The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Weekend Special #20 -- Plus Something Extra

Episode Date: July 31, 2020

Your thoughts, comments and questions -- plus a something special for the long weekend. Enjoy!

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily here we are at Friday of week 20. Week 20. And we're already through it. Fridays, of course, mean the weekend special. So I have some of your thoughts and questions, comments, to go through for this weekend special. Not a lot of them, but enough to make a little podcast out of and have a great article to read you that'll kind of make your weekend.

And this is a holiday weekend. A long weekend in August. August starts tomorrow. But because it's a holiday weekend, there are things to keep in mind. Like I won't work on Monday. I'm going to take a three-dayer just like you guys are. I hope you are.

I know some of you are working, but a lot of you in the middle of summer look forward to this weekend to have a little relaxing time. And today's a big day because it's Willie's 21st birthday. Our son, Will, who's home for the weekend or at least part of it. So we'll have a nice little evening tonight to celebrate number 21. Time flies. Keep that in mind with your kids, no matter how young they are and how many times you go, oh my gosh, how are we going to deal

with this? They're driving me crazy. That flies by. Those days fly by. It just seems like yesterday. Cynthia was in the hospital. Willie was being born. It really does just seem like yesterday. Anyway, enough about that. He'll be embarrassed. So Monday I won't be here.uesday will be the next um bridge daily obviously if something big happens over the weekend we'll uh we'll jump in with a special podcast but the plan is to take

the next three days off um okay let's get out uh get out some of your letters. So we'll get through the mail, and we'll get to this special little article I've got for you. It's fun, and I think you'll enjoy it. All right. Alana Guinane. I'm not sure where Alana is writing from, but she writes, I love your podcast. Great way to start.

It serves to simultaneously inform and calm me somehow. I appreciate your measured and thoughtful take on the times we're living in. I'm a grade 8 teacher with the TDSB, which I'm assuming is the Toronto District School Board. You recently talked about the mask that has the ability to translate and amplify and mentioned that it might be useful once we get back to traveling. However, as a teacher, I want you to know that this mask would provide many benefits for me and my students right here at home. For ESL students, this mask would allow for easy communication between teachers and students who don't speak the same language. As well, I think the ability to amplify would be very useful as I struggle to speak loudly enough through my mask

for the grossly clerk to hear me, never mind a class full of students. That's true. Jay Parks writes, keep in mind I don't read the full letters because some of them are actually quite long, but I look for the key part uh to me anyway is interesting and something that i want to uh to play off of so jeremy parks writes and uh he too is writing about mask wearing we had a lot of comments about mass this week after the mass special earlier in the week if you didn't hear it you should probably pop back and rewind a little bit and go back and find it because it's good and a lot of people have commented on it. One of the things he writes, well, he writes two quick things.

Mask wearing. Natural fibers, cotton, make mask wearing easy. People who say they hate wearing their masks in the hot summer sun usually all have polyester or other such man-made material masks. Polyester masks are torture to breathe through when the air is baking hot. Wearing a 100% cotton mask makes it a breeze to wear a mask when it's super hot outside. And second, I always get a kick out of these because I know a number of you have written over the 20 weeks, both pro and con, on my pauses. I started listening to your podcast because of

your pauses. They are refreshing, even inspiring. In fact, I pause more now in conversation instead of relying on verbal tics such as you know and like. Music is like, you know, the silence between the notes. Claude Debussy. Thanks for your podcast. Well, thank you, Jeremy, for writing. You know, I love watching great public speakers, and I had the opportunity to do just that yesterday when I was watching, as I hope you had the chance to watch as well,

the speeches given and the eulogy given at the funeral for John Lewis in Atlanta, Georgia. And I was watching both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. George Bush Jr. was there as well, gave a great speech. But Clinton and Obama are incredible speakers. And both, and I'm not comparing myself in any stretch of the imagination to them, but they both use the pause very effectively when they speak. And I like watching them. I like listening to them. And maybe they've had some influence on me in terms of how I speak.

I've interviewed both gentlemen. And there's some pretty good stories with both of them. But you'll have to buy my book to hear those stories. That book is a ways away yet. The book that's coming out this year, Extraordinary Canadians, is more about you, about you as Canadians and how so many of you are very special and extraordinary people. Even though they're not generally well known, these are the people that Mark Bulgich, my co-author, and I focus on in the book that comes out in November with Simon & Schuster. And you can read more about it, even pre-order it, if you wish,

on my website, thepetermansbridge.com. Okay, next letter. Michael Zaks, Z-A-K-S. I listen to your podcast regularly. I find your musings regarding virus regulations or recommendations interesting and informative. However, regarding your discussion on border restrictions between the U.S. and Canada, I'm puzzled. You seem to imply that this border is closed to all but non-essential travel. Although this may be true for land travel, I understand

that air travel between Canada and the U.S. is open to all who buy a plane ticket, although self-isolation regulations may vary from state to state and province to province. Well, Mike, at first when I read this, I thought, oh, no, I don't think so. But in fact, you're right. It is very uneven. You can buy a ticket to fly to New York City or Los Angeles. The odds are you're going to be able to get right on that plane. You may have some questions from the American

Customs officers at the airport, but you may, the odds are you'll probably get right on that plane. It's coming back that you're going to have real problems. You're going to have to go into quarantine for two weeks. But your point is correct. There is, we should be careful how we describe just how closed that border is. It's closed one way for sure.

And that's coming in. That's the way we want it closed, right? Certainly for now. Alex Gianfloni. This guy's a student. Brock University in Ontario. He seems to have time almost every week to send in questions, and occasionally I send in questions.

And occasionally I read his questions. I'm going to read one of them here today. Here it is. For the Republican Party, Trump's been a very popular leader. If Trump loses the election, will the Republicans ever be able to stimulate their base similarly as Trump has done since 2015 to present day. Listen, I'll tell you one thing about Trump's base. For all the fuss that people make about his base and how he's talking to his base, his base, in my view and in the polls I read, has got smaller and smaller and smaller. And that's why he's in so much trouble right now.

Now, there's still a few months to go before the election. Things can change, less than 100 days, but less than 100 days is still almost 100 days, and a lot of things can happen. But here's what I will tell you about politics, and I've watched this over the 50 years I've covered politics, both in this country and in others, is just because a party can end up with a leader

who becomes extremely unpopular, that doesn't mean that that unpopularity will last forever, or for even necessarily a long time. A new leader comes along and people get energized again. If that new leader is saying the right things. And they tend to forget about the past. And that's why we've watched parties get wiped out. Remember the Conservatives?

The progressive Conservatives in Canada in 1993? They went from a majority government to two seats. And people said, that's it. They're gone. They're done. We'll never hear from them again. Wrong. You know, within 10 or 12 years,

they were back in power with Stephen Harper and a united conservative party. The Liberals, 1984, down to 40 seats. The Liberal Party in Canada is finished. It'll never be back again. That was one of the themes that used to run across some of the commentary. Wrong. Didn't happen that way. They doubled their seats by 88, and they were back in power in 93. So things can change with a change in leadership. So as much damage as it appears that Trump is doing to the Republican Party, don't write them off forever. All right, here's Deb Lunney from Vancouver. I was on an Air Canada flight July 4th,

traveling from Toronto to Vancouver. Actually, I don't know whether she's from Vancouver. She may be from Toronto. But whichever the case is, she was on an Air Canada flight July 4th, traveling from Toronto to Vancouver. The couple directly in front of me had to be asked seven times by flight attendants to put their masks on. After the third request, I spoke up and told the flight attendant I was concerned about their lack of masks.

Even as we prepared to land and the stewards were walking up the aisles, they again had to ask this couple to put on their masks. The stewards and stewardesses, flight attendants, are limiting the number of times they walk down the aisles, so the fact that I counted seven times means they were asked almost every time flight attendants walk by. I find this terribly concerning.

Yeah, I would have too. And I guess that comes out of the story we told the other day about the Delta Airlines captain who said, okay, you don't wear your mask, so I don't have to fly you. Turned the plane around and flew back to where it started. Well, that didn't happen on a Toronto to Vancouver flight, but it may take that to make people understand that if you want to travel by air, you have to follow the rules.

Now, in fairness, I also got a note from our friend Rebecca the other day. She lives in Vancouver, and she'd taken the flight back from Toronto to Vancouver, and she said it was a great flight. First of all, it wasn't crowded. Second of all, everybody wore their masks. And she said in a couple of cases, a couple of people were wearing what she called the full zoot suit, the whole bit, with, you know, suit from head to toe and goggles, the whole bit.

But that the flight and the atmosphere on it was all good. Phil in Chicago writes, Thanks for your segment on the ins and outs of masks. I enjoyed the question and answer you read from the Atlantic piece. It really is important for people to realize how a comfortable, accessible, and smart design is what we need in masks. On top of that, I've enjoyed finding small online businesses that make well-made fabric masks with beautiful designs.

So to all the naysayers, masks don't have to give off an antisocial and isolating impression. Look for masks with creative and smart designs that you find attractive or appealing. And also a reminder, we had a few of them actually this week from people who said somebody's got a design. There are a few of them out there actually right now, but not one that's received general recognition. Some form of see-through mask, because for those who are hearing impaired and looking for either lip reading

or some form of facial recognition, facial expression, they'd like to see a mask that has a see-through quality to it. Martha Moriarty writes a fairly long letter, which I'm just going to read a couple of excerpts from. Martha is a retired teacher in Ontario, mother of two high school teachers and grandmother of school-aged children. And I must admit, we are all terrified about schools in

Ontario reopening. Now, since Martha wrote this note, Ontario has already announced that it is reopening and that it is calling for mask wearing for, I think it was grades four to 12. I think that's what it was. but for older students, masks will be required, and in some cases, at some times, masks on younger kids will be asked for as well. But here's Martha's concerns, other than the mask issue. I recognize that kids need to be in school, and parents need them to be in school so they can go back to work. But let us not forget that this needs to be a safe opening. There's a lack of understanding on the part of the politicians that Martha's heard talking on how classes could safely be run.

One has said in the past that teachers would be safe because they could stand at the front of the class and run the class from there. I know of no teacher who does that, and certainly not in elementary school. I spent 30 years teaching mainly children from ages 4 to 10, and never did I teach from the front of the room. You teach one-on-one or in small groups most of the time. And how do you keep from very young children confined to a desk? I would venture to say that the government thinks you can do that if they do pencil and paper tasks. Well, that's not how young children learn. Martha makes a lot of interesting points on this. I know that many of you,

many of you are concerned about the whole school issue, and there's so many different angles to it. I'm still looking for the possibility of doing, you know, a Bridge Daily special on schools and opening. Part of the problem here is because, as you know, education in Canada is a provincial jurisdiction, and therefore the rules and jurisdictions and restrictions and openings are different in most provinces. And so trying to do a program for a national podcast can be tricky. But there are certain things we can talk about,

and I'm looking for the right angle of doing that, and hopefully we'll have something. Well, we'll certainly have something before schools either open or not by the end of August. I guess I'm committing to go at least another month on this, although I'm going to take another week off in August. I had so much fun, you know, just fishing and swimming and golfing a little bit a couple of weeks ago

that I want to do that at least one more time. All right. Next message, once again, is on the whole mass question. And it comes from a familiar letter writer on this podcast, Val in Vancouver. We need to start with successful, and it's on masks, we need to start with successfully convincing more people to wear masks in public and wearing them properly, the nose covered, etc.

Once we get people to form the habit, yes, more attention to detail is warranted. I imagine all the information and disinformation regarding masks is overwhelming to a good chunk of the population. Thanks for helping to narrow the focus, which is what we did a little bit the other day on the special. My general impression, speaking as a Vancouverite, says Val, is that mask wearing here is actually in decline. General COVID fatigue and summer heat are two factors.

I take public transit and can confirm that few are wearing masks, even when buses are crowded. Same with grocery shopping. I'm guilty of unmasking if, say, bus is empty or the supermarket is not busy. I usually shop late in the evening. I usually mask up if walking on busy sidewalks, but not on the seawall or the beach.

Now, I don't know whether you've been to Vancouver. If you're lucky, you have been, because it's such a gorgeous city. But whenever you hear about the seawall, Stanley Park, any of that, you think Vancouver and how gorgeous that area is. And it's so hard to believe that we're living suddenly in this era where we've got to walk around gorgeous areas like that with masks on. But we need to do that for our protection and for the protection of others. You know, there's great fear, and the Prime Minister kind of dropped one

in the middle of his we hearings yesterday in Ottawa where he talked about evidence of, there's starting to be evidence of a second wave coming. Well, listen, if that's true, it's not going to be pretty. We are seeing evidence, as we've talked about a number of times on this podcast in the last 10 days, of numbers starting to go up a little bit in different parts of the country, including in British Columbia. We saw today that Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, has said they're

going to have to move back into restricting some of the things they'd reopen because numbers are starting to climb in different parts of Europe, especially Spain, a little bit in Italy and Germany and France, where they're having to turn back the clock a little bit on reopening because numbers are starting to climb and this fear of a second wave. Canada has done, we're not doing the best in the world. We're not even doing near the best in the world. But we are doing pretty well, and a lot better than people we normally compared with,

and those are our friends and neighbors to the south. But whenever you see numbers go up a little bit, you get worried about the direction this is heading, and you remind yourself of the basic rules, which we can't forget. Washing our hands, socially distance from others, and masks. So, keep all those things in mind. I did again again today we had just a couple of days we were

really low new case numbers in ontario really low compared with what they had been for the last couple of months and then today there was a bit of a little bump upwards so those who worry about these things, including me, are going to watch those very closely over the next few days to see whether there's a pattern developing. Hopefully not. All right, the last letter today comes from Fran Seguin. She's in Orleans, Ontario.

It's right on the Ottawa River. Right? Am I not right? It's Orleans on the Ottawa River. Separating Quebec and Ontario? I think so. So here's what France writes. I'm writing to you from Orleans. My husband and I have been listening to your podcast since you started for the 2019 election, and we've continued to listen nightly as I work on puzzles, and he plays Animal Crossing. Really?

So you've got the podcast in the background, but you're actually focused on your puzzle. And your husband, Jeff, he's playing Animal Crossing. And you know what? I don't even know what that is. But clearly, you've got to do something between the pauses, right? So that's what you two do, and that's good. I'm glad I'm part of your evening.

Here's your comment. Great episode tonight about masks. Really appreciate the information. It makes sense that the virus would not survive after a few days and in the sunlight. However, it occurred to me that people who wear makeup have additional concerns. While I'm confident that a previously worn mask will be virus-free after some time, there's still a concern for me about cleanliness. The inside of my mask gets dirty with makeup and I find it gross to put on a dirty mask. Have you found any articles addressing this? Actually, Franz, I don't think you need an article to address that.

Wash the mask, right? I think the point we were trying to make the other day is that in some cases, if the mask is not dirty, leaving it in the sunlight, according to the experts, will be enough after a couple of days to have disinfected it. But if it's dirty, especially with makeup, that's a whole new game. The odds are if it's dirty with makeup and it's one of those disposable masks, that's done. It's toast.

It's done. It's toast. It's done. But if it's a cloth mask, you've got to, you know, obviously you've got to wash it. If you can hand wash it, that's great. If you machine wash it, that's great too. The drying, and that was the other point of the article, drying the masks better in the sunlight than in the dryer. Simply because it's going to last longer

if you dry it in the sunlight instead of put it in the second machine to dry it. Now, you can get back to the puzzle and animal crossing. I've got to look that up. I've got to Google animal crossing. Find out what that is. All right. I promised you something fun to end the weekend special this week on Week 20.

I don't know whether you ever check out Quartz. Quartz is an online kind of magazine. And Quito is a design and architecture reporter for Quartz. And she had a good piece this week that I found interesting and kind of informative and fun. Its title is called The Angst of Remote Workers is Evident in Their Emoji. Okay, so this article is actually about emoji. For something so tiny, an emoji carries a lot of power.

I'll be reading the times here from the article. An emoji carries a lot of power. I'll be reading the Times here from the article. An emoji carries a lot of power, adding a dose of levity to a conversation or providing some much-needed encouragement to a friend. New research suggests that they've only become more important to communication during the pandemic. Remote workers on the platform are using 80% more emoji since the onset of COVID-19 and choosing more openly affectionate symbols to bridge the months of separation from their colleagues. How emoji has become the glue that holds everything together has been one of the more interesting insights of the study,

says Christina Janzer. On the messaging platform, Janzer says that the red heart has eclipsed tata as the most commonly used emoji this year. Workers are also more frequently using emoji to make sure the tone of their messages come across as they intended. For instance, appending fine with a smiley face better conveys the sender's feelings

and leaves less to interpretation. I know what you're sitting there going, really really is Mansbridge actually talking about emoji trying to understand how this all has an impact on how we are dealing with conversations with our friends during the pandemic yes I am Paul Hunt a typeface designer at Adobe who is working remotely from Melbourne, Australia, can vouch for the usefulness of emoji during the pandemic. I'm grateful for emoji through this time, he tells Quartz. You can add a little bit of color and heighten the emotion to your black and white words.

Even that little tiny bit of brightness is something to warm the heart. Hunt, who is a member of the Unicode Consortium, that's why I love this piece, I'd never heard of this group, the Unicode Consortium. That's the coalition that decides on new emojis each year. He also notes that the unique circumstances of the pandemic have pushed some underutilized glyph to the forefront. In the wake of the recent coronavirus outbreak, some previously overlooked emoji have shown their worth.

In particular, the soap emoji can serve as a reminder of the importance of frequent hand washing. And the masked emoji can help us encourage others to be considerate of others and to wear a mask when going out to public places. That's what our friend Mr. Hunt, Paul Hunt, writes, citing research from Emojipedia. You know, the things I've learned through this. Emojipedia, you know, like Wikipedia, like Encyclopedia. Well, now there's an Emojipedia. I don't know. I don't know.

Here's how it winds up. There's also been an uptick in the masked-faced emoji, microbiome symbol, and expressive face emoji on Twitter. The pie chart attached to this article shows the breakdown of emoji usage in 2,454 tweets that mention coronavirus or COVID-19. In a broader analysis of over 200,000 tweets, Emojipedia's researchers found that the masked emoji climbed 100 places in popularity, and the microbiome moved up 133 spots.

So here's your last fact. I mean, really, did you know all about this? Did you know this much about emoji? Come on, be honest. You didn't, did you? Well, some of you did. I sure didn't. In addition to the 3,304 emoji currently available. Now there's a basic fact. Did you know that? Did you know how many emoji were available right now? 3,304. Now there's a

fact you can dazzle your friends with. Custom emojis have proven to be particularly useful to establish a sense of collective identity. Created by uploading a JPEG or a PNG or a GIF file to Slack, it's another service, these symbols serve as a kind of unique graphic alphabet for a company. Okay, I know, stop. You're telling me to stop. I get it.

3,304 emoji, though. Bet you didn't know that. And you had to rely on the Bridge Daily Weekend Special, number 20, to let you know that. And this weekend, you will dazzle your friends. You will say, within 100, how many emoji are there currently registered as official emojis in Emojipedia?

I bet none of them know the answer to that. Unless, of course, they listen to The Bridge daily. Weekend special, number 20. All right, couple of quick reminders. You can always write me at themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. If you want to go back and find other podcasts from the past, they are all available on my website, thepetermansbridge.com. And you can also find the special section on the book Mark Bulgich and I have got

coming out later this year in November. And you can pre-order it section on the book Mark Boldgich and I have got coming out later this year in November. And you can pre-order it there through Simon & Schuster. It's called Extraordinary Canadians. We're really proud of this work. I did a couple of interviews with it. People are kind of lining up to talk to us about this. Talk to Costco. Costco.

They're going to feature it in their magazine for November or October I can't remember which and they are also going to be selling extraordinary Canadians at Costco stores from coast to coast to coast so will Indigo

who are also lining up some special programming to do with them anyway enough about that who are also lining up some special programming to do with them. Anyway, enough about that. I hope you have a great weekend this weekend. I hope that you are able to spend some time with family and friends and try to enjoy it as we continue to live through this challenge and as we continue to act smartly during this challenge. All right. So I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been the Bridge Daily, the weekend special.

Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again next on tuesday unless something big happens in between but enjoy the long weekend we'll be back on tuesday Thank you.