Hmmm.
Reader-submitted question: Why are there chocolate eggs in the stores at this time of year? Did the Pagans hide them successfully from the early Christians?
I have no idea. Christians, any thoughts? I assumed it was a symbol of new life, but I could be wrong. I bet at least one of my readers knows the tradition’s history. Is there a connection to the seder egg, or am I over-thinking this?
This is why I hate e-mail.
Writing may be precise, but it lacks the cues of facial expression, tone, and gestures with which you communicate meaning in speech. That makes it dangerously easy for readers to misinterpret your tone and attention. What you intended as patient explanation, they see as pompous condescension; what you saw as puckish wit, they see as a sarcastic affront; what you present as a reasoned plan to correct faults, they will regard as impudence. You will do yourself no favors with these documents.
There are days when I never want to read another e-mail message again. I despise e-mail.
OK, not YOUR e-mails. Those are great. I hate the e-mails that OTHER people send me.
“The real question this reader wants to know is…”
Reader-submitted question: Have you made peace with staying in the North?
No. I still plan to leave.
Over ten years ago, before shelling out tons of cash to move me to Inuvik, an interviewer asked me how long I planned to stay in the NWT. I said that I would stay for four or five years. I’m well past that now.
Ten years ago, there were only two people in my family. Now a little boy lives in my house, and he is devoted to his friends. I moved a few times when I was a kid. I don’t see any point in moving him. Heck, we refuse to move out of our neighbourhood because Michael’s best friend lives across the street. Moving just creates extra stress for kids.
All of my CBC girlfriends are long gone. I have a new group of GNWT girlfriends, and I am very fond of them. And I love my co-workers and the mommies in the neighbourhood. They all make Yellowknife a great place to live. But I still plan to leave one day. Maybe I’ll get to do that after Michael graduates from high school.
Thanks for your question.
Back in a bit.
I’m going out of town and possibly offline. Don’t be surprised if there are no posts for a couple of days. I promise to come back.
If you enter your e-mail address in that little box on the right, you’ll get all of my posts by e-mail, and you won’t have to keep checking the site. Or if you have a RSS reader (and if you do, you’ll know what that is), you can subscribe by clicking this link.
“In case you’re interested.”
Reader-submitted item: Thought you might like this poster, seeing as it is a juxtaposition of Sarah Palin and the Rapture.
Well, this IS an excellent argument. It may be the best one I’ve seen so far.
Reader-submitted photos
Reader-submitted item: You can’t go to Japan and not bring back pictures of Engrish signs, right? These are good, but the best one we saw said something to the effect of “Caution: the sharp edges that sometimes drop off the edge. Please be careful of the fallen pricks.” My wife is mad at me for not letting her take a picture of it. In my defense, there was a kind old security guard standing next to it, and since it was just a sign at a small town bus ticket dispenser, the only reason to take the picture would have been to make fun of the poor English. And while that’s exactly what we were doing, I didn’t feel right having them know that! Fallen pricks. Classic though.
I love this. He was incredible.
I think it is a challenge my language grammatically. grammatically-challenged people. We can start your newspaper — do not wait. curse not a new idea.
In which the Republicans turn into Canadians
U.S. House of Representatives, March 21, 2010:
Canadian House of Commons, any day, really:
The second decade
Ten years ago today, I woke up in Yellowknife.
Steve and I had landed late the night before with suitcases full of clothes and not much else. Our flight had been delayed a day because of terrible storms on Canada’s east coast, but we were finally in the NWT.
It took us a while to get to sleep, tucked in at a little bed and breakfast around the corner from McDonald’s. Misled by a display at the airport, we wondered if there were polar bears near the city. That made us nervous. We were also buzzing with excitement after our long flight and brief tour of Yellowknife.
It was dark when our plane got in. We couldn’t see much. But even now, every time I drive along the highway from the airport, I think of that first late-night trip through town with the station’s program manager. I remember watching the tall buildings come into view. I remember the quick tour of the downtown area, including a brief rant on the poor audio quality of telephone service to small communities. I remember that he asked if we’d brought our bathing suits, and pointed out the swimming pool across the road from the station. I chuckled to myself: we hadn’t thought to bring bathing suits to the Arctic.
Yellowknife was just a stop on our way to Inuvik. It was a chance for me to get to know the people in the Yellowknife station, who I would know only as voices once I headed farther north. I was sent to cover the Canadian Championship Dog Derby, on the Caribou Carnival site, where my boots froze to the lake during a live hit. My producer came with me and helped me to pronounce names like “Poitras”. (There’s no French accent on the name, as it turns out.) I remember two things about that week’s dog races: 1) the Becks lost to some guy nobody’d ever heard of from British Columbia, 2) Jason‘s brother Sam won the truck-pull race. (DOGS PULLING TRUCKS OMG OMG WHAT THE HECK???) Sam did pretty well in the three-day derby, too, but the BC guy was so fast, he was the talk of the weekend.
Cindy and I were scheduled to start on the same day. She was miles ahead of me: she’d been working at the paper for a few months and already knew lots of people. I was starting from scratch in a new town and new culture I would only be covering for three weeks before moving to Inuvik to start all over again. I’m sure I wasn’t very good at it.
My boys are finally home!
And look what Michael found in the parking lot of the Classy Nails Strip Mall!
Reflections in the Snow-Covered Hills 
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