My hometown corporatized kiddieland.

I was really disappointed the other day when I read that my hometown had sold out to corporate sponsorship.  Town council accepted a $100,000 “donation” from Spinrite, the major yarn and craft textile manufacturer that has its factory and head office there, to the new municipal day care centre.  In return, council agreed to include Spinrite in the name of the new facility.

There’s nothing wrong with sponsorship and corporate donations.  In fact, more corporations should be doing this.  Spinrite probably could have donated more than $100,000 if it really wanted to.  What I don’t like is this shameless selling of the names of public facilities to whoever comes along with the biggest cheque.  Stingy is the best word I can find to describe the budgetary and decision making habits of the council in my hometown.  Its members have always seemed to give the impression that ones highest calling in life is to live as cheaply as possible.  $100,000 is a pretty cheap carrot for a company to dangle before the eyes of the perpetually frugal.

It’s true, Spinrite is one of the biggest employers in town.  Many of the employees likely make use of the public day care centre.  However, in a world where the lives of children are commercialized from the moment they’re born, whether it be through the manufacturers of disposable diapers and baby bottles to every mass market toy baring the evidence of Disney, do we really need the logo of a company on a place that should be set aside for children to be cared for, for them to play, and for their creativity to be encouraged?

There’s a labour component to my complaint too.  It’s mostly rooted in history.  Spinrite was for years owned and operated by one of the wealthiest families in town.  This really created an “us and them” social structure.  A structure like this is much more tolerable in a large city, but in a small town in the prairie-like farm country, it’s a lot more noticeable.  Although the company is now a publicly-traded one, it still looks to me like the paternalistic old-money class throwing crumbs at those less privileged.  The factory was also known for its hot and dangerous working conditions and an extreme dislike for even the slightest talk about union organization.  Having a corporate name on a public facility reminds me too much of the old days of company towns where workers were stuck living in a place owned by their employer.

The local press really dropped the ball on this story.  Nobody asked the hard questions about corporate sponsorship, selling the name of a public facility to whoever showed up with a fat cheque, and is it socially responsible to have a place for the community’s children under the influence of corporate branding?

The coldest weekend

The bitter cold this weekend has been a cruel shock during an otherwise warm winter.  I was positive that steel would become brittle and we’d see vehicle axles split and highway sign posts snap like toothpicks.

My parents are visiting.  Yesterday, we were out doing some shopping and it seemed as though the other customers did not want to leave the warmth of the store.  People were taking extra time looking at what kinds of cookies or cereal to buy.  Car tires have felt square for the first mile or so after heading down the road. 

This morning at church, almost everyone kept their coats on, even while indoors.  I’ve never witnessed this before in a city church.  It was a pretty common occurrence though where I grew up.  Well-dressed people would stay covered in a layer of wool or some kind of stuffed fabric after they reached their pews.  It’s an old church in the country and it gets draughty around the windows.  At the cavernous place in the city where I worship, the air was crisp this morning, even though I’m positive that the furnace in the basement was probably doing its best to keep up with the temperature.  It even got colder by the end of the service and some people had put their coats on.  Fortunately there were no baptisms today.  I’ve never seen a baptism before where ice had to be broken in the font.

We went over to the farmer’s market after church.  The parking garage was the warmest place there.  The old Aberdeen Pavilion was almost just like the outdoors, except without wind.  Every vendor was wearing a coat and a hat.  About a third of them didn’t even show up.  A lot of them drive over an hour to be there.  Cars won’t start, doing farm chores on a freezing morning is more challenging too.  Returning to bed, sitting by the woodstove, or laying on a couch under blankets is a better alternative on days like that.  There was no risk of the pork chops I bought thawing out on the way home.

We’ve stayed inside ever since.  Mom made a great roast beef for dinner.  We’ve done a few household tasks.  She and Dad are watching TV.  I’m writing this post.  We’re waiting for a heat wave.

The Super Bowl.

I’m not a fan of North American football at all.  Aside from an initial kickoff, I can’t understand why it’s even called football anyway, especially when the players seem to just run around holding the ball or throwing it to each other with their hands.  I have serious issues with the National Football League too.  The biggest is the fact they don’t pay any federal taxes in the United States because back in 1966, they were able to persuade some friendly Congressmen to have them designated a charitable organization.  Of course, football is pretty much a secular religion in the United States, and churches don’t pay taxes either!  I also have really big issues with professional sports players who make millions of dollars a year for playing a game that really should just be for fun, not a job.  Meanwhile, there are full-time workers who are still not earning enough to be able to afford a place to live, food to eat, and health care.

                I’ve only ever watched a Super Bowl game in its entirety once.  A few years ago, a friend decided to have a few guys over to watch it.  He and his wife were recently married.  We arrived at their house and she left for work.  Now they have two children and another on the way.  I don’t live near them anymore and the other guys who were at the party are married now.  I’m going to guess that there’s no Super Bowl party happening at any of their houses.  The invitation to the party was funny enough.  The subject line in the email said “Super Bowel Party.”  I figured this was a spelling mistake, at least I hoped it was.  However, one can never tell since the average Super Bowl party menu consists of spicy chicken wings, chili, and beer.

                 Once the game started, we increasingly found ourselves not paying much actual attention to what was happening in it.  There were instead a lot of jokes about what the players, coaching staff, and fans were possibly really thinking.  It does seem rather odd that in such a conservative sport like football, men spend a lot of time patting each other on the rear end.

                And then there’s the half-time show.  These have become memorable over the years.  I believe it was the Black Eyed Peas who performed during the game I watched.  I don’t particularly like their music anyway.  To me, a football half time show still has to be good old fashioned marching bands or a drum and bugle corps.  Those who remember Super Bowls of the 1970’s and early 1980’s will of course remember the recurring appearances of Up With People doing their massive song and dance performances.  Up With People are just way too happy and out of character for a tough guy sport like football.  I always got the impression that their fans were young Nixon supporters whose parents listened to Percy Faith and whose grandparents were groupies of Lawrence Welk.

                Even non-fans like me can find the cultural ritual of Super Bowl fandom amusing to observe.  It’s become a part of North American culture.  On Sunday afternoon, living rooms, basement rec rooms, bars, and even some churches will attract crowds of people wanting to watch the game.  There will be occasional waves of cheering or booing from the assembled.  Television viewers will be unsure if they should watch the always one of a kind commercials or rush to the bathroom and become participants in the collective flushing of toilets and resulting peak usage of sewer systems everywhere.  

Tom Lehrer and True Dough Mania

When people buy a gift for themselves, it’s usually something expensive and excessive.  No, not me.  I bought a vintage comedy album.  I found An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer at a store that sells an amazing selection of videos and albums in Stratford, Ontario over the holidays.  I first learned about Professor Lehrer (yes, he’s a retired professor of mathematics and musical theatre at both Harvard University and the University of California—Santa Cruz), when I was in broadcasting school and my instructor—who grew up in Massachusetts during the height of Lehrer’s popularity mentioned him one day.  A Youtube search followed and I’ve been a fan ever since. 

Tom Lehrer, now 87, is probably the funniest mathematician to ever grace his discipline.  I wish I’d had him as a teacher in high school, I may have actually passed the courses.  This man of numbers is also a pianist and started writing satirical songs in the 1950s.  Topics included contemporary ironies within the realm of civil rights, religion, politics, and otherwise taboo subjects of the time involving sex and crime.  The Lehrer repertoire includes memorable tunes like Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, National Brotherhood Week, Oedipus Rex, The Vatican Rag, and a nostalgic look at a not so wholesome upbringing in My Hometown.  This particular album, recorded live at Harvard sometime in the late 1950’s is still funny today.  It keeps me laughing.

A couple of months ago, my sister gave me this piece of obscure Canadian political satire.

  True Dough Mania is a board game parody of the government of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, father of Justin Trudeau, the current occupant of that office.  The first player to lose all of their assets and money in the game to the government is the winner.  The game was released in 1982 when Pierre Trudeau’s leadership was near its end and facing growing unpopularity, quite the opposite from the “Trudeaumania” accompanying his arrival in office in the late 1960s.  The worthless fake money in the game; True Dough dollars, are amusing.

  Could we soon see similar notes with Justin’s face on them valued at 0.71 cents US?  Will a Canadian video game developer, or university student with nothing better to do soon come up with an electronic version of True Dough Mania?