OPUNTIA 444 Early June 2019
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OPUNTIA 444 Early June 2019 Opuntia is published by Dale Speirs, Calgary, Alberta. It is posted on www.efanzines.com and www.fanac.org. My e-mail address is: [email protected] When sending me an emailed letter of comment, please include your name and town in the message. LUFTBALLOONS, BUT I DIDN’T COUNT IF THERE WERE 99 photos by Dale Speirs As much as possible I like to have something colourful or scenic for the covers, so herewith is an art installation at the Southcentre Mall in Calgary that was staged in May. 2 3 JOURNEY TO RED DEER During the lunch hour break of the conference, I strolled down the street and photos by Dale Speirs saw this amusing juxtaposition in a shopping plaza. One way or another, you can get spirits at either end of this building. I traveled north on May 25 to Red Deer, a 90-minute drive. The city, population 100,000, is almost exactly halfway between Calgary and the capital city of Returning home, I took the old highway through the village of Penhold, which Edmonton. The reason was for a philatelic conference called Alberta-Wide is about ten minutes south of Red Deer. During World War Two there was a Stamp Gathering, which brought together stamp clubs from across the province military air base here. The RCAF abandoned the base after the Cold War ended for workshops and seminars. and turned it over to the City of Red Deer, which now uses it as the municipal airport. The details would not be of interest to outsiders. After the conference was over, I did some side road driving on my way back to Calgary. A few photos Souvenirs of the wars, hot and cold, were on display, seen on the next page. herewith. 4 Below is a view of the airport terminal, with a yellow Harvard trainer aircraft on display. They were ubiquitous over the Canadian prairies during the last war, as numerous air bases on the flatlands trained pilots from across the British Commonwealth. At right is a relic from the Cold War. Penhold was part of the early warning system. The radar antenna was actually positioned elsewhere on a nearby hill and brought to this park after the radar station was decommissioned. 5 AROUND COWTOWN photos by Dale Speirs On May 9, the City installed a new sculpture on the banks of the Bow River at the southwest corner of the 12 Street SE bridge. The subject was General James Wolfe, who died winning the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759. That battle ended New France and changed the course of North American history. Calgarians were baffled as to why he should be honoured in a city that wasn’t founded until 1875 and is thousands of kilometres from the Plains of Abraham. Wolfe never knew the prairies existed, much less the Bow River. The statue shows Wolfe’s head and shoulders morphing into a flock of sparrows. The plaque on the plinth cited some artistic gibberish about how it was transformative. Our tax dollars in action. 6 7 On May 29, I was at the University of Calgary campus. They have an occasional feature called Soapbox Science, whereby researchers do exactly that, get up in the quad and harangue passersby about their projects. This woman was discussing her graduate project on Northern Leopard Frogs. Certainly better than listening to Tories or Dippers. Calgary is a great city for street and ethnic festivals all summer long, except when the Stampede rodeo is underway, which is the biggest of all festivals. The season begins each year on the first Sunday of June with the Lilac Festival, so- called because they flower in early June. As I walked out my house on June 2 to take the bus downtown, I photographed some of my lilacs in bloom next to the Opuntiamobile. 8 The Lilac Festival began in 1989 as a street festival in the Mission district taking up a couple of blocks. It has since expanded into the city’s largest and longest street fair, with 120,000 attending throughout the day. It now stretches along 4 Street SW from 13 Avenue to the Elbow River, a distance of 13 blocks. Each side street is blocked off for a half-block and is used by bands and dance troupes. There are hundreds of exhibitors and food trucks. All the restaurants set up patios on the sidewalks, jammed with people paying $10 for a beer with insects. At right is Harry the Horse, the mascot of the Calgary Stampede. 9 Below: I always buy a Bavarian smokie at any street festival I go to, the only time I eat them, and always from The Dogfather. At right: Even the haute patisseries have mascots. 10 Dance, dance, dance! Top: Carifest will be in mid-August, so they were advertising at Lilac Festival. Bottom: Upside-down milkshakes? 11 FAR SPEAKING STORIES: PART 8 blew the opportunity. Realizing his blunder the next day, he telephoned her but by Dale Speirs had to leave a message on her voicemail. [Parts 1 to 7 appeared in OPUNTIAs #313, 327, 337, 361, 372, 389, and 410.] She didn’t return his call, which fed his insecurity and caused his thoughts to run away on him. Each day for the next four days, he called back and left an Messages. increasingly angrier message. The last one was volcanic, in his words as he told Seinfeld about it. I am old enough to have had an answering machine for my landline telephone that used tape cassettes. For some brands of machines, one carried a special Donna finally called Costanza at his office, telling him that she had been beeper that was held to the mouthpiece of another telephone and would trigger traveling and couldn’t get her messages because she didn’t have the remote playback after you dialed your home phone. control beeper. Costanza was beside himself, so he hatched an elaborate plan with Seinfeld to switch the tape on her machine before she had a chance to play In the 1990s, voice mail was introduced whereby one could just dial a number, it back. enter a code, and get messages over the telephone. This was a boon to those away from home who wanted to check their messages. They met her outside her apartment as she returned from her trip. While Costanza took her into another room and distracted her, Seinfeld switched her Then came cellphones with voice mail. Few Millennials have seen the tape machine tape for a blank one. They succeeded, but there was a twist. Donna machines, and those born since 2000 probably never heard tell of such devices. mentioned she had her neighbour come over and play back the messages. They Ironically, since smartphones came in, I seldom make or receive calls. In an both thought Costanza was joking, and the messages were hilarious. All that average month, I might have five minutes of calls or voice mails, and two or worry for nothing. three times a year I have no voice calls in a month. The majority of my contacts are now by email and texting. Have I Reached The Party To Whom I Am Speaking? The advent of cellphones has dated many television shows and movies. The “The Statement Of Randolph Carter” (1919) by H.P. Lovecraft is a story I SEINFELD television series ran from 1989 to 1998, and went off the air just as overlooked before as an example of early telephone fiction. The narrator told smartphones appeared. I have the series on DVD, and it is noticeable how many how he and Harley Warren went into a cypress swamp somewhere down south plot points would not work today when a telephone was involved. By contrast, to find an ancient cemetery and then explore one particular crypt. a more modern series such as THE BIG BANG THEORY had no landlines except in occasional office situations. All the characters used smartphones to They had what was for that era some cutting-edge communications, two advance the plots. portable telephones connected by very long cables. The telephones were in briefcase-sized boxes, with enough cable for any length of tunnel likely to be “The Phone Message” (1991) was a Season 2 episode of SEINFELD, written by encountered. Warren went down inside the crypt while Carter remained in Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld. The latter played himself in a highly telephonic communication at the surface. fictionalized version of his life in Manhattan. His sidekick George Costanza was a short insecure man. He had an explosive temper that frequently got him Warren ran into difficulties, serious ones. He met some of those eldritch horrors into trouble when a more reasonable person could have avoided it with a bit of that lurk about in Lovecraft stories. It was the last thing he did. As his screams diplomacy. died away, one of those horrors picked up the telephone. In a voice not of this world, it told Carter, who was shouting down the line trying to re-establish Costanza’s current girlfriend Donna (he usually had a new one every week in the contact: “You fool, Warren is dead!” early part of the series) had invited him up to her apartment, but he panicked and 12 Landlines were used by burglars to verify if someone was at home. If the He dialed a number and was connected to someone in the far future. Both sides telephone was answered, nothing more happened. If no one answered, the house disbelieved each other, but eventually they got it straight.