wearing the orange

A confession: I'm a hypocrite.

This morning I decided that if possible on Saturday, rather than watching Jack's funeral on television, I'll go down to Roy Thomson Hall and stand outside with the, I'm sure, many hundreds of others, watching it on monitors. So I got out an orange t-shirt to wear, and then realized how hypocritical that is. In the eighties, I joined the NDP, but soon let my membership lapse. Unlike Jack, I gave up hope; the party was pathetically earnest and out of touch and would never, ever win real power. I felt like Bob Rae - better to go where the power is, try to effect change there - and became more interested in Canada's Natural Ruling Party, the Liberals, than those scrawny outsiders the NDP.

Ha! Talk about the joke being on us - the NDP now the official opposition, and the Liberals decimated, leaderless, wandering in the desert. O ye of little faith ... What a lesson in sticking to your principles and not giving up. Lesson learned. Thanks, Jack. I'll be there in my orange t-shirt, hypocrisy or no. For you, your courage, your optimistic vision.

It's too bad that Christie Blatchford felt the necessity to write such a nasty piece in the National Post about Jack, his family, party, legacy and letter to the nation. But we shouldn't be shocked or surprised - she's a right-wing columnist writing for the right-wing; it's her job to stir up controversy and sell papers, no matter how low a blow this requires. I feel sorry for her. Imagine looking at the moving spectacle of human grief and compassion, and seeing only the negative. What a dark, bitter tunnel that must be.

And now - life goes on. A violent storm last night, the heavens cracking open. I watched a documentary on TLC with incredible footage showing exactly how that one sperm gets to the egg - believe it or not - and on TVO, simultaneously, a documentary on mother animals and their babies. Weeping the while, of course, about these most common of miracles, birth and motherhood. In the middle of all this, my son made the mistake of phoning, and had to listen to me tell him what a miracle it is and how grateful I am that he's alive. Poor guy - he never knows what kind of over-emotional sturm und drang he'll encounter here.

Also Suzuki's documentary on raccoons, stating, basically, that they are going to take over and human beings are doomed. No surprise there.