whistler I didn't tell you about our trip to Whistler with the Haligonians. The drive up was painless with no traffic snarls. This is not to be underappreciated. Vancouver traffic has become more and more like that of big cities elsewhere (London, Paris, Toronto, New York). Every drive into the city centre runs a huge risk of gridlock and hours of parked cars going nowhere. Mary and I traveled in a second car (the kids took our other car) and we had a nice lunch at Watershed Grill in Squamish. Up in Whistler, we had time for dinner at the award winning Wild Blue, one of Canada's top restaurants. This photo doesn't do justice to the decor at Wild Blue. The service was impeccable. The food was really interesting and perfectly presented. The next day, Ewan took us all to watch the warm ups and early rounds of Crankworx. Mary went shopping, and I must say I knew nothing about the sport, but what I saw was pretty incredible. I kept saying to Ewan, "That's not safe." After that, we took the gondola and chair lifts up to the top of Whistler Mountain which was just magical. The final chairlift took us up into the clouds. The clouds quickly cleared as we walked around the summit trails, but it was so cool to watch the chair up ahead of you disappear into the clouds. I didn't get a picture, sadly. I was sure I'd drop my camera trying to fish it out of the backpack! emma is home! Mary has gone off to the airport while I type this to pick up Emma. We are looking forward to a short visit; nothing spectacular planned, just some downtime for mother and daughter. until they think warm days will never cease Still more pictures of tomato trichomes - on the pics page. Everything comes ripe at once in our short Canadian summers. A neighbour kindly gave us a bushel basket of veggies so now our kitchen counter is overflowing with the abundance of nature. A macrophotograph of glandular tomato trichomes. trump I know very few people consume as much news as I do, or think about politics every day. I suspect my American readers would have little awareness of how much Trump's trade war with Canada dominates the news up here. Our news cycles have become both angry and boring. "Angry" because Trump is such a corrupt and venal character; "boring" because his bluster hasn't changed in the last 40 years. In part, it is our familiarity and acclimitization with Trump's corruption that is the most disturbing aspect of modern life. I'm certainly willing to concede that there could be aspects of Canadian/USA trade that are unfair to the US. In general, I believe trade agreements are bad for the working class. But my objections to Trump don't have anything to do with the fine print of complex international trade agreements. Before 2024, trade agreements were conducted on mutually agreed upon timelines. For the USA, these agreements required congressional approval. The agreements had mechanisms which made them (more or less) binding. Careful, thoughtful and binding agreements are necessary for businesses to plan international trade. All of this has been replaced with Trump's random preremptive late night tweets. Whole governments and all of their businesses are put on hold while various threats, real or "just joking" are fired off, again via the social media. The congressional and judicial branches of US government have completely capitulated to Trump's authoritarian rule. It is a commonly held viewpoint in Canada that "one can't make a good deal with a bad person." So we are left here to suffer the whims of this blustering fool and his armada of sycophants in Washington. Please God, don't let Americans re-elect Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections.