Some solace is better than no solace.

I sit in the glassed entranceway of the Walter C. Koerner Library. The library is an impressive mix of glass and stone exterior, with semblances of Vancouver's main library inside. The walk leading to the entrance doors is littered with the detritus of our habits: cigarette butts and dried remains of chewing gum like so many small round flakes of paint. It is not a sight befitting the approach to such a fine building in such a fine university on such a fine day. The day is nippy and grey, but not so grey and worn as the dirty carpet in the entranceway between the layer of glass doors where I sit behind a desk and a laptop. The trees outside are swept of leaves and the bare, spindly look contrasts with the grove of evergreens sprouting from the dell between the two libraries, old and new, Main and Koerner. A small flock of Canada geese dart past the clock-tower in confused flight. Confused because the weather and temperature always seems to vaccillate here in Vancouver, never really deciding if it is going to be cold and wet, or cool and wet, or frigid and wet, or frigid and dry - which leaves the animals confused if mildly content that they are still able to find forage here, when in other parts of Canada would leave them little but snow and dirty snow at that.

The occasional muffled conversation and pithy banter as I exchange cards are about the only interruption in an otherwise wonderful opportunity to lie down and stretch out to sleep. There are some curious stares but I gather that most are only too happy to have finished their examinations for this term. Life is otherwise interrupted by having to do these card exchanges.

The place would look so much better if the cigarette butts didn't litter the ground outside as if a bag containing them had suddenly emptied. The situation would be undoubtedly helped by the presence of ash/butt cans and the oft-seen stone kind with the fine white sand would do nicely here but I surmise that in the wisdom of managers in a committee somewhere, they have decided that in order to curb smoking and to eliminate the visible sign that the campus somehow promotes smoking, have decided to do away with them altogether. This measure, while may have seemed astute at first glance, resulted in having no-where for the die-hard smokers to deposit the refuse that is the culmination of their smoke - the butt. And nowhere to put it for it is not meet that butts go in regular garbage cans for they have the potential of sarting a particularly nasty rubbish bin fire, and so they go on the ground to be an eyesore for all to see, and perhaps a visible sign of the migbegotten and parochial half-measures that manifest themselves in the thinking of management so common in a large organization.

There is nothing quite so content-looking as a large white seagull sauntering across the apron of the Main Mall. There is a look and feeling of abject disdain for all around, but tempered with the ever-gnawing search for for.