If you are an aficionado of the Confederation Centre of the Arts, you will remember the striking Armand Vaillancourt installation Song of the Nations that was mounted in the upper gallery several years ago.

Earlier in the week we were walking down the Ferry Terminal end of Market St. in San Francisco and Oliver spotted a large water fountain in the plaza (truth be told, he called it a “water mountain,” which it sort of is). It’s an impressive, immersive piece of fountain cum sculpture that you can walk right inside. Oliver insisted on exploring every nook and cranny and we willingly obliged.

Turns out that what we had happened upon was the Vaillancourt Fountain, created in 1971 by the selfsame Armand Vaillancourt. And that we’d come at the right time because the fountain was, in fact, turned on again last summer after a 4 year period during which it was left fallow.

You can see the photos I took of the fountain or watch a video clip.

Talk to any veteran of the CBC for a while, especially CBC expats, and eventually you’ll hit the deep well of vitriol that lurks within. It seems that while CBC employees love their jobs, and may even believe deeply in the “institution,” they hate their employer.

The dominant workplace metaphor at the CBC appears to be “hearty bands of dedicated workers making good shows despite their employer.”

Listen to the lockout podcasts and you’ll hear this hatred loud and clear: much of the commentary is simply about the indignity of the lockout, and it’s not unlike what you’d hear from the archetypal spouse whose partner leaves them for a younger lover despite their years of selfless toil.

It’s certainly not unusual to hate your employer — when I worked for a Thomson newspaper there was certainly no love lost for Mr. Thomson (I once received applause at a union meeting for saying I’d rather have Ken Thomson down on his knees in front of me rather than the other way around). But I think that it’s rare to have a situation where employees are, generally speaking, passionately interested in and involved in their jobs while simultaneously seething about the conditions of their employment. At best this leads to helpful “creative tension.” But at worst it’s just plain unhealthy.

Even it the CBC and the Media Guild work out their immediate differences and the CBC unlocks the doors, I can’t imagine this problem can be negotiated away. If anything, the lockout is, by getting employees out on the streets with nothing to do but talk to each other 20 hours a week, going to deepen the gulf.

Despite the several layers of democracy and bureaucracy between us, “we the people” are the real employer of the 5,500 locked out workers, and the CBC is, in theory, negotiating on our behalf. What can we do to change the employment dynamic at the corporation so that we’re not employing public broadcasters who, well, hate us.

If everything for miles around was flooded and most of my city destroyed and my family was hungry with no prospect for help from others, would I loot the local grocery store to feed them? Damn right I would.

Here are a some things that Oliver seemed to really enjoy here in San Francisco:

• The Kidpower Park, in the Mission district, is a children’s playground that’s really nice. One one side there’s an area for younger kids, on the other one for older kids; Oliver (almost 5 years old) had fun on both sides. The entire play area is underlaid with a very bouncy rubbery surface that makes the gravel or wood chip protection of other playgrounds look barbaric. There’s lots of parent seating, a water fountain, and the entire playground is surrounded by a tall fence. There’s a community garden (for adults) that shares the same lot. Ride BART to the 16th/Mission station, walk one block down 16th to Hoff (you can see Hoff from the station), turn left and walk halfway down the block: Kidpower is on your left.
• There are very nice carousels (aka “merry go rounds”) on Pier 39 (take the F-line street car or trolley bus from Powell St. BART), Golden Gate Park (take the 71 bus from Powell St. BART, down Market and Haight until you get to the head of the park; get off and walk towards the Sharon Meadow) and Tilden Park (further afield in Berkeley, you’ll need a car to get there, but it’s arguably the nicest of the bunch and Tilden Park is a neat place in its own right).
• The Exploratorium is an interactive science museum that Oliver spent two very happy hours in. It’s a little hard to get to: from Powell St. BART walk east to Kearny and get on the #30 Stockton bus and ride to the end of the line; the driver can point you in the right direction from there — a short 2-block walk). Once you’re there, the bay is only a block away, and there’s a pleasant walk along the water to Fort Mason, and, if you’re enthusiastic, over a hill to Fisherman’s Wharf.
• FLAX Art and Design is the queen of all art supply stores, and it has a good collection of kid-specific stuff (crayons, paints, paper, markers, toys) plus lots of other stuff that Oliver really liked (handmade paper, myriad boxes, bags and portfolios). Think “Home Depot” but for artists. Right next door is Delessio Market & Bakery, a buffet-style restaurant with a selection of food that will please everyone (they even have a “chocolate bar” — think “salad bar, but with chocolate”). Take the MUNI M-line to Van Ness and walk two blocks west.
• Of course the cable cars are lots of fun. I think they’re best at night, when you get a great view. Remember that you can ride the cable cars with a multi-day MUNI pass: a $9 one day pass, for example, is a great deal if you’re planning to ride the cable cars both ways ($6) and do a little MUNI-ing around ($1.25 a trip).
• The Ferry Terminal has a great selection of (somewhat expensive) places to eat laid out food-court style. There’s also Book Passages, a nice little bookstore, and a Scharffen Berger outlet. You can catch the ferry to Sausalito for a cheap tour of the city from the water. To reach the Ferry Terminal you can ride the F-line streetcar or trolley, or take BART to Embarcadero.
• Although there are literally thousands of places to eat in San Fransciso and, in our experience at least, most will welcome kids, we did have one experience worthy of particular mention: Puccini & Pinetti, near Union Square on Ellis Street, advertises kids-friendliness and it delivered. They have the usual booster seats, high chairs, and colouring crayons that are entry-level requirements for kid-friendly status, but they co beyond that and have a real childrens’ menu that includes more than just the usual chicken fingers and fries. Oliver selected the “make your own pizza” (with my urging, visions of Maximum Fun dancing in my head) and, true to its name, the server brought Oliver a crust and little goblets of ingredients, sauce and cheese to make it up and, once his creation was completed, it was taken away to be baked and returned 5 minutes later ready to eat. On top of all that, they have free Wifi. Recommended.

Derek pointed out that the Race About Charlottetown Results have been posted — we came 11th (out of 56 teams), only 1:59 behind our spry young colleagues from silverorange.

Oliver and Sophie got married. It was fun. Details to follow. Speak preview:

It’s only when you’re far away that you realize how important the CBC’s web efforts are to keeping you in the loop about what’s happening in Charlottetown, the Island and Canada. I’m left to rely on the disaster that is the The Guardian website to keep up to date.

Which got me to thinking: this lockout is going to result in a sort of “dark ages” in terms of the digital fossil record. Our ancestors (or even ourselves, in a year) will go the CBC website to search for stories about things that are happening now and will find nothing. Worse, when our friends at the CBC are allowed to work again, they will have no audio or video record of news that’s happening now. Which means that, in essence, nothing that is happening now is actually happening at all.

Think what you will of the CBC, they are, among many other things, the Canadian news source of record. When they’re not recording, what happens?

As best man for Oliver and Sophie’s wedding I have been placed in charge of the music for the reception. As those in my family will attest, I am not a musical savant, and my musical tastes, though broad, are not particularly sophisticated. So it is with some perverse pride that I take on this task. When pressed, Oliver provided the following description of their musical neighbourhood:

Sophie really likes the Oh Brother soundtrack and old folk and German language folk and cabaret. I like that stuff and klezmer and crazy Balkan brass bands (e.g. the music from the movie “Underground”, the soundtrack for which I mail ordered from Europe) and traditional Romany and funk and Cuban and early-to-middle period Beatles (Rubber Soul, Magical Mystery Tour, Help, Hard Day’s Night).

He also added that I could “feel free to disregard” this layout.

If it weren’t for the iTunes Music Store I would be crawling around the Jewish Cuban music stores of San Francisco looking for dusty klezmer albums. As it is, I’m squirreled away here in the washroom while [wee] Oliver and Catherine have a nap finding all sorts of bands and music I never knew existed. Bands like the Yiddishe Cup Klezmer Band who do a mean rendition of I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow.

There was a brief panic earlier in the week when some crossed signals suggested that the officiating Rabbi might have to review the set list, but this turns out to have been not the case, and after assuring Oliver that, no, I wouldn’t be playing Mahalia Jackson, all seems to be good going into the event tomorrow. I’ll post the set list here after it’s all over.

The City of Berkeley has a Cool Things to Do in Berkeley page on their website. Cool.

More and more it is appearing that my little hotel here in San Francisco may, in fact, be located at the centre of the universe:

Well, at least that sub-section of the universe concerned with bits, bytes and all that.