I think the shooting of four RCMP officer in Alberta is tragic.

But I don’t understand why this means we need to “crack down on grow-ops.”

The fact that growing marijuana is illegal is what builds a criminal culture around the enterprise. The more illegal marijuana growing is, presumably the more dangerous it is for police.

If we “crack down on grow-ops,” then marijuana will be more scarce, hence more valuable, hence more “criminal.”

If we decriminalized the growing of marijuana, then police resources wouldn’t be wasted trying to stamp the “problem” out, there would cease to be a criminal culture around it, and the police would be in much less danger.

What am I missing?

The Jane Siberry took over the reins of her career 9 years ago, it was a big step. With Sheeba she took those things usually outsourced to others — managers, record companies, ‘A&R’ people — and ran them herselves.

And along the way, through Sheeba.ca and her email newsletter, we listeners / fans / groupies have watched as the enterprise has gone through its ups and its downs. “We’re closing the office,” we’d hear one month. And then “We’re open again, with a brand new web store.” Sometimes you would place an order, or send an email, and you’d hear back from Jane herself.

Here’s a snippet of a note that went out on the mailing list this morning:

I AM FINALLY CLOSING SHEEBA

It will have been 9 years on May 17, 2005. It has been a very special time of learning and struggle and sometimes deep satisfaction. I wanted freedom and it has come in a different fashion than I expected. Now as I let go of more and more things, not always knowing why I have to and resisting it, I see the signs of a greater hand at work. I am sure you know what I mean.

WHAT THIS MEANS

- Website will stay open - Webstore will be closed - we may have MP3s for sale later as they do not require inventory or staff, but we’ll see. - I am disconnecting the SHEEBA phone and email by the equinox. There will only be links to my manager, Kim Blake, for work or licensing, or the web-master for problems. I may still send out the odd Museletter. I feel you nodding – okay perhaps odd but hopefully charming.

I had to take Oliver to the after-hours clinic this morning — he had puffy eyes. On the way to have his prescription filled, he insisted that we stop and buy him an egg. “What kind of egg?” I asked. “From the Itchy Bunny,” he said.

We will burn in hell for this lack of religious education.

Of course I’m the one who answered “Sodom and Gomorrah” for the question “Who went into the Lion’s Den?” on the religious knowledge portion of the entrance exam to Hillfield Strathallan College.

I think I was actually accepted — probably under some “broadening our arms to accept the heathens” special program — but I decided to stay away. Something about the uniforms and the rigour and the well-outfitted science labs turned me off.

When I was Programme Director at Trent Radio in the late 1980s, my favourite project (ironic given the setting) was the publication of The Radio Paper, a tabloid newspaper with the radio schedule, and articles about various and sundry. I was the editor, paste-up artist, and I drove it up to the printer in Tweed. I had total creative control, and I loved the newspaper format.

This is what ran “above the fold” in the first issue, September 1989. I love the typeface. And the white space. And the period.

My friends Ruth and Paul bought two working 16mm film projectors at an auction. And they let me borrow them. I rented The Union, a cooperative space that served as theatre, bar, and hangout, funding itself mostly from the illegal but overlooked sales of beer. And then I borrowed films from the National Film Board. I tried my darnedest to make films from the NFB archive like The Best Damn Fiddler from Calabogie to Kaladar seem new and sexy. And this was my handbill for a showing of Mon Oncle Antoine:

This was my first experience with a “full bleed” handbill — it was really just creative use of a paper cutter. But it is one of my favourite little pieces from those days.

Sometime during my tenure in Peterborough — the specific year is lost to history — I ran for election as a School Trustee for the Peterborough County Board of Education. While I was certainly interested in and passionate about education, I must admit that my primary motivation was the urging of my friend Simon, who assured me that there were only 7 nominations for 8 positions, and thus I would be acclaimed. Needless to say, a lot of nominations came in at the last minute, and I had to wage a campaign.

Pictured are both sides of a double-sided 8-1/2 by 11 inch handbill that I produced on a very early laser printer, then blew up with a photocopier, and printed on a Gestetner (a sort of bridge technology between printing press, spirit-master duplicator and photocopier). And that was my hastily-conceived “platform” there on the right.

I came 13th.

Tonight I went up to the attic and dug out the large Rubbermaid container that holds my “design archive” — the collected output of 8 years of an off-and-on career as a freelance graphic designer that ended with our move to Prince Edward Island in 1993. I’m going to scan some of the items from the Rubbermaid, and splash them here, if only so that if I lose the container, I’ll have some record.

I should preface the series with an admission of fraud: I am not, nor was I ever, really a graphic designer. I mean in the sense that (a) I received any training in the art, (b) accepted any feedback about what I did, or (c) can actually do anything other than sometimes clever manipulation of type.

On a lark I once took the Rubbermaid into the Ontario College of Art “portfolio day” where you could have your work critiqued in anticipation of applying to art college somewhere. The very kind adjudicator praised me for my “typographical sense,” but was left silent when I admitted that that’s all there was. I couldn’t draw a cat, or a horse. And moving outside of the safe confines of black and white wasn’t something I was comfortable with.

So maybe I was a “dual color type manipulator for hire” rather than a graphic designer.

In any case, here’s what I manipulated…

This was a logo for the 1992 season of what later became Peterborough New Dance. I came up both with the design and with the “confront choreophobia” tagline itself, which I remain quite fond of for its double and triple entendres. Here’s an example of how it was used in a 1992 program for marta marta danse:

I’ve decided to quit my day job and use the time I free up to read kottke.org full-time. Now that the blog is revivified, the flow has increased from a trickle to a veritable flood, and I’ve decided that I can’t really do justice to the content unless it has my full attention. If you’d like to support me as a micro-patron-patron, buy me things from Amazon.com that I can read between the posts.