On February 28, 2008 Karen Armstrong won the TED Prize and made a wish: for help creating, launching and propagating a Charter for Compassion. Since that day, thousands of people have contributed to the process so that on November 12, 2009 the Charter was unveiled to the world.

I'm setting aside enough 15 minute appointments over the next week or so to meet with all 50 of my advisees. I'll be available to answer any advising questions and to help review your choice of courses for the fall semester. If you'll be a senior planning on graduating in spring 2010, you should definitely come to see me before registering so that we can make sure you'll be set to graduate.

Keep reading after the break for further details and to choose your appointment time.

English majors and minors can find the list of Spring 2010 courses from the Department of English at the department's website. On that same page, you will also find the list of courses that fill the A, B, C, D, and senior seminar requirements. It's also worth checking the Winter Session and Spring course listings from Continuing Education. Note that registration for Spring courses from CE opens on November 23.

Here are a few quick links that you will need when planning your courses:

• Registration schedule for Spring 2010.
• Click here for the complete list of Arts and Sciences Distribution Requirements (PDF file)
• Here's a link to the course listings from the Registrar's website
• Spring enrollment listings (updated hourly)

BEFORE COMING TO SEE ME, ESPECIALLY IF YOU'RE A GRADUATING SENIOR, MAKE SURE TO RUN A "CATS REPORT" TO SEE WHAT REQUIREMENTS YOU STILL NEED TO FILL. If possible, print a copy and bring it with you to our meeting. That will speed up the process considerably. Also, please do your best to pick your courses before our meeting.

Here are the available time slots I have in the coming days. Please e-mail me to book an appointment. I'll fill in the taken spots on this form as I hear from you on a first-come, first-served basis.

REMINDER: ALL APPOINTMENTS WILL BE HELD IN MY OFFICE AT 321 OLD MILL

Friday, November 13
2:00: Megan B.
2:15: Melanie D.
2:30: Nigel P.

Monday, November 16
9:00:
9:15:
9:30:
9:45:
10:00:
10:15:
10:30:
10:45: Chris F.
11:00:
11:15:
11:30: Austin B.
11:45:
12:00:
12:15:
12:30:
1:45:
2:00: Stephanie W.
2:15:
2:30: Hallie B.
2:45:
3:00: Molly M.
3:15: Matt C.
3:30: Dan Y.
3:45:

Tuesday, November 17
9:00:
9:15:
9:30: Paul D.
9:45: Derrick D.
10:00: Megan L.
10:15:
10:30: Jack L.
10:45: Alex S.
11:00:
11:15:
11:30:

Wednesday, November 18
9:00:
9:15:
9:30:
9:45:
10:00:
10:15:
10:30:
10:45:
11:00:
11:15:
11:30:
11:45: Whit B.

Thursday and Friday: unavailable

POETRY READING BY RANDALL MAGGS

NWP moves on

Greetings from Northwest Passages. I know that it has been a long time since you have heard from us, but I’m writing today with important news. As of December 31, 2009, Rob Stocks, Sarah Bagshaw, and I will no longer be in the business of selling books. Northwest Passages will cease operation at the end of this year.

This decision has been coming for some time and probably should have been made a long time ago. We’ve loved much of what we’ve done at NWP and have had a hard time letting go of our passion for selling and promoting Canadian literature. With the directions our lives and careers have taken in recent years, not to mention the changes to the landscape of publishing and bookselling in Canada, we feel it is time for us to close our store.

We are very grateful to all those of you who have supported us over the 14 years our site has been online. This newsletter’s editorial talks in more detail about our history, but suffice it to say that we have loved working with so many great authors, publishers, distributors, and, most important, customers from across Canada and around the world. Northwest Passages never made us anything close to enough money for us to even consider this a part-time job, but the site did help

Although we have stopped bringing in new books, we still have a considerable inventory of fine Canadian books that we are hoping to clear out by the end of this year. If you’ve supported us in the past, we hope that you will take some time to look through our inventory. Any of these books would make great Christmas gifts for your loved ones or excellent additions to your own personal library of Canadian fiction, poetry, drama, and literary criticism.

To see which books we have in stock, just go to our website at http://www.nwpassages.com You can either go genre by genre and see what’s “in stock now” or head right to the “On Sale” heading on our site. Either way, you’ll discover many great works of Canadian fiction, poetry, drama, and literary criticism at excellent prices.

The future of Northwest Passages?

Over the next seven weeks, Northwest Passages will be clearing out all of its inventory and preparing to close down our retail operation. We will, however, entertain any offers from parties interested in taking over Northwest Passages and carrying it on into the future. As mentioned below, with Twitter and blogs and espresso book machines these days, perhaps someone might want to take this established brand and bring it back to life in a new form. We’ll definitely be willing to talk to anyone who’s interested. If this interests you, please contact Paul directly at paul -- at -- nwpassages.com

Passages: 14 years of Canadian Literature Online

In the fall of 1995, my best friend Rob Stocks and I came up with an idea that, for better worse, would go on to be part of our lives for the best part of fourteen years. Rob, an early Internet entrepreneur in the days long before this would become a common term, and I, a grad student just starting a PhD program in Comparative Literature, thought we might be able to combine our interests and expertise to create an online bookstore. What would make this online bookstore unique was that it would focus solely on Canadian literature. In the years since, we have put thousands of hours of work into our business and have helped sell thousands of Canadian books to readers around the world. Much of this work has been done by Sarah Bagshaw, who for years now has been the heart and soul of NWP.

When the Northwest Passages website went live in the summer of 1996, Amazon.com was still a new enterprise that many doubted would ever be capable of turning a profit. Although there was no Canadian equivalent to Amazon whatsoever, but Rob and I didn’t have much interest in the “everything for everyone” approach to bookselling online. We envisioned that the Internet could become home to a multiplicity of niche booksellers who could provide both a deep selection of an online store and the knowledgeable customer service of an independent bookseller. Northwest Passages would target the valuable and, still to this day, underserved market of Canadian literature.

In the early days of Northwest Passages, many people in the publishing industry viewed us great suspicion. As crazy as this might sound today, it sometimes took me weeks to persuade certain publishers that putting a picture of a book’s cover up on our website would neither violate copyright nor anger the book’s author. While publishers gradually warmed to my argument that this was no different than putting a copy of the book in a store’s front window, they were clearly unprepared at that time for the massive changes that the internet would soon bring to bookselling and publishing. When we launched, many publishers did not even have websites and none had any people on staff devoted to online marketing of any sort. Furthermore, most publishers were either unable or unwilling to provide us with digital data of any sort. Many of the early book covers and book descriptions that still exist in our database were all painstakingly scanned or entered by hand.

One of the things at the heart of our early vision of Northwest Passages that long set us apart from other online stores of any sort was that we wanted our site to be as much of an information resource as it was a retail store. Ultimately, as the three of us will readily admit, Northwest Passages was always more successful as a hub for information about Canadian books than it was as a store. At its peak, Northwest Passages saw thousands of different visitors accessing our site each month and over 1000 readers subscribed to our newsletter, The Compass. At the same time, however, we never sold enough books to pay even one of us a salary that would enable us to look after the store full-time. Because we held limited inventory and brought in books as people ordered them, it was very difficult for us to compete with the behemoth online bookstores (Amazon.ca and Chapters-Indigo) or local stores where you can walk in a find a book within a few minutes. The lure of immediacy was hard for us to overcome in the minds of our customers.

Where we did succeed commercially was mostly in sales to customers outside of Canada. Accustomed to moderate to long shipping times for purchases made by mail or online, these clients were more than willing to wait a few weeks for a book to arrive. More important, they appreciated having a bookseller like Sarah who was eager to help them obtain the books they wanted and who would keep them apprised of the latest Canadian releases and literary news. We also did well selling course books for Canadian literature courses taught everywhere from Australia to Italy. These customers especially will feel the loss of Northwest Passages acutely.

Looking back at what we began 14 years ago, it’s clear that Northwest Passages was ahead of its time. In some small ways, perhaps, we helped push some Canadian publishers on to the Internet more quickly than they might have otherwise done. With the technologies that surround us today such as Twitter, blogs, ebook readers, and Espresso Book Machines, I can’t help but wish sometimes that we were starting out again today with the same youthful energy and enthusiasm Rob and I shared in those early days of the Internet. We are once again at the dawn of a new and exciting era for publishing and bookselling in this country that will require us to start thinking in new and innovative ways about what it is that we do.

Over fourteen years, our lives have grown in rich and wonderful ways. So too has publishing and the selling of books. Today, Rob, Sarah, and I are ready to leave Northwest Passages behind and to go our separate ways. With his company ideaLEVER, Rob continues to innovate in the world of ecommerce and content management. Sarah, who has really kept NWP running for much of the last decade, has taken her expertise as one of the best booksellers around to KidsBooks in Vancouver. I, as many of you know, am now in the US teaching Canadian literature at the University of Vermont and directing its Canadian Studies Program.

We are incredibly grateful for the support we have received from family and friends, publishers and authors, professors and students. Most of all, we want to thank our incredibly loyal customers, some of whom have stuck with us since our first days online. It has been our great pleasure to get to know so many interesting people from all corners of the world.

Canadian literature, as we have seen firsthand, continues to have a wide international audience. We have been honoured to have helped readers everywhere get their hands on thousands of Canadian books.

On behalf of Rob, Sarah, and myself, thank you again for all of your support.

Paul Martin

October 20, 2009

What makes this event unique is that Spotted Cow Press will be printing off copies of S. Minsos' novel Squire Davis and the Crazy River in each of these locations on Espresso Book Machines, making this the first "Double Espresso book launch" in history. After a reading by the author, both the University of Alberta Bookstore in Edmonton, owner of one of the very first Espresso Book Machines ever produced, and the Titles bookstore at McMaster University in Hamilton, who acquired their machine more recently, will start printing copies of the book simultaneously for customers to purchase on the spot. Customers at the Titles bookstore will be able to watch the book launch in Edmonton, 3000 km away, via live video.

Spotted Cow Press and the University of Alberta bookstore already made history on this front when it launched (PDF) Twice in a Blue Moon, a new collection of poetry by Joyce Harries, using the Espresso Book Machine on November 15, 2007, which might well be the first launch of a new literary title using the machine. The cutting edge approaches of both Spotted Cow Press and the U of Alberta bookstore are only just now becoming more mainstream with more Espresso machines starting to appear in bookstores such as the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, VT, and with Google announcing just yesterday that it will being to sell copies of over 2 million currently out-of-print book titles via the Espresso Book Machine.

(Here's a PDF link to the Spotted Cow Press press release about this afternoon's event)

If you're interested in following along online, I expect that there will be a few people twittering from each event. Just look for the hashtag #doubleespresso or follow @pjmartin or @MACBookstore on twitter.

Even as a non-American, I'm getting a bit freaked out by the rhetoric of the anti-Obama crowd. To me, it's gotten beyond bizarre and is getting plain scary. I would feel even more disheartened if I saw something like this happening in my own country.

This great editorial cartoon makes light of all this, but, really, can people actually think that it's okay to pull their kids out of school so they don't have to hear a message from the leader of their country? That scares me. Of course, those are probably the same people who would be up in arms if they tried to pull the Pledge of Allegiance out of the schools.

I've told my kids that, as non-Americans, they don't need to say the pledge, but that they should be respectful of it. Obama is not their president and this is not their country. I'm happy, though, that they get to watch his speech in school tomorrow. Obama is such a fine example of what is possible when you value education and develop an insatiable curiosity about the entire world. He's the best role model of any world leader that I can recall. I feel very sorry for the children whose parents are removing them from school tomorrow. That narrow-minded action by their parents is teaching them the exact opposite of what education should be about.

All four Martins had a great time at Shelburne Museum this evening. The Tragically Hip were excellent, as usual, and the setting was a wonderful place to see a concert. It's always kind of a surreal experience seeing The Hip here in Vermont because, although tonight's gig was sold out, the venues and crowds are vastly smaller than what one would find in Canada. So, it always feels like a special treat getting to see them in such an intimate venue.

Here's an expanded version of the comment I just posted on one of the many conservative blogs that is now using this video as their top evidence of how the last thing they want is for the US to look to Canada for inspiration.

As a Canadian currently living in the US, I watched this video with interest. I saw nothing that resembles my own many experiences with healthcare in Canada. As with the United States, the level of service one gets can depend greatly on where you live. For me, I've consistently had longer ER wait times in the US than I ever had in Canada (my son has asthma and I've visited emergency rooms on a number of occasions back in Canada). Just a few weeks ago, my wife and nine-year-old daughter waited 7 hours in our local ER in Burlington where she went because of chest pains and trouble breathing. All in all, though, I have to say that we've had fine service in both countries. In terms of service, access to care, and high quality of care, I've seen no difference. The big difference, though, is that my employer and I pay thousands of dollars per year for our coverage in the US. That works out to far more than the difference between the income taxes I paid in Canada compared to what I pay in the US. I pay slightly less in income tax here, but four times what I paid in property taxes in Canada, and my employer in Alberta paid under $200 a month for my family's healthcare.

In the video, Steven Crowder, who if I recall correctly is a dual citizen, visits Montreal, Canada's second biggest city and the place in the country that seems to be having the worst time of things by far. When I lived in Edmonton, if it were an urgent matter I could usually see my GP on the same day that I called. After-hours, there were a number of 24-hour clinics where the wait would be longer but I'd always be able to see someone. For urgent cases, we'd go to the ER and the wait was always understandable; the more severe cases always go first, as they should. Crowder goes on and on in this video about how in Canada they have to ration care because of the system. I'm sure my University of Vermont colleague down the hall, who is fighting with her insurance company here to get approval for some desperately needed spinal surgery, would be happy to talk about her experiences of care being rationed in the US. It's rationed in the US all the time, not because of a lack of capacity in the medical system, but rather to increase shareholder earnings in the for-profit insurance system.

The major problem in Canada has, to my mind, very little to do with universal healthcare itself; there can always be greater efficiency in any system, but the system in Canada at the moment is underfunded, particularly in Quebec. Crowder's video documents this underfunding very well with the clear problems in the Quebec system's shortage of capacity at the moment. Despite this underfunding, the results in Canada are still superior to those of the US. Canada puts 30-40% less into healthcare than the US does and yet Canadians' life expectancy is longer, patient satisfaction levels are similar if not higher in Canada, and no one ever goes bankrupt over medical bills. The question of higher tax rates in Canada, as I suggest above, is all relative. In Quebec, Crowder is right that with sales tax people do wind up paying the 8% provincial sales tax on the 5% federal sales tax, but there are other provinces that have solved this by "harmonizing" their sales taxes so that they are charged only one tax rather than two separate ones. In Alberta, there is no provincial sales tax at all and there never will be. Paying tax on tax is absurd, but one can't say that happens in all of Canada.

While we Canadians, like people everywhere, wish our taxes would be lower, 85% of Canadians recently surveyed said that they wouldn't dream of trading their healthcare system for that of the United States. Universal healhcare works. It's more effective than what we find in the US in terms of its ability to treat everyone equally. It's also, contrary to popular belief here in the US, far less bureaucratic than the US system. Just stop by a Canadian hospital or doctor's office and look for the billing office. You won't find one.
To see the problems Crowder found in Montreal as representative of all of Canada is as foolish as walking into one of the poorest areas in a major US city and describing the whole country as being rife with poverty and crime. The Canadian system needs to be improved and better funded, without a doubt, but overall it's still very good and works well for most Canadians.

Finally, as Canadians, it doesn't do us any good to be smug about how well our system works, because it doesn't work anywhere close to as well as it should for many Canadians, and particularly First Nations people on reserves and the Inuit . Just because we're ranked slightly higher internationally than the US doesn't mean that we still don't have a lot to learn and lots to improve. Because of our sometimes foolish and shortsighted preoccupation with what Americans think of us, it's easy for us to get distracted by comments in the US about the good and the bad aspects of our system. What we really need is to start looking seriously (as they are doing right now in the US) about how we could do a much better job at providing better access and quality of care to all Canadians. Instead of focusing how much better our system might be than that of other countries we should start looking at how much worse our system is than that of the nations higher up the list.

Followup: This report from CNN offers a pretty balanced assessment of the state of things in Canada.

This story on a recent survey on Canadians' taste for Tim Hortons is interesting and is probably something that's bound to come up in this fall's freshman seminar "From Pucks to Parliament: Exploring Canadian Culture."

Now, if only I could convince someone in Vermont to open a Tim Hortons, something I promise to do if I ever win the lottery.

I'm all for trying to put more hybrid and electric vehicles on the road and, more importantly, trying to cut down on our use of vehicles altogether. These days, I bike to work most days and try to take the bus during the winter. We've deliberately avoided buying a second car for our family to try to be more environmentally conscious. Despite all that, I've been laughing all morning at this piece from this weekend's Sunday Times.

This review of the new Honda Insight may be one of the best car reviews ever written. That's not to say that Jeremy Clarkson liked the Insight. Indeed, he seems to loathe everything about it.

Here's an excerpt, but make sure to read the whole thing here:

Much has been written about the Insight, Honda’s new low-priced hybrid. We’ve been told how much carbon dioxide it produces, how its dashboard encourages frugal driving by glowing green when you’re easy on the throttle and how it is the dawn of all things. The beginning of days.

So far, though, you have not been told what it’s like as a car; as a tool for moving you, your friends and your things from place to place.

So here goes. It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more.

The biggest problem, and it’s taken me a while to work this out, because all the other problems are so vast and so cancerous, is the gearbox. For reasons known only to itself, Honda has fitted the Insight with something called constantly variable transmission (CVT).

It doesn’t work. Put your foot down in a normal car and the revs climb in tandem with the speed. In a CVT car, the revs spool up quickly and then the speed rises to match them. It feels like the clutch is slipping. It feels horrid.

And the sound is worse. The Honda’s petrol engine is a much-shaved, built-for-economy, low-friction 1.3 that, at full chat, makes a noise worse than someone else’s crying baby on an airliner. It’s worse than the sound of your parachute failing to open. Really, to get an idea of how awful it is, you’d have to sit a dog on a ham slicer.

So you’re sitting there with the engine screaming its head off, and your ears bleeding, and you’re doing only 23mph because that’s about the top speed, and you’re thinking things can’t get any worse, and then they do because you run over a small piece of grit.

If I were a journalism prof, this might well be required reading....

DONALD R. BROWN MEMORIAL LECTURE IN POLITICAL THEORY: "THE ESSENTIALIST CRITIQUE OF MULTICULTURALISM." Will Kymlicka, Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy, Queen's University, Canada and senior research fellow, Nuffield College, Oxford.

Memorial Lounge, Waterman Building. 3:30 p.m.

A BECKONING COUNTRY OPENING RECEPTION

5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. — Marble Court at the Fleming Museum

Hosted by President Daniel Mark Fogel and Rachel Kahn-Fogel. In celebration of the quadricentennial anniversary of French explorer and cartographer Samuel de Champlains travels to the lake that bears his name, this exhibit examines the features of the Champlain Valley landscape through the objects and art created from and inspired by them. University Concert Choir performs. Exhibit continues through Sept. 20.

Admission Fee: Regular Admission at the door. Free to UVM.

Thursday, April 23

"Reforming Health Care: A Single Payer or Consumer Driven Solution," a debate featuring Arnold Kling, Cato Institute, and Robert Kuttner, editor of The American Prospect. Moderated by Emerson Lynn, editor of the St. Albans Messenger. A reception follows immediately. ADA accommodations: 656-5665.

4:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. — Davis Student Center - The Grand Maple Ballroom

I'm setting aside enough 15 minute appointments over the next week or so to meet with all 40 of my advisees. I'll be available to answer any advising questions and to help review your choice of courses for the fall semester. If you'll be a senior planning on graduating in spring 2010, you should definitely come to see me before registering so that we can make sure you'll be set to graduate. At the very least, you should carefully review your CATS report to see if you're on track to graduate.

Keep reading after the break for further details and to choose your appointment time.

English majors and minors can find the list of Fall 2009 courses from the Department of English at the department's website. On that same page, you will also find the list of courses that fill the A, B, C, D, and senior seminar requirements. It's also worth checking the Summer University course listings from Continuing Education. Note that registration for Summer courses from CE is already open. Summer university is a great chance for you to grab some credits towards graduation. Summer courses are also priced at 15% below what courses cost over the Fall and Spring semesters.

Here are a few quick links that you will need when planning your courses:

• Registration schedule for Fall 2009.
• Click here for the complete list of Arts and Sciences Distribution Requirements
• Here's a link to the course listings from the Registrar's website
• Fall enrollment listings (updated hourly)

BEFORE COMING TO SEE ME, ESPECIALLY IF YOU'RE A GRADUATING SENIOR, MAKE SURE TO RUN A "CATS REPORT" TO SEE WHAT REQUIREMENTS YOU STILL NEED TO FILL. If possible, print a copy and bring it with you to our meeting. That will speed up the process considerably. Also, please do your best to pick your courses before our meeting.

Here are the available time slots I have in the coming days. Please e-mail me right away to book an appointment. I'll fill in the taken spots on this form as I hear from you on a first-come, first-served basis.

REMINDER:
ALL APPOINTMENTS WILL BE HELD IN MY OFFICE AT 321 OLD MILL

Tuesday, April 7
2:30: Laurel G.
2:45:
3:00:
3:15:
3:30:
3:45:
4:00: Megan H.

Wednesday, April 08
1:15:
1:30: Morgan L.
1:45: Lauren G.
2:00:
2:15:
2:30:
2:45: David J.
3:00: Sarah V.

Friday, April 10
8:30:
8:45:
9:00: Joanna W.
9:15:
9:30:
9:45: Alex D.
10:00:
10:15: Allie G.

Thanks to Mark for sending this my way.

It was really great to see such exciting things happening at the U of A these days. There are many new young faculty there and a herd of super-smart graduate students (they travel in herds on the prairies). Meeting many old and new friends from across the country and hearing some really interesting talks made this one of the best conference experiences I have had.

The folks at the CLC who planned the conference thought of everything, by the way, including hiring this guy to greet potential conference goers as they drove in to Canada.

(okay, everything I said above was true except for this last part)