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Photo: gdgt.com

It’s been announced. It’s been explained and demonstrated onstage by Steve Jobs (in a presentation of which, for some reason, Apple refused to provide a live video stream, making the nerds of the world resort to listening to crappy cell phone feeds, not that I’m bitter or anything). Discussion of it has taken over Twitter, news sites, Facebook, and every other corner of the internet.

I have a few thoughts on the matter, which I will share with you now.

1. THIS IS SO COOL

Seriously, people. We are getting closer and closer to living in Star Trek. (Minus the faster-than-light spaceships, the end to hunger, poverty and greed and the onset of world peace.) Frankly, I think we’re all getting a bit jaded about the proliferation and excellence of the consumer electronics already in our lives — from the iPhone to the Wii to our super powerful laptop computers. This stuff is awesome, and let us relish that we are among the privileged few on the earth who can possess it.

2. I’M NOT GOING TO BUY ONE

Yet. As much as I wish I were an early adopter of hardware, I’m not. I can’t afford to be. I wait a couple of years for the bugs to work out, which, let’s face it, is important when it comes to Apple products. That said, I do look forward to owning a tablet device in the future. However, I’ll probably buy an e-paper reader before I get a tablet, since, as many have noted, the iPad is not really a must-have device if you already have a laptop and a smartphone. Which I do.

3. ENOUGH WITH THE JOKES

People are asking, “Did the marketing people at Apple not google ‘iPad’ before giving the device that name?” You know what? I think they did. And they didn’t care. Apple doesn’t care about an old MadTV sketch, nor do they care that you’ll be making “macs ipad” cracks for the next few weeks. In the end, they will bend the cultural context surrounding the word to their own will.

So, instead of repeating a tired feminine hygiene joke, how about making a donation to buy menstruation products for Ugandan girls, who often have to leave school for lack of them? [GlobalGiving]

The past week was so packed (as one might be able to guess from the lack of posts) that I have done some serious vegging this weekend.

Part of that has been looking at pictures of swans.

Diana+ + Diana 35mm Back by Maco@Skywalker

This shot reminds me of this song.

winter view by bibman

The collective noun for swans is either “herd” or “eyrar,” depending whom you ask.

The name for baby swans is “cygnet.” I didn’t have to look that one up; I know that ’cause my dad is from a town called Swan River.

Not gonna lie, I definitely want that inflatable.

And of course, no discussion of swans can ever be complete without this:

I am of the opinion that this dress was a victory for fashion. Classic and epic.

Sunday afternoon I took a stroll down the frozen Assiniboine River with friends (i.e. the stylish mama pictured below and her adorable offspring, in pink, running away from us. Don’t worry, we didn’t let her go far!).

The unseasonably beautiful weather made the Forks a great place to be! Lots of other people had the same idea as us, and the whole thing had a festival vibe to it, though it’s not a festival per se (though there were some Festival du Voyageur folks there, as well as a kettle corn truck!),

Our pals DJ Co-Op and DJ Hunnicutt were spinning tunes in the centre of the skating rink. (Rink pictured below.)

The young ones ate mini-donuts! (A Forks essential if ever there were one.)

I didn’t take too many pictures — mostly video, which you will see in the January Video Scrapbook, due to arrive in a scant fortnight. I will leave you with one photo of DJ Co-Op demonstrating why he really needs a better iPhone case. And to be fair, one of the stellar DJ Hunnicutt, betoqued, beheadphoned and hard at work!

1. REMEMBERING

We still don’t know what the final death toll will be for the devastating earthquake in Haiti. Some are estimating it could reach 200,000, which is so large a number as to be incomprehensible by the human brain.

That’s why, I think, in disasters like this we gravitate towards memorializing those to whom we have some kind of tie. For me, that means that I listen with interest to reports on the radio of the Canadians who perished on Tuesday (just six confirmed, though more than 1,400 are still unaccounted for).

The highest-profile Canadian death was that of Georges Anglade, a Haitian-born Quebecer who first to Canada in 1969. He was a scholar, writer and activist who, among other things, founded the Haitian chapter of PEN (a global movement that supports freedom of speech for writers). Over the last forty years, he went back and forth between Haiti and Canada — he and his wife, Mireille Neptune, were visiting Hait this time for a literary conference. Read more about Anglade in this CBC story; it should tell you something that the guy who the CBC has turned to for comment on Anglade’s life is none other than John Ralston Saul.

Of course, the vast majority of those who died on Tuesday had no such claims to fame and praise. We won’t know their names or see their pictures — not many of them. But their deaths are equal in weight to that of a luminary like Anglade, and it’s important to remember that.

2. TALKING TO STRANGERS

My friend Brett, a history scholar, extrovert, and all-around excellent guy, linked to this article on Facebook. I found it very encouraging, because recently, I’ve found the value of talking to people to be quite great in my own life. I know there are plenty of misanthropes out there. Those who don’t want to be bothered by others. Those who want to be hermetically sealed in their dwellings, free from the assualt of the mere presence of other humans. (They know who they are.) This is not, I feel, the best way to go through life.

From the National Post, by Dave Bidini:

If you don’t ask questions, you’ll never have any answers. Since you are not a newt or a harpie eagle or a mudfish, you have the ability to find out why that sad woman in the grey coat passes by your house the same time every afternoon or how come Chilean cherries are cheaper than Canadian ones or where East Gwillimbury is or why so much Michael Bublé all the time, every time? One by one, you’ll drop these answers like pennies or stones in your coat pocket, and the heavier the pocket gets, the more proud and self-assured and alive you’ll feel. You’ll feel as if you’re an important participant in the activity of living and a surviving character in the great, sad, beautiful comedy of life. And in the end, you will die filled up with as much knowledge and empathy as any wild creature who ever walked the earth.

There are exceptions to this rule, as there are to any, but I do believe this: people are interesting and worthwhile. I really do enjoy meeting a new person and getting to know a bit about their life. The other week, I struck up a conversation with a new arrival to Canada, a Tunisian-born woman who speaks Arabic, French and English and has worked as a translator in all three languages and, on top of that, has mothered nine children. We exchanged email addresses. Now I know where to go if I need an Arabic translator! You can’t put a value on a connection like that!

Sometimes I’m too tired or otherwise grouchy to engage with a stranger, but I try when I can. The world is pretty lonely if we don’t talk to each other.

3. LATE NIGHT WARS

I think the current debacle that is the National Broadcasting Corporation in the United States has provided a much-needed escape for we who follow the current events of the world. Do the ins and outs of the concerns of rich white guys on television matter? No, not really. Not when a poverty-stricken island nation is in literal shambles. But non-problems can be a welcome respite from real ones. And that’s the case with the Conan/Leno thing. My favourite place to get the latest on all the back-and-forth has been Gawker.TV. Visit the #jayleno tag there for all the clips and analysis you can handle. Evidence going back decades that Leno is, in fact, a dick, and more evidence that Conan is, in fact, awesome. Not to mention Jimmy Kimmel’s scathing entrees into the fray.

Obviously, I’m on Team Coco. But I’m not worried. Conan is good at what he does and he has a large, loyal, and, perhaps most importantly for his long-term survival, young fanbase. Leno’s viewers will pretty much all be dead soon. Then he’ll have no choice but to make his retreat to Vegas and never bother us over the airwaves again!

4. HEL-LOOKS CHASER

You know you want to look this awesome in the snow.

Olavi (26)

5. FURTHER TO WINTER FASHION

The Freelancer’s Fashionblog has a wonderful illustrated post on looking fabulous in cold weather. (Disclaimer: when she says “really really cold”, she clearly means “moderately-to-pretty cold,” because where I’m from, “really, really cold” requires Sorel boots, which will never be fashionable, but will insure you survive the winter frostbite free and therefore are quite necessary at times.)

“Pics or it didn’t happen!” is the joke refrain people of my generation make, given the ubiquity and ease of information and image transfer in the 21st century. When there’s any kind of delay in getting information about a news event — disputed elections, natural disasters — we know things are bad. And so was the case with the earthquake in Haiti on Tuesday. The delay was slight — measured in hours — but significant enough. When electricity is disrupted in a small island nation, that means the internet isn’t of much use, either.

Two days have passed, now, though, and the picture of the devastation might not be yet complete, but it’s broad enough to be heartbreaking.

The Boston Globe has an edition of their “The Big Picture” feature up, with 48 images from the last 48 hours. I hadn’t yet given money before I saw these pics; needless to say, I’ve made my donation now.

Residents sleep in the street after the earthquake in Port-au-Prince January 13, 2010. (REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz)

The photos are graphic. They show dead bodies, wide-eyed Hatians with faces caked with white concrete dust and blood, an elderly man sitting in the street with two broken legs, a three-storey presidential palace reduced to one dilapidated storey.

The photo of the presidential palace is one of the most jarring, to me — if that’s how the President fared in this earthquake, what hope do shanty-town residents have? In my part of the world, we have natural disasters, too. The most frequent and destructive are spring flooding events. But even in the worst-case scenarios of these floods — where people have lost their homes to the water — I don’t believe it compares to the loss of poverty-stricken individuals who lose their homes to mudslides, tsunamis or earthquakes. Losing everything you have when what you have is so very little puts your continued existence in jeopardy.

Knowing what the people of Haiti, and those working to help them in this crisis, are going through, makes giving money seem even easier than it already is.

PLACES TO GIVE

Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) (Secular)

Mennonite Central Committee (Faith-based)

Via Letter Writers Alliance, news of a super cool art project happening outside of Winnipeg’s unofficial sister city Minneapolis: the Art Shanty.

LWA takes interest in the Art Post shanty, naturally.

As a postal afficionado, I am equally intrigued by the prospect of a small construct where mail will be hand-cancelled, new stamps will be unveiled, and postcards will be mailed. However, I think that the Assiniboine River would be a perfect locale for our own village of Art Shanties!

Some Shanties that particularly capture my imagination:

• Ace Stellar Shanty — for stargazers, astronomers and astrologers!
• Art Swap Shanty — “Filled to the brim with intriguing art objects, and visitors are invited to swap their own art for any work that strikes their fancy.”
• The Black Bania — A working sauna!
• Dance Shanty — I think the name is self-explanatory.
• The Light House — “With the ‘light’ house, we intend to gather as much energy as possible so that we can give it away freely.”
• Shan-Tea — “The door is the handle, the stove is the spout, the Tea fosters hospitality, conversation and giving.”

If you ask me, this kind of project has Art City written all over it. Let’s do it!

I’m picturing Christine Fellows in a songwriting shanty. Fred Thomas in a graf shanty (though I suppose the enclosed space would preclude spray paint — still, there are other tools of that particular trade that are less toxic!). Send + Receive with a sound art shanty. Videopool with a video shanty. The list goes on! It would be a great midwinter antidote to the cold. Plus, one could skate between shanties!

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