REVELSTOKE AND ROYALTY

Prior to this weekend, we’d driven through Revelstoke about a thousand times (or maybe 30), stayed there once, and missed the place altogether. A common tale I’m sure.

This time we took a whole day to poke around there. Walked on the old rail bridge across the Columbia River. Went up to the ski place which is closed for shoulder season but it still pretty impressive. Kinda like a mini-Whistler. In the afternoon we took a hike into Begbie falls which was spectacular. If you think that’s hyperbolic, ask Gail. She agrees with me, at least on this point.

As we all know and all forget all the time, there is much more to towns than just driving through them, the same as there is much more to humans than just waving at them. You have to pay attention to get the story. Did I say that before? Anyway, we have a much better sense of Revelstoke than we did before. Beautiful mountain town it is.

One humorous touch: we got coffee at Macdonald’s there and it was not drinkable, or whatever the opposite of potable is. The worst ever…tasted like they hadn’t cleaned their machine out for years. One sip each and then onto the ground. Horrible.

But we survived and had fun.

In other news, how about that coronation? What did you make of that?

I thought that the only thing they missed was having Bob Dylan come out and sing “Serve Somebody”. Was that not the main point made by the main minister man? He said that the purpose of power is to serve the people, and he told Charlie in no uncertain terms that he’d better do that. He also widened it to say that we all should do that in our various stations in life.

I’m not watching all that closely, but I’ve yet to hear commentary on that point in the press. They talk about how cute Louis was and how sad Harry must be and how nice Kate looked, and so on. Lisa Laflamme talked during the world class choir show, which was annoying, and I saw a picture of protesters outside, but I haven’t seen anybody talking about the good clergyman telling Charlie to get out there and serve the people, just like his momma did.

Is this talk of service just platitudinous drivel? I wonder what HRH thought about it? What does the Donald think about it, or Justin? For that matter, do kings exist anywhere whose main intention is the greater good? Did the czars serve their people, or the Roman Emperors, or John Horgan?

Other than QE, two examples of top dogs who served the people jumped into my mind: Jimmy Carter and Pablo Escobar. They might have had different MO’s, but seems to me they both tried to do right by their people. Well, maybe let’s just stick with Jimmy. Old Pablo had too many dark sides to serve as a poster boy for service minded leaders, but he tried. At least I’ve heard that.

Next time something like this happens, which won’t be long in the UK, they should get our man Dylan out there, right after that arch bishop. Those guys both got to the crux of the matter, in my opinion. Gotta serve somebody.

And somebody should tell Lisa to keep quiet during world class choral performances. That’s just tacky.