G'day from the Ottawa Valley

  It's been a quiet week in the Ottawa Valley, at least for me. The pipes froze last Saturday. We launched Straight Goods on Monday. The plumber came Monday, which was good. The pipes thawed finally on Tuesday, and I got a shower, which everyone appreciated, especially Ruby the dog.
  There was a great grey owl flying around the farm on the fence yesterday. Probably trying to get the squirrels at the squirrel feeder. It used to be a bird feeder but...
  And I never left the farm for a solid week. Producing Straight Goods and responding to the tide of interesting e-mail kept me riveted to the chair from 5:30 until collapse at 10 or 11 every day. 9 on Tuesday.
  I presume the world went on without me, from what I see on my computer screen. Let's see if anyone was in touch with reality out there.

• "The Ministry" is flying Russian plutonium around northern Ontario as part of another cockamammie deal that makes no sense to anyone, even AECL. Seems the PM wants to do a favour for someone. Well, that's his affair. But using Ministry choppers to move it! (The Ministry, for those who don't live in the Ottawa Valley or Northern Ontario, is the Ministry of Natural Resources. It is the visible manifestation of government and, while we love to bash it for sins real and imagined, is also seen by many as possibly the only necessary arm of government (Well, there's also the crowd with bumper stickers on the half-tonnes saying "JUST FIX THE ROADS"). To use our Ministry's choppers to fly in Russian toxic waste when they could be trading Ontario moose for Michigan wild turkeys like they did a few years ago is beyond my comprehension.
• Every year, farm technology advances. Every year, more family farms die. After decades of following the agribiz line about getting bigger and borrowing more, most farm families are going broke. They cover the losses of farming with 20-hour workdays, much of it off-farm. Big business and the feds say genetically-modified foods will put the profit back in farming. They expect farmers to believe this too. Any farmer who thinks this makes sense should se me. I've got some swampland out near Ruby that could be a golden opportunity for condos and a golf course.
• The banks are out of trouble. Thank the gods. I was worried, but the feds pitched in a $100 million bailout to help them deal with student loan defaults from grads still flipping burgers or staffing phone banks for $10/hr. Maybe it would be better if students and their parents got a break instead of just the banks.
• Toronto cops are in trouble. The same police who recently recently-covered up the fact two of its officers were drinking on duty when their partner William Hancox was being murdered are seeking protection money through their Operation True Blue. Remarkably, the public rebelled.
• And so are hockey owners, or at least one of them. Did Industry Minister Manley score on his own net with the fumbled bailout? Or was it all a set-up? We don't know. But we do know that Rod Bryden, owner of the Ottawa Senators, now has no reason not to sell the team for hundreds of millions of dollars. Some suggest this was always the objective. A knowledgeable Killaloe hockey man told a friend back in 1992 when the Sens got started - "They're not gonna keep it there. They'll get it going and then sell out." Gotta admit, the puck-handling's been some kind of slick on this one.
• The Centre for Social Justice reports this week that despite economic good times and right-wing tax-cutting regimes in most provinces and Ottawa, take-home family income has gone down for almost everyone. Seems that came as a big surprise to some folks. Not to most around Killaloe.
• Spoke with journalist and author Murray Dobbin Friday about his Monday piece on the Reform Rave in Ottawa. He told me what he tells journalism students he talks to. He is fed up with mainstream journalism and the lack of diversity or balance in papers like the Globe, the Post, and the Sun (Vancouver, where he lives). He tells students "Buying the Vancouver Sun or the National Post is like letting a rat loose in your living room. Why would you do that?"
  "Reading the daily press actually makes you more stupid than if you read nothing at all. Every headline, every story chips away at our values and undermines what we know to be true."

  Here in the Valley, people get little yappy dogs to deal with rats. If you can't have one of them, I advise Straight Goods. Maybe that should be our slogan: Straight Goods: the yappy dog of the Canadian media.

  Thanks for stopping by. Come by again. Don't worry, the dog won't bite - you.