I remember when CBC Television would run endless episodes of Newhart and The Golden Girls to fill in the gaps around hockey playoff time. It seems that This Hour Has 22 Minutes is now playing this role: as far as I can tell, the post-Canada Now period now contains endless episodes of this programme.

Speaking of which, brother Steve relayed the story of how he listened to the hockey game earlier in the week by calling brother Johnny on his cell phone. Johnny put the cell phone up to the computer speakers where the game was streaming in over the Internet. Amazing.

When my mother was growing up in Cochrane, the hockey broadcasts used to come up, days later, on the vinyl records on the train from Toronto where the station in Timmins would broadcast them on the local radio. How times have changed.

When they were little, my brothers Johnny and Steve made up an elaborate set of stories about the “Dark Woods” that included characters named Ooust and Ernst and their little dog. Their voicing of these characters was brilliant and has become classic family audio.

Unfortunately all recorded trace of these early dramas was lost when my house was broken into 15 years ago: the criminal, oddly enough, stole only my grandfather’s electric shaver and my cassette tapes. Since then I’ve had visions of some aging cleanshaven maniacal punk criminal hunkered down in his hideout listening to those stories.

Fortunately, Steve is still coming up with classics. His latest, which will, I fear, go down in family audio infamy, is Election Fun Fact [560KB AIFF]. After airing locally on CBC Montreal for the past weeks, the fun facts, complete with Steve’s squeezy introduction, went national this morning during The Current.

Just a proud brother.

My old friend Eve Goldberg recently released a new album. You probably know Eve’s work: her song Watermelon Sorbet is the theme song to CBC Radio’s Richardson’s Roundup.

Allan Rankin’s Raise the Dead of Wintertime is a stunningly beautiful song, the kind of song you think was written by Woody Guthrie. Now’s a good time of year to listen to it [MP3 clip], because you can look at it as a celebration of the season just past as opposed to a dirge warning of season to come.

And when at night we’re by the stove

Our bellies full and our stories told

The winds of winter might blow cold

But none of us will feel it

Oliver has never been timid about eating. I credit this both to Catherine’s diet while pregnant, and also to our trip to Thailand. There is also Ann Thurlow’s influence. This means that while other kids are eating Spaghettios, Oliver is happy to eat spicy Garlic, Basil Chili Rice and sushi.

Tonight we had Punjabi Potato and Chickpea Curry for dinner. We all loved it, but Oliver especially so. He’s learning how to say the words “potato” and “chick pea.” Unfortunately “pea” and “Pete” are the same in his mind, so he somehow thinks we had bits of me for dinner. Or something.

Here’s the recipe.

I’ve never been to the Trailside Café in Mount Stewart. Mount Stewart is one of those funny villages that seems like it’s hours and hours away from Charlottetown. But when you actually get in your car and drive there, it turns out to be very close. As such, every time I think of going out to an event at the Trailside, I mistakenly think “oh, that would be like driving to North Bay,” and opt not.

That I have never been to the Trailside would tend disqualify me from recommending it to others. However the infectious enthusiasm for the place demonstrated by proprietors Doug and Barb Deacon towards the place, combined with what I’ve heard from others, suggests it’s a place worthy of mention.

All the more so for the following notice that came over the wire from Doug this weekend:
 

Katherine Wheatley—Live at the Trailside Café!

Spring has brought Katherine Wheatley back to the Trailside Café in Mount Stewart for two special performances on April 27! A well-known singer/songwriter from Ontario, Katherine has developed a strong following after a number of successful Atlantic tours. Her most recent CD “Habits and Heroes” was highly acclaimed by audiences across Canada. Her beautiful voice, melodic piano styles and well-crafted song structures are very pleasing to the ear. She is returning to the Maritimes this spring along with Wendell Ferguson, six time winner of the Canadian Country Music Awards guitar player of the year. Wendell has performed with many well-known musicians including the Dixie Chicks, Gordon Lightfoot, James Keelaghan, Jane Siberry, and Sylvia Tyson. They will perform at the Trailside Café from 2-4 and again from 7-9 on Sunday, April 27. For tickets and for more information call 676-3130.

Everything I’ve ever heard come out of Katherine Wheatley has been great, so I think the event is one worth attending. Past experience of others suggests getting tickets early, as they’re sure to sell out.

Dan James commented recently about the practice of spending so-called “old year money” during the run-up to the end of the government fiscal year (which is March 31 for both the federal and provincial governments).

Dan’s comments are pretty standard Reform Partyesque griping about “government waste:”

I have come to understand that Christmas comes twice a year in Canada (December 25 & March 31). What once was urban legend to me has been confirmed as cold hard truth. The government does in fact waste money on unnecessary things bought in a spending spree at the end of March… The system forces reasonable people to perpetually waste our money.

I’m certainly not going to argue that old-year money spending doesn’t happen. I just tried to order a desk chair, and was told by my dealer that it would take an extra week or two because of the flood of office furniture orders from government.

But I think there are four solid arguments why Dan’s got it wrong about what this means, and what the “solution” should be:

First, having worked closely with the provincial government for the past 8 years, I can tell you, first-hand, that there’s not a lot of excess fat in the system. Budgets are tight. Tighter than they’ve ever been. The sterotype of the public service swimming in money just isn’t true. As a result, decision makers have to watch money more carefully than ever, and spend on essentials before anything else. That means that they don’t go out and buy computers and desk chairs at the beginning of the year, because they might need to buy gauze pads or soil test supplies or road signs before the year is out. If they’ve managed wisely, and, more importantly, if no unforseen events come up over the year, they might be able to replace old equipment, office furniture and other “frills” at the end of the year. That’s a more responsible approach to spending, I think.

Second, there are three levels of oversight in place to ensure that spending is not irresponsible: the internal “chain of command,” the Office of the Auditor General, and the annual review of revenue and expenditures [815KB PDF] in the Legislative Assembly. For many years there was $400 set aside in the budget of the Department of Economic Development to cover travel expenses associated with our contract with the province; each year in the Legislative Assembly this line item would be raised by the opposition and explained by the Minister. These checks and balances help keep people honest.

Third, public servants, as a rule, are people of great integrity. This is not universally true, of course. But I can honestly say that there’s much more awareness inside the public service that it’s the public tax dollars that are being spent than the public realizes.

And finally, a notion best illustrated by this quote from last week’s The New Yorker magazine:

The military is not like a corporation that can be streamlined. It is the most inefficient machine known to man. It’s the redundancy that saves lives.

The speaker is a “former [Air Force] planner” speaking to Seymour Hersh about the tensions between Donald Rumsfeld and the military over the “efficiency” of the war in Iraq.

While I don’t suggest that direct parallels be drawn between the military and the public service, the larger message of this statement is that sometimes looking only at what’s most efficient, or quickest, or cheapest, isn’t the best way to run a system.

In other words, it’s easy for Dan to sit outside government and spot what he sees as egregious waste, and to suggest that the system needs to be changed so that it “rewards diligent managers for carefully managing our money.” But to look at old-year money in isolation rather than as part of a system that, by and large, works very well as a way to run a little society like ours, is to ignore the richness and complexity in the system.

You have probably seen the previews for the new movie It Runs in the Family.

The publicity highlights the movie’s two stars, son and father Michael and Kirk Douglas:

What is left unmentioned is that there are actually four members of the Douglas family the film: the other two are Michael’s son Cameron and Michael’s mother (and Kirk’s ex-wife) Diana (highlights are mine):

I assume that some sort of complicated Hollywood rules prevent the mention of these other Douglas family members without mentioning the other non-Douglas cast. But I gotta say, the promotion would be far more effective if it highlighted this “art imitating life” aspect of the picture.

Québec votes tomorrow; brother Steve has been hard at work for CBC Montreal preparing a series called Election Fun Facts.

Here’s Ian Williams on hybrid cars. Brilliant.