2024: The Year in Semi-Spew

 It was a year of great contrasts as we lost some important people but also ventured to new places and had some great experiences including the second half of my penultimate sabbatical.  I lost my mother in May, and Mrs. Spew lost hers on Christmas/Hanukah eve.  For both of us, these women played the most significant roles in shaping who we are and how we parent our kid who is damn near 30.  Neither death was a big surprise as both were declining for some time, which meant that 2024 involved a lot of stress about how to manage their respective situations.  

We (meaning mostly me) managed such stress with perhaps more terrific travel in this one year than in any other (I am too lazy to do the math).  It started with an amazing ski trip to Japan with my sister, her guy, and his kids.  Upon return, I immediately went with my brother and then my cousin and his family to a few Magical places--lots of thrilling rides, heaps of silliness, lots of time with the next gen.  We also celebrated

And then very shortly afterwards, I started the first half of my Humboldt Award time in Berlin (second half to start in just over a month).  It was really well timed as my host, the Hertie School, had an event shortly after my arrival on whether Europe was really at a watershed moment and whether countries were acting accordingly.  While in Europe, I got a chance to do something I have always wanted to do--experience the Alp in Alpine.  I also went to Finland to do some fieldwork, and then Mrs. Spew came for some tourism in the middle of Germany and then northern Italy.

I spent more of 2024 working on the previous book project than the next one as we met with some challenges along the way.  In discussing this, someone asked us why it takes so long to publish an academic book, so I had some thoughts.  And then we finally got a book contract for our legislatures and oversight over the armed forces and got the book into the publication process!  

Mrs. Spew's round number birthday by embracing our 1970's-80's by going to a Springsteen concert!  Oh, and I finished the year with another great ski trip with my sister to Mount Bachelor in Oregon. 

Being a doomsayer at various events around Ottawa was a consistent activity for the year, where I predicted that a Trump victory (that I considered unlikely) would be catastrophic.

Defence policy was major news in Canada this year with a defence policy update that came out in April and was revised in July to appease allies.  In the summer, we got a new CDS!

One recurring theme this year was the state of Canadian civil-military relations.  It is not just one part of my research agenda, but an ongoing challenge for the Canadian government and armed forces.  The backlash against culture change is definitely on, and one measure was how many of my posts got comments from people who thought the entire leadership crisis was overblown.  I guess having not one but two heads of the military disgraced was not sufficient?  What is a little obstruction of justice after all?   I will probably post soon about this effort to deny the severity of the GOFO culture crisis even though the fans of the old order will have deaf ears.  Oh, and I have been identified as part of a Liberal party conspiracy to cancel someone has a platform at a national newspaper (despite my best efforts apparently). 

In the broader civil-mil world, lots of discussion about the politicization of the armed forces.  I wrote about it occasionally on the blog and definitely built into the next wave of grant applications.  And those grant applications dominated the latter part of 2024, so much so that I fell behind on the Canadian civ-mil edited volume project.

As we anticipate a very turbulent 2025 with Trump taking power in the US and Canada facing elections at some point soon, I am hoping that our family learns how to get by without our respective matriarchs.  They will be missed.  I hope you and yours have a much happier 2025 despite the political madness.

Goodnight to the Sweetest, Fiercest Animal Goddess

My daughter teaching Susie about some new tech

 Last night, yes, on Christmas eve, we lost my mother-in-law, Susie.  She had been declining for the past two years, so this came as no surprise, but, of course, hurts quite a bit.  The last few years have been tough on her as Susie made it clear she didn't want to move to anything approaching a nursing home.  She had been so independent for so long, living on her own since the divorce something like 30 years ago, just her and her ravenous pack of squirrels that she fed daily.

When I first met Susie, she worked at an animal shelter, and it was clear she enjoyed the company of animals.  I heard stories of various baby animals being fed at her home as my wife grew up.  Late in life this turned into feeding the squirrels outside her home.  They loved her, well, sort of, as they also chewed through some of the lines in her car.  Anyhow, she was easy to buy gifts for--shirts and sweatshirts with animals on them.

Susie was dedicated to her two daughters, imparting upon them a love for animals and a fierceness deployed to defend those who faced some kind of challenge.  Despite being of modest means, she gave so much to my sister-in-law when the latter needed it. 

Family was everything to Susie, so she put up
with my mid-meal pics.

 Over the years, I saw Susie every year at the holidays, she got used to my winterfest ways--of hanging out on my computer and binging tv marathons.  She was not much of a cook, so she was happy to have me take over her kitchen.  She loved razzing me about my quirks and she put up well with my return fire.  And she was patient when we dragged her out to the movies every winterfest.

Susie was a bit of a paradox--she was a bit of a hermit who didn't like crowds or hanging out with people, but she was so incredibly sweet to everyone she met.  She was so very kind to every clerk, every salesperson, everyone she encountered.  She hated driving on the highways and she hated all drivers, so she would sit in the back seat of my car marveling at my patience with the other drivers as we would go on the long treks from suburban Maryland to rural Virginia to see her other daughter.  

Susie even put up with the SW sequels. 
A very patient hermit.

Life could have been kinder to Susie, but she never developed any malice to those around her.  For someone who did not really other people that much, she was full of love to those closest to her.  She let me into her family, and for that I will always be most grateful.  Susie will be greatly missed even if her nagging about the various items on her winterfest prep list will not. 

Winterfest 2024 Cookie Madness: Infinity War

 

Oh man, I went wildly overboard this year.  In previous years, I realized:

• a kitchen aid stand mixer makes things so much easier
• gifts of cookie scoops makes things so much easier
• one of my fave gifts of graduated cylinders/beakers from King Arthur makes it easy to measure the liquid ingredients.
  
• using a kitchen scale (good idea, Steph) makes it far easier and more accurate to measure the dry stuff that goes into the cookies
  
• cookies can be frozen so you can bake way ahead of time (3 months or so)
• 
• that my new kitchen is really optimized for max cookie production
• that a chest freezer acquired for the purpose of storing the winterfest hoard of cookies is super helpful (and I did fill it this year, see the pic)
  
• that I have a severe case of FOMO--I want to make all the recipes because I don't want to miss out on any
• that Costco butter is about half the price of what I can get in supermarkets
  
• that most importantly, while stress-baking is a very important part of getting through pandemics and other stressful times, and that eating cookies is joy, giving cookies away is heaps of joy.  

So, yeah, I made something like 25 batches of cookies.... so many recipes and so many cookies that I am not really sure how many I made from October through to December.  I do know that by the end of today I will have given cookie boxes of varying sizes to 28 people/households/gatherings including multiple Stef/Stephs, my family at Thanksgiving, the last sessions of my two classes this fall, both CDSN and NPSIA staffs, and a heap of friends around Ottawa. I spent yesterday driving around Ottawa delivering most of ten boxes, and I got to chat with most folks.  Today, I venture out for three more deliveries.  I will have enough leftover cookies for my in-laws and my daughter to snarf over the holidays as well as some in reserve for those who left town too early or were too sick or busy to receive them.  And, yes, I keep a bunch handy for whenever a former defence minister has time to receive the cookies I owe her.  

I get to meet an occasional dog,
which is a big bonus, when delivering

My key sources for recipes--the NYT recipes I downloaded before I dropped my subscription, King Arthur, Sally's Baking Addiction (great website and I received all of her books during previous winterfests), and a few others (I have received multiple cookie cookbooks as gifts and some of them are better than others).  What is my decision rule for which recipes to make?  Primarily: do I want to eat it?  I don't bake stuff that I don't want to eat as a key ingredient (sorry) for this entire thing is I want to make cookies I want to eat.  So, no peanut butter cookies.  I also don't like nuts, which is helpful for making cookie boxes that don't produce allergic reactions.  I generally try to make things that don't require a heap of difficult to get ingredients, and, yes, I prefer to make recipes that produce many cookies, which means I don't make many sandwich recipes.  I got heaps of boxes to fill!  

So, what did I make?  Because I have a few more deliveries, I will first post the list and then put up a bunch of pics (I don't have pics of all as I kept forgetting--cookie madness is not good for the memory), no ranking this year as last year's holds up pretty well.   

King Arthur:

• Candied Ginger Shortbread
  

• 

  One of my sister's gave me a long set of
  forceps (tweezers) for fancy cooking
  a la The Bear, but it really came in handy
  for the placing of googly eyes.  Which,
  yes, always make things better.
  

  Peppermint sandwhich
• Blondie (I had two blondie recipes and, so, yeah, I made both). I think I preferred KA.

Dorie (a new cookbook, and one that, alas, didn't really do it for me):

• Fudge mocha
• Double ginger molasses
• Mocha-ricotta
• Melody cookies 

Sarah Kieffer (another new and much better cookbook)

• Oatmeal Raisin
• Chocolate chip cookie
• Blondies

• 

  I have always sucked at arts and crafts, but
  I am learning to frost better and more quickly
  thanks to Steph's encouragement and gifts of
  some frosting tools. 
  

  Palmiers (tasty but I messed up the puffed pastry)

NYT

• Marshmallow Surprise
• Gochuchang Carmel (spicy)
• Peppermint brownie--Mrs. Spew's fave
• Maple Brown Sugar
• Grammy's Spice--the best
• Gingerbread Brownies
• Black and White
  

Smitten

• Thick Molasses
• Brownie rollout
  
  

Sally's

• Sparkling sugar
• Brown butter snickerdoodles--the very best-est
• Butter spritz--made with a cookie gun, which I got in a previous winterfest (I have many enablers)
• Cookies and cream--involves oreos.
• Chocolate crinkle
• Snowballs 

I may have missed one or two.  It has been a very sweet fall--lots of sugar and butter.

And here are the pics of many of the cookies I made:

 

Black & white

Marshmallow Surprise

Chocolate Brownie Rollout

Butter spritz

Candied ginger sb

Gingerbread latte

frosted sugar

Chocolate crinkle

Peppermint meltaway (meh)

Sparkling sugar

Brown butter snickerdoodle

Cookies and cream

Gochuchang caramel

Peppermint

Maple brown sugar

Peppermint sandwich

frosted gingerbread

Palmier

Blondie (I forget which one)

The other blondie

Peppermint Brownie

CCC's

My first ever attempt at
Oatmeal Raisin--worked very well.

The Two Games Aren't Level: Dems Shouldn't Cooperate but Countries Should Pander

 I am seeing some stories of Democrats trying to pick off some elements of the Trump 2.0 agenda and agreeing to cooperate with them while I also saw much condemnation of Canadian PM Trudeau for going to Marlago to pander to Trump.  This is exactly backwards.  The key is this: the Democrats and foreign leaders are playing completely different games so don't expect them to behave the same.

The easier thing is foreign leaders: yes, going to meet with Trump legitimizes Trump a bit.  But foreign leaders have no choice--the American people elected Trump president again.  Yes, it sucks, but here we/they are.  The President is the actor for any country around the globe in normal times, and when the President happens to threaten his opponents or even his supposed friends with political violence and when his party is full of cowards yet they dominate every national institution, a foreign leader has to interact with Trump.  

This pic also legitimates Ivanka... yuck

People's memories are short, but very prominent and powerful leaders visited Trump in December of 2016 to get a sense of Trump and also, yes, to pander to him.  Trump is easy to manipulate if you know how, and flattery will get you very far.  Japan's Prime Minister Abe played Trump early and it paid dividends for the entire Trump 1.0 administration.  Did Japan get heaps of crap for not spending 2%?  Not nearly as much as other countries.  As far as I can recall, Japan did not get nearly as much pressure as South Korea for the privilege of hosting American troops.  

To be clear, this time, trying to go around Trump will not work.  Team Canada did a great job playing to Republicans in Congress and to Republican governors to try to minimize Trump's threats to the US-Canada trade relationship.  This time, it will simply not work.  This GOP is not the same GOP--it is now thoroughly Trump's party, which means they will do his bidding most of the time even if it hurts the interests of their district or state.  They live in fear of his encouraging them to be primaried or to have his supporters sicced on them.  So, yeah, Trudeau pandering to Trump's ego is the right move.  Will Pierre Poilevre be able to do so or will Trump look at him like he looks at Ted Cruz?

On to the Dems.  They need to oppose everything Trump does.  They need to make him fail.  This worked for the GOP, so time to learn from the opposition. The Dems need to paint every bad thing as being Trump's fault, they need to block as much as they can for as long as they can.  His policies will do harm, and the "good" ones will only provide cover for the bad ones.  Working with Musk and Vivek on the dodgy DOGE bullshit only grants it legitimacy it should not have.  The problem with government is not that it is wasteful--the problem with government today is that the GOP prevents it from serving the American people.  Remember what the Postal Service did during the first Trump Admin?  FFS.

Musk should be confronted at all times--he has not been confirmed by the Senate, DOGE is not a legitimate government agency, it should not be treated as anything other than a billionaire's club.  

To be clear, the election was close, and Harris lost because the pandemic and international dynamics produced inflation.  It was not a mandate for radical change that Trump proposes.  While the immigration message played well, there is no immigration crisis and it should not be granted the status of a real thing.  The Dems should fight back on that even if it is not popular at the moment.  It will become more popular as Trump's massive deportation hurts lots of Trump voters and everyone else and as it devastates the economy.  Get in front of it, for fuck suck.  

The only thing the Dems should avoid doing is hurting people.  So, the Dems can't close the government in a bargaining situation with Trump.  But then again, they don't control either house, so that's not really a choice.  But they should block everything else.  Stand for something.  And don't grant any of Trump's initiatives any legitimacy.  Unlike a foreign leader, you don't have to work with Trump.

Canada and American Asylum: Invoking Madisynn

[Caveat: I am not an immigration lawyer, but friends of mine who have explored this option have not found clear answers from immigration lawyers]

  It is not what you think.  Every four years, I would hate folks who said that they would flee to Canada due to a bad US presidential election result.  This time is very different.  Last Trump election did produce a bunch of people who did try to flee to Canada, some at great cost as they tried to walk into the country in mid-winter, losing lives and limbs.  This time it will be very different.

Canadian authorities need to be thinking about this RIGHT NOW, as the weaponization of the Department of Justice with Matt Gaetz Pam Biondi as Attorney General and Kash Patel as head of the FBI will people to rightly fear prosecution and persecution.  Not to mention "massive deportation" where the US government will put people into concentration camps before sending them to whatever country that will take them (Rwanda?)  There has been much discussion of target lists for those who have had the temerity to be decent public servants, real political opponents, or honest, dedicated journalists.  

Should they flee to Canada?  The more important question is: can they? First, the existing asylum policy is mostly focused on an agreement with the US that if an asylum claimant first goes to the US, they can't seek asylum in Canada, and if they first get to Canada, they can't claim it in the US.  Notice this does not really imagine Americans residing in the US seeking asylum in Canada.  So, it is not clear what will happen if Americans just show up in Canada and then seek asylum.  The good news is that they can get in, claiming to be a tourist or whatever, and then they can go .... damn, I have no idea.  But they can get in to the country. But staying?  No idea.

Which gets to the second thing: how about immigration? Can't Americans immigrate into Canada? Mostly, there are two pathways: family reunification and employment.  Americans can't just immigrate--they have to apply and there are processes.  If one has a job offer from a Canadian entity, then one can become a temporary resident that can lead to permanent residency and ultimately citizenship (as happened in my case).  However, the Canadian employer will have to justify why they need to hire a foreigner rather than a Canadian, and most employers don't want to go through this effort or subsidize the applications of the candidates.  My immigration was part of a larger federal policy aimed at reversing the brain drain, and McGill University also had no hesitancy about claiming that some academic was special enough that there were no Canadians that were as worthy.  So, immigration is hard but not impossible, costly and not free.

Third, Canada is not a paradise.  We are very much likely to elect a transphobic government (plus a few provinces are already enacting transphobic policies), so trans people seeking to escape persecution in the US may not find Canada to be that great of a place. 

Fourth, getting back to asylum, the Canadian government is going to have to think about the consequences of granting asylum to Trump's targets like General (ret.) Mark Milley or the Biden family or whatever.  If China is willing to hold a couple of Canadians hostage for a couple of years because Canada holds onto an extradition target, what would the Trump administration do if Canada grants asylum to some visible targets of Trump's resentment?  I wouldn't count on Canada to being that brave about it.  

Sorry for the pessimism here, but better to have a realistic plan than a dream when seeking to avoid persecution.  And, yes, Canadians will feel like shit and apologize a lot, but may not be that helpful.