good news, bad bad man

An optimistic article about - gasp - the book! And the bookstore - that people may be returning to hardcovers as they're returning to vinyl records - as a technology that may seem old-fashioned but that delivers more than its replacement.

Nice to have a happy story about our industry. For once!

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/14/book-revival-james-daunt-waterstones?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2

I nominate Dick Cheney for a new award: the Pure Unmitigated Evil Award. He says that what the CIA did was not torture and that he'd "do it again in a minute." His prize for the award would be a jolly spot of waterboarding and then being chained naked to a cold floor for a week or two. Fun times! Congratulations, Mr. Cheney, you living devil.

In memoriam - writers in 2014

Bravo to all.

Macca and Jon - ecstasy.

Joy, my friends, joy - Paul McCartney is going to be on Jon Stewart on Tuesday. Two of the best men on the planet, two of the most talented, interesting, ethical and generous men on earth, together. Thank you, gods of television. 

Macca will be advertising his new single, which I heard briefly and which is not his best. Definitely not his best. But he's still in there, still in the game. He cares. He tries. We love him for it. 

Now for today's Florida pix. 

Absurd - looking for local produce in Publix, the local supermarket, I found these tomatoes - from Canada! How is it possible that Canadian tomatoes are exported to FLORIDA?

Christmas message in the sand.

A bronzed grouping - the 3 of them were mahogany-coloured; there are some crazy tanners around here. Otherwise, the beach is empty because it was 68 degrees with a bit of wind. Much too cold.

Christmas in Florida - a deflated reindeer and a very small decorated something or other. I saw a row of red things and thought they were fake - but they were real poinsettias. Extremely red.

I spent today with Cousin David, my father's much younger cousin, six years older than I, who now lives nearby. We went to an arts and crafts fair and walked on the beach and had dinner on the beach watching the sunset. (At 6 p.m. - you eat dinner early in Florida.) It's a wonderful bond with a man who knew my father before I did - and I knew his parents Bill and Chet, who were favourites of my parents. Family.

Now it's 7.15, it's very quiet and dark and I'm full of fresh fish and wine. Time either to fall asleep or read. And maybe 7.15 is just a tich early for bed.

Guns don't kill people? Really?

Drove to Walgreen’s this morning to get the Sunday New York Times, mmmm. Just in case I had any affectionate notion of staying in Florida longer, the truck parked next to mine decided me. The bumper sticker read “GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE - ABORTIONS KILL PEOPLE.” I’m outta here.

It's hard to understand why abortion continues to be the biggest controversy down here. You'd think this was a Catholic country. It must have something to do with controlling women's bodies, hating these new-fangled notions of women deciding what goes on inside. How to make sense of: Guns don't kill people. What kind of mind came up with that slogan? 

One I don't want even to park beside, thank you very much. 

Have started to open drawers and cupboards and contemplate my mother's and aunt's life here over the years - their box of Christmas decorations and box marked "extra wine glasses," in case they ever had a social event, which they never did. Love the Canadian flag stuck in a large glass vase full of shells. What to do with it all? Ah well, there's hardly anything here, at least in comparison with Mum's Ottawa apartment and its 600 pairs of knee-high stockings and 30 year collection of Bon Appetit magazines. 

It's too bad that this place is so inhospitable politically, because it sure is wonderful in other ways - water, sunshine, palm trees, pelicans. In the morning, squeezing fresh tangelo juice and going for a swim. 

However. Moving right along.

What is that hot yellow thing in the sky?

Quickly - because for some reason there's wifi in Mum's condo - some generous person is sharing theirs but who knows for how long? Jesus God, the rigamarole to get here. They now have a holding pen at Pearson. There was an incredibly long line-up even for those who already had boarding passes and baggage tags, so we stood and stood just at last to be checked by someone and sent to Gate 15. That's new, at the far end of the terminal, and it turns out to be a holding pen where you sit until they allow you through to walk all the way back where you came from, to American customs. So you wait in a long line up there, and then you get through and wait in an interminable line to get through security. The guy in front of me had an inch of distilled water in a portable bottle that took ten minutes of deep discussion between all the guys - should they let it through? Need I mention that the guilty party was brown? They did not.

So - gruelling to get to the gate, and then of course wait, the flight is packed. Sitting in front of me was none other than Clayton Ruby, a principled Toronto lawyer whom I deeply admire. We chatted for a bit. He dislikes Harper, is concerned that Justin surrounds himself with Liberal party apparatchiks, thinks Mulcair has a good chance to make a difference. I thanked him for all he has done for Canada, which he shrugged off, and asked him why he was flying back here instead of up there. "I can't afford up there," he said. How is that possible, famous lawyer? I wanted to say but didn't.

I watched a wonderful documentary called "Children and Film," showing how kids have been portrayed through the decades in classic and unknown films. As the narrator pointed out, film itself, in terms of an art form, is a kid.

And then here we are, rent the car, get the bag, leave the terminal - and melt. That first hit of warm damp air and heat and sun - and you think, why ever leave? I'm in Mum's living room now - it smells musty and uninhabited here, but I have the windows wide open. I can see the bay and palm trees. I've been for a walk on the endless white beach and to Publix to buy groceries and, of course, wine. And now I will sit in a stupor. So much to do at home, so busy, frantic. Here - silence, warm damp air, this computer, books to read, books to write. Bewildering.

I mourn my mother, whose battered sunhats are still hanging up here, whose taste furnished this place, who enjoyed it through the winter months, with her sister Do, for a dozen years or more. It really is heaven. Too bad it's in Florida.