On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

I went to a meeting of the local riding association for the provincial New Democratic Party tonight. My supper beforehand was British-style chips and a Coke. And I participated in an uncontested nomination meeting. Party leader Andrea Horwath showed up in person to rally the troops. Sat right in the row in front of me for the first few minutes before being called up to do that rallying. I expect that some of the local news services tomorrow will announce our candidate's name and some of her history. Maybe this will do some good.

While that was going on, Iran's current "management" rang in chapter two of the Evil-Kill-Dance between them and the Trump by firing rockets at two air bases in Iraq that US forces were stationed at in reply to the Trump's drone-assisted disposal of Qasem Suleimani's life over the weekend. Thanks to both governments' leaders for absolutely nothing of worth and value.

Meanwhile, the quest for exoplanets continues to accumulate successes. Of particular interest tonight are worlds orbiting TOI-700 Doradus and TOI-1338 Pictoris. The latter is already being compared to Star Wars' Tatooine system because of the binary stars angle.

(My apologies for mashing IAU standard star-naming/cataloguing practices up here like this. I just wanted to make clear which parts of our skies to look to.)

The worlds are a mess. And likely to stay that way.

More on other stuff as the night goes on.

Went and saw Shock and Awe at Imagine Cinema St. Laurent this afternoon. Harrelson, Jovovich, Marsden, Reiner (both sides of the camera), Biel, Schiff...a docudrama covering the Knight-Ridder reporters who covered the run-up to the Third Persian Gulf War and the Bush II administration's efforts to gin up the rationale for it.

I should have been paying at least twice the ticket price for seeing this movie.

Okay.

I voted on Friday night.

Then I went to see Paul Gross's new movie Hyena Road, which was - as expected - disorienting. I don't know that it'll compare to the greats of the genre, but I did get a sense of what the latest Afghan War's been like for Canadians serving in the middle of it. Which, aside from making back the money spent on it, was all that Gross really wants out of it. I figured if I didn't see it ASAP - premiere night, as it turned out - I wasn't going to have much chance beyond that. I've mentioned before that Canadian movies tend to get short attention from our movie theatre chains, and fully expect this to be no different, even though it should be.

Hyena Road, people. If you've got violence-trauma triggers, be warned. The fight scenes are bloody. But I do believe it's worth the time and money to see at least the once.

Come to think of it, not being patient was exactly why I voted at the advance poll on Friday after work too. I just didn't want to cope with any more pressure to vote "strategically". One acquaintance has accused me of maintaining "purity", but I can't trust a party that turns its back on several of its best contributions to Canadian life to avoid the inevitable false accusations of terrorist sympathy. And those accusations were trotted out by the incumbents anyway on other excuses.

Anyway. A more positive note...

Today, I listened to Chris Hadfield's Space Sessions: Songs From a Tin Can for the first time, having picked up the album at Compact Music yesterday. As you might expect from Hadfield, there's more of a country/folk vibe off the album. You may consider that either ironic or totally expected given that this was the first ever album with the vocals recorded Up There.

There's a certain exceptionalist satisfaction I get from that. Admitted freely. It took a Canadian to do this. No one from anywhere else thought of it.

And now I'm headed off to see the 6 PM showing of The Martian. I bought, read and enjoyed the book after looking at the first trailer. I figure they've got enough good raw material to work with. If my brains are working properly after getting home again, I'll let you know what I got out of it later tonight.

Later, all!

And for the Canadians reading this? Please vote. I don't need to know for whom, I don't need to be able to approve of your choice(s) before or after the fact. Ever.

Just vote.

I'm going to attend the service at the War Memorial downtown tomorrow morning. It's something that I do every year barring sudden changes of fortunes, good and ill alike. I've seen a lot of the changes in the ceremonies over the last decade or so since moving to Ottawa and starting this particular ritual of pilgrimage. I expect that, should I live so long, I'll see a great many additional changes in the rituals of Remembrance, in its participants, and in myself.

One thing I've tried to not change is this: I try to dress for the weather at its worst. More than that, I tend to expect the weather to cooperate accordingly, allowing for the health of the veterans in attendance. In fact, I'd consider it disrespectful to the occasion if the temperature rose much above 5° C or if the sky were excessively bright. I often don't wear my Sunday best to these observances either.

If this seems odd or rude of me, here's an attempt at explanation:

The first of the veterans honoured by what we now call Remembrance Day in Canada fought in the mud and cold and wind and rain turning to snow. Fought and died in that mess of weather on the various battlefields of Europe. That was what it was like for the first of them, the ones who lived to see the first observances of the Day in 1918.

So it only seems fair and just to me on some level that those of us who observe the ceremonies now, at least in Ottawa, to feel something of that sense of time and place. Of the pains the soldiers endured in it. Feel it firsthand, as best we can.

So I bundle up every year on that morning, go down to the War Memorial, and huddle in my coat and whatnot, and hope for the weather to be as close to what it was Over There Back Then. Even though it'll render my wardrobe somewhat less than useful for the purpose.

And if I feel some of that cold and damp...so much the better.

It is, after all, the right time and place for such feelings.