kar0ling

Re “Ev Sales supercharged”, Saturday, 12 March 2022   In the face of the climate crisis, it’s both encouraging and discouraging that it took high gas prices to get people to finally consider electric vehicles. But, let’s really make this a transportation revolution by shifting to electric-assist bicycles instead.  An EV is still a monstrous, high speed weapon that takes up a large amount of public space everywhere it goes. Although they don’t poison us with their tailpipe fumes, EVs pose a greater the threat to human-powered road users because their greater weight is more deadly at the same speeds as gas vehicles.  As a mode of transportation, even a cargo e-bike costs less than a new car, and that’s before factoring in lower maintenance costs, lower or no insurance costs and zero gas costs. It has almost no emissions beyond its manufacture, and brings the user into communion with the landscapes they ride through (for better or worse!)  E-bikes have changed the ...

 The past twelve months have been extraordinary in so many ways. One of the good ways, at least for active commuting, was mild weather. An early snow storm in October had me rushing to get the fatgirl tuned up for winter, then it warmed up again and barely called for the fat tires before Christmas.  Now it's barely mid-March, yet after several days of mostly bone dry pavement, I started to feel sheepish pushing Bullwinkle around the city, so I switched back to the Skyline today.  It is still mid-March though, so I'm anticipating the fatgirl will probably come back again for a few days before spring is here to stay.

I did not want to make multiple trips, nor have to cover the same ground twice. Additionally, it was later in the afternoon, so looming closing times meant I only had so much time to fit in all my errands. They all had to happen in one trip, carrying capacity be hanged. The just-in-time stop at the thrift store provided things I was looking for (curtains) and unexpected treasures I wasn’t (glass spice jars with hinged lids). Geography dictated it was grocery shopping next. It being coronatide, we’re all trying to keep out of each other’s way. A woman accidentally cuts me off by the yogurt, but we both smile and laugh good naturedly at each other. Later, outside, I back into her with my bike having failed to notice her behind me while I fiddled and grumbled with my lock. Again we smile and laugh with each other as I try to disavow that it was payback. My bike was heavy laden by the time I locked it to a flimsy bus sign pole in front of the German meat shop. I decided to take a risk: m...

My bike has been parked all over the city: lashed to suburban trees, downtown bus stops and everything in between. It’s generally my policy to take everything off the bike that I want to be there still when I return. A few the times I’ve lapsed. Things have been stolen off my bike when parked where I should have anticipated theft potential. But I’ve had things not stolen off my bike where I would have expected it. In general, I don’t assume any place is entirely free from the possibility of theft given sufficient opportunity or enticement. But there are places one thinks it’s less likely. The Canadian Mennonite University campus is one place I wouldn’t expect a non-valuable item would walk away. So, I was surprised to experience bike theft there. After a season banging over Winnipeg’s potholes tied to the rear rack of my bike, the old plastic milk crate just gave up. Every arm of the plastic lattice-bottom broke, leaving the walls of the crate hanging low over the rack. In spr...

Women of the Fur Trade, RMTC, 📷 Dylan Hewlett Siri Cruise and Shiloh Pitt: a feud to go down in history like Louis Riel and Thomas Scott? The opening words to Women of The Fur Trade at RMTC Warehouse set the tone for the lighthearted play with whiplash syncretism of history and pop culture. This playfulness redeemed the heavy-handed moralizing that permeated the play. It was to be expected in a piece taking the perspective of women in the early days of Manitoba, a play written by an Indigenous woman, that the action would obliquely, if not directly, urge action on the hard work of reconciliation. The women talked of belonging, of fearing for their lives, of land protection -- all issues as relevant and urgent today as they were back then. The most surprising part of the play was the recasting of Thomas Scott as a friend of Riel's -- actually, a simpering acolyte -- whose relationship turns suddenly, resulting in the ending we know. The most surprising joke in the play ...

Obviously not Winnipeg The light dribbles away in fall a trickle at a time. Each day, another few seconds, a minute, is lost. It erodes gradually as a tide of darkness slowly encroaches on the day. And then Christmas comes. The twinkling lights provide a welcome distraction from the ebbing daylight. But the return of the light. That comes back in fistfuls. In the midst of frigid January, suddenly, one realizes the light is returning. Even as the mercury reaches its lowest, the hope of spring beckons as daylight hours stretch out longer and longer. The winter wind may howl, the temperature may dip again and again after the false promise of spring, but the light tells the truth: warmer days are coming. And it does so generously, glopping out bigger portions of daylight each day.

“We don’t really have customs and traditions,” says the keen young woman explaining the Baha’i faith at a multifaith educational open house. Then, she proceeds to explain Baha'is have 19-day months, have 11 holy days of which 9 are mandatory to abstain from work and school, and they have weekly junior youth groups for ages 11-15. Why are we so afraid of admitting to having customs? It’s a religious tradition! Of course there are ritual practices and corporate habits. Is this the influence of oh-so-pious evangelicals who like to say, “It’s not a religion; it’s a relationship”? Is it post-modernism that makes us all want to be unencumbered the the strictures of someone else's philosophy? What is it that we resist admitting we all do? Rituals can be deadening, sure, or worse, abusive, but managed well they are shaping in constructive ways. Anyone who has tried to develop skills has learned that to become really good at something, you just need to push through hou...