Today is Election Day in Nova Scotia and we stand on the brink of history being made. For those of you who are not aware, the Nova Scotian electorate in the past have been very traditional voting either Whigs or Tories, Liberal or Conservative. The party lines were often drawn along family boundaries and feelings have run so deep that I even know of a couple down the South Shore who married inter politically and neither family have spoken to them since. In the murky past I have even worked for one of the NDP (socialist) candidates in the same riding, not because I was a particularly left leaning person but because that I thought the candidate would make a great MLA. So did a lot of people, but when it came to actually casting their vote they couldn't bring themselves to defy their parents and grandparents and their political leanings, even though they may have been dead for years. As little as fifteen years ago the statement that dead men still cast their ballots in Nova Scotia was very true. However, it appears that the times they are a-changin' as the song goes. In the last election the NDP became the official opposition, ie second place and the Liberals were relegated to third, something unthinkable twenty years ago. Now, today, if the polls are to believed, the NDP will not only win and do it with a majority, but it might even be a HUGE majority. Some of the old boys must be writhing in their graves today. By 1930 the media was declaring it a majority NDP government, the first one east of Ontario, ever! The radio station that we were listening to were getting both messages of congratulations as well as people saying that they had lived in BC under socialism and had left there in disgust and now were going to be moving out of Nova Scotia for the same reason. Pretty small minded, if you ask me!

Last night Barb, Kayt and I went to a talk and demo put on by Bonnie Stern, a lady from Upper Canada who writes cookbooks and contributes regularly to Reader's Digest and several other national magazines. Her talk was very good and the food she prepared was delicious, what I could hear of it as I have never been in such an audience of rude, rich, middle aged and ancient women in my life. All through Ms Stern's talk there was a general hubbub of yammering about what happened last night, where they were going on their next vacation, who did what to their garden, how great their husbands were, how their children were doing in med/law/dentistry school (pick one). I was about ready to scream or grab a rolling pin and run amok.

Today, work simply flew by as I was spending most of my time in the swaging tunnel working on multiple projects of splicing double braid. I'm regaining my confidence in doing it as well as learning several other techniques for getting the basic eye splice. I have also had my first experience in using a new sort of hollow fid that is supposed to facilitate threading both the core and cover through each other. I find them really neat and with a little more practice I might even prefer them to the standard fid.

From Barb:

Lest you think that Mike is a total crank from his notes about the Evening with Bonnie Stern - he isn't! Never have I sat in a more rude audience - ever! It seems that good manners don't go along with expensive clothes, manicures, pedicures and updos. Indeed it was very rude treatment for Ms. Stern and for the hard working organizers of the event. I was looking forward to hearing Bonnie (she seems like an old friend since her books and publications have been treasured part of my kitchen library since the 70's) and I was also looking forward to introducing Mike and our daughter to her culinary techniques and dry wit. It is a crying shame that the rude chatters of over half of the audience took away from the experience. It was not just us who had a hard time based on the number of librarian-like "shusshes" that emanated from around the room periodically. I sure wish we had a bit of time to visit Toronto as I would love to attend classes at Ms. Stern's cooking school that she established in 1973 or so.

I have been doing what I can to assist with the tool crib project with finding/passing tools, positioning gluey pieces, making appropriate noises of encouragement, and keeping the sawdust under control - as it is it feels like we have been eating sawdust on our every meal lately.