journal features

a busy Saturday in June

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2015.06.06

This morning I:

a. Ironed all my shirts for the week ahead while The Girl played around my feet.

b. Prepared the bike trailer for The Girl's use for the first time, and mounted it on my bike for the first time.

c. Attended a surprisingly long "Bells on Danforth" with the rest of my Cycle Toronto group. We got up to Castle Frank, and from there rode all the way to Danforth Road. The combination of trailer and bike is *vastly* better than the trailer was on my previous bike. So, a silver lining to having lost that bike in the first place.

d. I then raced home and dropped off The Girl with Mari, and the trailer in the back yard.

That was just after noon. Then I:

e. Zipped across to Broadview and Queen to meet Jon in looking at some bike. I sat with Coko and asked questions.

f. Led Jon to a fair at a school on Dundas where some friends have their kids.

g. Got home, did the dishes, sorted out a few things, and had a nap with The Girl.

h. I sat down and did some research on my next studies. I might do a designation with RIMS, and study economics.

i. Then we took the family over to see some friends (this was the first weekend we've found time in three weeks, I think) and talked 'til our return cycle trip was in the dark.

j. While at their place, I took possession of my work laptop, delivered to our door by the good folks at ASK Computers downtown. The laptop was badly sick (and apparently beyond the ability of our IT team at work) but I started rebuilding it.

k. At midnight I declared it time to stop. Or rather, drop.

rand()m quote

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (1995)