Vermont and Hydro Quebec

Power utilities in Vermont are in the final stages of negotiations with Hydro Quebec for a new long-term electricity supply deal. Business Week reports…

Note on comments

Quick note: I am receiving comments to this site for approval. Happy to approve comments but they must be accompanied by your full name. Thanks.

Note on (un)fair comments

This morning, the Telegraph-Journal published the latest installment in my series on electricity and the New Brunswick and Quebec deal. (The final installment runs tomorrow.) On the newspaper’s website, some readers have chosen to make personal attacks on one of my sources, Bill Marshall, a former senior NB Power employee. I welcome fair comments on my work. (I can also deal with the not so fair comments directed at me, for example that I’m a paid hack on the take from big industrial groups that influenced my stories in some way.) I feel I need to correct the record with regards to Mr. Marshall, who is an honest and good man, who is in my story at my request. I attended a public forum about the NB Power deal, and after the meeting sought out Bill Marshall for help in understanding the broader story of what happened to the utility. I approached him because I had already spent a couple of months investigating the story and what he said made sense. He was also in a position to know something, and I thought the public should have an opportunity to hear it. Simple as that. I am responsible for every word in this story, as I am in every story published under my byline. Criticism of the content of the story is fair comment. Personal attacks are not.

The electricity stock exchange

The latest in my electricity series is here on the Telegraph-Journal website. We’ve been to James Bay and back and for the next few days I’ll be looking at the electricity story at home.

‘Philip Lee is in the back pocket of big oil’

You can find the latest story in my Telegraph Journal electricity series here, along with the comments, including the suggestion that by writing about hydroelectricity I am promoting the interests of big oil. Still trying to figure that one out. The photo above is of the road (and caribou) at the base of the dam at La Grande Riviere 1,000 kilometres north of Montreal.

Balance of Power

Here are the links to story 1 and story 2, the first installments in a series that will run this week in the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal. Please feel free to send comments here or to the newspaper. My hope is that these stories will offer a measure of understanding in an enormously complex area of public policy. Tomorrow, the series follows the road to James Bay and back. Wednesday we are in Eel River Crossing, New Brunswick.

Confessions on The Next Chapter

Listen here for the podcast of my interview with Shelagh Rogers on CBC Radio’s The Next Chapter. We talk about divorce, love, marriage and my book, Bittersweet: Confessions of a Twice Married Man. The Next Chapter will be broadcast on CBC Radio this Saturday at 4 p.m. In her introduction, Ms. Rogers mentions Confessions in the same breath as Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love. I’ve noticed that Ms. Gilbert is now committed, and has made peace with marriage, which does place us in the same camp. At any rate, it’s nice to be talking about the book again.

A new review

Writing will resume here soon. On assignments, back in the classroom. In the meantime, a new book review.

On bowing very low

Editor’s note: This is a guest submission from another Philip Lee (my Dad), who writes under the byline Philip J. Lee, otherwise known as the older, wiser and more well spoken Lee.

There has been much negative comment about President Obama bowing from the waist, no less, before the Japanese Emperor. The critics found it unseemly that a President of the United States should actually bow before anyone. After all, Americans are republicans and therefore not in favour of monarchs and emperors; Americans are democrats and therefore of the opinion that government should derive from the will of the people rather than from the tradition of an hereditary monarchy. So, bowing is somehow a betrayal of American values, not to mention degrading when practiced by the American head of state.

Several things come to mind. First there is the simple matter of manners. Didn’t our mothers tell us that when we’re in someone else’s house we respect their customs and lifestyles? If they are accustomed to taking off their shoes as they enter their house, so do we. If they say grace before meals, we bow our heads. If they do not say grace before meals, we do not embarrass them by bowing our heads and waiting for the blessing.

Manners have to do with showing respect for, as in this case, Japanese hosts. In Japan, the Emperor is venerated. By bowing before him, wasn’t the President merely showing his good manners? Can’t Americans and all who wish them well be proud that Mr. Obama’s mother brought him up the way she did?

As for the very low issue, would a half-hearted bow have been better? Perhaps a nod would have been the North American answer. Then the impression might have been that we know we’re to show some respect for the Emperor, but let’s not overdo it. We don’t want to act like an actual oriental and get carried away with this deferential stuff. A cool gesture might be more appropriate, letting the world know that Americans don’t really revere this foreign potentate. Again, can’t Americans and their friends be proud that the President not only showed respect to his hosts, but also was schooled enough to show respect in the proper way?

Then there is in the United States the question of humility. We have all been through eight years in which humility was not considered an admirable trait. The strut was in. In Texas, we were told, that strut is just called walking. The President’s posture embodied the Neo-conservative mindset, that since the United States of America is the one great superpower, there should be no bowing and scraping to anyone anywhere. No discussions, no compromises, “you are either for us or against us.” Never show weakness; never show respect. All the others are weak compared to mighty US! Let the respect come our way.

There is some concern among educators and other social scientists that many young people in North America have come to believe that any form of respect is a sign of weakness. Saying “thank you” and “please” has become difficult. Addressing elders with the words: “Mister” or “madam”, “sir” or “ma’m” would be absolutely degrading. We all have come a long way from the practice of the first President of the United States and other founders of the Great Republic and the Fathers of our Confederation who ended their letters with the a phrase like: “your obedient servant, George Washington.” But when humility has been socially ostracized and politically banned, won’t we miss it?

One other practical note, even if a low bow is a bit old fashioned, even anachronistic, what did the President’s bow cost the American taxpayer? So many gestures these days seem to run into rather big money. Recent bailouts to show one another and the world that the System is really strong and that our way of life is really not going under have cost the taxpayers billions of dollars. Bowing from the waist to show respect for a valued ally and trading partner may have lost a few votes for President Obama, but the American citizens came out light and standing tall.

Philip J. Lee

A big nod to New Brunswick’s Eilish Cleary

The Globe and Mail’s lead editorial today offers much deserved praise for the clear-headed leadership of New Brunswick’s chief medical officer of health, Eilish Cleary. Despite the struggles of the H1N1 vaccination program across the country, New Brunswick has been fortunate to have Dr. Cleary in our corner. She has more than risen to the occasion.