On Parliament Hill...

I'm standing beside the East Block of the Parliament Building, waiting in line to go in and see Jack Layton lying in state.

I've never done anything like this before.

What I most like is that the NDP Members of Parliament are coming out to talk to us, shake our hands, and thank us for coming.

It's what all politicians should be like... But so many aren't.

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Essex County, vol. 1, Tales from the Farm...

I just read Jeff Lemire's comic Tales from the Farm, which I'd heard was good. It's better than that. It's superb.

I have a weakness for stories about the milestones of growing up, and this captures childhood experience beautifully. It also had the whiff of autobiography about it: like his protagonist, Les, Jeff Lemire is from Essex County, Ontario, and the story is that of a ten year old who has lost his mother and has to live with his Uncle Ken - a farmer who has never had much experience with children. Les works on his own superhero comic book in secret, and befriends an ex-hockey player who was damaged in his one big game.

It's about what we do when we are lonely and life goes wrong, and what we make of it.

Though I have never been to Essex County, and though I don't know a lot of farmers, it's a story that made me feel as if I was seeing people I knew, people just like those I might meet on any given day. The way I felt when seeing Bon Cop, Bad Cop or Slings and Arrows.

The Seven Blunders of the World...

From The Seven Blunders of the World:

The Seven Blunders of the World is a list that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi gave to his grandson Arun Gandhi, written on a piece of paper, on their final day together, shortly before his assassination. The seven blunders are:


• Wealth without work.
  
• Pleasure without conscience.
  
• Knowledge without character.
  
• Commerce without morality.
  
• Science without humanity.
  
• Worship without sacrifice.
  
• Politics without principle.