Author: Peter

Darling heart

I’ve written before about how huge a fan I am of Lenni Jabour‘s, but I don’t think I’ve ever said how personally kind she’s been to this guy who keeps showing up at her gigs. I’m not going to go into detail; instead, I’m just going to say that she’s one of the sweetest nicest people I know, and she’s taken me by surprise again and again in many different, thoughtful ways. I’m lucky, proud and happy to consider her a dear friend.

The future of the CBC

Tod Maffin’s podcast on the future of the CBC should be required listening (and reading; remember those that can’t hear, Tod!) for management—and employees, and future employees—at the CBC. He’s got that vision thing, and the part that’s encouraging and frustrating at the same time is that it’s within reach. People like Tessa Sproule, Tod himself, and a host of others are the vanguard of the new CBC… and they’ve been locked out.

Regarding Marjory LeBreton

As far as I am concerned, I hope it takes months to settle the CBC lockout.

The thought of going through a national election campaign inconveniencing those Liberal and NDP supporters who rely on the CBC is truly something to look forward to.

Folks that would prefer no strong public broadcaster in Canada, and are somehow, quite unbelievably, happy with the choice offered by the private networks, clearly have no sense about them and should not be trusted, followed, or voted for.

How can anyone wish for 5500 people to remain miserable and humiliated just because she/he sees some personal gain in it?

Conservatives who focus their energy on whining how poorly the media treats them are short-sighted and just not very smart.

No means no

From another website’s logs, one year ago:

66.151.189.9 - - [30/Aug/2004:00:14:50 -0400] "GET /blog/rss2.xml HTTP/1.1" 410 1112 "-" "Feedster Crawler/1.0; Feedster, LLC.; Crawler #"

From the same site’s logs today:

64.95.116.1 - - [02/Sep/2005:23:24:49 -0400] "GET /blog/rss2.xml HTTP/1.1" 410 1113 "-" "Feedster Crawler/1.0; Feedster, Inc."

Hey Feedster, ya bunch of dorks, why is it that every other feed spider seems to understand this but your crawler doesn’t?

The requested resource is no longer available at the server and no forwarding address is known. This condition is expected to be considered permanent. [… The] resource is intentionally unavailable and [the] server owners desire that remote links to that resource be removed.

Small town obsession

I am from a small town, and one of the things i have had a hard time adjusting to in the City is that people don’t just “drop-in” for a visit unannounced. […] No phone call, no warning, just a ring of the door bell!

Today i decided to share some of that feeling with a couple of the locked out friends on my street. […]

This is what I miss about the CBC during the lockout: it’s a nationwide small town, full of stories and storytellers. Pary Bell isn’t an on-air personality—when not on the picket line he’s a senior producer for CBC Kids Online—but his weblog and many of the others show the depth of narrative talent that the Ceeb has all the way through the organization. For the most part, the podcasts and lockout blogs—even Ouimet’s, most of the time—aren’t propaganda tools: they’re the products of people who are going through a situation in which they can’t tell their stories to the country any more, so they’re telling them to the ether because they can’t not tell them.

Writing is a mug’s game. It’s heartbreak. It’s pain and struggle and rejection and isolation and the only reason…the ONLY reason…to do it is if you’ve got something to say, something that burns in you so that you can’t *NOT* write.

End the lockout. Soon. Please.