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Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Happy New Year!

September is a special time. For us, in the far north it marks the change of seasons. It is already well and truly fall up here. The trees have been golden for two weeks now. One night we were just out for a walk and there it was, a single tree, a small poplar, alone amongst the spruce and Tamaracks. A golden signpost to let us know that the change was coming. It was a beautiful day, hot really. The road was dusty and the sand flies were fierce. Suddenly there it was all alone and looking odd, its' limbless trunk adorned in yellow leaves looking odd amidst the dark green of the the spruce. Lone beacon. The days that came brought more yellow to his neighbors even the Tamarack which is alone among conifers in shedding it's needles each fall in the boreal forest. The days are getting short err and night is returning to the arctic. The summer long day is almost over. The mornings are crisp the days are warm and splendid, except for the Sand flies.

Years ago September was special too. All summer long we marched to the tune of a different drummer. We still had a routine, to be sure. I mean I still had my paper route, six days a week. But there was swimming afterwards/ Baseball in the mornings and evenings. The days were long and carefree. July was heaven, fall with its' tighter schedules and increased responsibilities was a long way off. When you are twelve a month is a very long time. Your life could still be measured in months. Just a gross of months. A month might as well be a year. Today a month might as well be a minute. Months slip by so fast that you can scarce remember them. Remember the month that lead to Christmas when you were twelve? It seemed like a long endless tract less expanse. The way the prairies must have seemed to Thompson or the arctic to Franklin. A thing so vast that time stood still. But eventually it did pass. Leading inexorably, to August. August was good, but not quite as good as July. Like a car that has lost that new car smell. By August there was a dent in the door of summer and the sidewalls were rubbed by the curb of care. You lost your pride of ownership of summer by August. In August summer was a tarnished thing. No longer new. Frayed, faded somehow less precious. You stopped thinking in terms of months. Summer had now shrunk to weeks. And a week is something a twelve year old can relate to. I love summer. I always have. In fact I measure my life by them. Another summer marks the passing of another year.

That brings me to the point of this essay, if that is what this rambling string of sentences is. Maybe a rant is a better description.When I saw that little tree, that tiny yellow harbinger of fall, it was like the passing of another year. Another summer had come and gone. I have always wondered at the arbitrary nature of January first. Why on earth is January first new years? What is different about January first , Different I mean from December 31st? Nothing I think. It is still winter. The winter's solstice is marked by the celebration of Christmas. I can see this being a start of a new year, as it marks the point where the days will again start to get longer. But why the first of January there is something artificial about it. Why not make the first day of spring the first day of the year? For most people the spring is the beginning. When life begins anew. Or why not the first day of summer? The change of a season. The beginning of what is for most people the most popular season of the year.


Or, if I might be permitted, why not the first day of September? Bear with me a few moments and I will try to explain. I will try to sell you on thing strange idea, that is not so strange as it might seem. What is different about January first, I asked? After the holiday we go back to work and school as usual. The winter day will still be short and dark. In fact it will be the start of the longest, bleakest part of the winter. The longest wait until the next holiday. Especially here in the NWT where we don't get another holiday until Easter, whenever that will be, its' date being so arbitrary and fickle. No January first marks no real event for me, except that it is my Wife's birthday. If you'd consulted me, and I know full well that you didn't. But if you had taken leave of your senses and consulted me I would have chosen September first.


The first of September because it is the first of the month. But September because it is the perfect time for a new year. For a new year is at once a joyous time, a new beginning, a clean slate, and fresh page, a blank canvas, choose your metaphor. But it is also a time of reflection and, I think, a little sadness. It is after all the end of an old year. A passing of time. An ending of sorts. September is just such a time. It is the ending of summer The morphing of summer into fall. Of carefree life into the structure of fall. It is the end of another summer. A time of some sadness. For we all love summer. It is a time when vacations are done. For students and parents alike. And for others too. For most of us, parent, student or not have structured our holidays during the less cluttered days of summer. Si there is closure in September. There is an ending of sorts. But there is a beginning too.


Perhaps it is most clearly felt by children and those who have a second chance at childhood, parents. For parents experience childhood again, vicariously, through their children. Through there eyes they will see the world anew. We think of children as being unable to focus. To do what we take for granted. We ignore all things around us. All distractions and we focus on a single thing, a single task. And we, in so doing, feel superior like we are better than children because we can focus, we can ignore. For children are like strangers in a a strange land. They look at the world with eyes wide open, eyes of wonder. Eyes that are seeing things for the first time. Do you remember the last time you were in a foreign country? I bet you could write a five page letter about the first time you walked down the street. About how the mail boxes were a different color. How the parking meters were solar powered. Try to do the same thing about the last time you walked into your place of work. Not so easy is it. Kids aren't distracted. They are seeing everything, they are focusing on everything the way you would if you were seeing it all anew. Parents get a special gift. They get to see the world fresh, through the eyes of their children. Through eyes that have not lost the wonder of the everyday.



Children are usually of two minds about September, the way that you always are about a new year. Summer is over, but fall has a promise too. A new year a new school year. Last years friends, who live too far to play with in summer. Those who took the bus, or a different bus, anyways. They would be waiting for them. There would be new kids too. Maybe a whole new school for kids going to middle school from grade school. New kids who had moved into the area. New teachers for most, with all the threat and promise that this entails. New clothes. For me a new pair of Dash sneakers, those black canvas topped ones with the rubber caps on the ankle bone. New scribblers and new campfire notebooks, with the two guys sitting outside their tent in front of the two tome campfire, blue and red ink. New erasers, the pink ones, unsmudged by the graphite of mistakes. There would be new textbooks, a new plaid zippered bag full of new pencils, not even sharpened yet. Their was in the newness the potential of perfection. For a fleeting moment you could imagine a year when you never used the pink eraser. Never left the curled shards of rubber, never smelled the burnt rubber smell of failure. Never left the mark of error on the page of life. New, like a new year.

September also marks the new TV season. After the reruns of summer a new season begins. No such thing in January. What fool picked January for new years? Move labor day to January. Who cares when you celebrate labor day? Actually when better to celebrate labor than in the dark days of winter? When you go to work in the dark and come home in the dark like some pit pony that never sees the light of day! When better to take a day's labor off to see the brief minutes of daylight. When better to take a lazy day? To linger over a second cup of coffee. To put up your feet and trade the morning paper for a trashy book, like the guy in Stan Roger's song "Workin' Joe"

So join me in this campaign. This sacred crusade. Write you M.P., your MLA, your town councillor. Add your voice to what will soon be a chorus. A chorus of right minded Canadians. Who know a new year when they see it. And who know when we really need a day off! Maybe someday we can straighten out this world.





Workin' Joe

by Stan Rogers Fogarty's Cove Music



I used to love these lazy winter afternoons;.

Starting out too late giving up too soon;

Coming home to coffee and a trashy book;

Never paying any mind if things were never done on Time

was when a fella could just let time slip away;

No worries car or telephone just rent and food to pay;

And every night with single buddies boozing at the bar,

Living for the minute, taking every hour in it!

But now there's just too much to do in any given day;

The car phone the kiddies shoes too many bills to pay;

Running from the crack of dawn 'til Knowlton reads the news,

And falling into bed too wiped to even kiss the wife good night.

Oh, oh, oh...just another working Joe.



The baby's in the Swingomatic, singing Rock and Roll;

My Sweetie's in the kitchen, whipping up my favourite casserole.

I knocked off work at ten o'clock, the kids are still at school.

The coffee pot is perking...to hell with bloody working.

Oh, it sure is sweet to sit at home and let time slip away,

Through tomorrow I'll be scratching through another working day;

But when I start to come apart from all the things to do,

I know that I'll be taking soon another lazy winter afternoon.

Oh, oh, oh...just another working Joe!