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.

Life in my parking lot

I WANT TO ASSURE YOU, I AM NOT THE MS. CRAVITTS OF THE BLOGWORLD.

I don't stand by the curtains, peering out my window to spy on what everyone else is doing and, thus, make myself the Nosey Parker of my apartment complex.

However, my computer is right next to a window. I usually keep that window open for the fresh air and to hear the birds sing.

And that means I hear everything else that is going on in my parking lot. And in a strange way, a parking lot is a bit of a microcosm of life itself.

First, here's a pictorial update on a woman I've told you about before.

I'm now convinced she is actually a millionaire tin can tycoon who moved here from China and wakes up every day laughing at how wasteful we are.

She goes into the dumpsters and recycle bins -- even in the dead of winter -- to collect all the beer cans and other items our disposable society casts away.

On another parking lot peeve, my car got broken into last weekend. A $5 bill that my daughter had left there in full view was not taken and neither was anything else that I can tell.

The punk thief went through my glove compartment and left everything, including my drivers' registration and insurance, strewn about.


I couldn't understand why it wasn't taken because a big criminal ploy now is identity theft.


But a fellow apartment dweller approached me and told me he caught the guy in my car and chased him off, maybe that's why nothing was stolen.


ANOTHER misfortune of living about 20 feet away from a parking lot used by hundreds of people every day is that I'm subject to the vagaries of innane late-night drunken stupidity.

But I'm also at the mercy of people with car security systems who have no idea how to operate them. This morning, the woman below came out to her fancy car and set off her own alarm.

HONK! HONK! HONK! HONK!

This went on for 10 minutes before she finally figured out how to shut it off.

Don't they give people instructions on these things? I've never had a security system.

I wonder when they'll invent one of those little push-button thingies that would allow me to blow up their car.

Finally, and this has nothing to do with parking lots and I am just rambling, my computer apparently wanted a divorce or something this week.


After barely more than a year together, Cecilia, as I lovingly call her, was non-responsive when I, ahem, tried to turn her on.


She woke up one morning on startup with this message...


I have no idea what a DCOM Service Process Launcher is, but if you can read the message, I had only 44 seconds to act and to revive my relationship with Cece.

As suggested by a fellow blogger who knows more about female computers than I ever will, after several attempts at trying to caress Cecilia and find out why she wanted to leave me, I took drastic action.

I found the system restore button. I pressed it, firmly but gently, before the 44 seconds elapsed.

Ever since then, Cecilia has been doing pretty much everything I asked.

Don't you wish life was just like that?

INSPIRATION

MANY THINGS CAN INSPIRE ME.

THIS IS ONE OF THEM -- THE MANITOBA MARATHON.

From the massive lineups for the loo at 6:30 a.m....

And 12,927 people listening for the start gun after months of training to run the full (26.2 miles), half or relay marathons, the 2.6-mile Super Run, the 10km walk...

...To the scores of people who accomplish their goal of finishing, each of them with fantastic stories to tell of how they did it and why it was important to them.

Fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, two-year-olds and 82-year-olds, breast cancer survivors and quadriplegics...here are some of them that made me smile.

This is Dorothy from Birch River. She just turned 80 and is a breast cancer survivor. It was her 10th half marathon. Eighty of her friends and family ran with her.

I can't remember this man's name but his six-month-old son Mathieu caught a ride the last 200 metres.

He ran for (below) his dead sister, his dead father-in-law and a friend who committed suicide.

This guy's name is Luke, I think.

He's 30 and is a quadriplegic from a tumor that grew in his spine.

He's wheelchairing because he supports the charity all the money raised goes to -- the intellectually disabled.

And this guy is just a dead ringer for David Letterman, although I couldn't get a shot of him head on to prove it.

He was one of the thousands of volunteers that lined the course all through Winnipeg.