Nominations For A Nobel

Earlier this week, I reported on the award of the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature to French author Patrick Modiano. That got me thinking.

As I read citations for the Prize over the last dozen years or so, I notice that many refer to the authors’ abilities to represent the cultures they came from.  Well, it seems to be that no-one has captured the western zeitgeist of my lifetime any better than the lyrics of Leonard Cohen, Lennon & McCartney, Joni Mitchell, Brian Wilson and Bob Dylan.

I hereby nominate them as a group for the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature.  I sure hope someone in Stockholm is reading this.

With 33 Days To Go …

I don’t care what the media says, I think this has been a fascinating municipal election so far.

Vision is peddling promises that are not theirs to give; the NPA is remodelling itself and attempting the rebranding that they needed to start a year or more ago; the Greens are solid but need to be punchier on a daily basis to keep their momentum; Meena Wong has single-handedly revived the fortunes of COPE; we have a wonderfully diverse set of smaller parties and independents, several of whom are in deadly earnest; and the smell of scandal, both private and public, big and small, is in the air.

What’s not to love!.

What we haven’t seen so far (and I am not talking about the almost invisibility of Gregor Robertson) is the heft of Vision’s money.  Their lawn signs have started to appear over the last two days, and I am sure there will be a blizzard of them in the next week or so.  I understand they are already running radio ads.  In the last week we will surely be unable to read our newspapers or watch local TV without Vision ads being thrust in our face.

Now we start the season of meetings, where candidates of all types have to perform almost nightly before radically different audiences and conditions. If you haven’t got your talking points engraved in your head by now, it is going to be hard training on the job. Audiences such as the Vision-friendly social gospel crowd at the MVA the other night will encourage certain candidates, while some neighbourhood association audiences will definitely swing in another direction. Done well, this series of meetings could shake out the weak from the strong.

Hard core stuff for those of us who try to keep track.