This Is Young Calgarians

Yellow House On The Prairie
Originally uploaded by Gringcorp.

Little nod to Make Up there. Yes, I am currently chilling out in the world's largest airport chair, charging my iPod, and catching up on the news, after a few days offline. I was in Banff for a day, where I neglected to take in any of the scenery (usual conference nonsense), and then spent two days in Calgary with relatives.

Mostly just chilling and sleeping an driving around and telling stupid stories about grandparents, except for a brief visit to an historic house. The Perrenoud Ranche has a history going back to 1890, although the main structure is just under 100 years old. It was restored last decade and now serves as a place to display art. An earlier plan to run it as a B&B fell through, which is probably for the best because it's a lovely place to see pictures. The happy snap up top doesn't really do it justice, so please follow through on the link.

While I'm talking about cultural institutions for a moment, could I just issue this plea to the Municipal Arts Society to stop bringing the spam to concerned Prospect Heights/Park Slope residents. For some reason, signing up to the Brooklyn Speaks campaign, this whole misguided "maybe if we adopt more nuanced tones in criticizing the Atlantic Yards project they'll scale it back or make it less ass-ugly" campaign has been read by the MAS as consent to be added to its mailing list for all of its non-Atlantic Yards verbiage.

The sum total of the campaign's achievement seems to be a healthy boost to the MAS' email list, and that ain't right. Apparently John Kerry's personal political organisation benefited from a similar influx of email addresses from people who couldn't stand George W. Bush. He tried to use them to turn himself into some kind of power broker. Which is bad. So you shouldn't do likewise, Kent Barwick.


[UPDATE. Hello No Land Grab readers. I've fixed the post, the result of a rather rushed writing process, so that it makes sense]