His world is small. There are people he knows by name, but not many of them. His concept of work is severely crippled by the fact that his dad works from home (to him, work means sequestering yourself in a different room). His concept of the rest of the world consists of the places he routinely ends up (CVS, Walmart, Walgreens, Church, and the Library). And yet, within his little world, there is great opportunity for invention. He can be one of his great aunts going to work. He can be any one of his grandparents going to Walmart. He can be daddy. He can be mommy. He can be Farmer Dooley. Whatever occurs to him, he makes happen (the gender confusion thing, I’m sure, will sort itself out). The language barrier is still strongly in place — I can’t get too much of a window into what he’s thinking, yet. But I love watching it develop. It’s a great reminder of how fantastic and big and different the world is when you’re not accustomed to it.

Experiencing the familiar through the eyes of someone experiencing the new is inspiring; it’s a gift from my son to me, and often a gift from a writer to their readers.

Being a Canadian living in the USA, I am perhaps more acutely aware of the different ways that history can be presented than most. Take the War of 1812 as an example: In Canada, to the best of my recollection of 4th grade history classes, in the War of 1812 the Americans tried to invade Canada in a land grab. The Canadians beat the Americans senseless, marched all the way to Washington, set fire to the White House and left when they finally begged us to stop. We’re nice, so we said “Let’s just go back to the way things were,” and the war was over. In America, they teach that it was a war of resistance to British imperialism. Any attempts at land grabbing were expressly to gain leverage to get the British to cooperate. Since the British eventually were forced to cooperate, the victor was obviously the USA. (Note: that’s a gross oversimplification of the views from both sides… and I’m more and more inclined to fall somewhere in the middle of the debate. Also, we had Maine and they had Windsor/London Ontario and we traded back!? Seriously? Shoulda kept Maine! I digress…)

To the victor go the spoils, and also the right to record history. A Century Turns is a view of American history in the last 30 years or so from the perspective of Bill Bennett, a conservative talk show host. (I will state as a disclaimer that I am sometimes, perhaps even often, on the same side of issues as Bill Bennett.) This is an unabashedly American book. It tracks minutiae of the way politics developed through the late 80s, 90s and 2000s. It was a genuinely interesting read for me for several reasons: I’ll give you three, plus the two reasons the book aggravated me:

1. My understanding of American politics between 1950-1996 is woefully thin. Getting some of the details of the latter part of that period filled in was fascinating.
2. I don’t think I’ve ever engaged in reading an attempt at a historical accounting of events that I’ve lived through. I think that’s probably a reflection of my age. But, it was interesting to read how someone else saw events that I lived through. I didn’t always agree, but getting a different perspective was helpful.
3. Bill Bennett is obviously a smart person and understands the details of how Washington operates at a very high level. Getting a window into that world was beneficial, even if just to confirm for me that politics is not something I aspire to.

Now for the aggravations:

1. Bill constantly has footnotes that tell anecdotal stories from his experience that attempt to fill in details about the people involved in the events. In spite of his disclaimer that it’s not intended to be self-aggrandizing, that’s exactly how it feels — kind of like MadTV’s Stewart saying, “Look what I can do!”
2. This is a distinctly conservative book. For the most part, Republicans get either an even-handed or light treatment while the Democrats mentioned are given the gears. Clinton’s problems are flogged while George W Bush’s are excused. If the Republican party “wins” in the long term, this will probably be how histories of this time read in a hundred years. If the Democratic party prevails long term, these sorts of accounts will be discounted as obviously partisan.

You should read Bill Bennett’s book, if you have the time, if for no other reason than to better understand what you’re getting when you read historical accounts of any kind. In this book, with events that are easy for me to remember, it was easy to see where the writer’s personal biases came into play. The reality of writing is that biases are likely in play in the ancient histories I read as well — I simply don’t know the events or players well enough to see them. All in all, an interesting experience.

Aging wrinkles the skin;
quitting wrinkles the soul.

- General Douglas MacArthur

This is a clip from CTV’s Olympic morning, hosted by Jay Onrait of TSN, the Canadian sports network, along with Beverly Thomson. Jay Onrait is known for saying outrageous things on SportsCentre, but in this case, putting him with a news team that isn’t necessarily used to working with him, well… lets just say that he manages to keep the only straight face in the building. Best olympic clip ever? Close, but not as good as Sid’s winning goal. That was epic.

I hate how true this is. You can find more funny comics like this at www.thedoghousediaries.com

My favorite:

You’re curling on your patio with a Swiffer and a fruit cake

That would work? I’ll have to try it… anyone want to join my curling team?

You can learn more about it at http://www.lemonademovie.com . You can also watch it for free at Hulu. This movie was good for my heart… it’s encouraging to see that the universal desire for “more, better,” which is so often the cause of problems, can translate into people doing good things (even people who are not of my particular worldview). When life throws you a curve ball, you don’t have to throw your hands up and despair. You can reinvent. It’s a neat little documentary. My apologies to my friends in Canada, for whom Hulu does not work.

You see, one of my biggest problems in life revolves around “I don’t feel like it.” Seth Godin, writer and thinker extraordinaire, talked about just this very thing yesterday, and really nailed it.

What’s it?

Why do you need to feel like something in order to do the work? They call it work because it’s difficult, not because it’s something you need to feel like.

It’s a short post, over at http://bit.ly/aWKJbA . Highly recommended… and I’d encourage you to expand the thought beyond just work too. Whether it’s cleaning up your house, organizing your paperwork, exercising, or any other form of self-discipline, the issue is not what you feel like, it’s what you decide to do.

Or, to quote Yoda, “Do or do not. There is no try.”

Action is greater than writing. A good man is a nobler object of contemplation than a great author. There are but two things worth living for: to do what is worthy of being written; and to write what is worthy of being read.

- Ross Perot

Of course, if Team USA comes out playing like they did against Finland, it might not matter. They were good. They looked like we did against Russia. They scored a lot.

But, however this ends up, whether Canada wins a gold medal or ends up ranked 4th, I know where my allegiance is. Go Canada!