The Bruce Report

Not a day in May goes by when I don’t think about my mother, which doesn’t necessarily make me a dutiful son; but only a fretful one.

I have trouble remembering routine dates – like birthdays, wedding anniversaries, doctor’s appointments, dinner engagements, and garbage pick-ups – let alone an annual ceremony manufactured by the greetings card industry to honour all the world’s maters.

I suspect I’d have no difficulty if the object of this coming Sunday’s observance was not my ma, per se, but that which Webster’s defines under “mother” (fourth meaning) as: “A slimy membrane composed of yeast and bacterial cells that develops  on the surface of alcoholic liquids undergoing acetous fermentation and is added to wine or cider to produce vinegar.”

But, then, that’s no way to talk to one’s mom, regardless of her drinking habits.

No, I’m stuck with my calendrically befuddled mind, made worse by the vast number of claims various interests have staked on the days of the month. Wikipedia independently verifies no fewer than 228 of these in any given year, of which Christmas, Easter and Halloween are only the most familiar.

There is, for example, “World Information Society Day” (May 17), which is not to be confused with “System Administrator Appreciation Day” (July 27). The objective of the former is to “raise global awareness” of the Internet among those who, apparently, have been living under a glacier these past 25 years; whereas the purpose of the latter is to thank IT geeks for not bringing the planet’s communications architecture down around our ears whenever office bullies kick metaphorical sand into their faces.

There’s “World Hello Day” (November 21) during which each of us must say “hi” to ten people, thereby demonstrating for “world leaders” the supremacy of peaceful greetings over brute force.

There’s “International Lefthanders Day” (August 13) which promotes awareness of the “inconveniences facing left-handers in a predominantly right-handed world” and seeks to reverse the discrimination that has rendered the lives of oppressed underachievers, such as Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Robert DeNiro, and Robert Redford, so tragically unfulfilled.

There’s “World Turtle Day” (May 23), “International Adopt-A-Rabbit Day (January 30) and “World House Sparrow Day” (March 20). There’s “World Thinking Day” (February 22), “World Radio Day” (February 13) and “World Puppetry Day”. There’s “World Dance Day” (April 29), “World Poetry Day” (March 21) and “World Theatre Day”, which, oddly enough, shares the same date as “World Whisky Day” (March 27).

On “Star Wars Day”, we are instructed to recognize the knee-slapping humour in the phrase, “May the Force be with you”, as the observance falls, in fact, on May 4.

“Pi Day”, the unofficial holiday commemorating the mathematical constant of the same name “is celebrated on March 14 (or 3/14 in month/day date format), since 3, 1 and 4 are the three most significant digits of Pi in the decimal form.”

“Towel Day” commemorates the work of the late author Douglas Adams, specifically his “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” in which the protagonist carries the absorbent cloth to, among other things, “avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you).”

And, there’s “International Talk Like  a Pirate Day” (September 19), the brainchild of Oregon residents John Baur and Mark Summers who, according to a Wiki entry,  “found fame in the 2006 season premier episode of ‘Wife Swap’. They starred in the role of ‘a family of pirates’ along with Baur’s wife, Tori. Baur also appeared (in an) episode of ‘Jeopardy!’, where he was introduced as a ‘writer and pirate from Albany.’”

Now, I learn with some trepidation about the impending arrival of the “National I-Can’t-Find-My-Car-Keys Day”, the “International Grass-is-Always-Greener Day” and the “World Not-Enough-Days-in-The-Year-to-Remember-Stupid-Things Day”.

But, don’t worry, mom, I got you covered. The card’s filled out and the flowers are on order. Now, tell me: When is Mother’s Day, again?

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

When I scored my second, real job in journalism, the Report on Business was looking for a beat beat reporter who could demonstrate a working knowledge of stock markets, financial statements and business trends.

Naturally, as I possessed a working knowledge of graphic novels, punk rock and the Seahorse Tavern in downtown Halifax, I thought that I, a young 20-something, was perfect for the position.

At least that’s what I told a gathering of my peers on the weekend, which wasn’t very journalistic of me, as I wasn’t, in fact, being strictly accurate.

It’s more likely I got the job because I could write well and I had a good name. (If I had a dime for every time some editor or freelancer has asked after my old man, I’d be crafting bad poetry and slipping away in my own, private Margaritaville).

But I wasn’t there to retail my autobiography. I was there to reflect on some of the  trends that are reshaping the journalistic landscape. And, in the absence of anything remotely resembling a single malt, a shot of humour was the only antidote left to palliate the trembling the topic evoked.

For ours is, quite frankly, among the most precarious of vocations.

A colleague of mine at the Globe, many years ago, actually refused to call it a profession, because – unlike doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, and public relations officers – journalists weren’t actually certified to do what they do. We weren’t required to submit to periodic examinations of our skills and abilities. We weren’t officially reviewed by an independent body unless we had screwed up in some way.

Standard credentialing is more stringent nowadays; still, anyone can call himself a journalist without much blowback.

Writing in Salon.com not long ago, Dan Gillmor, who teaches digital media entrepreneurship at Arizona State University, remarked, “As digital media become ubiquitous and more and more of us communicate and collaborate online, every person is capable of doing something that has journalistic value.”

But what does this mean? Not a lot if you’re Christie Blatchford who commented in a Globe and Mail opinion piece published in 2010, “Just as you are not a physician or a lawyer merely because you say you are, much as you may want to believe it so, neither are you a journalist because you and your friends say you are or because your ‘writings’ appear on a website.”

And yet, try telling that to the 52 per cent of bloggers who, according to the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, consider themselves “journalists”, up from only 33 per cent a few years ago.

Combine this with another statistic, courtesy of Ivor Shapiro, Chair of Ryerson’s School of Journalism: Canadian universities and colleges graduated 6,000 journalism students last year, though it’s unlikely there are as many jobs available for them to fill.

All of which tends to lead those in the business of educating and preparing young minds for careers in the Fourth Estate to worry: Are we diluting our brand?

But the numbers’ game misses the point. The better question is: Why do we choose to do this thing of ours at all?

It can’t be for the money.

Statistics Canada reports that the average annual income for a working journalist in this country is between $40,000 and $50,000. According to these latest figures, the highest hourly average wages are earned in Halifax, at $28.60 per hour and the lowest average wages are earned in Brant-Haldimand-Norfolk, Ontario, at $19.12 per hour.

It can’t be for the respect.

In England, a recent BBC poll ranked journalism the fifth-most despised occupation in that country, below footballers and car dealers and just above lawyers and members of parliament.

The answer has more to do with the pleasure of getting a story, getting it right and telling it well; of shedding real light on hidden places; of, in small and incremental ways, contributing to the progress of democratic civilization.

As long as these principles continue to guide the scribbler’s craft, real journalists will always rise above the rest whoever and wherever we are on the constantly shifting landscape of new media.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

A faithful reader writes: “I have enjoyed your column for many years. But I’m wondering why you use so many big words?”

Obviously, I do it to impress the ladies. But that’s not the only reason.

I once began a column about Conrad Black this way: “Now that the loquacious practitioner of prolix prose – that earnest icon of inestimable erudition, that braggart-general of besotted bookishness – is (well, let’s not gild the lily) out of jail, the time has come for Canadians to rally behind their once-fellow citizen and provide him with what he so desperately needs: A job.”

I might have written the passage this way: “Now that the chatty writer – that representative of knowledge, that avid reader – is (well, let’s not gild the lily) out of jail, the time has come for Canadians to rally behind their once-fellow citizen and provide him with what he so desperately needs: A job.”

Still, something important would have been lost in the translation: The homage to Black’s love affair with complex, often arcane, language, which seems to me the grimly humorous part of the fallen media baron’s diminished station in his life behind bars.

Of course, the debate over what makes good writing has been raging (if only at university English departments and in newsrooms) for decades. Somehow, circumlocution (using too many words to express an idea) has been confused with lexicon (the state of a person’s vocabulary).

One of the wisest teachers on the subject was former New York Times editor William Zinsser who wrote, in his seminal work “On Writing Well”: “During the late 1960s the president of a major university wrote a letter to mollify the alumni after a spell of campus unrest. ‘You are probably aware,’ he began, ‘that we have been experiencing very considerable potentially explosive expressions of dissatisfaction on issues only partially related.’

“He meant that the students had been hassling them about different things. I was far more upset by the president’s English than by the students’ potentially explosive expressions of dissatisfaction. I would have preferred the presidential approach taken by Franklin D. Roosevelt when he tried to convert into English his own government’s memos, such as this blackout order of 1942:

“‘Such preparations shall be made as will completely obscure all Federal buildings and non-Federal buildings occupied by the Federal government during an air raid for any period of time from visibility by reason of internal or external illumination.’

‘Tell them,’ Roosevelt said, ‘that in buildings where they have to keep the work going to put something across the windows.’”

Although Zinsser clearly preferred shorter words to longer ones, what really bugged him was clutter and bafflegab.

In fact, some of the most beautiful words in English are deliciously multi-syllabic: serendipity, denouement, effervescent and evocative; labyrinthine, lissome, panacea and riparian; ripple, scintilla, susurrous and talisman.

And, occasionally, when it’s not overplayed, latinate diction just seems right. “I noticed how much I love the word abrasive,” writes professional copyeditor Sarah McCartney in a recent blog post. “We could shorten it to rude, but that’s not the same thing. It could be replaced with hard or tough or hurtful or scary or harsh. Still not good enough. Abrasive implies lasting and painful damage from a light, fleeting touch, like scraping your fingers on a brick wall. . .When I’m editing business documents, I do spend a lot of time extracting long words that exist only as insulation for delicate egos. But sometimes the shorter alternative doesn’t quite do the job.”

Indeed, If the job is to be funny, sometimes the shorter word doesn’t even show up for work.

So, with apologies to my faithful reader, I don’t mean to appear obstreperous or abstruse. But my appetency for the appropriate apothegm will continue ad libitum as long as I am able to eschew obfuscation.

Look it up, pal.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

Words are my occupational hazard. They frequently bug me – even good the ones.

I’m not referring to perfectly serviceable varieties like articles (the, a, an) that provide the connective tissue for meaning. I’m talking about words that, in certain combinations and contexts, are misused, abused or merely over-used. And each year, at around this time, I resolve to cluster a few for jettisoning before the champagne goes flat at the annual warbling of “auld lang syne”.

The mysterious emergence of “so” in all forms of discourse is a case in point. A troubled soul writes to Yahoo: “Has anyone else noticed an overuse of the word ‘so’ to begin sentences, especially among academics and scientists? Is it correct to begin sentences with ‘so’, even though there is no cause-effect relationship with what has been previously said.”

The answer, dear friend, is “no”. But that doesn’t prevent an otherwise educated, articulate person from sounding like a tremulous teenager trying to explain to Pop what happened to his lunch money.

Interviewer: “Are you telling me that the Hadron Collider has produced faster-than-light neutrinos in violation of Einstein’s theory of relativity.”

Interviewee: “So. . .what we’ve seen is still unconfirmed. So. . .it seems possible. So. . .we need to do more empirical work. So. . .that’s where we are.”

So, get on with it (and please shut up). I’m just saying.

Which brings me to another verbal earworm of a phrase.

What do people mean when they pontificate on a subject, then shrug their shoulders and blurt, “I’m just saying”? Are they making excuses for their reasoning? Are they apologizing, after the fact, for their opinions or the forcefulness of their arguments?

Imagine a Supreme Court judge issuing the following edict:

“The defence has not presented a persuasive case for consideration of appeal. The burden of evidence clearly indicates that there was no prosecutorial misconduct in the trial of one Benard “Mauler” Trippleworth. Having been found guilty of armed robbery, common assault, and mass murder, it is the ruling of this court that the original verdict will stand and that said defendant will continue to serve three consecutive life sentences in a maximum security prison. . .I’m just saying.”

In other words, that dog don’t hunt, which is, not incidentally, an expression the online Urban Dictionary defines this way: “An obviously faulty endeavor; also as ~ /won’t hunt/, predictive of failure. A no-go or non-starter. Eg.:  As he faced the blank stares of the members following his proposal, someone whispered off camera, ‘Well. That dog don’t hunt.’”

But, however you define it, there is something profoundly irritating about a phrase that traces its origins to back-woods Arkansas finding near ubiquitous usage in the gilded parlors and granite kitchens of the very wealthy in American society.

Matron: “Lolita, did you clean the fifth bathroom – the one near the pool house?”

Maid: “I was just about to get to it, madam.”

Matron: “Oh, my poor dear. . .I’m afraid that dog don’t hunt.”

This is not how any good “one-percenter” should talk.

Still, the remaining 99 per cent who claim de facto membership in the “Occupy Movement” are in danger of offending the language even more deeply.

Has it occurred to anyone that the term is an oxymoron? How can a thing simultaneously occupy and move? Of course, it is possible to sleep and walk at the same time. Perhaps the new incarnation of the protest next year should be dubbed, “Sleepwalkers Anonymous”. It’s fresher and, in a strange way, more reflective of its purpose and impact.

Fortunately, New Brunswick’s Alward government knows what to do with a bad brand. This year, the provincial Tories unceremoniously dumped the meaningless, and frankly embarrassing, tourism slogan, “Be in this place.”

They did so, they said, after consulting with members of the public – consultations that were, naturally, “extremely inclusive”.

It may be the only time in history when a politician’s “committing to discussing” wasn’t wretched code for “deciding to dither”.

But given the state of emergency that is the provincial bank account, “consultation and inclusiveness” is another phrase we cal ill afford to keep in the breaking, word-challenged days of 2012.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

I am not what anyone, certainly not my wife, would describe as a comfortable flyer. When I was 14, I was determined to become a pilot, though I had never stepped foot in an airplane. I begged my father to let me accompany him on a business trip. We took off in a snow storm, and landed in a blizzard. It was pitch dark.

I never again entertained the notion of making a living by jetting other people around the world.

A week ago, I climbed aboard a plane bound for Ottawa enroute to London, England. My beloved and I were canned in a metal cylinder for about eight hours each way. No room. Bad food. Shirty flight attendants. Uncertain weather. What was that bump?

Christmas is, to be sure, the oddest time to test the limits of one’s comfort zone. Yet, unaccountably, I was looking forward to the sojourn. If I had a psychiatrist, he might suggest that I have finally overcome my overweening determination to control every aspect of my quotidian existence. But, what do shrinks know?

It’s more likely that I have, in my middle years, come to realize that the older one gets, the more crucial change – any change, large or small – becomes to both mental and physical health.

According to recent research, sitting kills. Here’s what medicalbillingandcoding.org says on the subject: “As soon as you sit, electrical activity in the leg muscles is shut off, calorie burning drops to one per minute, enzymes that help break down fat drop 90 per cent.”

In fact, people who recline on their derrieres more than six hours a day are up to 40 per cent more likely to die within 15 years than those who bum-squat less than three. The stats don’t improve much even if you exercise regularly.

Fully eleven per cent of us are fated to die young because we spend too much time watching television, though given the quality of boob-tube programming such untimely demise may be simply sweet release.

The point is sitting is a metaphor for the spiritual rot that afflicts us.

We receive news of the world through our computer screens and smart phones. We’re more likely to Skype people than meet them. Canadian residents actually made 766,000 trips to overseas countries in October, which sounds like a lot. But it was actually down 2.1 per cent, compared with the previous month.

Still, why should we stand and move? Why should we change, when our perspectives are so thoroughly manipulated by the masters of marketing, politics and economics?

It’s not going to far to suggest that the financial meltdown of 2008 – for which we  are still paying – owed much of its rolling thunder to the millions of people who believed the lies unscrupulous traders and their willing confederates in the banking industry spun about mortgage-backed securities.

We know what we’re talking about, they cooed. Don’t worry your pretty little heads about assuming unsustainable levels of personal debt. Just hand us your credit cards, folks. Relax. Sit.

Neither is it absurd to speculate whether the current crisis in the Eurozone would have assumed the calamitous dimension that it has had some of the member nations pulled themselves up from their recliners and took a good, hard look at what monetary union actually meant to their comfortable, sedentary, entitled citizens.

Of course, sitting in an airplane for the better part of two work days does seem self-contradictory. I console myself by realizing that it’s merely a means to an end. And that end is old London town, which I hadn’t visited in years.

There, we walked everywhere: Across the Millennium Bridge to the Tate Modern; into the country to photograph the Bronze Age Uffington White Horse; through North London, where youthful rioters only recently refused to sit.

And when we returned, we thought about who we met and what we saw. We eyed our bicycles, dreamt about spring and planned another trip.

We kept moving.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

Doomsday scenarios, those ardent little prognostications that every turn of the year seems to invite, are not testaments to gullibility as much as evidence of indolence. Hell, I can “believe” in almost anything – UFOs, the pearly gates, superior returns on ethical growth funds – when I’m bored.

Every so often, though, a real fish tale of an apocalypse spreads across the Internet like urine in a swimming pool, winning friends and influencing busy, productive people who ought to know better. This year’s winner is: The Mayan long count calendar, which runs down, after 5,100 years, on December 21, 2012.

This arcane chronological oddity, alone, should be sufficient to convince anyone that the “end days” are nigh. But if skeptics need more resonant proof, one “official” website helpfully posits this external link:

“Underwater volcanoes are increasing exponentially. The harmonic tremors are also on a steep rise. A 74,000-year cycle of a devastating super volcano nears as we approach 2012. The December 2004 tsunami epicenter points towards a possible site for the super volcano.”

And this:

“The real cause of climate changes, volcanic activity, intensification of seismic activity etc., is the planet Eris, (which is) getting closer to our solar system. (It was)known in antiquity under various names: Nibiru, Marduk, Nemesis, Hercolubus, the Gods Planet, the Planet of the Empire, the Planet of the Cross or the Red Planet.”

And (sigh) this:

“At one time, the earth was not located in the present position. Mars was located here and had the same makeup as earth. Mars was knocked out of the position where earth is located now while rotating around the sun. Both planets are still in the Milky Way Galaxy. There are many human beings on earth that are presently aware of the many alien humanoid beings due to some have crashed on earth. Some crashes were planned and others were simply accidents.”

Still, the owners of this site are not above engaging in a little motivated self-ridicule, especially if they can make a few bucks:

“Whether by alien Invasion or nuclear war, the humorous and original 2012 sixteen-month wall-calendar makes fun at possible end of the world scenarios. It also touches on current problems plaguing the planet like global warming, oil spills to greed on Wall Street. Whether man-made or natural disasters, the calendar takes a lighthearted look at mankind’s potential downfall. It’s cool, creative and thought provoking!”

It’s also a mere $13.95 (not including shipping). But, hurry before you. . .well, run out of time.

In fact, what tickles me most about the 2012 phenomenon – which claims its “true believers” include luminaries Woody Harrelson, Mel Gibson and Lil’ Wayne – is its wanton and playful disregard for precision.

The world will end in a black hole.

Or maybe it’s a collision with a wandering planet.

Or maybe some sort of “galactic alignment” will do us in.

Then again, it could be a magnetic reversal of the poles, or a giant solar flare, or Donald Trump’s combover spontaneously combusting and igniting all the oxygen in the atmosphere.

It doesn’t matter. All you need know is that something big is going to happen, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Indeed, writes Jonathan McGregor Bethel (who self-identifies as “Writer, Researcher, Lecturer and Founder, Omega Point Institute”), “Whatever the facts are, we need to be creating spiritual ideals and treating the others around us with the kindness we would like to receive, creating a positive morphic thought field and influencing the course of events in a beneficial way. This way, we will be in the best frame of mind to meet any challenges that may arise. If nothing happens, wonderful, we’re all better off with our benevolent behavior!”

And who can argue with that? If more of us had created a “positive morphic thought field” back when Wall Street animals were marauding through the pantries of our retirement funds, we’d all be better off now.

So, then, I don’t mind reflecting, in my idle hours, upon the fate of the earth, crica  December 21, 2012.

It beats contemplating the manmade doomsday our arrogance and spite have already guaranteed.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

Weh-Ming and I (left) discussing the lighter points of heavy equipment

A few winters ago, in a fit of Christmas cheer, I offended the gods of common sense by giving away a practically new, all-metal-construction snowblower.

Had I lived in Fort Lauderdale, my soft-hearted gesture might have seemed merely unnecessary. But I didn’t live in Fort Lauderdale. I lived in Moncton. I still do, and over the years of record-breaking accumulations, I have come to believe that the decision I made then actually betrays congenital mushiness in the organ located somewhere north of my big mouth.

Until last Sunday.

That’s when I met a man by the name of Weh-Ming Cho, who lives with his wife  in a nicely appointed bungalow in one of the Hub City’s prettier neighbourhoods. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.

About a week ago, after the season’s first, real blast of winter, he posted a squib on the online classified advertising site Kijiji, seeking offers for his snowblower. But it wasn’t just any squib. It was a comedic rant worthy of the late George Carlin writing at his raucously best. It read, in part: “This isn’t some entry level snow blower that is just gonna move the snow two feet away.”

This is an 11 HP Briggs and Stratton machine of snow doom that will cut a 29-inch path of pure ecstasy. And it’s only four years old. I dare you to find a harder working four-year-old. My niece is five and she gets tired and cranky after just a few minutes of shoveling. This guy just goes and goes and goes.”

You know what else? I greased it every year to help keep the water off it and the body in as good a shape as possible. It’s greasier than me when I was 13, and that’s saying something. You know how many speeds it has? Six forward and two reverse. It goes from leisurely slow up to light speed. Seriously, I’ve never gone further than five because it terrifies me.”

Weh-Ming, who now prefers to hire others to move his snow around, explains he was just having some fun. But within hours, something that could only make sense in this Internet-addicted, glued-to-the-blinking-screen age of ours happened. Weh-Ming and his haughty Briggs were getting famous. Everywhere.

Views of the ad jumped from 100 to 1,000, then to 10,000, 50,000, 100,000. By Sunday night, the counter at the bottom of the screed registered more than 300,000 hits. Emails poured in from Europe, New Zealand, the United States. Facebook was on fire. The twitterverse was. . .well, all atwitter, and the mainstream media were muscling for interviews. Who was this guy, and how did he get so funny?

Weh-Ming, who is actually an office worker in real life, graciously complied, chortling merrily for CBC hosts on the regional and national networks. Meanwhile, the Huffington Post gave the ad two thumbs up for hilarity.

I came late to the party, catching wind of the fine fellow’s adventures only after hearing him talk in a radio item late last week. But after checking out his prose online, I recognized a man who had clearly missed his calling. And I began to cogitate.

All my recent efforts to secure a snow-removal contract had come to nothing and I was not looking forward to another winter of sinew-stretching shoveling. My only question was: Why was he selling? He had an answer for that, too.

“I’ll tell you why,” his ad obliged. “Because I heard it was time for you to man up and harness some mighty teeth and claws and chew your way to freedom.”

That was good enough for me, so I sent him an email: “I will buy your snowblower for the listed price, plus the cost of having it shipped over to our place in Moncton. As a professional writer, I think we writer guys ought to stick together on matters of snow jobs!”

He agreed, and the deal was done.

Do I need a snowblower? Yes.

Do I have anywhere to stow it? No.

But when it comes to supporting great scribbling, I believe in putting my money where my big mouth is.

UPDATE: Kudos to Junk-Away Moncton for dropping their cargo, speed-washing their ride and getting their asses in gear just in time to be CTV-filmed taking the fame monster to her new home on the other side of town.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

Every so often, somebody from my distant past drops me a line, asking me if I’d be willing to return to Toronto and take over some small principality of a metropolitan newsroom. When I laugh derisively and tell him I’d rather hang by my thumbs over a crocodile pit, I can almost hear his jaw hitting the keyboard.

Have more than two decades of rustication in the Canadian outback turned my mind to fish meal? What do I mean by rejecting such a generous offer, the chance to live and work again in the centre of the universe where the grass is ever green, when so many Maritimers are grabbing every opportunity to abandon their unpromising corner of the steppe?

That’s when the wisecracks really start to flow:

“Well, I might consider it once I’ve run out clean air, affordable housing, local food, friendly neighbours, and silent nights. Until then, someone’s got to mend the nets, fix the lobster traps and write the sea shanties you Upper Canadians love so well. Who knows, one of us left behind after the Great Rapture to Hog Town may even discover indoor plumping.”

Invariably, my correspondent is not amused. Indeed, he seems almost offended. It never occurred to him that some denizens of the East Coast actually like where they’re to. They don’t perceive the observable lack of crime, pollution, noise and horse’s arses any hardship.

That’s not to say the region where Confederation was born, where most of the nation’s banks began, is perfect. It has its problems, such as public debt, struggling resource industries, low labour productivity, crumbling municipal infrastructure and a rather unseemly devotion to something called “celtic rock”. But in the big picture of global depredations, these troubles are trifling. We’re lucky, and we know it.

As a 15-year resident of Moncton, N.B., here’s how I count my blessings:

My mayor’s name is George LeBlanc. If I were to return to Toronto, my mayor’s name would be Rob Ford. Enough said.

My house is a 20-minute stroll from downtown (a seven-minute bike ride in a headwind). If I were to find comparable accommodations in the GTA, I would be commuting to work for more than an hour each way, and paying extravagant prices at a parking garage for a car I would have to buy with a line of credit I couldn’t sustain thanks to the upper six-figure mortgage that would be sucking my bank account dry faster than I could replenish it. In the end, I’d most likely have to move down east, claiming economic hardship, which is how I got here in the first place. And I’ve never been a fan of deja vu.

My mechanic is a fine fellow by the name of Jim, who operates a service station on north Mountain Road. The other day, he fixed the transmission in my car. When I went to pay him, he handed me the key and said “no charge”. Dumbfounded, I said “huh?”. Apparently, he thought he should have noticed the leak during a previous inspection and now felt honour bound to give me a free ride, as it were. Where does that happen? Not in the big TO.

My wine guy is a worldly gent named George. And by worldly, I mean he seems to have lived everywhere. Once every couple of months, I head to his shop to bottle some vino, but mostly to get his take on current events, as he is wicked smart. To obtain the same quality of observation and perspicacity in Toronto, I’d have to lay down five-hundred bucks at a Moses Znaimer “Idea City” conference and listen to university professors bleat on about why “work” is inherently evil. Which, of course, it is.

In fact, here on the Atlantic rim, I don’t work; I play. Sometimes, people pay me for it. That’s something else I couldn’t pull in the city of my birth.

Or maybe I could; I just can’t be bothered.

The grass is plenty green right here.

“Is there anything nicer than a weekend in spring?”

That’s what one Globe and Mail Focus-section-factotum recently asked of his devoted readers, who were doubtless breathless from anticipating his answer.

Of course, the answer came.

“Actually, there is,” he chirped in last Saturday’s edition. “A three-day weekend in spring. . .Seventy-two precious hours of freedom. Finish that book on the bedside table. Stroll the park, scour the barbecue, plant the garden. Or, if you’re really ambitious, tackle the clutter in the basement. . .Canadians enjoy five or six of these brief furloughs a year. In fact, they savour them – tonics for the spirit – like bottles of vintage wine.”

But wait, there was more from this rhetorical cellar of ripened pomposity:

“The regular weekend is like a speed bump. It slows you down, but doesn’t last long enough to change your basic habits. Three days, on the other hand, is a legitimate rest. It allows you to reset the psychic thermostat. So here’s the real question du jour: Why aren’t there more of them? What’s so sacred about the five-day workweek, a regimen set in place in North America seven decades ago that has been virtually immoveable since (unlike in many European countries)? In an age of high-tech efficiency and higher productivity, why isn’t the working world organized to provide us with more leisure time?”

Sigh. This would be perfect parody, except for the fact that Globe writers are notoriously incapable of managing this literary device. All that’s left, then, is to parse the meaning of an earnest mind.

Do we actually think that most people in this country reasonably expect a four-day work-week? Do the farmers, foresters, fishers, miners and off-shore oil workers  – you know, the ones who would support extended weekends for the punditry – anticipate time off from the woods, oceans, pits and rigs that pay their families even as these risky activities threaten their lives and livelihoods?

And do we believe for a Toronto minute that 60 percent of the job-generating class in this country – independent entrepreneurs – spend a nanosecond of their time wondering how to beg off work long enough to organize their leisure? Do we understand why they spend years in virtual poverty? Can we reckon the enormous sacrifice they make of their souls simply by not being around for their families and friends – at weddings, births, confirmations, graduations, mitzvahs – to grist the mill and keep the wheels turning year after year?

What’s a rustication to them, except an excuse to wither?

Is there anything nicer than a three-day weekend in spring?

Try these bromides instead:

“If you live for weekends or vacations, your shit is broken.”

“Go big, or go home.”

“Most people have attained their success one step beyond failure.”

“To win without risk is to triumph without glory.”

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

That last quote was from Mark Twain, who made three fortunes in his lifetime and lost them all by making the main chance, grabbing for the brass ring, and otherwise risking it all on something other than an opportunity to catch up on his reading, snoozing, gardening, strolling, grilling and household organizing.

He died both rich and happy, knowing that there are many things nicer than a spring day. There is faith and fortitude. There is determination and decision. There is the  sound of your child who says she misses your face even when it’s five degrees in the shade and you don’t know when or how to sow in the next generation gratitude for a hard, scrabbling life that purchases a three-day weekend for the foolish, frivolous and eternally fortunate.

Once, early on in my part-time career as a government writer, I submitted a report the subject of which has altogether slipped my mind. (A failing memory does occasionally have its rewards). But I do recall my supervisor’s critique:

“Not bad at all. It’s accurate, comprehensive and to the point. But I’m wondering if you can make it, you know, more bureaucratic.”

By “bureaucratic” he meant “cluttered”. In this particular branch of the public service, the rule was: Never use one word when three or four would do. So, a sentence like “The sun is shining” should properly read “It was observed that overcast conditions were not prevalent.”

For anyone trained as I was, in the homes of professional journalists and news rooms of major media, this was not only silly, but downright dangerous to meaning. Or, as New York Times Editor William Zinsser once observed, “Clutter is the ponderous euphemism that turns a slum into a depressed socioeconomic area, a salesman into a marketing representative, a dumb kid into an underachiever and garbage collectors into waste disposal personnel. In New Canaan, Conn., the incinerator is now the ‘volume reduction plant.‘ I hate to think what they call the town dump.”

The refuse containment, compaction and separation facility, perhaps?

Of course, as at least one of any government’s main objectives is to confuse people about its policies (the very essence of the horrible phrase “plausible deniability”), clutter is a crucial literary device.

Still, not always.

Back in 1942, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt received the following memo about blackouts from one if his functionaries:

“Such preparations shall be made as will completely obscure all Federal buildings and non-Federal buildings occupied by the Federal government during an air raid for any period of time from visibility by reason of internal or external illumination.”

The Commander-in-Chief replied thusly: “Tell them that in buildings where they have to keep the work going to put something across the windows.”

Now, the Obama administration seems ready to tear a page from FDR’s primer. Its new Federal Plain Language Guidelines makes the case for simplicity and clarity in public sector communications. “Words matter,” it states starkly. “They are the most basic building blocks of written and spoken communication. Choose your words carefully – be precise and concise.”

It goes on to stipulate, “The active voice makes it clear who is supposed to do what. It eliminates ambiguity about responsibilities. Not ‘It must be done’, but ‘You must do it’. The passive voice obscures who is responsible for what and is one of the biggest problems with government documents. Don’t confuse the passive voice with the past tense. In an active sentence, the person or agency that’s acting is the subject of the sentence. In a passive sentence, the person or item that is acted upon is the subject of the sentence. Passive sentences often do not identify who is performing the action.”

According to an Associated Press report, the new rules are mandatory: “Obama signed the Plain Writing Act last fall after decades of effort by a cadre of passionate grammarians in the civil service to jettison the jargon. It takes full effect in October, when federal agencies must start writing plainly in all new or substantially revised documents produced for the public. Bad writing by the government, says White House information and regulation administrator Cass Sunstein, discourages people from applying for benefits they should get, makes federal rules hard to follow and wastes money because of all the time spent. . .explaining things to a baffled populace.”

How does the Government of Canada stack up?

Here’s a tidbit from its online language portal:

“It’s easy to become dogmatic about passive voice, to thump our desks and insist on purging every instance of it from our writing. Indeed, some writers go to extraordinary lengths to do just that, with little regard to context or flow. Truly understanding passive voice means acknowledging that there’s room for it in clear writing – if we use it sparingly, and for a particular effect.”

It is to be acknowledged that the point is arguable.

But, I say poppycock.