Flotsam and Jetsam

A headline on CTV news last night announced:

"Liberals believe they have recovered their Mojo but don't know if they're ready for the election dance yet."

I didn't think Mojo was a word let alone know what it meant. Not for a minute did I imagine I would find it in the dictionary.

But it's there. It 's of African origin.

Mojo means medicine man...magic spell...charm.

My dictionary is Webster's Tenth copyright 2001.

So if we can tell nothing else from the Liberal statement, we know they are up to date on language

Yet if any modern political organisation claims to have Mojo, I fear it may largely be in their own minds.

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Apropos of yesterday's post, I have been asked if an assistant was even hired to assist with organising the July 1st Parade.

The invoice and the cheque were made out to an individual. I don't know the person.

Residents may remember three years back, staff reported , no volunteers had come forward to organize the July 1st Parade. A large part of the responsibility was fund-raising. The parade had been struggling for years.

Once I was asked to ride in a car with another former Mayor. I did it out of compassion for the man who was desperately trying to marshall a semblance of a parade.I squeezed into a red July 1st Parade t-shirt three sizes too small and hung out the car window from the waist up and
waved frenetically and wished everybody Happy July 1st Birthday.

Not because little children were likely to recognise former Mayors in a car and understand why we were in the Parade.

Another year, the theme was Old Soldiers. Dick Illingworth stood with another veteran in the back of a vehicle grimly saluting.

Well, you know.... little children sitting for hours on a sidewalk ,with flags and round eyes
waiting to see mojo like they've never seen it before. With music and colour and crazy little men in funny little hats scooting in and out and back and forth in tiny little vehicles squeezing squeaky little horns and generally acting like this day and place and circumstance will never come again.

A parade is to laugh and squeal at the clowns and gaze in amazement and Ooh and Aah and dance and wave the tiny little red and white flag and.... remember

A parade is MOJO. It takes all kinds of imagination and enthusiasm and in a town like Aurora ,
the whole community to be involved.

You can't buy it with money. You can't generate magic like from a slot machine.

When the town made fifteen thousand dollars available to pay for a parade, had they given it in time to our professional staff for that purpose, there would never have been a question about whether or not there could be a magical parade.

Two thousand dollars would have bought a lot of overtime.

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I need to make a correction. In my post on the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms and the Code of Conduct I included a sentence included in the copy at hand.

It read;

"Communications with the media by Members of Council shall be conducted through proper interviews and media releases .Members shall refrain from submitting letters to the editor and writing a regular column in the newspaper or hosting / or co-hosting a regular televised program."

Having been part of the Council since the Mayor's clarion call of emergency to justify retaining George Rust D'Eye and retreating behind closed doors. I was well aware of the objective of the Code with its potential for enforcement on pain of penalties.

Its inclusion in the Code of Conduct was not a surprise.

After I printed the post, I received a comment which indicates the last bullet point is not in Clause 3 of the Code as it appears on the town's web site.

And thereby hangs another tale.