Abolish

I believe that they should abolish the "first past the post" system we use in Parliamentary elections.  The new system doesn't have to be unstable.  We could replace it with something like the German system, where about two-thirds of MPs are elected in the same way as now, while the rest of the seats are allotted to match each party's share of the popular vote.

They should also abolish nuclear weapons.  The United States should have made a bigger effort to do so in the late 1940s when they had a monopoly on them.  The Truman Administration actually did make such a proposal to the United Nations, but stipulated an inspection system that was ahead of its time to the point of naivete. (Stalin was never going to agree to that, and the Americans probably knew it.)

I think it was Ian Shoales who said, "If I were American president, I'd get rid of all our nuclear weapons.  That's why I'll never be elected President."

But I mostly think in terms of all the new things I want created rather than things to remove!  Like, I think they should introduce a tax on stock speculation and currency exchange.  Not only will it provide money to build infrastructure, it'll probably make the financial system more stable.

Skating

I used to skate when I was young.  But I never played hockey--team sports just didn't interest me.  We sometimes skated at Allison Gardens on the Mount Allison University campus.  The rink sometimes played recorded music like "Wonderful Copenhagen."  Sometimes we'd bring our lunch there.

I also had a pair of roller skates once, but I didn't get much use out of them.  And I've never tried rollerblading.

I remember the rule the Red Cross or someone had on judging how safe ice was for skating from its thickness.  One inch, keep off; two inches, one may; three inches, small groups; four inches, OK!

Figure skating is one of those sports they show on TV a lot, like golf.  It's a sport that you have to dress up for, whereas most athletes dress down. Does anyone remember the TV show Stars on Ice?  That was on over thirty years ago!

I used to play Emile Waldteufel's piano piece "Skater's Waltz."

Funerals

I have little experience with funerals. As for my own, I think I'd like a Chinese-style tree burial, where they cremate you and plant a tree over your ashes.  I like the idea of having a living memorial.

You know that music they used to play at the start of the TV show Alfred Hitchcock Presents?  The original version of it was Charles Gounod's "Funeral March for a Marionette."

In the Middle East, a bereaved family can hire a professional wailer to do the loud lamenting that they're ashamed to do!  Those women can wail up a storm.

Buddhists write messages to the dead on pieces of paper that they then burn.  I like that idea...

W.H. Auden wrote the poem "Funeral Blues":

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Wildflowers

The Carter family sung a lovely country song "Wildwood Flower." It's about a girl who was seduced and abandoned.

When I was young and lived in Sackville, N.B., there were wild lupins near our cottage so we took some of them back home and planted them next to the quarry near our house.  They improved its appearance a lot!  Some were red, some blue, some white, and they naturally crossbred into combinations like pink and purple.  Some fine arts students at the local university would come over and paint the scene.

I used to play Edward MacDowell's piano piece "To a Wild Rose."

When you think about it, even the fanciest orchid is ultimately descended from wild flowers, just as we're descendants of cavemen.

I can name all provincial flowers!

Newfoundland:  pitcher plant

P.E.I.:  lady slipper

Nova Scotia:  mayflower

New Brunswick:  purple violet

Quebec:  madonna lily

Ontario:  trillium

Manitoba:  prairie crocus

Saskatchewan:  prairie lily

Alberta:  wild rose

B.C.:  Pacific dogwood

I had to look up two out of the three territorial flowers:

Yukon:  fireweed (that's the one I knew)

N.W.T.:  mountain avens

Nunavut:  purple saxifrage

Wal-Mart

I remember in 1994, I think, when Wal-Mart came to Canada, taking over Woolco.  For a brief period it felt like a big deal.  The first one I went to was in Dufferin Mall.  Every Wal-Mart branch had a McDonald's restaurant, and a bench with a Ronald McDonald figure.  Like Toronto needed more McDonald's branches--even Dufferin Mall already had one!  I'll still go there for stuff like new pants, but I'm hardly proud of it.

I've heard very bad things about Wal-Mart in the USA.  Like how they'll open a branch in a new town and underprice all the local shops out of business, then sometimes they'll close that branch down and leave the community wrecked.  Sam Walton's family has a lot of clout in Arkansas--I heard that one relative got away with drunk driving because of her connections. (She had a "Don't you know who I am?" attitude.) I think Hillary Clinton was on the Board of Directors.

I don't have much to say about Wal-Mart, but I remember K-Mart.  I recall visiting the K-Mart in Moncton when I was young.  I remember their white, bullet-shaped wastebaskets, of a type I saw again in my local high school!

Mondays

There was a case of a girl who shot up her classroom and explained, "I don't like Mondays." (The Boomtown Rats made a song about it.)

For me, Monday nights used to be when I went to choir practice.  I was in the Giuseppe Verdi Chorus, which did a lot of Italian songs.  I especially liked my first year there when all the music was new and challenging for me.  I discovered a lot of good music there:  opera, classical, Christmas, Italian folk songs.

Today, Monday is the afternoon when I go to this memoir group.  I only discovered it seven years ago, because I'd joined a group on meetup.com that made an event of going there.  The group didn't last, but here I am in the group still.

One thing I like about this group is the chance to write by hand each week.  Cursive script may be a dying art, but it's a nice change of pace compared to typing posts online.

And of course, it's an occasion to meet friends.  That may not seem like much to some, but in the earlier part of my life I had few friends. (Friendships just didn't interest me.) If you asked me what I consider the biggest achievement in my life, I'd have to say, "Making friends."