Orientation

Last night I went to an orientation session for volunteers for Olivia Chow's mayoral campaign. (An appropriate way to commemorate May 1.) It was at a Canadian Legion hall in the Lakeshore area.  They told us about how to develop our story and approach people on the street.  Really, I'm more of an office man what with my experience in several St. Paul's NDP campaigns.  In the form I filled out, I indicated that I was well suited to data entry. Seems I was visible on TV.

They had a bulletin board where you could post your reason for participating in the campaign.  One of them was from someone who'd been in the choir at Jack Layton's funeral and was impressed by his widow's courage.  I just wrote, "Bring back the LRTs!"

I don't envy Lakeshore residents.  Just around Lakeshore Boulevard it isn't so bad, but just a few blocks northward, in the Legion Hall's area, it's a dump!  There's some urban wasteland nearby with a stagnant pond that's already breeding flies.  And it isn't pedestrian-friendly:  I was late because I went west from Islington Avenue on the north side of Birmingham Street instead of the south side, and there was no crosswalk until I reached Kipling Avenue.  Some of these people will vote for a Rob Ford just because they hate the downtown.

I was going to see Beyond Clueless, a Hot Docs film about teenage comedies getting a midnight screening at the Bloor, but I was tired out. (I should have known that would happen.) Besides, I misplaced the ticket.

I'm almost finished the latest Lapham's Quarterly.  It  has part of a two-hour speech given by Hitler in 1937, with the following sentence (remember, it's a single sentence): "The greatest revolution which National Socialism has brought about is that it has rent asunder the veil which hid from us the knowledge that all human failures and mistakes are due to the conditions of the time and therefore can be remedied, but that there is one error which cannot be remedied once men have made it, namely the failure to recognize the importance of conserving the blood and the race free from intermixture and thereby the racial aspect and character which are God's gift and God's handiwork."