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Why would I care about Microsoft? – Part 2

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Business, computers, corporatelife, Free Geek, Free Software, freesoftware, laptop, Microsoft, opensource, Uncategorized on August 26, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Reading the comments left publicly and privately for “Why would I care about Microsoft?”, I realize that many people’s view of free software is outdated. To many, free software is a small, delicate idea that a juggernaut like Microsoft can overrun at will. In this circumstance – which may have existed ten years ago – fears, obsession, and paranoia are only natural. But having these emotions in 2007 may no longer be appropriate. Like parents who haven’t realized that their children are growing up, perhaps many of us in the community haven’t realized that free software isn’t as fragile as it used to be.

I’m not saying that Microsoft shouldn’t be watched or that its motives shouldn’t be questioned or guarded against. But I am saying that free software is in a much stronger position to defend itself than even a few years ago.

Consider, for example, the variety of responses that Microsoft has made to free software in the last year. It’s tried co-opting companies like Novell, Linspire, and Xandros. It’s made unsupported threats about patent violations in GNU/Linux. It’s talked about wanting to cooperate with the free software community. Just ask yourself: Are these the actions of the winning side? Or are they a sign that the company is desperately looking for a winning strategy in a losing fight, or divided internally?

The truth is, free software has come a long way from its days of vulnerability. In its early days, free software may have been vulnerable, but now it has strong defenders. For major corporations like IBM, Sun, and Hewlett-Packard, free software means billions. Why do you think they have surrendered some patents, or supported the anti-Tivoization and patent clauses in the third version of the GNU General Public License? Part of the reason may be altruism, depending on your view of human nature, but, on the whole, I doubt that many corporations like these provisions. Yet not one of these companies was willing to disagree with them in public. In the end, the price of dissent was more than the potential profit.

And that, in itself, is a prime reason why Microsoft is not much of a threat these days. These days, to take on free software means to take on the rest of the computer world. No single corporation, not even Microsoft, can afford that risk.

Just as importantly, free software has grown its own defenses. At the Software Freedom Law Center, Eben Moglen and Richard Fontana are educating the next generation of free software legal defenders. The Linux Foundation is working on patent pools. Peter Brown and Richard M. Stallman at the Free Software Foundation are linking with social activists, who are starting to add free software to their causes. So free software has a second line of defence as well, one not limited by budgets or the concerns of shareholders. And if you haven’t talked to these people, let me tell you: These are frighteningly intelligent and dedicated people. If I wasn’t on their side, I’d think twice about opposing them.

But there’s a third line of defence, even stronger than the first two: The community itself. It’s no longer just geeks. It’s educators, for whom free software is the only way they can function with their limited budgets. It’s government departments in both industrialized and developing nations. It’s groups like Free Geekers introducing free software to the general public. This, I suggest, is defence in depth. In the event of an attack, the community is like thousands of widely dispersed guerrillas, next to impossible to attack by conventional business or legal means, and needing, not to win any fight, but only to make the cost of fighting too high for its opponents to want to continue.

Maybe I’m in a privileged position as a journalist. As I research stories, I probably get to see more of the community than most people. That’s why I trust it to be able to defend itself. Against these defences, a company like Microsoft may gain a temporary or limited advantage. But the days when it could realistically be thought capable of destroying free software are long over.

That’s why I don’t spend a lot of time or emotional energy worrying about Microsoft. I keep an eye on them, certainly – just in case. But Microsoft’s days as a threat are gone, and so are free software’s as a helpless victim.

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Why would I care about Microsoft?

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Free Software, freesoftware, journalism, Microsoft, opensource, Personal, software, technology, Uncategorized on August 19, 2007| 18 Comments »

Whenever I mention in a crowd that I use free software, someone always seems to comment that I must hate Microsoft. When I add that I write about free software for a living, someone is apt to call me a Microsoft-basher. In either case, the implication seems to be that my identity is defined by Microsoft, and, perhaps, is composed of an unhealthy amount of envy. When I reply calmly that Microsoft is mostly irrelevant to me, the people who made these comments seem disbelieving, or at least disappointed. But why would I care about what Microsoft is doing, beyond a mild interest in news that doesn’t particularly concern me?

Oh, I know that some free software users seem fixated on denouncing Microsoft at every opportunity. You can find them on any forum with a free software slant, writing about “Micro$oft” and referring to Windoze, and seeing a deep conspiracy in every move that the company makes. Mostly, I suspect, these users are in their teens, and either passionately young or anxious to sound as though they belong.

Personally, though, my teen years are long gone. These days, I tend to hold my beliefs with a quieter but no less deep conviction.

Yet, even when I was younger, I could never rally more than an abstract dislike about Microsoft. Sure, I object to a monopoly. I’d have to be an idiot not to think that the constant anti-trust cases brought against the company world-wide are coincidences. And my personal sense of aesthetics and quality revolt against anything that is designed poorly and intended to keep the user ignorant.

But I’ve never felt much need to convert others to my beliefs, and I certainly wouldn’t be rude to Windows users. I’ve even chatted amiably with a number of Microsoft employees; some of them are pleasant people.

My move to free software was not a rejection of Microsoft so much as a discovery of a philosophy that was in sync with the rest of my social principles, and a decision to go with the superior software.

Since I made that decision, I’ve generally had a small partition with Windows on at least one machine. But it’s been kept mostly for games, and months sometimes passed between the times I booted it. For the last eight months, I didn’t have a copy of Windows running anywhere in the house, and that only changed because my new laptop came with one. I immediately minimized the partition and allocated four-fifths of the hard drive to Fedora 7. Probably, I’ll only boot into Windows when I’m doing comparison articles. I certainly don’t need it for anything else.

Under such circumstances, why would I care about Microsoft one way or the other?

The only time I’m interested at all is when a Microsoft executive makes some far-fetched statement about free software or makes a tentative attempts to interact with the free and open source software community. Yet, even then, the most I can muster is a mild professional interest. Mostly, Microsoft interacts with free software-based companies, while I prefer to use community GNU/Linux distributions, so on a personal level, I don’t care much.

I suppose that one reason people assume that I must spend my time conducting Three Minutes’ Hate sessions against Microsoft is that I earn a living from free software, so all the related issues must be of absorbing interest to me. But, the truth is, I usually leave writing about Microsoft-related issues to other people. It’s a beat that I prefer not to cover.

Anyway, even those who do write about Microsoft are rarely rabid about it. They’re professionals. They work eight hours or more a day with free software, and very few people are capable of sustaining a fierce hatred for forty hours a week. Nor are editors especially interested in paeans of hate, even if some of them have a fondness for stirring up controversy. For these reasons, if you are passionately anti-Microsoft going into free software journalism, you either don’t last long or mellow.

I could be wrong, but I suspect that the main reason people assume that I hate Microsoft is the poverty of their own imagination. For many people, Microsoft is such a large fixture in their world that — love or loathe it — the idea of not caring what the company does is almost inconceivable. They seem unable to comprehend that, among other things, the free and open source communities are refuges where – unlike the larger world – Microsoft’s latest doings or Windows’ new security patch are irrelevant.

Frankly, the obsession with Microsoft is theirs, not mine. There are days, even weeks sometimes, when I don’t think of Microsoft one way or the other. Believe it or not, mostly Microsoft just doesn’t enter into my life.

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Freelance writers need subject expertise

Posted in Bruce Byfield, careers, journalism, Personal, Uncategorized, writing on August 10, 2007| 2 Comments »

So far as I can determine, complaints about the rates for freelance writers first began in the 18th Century, when Daniel DeFoe invented the profession. Today, the complaints have some justification, considering that, in many markets, payments haven’t changed for a couple of decade. And when Writer’s Digest publishes a list, as it did a few years ago, about the best places to be published online and the rates for the top two sites are below $30 per article, you know that the list is aimed at hobbyists rather than professionals. All the same, as a freelancer who does make a respectable living from writing, I can’t help thinking that the complainers are approaching the problem the wrong way. To me, they always sound as though they expect to make a living because of their writing skills when what they really need is subject matter expertise.

The complainers remind me of the technical writers who insist that what they offer is writing expertise, not technical knowledge.These technical writers produce mediocre documentation, and, after a year or so, have trouble finding employment. Then these same purists complain that their profession never gets respect – even though the minority of technical writers who do learn their subjects have no trouble finding employment and command ever-increasing salaries.

In freelance writing, the purists are usually those with a literary bend, but the attitude is much the same. They feel that their language skills make them an elite, and they condescend to those who are experts and can make a living from their writing. To them, the experts are hacks, literary prostitutes who have sullied the purity of the written word.

Haven’t the purists heard the old dictum that you should write what you know? And, if they have, why should they imagine it doesn’t apply to them? Or to non-fiction as much as fiction?

As a former university English instructor who taught more than his share of composition classes, I am satisfied that most people can be taught to write a publishable piece of writing. Not a classic, you understand, but something comprehensible that an editor would consider publishing. Beyond a very basic level of literacy, what a freelancer offers an editor is an interesting topic, one that’s either entirely new or – more often – one that offers a different slant on an old topic. Editors appreciate fine writing, but they consider it a welcome extra, rather than a requirement, the way that originality is.

And to provide that basic requirement, you have to know what you’re writing about. Otherwise, the ideas won’t come. You’ll have no idea that what seems fresh to you is a cliche (For instance, hardly a week goes by when Linux.com doesn’t receive a query from someone wanting to write about how they converted from Windows to GNU/Linux). You won’t know what to focus on to develop a new idea, or the powers of observation to know what you might develop into a new idea. Just as importantly, you won’t have the contacts to develop enough new ideas to make your living by writing.

Nor will you learn the biggest secrets of all: Not only that editors will pay money for expertise in a way that they won’t for fine writing by itself, but specializing makes it much easier to be productive.

Take my example. Partly by idealism and partly by accident, I have become a computer journalist specializing in GNU/Linux and free and open source software. When I first starting selling articles as a sideline, I considered myself lucky to manage three articles a month. The writing itself only took a few hours, but gathering the information and finding sources to quote was time-consuming. I couldn’t imagine doing 12 articles a month, as Robin Miller, the senior editor at Linux.com, suggested.

Now, two years later, I average 16 articles a month for Linux.com and other online sites. What’s more, I get enough information that I could easily write three times as many, if only I had the time. Not only do I know my subject and where to find more information quickly, but people I’ve consulted before often let me know when they have a newsworthy item. Some even give me the scoop.

By contrast, consider the freelancer whom Russell Smith mentioned yesterday in his column in The Globe and Mail. It was hardly worth her time, she said, to do an article for $3000. She would have to do about twenty interviews, she said, and research would require intermittent effort over a couple of months.

No story is going to quote twenty people – that would be too confusing for the readers, and any competent editor would send such a story back for a rewrite. Five or six is more that most stories can handle. I can only assume that the freelancer was talking about writing an article on a subject for which she had expertise.

And a couple of months? Allowing for difficulties in contacting people, a couple of weeks is about the maximum a story should take – and, even then, you’d be normally doing several other stories at the same time. Moreover, between email and IRC, you shouldn’t normally need more than a few days if you’re actively assembling a story.

Yet if you’re relying on your writing skills rather than your expertise, the sort of effort and time-line described by this freelancer is probably unavoidable. You start from behind, so everything is harder and takes longer.

Some people might say that, by becoming a specialist, you narrow your subject range. Yet even that isn’t necessarily true. For instance, I started by writing articles on OpenOffice.org, the free office suite. For a while, I was worried enough about being type-cast that I went through a period during which I avoided the subject, but I soon found myself branching off into other related topics, such as other desktop programs. Before long, I had enough articles on a variety of topics that I had the credibility to write about almost anything.

Free software, recycling, the music industry – it doesn’t matter what your area of expertise is. But if you’re going to be a freelance writer, you need to find one. And if the literati call you a hack, just ask yourself which you’d prefer: Striking a pose and lamenting how you are misunderstood and underpaid? Or having the power to earn a living and be your own boss while doing something that interests you?

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Blogging begets blogging

Posted in Blogging, Bruce Byfield, Personal, Uncategorized on August 7, 2007| Leave a Comment »

For someone who rejected the idea of blogging for so long, I’ve made up for lost time.

Last year, I started writing a twice monthly blog for the Linux Journal site, making me one of the few bloggers I know who is actually paid for the hobby. I confess that the blog is more a function of the content management system used by the site, and what I am really writing is articles, but I admit that I enjoy the look on blogging advocates’ faces when they hear that a parvenu like me is getting paid.

Then, in March 2007, I started this blog for personal topics, mostly unrelated to my usual work covering free software and GNU/Linux. It really isn’t a regular blog, either. Instead of keeping a journal, I usually write entries that are short personal essays. The result hasn’t been a runaway success, but the readership is growing nicely for a new blog, and, a couple of weeks ago, my entry “What Makes a Canadian Canadian” received almost six hundred visits in a day.

Left to myself, I probably would have been content to stay at two. However, a few days ago, David Repa from Free Geek Vancouver asked me if I wanted to start writing a blog for that organization’s site. Since I’ve already written a few blog entries here about environmentalism and computing, I agreed.

The experience should be interesting. Like many people, I’ve always been vaguely supportive of environmental topics, but I confess that I was originally more interested in the free software side of Free Geek’s efforts. However, I’m less ignorant that I was a month ago, and with luck I’ll be less ignorant a month from now than I am now.

I already have enough topics for my first four or five entries. Bar disasters, I’ll be posting the first entry on the Free Geek Vancouver site some time in the next few days.

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Baby crow season

Posted in architecture, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, crows, Personal, Uncategorized, Vancouver on August 5, 2007| 3 Comments »

Since I live beside a green belt, one of my markers of the year is when this year’s crop of newly-fledged crows become independent. The Vancouver area is in the middle of the season now, and it never fails to entertain me.

The first sign that the baby crows have left the nest is the echo of their plaintive cries as they try to convince their parents to regurgitate for them. The more aggressive of the babies go so far as to push themselves underneath their parents’ beaks. At first, many of the adults oblige, but, after a week or two, they keep their beaks resolutely shut, no matter how the babies position themselves. Once, I even saw an adult thrown off balance by a baby’s insistence. And there’s always a few parents who do their best to lose junior at this stage.

Eventually, though, the young ones grudgingly accept their independence. They come together in groups of four to twelve birds, all identifiable as young ones by the narrowness of their bodies and their slightly shrill cries. Like human teenagers, they tend to do everything together, the flock chasing after one who has sighted something that’s possibly edible and squabbling as they brush against each other in midflight or land too close together. They seem to congregate where the food is plentiful, such a shopping mall, and, for a few months at any rate, their elders seem to cede such places to them.

At this stage, the young crows are clumsy – which isn’t surprising, considering how fast most birds grow in their first few months. They simply haven’t had time to learn coordination in the middle of their constant growth. Frequently, they’ll try to land on a branch too small for their weight, and lose their footing as the branch whips up and down. They haven’t learned, either, to coordinate hopping along the ground and keeping an eye out around them, so they sometimes trip themselves.

Unfortunately, too, they don’t understand cars, and some of them always die each year before they can learn. However, crows are adaptable enough that many of them learn quickly enough to survive. In another month or so, they’ll have left their small flocks for the great host of crows that roosts about six or seven miles from where I live, and become at least tentative adults.

Many people despite crows as vermin, and no doubt I would feel the same if I were a farmer. But as an urbanite, I find myself impressed by how adaptable crows can be to human changes to the environment. Whatever else you can say, crows are survivors, and I always enjoy their first self-taught lessons in how to get on in the world.

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Advocating greener hardware

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Business, environmentalism, ewaste, Free Geek, hardware, recycling, technology, Uncategorized on August 3, 2007| 1 Comment »

Lately, I’ve been learning about the ewaste problem. I’ve written an article on the subject, and, last night, I attended Free Geek Vancouver’s airing and discussion of the Basel Action Network’s (BAN) two films on the problem: Exporting Harm and The Digital Dump. Knowledge of the situation is so alarming and depressing that I’m almost afraid to turn my computer on and add to the problem. Instead, though, I’ve been considering about what I could do in my own life to improve the situation.

Most people, if they stop to think, wouldn’t be surprised that the problem of discarded high-tech hardware is growing. These days, many households have not only multiple computers, but also multiple televisions, cell phones and mp3 players.

However, what people don’t know is that most hardware is full of toxic substances, including lead, beryllium, mercury, cadmium, and brominated flame retardants. Nor do they know that North American countries routinely ship the junk to developing nations like China, Nigeria, India, and Pakistan against the wishes of those country’s governments, using loopholes to get around the Basel Convention, the international treaty that is supposed to prevent such trade. There, the waste is stripped of any valuables under dangerously unsafe conditions and the remnant is burned, releasing toxic fumes.

And if all that isn’t enough, even supposed recyclers are shipping ewaste overseas. That’s right: even when you think you’re doing the proper thing, you may be adding to the problem. Many recyclers won’t tell you what they’re doing, either, citing trade secrets as a reason for keeping you uninformed. Even those recyclers who would prefer not to ship overseas often have no choice, because local means of dealing with the waste don’t exist.

BAN advocates legislation that makes manufacturers responsible for the disposal of their own products. Such laws already exist in many European countries. As part of this effort, it is also working with other environmental groups to encourage manufacturers to reduce the toxins in their hardware.

Besides supporting these efforts, and trying to deal only with true recyclers, what else can one person do? I found myself considering this question last week when I bought a new laptop.
Mindful of the ewaste problem, last week I decided that I would use Greenpeace’s assessment of the leading hardware manufacturers as a guide when I went to buy a new laptop. I chose to buy a Hewlett-Packard product, since Hewlett-Packard has one of the better records in removing toxic substances from its products.
I give nothing up by making this decision, since Hewlett-Packard’s laptops have a good record for reliability. In fact, I might have bought a Hewlett-Packard machine purely on its own merits. As things were, the company’s record on the ewaste problem was one of the deciding factors between buying from Hewlett-Packard rather than Acer or Toshiba.
Still, no company’s record is especially strong, so I still felt a few twinges of uneasiness. Never mind that my last laptop was bought eight years ago, and was used until it became unreliable.
During last night’s discussion, I suddenly realized that I could do more. As soon as I finish this blog entry, I’m going to write a letter to Hewlett-Packard, congratulating them on their awareness of the problem, and adding that it was one of the reasons I bought one of the company’s products. I’m also going to urge everyone I know to shop in the same way, and let whatever company they buy from know what they are doing.
Of course, I don’t deceive myself that a couple of dozen letters will have a huge influence on manufacturing decisions. Yet one of the common arguments you hear from manufacturers is that there is no demand for greener products, so enough letters of this sort might just help them decide to change their practices.
That’s why I’m also urging anyone who reads this blog to do the same. The effort is minimal, and can’t hurt – and just might do a small piece of good.

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Live on cable TV

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Personal, television, Uncategorized on July 31, 2007| Leave a Comment »

My television debut occurred at the age of 6, when I was poster boy for the local March of Dimes campaign. My only qualification was being at a speech therapist when no one who was deaf happened to be (my problem was a difficulty pronouncing a hard “k”, and the experience left me with a precise way of talking that many people mistake for an English accent). The experience brought only brief fame and no fortune, and was memorable mainly for the reaction a few weeks later, when my older brother looked up and exclaimed, “Bruce is on the television!” and my mother replied, “Well, tell him to get off it.”

My only other experience with TV was as an extra in a crowd scene for a locally shot movie with my wife and sister-in-law. At the time, it was an easy if tedious $80, and I never did learn if we were visible in any shots. In fact, now that I think, I can’t even remember the name of the movie.

One way or the other, though, I’m about to increase my TV experience. Next week, I’m scheduled to appear on the Lab with Leo cable show to talk about the GNU/Linux desktop for five or six minutes. The reccomendation came through Free Geek Vancouver, one of whose coordinators is scheduled to appear on another couple of segments.

Like many people, I have the idea that I appear overweight and gauche on film. And I know that I often talk too fast or mutter. I could get away with these tendencies when teaching but I suspect that idiosyncrancies are less forgiving on TV. I would very much like to solicit the opinion of someone with some experience on TV, but I’m not on speaking terms any more with the only person who might be worth consulting.

Instead, I’m on my own, doing my best to approach my adult debut in the spirit of adventure, not in the least self-important, but curious about the experience.

Already, it’s proving interesting. The show has a list of colors not to wear: No blacks and browns, because they blend into the set, no white shirt because either my torso or face will suffer from the contrast. No shorts, either, because the show might be shown in winter time, and would look out of season if I did. The color restrictions alone has me mentally thumbing through my closet in a way that I rarely do.

I also have to write in advance an outline of what I am going to discuss, along with any biographical information or any web sites that might illustrate my stint.

Visions of failure nibble at the edges of my self confidence, but I keep telling myself: one way or the other, it’s going to be an interesting experience. But “interesting” is such a neutral word: Proving a natural and coming across as an idiot could both be described with it. Unsurprisingly, I find myself apprehensive and anticipatory at the same time.

So why go through with it? All I can do is answer in the time-honored way, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I wonder if I’ll feel the same way after the spot is shot?

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Navigating manufactured needs

Posted in Bruce Byfield, fashion, manufactured needs, Personal, Uncategorized on July 27, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Except when buying books, I have tried to avoid reflex consumerism since I was a young teen. I don’t want to be a Luddite (as a computer journalist, I could hardly be that), because, while I sometimes admire the independence of such people, I also think they take a neurotic pleasure in denying themselves. Yet, at the same time, I don’t want to buy the latest appliance or follow the latest fad unless doing so fits my long-term needs. In trying to avoid these extremes, I have become somewhat paradoxical, on the one hand having up to date computer equipment, and, on the other hand, having chosen to live without some of the things that most people take for granted, like microwaves, credit cards, and cell phones. The paradox leads to a very different outlook on life — a slower and less harried one.

To me, a microwave simply duplicates what’s already in the kitchen — and doesn’t function as well as a standard issue oven and stove. It’s nearly impossible to prepare a sauce in one, or anything except non-gourmet meals, because it eliminates most of a hands-on approach to cooking. For this reason, they encourage the use of prepared foods, which add to household expenses.

Their most common use seems to be to heat coffee quickly, a use that hardly justifies the counter space they occupy. So, why bother with them? I don’t stand waiting for water to boil for my peppermint tea — I busy myself with something else — which means that I don’t need the extra few seconds that a microwave promises.

Nor have I ever carried a credit card. Why should I? Living with debt makes me uneasy, and I’m no longer an adolescent who demands instant gratification. Saving beforehand, I appreciate a new car, a new house or a trip more than I would if I were paying for them for months or years after I had them. Sometimes, while I’m saving, I have second thoughts, and realize that I don’t need the high ticket items that I thought I did. At other times, I can enjoy the anticipation of waiting for gratification.

This approach confounds bank employees, who insist that I should take out a card to build a line of credit. “But I don’t care about credit,” I say. “But you should,” they reply. “You never know when you need it.” “But I’ve arranged my life so I don’t need it,” I reply — and so it goes, in an endless Abbott and Costello routine in which neither side understands the others. The bank employees are dumbfounded at the idea of a life without credit, while I have no patience with the idea that you have to increase your levels of anxiety just so you can momentarily act like an infant.

The only real drawback to life without credit is that I consistently over-estimate the income of others. What seems like a wealthier lifestyle than mine is often just a similar income with credit.

(By contrast, I approve wholeheartedly of debit cards. They’re pay as you go — a concept of which I heartily approve — and much more convenient than carrying large amounts of cash, so I’m quite prepared to pay processing fees for using one)

In the same way, I was probably one of the few people in North America who had no interest in the iPhone as the pre-release hype built to the release date. Whether I work in an office as I once did or at home as I do now, I am always within a few meters of a land line. When I am on an errand or on my own time away from my place of work, very few people ever have business with me that can’t wait for an hour or two — and, when they do, it’s extremely rare. I have no wish to have those interminable monologs that sound like a homework assignment at announcers’ school.You know — the ones in which cell phone owners describe the mundane details of their daily activities: “I’m standing in front of the frozen peas now. Is it cold! And there are all sorts of different types of frozen peas here…” Personally, if I was that interested in public performance, I’d have become a mime.

The few times that I do need a phone, I can usually find a pay phone (although not so much recently, since public planners are starting to assume that everyone has a cell phone). At other times, not being connected 24-7 means that I actually have a few hours most days that are mine. The result is that I’m a much calmer person, because I suffer fewer interruptions.

The truth is, very few of us need a cell phone. Those who do — for instance, those whose work day takes them to many different locations in the day and who would otherwise be impossible to contact — are welcome to them. But, for the rest of us, cell phones are a self-indulgence that have little practical use, and serve only to add to the problem of high-tech waste piling up at the landfill, or being exported overseas to endanger the citizens of developing countries who try to recycle them.

Personal coaches and motivational speakers like to talk about taking control of your life and building the sort of life you want. However, I wish a few of them would apply such glittering generalities to our culture’s love affair with technology and fashion. Navigating between going along with the crowd and a perverse self-denial is tenuous and difficult effort, and it doesn’t actually succeed. However, unless you can get ride of the artificial needs foisted upon you, how can you hope to realize the needs you actually have? You’ll only get sidetracked and wind up vaguely unhappy.

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The bazaar of the palette

Posted in British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, Granville Island, Personal, public markets, tourism, Uncategorized, Vancouver on July 22, 2007| Leave a Comment »

When I was six or seven, I was fascinated by the promise of stores. They seemed full of undefined but definite wonder, capable of containing anything. Their potential seemed unlimited, but, the reality always fell short of my imagination. Even the magic shop at Disneyland only sold tricks rather than brass lamps with their very own genie or antique bedroom furniture that was a gateway to a world of adventure. Nowadays, I don’t expect such wonders to be near at hand, except very occasionally in a well-stocked book or music store – which is why the Granville Island market is always a pleasant surprise.

It would be easy to dismiss Granville Island as a nothing more than an extended ploy to separate yuppies from their bank accounts as painlessly as possible. And maybe if I visited with any regularity, I would come to see the market that way. But, visiting only once or twice a year, I can preserve my view of it as a bazaar of potential delights.

Part of my enjoyment is the setting – a chaos of comings and goings in which pedestrians stroll unimpeded and cars give way on the irregularly angled streets. Stores come and go in the unlikelilest places, so I could almost believe that they magically shifted locales. On the docks, water taxis are continually disembarking people from other parts of False Creek. In the outdoor sitting areas, seagulls wander with psychotic gleams in their eyes, secure in their knowledge that they have the right to any food they recognize as such.

And every fifteen minutes or so, the buskers (many of them surprisingly good) move on to a location. Rumor has it that, twenty years ago, their numbers would include Loreena McKennitt when she was in town. Now, they include many of the mainstays of the local folk scene, as well as the occasional musician. Some years, too, the Fringe Festival has had small plays performed in various corners. Something is always happening or about to happen at the market – or, at least, it seems that way.

Some of the market tables include crafts, but the main appeal of the market is its selection of food. I’m far from being a foodie, despite the half dozen or so special menus I sometimes prepare, but, more than any other public market in the greater Vancouver area, Granville Island comes close to fulfilling my imaginative expectations.

Besides the fresh produce, the market vendors sell an endless variety of food, ranging from the raw to the prepared. Wild salmon (no one in BC would admit to selling farmed salmon), crepes, locally blended coffees, dolmathes, cassava chips, smoked almonds, flax rolls, maple syrup toffee, tzatziki, pinots and zifandels – I can’t begin to list the types of food offered with anything like completeness.

Pastas, breads, and chocolate desserts are especially well-represented, but, no matter what your palate or ethnic preferences, you have a good chance of finding it somewhere on Granville Island. If you have the patience, you could assemble a ready-made meal that cost the same but was far more varied than anything you could find in the nearby restaurants. Alternatively, a well-dressed homeless person who kept their poise could feed well by going around to all the booths and taking the proferred samples as they talked seriously to the clerks about the various offerings. Just wending your way through the aisles is enough to turn you gluttonous.

Usually, I get away with only spending twenty dollars or so, but I could easily spend thirty times that if I indulged in every impulse that came my way at Granville Island. Not that I haven’t had many unexpected and delightful gourmet meals after a wander through the market, but it is the array of exotic possibilities, not actually possessing them that fascinate me. Mostly, I am content to look, sample sparingly, and buy little. The experience, which is free, is worth more to me than anything I could buy, no matter how it melted on the tongue or lingered on the palette.

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Learning to love the Harry hype

Posted in Books, Bruce Byfield, Fantasy, fiction, HarryPotter, Personal, science fiction, Uncategorized, writing on July 21, 2007| 1 Comment »

Yesterday, I went to the Chapters store at Granville and Broadway in the early evening. When I got there, the staff were preparing for the midnight launch of the new Harry Potter book. Watching them, I soon found myself changing my mind about all the Harry-hype.

Having read fantasy ever since I discovered it in the sixth grade I’ve always been cool to the popularity of the Harry Potter series. I’ve read all the books, but I’ve only been moderately impressed. J. K. Rowling shows flashes of invention and whimsy, but her books are far from the best children’s fantasy for those in the know. Personally, I’d rate dozens of children’s writers above Rowling – Joan Aiken, Lloyd Alexander, J. R. R. Tolkien, Diana Wynne Jones, Ursula K. LeGuin, Garth Nix, and Philip Pullman, just for starters. Her voice is too uncertain, her characters too stereotyped, and her books too much in need of editing (especially after they became popular) for her to equal writers like the ones I’ve mentioned. Her main innovation is to blend fantasy with the school story to create a sub-genre that is simultaneously new and familiar.

I’d put the series in the middle of the pack: neither outstandingly bad nor – for all the hype – outstandingly original or any sort of literary gem, not even one in the rough.

But if I haven’t been enthusiastic about the books, the promotion has thrilled me even less. For one thing, it seems unnecessary. Why bother to hype a book that you know is going to sell several million copies? Spend the money on some worthy midlist writer, and the publisher could have two bestsellers rather than the one.

More importantly, I had dismissed the midnight book launches and parties as simply another attempt by people to inject a little excitement and meaning into their lives. The attempt seems healthier to me than following a sports team, or seeing terrorists under the bed, but, in the end, the launchings of Rowling’s books have always struck me as being much the same sort of group event, carefully manipulated to allow people an emotional release – a modern update of bread and circuses, really.

But that was before I saw the preparations for the event. The store had put a castle and dragon painted on brown paper around the entrance, and most of the staff was dressed for the occasion. Some were in black, witchy costumes. One woman managed a severity that made her a perfect Severus Snapes – or would have, except that she kept grinning. A man was wearing a top hat and tails with a long blue and white scarf that seemed to owe as much to Doctor Who as Harry Potter. Another woman was wearing wings and a straw hat and layers of loose brown cloth, apparently meant to be a house elf or at least some supernatural being. Still another woman had a brightly colored snake pained on her face that ran from her right cheek across her temple and down to her left temple.

These people and more were rushing around setting up tables and putting out stacks of Rowling’s previous books and the Harry Potter action figures. Given the wages of the average book store clerk, you might have expected them to be complaining about the extra work and the longer hours.

Yet that’s not what they were doing. Instead, they were laughing and chatting animatedly as they worked, pausing to show their costumes off to each other.

That’s when I had a Scrooge-like conversion. If all the promotional events could give so much pleasure to those organizing them (let alone the children for whom all the effort was for), they couldn’t be all bad.

Yes, the object of this attention seemed unfairly singled out from among her betters, and the promotions seem needless, and the motives behind them cynical. Yet, all too obviously, they were a welcome break in routine, and a chance those involved usually didn’t have to exercise their creativity. From the unpromising origins of the launch, they had managed to make something approaching a holiday.

That’s why, for all my misgivings, I don’t really have the heart to criticize. Anything that brings such gifts to people can’t be all bad. So, while I’m not buying a Christmas goose and hurrying off to Bob Cratchit’s house loaded with gifts for the family, I am looking at all the activity with a far more benevolent eye than a couple of days ago.

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