Polling data from the last few days speak to a few things. First, Canadians are getting increasingly anxious about economic matters. Second, none of that is hurting Mark Carney — at least, not yet.
There’s a conventional wisdom that economic indicators — and not just that, but public perception of them — are tied directly to a political success and failure.
It’s not always that simple or straightforward, though, and right now Canada’s Liberal prime minister has not been dragged down by an economic gloom that threatens to push much of the world into recession.
It’s enough, indeed, to make me wonder if Carney’s greatest opponent right now is not any individual in Parliament, but economic forces outside.
“I don’t think people listen with their ears. I think they listen with their soul.” — Herb Alpert
I heard Herb Alpert — the legendary trumpet player, producer and career-maker — say these words in the documentary Herb Alpert Is…, which is currently streaming on Tubi.
Early in the documentary, we’re reminded that Alpert accomplished something that later generations might find hard to believe. He was so successful around 1965 and 1966, he was outselling the Beatles.
For Gen X folks like me, a few bars of some signature tunes like Spanish Flea are shorthand for an era of kitsch, plastic and questionable taste. But I actually do like his playing, and (Dad puts on his cardigan for this part) some of those Sixties records actually sound pretty good.
“It seems like only yesterday that savers were dorks. They kept piggy banks. They drove last year’s cars. They fished in their change purses for nickels while the superstars flashed credit cards. Today, values have changed. The new object of veneration is not money on the hoof but money in the bank — and the dorks all have it.” — Jane Bryant Quinn
The financial commentator Jane Bryant Quinn made that observation during a recessionary time … the early Nineties, to be exact, in the book Making the Most of Your Money.
This was a work she would revise or update through the years, which makes sense, because practical advice about money never really goes out of style.
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” — Isaac Asimov
These words from Isaac Asimov, the noted author and writer, first appeared in January 1980 as a My Turn column in the American magazine Newsweek. My Turn was a pillar of the magazine, showcasing a different guest column each week.
Asimov, though best known as a science fiction author, was also passionate about public understanding of science, and took advantage of the opportunity to argue that the right to know is meaningless if so many people are ignorant. (And, yes, more than three decades before the MAGA movement, he critiqued how gaining knowledge and checking facts were being dismissed as activities of “the elite.”)
I was saddened to learn today that Dr. Carl Robbins has died, at 81. The family’s obituary speaks right away to the kind of man he was.
Carl passed away during his last walk on Easter Sunday. Walking had always brought him joy, though it had become more difficult in recent years. We are grateful he felt well enough to be out that morning doing something he loved.
We should all be so lucky to be doing something we love in our final minutes.
I knew Carl mainly from reporting I did through the years on medical issues. He was a vice-dean at the medical school at Memorial University, was an evangelist for rural medicine for decades, and taught and trained scores of doctors, many of whom are practising now in Newfoundand and Labrador.
“We’re curious people. Humans are curious. We want to understand things. And for me personally, there’s no greater thing to understand than the universe itself and the parts that make it up.” — Anna O’Grady
Today’s quote comes from a recent CBC article by former colleague Elizabeth Whitten about an aspiring astrophysicist who grew up here in St. John’s. I was drawn to Anna O’Grady’s above quote, which is about curiosity, passion and learning.
I was also struck by details in the story that underscore how important it is to fire up a young kid’s imagination.
O’Grady said her parents always encouraged her to be curious, but she can recall in Grade 8 shopping with her mother at the Chapters bookstore in St. John’s and spotting a large astronomy book on the bargain table.
Since she was holiday shopping for other people, she put it down but said her mother noticed her interest and the book ended up beneath the Christmas tree.
“I absolutely inhaled the book,” O’Grady said, and it led her to the NASA website, reading what she could, and she became hooked.
In early 1986, the British TV series Yes, Prime Minister aired a scene that remains stunningly relevant with its lessons about political manipulation, polling, media literacy and public policy.
The series was a sequel to Yes, Minister, and carried on with the exploits of Sir Humphrey Appleby (played perfectly by Nigel Hawthorne), the adroit mover and shaker behind the scenes.
The hand underneath the puppet, as it were.
As the title of the sequel series indicates, Sir Humphrey is now, um, “advising” the prime minister as cabinet secretary, and the stakes are higher than before.
“Masterpieces are only lucky attempts.” — George Sand
The French writer George Sand — born Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil, she adopted a pen name and a style for dressing to put her as an equal with men — experienced masterpieces. Her own, plus those of artists she met in 19th century Paris, not the least of whom was Frederic Chopin.
Jools Holland is probably best known as the host of the long-running BBC music series Later …, which has been showcasing live performances since 1991. He’s also a bandleader and pianist, and was a founding member of Squeeze in the late 1970s.
One of his most celebrated performances is a piano solo on Uncertain Smile on The The’s debut album, Soul Mining. The solo is exuberant, almost breathless, and lasts for more than three minutes. It bursts with energy, has Holland at some points banging away on the keys, and ends with softer, almost tentative playing.
And it was never meant to be that kind of solo at all. How it came together is quite a story.
“If you want to avoid a trip to the ER, I’d say get your advice from real doctors instead of a 25-year-old woman on TikTok with three first names.” — Gina Ippolito
This will be the first time I’ve taken a quote o’ the day from a breakdown of a TV show, but Gina Ippolito’s quip about wellness influencers — a subject I’m increasingly fascinated by and concerned about — hit home.
The comment is from her recap last week of the 13th episode of the second season of The Pitt, and a lighter plotline about a woman who consumed way, way too much turmeric. The character (played by Sara Wyle, who’s married to series star and executive producer Noah Wyle) insists she only makes healthy decisions, but has found she got sick from, as she calls it, a spice.
“I believe in an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.” — Arthur Hays Sulzberger (attributing it to others)
Sulzberger was publisher of the New York Times during some consequential years (1935 to 1961). This quote appears in numerous places as a quote of his making, including in the Times itself in 1996, although it Sulzberger popularized a phrase that had been expressed elsewhere.
Over the last decade, words like “inclusion” have become weaponized. It ought to mean making sure that people from various backgrounds — reflecting diversity, which has also become divisive — feel comfortable and welcome in a group setting, like an office, a public service, a school, etc.
I was struck recently while reading how two people who had been convicted over the Jan. 6 riot in Washington in 2021 were making an unusual bid for a judge’s favour.
Their argument: the memorial was not “inclusive” because … it was not about them.
“When you first get a hill in sight, look at the top of it only once. Then imagine yourself at the bottom of the other side.” — Florence Griffith Joyner
The American sprinter still known to this day as Flo-Jo was recruited by the folks who do the “for Dummies” books to handle Running For Dummies, from which today’s quote is drawn.
“It was a pudding, you know? It really was a pudding. It was a pudding of new ideas, and we were terribly excited, and I think we took it on our shoulders that we were creating the 21st century in 1971. That was the idea. And we wanted to just blast everything in the past.” — David Bowie
David Bowie was reflecting on the creation of Ziggy Stardust — character, persona and album, all wrapped up in a shiny, gender-fluid cacophony of colour and sound — in a 2003 interview when he made this remark.
While Ziggy was being cooked up in 1971, the world didn’t get to meet the alien rock star until the next spring. The album came out in mid-June. A few weeks later, in early July, Bowie joined the fellow Spiders from Mars on a telecast of the BBC’s Top of the Pops.
And, with a rendition of Starman, the universe kind of changed.
“I can’t even really tell a joke. I find being funny very hard work. I am always asked about it and I feel guilty saying that, but it’s the truth. I love my work but it ain’t easy.” — Madeline Kahn
She created some of the funniest moments in the movies , so it is something to learn that Madeline Kahn had to work hard to get a laugh. She revealed this in a 1993 New York Times profile.
Kahn trained as an opera singer, and somewhere along the line, people noticed she could command a scene and kill with comedy.
