Month: November 2009

The first (and likely only) time I've been able to say Mazel Tov

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While getting ready for our friends’ wedding yesterday Nellie commented on how unusual it was to see a relationship develop from infancy — before there even was a relationship — to marriage. We were lucky enough to see the culmination of that last night. Our friends tied the knot, and they did it in style.

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The venue was The Carlu, which we’d never been to before. It’s an inspired, elegant space which, two days prior, had hosted Prince Charles. He even left a decorative centerpiece. The ceremony happened in a beautiful candle-lit room with a view of the city, and the reception afterward gave everyone a chance ooh and aah appropriately. I had the opportunity to catch up with old friends, even an old colleague from Delano, while fruitlessly hunting for the lamb lollipops we heard were making the rounds.

Our meal, in keeping with the bride’s foodie inclinations, was among the best I’d ever had at a wedding: lobster risotto to start and beef tenderloin with potato gnocchi, both paired with a recommended wine. A trio of desserts wrapped up while the speeches continued, and quite a collection of speeches they were. All were touching, but I thought the bride and her father stole the show.

Dinner gave way to dancing, and speeches to laughter. The bartender, who I came to know quite well over the course of the evening, commented that it was the best (which I took to mean busiest) dance floor she’d seen. At 11pm the caterers began serving gourmet poutine, a nod to the groom’s Montreal heritage, which was an enormous hit with many, especially Nellie. Some time after that we hoisted the bride and groom on chairs, which is harder than you might think, especially when you’re the only one throwing an entire side of the chair up in the air. My arms are a little sore this morning, but it was worth it to be able to sing Hava Negila.

At the end of the night with the remaining few dozen left on the dance floor and drinking drinks, I found myself sitting, staring, smiling broadly as I saw my friends so happy. Happy not just because the evening came off so perfectly, but also from the sheer joy that comes from being part of such an effusion of love. I remembered the feeling from my own wedding, and could see it on their faces. We were lucky enough to be there, twenty-five months to the day (so the groom told us) from their first date, to see the end of the prelude, and the beginning of their story.

"The dark valley through which we have marched together."

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After…I dunno, like eleven years, I’ve finally finished reading The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s (amazon | indigo) by Piers Brendon. I picked it up along with Richard Evans’ The Coming Of The Third Reich (which I talked about in February) to help make sense of the interwar period and run-up to WWII, just as I had read The Guns of August to set up WWI.

Where Evans wrote a micro look at how the Nazis came to power in Germany, this book was the macro history of the rise of dictatorships in Italy, Spain and Russia, and of imperial militarism in Japan. It also chronicled the weakness, hesitation and indifference of France, Great Britain and the United States. There wasn’t much information here that was new for me, but Brendon managed to artfully tie together all the moving parts, giving a greater sense of the rise of fascism in the 30s around the world. Highly recommended if you’ve always wondered, as I did, how the world came to such a conflagration.

Now, as I did when delving into the first war, I’ll turn to my uncle’s book A Short History of WWII to understand the events of the war itself. I’ve read the book twice before, but if following this same pattern for WWII has the same effect on my understanding that it did for WWI, I’ll have a better grasp of what the battles meant. If, as von Clausewitz said, “War is a continuation of policy by other means,” I’ll have a better grasp of what the policy was in the first place.

I don't know where Tilburg is, but I want to go to there

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Just had dinner at beerbistro with Nellie and Stanzi, who’s in town for a momentous occasion. More momentous than dinner with us, that is. We were just an appetizer before the main course.

Dinner was fantastic. Frites, pakoras, cheese fondue, bacon-wrapped shrimp. Nellie had two tripels from Allagash, and Stanzi had their wit. I had a Maudite and a Tilburg’s dutch brown ale, of which I’d never heard but of which I became damned fond.

And now…sleepy. I had an 8am meeting this morning. I have another 8am meeting tomorrow morning. I have a 7am (!) meeting Thursday morning. Thank god daylight saving time ended this week.

It'd be easier to illustrate this to Joe Camel if he had five fingers

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This Economist daily chart last week shocked me:

I should point out, though, that it wasn’t so much the chart that freaked me out. Percentages can be deceiving as there’re two numbers involved, and in this case the denominator — total deaths in a country — is going to vary wildly between countries. African countries may have more smoking deaths than North America, and may even have more smoking deaths per capita than North America, but there are myriad other causes of death in those countries which mute the relative impact of smoking.

In my mind the most shocking part of the Economist’s post was in the preamble: “Nearly one in five deaths in rich countries is caused by smoking, according to new data released this week by the World Health Organisation.”  I found that hard to believe, but a quick Google search turned up some supporting evidence.

One in five…one in five. According to the list of leading causes of death in Canada in 1997, that’s twice as many deaths as accidents, diabetes, suicide, liver disease, cirrhosis and HIV account for put together. How tobacco companies haven’t been sued — or prosecuted — into oblivion yet is beyond me.

Seeing that list does put things in perspective though. No warfare in the top 15. No genocide or famine either. No earthquakes, typhoons or tsunamis. Instead, safe from the list of things that kill the rest of the world, we voluntarily stick cancer-causing chemicals in our mouths. Unbelievable.