Closed On Account Of Climate Change

This has to the funniest catch yet. Via Drudge, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has postponed a hearing entitled, “Global Warming Impacts, Including Public Health, in the United States” owing to inclement weather.

This weather:

Snow blew across the Midwest on Tuesday and headed for the hard-hit Mid-Atlantic region, where federal government offices have been closed since last week and utility workers struggled to restore power already knocked out by a weekend blizzard.

The latest storm hit the Midwest early, closing schools and greeting commuters with slick, slushy roads from Minneapolis and Chicago to Louisville, Ky. Hundreds of flights were canceled at Chicago’s airports as the storm moved across Illinois, where up to a foot of snow was forecast.

Meanwhile, from the Twitter account of Senator Jim DeMint:

It’s Not Khadr That’s A Terrorist, It’s The Government That’s Racist

The Liberal Party held a public forum on consular issues today, in which “human rights experts” accused the federal Conservative government of deliberately not helping Canadians abroad because of racial or religious bias. Their selective consular assistance, they argued, is based on “inept, cruel and often racist” reasons:

“If I were a [Canadian] Muslim, I’d be quite terrified of travelling,” Amir Attaran, a law professor from the University of Ottawa, told a public forum on consular issues organized by the Liberals.

What’s interesting about this statement is that, unlike most other people, Mr.Attaran apparently isn’t concerned about the prospect of his plane being blown up by insane Muslim fundamentalists. Nor does he seem to think that the widespread perception of that danger is at all based on the previous actions of insane Muslim fundamentalists, but rather a racist government.

Yes, well, the problem with that theory is that the Conservative government, aside from having numerous MPs, aides, and government workers from all kinds of diverse backgrounds, including Muslims, sees the immigrant communities in Canada as their big ticket going forward:

“I strongly argued that the future of Canadian conservatism had to go through the increasingly diverse immigrant communities,” Mr. Kenney said in an interview.

His contention was that new Canadians are overwhelmingly conservative in their values. They’ve been in thrall to the Liberal Party of the Trudeau era largely because the Liberals introduced large-scale non-white immigration to Canada.

At any rate, Amir Attaran is hardly a “human rights expert”. The man has a case before the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal to try and get taxpayers to pay for his wife’s in-vitro fertilization. Apparently it’s now a “human right” to get other people to make your wife pregnant.

Olympic-sized Pandering Time

Photo: BC government website

After a month and a half of watching the national media vilify the federal Conservative government for proroguing Parliament, the B.C. Liberal government is quietly returning to the legislature after being off since November 26, 2009. The legislature is only reconvening for three-days in order to deliver a throne speech, and self-aggrandize about the upcoming Olympic games before they prorogue until March 2.

This is nothing new for a government that seems to fly under the sleepy radar of the people of British Columbia. Only recently did they seem to raise the ire of the province when they announced that they would be implementing a new 12% harmonized sales tax last July after winning an election in which they mentioned nary a peep about it. [On that file, by the way, former Premier Bill Vander Zalm was recently given the go ahead by the province's Chief Electoral Officer to secure 10% of the voting signatures to force a draft bill in the hopes of killing the tax before it is implemented in July.]

Yes, Gordon Campbell and the Liberals enjoy taking much longer vacations than the Conservative’s much maligned prorogation of six weeks. Back in September of 2008, fearing a backlash from another unilaterally implemented tax [the hated carbon tax], the Liberals canceled the entire fall sitting, citing a lack of business. At the time of the summer break, three bills had remained unresolved before the legislature, but the government canceled the house until the following Spring.

With the federal Conservatives and the provincial Liberals both under their own share of heat from critics, they will band together on Thursday with Prime Minister Stephen Harper addressing the legislature. It will be an opportunity for both Prime Minister Harper and Premier Campbell to shift the attention off of their unpopular political mistakes of late, and onto the Olympic Games.

The federal Liberals are paying close attention to this move. Stephen Harper tried to mitigate the prorogation miscalculation by recently requesting that the Parliament sit through two scheduled breaks after it reconvenes in March. Now Michael Ignatieff sees the Prime Minister as using the Olympics to try and bolster his image over the next 17 days, and the Liberal leader is having none of it.

Declaring earlier that he would continue to “work” through the Olympics in protest of the “undemocratic” prorogation, the iffy Liberal leader has decided he will instead attend venues. Not that Stephen Harper gets a free pass from the flip-flop flagellation. Last spring he told his caucus that the House of Commons would sit through Vancouver 2010, and that no caucus member was to take a free Olympic ticket or hotel room.

Back then, of course, the Liberals followed suit, not wanting to sound like they would be reveling in Olympic parties while their Conservative cousins were hard at work. Michael Ignatieff also sent out a directive discouraging his MPs from going to the Olympics. Which is why it’s easier to understand Mr.Ignatieff’s latest slippery about-face, leaving only the NDP to make fun of them both.

These Are Not The Taliban You’re Looking For

An obscure interview between the Caledon Enterprise newspaper and federal Liberal nominee for the riding of Dufferin-Caledon in Southern Ontario, Bill Prout, produced a rather memorable quote:

I was getting a little tired of the afghan detainee thing, but I am thinking the only reason they would do this is there is a lot more in there then even we as Liberals know, or believe is in there. I think the government maybe feels it would be very badly embarrassed. Listen, I think most Canadians believe we’re at war, and if a little torture happens to save lives, most Canadians feel it’s ok, if it saves lives.

I think that Mr.Prout could have stopped there quite comfortably and left it to the circulation of the rural suburb of Bolton, a predominantly Conservative riding anyway. David Tilson for the Conservative Party won in 2008 handily, accruing 53% of the vote while defeating Liberal Rebecca Finch by a margin of almost 3 votes to 1.

Bill Prout was nominated for the riding in late December, the 62-year-old proprietor of a solar power distribution business, EnerControl, making him an “environmental candidate”.

“Liberals are progressive and true leaders with a social conscience by conviction not as a result of how the wind blows,” he told the Caledon Citizen at the time. “I see myself as a new Liberal, unencumbered by years of political infighting. I owe no favours and no one owes me. So just maybe I can get down to work and get us on the map for being the most progressive riding in Canada.”

Consider this your first class in Liberal policy-making on the fly then, Bill. After making those comments about torture, he received a negative letter in the Caledon Enterprise, and felt the need to respond. In his answer, he explained that he wasn’t justifying torture, but rather characterizing the position of the Conservative government.

He then explains that the prisoners being captured by Canadian soldiers are mainly innocent victims:

Unfortunately, we are at war, but Canada should never lose that global respect for being peacekeepers and torchbearers for human rights. With all my soul I abhor the fact that Canadians have been involved with torture to get information from prisoners, who for the most part, are just farmers in the wrong place at the wrong time. Language barrier is probably the cause of so many being detained and handed over to (the) Afghan military.

Well, that, or being caught planting IED’s and shooting at Canadian troops. But who wants to get bogged down in details?

Mr.Prout then laments that the Conservatives quashed the construction of a detainee jail so that prisoners can be interrogated according to the terms of the Geneva Convention as being too expensive a project .

First of all, it seems clear that the Liberal candidate hasn’t done his research on Afghanistan. The allegations stemming from incidents of detainee abuse are based on incidents that occurred in Afghan prisons from 2003-2006, mainly during the Liberal government, and as late as 2007 before the Conservatives overhauled the transfer protocol. As for the number of “farmers” being accidentally detained, documents released when the BC Civil Liberties Association and Amnesty International took the federal government to court, revealed that the total number of detainees Canadian Forces held between 2002 and 2006 was only 40.

Building a prison just for Afghan detainees not only sounds like a case of closing the barn door after the horses are gone, but also goes against one of the main criticisms of the conflict, in that it’s already too expensive at an estimated $22-billion.

The final issue I have is with Bill Prout’s explanation is his cavalier use of the word torture in conjunction with our soldiers, something that Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, John McCallum, Ujjal Dosanjh, and numerous other Liberals don’t seem to have a problem with. Canadian complicity in torture allegations have neither been proved or substantiated by any reliable evidence or testimony to date.

Stifling Popular Dissent Obama Style

The above video is a time lapse display of the February 5-6 avalanche of snowfall in Washington DC. Buried somewhere under that expanse of fluffy white frozen water, however, is an administration so out of touch with the principal challenges facing the country, that even with a colossal debt of $12.4 trillion it can find the money for the creation of new agencies.

The Obama administration is committing to the formation of a new climate change agency that would study the dangers that man-made global warming presents to the United States. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said that the NOAA will set up the new Climate Service to operate in tandem with the National Weather Service and National Ocean Service.

Never mind that we’ve run out of “gates” to append to all the various climate scandals that have been revealed in the wake of the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. Never mind the fact that the melting glaciers claim was taken from an obscure 1999 magazine article by The New Scientist and had no basis in peer-reviewed science. Or that the IPCC claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020 was similarly pulled from thin air. Or the fact that forest fires, hurricanes, and drought were all heaped into the same ubiquitous global warming explanation as a means of frightening people into surrendering more tax monies for climate researchers.

No, the President is now busy ignoring the popular will of the people by creating needless agencies in plain view of the fact that 50% of the U.S. population believe that if climate change is occurring at all, it is based on planetary trends and not man emitted carbon dioxide.

But it gets worse. President Obama’s regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, has made the argument that the United States government should ban conspiracy theories. Chief among these conspiracy theories, which Mr.Sunstein lumps in with 9/11 and assassinations, is the theory that global warming is a fraud.

In a paper written by Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule from Harvard Law School in January of 2008, the authors say that “conspiracy theories create challenges that are distinct from those posed by false but dangerous beliefs”. Cited as one of those dangerous beliefs is those who say that “climate change is not occurring”. The paper encourages actively “undermining such theories” and on breaking the closed information networks that produce these conspiracy theories.

It seems that there’s a fine line between legitimate scientific research, such as unsubstantiated claims about glaciers in order to secure billions in worldwide funding, and the conspiracy theorists who dare to challenge their conclusions. But when you have Hillary Clinton and the Democrats vying for a $100-billion wealth transfer to the third world to help them “cope” with the effects of climate change, when the same political party is running fiscal deficits nearing the $2 trillion range, it’s only fair to wonder what it all means.

In the end analysis, what’s most distressing about the creation of cap and trade markets, carbon taxes, and great big bureaucratic agencies to “study” climate change, isn’t just that they seem grossly premature with the growing mountain of evidence that the debate on consensus continues. It’s that they have framed the debate in such a way that those who challenge the scientific claims of the warming crowd are called deniers, conspiracy theorists, and worse, shills for Big Oil or corporate America.

Well, if that’s the case, can anybody tell me where I can pick up my pay cheque?

h/t iOwnTheWorld & Kate

We’re Getting Number Two

Well, it appears that the indefatigable Teleprompter and his trusty President won’t be making the arduous journey across the continent to the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver. But he is, as a consolation prize, sending somebody almost as incompetent.

And just to make sure he isn’t wasting the trip, the same “gaffe-prone gabber” will be attending a Wednesday evening fundraiser in nearby Washington state to stump for Washington Democrat Senator Patty Murray. Lucky for the Democrats that this isn’t a Senate seat in contention, or else they’d have Barack Obama fly in to seal the loss.

And while I’m sure President Obama isn’t quite as shallow as to deliberately boycott the opening ceremonies because the IOC didn’t favour his personal touch in the 2016 Summer bid for Chicago, you have to understand one thing: nobody offered him a gold medal or a million dollar prize to pick up. Perhaps if we had commissioned a statue in his honour, instead of just one with Lenin and Mao, we could have been graced with the presence of the One.

But, as Andrew Malcolm writes in the LA Times, for the closing ceremonies it’s even worse. The White House is sending Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet “The System Worked” Napolitano. Just a heads up Janet. Don’t try and bring any of that outside food stuff past the gate, or the ISU will have you hog-tied and charged with infringing upon the corporate sponsorship exclusivity of the IOC faster than you can extinguish the crotch fire of a Nigerian terrorist. Unless, of course, you’re bringing in McDonald’s.

I’m rather surprised that Barack Obama isn’t attending the opening ceremonies to send off hundreds of American athletes to our sun-soaked venues of trucked in snow. He would have enjoyed our Hawaiian climate. But I’m sure he has more important things he won’t be accomplishing, foremost among them calling a “summit” on health care reform so that he can get out the defibrillator, and attempt to revive the rotting horse carcass.

It’s a move that provides a very interesting gleaning into the mind of Barack Obama and the Democrats. After botching the entire health care reform process from the very beginning so badly that it makes Teddy Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick incident look like a parking violation, now they’re going to present ObamaCare as being some kind reform that has bi-partisan support, even as recent polls indicate as many as 58% of Americans are in opposition. ObamaCare has bi-partisan support allright, to pull the plug on it.

You would think that the politicians on Capitol Hill would do anything to escape the current deluge of global warming that is busy entombing the Eastern seaboard under a blanket of snow. So all we’re getting is Joe Biden. No big deal. So long as he doesn’t attempt to unfurl a great big Obama flag outside his hotel room, all should be fine.

The Racism Witch Hunt

Ryerson University

One of the most predictable effects of anti-racism policies can be found in the law of unintended consequences, in that after a while they tend to foster and perpetuate the very racism those policies aim to defeat. After all, cataloging and enumerating every shade of skin pigment in a University is more than just an exercise in demography. It preserves the contradictory premise of anti-racism theory, by arguing that race is important and needs to be identified, so that we may observe how far the targets of this alleged racism have come.

Instead of applying simple, logical rules in workplaces and educational institutions, such as valuing individuality in concert with equality, and then admonishing those people who break those rules, there are too many people who classify discrimination into two distinct categories. The one category is the privileged white Christian heterosexual male who is assumed can never be a victim of any sort, and the other contains everybody else who happens to reside in the world. This makes it easy, since institutions can add all the white people together, all the non-white people together, and then subtract one from another to see if it is diverse enough.

Ryerson University, located in Toronto’s multicultural downtown core, just spent the better part of a year investigating alleged racism on campus, concluding with a 107-page report and recommendations on how to combat it. The probe found a “staggeringly diverse campus” where some visible minority students say they feel harassed and excluded, and where non-white staff complain they’re shut out of the power loop.

“Fostering a racism-free and inclusive environment requires bold leadership, action and vigilance on the part of everyone in the Ryerson community, and there are key gaps the institution needs to address,” said the report.

But wouldn’t a truly racism-free environment require the complete exclusion of one of the categories? You know, the one which is committing all of the acts of racism? No doubt that if all white students and teachers were excluded from Ryerson, the conditions for a racism-free University would improve.

Some of the suggestions from the report are to have the University declare itself an “inclusive university” that values equity, diversity and inclusion. They want to create an Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, complete with a vice-president to oversee rigorous investigation of discrimination. They want all senior staff to undergo anti-racism training. They want to hold a Census day in which all students enter in their vital racial statistics. And finally, they would create a compulsory course on anti-racism.

Does anyone really know what kind of racism they are talking about? What, according to this study, constitutes racism? Is it based on real world tangible evidence corroborated by witnesses and examples of discrimination? Or is it more of the Human Rights Commission “hurt feelings” kind? For example, the report says that non-white staff feel a “chill” from the other faculty that keeps them out of the power loop. But since when did feelings and intuition make for good policy making?

Another example is provided in the report. A student complains: “I remember in class saying I lived at Jane and Finch for 16 years and the entire class turned and looked at me weird.” Her impression that the class looked at her “weird” has more to do with her own hurt feelings and sense of alienation, than an event which was clearly not discriminatory. Nobody turned to her and made a comment about it being a black high-crime neighbourhood.

One student said: “I look around the classroom and it is so diverse so I often wonder why our courses are not diverse. They’re always taught from a Western point of view.” Well, one possible explanation that our courses are taught from a Western point of view, not to put too fine a point on this nail of logic, is that our country is located in the Western world, with a Western history, Western alliances, and Western geopolitical interests.

Some rather clever individual once penned the phrase: “What the opposite of diversity? University.” It’s fitting. Instead of promoting a more inclusive and diverse atmosphere, the hysterical witch hunts for racism are more reminiscent of the search for communists by the John Birch Society. In a University that is already as diverse and multicultural as Ryerson, they’re probably not going to find any racists. But they will find a few white people. Perhaps in their minds, that’s the same thing.

Europeans In Dire Need Of Some Manners

Photograph: John Tyman

The two-day Group of 7 finance ministers summit wrapped up in Iqaluit, Nunavut, today with all the ministers promising to make the banks bear the cost of the crises they create. They all spoke about the usual confidence of a recovering global economic recovery, and the need to continue stimulus spending.

At the conclusion of the summit, the Canadian government in conjunction with the local Inuit, offered a community feast featuring raw seal meat. Only Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney, who was born in the Northwest Territories, appeared at the feast. Boycotting the dinner was the ministers and central bankers of France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom.

It’s one thing to have laws in Europe prohibiting the sale of seal meat on the morally feeble and fallacious grounds that the commercial seal slaughter is inhumane. It’s quite another to make a show of contempt for the Canadian Inuit and their traditional food, by refusing to attend the feast in some kind of immature, imprudent boycott. Quite literally, it’s like going to the house of a friend as a dinner guest, and then deciding not to dine because you disagree with the food choices being presented.

Not only did the Europeans display their complete disregard for diplomacy, they showed ignorance toward the realities of the staple diet of the people of the far North. By their actions they showed a strong ideological alliance with such marginal bedlamites as the ones who cavort with PETA, and the ethical vegan revolutionaries who equate the word meat with murder. But in another way, they robbed themselves of a unique opportunity to partake in the culinary palate of a foreign culture, and discover the enrichment that comes with that experience.

Of course the feast was not entirely an apolitical and altruistic one meant to delight the G7 members. Canada had hoped to raise the subject of the proposed seal ban in Europe, although it is reported that they were stonewalled on all attempts. When Iqaluit reporter Kent Driscoll asked the four finance ministers if their stay in the Great White North had taught them a lesson about the importance of the seal, there was no answer forthcoming. Just an uncomfortable silence.

As we Canadians are wont to do when something becomes too uncomfortable, Jim Flaherty pointed out, almost apologetically, that the European Union makes an exception for Inuit seal. But that’s not entirely true, since the exception is only for parts saved from the animal that are used for traditional ceremonies and art. When pressed on whether they could see the value of hunting seal in the Arctic, the four ministers remained silent.

Although they didn’t learn very much from their mothers, it appears that they took away one lesson from her. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

The Cult Of Obama

Forget the polls, writes Doug Heye in U.S. News. The sign that Barack Obama’s popularity is crashing down to earth can be found in the marketing slump of his crass commercialized likeness on everything from coffee mugs to condoms.

One of the greatest marketing acts in political history propelled the half-black orator into the mainstream pop culture consciousness of a nation looking for the next “American Idol”. Barack Obama fit the bill perfectly. His seemingly flawless execution of oratory talents, combined with narcissistic narratives, Obama became the first brand name President. From the very beginning, it was all about making him the most recognized name, his face an iconic figure for “change”, however ubiquitous and meaningless that word became.

Obama and his handlers didn’t set out to influence the mainstream. They set out to become the mainstream, to capture popular culture’s current, and drive it toward the main event at the center, a man who can read teleprompters with more skill than any who had gone before. And for whatever fortuitous circumstances that led to the perfect alignment of starry fate and fortune, Barack Obama rode that wave of popularity, a thousand miles wide and one inch thick, right into the White House.

Now, just over a year into his Presidency, the nation of the United States is waking up from its collective delirium, and realizing, perhaps for the first time, that not only does the Emperor have no clothes, but that the clothes have no Emperor. Much like the Vanilla Ice craze that swept a spiky-haired white boy into the spotlight of hip hop’s fickle favor in 1990, the following year most people realized that Robert Matthew Van Winkle was nothing more than a kid from the suburbs who could breakdance.

All of this probably would have been discovered long before now, if there wasn’t a conscious decision made by the media to ride the Republicans right off the road map. The sheer animus shown to vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, which continues to this very day, was so disproportionate to the softball they played with the master of the teleprompter, that there was an endless game of “gotcha” Palin gaffes being reported.

A perfect example of this is the media frenzy over Sarah Palin’s “crib notes” discovered scrawled on her hand during her delivery as keynote speaker for a conservative “Tea Party” event, compared to the general silence of Barack Obama’s mispronunciation of corpsman as “corpseman”. But while the media let the walking undead pass, few of us forget the incessant and gratuitous hand-wringing over George W’s problem with the word “nucular”.

But it goes beyond just Barack Obama’s constant self-referential language, his transparent attempts to keep up appearances, or his well-trained head bobbing as he scans from teleprompter A to teleprompter B. In a recent speech at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser, he told supporters that a woman who had died of cancer recently “insisted she’s going to be buried in an Obama t-shirt.” It is almost as though his narcissism is so dependent upon the validation of his commercial appeal, that he is literally oblivious to his exploitation of a cancer victim for his own self-aggrandizement.

Barack Obama, like Al Gore and his peace prize, has been through the mainstream’s fifteen minutes of fame, and is now on the decline. No longer does the big “O” inspire and project hope and change unto the underclass of America, who perhaps realized after their homes were foreclosed even as Obama became the President, that they would still have to go to work, pay their bills, and send taxes to the IRS. It was then that it dawned on them Obama wasn’t going to be there to tuck them in at night, kiss them on the foreheads, and tell that everything was going to be just fine. And just like any other mainstream craze that has run its course, all we are left with is a landfill of Obama memorabilia trinkets and bumper stickers that will add another Texas-sized amount of plastic flotsam off the coast of the Hawaii Islands.

I, Musician

When I was in junior high school in the late eighties, I remember I used to have to take a bus, a subway, and another bus just to get there. I have no idea why my parents registered me in a school in the Northwest part of Toronto. Perhaps it was to get me out of Parkdale, a neighbourhood in the west end which, at the time, was a high-crime area with schools that were more devoted to ESL than accommodating Canadian-born children.

Most of the kids I met at Winona Drive Public School, went on to the high school right nearby, Oakwood Collegiate, a Secondary School located in Toronto’s other Little Italy on St.Clair. My homeroom teacher, who also taught English, was a very patient, encouraging fellow, who was impressed with my reading and writing skills with sufficiency that he recommended me to the advanced enriched program at the prestigious Northern Secondary School in Toronto’s rather affluent Eglinton East and Mount Pleasant Road area.

Sadly, his assessment of my academic skills were based upon my proficiency with the English language and my performance in homeroom. When the first report card came, revealing my marks in Science, Mathematics, French, and all the other subjects I spent the majority of my time not paying attention to, my homeroom teacher quietly withdrew his recommendation. In hindsight, I can see now the flaws of the education system, which seeks a well-rounded student who is competent in all areas, but has no contingencies for somebody who is specialized in only one.

I recall writing a short story that year as an assignment, complete with illustrations, that was so loved by the principal that he asked me if he could keep it in his office as a means of showing the parents of prospective students to the school, just what kind of talent they attracted.

But, as I say, the skill of manipulating the language of my mother tongue was, it seems, the only one sufficient that my benevolent creator deemed necessary to endow me with, for I struggled in nearly all other areas. At Winona, one was encouraged to learn a musical instrument, mainly because the school was more of a supplier of talent to Oakwood Collegiate’s renowned musical program, than it was a vessel for learning.

The head of the music program for Oakwood at the time was Graham Wishart, a respected and venerated man who attracted talent from all over the city of Toronto, and broadened the horizons of young aspiring musicians with trips to far-flung regions of the world to perform, such as the trip they took to China in 1986.

I met Mr.Wishart in my freshman year in high school, but only by accident. I needed to take an easy credit, so I entered the “vocal arts” program, a fancy term for the school choir. Don’t be so quick to laugh. I won an award that year for being the best student in that class, as I was blessed [or cursed] with a late puberty that facilitated a high tenor which at times I could transpose to alto. He was a striking figure, with a mop of white and wild hair, contrasted by large, bushy black eyebrows which presided over eyes that would remain transfixed on the person with whom he was speaking.

Mr.Wishart approached me one time in the music room and asked me what musical instrument I played. I replied that I played no instrument, but that I sang in the choir. He requested my hand for a moment, and after a brief hesitation, I gave it. He turned my hand over in his several times, stroking his finger over my sinewy veins, as he studied it.

“Cello”, he announced. “You have the hands of a cellist.”

I was doubtful, mainly because I had already tried to learn the Cello, and was a terrible student. But I said nothing.

Graham Wishart would later go on to become ensnared in a scandal of sexual assault on the prodigal music geniuses in the program. He invited them up to his cabin in the woods, which students saw as a special honour, but he betrayed that trust and honour by drugging and violating them. For a man of his reputation, it was an incident that shook the very city.

I never wanted to be a musician, any more than I wanted to speak French, do my sums, or dissect frogs. When I was at Winona Junior High, I chose the trombone to learn. But unlike many of the children who had been practicing for years, I knew nothing about the trombone, or the first thing about how to use it.

The music teacher delegated the task of learning this instrument to the other trombone players in the class. It was understandable. When you have thirty children who are already at a competent level of performance in their instruments, the last thing you want to do is spend some one on one time teaching somebody the basics. Unfortunately for the teacher’s theory, it was the last thing that my fellow trombone players wanted to do either.

So what was a fourteen-year-old kid to do, faced with a class every day in which he received no instruction, but was required to attend? I did what any other person would probably would have done in the same situation. I faked it.

I moved the trombone arm up and down, I puffed my cheeks in and out, and I made serious faces. Using my peripheral vision, I would mime the movements of my classmates, and as the months went by, even though I was no more learned in my craft, I had perfected the art of mimicry. I was the best damned fake musician that school had ever seen.

Everything was going quite swimmingly. I was getting the marks I wanted, while the teacher wasn’t forced to bother teaching me anything. And all that’s well may have ended well, if not for a little snag. Winona was to perform a musical concert in a nearby church, and as a part of the orchestra I was asked to perform. To make matters worse, the other trombone players were sick, save for one.

There was no way that I would be able to go up there and fake my way through a public concert with just one real trombone playing. But admitting now to the teacher that I had been perpetuating a fraud for an entire semester did not seem to be an option. Nor did I have the wherewithal to excuse myself from the concert with a sudden case of the German measles.

In the end I decided to do the only thing I thought I could. I showed up with the instrument I didn’t know how to play, sat up on that stage with the orchestra, and did my best to blow into that brass mouthpiece as I mimed the movements of my sole mentor. All the panic I had manifested in my imagination came to nothing. The symphony was so loud that my off-key explosions of trombone flatulence wasn’t noticed by a soul in the audience. I took my bow, and happily retired the instrument to the long list of things I don’t ever want to touch again.

That memory, however, stuck with me throughout the rest of my life. There have been many times when felt like I was back on that stage, pretending to know what I’m doing, always afraid I will be found out as being a fraud, ever fearful that I will be exposed for being anything less than what I claim to be. Alas, though I may wish to play sweet music for your ears, I’m afraid words will have to suffice.