So Sault me.
Tuesday, September 28th, 2004
It’s a crystal-clear fall Tueday so we head over to Sault Saint Marie, and we encounter small handmade expressions of a polarized nation: a handmade ‘Native Americans support Kerry Edwards’ sign…a stack of round hay bales, one on top of two on top of three, the ends painted red white and blue and labeled “one nation under god.”
We’re listening to ‘The Current’ on CBC Radio…first a half hour with the Montreal-based president of Medicins sans Frontieres, a pediatrician who lives her life helping small dying children in Darfur, in Afghanistan, in Haiti. In the next half-hour, it’s a thoughtful documentary on the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide.
Canadians are routinely listening to thoughtful radio about the problems of the world, their attentions turned outside their borders. Here on this side, we are a nation turning away from the world, presenting them a caricatured cowboy arrogance, take us or leave us. Marvel at our simplicity, our solidarity, our strength.
I find myself grateful for every Kerry Edwards sign we see up here, and come away with, in general, a bad feeling. I remember in 1988 I listened to the Vice-Presidential debate on the radio heading back to Georgia from Ohio…this time we’ll be at Doug and Ruthette’s…
Sidewalk blogging, U.P. style.
Monday, September 27th, 2004
It’s a bright sunny late morning, and Sammy is around the corner at the laundromat folding clothes after checking her email here on a bench in front of the local newspaper office. Newberry Michigan is a very small, somewhat economically…challenged?
And yet, here I am, squinting at the Powerbook screen, watching the 4WD trucks and SUVs (all american-made, of course) parade at a strict 25 mph.
Wireless broadband. It’s amazing.
