Today's essay by Laura is calling from within me a much-needed response. I resonate deeply with what she feels in her heart -- but am not ready to make my own heart-felt statement about the the political situation. I don't think that I'll be ready until I take up the challenge implicit in the first paragraph of her post:

I can't quite find it in me to write in a fact-based way right now--even though that's what we think we all need to do, take an unflinching look at the facts about what's happening to people as a result of these policies.

I feel called to take up such a way of writing -- though frankly, I don't know whether I'm up for the task. I know how I feel about what's happening but I can't say that the feelings are sufficiently grounded in a careful, critical examination of the facts. Not that I have any illusion that I can get to the bottom of things because things are complex -- and because people are out to spin things for their own interests, to obfuscate the truth.

I suppose that another reason I'm not ready to publicly claim and make my own what I feel is that I want to sort out for myself why I believe what I do. More to point, is my belief the way it is only because those around me believe likewise? I need to hear fully the viewpoints of intelligent, thoughtful people of integrity who see the world differently from the way I do.

I may be just dense and slow and unwilling to accept what is obvious. Don't know yet. I also don't know what I'll be writing next on this topic. We'll have to see.

Greetings from Vancouver, Canada! I'm in town to attend the Pan
Canadian E-learning Workshop, which runs from tomorrow (Monday) to Tuesday.
When I was making my travel arrangements for the conference, I decided to fly
in a day early -- not because I wanted to have some time to tour Vancouver but
to save some money. After a full day of walking around downtown (along the waterfront,
through Gastown, the historic
core of Vancouver; to the surprisingly large Chinatown
(which blessed me with the stillness of Dr.
Sun Yat-Sen Park), but couldn't get into the museum/archive
of The Chinese Cultural Center
of Greater Vancouver (though it was supposed to open today); onto the main
branch of the Vancouver
Public Library, which reminds me of the Toronto
Reference Library; the Granville
Book company and Chapters
Books on Robson
Street (which I guess is one of the main drags of Vancouver), along with Granville
Street; to dinner at Hon's
Wun-Tun House -- and then back to my hotel, the Pan
Pacific Hotel Vancouver.

As I walked around today, I saw so many things that intrigued me
about Vancouver that I was thinking about ways to share that excitement
with readers. The previous paragraph is a start, a laundry list of
where I was. But it's 11pm -- and I need to hit the sack. Perhaps more
will come later. (I regret not bringing my camera with me but lately,
I've gotten tired of schlepping a big camera on my trips to other
cities -- it makes stowing my backpack underneath the seat in front of
me that much more difficult.

It's January 8 -- and I still feel optimistic about 2004. I don't know what to make of it, save that it beats being pessimistic, I suppose. Not that I'm doing so well on my blogging, mind you. But then again, though I'm tempted to promise to blog regularly, I am learning from friends that it's better not to set myself up for easy failure in my resolutions. All I will strive for is to blog as faithfully as I can.

I find it strangely comforting to blog while in transit. Right now, I'm making my way from Toronto to San Francisco -- via the Newark airport. I'm logistically closer to home, with only one more flight separating me from my own bed, but geographically I'm hundreds of miles farther away from my goal than I was this morning. Though it is unlikely that there is anyone at this airport who knows me, I'm not alone. I rest secure in the knowledge that I can reach out to my loyal readers on the blogosphere, make my presence known, if only virtually, while I'm in neither of my homes.

Although air travel can be incredibly aggravating, I also treasure the time it gives me to reflect. Some of my most fruitful reflective moments over the last year have been granted to me while sitting at airports such as the one I'm at right now. I'm usually full of excitement, new resolve to do good and truer things when I get home. Such is how I feel right at this moment.

A couple of weeks ago, humanity commemorated the centenary of powered flight. Though air travel was well-established long before I was born, I still find flying amazing, almost miraculous. There are a lot of astounding things in this world, many technologies that are arguably more advanced than human flight. I suppose my amazement has a lot to do with being physically transported among the different worlds I inhabit. Virtual reality does not come close to physical reality at this point. When I am physically in Toronto, my entire life in Berkeley more or less vanishes -- sure, it still continues, but it more surely enters the realm of suspended animation. So must it be with my family's life in Toronto. They are as real as I am -- but when we are thousands of miles apart, it must appear to my dear family that I'm gone into some twilight zone while they go about the daily business of living.

Can't I live in both worlds simultaneously? As miraculous as air travel is, it has yet to allow me to pull off that trick.

Today's breaking news: "a single Holstein on a Washington state farm has tested positive for mad cow disease (search), marking the disease's first suspected appearance in the United States".

A big question immediately emerged for this Canadian who happens to in Canada while the story broke: will American beef be banned worldwide as was Canadian beef was earlier this year under very similar circumstances? As the Fox story points out:

Lawmakers are keenly aware that a case of mad cow disease in Canada last May -- which officials described as a single, isolated incident -- still had devastating economic consequences.

"If it's anything like what happened in Canada, it will be bad. The problem won't be that people will stop eating meat in the United States; the problem is the exports will be shut down like we did with Canada," said Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn.

One of things that fascinate me most about living in complex human constructed environments (such as great cities) is the question of who actually knows what. No matter how much one knows theoretically and practically, one is bound to be surrounded by so much that one knows basically nothing about. I know next to nothing about where my food comes from and how to grow it. I get on planes that I don't really understand and type this entry on a computer made of components whose function I have never studied. It's actually amazing how little each of us knows individually -- and yet, collectively things manage to work (for the most part). So where does the knowledge lie?

A couple of weeks ago during some after-dinner conversation, my friend Krista and I took up a very specific and somewhat related question that I hoped would get me a bit further in my thinking. The question we posed is this: if somehow all records of Shakespeare in every media (print, electronic texts, the google cache, CDs, film) -- save human memory -- were to magically disappear without a trace, to what degree would it be possible to reconstruct the Shakespearean texts? For the sake of argument, we assumed that we would somehow also have access to all contemporary forms of communication and transportation devices and a good amount of resources to deploy in our reconstruction efforts. In other words, we could fly a bunch of Shakespearean scholars and actors to a desert island to which they would be confined (with their notebook computers) to see what they can pull together.

I wondered how much of Shakespeare is in active memories of living humans today -- or is latent in the community of Shakespearean students. I can certainly believe that the most famous of Shakespeare's works could be reconstructed with little effort. After all, how active performances of his plays are happening today? Quite a few I would imagine. But how about his more obscure plays? His sonnets? Are there people who have committed those texts to heart too? We were guessing yes.

As we varied the object of disappearance from Shakespeare to other matters, we came across a wide range of behaviors If the essays that I published were to perish, for instance, they would not be coming back since they neither live actively in the memories of readers nor the author. I naturally was curious about the case of Bach's music. Is his case like that of Shakespeare's works, which we were surmising, is fully recoverable -- or would there be parts of his music that would be gone forever? My guess is that the Bach oeuvre is large enough that it contains works that are not in the living memory of any musician at any given point. It's just a guess and nothing else though.

This question of recovering things from memory barely begins to scratch the surface of the question of what we know. Indeed, it's really a side issue -- but a fun one to consider nevertheless.

I'm writing this post from my parents' place in downtown Toronto. On Wednesday night, after characteristically long hours of winter air travel from Boston, I arrived in one of three cities that I call home. It wasn't quite the start of my Christmas vacation yet. On Friday, I spent a big part of the day at the University of Waterloo, giving a talk co-sponsored by the library and LT3. (I hope to write more later about the day -- but I had a wonderful time!)

Alas, soon after I gave my talk, I started to experience the onset of postnasal drip. I've been drinking a lot of fluids and am about to turn in for a long night of sleep. With any luck, I'll fight off any impending cold.

So that's what's been happening.....When I started to compose this entry, I wanted to enumerate what's been on my mind. Alas, I'll have to forgo that plan for the sake of my health!

After a very long day of travel, I'm happily ensconsed at the Inn at Harvard for what I have been longing for the entire day: a good night's rest.

I woke up at 5 am this morning in Berkeley with a gnawing "I don't want to travel -- don't make me feeling". I can say right now that I'm glad to be here on the other coast. Of course, I was surprised by the freezing rain covering Cambridge right now.

(It was a bit surreal to get in the Bayporter shuttle this morning to hear the news of Saddam Hussein's capture -- which despite my misgivings of the war -- is great news.)

Tomorrow morning at 6am, I expect to board a Bayporter shuttle to take me to SFO. Where am I going? Hopefully to Cambridge, MA for a meeting at Harvard -- and then on Wednesday, to Toronto.

I should be more excited. But a lot of travel tends to stress me out, especially after a week like this in which I have had to fight with my travel agent and the airlines to get my tickets straightened out (more later!)

I hope to blog on the road.

Amen:

I'm off to NYC - let's hear it for Amtrak! - to give a talk to customers of Pitney-Bowes about why documents aren't really containers of information. Why would we ever think that they were? Perhaps because we've viewed ourselves as containers of information. Plus, we've recently managed to informationalize all of business. But, you know what? Information isn't really the lifeblood of business. Lifeblood is the lifeblood of business.

Of course, I'll probably rewrite the whole thing on the train ride down. [Joho the Blog]