Monday, January 17, 2011

AND SO IT BEGINS...



My new TV show on Shaw Community TV Channel 4 begins this week.

We will tape the first episode on Thursday afternoon and your first opportunity to see the show will be on Friday, January 21st at 2:30 pm.

The show will then be rebroadcast each week as follows:

Tuesdays 10:30 pm

Wednesdays 9:30 pm

Fridays 2:30 pm

Mondays 4:30 am (for the Sleepless in South Burnaby and the Truly Devoted)

You will also be able to watch the shows on YouTube, and on this blog.

Before the week is out, you will also find new Facebook and Twitter links to follow the show babble.

Here is the content for Show One:

CANDIDATE SOUP - Can any of the Usual Suspects lead us out of the darkness. Globe and Mail columnist GARY MASON joins us in studio to examine in minute detail the men and women who wish to lead the B.C. Liberals & new Democrats into the next provincial election. Is there a winner at the gate?

And just to give you a heads-up...next week BILL TIELEMAN will pour over the Basi-Virk disgrace.

GHOSTS


A hospice is a place for the dying to die in peace and dignity.

Hospices can be found world-wide. There are not nearly enough of them, but they exist everywhere.

A UBC proposal to open a 15-bed hospice run by the Order of St. John and the UBC faculty of medicine has been put on hold for the moment. A handful of Chinese residents of a near-by residential tower have protested that their cultural values are not being recognized. The residents have complained that living near the dead or dying is bad luck.

I understand.

Most of the men who died in the American Civil War died, not of gunshot or bayonet, but of disease that raced through their own camps. Similarly, towns adjacent to these military camps in both North and the South were devastated by disease.

Living near the dying could be bad luck indeed.

SOME CENTURIES AGO.

People who have come to a hospice to die are not disease carriers. Most are dying of irreversible cancers.

The University (which of late has become the Poster Child for Political Correctness - note the cancellation of the art exhibit at the Museum of Anthropology - puleeeese!) has quite rightly taken a momentary breath to calm the waters.

Thank goodness for Tung Chan, the former CEO of S.U.C.C.E.S.S., who has spoken up and pointed out that most Chinese are very supportive of hospices.

Perhaps, with the help of a conciliatory voice like Tung Chan, the good people of The Promontory highrise will relax, stop yelling "Racism!" and accept that one day they too might appreciate a quiet and loving place to go at the end of days.

STARTLING TALENT