Emergency Meeting Minutes: 2010-07-19

Venue: The Usual Spot
Present: 4th Dwarf, Woodsy, Aggie

1) Nobody blogging

It is noted that poor Coyote is carrying the blog and nobody else has blogged for weeks.

A: I would like to start again.

W: Me too, but I like to say “continue to blog”. It’s less negative.

4D and A agree.

A: Maybe using the camera is the key.

W: A picture with a couple of words is not so intimidating.

A: And maybe sketching...

Some discussion ensues about factors that limit blogging.

A: Then there’s perimenopause.

W: Or menopause, and 4D, how is your andropause?

4D: My andropause?

2) Vampires

A: Why are vampires so hot right now?

W: Because relationships suck?

Aggie groans. 4D pointedly does not.

A: Is it about gender power differences?

W: Huh?

A: In True Blood, vampires are an oppressed minority group, even though they are powerful beings. Like the white male narrative that they are now marginalized.

4D: Hmm. Maybe the Chair would like to come back to the blog as a vampire persona.

W: What is our official position on vampires?

4D: I don’t feel a need to have an official position.

W: What if Aggie and I do?

4D: [Shrugs and makes confusing hand gestures] Well... Why?

A: They seem to have taken on a cultural importance.

Some discussion ensues, but nothing is resolved on the vampire topic.

3) Coyote Carrying the Blog

A: Coyote is carrying the blog.

W: We should give him an award... Dinner and drinks from everyone else.

4D and Aggie agree and the motion is adopted by consensus.

A: Where is he?

W and 4D: It’s a mystery.

4) Back to Vampires

4D: Perhaps our official position on vampires could be reporting on who is not a vampire and who might be. For instance, our mayor Is not a vampire because he was captured on videotape outdoors during the day.

W: And we was married in a church.

A doesn’t seem to be fired up by this idea.

5) BOLO

A: Woodsy, how was Blog Out Loud Ottawa?

W: It was fun.

BREAKING NEWS: Conrad Black Appointed Head of Statistics Canada

Long census form records to be stored in his car trunk, never to be seen by anyone, anywhere, ever...

Like Zoom says!

Y'know, I've been watching the whole Census Long Form thing and thinkin' that the Prime Minister must be denser than a black hole to have decided to scrap it. Exactly what kind of hole that makes him is a subject for a whole 'nother post. I dogress.

Anyway, I'd lined up my arguments and was about to launch 'em into the near blogosphere when I happened upon Zoom's latest post over at Knitnut. You tell 'em, Zoom! Our personal styles might differ a little teensy bit, but in the particulars we agree. 100 per cent, as statisticians would say. If they weren't hobbled by idiotic governments...

Six AM on Nepean Point

Nights, lately, we coyotes have spent on the move, too hot, too restless to sleep. At the end of one such, I dogtrotted to Nepean Point at sunrise. Near the base of Champlain's statue, I settled on my hind legs, panting a little, thinking to watch the shadows of the bridges shorten on the moving water.

"Nice view, isn't it?" said a near voice.

I was surprised. Not too many people actually see semi-mythical coyotes in this city. They usually dismiss us as figments of imagination. We encourage this, and in fact know a few small charms to help it along. This was an unusual person. I looked over my shoulder into a very tanned face with intelligent eyes.

"It is," I agreed, turning, taking in details of the man in the shade of the statue's plinth: clean copper-sand hair as dark and weatherbeaten as his skin, shabby-neat clothes, open book overturned beside him, indeterminate age, relaxed raffish air. In the growing brightness over his shoulder was Parliament Hill, clouds piling over it into a sky the same deep blue as his eyes.

"I like to catch the breeze off the river about this time of day," he offered.

"It's good," I agreed. "In this heat." I pointed my pointy nose into a scrap of moving air and sniffed gratefully.

"I like the heat," he said. "I spend six months a year cursing the cold."

Then, seeing I wasn't quite poised to flit, as we coyotes often are wont, he began to talk. He seemed have traveled and to know about minerals. He told stories about planting gardens in glacial sand deposits in the Arctic, of holding huge black onyxes in his hands, of illegally moiling for opals in the Australian outback, of diving for emeralds at the bases of South American waterfalls.

His current state suggested none had stayed in his hands, if ever he'd held them. He was obviously knowledgeable and intelligent, but there was hazy point in each story where the facts as I understood them seemed to drag their anchors and begin to drift.

It also might be that he was being completely truthful about the way he saw the world. I did not see fit to get into this. It might, I decided, seem a touch rich coming from a six-odd-millenia-old, semimythical talking dog. Who's not really from around these parts.

His stories had a humorous flair. He seemed serene about the wealth he did not have. He was amiable. I enjoyed his company. That was enough.

As the breeze died in the growing heat, I stood. He closed his book, placed it carefully into a battered pack, and uncoiled elegantly from the base of the statue. We walked companionably down the hill. At the bottom he wished me a very fine day. I wished him an equally fine day. He turned toward the Market, and I turned toward the alleys of Centretown.

It occurred to me as I re-entered the city's heated maze that many of the elite who sit in that fairy-tale Gothic-revival castle just across the bay, the one that had hovered over his shoulder while we spoke, probably wouldn't have much regard for my nameless new friend. I think that perhaps he wouldn't have much use for them, either...

Canada Day, 2010...

...have a good one.