Oceans

It's been raining steadily for the past two days; the riverbanks are slowly swelling but luckily there is no imminent danger. No sun for over 48 hours. I seek solace in my PJ bootleg--all 2:19:44 of it, including several stills from the show. Lovely.

Reading Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance currently. His writing has been shortlisted for several prestigious pirzes, a number of which he has also won. I'm trying to read more Canadian authors, so Mistry seemed like a good choice. Many may recall that Oprah selected it for her book club & the author refused to participate. Since then, Oprah only uses dead author's books--coincidence ? I think not.

I've seen snippets of the latest relief concerts for Katrina & some of the information profiled on Oprah's show. I like some of the analogies presented with respect to the race issue that the hurricane brought to the fore. The ad libbed portion of Kanye West's speech was of note--I relished the look on Mike Myers' face as he stood next to him, looking every bit the stereotypical polite Canadian. I know we're not that polite--please! I was very disgruntled by an editorial in the local paper that stated that playing the race card wasn't appropiate--we should be looking at the issue of poverty. I personally think that one cannot necessarily tease poverty apart from race. That's akin to seperating pregnancy from sex. But I know there are those who can write better constructed arguments, based on solid philosphical & ideological paradigms so I'll leave the pontificating for others.