Following a 415-day break from publishing on VanRamblings, we return in 2024 to cover municipal, provincial and federal politics, and much much more.
In the coming months, VanRamblings will cover the second full year of the ABC civic administration at Vancouver City Hall, British Columbia’s upcoming provincial election — to be held on Saturday, October 19th, the first election for David Eby as Premier of the province of British Columbia — and the state of federal politics.
Fifty per cent of the countries across our globe go to the polls this year, so it is likely we’ll cover aspects of some of those elections, most particularly the morass that is politics in the United States.
As has been the case dating back to VanRamblings’ first column — published in February 2004 (the VanRamblings blog created by current Vancouver City Councillor Mike Klassen — who told us, “Raymond, you need a blog. Let me see what I can do.”) — more often than not, Monday through Thursday we’ll write on a number of topics, ranging from homelessness to health, politics to tech, and more.
Friday will be given over to Arts Friday— mainly cinema, we think you’ll find, in a bit of a change, this Thursday focusing on VanRamblings’ Best Picture Oscar predictions, and on Friday, our Best Actress / Actor, etc. predictions — Saturdays to Stories of a Life (although, for the next while we’ll focus on a Redux re-telling of previous Stories), and Sundays to Music, with a focus on the identification of our favourite 100 albums of all time, replete with audio, video and lots of storytelling.
After having been “away” for 59 weeks, chances are that it’ll take us a while to build back our readership — we’ve begun publishing now, in preparation for daily coverage of 2024’s British Columbia provincial election when, if history offers any indication, VanRamblings’ “daily hits” spikes to 10,000 to 50,000+ each day of the 60 days we publish prior to election day, in this case, as above, on October 19th.
As we wrote elsewhere recently, the central thematic structure of VanRamblings going forward will be kindness.
In a world rent with division, misinformation, rabid and accusatory partisanship, a spiritual hollowness, loneliness, anger, and so much more that is disquieting, VanRamblings will make every attempt to be kind to those about whom we write (although, we may / likely will take “entities” to task, when we feel it is deserving).
We do, however, reserve the right to disparage federal Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre, who we believes represents an existential threat to the Canada we know and love. Even at that, we will acknowledge Mr. Poilievre’s humanity.
Pierre Poilievre says the quiet part out loud: he disdains ‘brainy people’, knowledge and expertise.
It’s why he and the CPC pose an existential threat to Canadian institutions and our way of life in this country.
Poilievre in 60 seconds on why he’s going after far-right,… pic.twitter.com/enQoCWU4rg
— Andrew Perez (@andrewaperez) January 2, 2024
Wherever possible, we’ll also attempt to keep columns to under a thousand words (we’re striving for 750 – 800 words), and on some days may publish a much shortened column. The exception, this week, will be Stories of a Life Redux — a republishing of an earlier Stories of a Life column (we will publish original content in this category in the weeks and months to come) — which will run long, at 1400 words.
VanRamblings will celebrate its 20th anniversary next month.
At 73 years of age, the writer-editor of VanRamblings — after several years of health challenges (hey, this getting old thing, it ain’t for wimps, although we’re feeling much better health-wise, at present) — is twenty years older than when we first began publishing on this peripatetic blog and, sad to say, we lack the “sit in front of the computer for 72 consecutive hours to publish a column” energy we once did.
The above said, we don’t believe we’ve lost a step when it comes to forming an opinion, and the recording of that opinion, which some may see as salutary, while others may have feelings on the matter that are not exactly in accord.
At any rate, we’re back. Welcome home!
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