visit with the neighbours
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-eight years and a million words
Today we visited with the neighbours.
It turns out that one of the other husbands shares my interest in photographing dilapidated things that have taken on a certain charm or beauty. He showed me some collections from various sites in Shizoaka: an abandoned hotel, a wave-collapsed train tunnel and a section of reinforced highway that was crushed in a rock-slide and then cut out of the road network. I stammered out an explanation of the Frank Slide in Japanese.
I also got into a discussion with another expat dad about the ongoing financial crisis-catastrophe. To my surprise, the Brit brought up the sudden mini-crisis in Canada, and wondered how on Earth Canada of all places had managed to manufacture such a thing. It's sad, really. At a time when absolutely everyone else is going through severe problems -- even the Swiss managed to completely ball up their banks -- Canada's have been largely intact. It's like Canada felt left out and decided that it needed its own home-made disaster. And then set about making it out of construction paper and dry macaroni.
I've had little but contempt for Harper and his creepy brand of crypto-Republicanism, but the lack of leadership he showed in bringing this farce upon us is downright embarrassing. And now the Governor-General has joined the game by allowing him to suspend Parliament with no valid reason. Where the hell is the "Peace, Order and Good Government" that our constitution promises? I guess if this decade's taught us nothing else it's that constitutions don't mean much to "Conservatives".