canadian for a day

This story about my friend Melanie will be on the front page of the NYT tomorrow morning[update: here], along with a picture of her!

Melanie Redman, 30, assistant director of the Epilepsy Foundation in Seattle, said she had put her Volvo up for sale and hopes to be living in Toronto by the summer. She and her Canadian boyfriend, a Web site designer for Canadian nonprofit companies, had been planning to move to New York, but after Nov.2, they decided on Canada instead.

These facts aren't quite right -- the bf is a tech consultant, not a web designer; M is an associate director of the Epilepsy Foundation Northwest, but close enough. I'm sad she's leaving, but I'm happy for her: she's in love, and she's happy to be moving to a country that isn't busy crushing the rest of the world under its enormous ass:

"I'm doing it," she said. "I don't want to participate in what this administration is doing here and around the world. Under Bush, the U.S. seems to be leading the pack as the world spirals down."
"I'm originally from a poor, lead-mining town in Missouri, and I know a lot of the people there don't understand why I'm doing this," she said. "Even my family is pretty disappointed. And the fact is, it makes me pretty sad, too. But I just can't bear to pay taxes in the United States right now." Compared with the other potential immigrants interviewed, Redman was far along in planning.

She's getting hatemail for it already. Much of it is in the "go back to Russia" vein; except that it's "go on to Canada, we real 'mericans don't want your kind here anyway". Amazing that some of us Americans think of Canada the enemy now.

(no subject)

argh. there's a board committee meeting for the TV studio (I'm on the board) at 6p that's regularly scheduled for this time every month.

But the chair for this meeting never sends out announcements. So the meetings never happen -- or when they do, he says 'nobody shows up'.

So I poked the executive director of the agency and asked her by email this morning -- "Is there a meeting today?"

Then -- at 4 -- I get a handwaving "I think there's a meeting because it's scheduled, but nobody's said anything" kind of email from the ED.

See, the thing is, it takes me a full hour to get to the station. It's now 5p. I'm supposed to go by bus for an hour *right now* and *if I'm lucky* there will be one or two other people there.

And you know what? I'm going to do it. But I'm going to rack up the martyr points for showing up for this one.

*grumble*