shamed into enjoying life

by Steven Garrity

The crew at design portal k10k.net (aka Kaliber10000) are taking the summer off. Good for them and thanks for the fine animated jakob nielsen.

this man has good taste in intranets
 

29 thoughts on “shamed into enjoying life”

  2. Can anyone who has lived here most of their lives, but were born somewhere else, actually tell me that they feel like they aren’t an Islander? I was born in Nova Scotia and moved here when I was 5. That’s 17 years ago and I don’t feel any connection to Nova Scotia. I consider myself an Islander and I can’t say that anyone has ever made me feel like I’m not an Islander.

    As an Islander I can’t say that I really enjoyed this article. People like Catherine Hennesey and David Weale lamenting the way the Island caters to tourists in the summer? David Weale doesn’t consider himself an Islander? Bet it doesn’t say that on his CD’s or T-Shirts. Catherine Hennesey doesn’t like the specialty shops and craft stores and tea rooms and comedy barns that are ‘dotting’ the Island…wait, scratch the last two.

    Why do people seem to think that it is so wrong for us to make money? We need money. It makes the world go ’round.

    Do you suppose there are people in Florida saying, “Hey, remember when that 44,000 acres was just a bunch of crap land worth nothing? Before Disney came along and wiped out all our income taxes and raised our profile and created 50,000 jobs? Man..those were the days.”

    I wish that Maclean’s would have countered their story by talking to people like Paderno, Cows, silverorange, Island Preserve Co., Seaman’s, Aliant, Fortis. Somebody that would stretch the story beyond: “Islanders love Anne and they hate her, she stiffles the creativity of starving local artists who are forced to hide from her at Baba’s. The people have cute accents and they still grow potatoes and go bankrupt one after the other like lemmings.” Throw in something like, “Oh, and a local firm just bought a few powerplants in New York.”

    Want to know what people think of PEI? Check epinions (www.epinions.com) under the travel section, reminds me of why I drive through the park every day on my way to work.

  3. i only skimmed the article for my name (and didn’t find it).

    disney world’s a bad fucking example, if you’re trying to convince me that tourism and business is more important than culture, dude.

  4. Uh, Charlie…

    When I go to http://www.epinions.com and look for PEI I find the only cons listed are “tacky”.

    That’s precisely what David Weale and Catherine Hennessey are trying keep out of PEI; and they’ve spent the best part of a life time trying to do it.

    I’m just having a bit of trouble squaring your second paragraph with your last one.

    As for interviewing a bunch of businesses (2nd last paragraph). What’s that got to do with PEI? — that stuff could be anywhere and it would be very much like it is here.

    Perhaps I’ve missed your point somehow. Nudge me in the right direction if I have.

    K

  5. Late night rantings after long days working sometimes result in messed up posts, my apologies!

    First Windom:

    I think the article gives a picture of the Island with Anne in the middle with farmers going poor on one side and artists struggling on the other. It says to me that the quaint government spends all their time promoting anne and cavendish and that’s all there is. I feel it gives a poor impression of what PEI is really like. I’m not saying that business is more important than culture (or vice versa) but at least it shows us as a developed place. There is the one mention of having Internet available in all the schools across the Island and then it’s back to farmers selling out and artists who can’t get on the mainstage because of Anne. Truthfully I think I just find it a bad article.

    Hey Windom, have you ever been to Disney World? I’ve been to many places in the world and I still get excited about going back to Walt Disney World and SeaWorld. My girlfriend told me for the last 6 years about how plastic and fake and corporate and commercial Disney World was. Then, in October, I took her there for a week. Now she’s wondering how we can arrange to go back once a year. I think everyone should go at least once. Disney is a culture. A business and a culture.

    Kevin O:

    In most of the epinions reviews I see people saying that things are tacky, “just like any other place.” But most of them go on to say that they food was good, the Island was beautiful, they never want to leave, and they wish they could stay a little longer. The Macleans article gave me the impression that Anne and tacky things were in-escapable. It was either depressed farmers or tacky tourism marketing. The majority of the people on epinions seemed to be able to say, “Hey, that dancing lobster is tacky.” and move on to something else that wasn’t.

    Quotes like: “Everything designed to get tourist bums into seats is at the expense of the people who live here 12 months a year,” she (Hennesey) laments. “If we don’t watch out, everything authentic will disappear. We’ll be just like everywhere else.”

    and: “Meanwhile, at the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown, Anne of Green Gables — The Musical is beginning its 37th run while edgier, less conventional artists and theatre groups are starved for funding.”

    are dancing around the edge of reality. We will be “just like everywhere else” if we only judge ourselves by tourism.

    They also make it sound like the “edgier” artists are being purposefully held back and Anne is forced on everyone each year. The reality being the Anne brings people to the Island and a wide range of people pay to see it. I submit that “edgier” artists are considered edgy because they don’t appeal to a wide audience and that’s fine but intimating that putting edgier acts on stage at the Confed centre would attract anywhere near the same ticket sales is far fetched.

    Enjoying the discussion, sorry if this one is confused as well, it is time to get some sleep!

  6. the problem with the macleans article is not its criticisms of tourism – the description of the golf course/wax museum culture in cavendish is accurate. the problem is that it tries to say there is more to pei than anne of green gables while dwelling on the tourism too much.

    when i talked to the author of the article, i thought he was going to try and reveal to the rest of canada the talent and culture lurking beneath pei’s glossy freckled image, but he doesn’t mention eyes for telescopes anywhere!

    the article keeps going back to the idea that everything authentic here is hidden beneath the shadow of green gables, which i believe it is for most tourists. but for the people who live here, we’re too busy hanging out at baba’s or victoria row to notice how our culture is perceived by the rest of the world. but after reading the article – and noticing it’s lack of content on our culture – i started thinking, “if we get a couple million people visiting this island every year, how come none of them know who eyes for telescopes, port citizen, or john mackenzie are?”

    the answer is the shit that the article says is taking away from local artists: an emphasis on tourism over culture (check out “stan rogers: the musical” and you’ll see how willing the confed center is to sacrifice culture in order to sell it to idiots from out of town) and the article also mentions an emphasis on reckless agricultural practices over environmental concerns (something you won’t find on most tourist brochures).

    as far as disney goes, it is a brand before it is a business or a culture. it’s a logo. the fact that it looks cute, and has a theme park does not make it any less threatening. the fact that disney OWNS a community makes me want to crawl in a whole and die. we’re all doomed.

  7. Windom, you are gonna love this.

    I have been to Celebration. I had lunch there, toured the city. It’s quite beautiful. You would enjoy the small rebellion that was going on against the city rules. The rebellious ones were the ones with Pink Flamingos on their lawns. They have a hospital on site and one of the most forward thinking grade schools in Florida. I recently did some job hunting in Orlando and considered moving down. I decided that if I made the move, I would try to rent an apartment/house in Celebration.

    Give me a city that hooks every house to broadband, mows your lawn and has an 18 hole golf course, state of the art hospital and top notch school in my backyard and I might just be inclined to have a look. Give me all that and have it operated by Disney’s brilliant imagineers (look at Windom squirm!) and I just might be the first in line!

  8. Wowsers! This is a super discussion you cats have going on here. I can’t resist adding my thoughts…

    Windom, I understand your frustration with not only the article, but also the state of affairs on Prince Edward Island. It does get pretty damn annoying when all people ask us about is Anne. We must remember, however, that we are by no means in a unique situation. How do they think the average Sudburian (?) feels when Mr. Tourist says “Damn! Where’s that big ol’ nickel y’all got here?” How about Torontonians who give directions to the CN Tower? (Who the *%$@ needs directions to the CN Tower anyway?!?) I was in Toronto once and some guy asked me where the CNN Tower was.

    Granted we may have a few more tourism cliches per capita than anywhere else in Canada, but I think it’s a stretch to believe that we’re hard done by. As Charlie has pointed out, it is money that makes the world go ’round, and as long as that is the case we best be prepared to tolerate Magic 93, Anne of Green Gables and plastic lobsters. On the bright side: we have Port Citizen all to ourselves!

  11. Well, I think I should add my standard rant to this list 🙂

    “If they think we are idiots that’s fine, as long as they bring their money,” declares David MacKenzie.

    You all probably have no idea how close to the mark this hits. As a former employee of the Capital Commission of PEI, the battle between historical integrity and cheesy commercial sell outs was one constantly fought. This is a discussion that I won’t elaborate on, but suffice it to say that I’m sure the family of John A MacDonald wouldn’t appreciate a teenager dressing up as their great-grandfather, pushing Murphy brand beer.

    In a similar vein:
    Having worked with the Confederation Players program, I have a deeper appreciation for the power of Island icons. When we would walk down the street in costume, people would stop us to learn more about who we were, having seen us on most of the Islands tourism brochures. We would do our best to get them involved with the history of Charlottetown and Canada, as well as the romance and excitement of the Victorian era. We take our jobs seriously: historical accuracy is important to us, as is making the history fun, interesting, and personal for each individual audience we speak to.

    It is also incredibly rewarding to show tourists the real reasons that make our city (and province) unique and worth visiting. We are historically important! We made stuff happen for Canada! We are infinitely more than Anne, lobsters, and potatoes. But sadly, for the few to whom we show the light, there are boatloads more that bypass us all together. Hence, Founders Hall – which is another rant for another day 🙂

    As a last note:

    I am not an Islander. I’m not really anything; having lived 12 years in Winnipeg (where I was born), 1.5 years in Ottawa, and 8 years here in Charlottetown – with the majority of my family’s customs and way of life being French-Canadian – I am most definitely not an Islander; more of an all-around Canadian. But the promotion of the history of the 1864 Conference has nothing to do with being an Islander per se. I feel personally responsible as a Canadian to ensure that ‘our’ story is told and we educate those we can about who ‘we’ are. If MacLeans magazine wants to talk about the Island selling out and that we are potentially misrepresenting ourselves farmers and fishermen when we are really money hungry business folk, while referring to our legistature as ‘delightfully toy-like’, that’s fine. I’ll just count them in the boatload that we missed. Or perhaps more accurately, the boatload who missed us.

  12. Dan – I think The Truman Show was filmed in SeaSide Florida. I don’t remember the exact name. Celebration has a lot of the same look and feel though. Minus the huge lake and man living in the moon. Great movie.

  13. I agree with Matt. Eyes for Telescopes is a fantastic band, but Johnny Tourist didn’t take his 2.5 kids here to go to Babba’s. He’s here to golf, go to the beach, and see Anne. I don’t think you can blame him for that. Nor do I think you can blame Islanders for promoting the Island as such.

    If you want an authentic cultural experience that is unique to Prince Edward Island, check out the Benevolant (sp?) Irish Society on a Friday night (and please don’t park at silverorange).

    If the good rich people of New England wanted peotry and rock bands, they needn’t travel all the way to Prince Edward Island.

  14. But if they want them to have those funny Accents. We’ve got just the fish’n’chips for them to munch on.

    Which reminds me, don’t order a burger from a Fish and Chips shack… It has been cooked in fish residue. Not cute.

  16. Yep, go to Irish Benevolent Society. And DON’T PARK IN OUR PARKING LOT! This picture was taken tonight from someone who tried…

    Look out Scratchy! It's an Irishman!

    And by the way, we had nothing to do with this. Really.

  18. Has anyone seen my soft-top caddy? It’s white. I’m sure I left it right behind the BIS.

  19. If by BIS you Benevolant In Sister…

    Then your sister had the keys and took it when she got off work.

    BIOTCH

  20. b/w making paintball rock vids and chronicling the downfall of sweet white caddys how is it you folks get any work done?

  23. i’ve been reading too much naomi kline lately. or maybe i haven’t been reading enough.

    anyway, what i meant by disney being a brand before a culture is that we can all participate in a real culture. but if i tried to write a song about mickey, or make a painting of goofy, my ass is going to get sued for copyright infringement. disney is something you can buy into, but not participate in any other way.

    and it’s not exactly a business because of its pervasive intrusion into every facet of our lifestyles.

    i guess they really are more like some freaky religion than a culture.

    goddamn them all.

  24. It’s odd, I just showed up in PEI yesterday and it isn’t home anymore. Everyone is older or have moved away.

    It just seems like more of a tourist trap than it used to be.

    Weird

    =v=

  25. Welcome home!

    I lived in Winnipeg for 8 years, moved to Ottawa, then here ever since, and I kept thinking “It’s ok, PEI doesn’t feel like home, Winnipeg is!” and I went there and it wasn’t. Leaving me stranded. I blame airplanes for screwing up natural human territorial bondings. I’m sure I’m missing out on something.

  26. I’m changed my mind.

    After tonight, it feels like home again. Yet we’ve added a new twist, I met Jeff and Dorrell tonight.

    It’s almost five and I have to go to my grandmothers tommorow, but yes it finally feels a little like home.

    =v=

  27. Ugh.

    Home again and not particularly thrilled. Wearing my cowboy hat and Johnny Depp sunglasses which makes me feel better, but it’s so hard to see the keyboard.

    And it’s rather late. Turn on the fan to drown out the birds. Or turn up the music (Magnetic Fields).

    Last beer. Honestly.

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