out to Grimsby for a taste of the spring Hawk Watch and watched waves of TurkeyVultures and sporadic flights of Coopers, Rough-legged, Sharp shin and Red shoulder hawks rise up over the Niagara Escarpment. I have neither the time, the eyesight or the skill to do a full-day observing and counting the return of these creatures, but those who do are a rare breed and are to be respected. I should have taken a picture of the large crowd of people out for a day of hawk watching, but all I got was this pic of the town of Grimsby and Lake Ontario.

NB. If Grimsby does not have a sports team called the "Reapers", they really ought to.

Midnight justice, or whatever you want to call it.

"Midnight justice, or whatever you want to call it" is how one resident described today's discovery of eight bodies in a farm field near Shedden, a tiny community in south-western Ontario. Was it a psychopathic mass murder or just another example of what sometimes passes for justice under a dark rural sky? Either way, this tragedy will provide further ammunition to Canadian and American politicians who want to tighten borders, build more jails, and generally spread fear, uncertainty and doubt among the citizenry.

But what if crime rates are actually falling? What if there is a disconnect between what is really happening in our neighbourhoods and what is reported? Such a disconnect was evident in the Toronto Star's reportage of this event. The Star included background on several other "grisly" Canadian mass murders and duly noted that "the scale of the [the Shedden murders] is unprecedented in modern Ontario history." No doubt the "if it bleeds, it leads" approach to journalism sold a few papers today.

But, what the Star failed to note as part of this story is the fact that crime rates in Canada have been falling steadily since 1991. And, despite a growing population, Ontario, Canada's largest province, still has the lowest crime rate in the entire country.

I don't know why those eight people in Shedden died, but the circumstances in which they were found sound like the drug-deal-gone-bad scene in Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. It's a depressing episode that may have more to do with our Draconian drugs laws -- laws which have served to foster a thriving underworld economy -- than a societal meltdown.

After all, when you look at crime rates in America, you see a similar trend. All forms of crime have been falling for several decades -- all except drug-related crime. The U.S. answer to the drug problem -- the infamous War on Drugs -- has resulted in a record number of black and Hispanic men being thrown in jail.

The ugly, dirty little secret (which is really not a secret at all) is that all crime committed for the purpose of turning a profit requires both producers and consumers. The Christian right, and various conservative movements prefer to target the producers of crime while ignoring the fact that it is primarily mainstream (dare I say white?) Americans and Canadians who consume it. We see evidence of this consumption every time a celebrity is "busted" for drug use or a politician is ousted for corruption or a TV evangelist is revealed to have a predilection for young prostitutes. When things go wrong for "mainstream" consumers of drugs, illegal gambling and prostitution, they are often embarrassed (while the rest of us are sometimes entertained). When things go wrong for the marginal, unacknowledged producers of illegal goods and services, it can often lead to something more tragic -- like eight dead bodies slumped in a farm field.

* Graphs from Statistics Canada 2004 Crime Statistics Bulletin

Help make a difference and Save the SUVs

We had a lively conversation at work today about cars and SUVs. Several of my co-workers have bought gas-guzzling cars and SUVs in recent years and now they gripe about the high cost of driving, parking and repairs. Let's not even talk about the post-petroleum stone age. It made me think of one of those Save the Children ads -- but for SUV owners. So, here's the PenOpticon Save the SUV Public Service Announcement.

Focus (Folk Us) on April Fools

In the few weeks that I have been blogging, I've been happy and bitter, optimistic and critical -- and often a bit of a pompous ass! And, as I expected, I have not been able to focus on any one subject. I wanted to play a good April Fools trick on you -- my non-existent readers -- but as my satirical muse, Jon Stewart would say: I got nuthin! So instead, I'll leave you with a few home-made MP3s and two pictures of Midnight (who went to the big pond / cheese factory / squirrel-chasing country in the sky last year).

Here's old man Midnight looking at you kid!

Midnight could always make us laugh, no matter how surreal things got. He put up with us for 15 years and we walked hundreds of miles together all over southern Ontario. This was taken years earlier at the southern edge of the Oak Ridges Moraine near Richmond Hill, Ontario. Sadly, this valley has now been cut in half by a 4 lane bridge, the paths have been eroded by ATVs and thousands of new houses are crowding in where the trees used to be.

...and a few MP3s