I'm a macrumors newbie!

Chris encouraged me to register on an Apple Mac users' forum this morning to tell the world how I managed to solve a word processing problem through sheer, unaided, technical brilliance (aka trial and error). All because I'd wanted to reread a letter I'd written in December '98 using WordPerfect, which wouldn't "open" in my current word processor, NeoOffice. The answer, by the way, is to choose Insert -> File, and Bob's your uncle (or in my case, your dad). I wanted to find out for how many years I'd been responsible for the musical distractions at our CFUW's annual Diplomatic Hospitality Christmas Parties. The answer, as revealed by my successful research this morning, is far too many, ten years. Anyhow, the "mac community" posted my contribution to the discussion forum under the moniker "macrumors newbie," which amused me, and in case I forget it, I shall make a note here to remind myself that in case I ever feel like joining these discussions again, my user name is adhobbs (some of the others have far wittier user names, but I can't be bothered) and my password is the name of a favourite poet of mine.

I hate this current obsession with security and am afraid it will get worse before it gets better. It's a bit of a paradox that in today's world we seem prepared to reveal intimate details about ourselves as never before, in Blogs like this, on Facebook and the like, and yet we suffer from paranoia lest anyone get an inkling of what might be revealed from our multifarious "accounts". This inconsistency seems to say something about our modern values and priorities. Oh well, I suppose I ought to have a System so that there aren't so many different usernames / IDs / account numbers and passwords to remember. It got worse when banks and such started insisting on passwords of at least 8 characters long, that contained both upper case and lower case characters and numbers. What a pain.

Another pain is having to make up my mind how to vote in the Canadian General Election tomorrow. In order to help me choose my party of allegiance, Chris has just read me extracts from the manifestos of the four main political parties (as published in one of papers yesterday), without revealing which party advocates which, and got me to choose my preferences regarding their environmental policies, health care policies, support for the Arts (an all-encompassing term if ever there was one, although many people seem to equate "Arts" with "TV")... and so on. The results of my personal ballot show me to be the archetypal floating voter, which doesn't surprise me in the least: on a per policy basis, had I the choice, I'd give one vote to the Conservatives, four votes to the Liberals, four to the NDP and four to the Greens. In other words, all the exercise taught me was that I shouldn't be voting for the Conservatives tomorrow, which I wasn't intending to do in any case.

People in all directions

My daughter's at an optical radiometry conference in Daejeon, Korea, my grandson and son-in-law staying behind in London; my son's in New South Wales and my sister's in Old South Wales, near my mother. My friend Elva's co-ordinating international standards at meetings in Stockholm and my niece Rhiannon is on a very strict Vipassana meditation course in Hereford, England. As I stood at Rockcliffe airport watching the sun set this evening it seemed that my thoughts were going in all directions towards these various people, like the contrails lit from below the horizon.

Here in Ontario we had a real treat, flying to Westport, at Laurie's suggestion, over miles of brilliantly coloured Ontario trees and blue lakes under a blue sky. Three other planes landed with us on the grass and another (Bill's yellow Cessna, a "180 on floats") taxied over the lake to join the outing so that nine of us could squeeze round the table to lunch together by the Mill Pond.

(Added on October 12th) Today being Thanksgiving Sunday, the Gatineau Park, through which we hiked for a couple of hours with Laurie this afternoon, is full of families enjoying themselves in the fresh air, dabbling in the streams and swishing through the fallen leaves. Simple pleasures; it's good to see people forgetting the world wide economic crisis and such worries while the sun shines. We're looking forward to a Thanksgiving Supper with David and Elizabeth for which I'm contributing some cranberry sauce I've just made from local cranberries bought at the market and (inspired by my sister-in-law, Debbie, who specialises in such things) a table top flower-and-leaf arrangement crammed into a small pumpkin.

Autumn farewell

My mother flew away home this evening, taking with her the memory of what she saw of Canada in autumn, such as this tree on the shore of Lac Meech yesterday morning. The colour will soon be gone, too, but while the trees have been lit up like this we've feasted our eyes on them in the Arboretum and round Dows Lake, in the grounds of Rideau Hall, in and around Chelsea, and in the Beechwood cemetery, where a fallen leaf was floating in the pond.

Tents in the park

We went to see The Encampment after supper this evening, rows of old-fashioned tents erected in Major's Hill Park and illuminated from within at nightfall, this artistic installation imitating a camp set up around an archeological dig. Only in this case we (the public) are invited to dig for insights about the plight or triumphs of (Canadian) people with mental impairments and their collective history. There are seventy tents: the number stands for a significant score in Intelligence Quotient tests—if you score lower than that you are considered to be mentally "challenged" and if young, you are then channelled into special education; in the old days, you went into a special Home where children were quite often ill-treated, it seems.

Inside each tent is a "work of art": a creative collection of objects or some momento put there by a person with an intellectual disability or in some cases by someone who cares for him or her; the history of the individual concerned is written on a sheet of paper that's pinned to the door of each tent, a flashlight attached on a string so that you can read it in the dark.

The six of us who saw it together came away subdued and disturbed. Designed to force us imagine the lives of these people, if only for a few moments, The Encampment certainly didn't fail in its purpose.

Colours!

Here are four photos I took today, in the Ottawa Arboretum, the Experimental Garden, the Byward Market and (through the window of our guest bedroom, at my mother's instigation) of our neighbour's tree.

Zubin, Pinchas and Johannes

Supporters of the NACO's nationwide education initiatives may sometimes attend the rehearsals of concerts taking place at the National Arts Centre, so yesterday morning I managed to get my mother and me into the two-hour rehearsal of Brahms' Violin Concerto and 2nd Symphony conducted by Zubin Mehta, a Parsi from Mumbai, although I expect he also thinks of himself as Viennese, having studied there (under Hans Swarowsky) with Claudio Abbado and Daniel Barenboim. He is obviously a good friend of Pinchas Zukerman, yesterday's soloist in the concerto, who is also the NACO's usual conductor.

The rehearsal was as good as a concert if not better. We had an unobstructed view of the orchestra from where we sat and observing the interactions of the conductor and instrumentalists (Pinchas Zukerman's glamorous wife among them), the orchestra less inhibited and more relaxed than in performance conditions, we also had a good view of their personalities, Yosuke Kawasaki for example, the new concertmaster from Japan, playing in dramatic style, rising from his seat at every surging passage in the music. We heard both works all the way through—none of the listeners could help applauding at the end as each one finished with a mighty flourish, con spirito.

It occurs to me that I'm to lazy to attempt a description of the music we heard and that the modern cult of personality in the music world might simply stem from the fact that journalists, always in a rush, find it so much easier to concentrate on the performers, to the detriment of the music that's performed. The music itself and the way it affects a listener is very difficult to put across in words.

Toadstool for warty bliggens

i met a toad
the other day by the name
of warty bliggens
he was sitting under
a toadstool
feeling contented
he explained that when the cosmos
was created
that toadstool was especially
planned for his personal
shelter from sun and rain

That was an extract from warty bliggens, the toad, sent to me by my friend Tanya after she'd told me, during our German morning, about the unpunctuated poems written by Archy, the cockroach in the 1920s. He seemed lighter-hearted than Gregor Samsa, the insect-man in Kafka's Metamorphosis, I said.

A couple of days ago my mother and I found the impressive and deadly (?) toadstool pictured above in a conservation area by the Rideau River and Kars "airpark". During Monday's drive to Kars and back we stopped for coffee and bruschetta by the river at Kelly's Landing and for tea and crêpes at Brown Bag Sue's in Manotick.