Ghosts under the floorboards

We have had occasion over the last few months to observe several local workpeople close up, and the ghosts of several others. The opportunities related to repairs and renovations we were doing to the house we have moved into.

It's well-known that one of Nova Scotia's chief exports is its youth. Its younger, more ambitious--and, yes, more capable--folks tend to head off to Alberta, Toronto, or the Boston States to experience the larger world and maybe make their fortune. That leaves behind many folks who are content doing what they do right here and do it well (or well enough); and a bunch of other folks who have not yet found the work or avocation that ignites them. Those latter folks take jobs that appear because they need the money, but may have no affection for the work they have to do, the structure or system that results, or the people who pay them.

Our household goddess

Our house was once a tiny summer cottage on a slope. It is now a somewhat larger year-round house with a ground floor tucked in under the main floor. The silent-movie actress Theda Bara spent summers here, which must have made a refreshing change from vamping around with Rudolph Valentino in Hollywood.

Every couple of decades the house has had some improvements: new windows here, new kitchen there; the aforementioned lower level. And the ghosts of some of the workpeople who made those changes come out to haunt us as more recent workers help with the changes that we want to make (even more windows! fewer frozen pipes in January!!).

We have had a couple of really, really solid craftsmen helping us, and it is a delight to look at the improvements they have made. It was less of a delight each time they showed us something previous slackers had done, a decade or decades ago, and then hidden behind wallboard or under gravel, some ghoulish bad idea now needing attention before things got even worse. Those are the ghosts of past workers who were just putting in hours, who couldn't be bothered to use a right angle if one walked up and volunteered. Our current, competent folk would sigh and look rueful on behalf of their predecessors, and then do the best they could to save the situation.

To add to the fun, we had a couple of modern-day slackers who seemed to spend a lot of time avoiding doing the sensible thing in order to do the half-assed thing and then cover it up real quick. I don't think they hate us, or really want the house to suffer. They just are not ignited, not engaged; would rather be anywhere else than where they were.

It takes a while to figure out what kind of worker each person is. And then, because we are kindly souls (and because we doubted the evidence of our own eyes) it took a while to get quit of the slackers so the craftsmen could do their thing. And I apologize in advance to some future owner of this house because, along with the pleasant and clever changes we have ordered up this year, this summer's slackers have laid down some nasty ghosts--ghosts we are barely aware of ourselves yet. But they will rise at some inconvenient time.

I only hope there will still be some solid craftsmen around to come to the rescue.

Getting there in one piece

One of the reasons we wanted to return to Canada was to be as politically active as I think every citizen ought to be. We haven't cornered the market on morals or ideas, but our ideas and our sense of what is just and right should be part of the political conversation. When we live in the United States we have to be pretty mute since we are not citizens.

The political party we align with, the New Democrats, was the government here in Nova Scotia when we got back to the province last year. And of course it promptly got walloped in an election about a year ago. The premier, who was also leader of the NDP, was defeated in his riding and resigned hi leadership.

Now we are starting to move toward a campaign to select a new party leader. The actual electoral convention won't happen until 2016, but folks interested in offering for the job are already starting to position themselves. This is right and proper: it's a big challenge and should not--cannot--be taken up on a whim.

So what I've been thinking about is how potential candidates should position themselves. The temptation must be to find the most inclusive and least offensive descriptors ("renewed leadership", "put the province on the right track", "end inefficiencies") so that people can gather under your banner even if they might not agree with every single thing you have ever said or thought.

The problem is, this seems to be what the NDP government did as it crashed and burned after only one term. There are some core principles of the NDP, and the government seemed unable either to articulate them or show how their actions harmonized with those principles; and so a lot of folks who might otherwise be assumed to support or at least be open to the NDP sat on their hands or voted elsewhere. (There were other factors at play, of course, including an incessant megaphone of negativity by the corporate media against the "socialist" government.)

It's a standard trope: you have to make compromises to get ahead in the world, and you can end up getting to, or near to, where you wanted to go having abandoned as ballast all the things you once stood for and worked for. And then you have to wonder, was the trip worth it?

Tomorrow night I go to hear one potential candidate, and then I meet with another on Sunday. There is a third who is testing the waters, and I bet there will be a couple more candidates who appear once the rules of the campaign are sorted out. I hope every single one of them stands up loudly and proudly for the party's core principles:

I'll revisit the campaign in future posts, to let y'all know what I'm seeing.