Eight Things about Me Tag

GAUTAMI TRIPATHY, THE ILLUSTRIOUS POET/WRITER/TEACHER FROM DELHI, INDIA, HAS TAGGED ME.

I'm supposed to list eight things about myself...one of them, actually (this doesn't count!), is that I've been tagged several times before and possibly will be repeating myself.

I apologize in advance if I do. I'll try not to...

1. I've been to more than 20 countries in my life that I can recall at the moment (they're outlined in red in the map below thanks to this cool site I found):

They are:

The U.S., Brazil, Argentina, England, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Spain and Romania.

2. My uncle, Len Cariou, is a Winnipeg-born actor and singer who won a Tony Award in 1979 for his Broadway role in Sweeney Todd opposite Angela Lansbury, who played the lead role in the TV series Murder She Wrote.

He also earned Tony nominations for roles opposite Lauren Bacall (Applause) and Liz Taylor (A Little Night Music). He also had a relationship with Glenn Close, who got her big start with Robin Williams in The World According to Garp in 1982.

I spent the day with the two of them in New York City just before the release of that movie.

He's had other roles in movies like About Schmidt with Jack Nicholson, The Four Seasons with Alan Alda and A Little Night Music with Liz Taylor. His TV roles include The West Wing, Law & Order, Star Trek and Murder, She Wrote, among others.

3. I covered the game Oct. 15, 1989, in which Wayne Gretzky broke Gordie Howe's all-time National Hockey League scoring record.

I picked him as the first star of the game so my name, I believe, is on the official scoresheet, although I can't get a copy of it.

4. In my younger, dumber years, I passed out twice that I recall from consumption of alcohol or drugs: once in India in a field in Bangalore in the middle of the night and once on the middle of the highway in Leaf Rapids in northern Manitoba. Duh.

5. My thinning hair on my head is still brown, but when I grow a beard, it's grey. I've had the hair on my head my entire life and couldn't grow a beard until I was in my late teens. What sense does that make?

Me in 1992, full head of hair, no beard

Me in 2003 or so, receding brown hairline and grey beard

6. I've learned more about women in the past 6-7 years since my divorce than I did in the entire 18 or whatever years of my marriage and all during my teens and early 20s before that. Go figure.

7. I've visited every Canadian province except Prince Edward Island off our East Coast. My favourite is Newfoundland, where I hauled in cod bare-handed with an oldtimer fisherman named Paddy O'Dea and cooked and ate it on board his dory.

8. The most important role model in my life is and always will be my mom, followed in no particular order by her mom, my dad, a now ex-priest named Max and, in more of a lifelong friend/Jiminy Cricket sort of way, my buddy Homo Escapeons.

North American Road Kill

IT'S SUMMER VACATION ALL ACROSS NORTH AMERICA.

That means millions of people are hopping into their cars, trucks, monster motor homes or what have you and heading out on the highway.

And THAT means millions of animals are getting mowed over and killed on those same highways.

There's road rage, when people have been known to kill people. This is road kill of a different sort and it happens on a far more frequent basis.

Having just returned from a 2,000-km trip that took me through North Dakota, Montana, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, I've never seen it so bad.

It was mostly deer -- fawns, usually -- left splattered on the road. Or racoons or skunks or rabbits.



There were a few coyotes, from what I could make of the carcasses as I sped past them at 120 kph (75 mph), and countless smaller creatures.


I know for a fact I creamed a garter snake and several of those quizzical little suicidal ground squirrels, the long thin ones.

They're very fast, those squirrels. They could easily make it across but they stop, right in the middle of the road, to see if it's still safe.

It's a fatal mistake, usually. By the time they start running again, they get smacked.

In my case, I saw one do just that. He ran under my car to his apparent death but I looked through my rear view mirror and saw that my tires missed him.

He survived and ran back to the side from which he came.

I had a lot of time and distance to see this carnage and to contemplate different aspects of it, from the obvious to the mundane.

What if the roles were reversed and animals were invading our cities and towns and killing us as we crossed their paths?

We'd call out the authorities and shoot them all.

In fact, that's exactly what happens now with "problem" alligators in Florida, cougars in the Rockies, wolves on sheep farmers' ranches.

But there's no similar protection for animals in their habitats when they try to cross our superhighways through their natural environment.

Usually signs are posted to indicate deer or mountain sheep are nearby, but that's not going to stop the animals from crossing.

So they get smucked. And they end up on the side of the road, sometimes for quite a long time, attracting crows and other scavengers.

Until the road crews come along to shovel them off the pavement.

Another common group of roadkill victims are birds. They're attracted to the pavement and to gravel shoulders, I assume, for reasons of survival.

It's on those flat, open surfaces they can more easily find the insects they feed on or to scavenge other animals killed by vehicles.

But they pay a price -- their own safety. Every time a car whizzes by, they fly away, only to turn right back again for more easy food on the road or shoulder.

Smack! They gets it.

Now to REALLY take this mind-numbing diatribe to its farthest extreme, what about all the insects we kill as we zoom down the expressway to our destination?

I'm guessing that my car alone, in about 22 hours or so, killed thousands of insects.

Multiply that by how many vehicles were travelling the roads in that time across the continent. Your windshield is a weapon, I tell ya.

Gawd Bless America

I don't mean to be disrespectful to America by using Gawd instead of God. It's just that I don't believe in God the way I used to, and I think the U.S. is far too governed by the religious Far Right.

But I DO want America to be recognized on its Independence Day for what it is, or what I perceive it to be.

I believe it is a collection of individuals who together are beautiful and intelligent and feeling, far beyond what its government indicates at any given time.

And it's those individuals -- many of whom I have met blogging -- and the great masses of its populace that I want to salute.

And I want to say you really ARE among the most advanced, feeling, strong people on the planet.

We couldn't do this without you.

Thank you for being there and, specifically, for being Canada's neighbor. We may whine and complain about you being a monumental pain in the ass sometimes, but we love you.

Just try not to step us on too much. And happy birthday.

ALL WE ARE

SUNDAY, JULY 1ST, IS CANADA DAY.

Just like July 4 is America's annual celebration of who they are, this is our day to celebrate our founding as a country in 1867.

And it got me to thinking...who are we?

We're young, for one thing, as countries go. We have an identity crisis, being in the shadow of the world's only true super power, the U.S.A.

We want to be like them, but we don't. At the same time, we have no choice...we're like a mosquito that lands on a huge arm, wary of being swatted away or squished.

Our current politicians are in Bush's back pocket, but the rest of us aren't.

We have in the past prided ourselves on being neutral, except when we had to join the world against Hitler.

We are insecure at times, and confused.

We're a large country geographically but inhabited by only 30 million souls, 10 per cent of the U.S. And we're a land of immigrants, then and now.

We pride ourselves on our cultural diversity, but we can't get out own aboriginal land-claims issues and aboriginal poverty problems worked out.

We have one of the highest standards of living in the world and we have a health-care system most countries envy, but it's a patch-work, underfunded system full of long waiting lists and frustration.

We live in a severe climate, super cold in winter in many parts of the country and very warm in the summer.

We're infested with mosquitoes but we have open wide skies and the most beautiful lakes on the planet.

We're so rich with resources we don't or can't develop that it's a travesty, economically.

We're so screwed up that we have two official languages, French and English, but Quebec is the most beautiful place you'd ever visit and its people are spectacular.

We have crumbling highways and potholes that swallow up SUVs whole, but you wouldn't care because of the expanse and diversity of our scenery and largely untouched nature.

There IS something about us. We don't compare on so many fronts, but hundreds of thousands of people immigrate here every year from all over the globe.

We aren't the land of economic opportunity that the U.S. is or other places, but we DO have a lot of wide-open spaces and an acceptance of other people.

We smile and we whine and we complain.

We're no better than Americans, Europeans or anyone else.

But we're us. We're a colonial country still partly attached to England, and that's our history and we're OK with that.

What I know is in my worldly travels, as long as I had a Canadian flag on my backpack, I was accepted or, at least, tolerated. Smiles came my way and invitations into houses.

Happy Birthday, Canada.