from chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca,
date Apr 1, 2007 9:32 AM
subject ‘Promiscuous’ pop star snags two; Jack Layton qualifie d’intéressante la performance de l’ADQ, lundi dernier
Dear Stephen,
We had a great selection committee meeting at the gallery yesterday. It lasted all afternoon and because Olivia and I had been preparing the packages the past 2 weeks we were well-organized and there were no technical glitches. And we selected some great shows. Next step: the grant-writing. We have a meeting Tuesday to kick-start the process. Fun fun fun.
Last night the bar was fairly busy, quite busy for a Saturday in fact. It was bittersweet: it was also DJ Fred’s last regular night. Peter was worried that he’s continue to lose money but lately it seems the night has been picking up and I fear that he has jumped the gun. The weekends are going to seem a little more dull now. Hopefully we’ll have Fred back on a monthly basis or some other form of fun DJ entertainment. After work Alex bailed on us but the rest of us went to Nep-tunes to catch Dan J and DJ Bones spin Indie-pop night, lots of wild and manic dancing going on. Afterwards Clo, Fred, Rae and I had breakfast buffet at the Colonial Inns! what a spread.
Today is super-mega-intense-clean-the-apartment day, in preparation for clo’s folks who arrive Thursday, yikes. We’ll give the apartment a major clean and organize and then we head to Darren and Alex’s in Brown’s Flat for supper. Shoot that reminds me to have the oil and winter tires changes on the car this week.
Oh and we’ve decided to order buttons for the wedding, there is a girl in Fredericton who makes 100 for $35, cheap!
If you’d like to consider a donation to our honeymoon travel fun I’ve added a Paypal link on the dearpm website, the link is below.
-chris
from chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca,
date Apr 2, 2007 10:04 AM
subject ‘David’ capitulates against army “Goliath’, Santé mentale: les provinces manquent de ressources pour prévenir la violence
Dear Stephen,
I forgot to mention that I went to Clyde’s play The Diary Within My Head on Saturday evening at the SJAC, after the selection committee and before I started work at the bar. It was a play in a loose sense of the word, as it was more a string of poems written and performed by Clyde A. Wray, all in verse, his deep baritone voice rolling over the audience in waves at once penetrating and other times lulling. It was all reflections of war, his experiences in Vietnam paired with contemporary musings of the dogs of war, the men in suits that are primarily interested in money, not human lives or the tolls of war. But that’s not what Canada is about, right? We’re in Afghanistan for the purest of altruistic reasons, right? And after we fix Afghanistan we’ll move our troops somewhere else democracy is needed, like Iran or China, right? And smoke out the evil-doers. Because we’re perfect, her in the West, the New Holy Chosen Land.
Claudine and I spent yesterday cleaning the apartment and then by late afternoon headed over to Browns Flat to visit Darren and Alex. They have a sweet little house they’ve spent the past few years fixing up, Darren was in the process of extending the chimney of his wood-burning kiln when we arrived. The inside of their place could be in a Home and Garden magazine and they’ve re-used and recycled materials to create a real slick, yet homey, rural environment. We went for a long walk in the fields with their two brown labs, then had a late supper of rice and shrimp and salad.
Wedding plans are rolling along, we’ve decided to make buttons as part of the party favours we’ll distribute so I’ve digitized some images to send to Jen P, a giraffecycler who makes buttons and was featured in the TJ on the weekend. Her prices are quite reasonable.
Off to the gallery this afternoon to begin the post-selection grant preparation and set up for the movie night. Tonight we are screening Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know.
-chris
from chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca,
date Apr 5, 2007 1:25 PM
subject Court will not hear terrorism appeal; Les députés libéraux sont assermentés mercredi à l’Assemblée nationale
Dear Stephen,
Unless the freaky weather undermines their flight plans, Claudine’s parents should be touching down in Saint John right about now. We spent all morning going over the apartment one final time, sweeping, scrubbing, polishing, vacuuming and mopping. The place is about as clean as it gets. What will be interesting is how the interpersonal dynamics unfold over the next few days. Neither Clo nor I have long experiences hosting parental units in our abodes for any length of time. We are both nervous as to how the first meeting between our parents will turnout. Any last minute advice? We have an schedule of activities, reservations have been booked, meals planned. Tonight should be busy at the bar, as tomorrow is a holiday, and we have a 30-person surprise B-day party to start the evening. Historically Good Friday nights are not that busy at the bar (we did about $500 in sales last year, a fraction of a usual Friday), so hard to say what tomorrow will bring.
Anyway, I have a couple hours of grant-writing and organizing to do before work, and the in law adventures for me officially begin.
-chris
rom chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca,
date Apr 7, 2007 10:34 PM
subject Vimy’s legacy marked by burial, Les honneurs militaires sont rendus au soldat canadien Herbert Peterson
Dear Stephen,
well, the first meeting between our parents went quite well. it came after a non-night at the bar friday, where i basically sat at the bar and drank beer and watched alex work; it was nowhere near busy enough for two workers. at least i made up for it with good tips on thursday. speaking of thursday, there was a birthday party for jeneca at the bar and a bunch of folks were heading to the karaoke bar afterwards so i couldn’t resist but go. sang karaoke with rae and meghan and the gang until 3am. needless to say claudine was not impressed as i made the bad judgement call of not calling her to explain where i was, as i assumed she would have been asleep. anyway, it ended up a late night of emotional, fruitful discussion and the makeup sex was good too. friday we drove to st. andrews for lunch at the alqonquin hotel, nothing else was open in the town. friday after “work” my friend lucas dambergs and a halifax crew stopped by the bar, they had driven down to see the exhibition in the gallery, we went to see dell at callahans. today we drove to fredericton for the farmers market and some shopping and also to visit gilles 93-year old aunt olive. i made paella tonight and everyone agreed it was delicious. and the parents seemed to get along and enjoy one anothers’ company. now we’re all exhausted but at least tomorrow we can sleep in.
-chris
from chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca,
date Apr 11, 2007 10:29 PM
subject More casualties in Afghanistan; Le contrôleur routier avait écrit de faire inspecter le viaduc “au p.c.”
Dear Stephen,
Wow, we had such an active day. we were up early, excited at the prospect of having the apartment to ourselves. No actually that came last night as we were free to behave like the sex-starved maniacs that we are. But today we were up early, mostly to take the garbage out, and change out tire and oil changing appointment. My dad dropped off a couple all-season tires but the other two were shot, hence the changing of the appointment. Tomorrow I’m off to by two more tires.
At high noon we had a moustache photo shoot in King’s Square with Greg and Stephen. Monica and Claudine took most of the pictures while Jay was there for support. We all had lunch in the market. Spent the rest of the afternoon working on the darn grants.
Went to yoga this afternoon. Jay had supplied me with a free workout coupon, in celebration of the 59th annual Tom Selleck Moustache Day. It was a good workout. Afterward we met Stephen and Monica at the wine bar and we went to a Chinese restaurant on the West Side with Michel-Antoine. Then we went bowling, to make our exploratory cultural day complete. How can I describe it? The lanes were full when we arrived, Wednesdays being a busy day with the leagues, so we amused ourselves with some crazy dance-off video game contraption. Then we bowled, then played more carnival games for points redeemable for candy. There were a few other moustaches in sight, and some pretty hard-core bowlers. Oh and a large over sized ‘Support our troops’ plastic ribbon hanging by the cash.
So a couple more down, just on the heels of the six from Sunday. This means the paper won’t end with its’ full on, front page coverage. I’m sick of reading about it as it is always the same, the same one-sided, ‘they were so young’, ‘they were doing what they loved’, ‘they believed in our freedom’ blah-blah bullshit, over and over. Never a fresh perspective, never more than the same redundant ‘support our troops’ mentality. It’s the same as ‘you’re with us or against us’ black or white George W. Bush world view, that of evil-doers and angels. How fucking ridiculous can you get? I mean, join an army when you’re eighteen, get sent to war-torn country, get blown up. Wait out the pointless two extra years you signed our boys up to. What, the Taliban will be eradicated by then? And if not? What’s the goal again?
-chris
rom chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca,
date Apr 12, 2007 8:01 PM
subject Boy succumbs to injuries in hospital; Les 41 élus adéquistes prêtent leur serment de député à l’Assemblée nationale
Dear Stephen,
We’re in the middle of grant-writing madness, with 4 CC projects and the Wellness, Culture and Sport provincial operating grants all due Monday. Claudine and Meghan are helping with the projects, we’re making good progress. The projects are all really good. I hope we score well. Of course, we probably won’t be around to oversee most of the projects, but that’s another issue.
I had to re-schedule the tire and oil change again. I stopped at Canadian Tire to buy a couple tires and a garage door opener for Judith (but couldn’t find the right one, or any info for that matter) and the guy with the tires was taking so long so I left without. I had a lunch date with Karina, which went well. I invited her to the wedding. I think she’s considering it.
Later in the afternoon, after a bout of grants, I went to buy tires but the place I went to didn’t have our size in stock, they have to come down from Fredericton, tomorrow at 10am. If the expected snowstorm doesn’t slow down the truck. What’s the deal, snowstorms in mid-April?
Tomorrow night I have off, a Friday night off! We’re having a Friday the 13th gambling and moustaches party at Monica and Stephens’. It will be fun to have a night off, maybe we’ll finish the night with some karaoke.
Saturday I have to finish the grants and then work at the bar. I need the money, the wedding is going to cost $10 grand, and plus we have to make a clothing payment to Kate Wallace: we accidentally threw out a bag of clothes she had lent to Claudine. I mistook the bag for one of garbage. Oops. Plus we still owe my parents $1000 for the car, yikes.
-chris
from chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca,
date Apr 16, 2007 10:33 PM
subject Zaccardelli denies coverup; Le gouvernement Charest n’est pas prêt à adhérer à la Constitution canadienne
Dear Stephen,
What a day. We were up late last night at the gallery, working on the grants. Then I was back at the gallery early after dropping the car off for the tire and oil and filter change. Back at work on the grants, 4 projects and our provincial annual funding, the one with the ridiculous and confusing formulas. Then I heard about the shootings in Virginia and the death toll has mounted by ten since then. WTF is wrong with people? So I finished the grants, mailed them off, made lunch at home for me and Rae, then headed back to the gallery for my french class. Then we screened the three-hour Deerhunter for the Monday Night Movie. That was intense. Now I’m both exhausted, emotionally drained, yet sort of charged up at the same time. Fuck war.
I just read an article from Saturdays’ Globe by Yann Martell about his latest book project, the one that involves him sending you a book about stillness to read every two weeks. The link is http://www.whatisstephenharperreading.ca
He says he’s doing it because he feels undervalued as an artist in Canada. Boy, can I relate. I’m heading to Fredericton tomorrow for some Excellence in the Arts awards ceremony. We’ll see if I don’t blow a gasket or two.
-chris
from chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca,
date Apr 19, 2007 12:48 AM
subject Museum to get federal designation; Jean Charest dirigera un cabinet réduit comptant neuf femmes
Dear Stephen,
I’m not sure if I’m even sorry anymore that I hardly write you. I guess I’ve become more and more disillusioned with this project. Since I’ve stopped posting the letters to the blog I seem to have even less incentive to write you. As you surely know, I certainly don’t write for the dialogue it illicites. The idea that a letter a day to the PM would somehow effect a dialogue, a communication of sorts, sort of ran dry after year three.
Maybe more.
In any case, I started this letter on November 21, if I can believe Gmail, and now I’m finishing it. Finishing it with a cut-n-paste:
Earlier in the same year, he and Kate Davis, a socially prominent Washingtonian woman, were married in the Protestant Episcopal Church. The Hungarian immigrant youth – once a vagrant on the slum streets of St. Louis and taunted as “Joey the Jew” – had been transformed. Now he was an American citizen and as speaker, writer, and editor had mastered English extraordinarily well. Elegantly dressed, wearing a handsome, reddish-brown beard and pince-nez glasses, he mixed easily with the social elite of St. Louis, enjoying dancing at fancy parties and horseback riding in the park. This lifestyle was abandoned abruptly when he came into the ownership of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. James Wyman Barrett, the last city editor of The New York World, records in his biography Joseph Pulitzer and His World how Pulitzer, in taking hold of the Post-Dispatch, “worked at his desk from early morning until midnight or later, interesting himself in every detail of the paper.” Appealing to the public to accept that his paper was their champion, Pulitzer splashed investigative articles and editorials assailing government corruption, wealthy tax-dodgers, and gamblers. This populist appeal was effective, circulation mounted, and the paper prospered. Pulitzer would have been pleased to know that in the conduct of the Pulitzer Prize system which he later established, more awards in journalism would go to exposure of corruption than to any other subject.
Pulitzer paid a price for his unsparingly rigorous work at his newspaper. His health was undermined and, with his eyes failing, Pulitzer and his wife set out in 1883 for New York to board a ship on a doctor-ordered European vacation. Stubbornly, instead of boarding the steamer in New York, he met with Jay Gould, the financier, and negotiated the purchase of The New York World, which was in financial straits. Putting aside his serious health concerns, Pulitzer immersed himself in its direction, bringing about what Barrett describes as a “one-man revolution” in the editorial policy, content, and format of The World. He employed some of the same techniques that had built up the circulation of the Post-Dispatch. He crusaded against public and private corruption, filled the news columns with a spate of sensationalized features, made the first extensive use of illustrations, and staged news stunts. In one of the most successful promotions, The World raised public subscriptions for the building of a pedestal at the entrance to the New York harbor so that the Statue of Liberty, which was stranded in France awaiting shipment, could be emplaced.
The formula worked so well that in the next decade the circulation of The World in all its editions climbed to more than 600,000, and it reigned as the largest circulating newspaper in the country. But unexpectedly Pulitzer himself became a victim of the battle for circulation when Charles Anderson Dana, publisher of The Sun, frustrated by the success of The World launched vicious personal attacks on him as “the Jew who had denied his race and religion.” The unrelenting campaign was designed to alienate New York’s Jewish community from The World. Pulitzer’s health was fractured further during this ordeal and in 1890, at the age of 43, he withdrew from the editorship of The World and never returned to its newsroom. Virtually blind, having in his severe depression succumbed also to an illness that made him excruciatingly sensitive to noise, Pulitzer went abroad frantically seeking cures. He failed to find them, and the next two decades of his life he spent largely in soundproofed “vaults,” as he referred to them, aboard his yacht, Liberty, in the “Tower of Silence” at his vacation retreat in Bar Harbor Maine, and at his New York mansion. During those years, although he traveled very frequently, Pulitzer managed, nevertheless, to maintain the closest editorial and business direction of his newspapers. To ensure secrecy in his communications he relied on a code that filled a book containing some 20,000 names and terms. During the years 1896 to 1898 Pulitzer was drawn into a bitter circulation battle with William Randolph Hearst’s Journal in which there were no apparent restraints on sensationalism or fabrication of news. When the Cubans rebelled against Spanish rule, Pulitzer and Hearst sought to outdo each other in whipping up outrage against the Spanish. Both called for war against Spain after the U.S. battleship Maine mysteriously blew up and sank in Havana harbor on February 16, 1898. Congress reacted to the outcry with a war resolution. After the four-month war, Pulitzer withdrew from what had become known as “yellow journalism.” The World became more restrained and served as the influential editorial voice on many issues of the Democratic Party. In the view of historians, Pulitzer’s lapse into “yellow journalism” was outweighed by his public service achievements. He waged courageous and often successful crusades against corrupt practices in government and business. He was responsible to a large extent for passage of antitrust legislation and regulation of the insurance industry. In 1909, The World exposed a fraudulent payment of $40 million by the United States to the French Panama Canal Company. The federal government lashed back at The World by indicting Pulitzer for criminally libeling President Theodore Roosevelt and the banker J.P. Morgan, among others. Pulitzer refused to retreat, and The World persisted in its investigation. When the courts dismissed the indictments, Pulitzer was applauded for a crucial victory on behalf of freedom of the press. In May 1904, writing in The North American Review in support of his proposal for the founding of a school of journalism, Pulitzer summarized his credo: “Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations.”
-chris
from chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca,
date Apr 19, 2007 11:56 PM
subject Alberta’s shopping spree budget; Line Beauchamp juge “alarmiste” le discours de John Baird sur Kyoto
Dear Stephen,
Sorry about the somewhat cryptic Pulitzer letter last night. I came home late from work, I was high and paranoid and having thought of mortality and death that kept me up all night. I should know better than to smoke too much pot but sometimes I slip up. Anyway it was a weird night, O’Leary’s Open Mic, talking with Brent really felt the years, and then with Jay in front of Trinity Church, and then the daredevil that he is was skateboarding down Princess Street which was scaring me half to death. We ended the evening at Subway of all places but when I got home I couldn’t unwind, was thinking of the finality of death, what would happen if I just never woke up? Sobering thoughts but it leads one to question how ready we are for death. And me, not that ready. There is still so much to do! You must feel that way sometimes, but then again, you’re the fricken PM, and you have power and you can do things, be a leader. But right now I’ve had a shower and am waiting for lovely Clo to finish her work for the evening so we can get it on. In the meantime I will draw the cats and reflect on the not-so-bad-not-so-busy night at the bar, Alex and John, Jay and his woman, and where we’ll all be in twenty-five years. I have no clue, really. Also I need a haircut.
-chris
from chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca,
date Apr 22, 2007 8:29 AM
subject Riding a green wave of change; La barricade érigée par des autochtones sur une voie ferrée du CN a été levée
Dear Stephen,
we’re in halifax, drove down yesterday. stopped at galerie sans nom on the way and ran into martin dufresne and carl bouchard, the artists who were down from Montreal installing their collaborative installation piece, chein et loup. I met Martin at TRAFIC in Rouyn-Noranda 2 summers ago. It was a nice, albeit short, reunion. Then we we continued to Sackvile to see Struts but it was closed, we went to the Owens instead, good Micha Lexier show and fine art grads. Favourite piece was the bear and the architectural prints. The we zipped to Halifax to catch last-day shows at the Khyber and Anna Leonowens. Being at the Khyber again felt very strange, the place looks to have been through hell and back, still smells faintly of trash, and still has a major problem with street-level visibility and access. But I hear it has turned a corner a bit, they’ve hired a new director and the city seems to be in more of a supportive mood. But I’m sure I’ll hear about more when we have drinks with my friend Emily tomorrow. So then we checked out the shows at Anna and shortly after ran into Peter Dykhuis and he introduced us to AA Bronsen, who was in town to accept an honorary doctorate and give the keynote address at the NSCAD convocation today. Meeting AA is like meeting a superstar or something, but he was very down to earth and friendly.
Last night we ate excellent sushi at Dharma Sushi, one of my favourite sushi restaurants ever, then met up with Tyler at his apartment, where we stayed for the night. But first we finished making a spicy waffle sauce, then went across the bridge to Dartmouth to pick up Tyler’s new girlfriend, some other friends, some whom I knew, others new to me, and then we went to a housewarming party for a guy named Geordie, whom I knew only by name before, he runs an organic foodstore, Rebecca used to get a weekly order form him. It was a fun party, ran into Marla Cranston there, but we left early to check out Al Tuck and Tyler Messick at Ginger’s. Tyler was playing in a band with the unfortunate name of The Former Jesuit Turns Acid Again, or something bizarre like that, and though the music was OK, it wasn’t a perfect match for his songwriting. Al Tuck sounded great but he’s so mellow we were drifting off to sleep, so we came back, unrolled the futon and crashed.
Today is more galleries and shopping, then we’re meeting up with Trevor and Tamara later. The sun is shining and it feels warm outside for what feels like the first time in eons.
-chris
from chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca,
date Apr 25, 2007 10:19 PM
subject Dion accuses PM of lying about abuse; David Dodge quittera la Banque du Canada à la fin de son mandat l’an prochain
Dear Stephen,
We’re back in SJ, driving from Charlottetown this afternoon after some final wedding shopping. We found fabric for the lining of Claudine’s dress, and it was on sale, which was a plus. We spent last night at Mark and Margo’s new place in Mantague, which was fabulous, and they and my cousins Colsen and Morgan were excellent hosts and marvelous company. Mark cooked so much and we ate so much we are still a bit bloated. Margo is bright and witty but has very little movement, though the whole family has high spirits. She is investigating the possibility of fundraising to go to China for stem cell surgery to halt and hopefully reverse the MS.
Our last day in Halifax had us meeting Ray Cronin at the AGNS and having a nice chat, then visiting the Art of Ancient Egypt show on loan from the Museum of Boston, and sneaking a peak at the John Hartman paintings (the show was technically finished and some of the paintings already packed away). Stopped at the eyelevel as well to chat with Eryn. Searched for fabric as well but didn’t find any and then really had to move to make it to PEI in good time. We did it in 4 hours, not bad considering the ferry wasn’t running yet so we had to go a longer way around.
I’m preparing a letter to the editor in response to the article that ran in the Globe today about the Canada Council SOFI funding. Keep in mind this is a draft and I may edit it a bit more for clarity:
“I am writing in response to the article regarding Canada Council SOFI funding. If it is indeed true that there are “legions” of MPs that are that hostile to the arts and consider them “frivolous”, then we are indeed in a more troubling place than I thought we were by simply electing a right-wing government. If arts groups don’t want to fall into the trap that has been laid for them, they had best do well to tear their eyeballs away from their own navels and direct them towards Mr. Harper and Ms. Oda, who, in attaching so many tangled strings to the one-time $50 allotment to the Canada Council, are the real architects behind any SOFI problems. The current $5 per Canadian per year that goes to the CC ($7 with the inclusion of SOFI), is not enough to sustain the very ideals of excellence in the arts at a pan-Canadian level. What artists and arts groups need to do on a more concerted level is convince those “legions” of MPs that the arts are an integral part of their lives. I’ll give them all the benefit of the doubt and assume that within each there still exists some semblance of humanity”.
Maybe it gets a little too accusatory near the end, but I’m trying to imagine that really most MPs, most people with families who read books or watch TV or films, go to parks, in short, enjoy any aspect of life that isn’t simply represented by meaningless toil, should actually, fundamentally, even if they don’t realize it yet, support funding for the arts. Even if they never see live theatre or dance or opera; these things flesh out our culture and humanity as a whole, wouldn’t you agree?
DEAR PM 