Big Moose Vacation

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We had another lovely visit to Vicky’s family’s cottage at Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks in Upstate New York from August 2-14. The vacation included kayaking, a little hiking, swimming, hanging out with ducks, loons, and llamas (!); playing fetch with Dougal, board games (which are some of Gareth’s favourite things), souvenir shopping, barbecues, ice cream, pizza and wings, mini golf, reading, visitors from Utica and Vermont, Emma playing piano at the nearby chapel, and more!

Speaking of the Big Moose Community Chapel, at their annual Bazaar they played recordings of Gordon Lightfoot songs as a warm-up, so I decided maybe we should be allowed to call Adirondack Chairs “Muskoka Chairs” after all!

 

 

 

 

Con Air: The 2018 Ontario Election

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UPDATED on June 18th, 2018: Under the forthcoming “Progressive” Conservative majority government in Ontario, taxes will basically only be saved by corporations and rich people, the salaries of the CEO and board of directors of now-non-public Hydro One will somehow be magically adjusted (instead of returning the agency to public hands and actually fixing it), and Doug Ford’s first-promised measure as Premier–getting rid of the cap-and-trade environmental measures–pretty much guarantees that the province will end up instead having an actual carbon tax assessed upon it by the federal government. Those are just for starters.

It will not take very long for the Conservative government to find that, in order to save the money it vaguely has in mind, it will also have to make drastic cuts to health, education, infrastructure, other social services, and so on. No “little guy” will benefit from any of that. Research also shows that the PCs, despite their presumed status as financially prudent, seem to have had the worst fiscal/deficit projections from among the three main parties (NDP, Liberal, PC). In addition, Doug Ford is a millionaire businessman who took over a company from his father, did not run the business very well, is intolerant and inelegant, has said and done numerous stupid things, has associated with questionable people (most of whom support him), and has no political experience (at this level). Does that sound familiar? It should!

The PCs got 60% of the seats (76 of 124) with only 40% of the votes, which just provides yet another example that some kind of fairer, run-off or proportional, voting system needs to be implemented in this province and this country. The NDP will now form the official opposition (with 40 seats), and the incumbent Liberals have now lost official party status (with only seven seats). On the other hand, the Green Party of Ontario elected its party leader as its first MPP.

Arrested Development – Season 4 Remix

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The Season 4 Remix (2018) of Arrested Development stretches the fifteen original, overlapping, character-based episodes (2013) out to twenty-two. It’s so repetitive that it keeps repeating things repeatedly and repeats them all repetitively with no end of the repetition in sight. Given the multiple points of view already present in the originally-released Season 4, they could have just as easily edited it down to eleven episodes, instead of adding more repetition to come up with twenty-two. I get that 22-episode seasons is the industry standard for syndication, etc., but even the cast members are not happy about their work being extended in such a way. It also just seems like an ill-advised ploy to promote the show in advance of the upcoming Season 5 (2018). The whole thing feels like George Sr.’s Steamboat Willie-ing of the purported US-Mexican border wall.

Simpsons book bio

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Here’s my bio for a forthcoming book about The Simpsons (McFarland, 2018, edit: actually 2019), in which I have a chapter called “Be Sharp: The Simpsons & Music.” [I also have a semi-related journal article coming out in MUSICultures in 2020.]

Durrell Bowman has a Ph.D. in Musicology (UCLA, 2003), a Certificate in Computer Applications Development (2010), and a Master of Library and Information Science (2018). For about a decade, he developed and taught music history courses as an adjunct or visiting instructor at seven institutions all across North America. He has also worked as a semi-professional choral singer, built websites, and presented numerous conference papers, including several on music in The Simpsons. In addition, he has written books, book chapters, journal articles, media and book reviews, reference entries, and program notes. His books are: Experiencing Peter Gabriel: A Listener’s Companion (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), Experiencing Rush: A Listener’s Companion (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), and Rush and Philosophy: Heart and Mind United (co-editor and three chapters, Open Court Publishing, 2011). He hails from what Homer refers to as “America Junior” and agrees with Marge that “grad students just made a terrible life choice.”

Stephen Hawking, R.I.P.

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In honour of Dr. Stephen W. Hawking’s remarkable work and (even less likely) long life, Albert Einstein’s birthday, Hawking’s status as Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at Waterloo, Ontario’s Perimeter Institute (PI), and Pi Day (3.14), please join me in a slice of pi/e (preferably at 1:59). You may also remember Hawking from his interest in Homer Simpson’s theory of a donut-shaped universe.

Library Super Conference

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I attended the Ontario Library Association’s 2018 Super Conference in Toronto late last week. It was my first conference as a newly-minted MLIS, and I wasn’t sure whether I’d know what to do or whether I’d fit in. The event has hundreds of sessions and hosts about 4500 delegates, but I’m not very good at schmoozing. However, I did meet and talk with some people, including a fellow author (mainly of children’s books about hockey), a colleague of an old friend, and a career centre counsellor. I also ran into lots of people associated with the MLIS program at Western University (London, ON)–and even a few I knew from elsewhere. In addition, I collected up the names of certain people to contact later.

I learned about things at some of the sessions (including poster sessions), such as newer aspects of RDA cataloguing, useful interactive/online learning tools, and a major linked data project. Other sessions,  though, covered things I already knew about, such Gold Open Access, universities walking away from publisher “big deals,” basic document accessibility principles, and early career advice. I mainly attended sessions having to do with academic libraries.

The keynote talks I attended by Jesse Wente and Naomi Klein involved more general, library-adjacent, thought-provoking cultural issues of storytelling and community-building. An artist created large posters of those talks as they took place!

20180202_164711[1]

20180202_163151[1]My main takeaway re the OLA Super Conference is that I should try to volunteer next year, present something, or at least register in advance. It’s an expensive conference to attend at the last minute, but I did at least have somewhere to stay for free. On the other hand, it’s difficult to plan to attend it ahead of time, because most people with jobs (especially new jobs) would find it awkward to attend something that mainly takes place on weekdays.