On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

In case it matters to you (and in several cases, I suspect that it does)...

https://apt613.ca/north-americas-largest-animation-festival-announces-official-selections-for-its-45th-year/

Okay, Bob Hepburn at the Toronto Star has been arguing for the better part of this past ten years - actually all the way back to May 2008! - that we need to get rid of Victoria Day. Not that we need to rid ourselves of a long weekend at the end of May each Gregorian-calendar year in Canada, because we don't. We really don't. But rather, Hepburn argues that the name of and reason for such events needs changing up. His latest such reminder of his opinion was published on 20 May 2021.

After all, we're supposedly celebrating a fictional birthday for the very real British monarch who signed off on setting up Confederation in 1867 after all the drinking contests, under-the-table mutual blackmail and whatever else was going on at those three negotiation sessions that the "fathers of Confederation" put together in the middle years of the 1860's.

Does Queen Victoria - specifically - really count for a lot with most Canadians and Canadian-adjacent people these days? Our local Monarchists aside?

One of his suggestions for the change, Peacekeepers' Day, is already officially observed by the authorities, but is not a statutory holiday. It's observed by the UN on 29 May, and by the Canadian federal government on 9 August. Maybe we need our feds to harmonize with the UN on this? Maybe not?

Some other options were mentioned, too...I'm trying to get at Pressreader via OPL's website in order to refresh my memories of those. And I found them: "First Nations Day" and "Prime Ministers' Day". National Indigenous Peoples' Day is already set for 21 June each year. The latter option...is not appetizing to my ears.

Have a look at this if you're interested:

https://apt613.ca/ottawa-arts-and-culture-jobs-may-2021/

So. Action Comics # 1 + 83 years today, too?

This will cause Arguments.

I look forward to reading - and participating - in due time.

https://michaelchabon.medium.com/some-notes-on-romulans-b1c7f30a383f

Some further discussion has begun at Mr. Chabon's Twitter account:

https://twitter.com/michaelchabon/status/1368627411894509569

1. Ottawa's got another edition of our Animation Festival coming up, and the organizers are working on making it Pandemic-resilient, as you might expect.

More details from the organizers here:

http://animationfestival.ca/

2. Cameras are rolling on Season 3 of Coroner. It's one of my favourite series, and I'd like everyone involved on both sides of the camera to stay safe.

3. Coffee is in trouble. I'm not a coffee person, my thing is tea. But I do worry about the implications of climate derangement for that component of the food industry, after my selfish fashion.

4. Ottawa-Gatineau also has an Indigenous film festival. And it's growing, Pandemic or not, as well. Online. And it starts today.

More as it comes to mind. Meantime, job search to continue.

Thanks to twistedchick for pointing this essay out to me:

https://longreads.com/2020/06/18/the-long-con-of-britishness/

Good on Laurie Penny for this. She's been good for sometimes brutal honesty about the worlds we live in - real and fictional - for a few years now. This is another aspect of that work of hers.

And this comes to mind in particular:

"If you love your country and don’t own its difficulties and its violence, you don’t actually love your country. You’re just catcalling it as it goes by."

Canada's existence in its present form is another consequence of that long con, and the people living here are dealing with being consequences of that as well. Consequences for each other. We are a mess right now. We can do better. We can be better.

Whether we end up with balkanization back into what the Indigenous nations had before first contact with the European nations whose leaders wanted empires built upon the burned bones and spilled blood of the locals; into a mix of Indigenous and Settler holdings; the next conquest of the American Trumpist fascism if that survives this November upcoming; or something else hopefully unified by freely made choice and better for its struggles to accept our own ugly truths and better angels...?

I don't know yet.

So, Transplant is getting picked up by NBC for US broadcast.

https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/nbc-transplant-ctv-1234606881/

And Coroner is getting picked up by the CW Network.

https://www.tv-eh.com/2020/05/12/cineflix-rights-sells-coroner-to-the-cw-network/

Both of those...they're both medical dramas of different kinds. Coroner also doubles as mystery/crime fiction. I'm not sure how they'll fit onto US broadcast schedules. Transplant, which started up on CTV, with its pro-refugee/immigration perspective. That, I'm sure, will enrage the reich-wingers in the US once the word gets out. Coroner started out on CBC, our Crown-owned public broadcaster, and is a woman's-perspective show, and it does not shy away from showing broken people being broken and trying to heal themselves and one another.

And both series depict life in different aspects of Toronto as itself, as its own place. Not pretending to be anywhere else.

If you're looking for different things from your TV-watching than you've had up to now, then do consider these two series.

The Ottawa Comic Jam, an informal gathering of cartoonists and animators - from amateur to professional - has been meeting at this restaurant on Somerset near Bronson for years. Maybe a decade, I think.

Now, this, an image taken by one Fanis Grammenos:



To the photographer, the building is a victim of "adaptation". I was a beneficiary of that adaptation, as a regular visitor/customer and a local artist trying to just...do art. Somehow.

But the Shanghai is capable of providing take-out and delivery service. Or, was. But there's still hope, and an explanation in some detail...at this weblog entry:

https://theshang.wordpress.com/2020/03/14/closed-until-further-notice-for-some-renos-as-we-ride-out-this-ongoing-health-crisis/

I think this is a name I know, probably from the Ottawa Small Press Book Fairs...

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/1932-2020-otto-graser-ottawa-artist-architect-bookstore-owner-dies-of-covid-19/wcm/80093f8e-4982-4ec4-afd6-8d8800edb080/

Update: I rummaged through my e-mail files at NCF and GMail. It turns out that I did know Otto, at least via Facebook...