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Boundary Bay

Monday.  Went for another drive this afternoon just, you know, to kill some pathogen time.  We took the Laing Bridge and then the Number Two Road Bridge through Richmond down to Steveston Highway, turned left, hooked up with Highway 99 and drove south to Exit 23 which took us into the Boundary Bay area and the end of the road where there’s an access point to a 13 km gravel trail death march if you feel like it along the actual Boundary Bay. I knew nothing about this and was momentarily concerned.  What else around here didn’t I know about?   

Boundary Bay Airport wasn’t far so we decided to go over there, found the sparsely attended parking lot and exited the car again to take the air.  Never been to the Boundary Bay Airport.  There’s no scheduled flights.  It’s all flight training and charters but there is among other buildings a large WWII vintage aircraft hanger, certainly one of the few left in the country and it looks well maintained and is still in use.  There’s a fairly new small terminal building with a licensed café to the right as you walk in and a long check-in counter a little to the left of the “No Admittance” doors that take you out to the runway and taxiway areas. 

The terminal was all set for Christmas, decorated trees, wreathes and long green garlands strung up.  We thought it a bit early, not even being Halloween yet, but our feeling that this was a bit dubious was short lived.  On the far left of the check-in counter stood three American flags side by side on their own freestanding poles, confirming for my companion, who knows about these things, that some movie or TV shoot had just wrapped here and this Christmas stuff was all props, which explained the three large box trucks just outside lined up on the road between the parking lot and the terminal. 

All the tech gear looked like it had been loaded up and all that was left were these mildly disorienting Christmas decorations.  Just earlier I’d seen the last in line truck of the three with it’s back door rolled up when someone’s employee was out there and it was mostly empty. But nobody I could see was pushing it too hard out here today.  Perhaps it was coffee time or just the secret ways of the movie business.

As a matter of fact it’s just occurred to me the whole check-in counter was also part of the set.  We need to dig into this, friends, and find out how the little terminal looks normally.  The half-walled off restaurant area had a ten dollar minimum per person advisory in effect, which sounds like the movies.  A large jug of liquid pathogen killer on a small round table was explained, as usual, with a “Please Sanitize Your Hands Before Entering” sign.  We elected against the restaurant but I was able to visit the Men’s and with these pills I’m taking that really was the fulfillment of Boundary Bay Airport for me. 

    

There’s an interesting and fairly recently established “history walk” you might call it also between the parking lot and the terminal building.  The Airport really got its start because of that above alluded to most murderous war in human history, and so it does have this history which is worth preserving. 

There’s a sizable granite slab, upright, with large commemorative plaques on both sides as well as four all weather historical information boards complete with black and white images down each way on the walk.  The airport trained over 4000 air crew during the last big war as part of the Commonwealth Air Training Program, so that’s interesting.  Boundary Bay Airport was it’s own little, self-contained town at that time. 

Then a train was going by a short distance away to the north complete with its lonesome train whistle call and I turned to watch for a half minute or so as the train chugged by. Luv trains.

 

          No, that check-in counter is a permanent component of the terminal.  The Airport advertises itself as a “Fixed Base Operation Services for Corporate and Private Aircraft” and, as we discovered, makes itself available for location “bookings”.  Many productions you’ve heard of have done shooting here. Now we know too. The history walk is known officially as an “Interactive Exhibit” and has been in place a year and a half. You can’t beat that.  czbb.com

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First Nations Summer

October 2. Today’s tally from John Hopkins University is thirty-four million four hundred seventy-one thousand two hundred and four confirmed cases global.  7,328,273 United States.  164,359 Canada.  1,025,815 deaths global, 208,642 United States.  9,430 Canada.  British Columbia today has a reported 162 new confirmed cases, up markedly from numbers in July and August.  That is also of course partly due to much increased testing of individuals. 

Today the great and much loved president of the United States himself came down with a dose.  He is much despised even in his own party, such as it is now, but he got the power, man, and we got the power with him so we stayin cause is all about the power, you know?  The power is everything.  Power, man.  It’s power.  The sweet man this afternoon was choppered over to Walter Reed Hospital in DC from the Casa Blanca as a “precaution” and is going to be lying low a few days unless it’s forever.  There are a great many who wouldn’t miss him.  He could be the most despised guy on the planet.  Others love him although few if any can understand it beginning with the lovers.  He’s a dark enigma and now he has a slight temperature.  Hang in there, prez!  The hate’ll keep ya goin!

Late Breaking Zinnia

October 4.  “The writer duly notes that I am about the same age as the editors of the paper but that I have obviously done myself in by not having gone to college.  In a sense, for a conventional writer the reviewer was right.  It is probably a good thing that the dwindling company of twentieth century readers and the hugely expanding company of writers share the same syllabus.  Although the voluntary reader will have read many books that schoolteachers will never have heard of, he may not know all of their required reading.  Required reading!  I have noticed over the years that those who go on to become teachers or critics—or even novelists or poets of a hyphenate kind—tend, as time passes, to dislike, even resent all literature.  But then the secret worm in their brazen apples is careerism, which kills off the amateur or the dilettante, the very best sort of reader, if not writer.”     –Gore Vidal. “Palimpsest”. 1995.

Been saying the same thing for years. That must make me smart. There’s an absurd number of writers in stark contrast to the scarcity of readers. And careerism, in an overwhelming number of cases, is the end of any real literary interest. Bubblicious creative writing mills. Cue the outrage.

Heroic Late Breaking Clematis
Japanese Anenomes You See
First Nations Summer Royal William Rose

It’s moving with the times. It’s going with the flow. It’s staying in your lane and playing your position. As always, it’s a bit of an experiment. It’s First Nations summer. New concept, same comfortable old clothes. Cue the spirit bears. This block editor as it’s called is a bit different but different is good. We can do different. It’s called being flexible. Do the rhyme do the time. Translation pending.

Fine late breaking flowers courtesy CS Nicol

Disrupter Disrupted

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image Yui Mok PA/via AP via The Guardian

This is the funniest man in England right now.  Dominic Cummings.  The guy is hilarious.  He views himself as a “disrupter”.  He thinks governments are a joke and despises the media.  He’s prime minister Boris Johnson’s top advisor and controls with an iron rule what goes on at 10 Downing Street.

Until very recently most Englanders, meaning anybody not living in London, had only heard of the guy.  They didn’t really know anything about him.  Didn’t know what he looked like or that he had a funny, northern England accent.

They certainly didn’t know that the guy who’s at least as in charge of the country as the prime minister, and some pundits suggest the prime minister, like a puppet, does everything he says, is a gormless baldy with the morals and scruples and integrity of an elderly, moth-eaten sock.

This funny man blatantly ignored the lockdown and self-isolation rules that he helped write that were imposed on the entire country.  Why?  Because he’s special.  And the rules for the specials aren’t the same as for the general public.  It’s hysterical.  For some reason he doesn’t like all the attention he’s getting at the moment and many politicians in his putative boss’s governing party very much desire that he fuck off.

Sorry about that.  That word is an old English colloquialism.  I’m using it to lend an air of authenticity to keep this piece from being too fluffy.  I mean, there’s fluffy and there’s fluffy and then there’s fluffier and fluffier and then there’s fluffiest and we’re not going by there today.

No.  This joker takes umbrage at any suggestion of impropriety.  I believe he’s offended.  He resorted to a weaselly press conference statement in 10 Downing Street’s “rose garden”.  I’ll be gooned.  I didn’t know 10 Downing Street had a rose garden.  It’s invisible from the street.  I should know.  I go by there all the time.  I guess it must be somewhere out back.

It’s just common sense.  Power.  The guy who commented on its corrupting properties was English.  It’s Englisher day around here today.  Having nothing more splendid to do in the long hours fighting off the pathogens I took to the overseas press and here was this incredible comedian, top advisor to “Bojo” as the exalted prime minister with the crazy hair is affectionately called.

England, like some other countries I could name, has a terrible affliction right now that it can’t seem to shake.  Weak at the top.  Very weak.  And it’s something just as dangerous as the pathogen but there will never be a vaccine for it.

This joker’s got a soul bro in the U.S. White house named Stephen Miller.  But I’m not going to take him apart right now.

2020 Rose 2
Rose Garden

 

3 p.m.  Shopping spree.  Helps.  Irritation of lining up outside a supermarket and the line isn’t moving.  Look, I just want to buy some groceries, all right?  Is that all right with you?  Pathogen?  You there?

Later. Two SUVs eastbound on Sixteenth Avenue making lefts onto Arbutus Street.  The first goes ahead and then the second one has to wait for oncoming traffic eastbound on Sixteenth.  It’s a lady driver and something the driver of the first SUV didn’t do she finds exasperating.

I can see her behind her driver’s side window throwing up her hands.  We’re first to go northbound on Arbutus as soon as the light changes so from her vantage in the middle of the intersection waiting to turn left she has a clear view of me just as I do of her.

After the hands come down she looks at me and shakes her head.  Looks right at me.  Me.  I’m a complete stranger in a random situation of less than four and a half seconds but am to be enjoined in her frustration and welcomed to it like a long lost friend. I understand and commiserate deeply.  No I don’t.  I have no idea what all this exasperation’s about.  I didn’t witness the first SUV’s crime, if any.

That’s when I remarked that I thought a lot of people’s fuses are a little shorter these days.  There’s a bit of impatience in the air and a grim determination to grind on but if there’s any little thing, even the teensiest, weensiest little thing I don’t like I’m going to go BALLISTIC on your sorry butt, especially because I have no idea who you are and I could care less.

It’s good to stifle these impulses.  We’re ladies and gentlemen.  Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. And most people are.  It’s probably a good thing.  There’s been enough upset already.

2020 Rose 1
Royal William. 20 years in a pot and still going strong

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