Yule Heibel’s Post Studio © 2003-2008

Hard and soft

Yesterday I went to the Oak Bay Police as well as to the Victoria Police to report the hate mail I received. At the Oak Bay police station there is just a small window where you check in with whoever is on duty. A woman in front of me was finishing up when I entered, after which I had the place to myself. In contrast, the Victoria police station is much larger, housed in a modern building with a somewhat intimidating reception area, and it’s of course a bit busier, with a very different “clientele”: distraught parents reporting run-aways, completely strung-out junkies hallucinating about having lost “property” (a purse containing money) in the station, that sort of thing. I was helped at both stations (I went to Oak Bay first because they already had opened a file on this matter, and I went to Victoria because that’s where the crime occurred), but in both instances I had to explain what a blog is. It was a bit of the blind leading the blind, or one techno-peasant explaining to another, but the letter was the main thing, and the police took that very seriously indeed.

On the subject of law: for the second time in less than a week, I had Canadians express incredulity, after I mentioned that I had lived in Massachusetts for 17 years, at the verdict handed out to Chante Mallard. First it was my dentist’s assistant last Thursday, then it was a police sargeant yesterday. They both spoke of it with some amazement, and wondered whether I had any insights into what makes the American justice system tick. (I don’t.) The sargeant told me an interesting story: a couple of years ago, a drunk driver and his drunk companion hit a cyclist head-on when their pickup truck crossed into the on-coming lane. The cyclist was thrown into the air and over the pickup, landing in its back. The driver realized what had happened, but fled the scene. Meanwhile, all the emergency vehicles arrived at the scene of the accident and found only a bicycle, but no victim. The search was on for the pickup. The police found it fairly quickly, but, tragically, the cyclist was dead. Worse yet, the men had already moved his body and were looking for a way of disposing it. But their sentence? Just under 3 years in jail. Arguably, they deserved a stiffer penalty. As for the Texas case: the dental assistant, who is dark-skinned, and the sargeant, who is white, both believe that if Mallard had been white, her sentence would not have been as severe.

My Dominion

It’s Canada Day today (formerly Dominion Day), and a fine day for it, too. Sunny, warm, breezy, perfect. I’m lying on a chaise in my tiny backyard, which is tucked into the L-shape behind the house, hidden from the street. It’s a city lot, but despite its small size, my wee backyard contains all of the following: a birch (weeping, and very messy), a double-house-high Japanese plum (overgrown), a sky-scraper cypress (or some such evergreen), a huge 3-4-metre laurel simultaneously hugging and menacing a fence, two camellias grown to similar tree-size proportions (as well as 2 still-small ones), 4 or 5 andromeda (at this point a mere 2 metres tall), one lilac, a small Japanese maple, a mock orange, clumps of lavender and St. John’s Wort, some flowering sage, daylilies, some iris, 3 or 4 rose bushes, two stone patios, …and about 16 mostly gigantic Rhododendrons & Azaleas, all different varieties, all blooming at different times and in different colours. Over the assembly lords the king of it all, a huge Garry Oak, deeply tap-rooted in the middle of my small plot. This stuff is all contained in the tiny backyard. When I tot up how much is growing here, I’m at a loss to explain how it all fits, but it does. I have pruned the Rhodies & Azaleas & Camellias into sculptural floribunda bottom-up shapes with dramatic unshorn heads, which has cleared up a lot of “floor space.” Of course, that just creates more room for more plants at ground-level, so I’m not sure why I did it, but I like the sculptural look of the shrubbery’s exposed limbs. When I tilt my head back, I see purple-red leaves made nearly transparent by sunlight (that’s the Japanese plum), glossy thick tight-bunched dark green leaves (the Garry Oak), whispy drooping tiny silver-green leaves (the dirty birch), and sated yellow-green fat sunsoaked semi-transparent ovoid leaves (the camellia). Birds streak across limpid blue sky. Not even a hint of humidity. No mosquitoes. Just after lunch now, and I can hear the neighbours coming to life with cocktails all around, lots of music, laughing, and of course the occasional annoying lawnmower. But mostly the sound of GTs, martinis, gibsons, all that sort of stuff: Happy Canada Day!