Recently, a petition circulated the internet, suggesting that the United States could easily take a big bite out of our ballooning Federal debt by liquidating some latent assets. Specifically, the petition suggests that Montana could be sold to Canada for a cool trillion dollars. It’s unclear whether this is USD or CAD, which is, what, like a few hundred grand?

As you might expect this proposal was met with mixed reviews, although most Montana residents I spoke with were ready to take the leap. It gave me reason for reflection that I have never really explored the Great White North, and it seemed like a good chance to visit Canada and learn a bit more. It has been illuminating, and quite frankly I’m on board. Let’s have a look.

Facts About Canada

Canada is sort of like if the United States and France got pretty drunk at a company holiday party and accidentally had a kid. They tried to stay together for a while, you know, for the kid, but it didn’t really work out and now the child has an aching guilt that it (Canada, here) was maybe responsible. This explains why Canadians are always apologizing.

Contrary to popular belief, Canada has been here for a long time. In fact, it is nearly 6,000 years old. They just didn’t tell anyone.

Canadian dollars are valuable to Canadians.

The mountains here are very real.

Tim Horton’s is much more exciting to non-Canadians than it is to Canadians. This is the opposite of In-n-Out Burger, which people from California love and no one else can figure out why.

The mountains here are very real, and you can just drive right up to them.

Canadian truck drivers do not care about your feelings, but every other Canadian does.

There are many jokes about Canada, Canadians, etc. (Sorry!) The only jokes about Americans are covered daily in the Washington Post.

There is a strange sense or communal understanding that it would be very uncommon, tragic, and out-of-character to be shot at in a public space. It’s almost as though Canadians have collectively shrugged and just, like, decided they don’t need to shoot at each other all the time. It’s odd. I’ll report back when I learn more, but some cultural differences can only be explained by the fact that it is a foreign country.

Have I mentioned that the mountains are very real?

You can get by with only English, no French necessary!

Poutine is a thing and it is french fries, cheese curds, and gravy. Somehow this existed before they legalized recreational marijuana.

So let’s put a band aid on this national debt, eh? I say sell!

Leave This Blank:Leave This Blank Too:Do Not Change This:

Your email:

 

Like

Happy New Year! This is, of course, the day of the year picked arbitrarily and more or less accepted as the opportunity for a new start. A fresh beginning. The holiday is our general consensus that self-reflection and self-improvement are worthwhile pursuits. Good for us, I say.

New Years, really, is a western attempt at practicing mindfulness, where we embrace our impending mortality and recognize how quickly life can slip away if we do not take a moment to reflect on where and who we are, were, and wish to be. New Years self reflection is a beautiful concept, really, and as we all have so much room for growth it never stops to puzzle me that we celebrate these new beginnings by donning diapers for a party and embarking on this brave new year with a hangover.

But at least maybe it’s honest. Resolutions, of course, are up there with extravagant birthday celebrations as among our dumbest traditions. But it’s not that the impulse to take stock and improve our lives and habits is silly, but that abandoning our resolutions is as much a part of the cliche and the tradition as making them. “I should lose weight,” or “go to the gym more,” or “be better with money” are not ignoble goals, but are simply terribly defined. It fails to consider scale.

Meaningful lifestyle change needs to step from an earnest interest in making it. And an earnest interest in effecting that change will take shape when it is time, not on January 1st. A ceremonial embrace of a present and improved self, one which swirls around a single day, should center on a single, discrete action.

That doesn’t mean this thing you decide to do can’t be meaningful. Ask for the raise. Reach out to an estranged friend. Or just kick of 2019 with a perfectly clean refrigerator. And then go on with your year and make yourself better or don’t, but let’s stop standing on ceremony so we can all take each other a bit more seriously.

Leave This Blank:Leave This Blank Too:Do Not Change This:

Your email:

 

Like

You’ve done it. You’ve survived Thanksgiving, and the very last bites of your holiday turkey are slowly going rancid in the refrigerator. A few crumbs of pumpkin pie are brown and solid on the counter, half-covered by hastily replaced tinfoil since November 29th, and the wounds of clumsy dinnertime faux pas are slowly beginning to heal.

You have braved the wilds of Black Friday, presented alms of charity to booksellers and candle stores on Small Business Saturday, and delved back into the hedonistic nihilism of Cyber Monday Week. You gave heartily on #GivingTuesday, and are ready, now, to embrace the real Christmas shopping challenge of the season.

We each have, in our lives, that person for whom it is simply impossible to buy. That person so immersed in material wealth or anhedonic gloom that each year no matter how you toil over what might make them smile, you fall short. You are confronted by the overwrought grin (is it too toothy? not toothy enough?) and feigned surprise that are, quite simply, the hallmark of a gift falling flat. You know this. You are accustomed to this. You are ready for a change.

And so I present to you now the gift giving guide for the person who has it all. Christmas shopping made easy, for the impossible recipient.

A Second First Impression – We have all blown it at least once or twice. You know, when you were just a little too drunk when you met a girlfriend’s parents for the first time, or thought for sure that Jehovah’s Witness joke would land in a job interview. This year, give that person in your life the chance to make a second first impression. It’s one thing you can be sure they don’t already have.

A 25th Hour – One simply cannot get all the things done in a day that one must. 24 hours simply not enough. This year give the gift of opportunity – a 25th hour in each day with which to master an industry, triumph over an opponent, or veg out and watch reruns of Quantum Leap. The gift of time provides infinite possibilities.

The Souls of His Enemies – Or her enemies. You don’t have it all without also having a few enemies.

Delete One Voicemail – Bonus points if you can also un-send one email, obviously. Like the second first impression, but also useful for when you known someone well, but perhaps not as well as you thought. Whether it’s one e-mail forward too far, a joke you didn’t know was racist, or simply an accidental “reply all,” everyone could do with taking back an email now and again.

The Perfect Socks – This person has everything, but you can never have enough socks that are just right. You know, with a little bit of padding but not too much. The gentle embrace of the ideal amount of spandex. Merino wool, obviously, or Alpaca fiber. Soft, warm-but-not-cloying, snug-but-not-tight, perfect, really.

Leave This Blank:Leave This Blank Too:Do Not Change This:

Your email:

 

 

 

Like

It’s been years, now, since a good friend and colleague characterized most of the things that we think of problems as really just caused by comfortable white people refusing to talk to each other. (Since then, to be fair, a lot of the issues that he was concerned about: race and class aggression, mostly, have crested through the public umwelt.)

This was never as clear as a month or two ago, when I had the opportunity to participate on a panel to discuss land management policy in the west. The event was billed as a round table conversation, with time at the end for questions and answers. Instead we were treated to ninety minutes of glassy-eyed gray hairs reading from prepared statements and retreating to their seats to scoff and stew. Conversation? Discussion? Hardly.

It’s just that we’re always yelling, really. We’re always so certain. And if we were honest I think that we might find that we are not even necessarily 100% certain of our own convictions, and that ignores whether those convictions are logical, or just, or based in any kind of fact. And so what if when we yell at each other, we could simply leave room for the shadow of a doubt. For a runnel of humility that might grow into a trickle of understanding, or a loop of wool that could unravel a shaky premise.

Enter, the interrobang:

It has it all, really. It is at once an exclamation point and a question mark. It says, “I am enthusiastic, but unsure.” And doesn’t enthusiastic but unsure really sum up so much of what we take for granted? It allows you to feel a way and not be sure exactly why. It leaves space amid opposites where conversation can take root.

Even in its etymology, combining Latin roots and base, boorish, fun onomatopoeia into a single word signifies to our best and worst that someplace in the middle is something like what’s right.

So heck, give it a try. Next time you’ve got a letter to the editor about Kids These Days or how Baby Boomers Ruined Everything, throw an interrobang in there. And when you’re using your anonymous Facebook to spew vitriol into the universe, maybe incorporate just a breath of reason. You may need to experiment with a few different hot keys or get at Zuckerberg on Twitter to get the character supported, but if we all work on it together we might be surprised at what we can achieve.

Leave This Blank:Leave This Blank Too:Do Not Change This:

Your email:

 

Like