Oh Canada....*.....

Oh Canada.....*.....

OK! So we've got a rugby scrum charging at, and wanting to bring down Stephen Harper in a humbling rumble.

I have no problem with that. Personally, I hope the microphones get in close so we can hear the crunching of broken bones.

What I do have a problem with is the crummy team doing the charging and scrumming.

So let's hypothetically say, Stephen Harper isn't able to suspend-and-or-dance-his-way-out-of-a-delay-by-immaturely-calling-a-
great-big-time-out, and let's just say the Governor General, who was always, up until now, purely a per functionary car hood ornament actually grants the scrum to take place.....and let's just say the potential coalition Gov't form, & win their vote-of-no confidence and take him down....assuming all that gets lined up in the crosshairs....

WTF?

Sadly. They are all the same politickers we've always had playing Pollyanna politics. No one is up for the job in this current economic global crises climate. Which is particularly clear in Canada when our adolescent-elects start doing that punch-each-other-in-the-back-seat-of-the-car-thing-that-is-Canada

...not bothering that no one is driving the thing that is Canada...and we're about to careen over a cliff, only this isn't as cathartically symbolic as that Thelma and Louise car careening scene.

So fast forward this twilight zone compendium of in incapabilities scenario to solutions.....

What's say, we alllllllllll agree, c'mon now, EVERYBODY, just hop on a plane (or just this one freakin' band wagon in your life), now's your chance, I say, if this infantile power struggle takes place, and we end up with Dion / Rae / Layton & Duceppe ((shudder))...I say we ALL - head in droves to Pearson Int'l Airport, from every corner of this once upon a time ( pre 1400's in my eyes ) great land of ours....and, let's all arrive at Pearson in our very own Thai-inspired anti-government "co-abolishing-political-cleanse' from our system.

THAT would trump the unprecedented. What's say WE wrest control of our country and write history together.

Especially given how unutterably Canadian we all are. Which has always been accept-and-complain tactics.

How 'bout we show some strength?

I think we, as a nation could take advantage of the upcoming busy flying holiday season down at Pearson Int'l Airport and just sit in to show our determination to have a capable, functioning Government at a time we kinda need one..we could oust each of our existing nonsensical, incapable governing 'leaders" if we stopped whining and did something.

Admittedly not something citizens want to do....but when you're stuck with these juvenile sandbox kiddies, c'mon man....some disciplinary action demands to be taken. WE are equally responsible....or else these little horrors actually grow old because (a) they were allowed to and (b) they forgot what the hell their post, position, duties and responsibilities were originally all about at one point (see waaay back in some history book for an example of a real leader, as none pops to mind as I type).

I think this is a great opportunity to step up and be as peaceful (however painfully-annoying) as the Thai population were in ousting their corrupt government. It works! ...not that we'll ever know that first hand.

In lieu of that, I say bring Casey our of retirement - that squeaky voiced, blonde little hand puppet from Mr. Dressup and stick him the seat of power (and Finnigan can be our new GG) until we find someone better. Casey may be our best Prime Minister we've ever had.

(or was Casey buried with Mr. Dressup? ...cremated you say?!?!)

AUGH!

See you at Pearson this holiday season people!

the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month ...

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month ...

Excerpt from "Welcome to Flanders Fields - The Great Canadian Battle of the Great War : Ypres, 1915", by Daniel G. Dancocks, McClelland and Stewart (Toronto, Canada), 1988

Although he had been a doctor for years and had served in the South African War, it was impossible to get used to the suffering, the screams, and the blood here, and Major John McCrae had seen and heard enough in his dressing station to last him a lifetime. As a surgeon attached to the 1st Field Artillery Brigade, Major McCrae, who had joined the McGill faculty in 1900 after graduating from the University of Toronto, had spent seventeen days treating injured men -- Canadians, British, Indians, French, and Germans -- in the Ypres salient.

It had been an ordeal that he had hardly thought possible. McCrae later wrote of it1:

"I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days... Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done."

One death particularly affected McCrae. A young friend and former student, Lieut. Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, had been killed by a shell burst on 2 May. Lieutenant Helmer was buried later that day in the little cemetery outside McCrae's dressing station, and McCrae had performed the funeral ceremony in the absence of the chaplain.

The next day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the dressing station beside the Canal de l'Yser, just a few hundred yards north of Ypres, McCrae vented his anguish by composing a poem. The major was no stranger to writing, having authored several medical texts besides dabbling in poetry. In the nearby cemetery, McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up in the ditches in that part of Europe, and he spent twenty minutes of precious rest time scribbling fifteen lines of verse in a notebook2.

A young soldier watched him write it. Cyril Allinson, a twenty-two year old sergeant-major, was delivering mail that day when he spotted McCrae. The major looked up as Allinson approached, then went on writing while the sergeant-major stood there quietly. "His face was very tired but calm as we wrote," Allinson recalled. "He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Helmer's grave." When McCrae finished five minutes later, he took his mail from Allinson and, without saying a word, handed his pad to the young NCO. Allinson was moved by what he read3:

" The poem was exactly an exact description of the scene in front of us both.
The word blow was not used in the first line though it was used later when the poem later appeared in Punch. But it was used in the second last line. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene. "

In fact, it was very nearly not published. Dissatisfied with it, McCrae tossed the poem away, but a fellow officer -- either Lt.-Col. Edward Morrison, the former Ottawa newspaper editor who commanded the 1st Brigade of artillery4, or Lt.-Col. J.M. Elder5, depending on which source is consulted -- retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England. "The Spectator," in London, rejected it, but "Punch" published it on 8 December 1915.

McCrae's "In Flanders Fields" remains to this day one of the most memorable war poems ever written. It is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, saw dawn, felt sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up your quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Doctor Major (later Lieutenant-Colonel) John McCrae of the 1st Field Artillery Brigade wrote this poem on May 3, 1915 after the battle at Ypres. The poem was later published in "Punch", December 8, 1915.

1 Bassett, John. page 44, "John McCrae." Markham:Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1984.
2 Public Archives Canada (Ottawa), now the National Archives of Canada, MG30 E209, biographical note by Gertrude Hickmore.
3 Mathieson, William D. page 264. "My Grandfather's War." Toronto:Macmillan, 1981.
4 Public Archives Canada (Ottawa), now the National Archives of Canada, MG30 EI33, volume 4, "Origin of `In Flanders Fields.'"
5 "Canadian Daily Record," 5/3/19.

Barack Obama

Justice

Just yes.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.


"Nothing Gold Can Stay" is one of Robert Frost's most famous poems.

Written in 1923, this poem was published in The Yale Review in October of that year.

Some say the poem helped Frost to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Only eight lines long, this poem is still considered one of Frost's best.

I've been negligent in blogging....not that anyone cares, but this evening's walk brought with it
the first snow from the north, covering Autumns beauty with the dusk's twilight white.

It is the first snow of the new season. Packing snow under foot, and wet.

So we begin a new chapter in our collective reflectiveness...

World Meet Pat

Pat Tanzola is one of the good guys, fighting the good fight,
running the good race, jumping the good hoops, spinning the good wheels,
twirlin' the good baton leading us on....

and he's winning!

To our dismay, today Pat leaves our pokey old icefloe to make a splash over at UofT.

All I can say is: Damn you Pat.

How could you leave us?

But also want to say thank you Pat, for being one of the nicest people I have had the pleasure of working with,
thank you for thinking my natterings were worthy of a weblog and got me all set up online...I feel I have failed you.
.

But congratulations on your new job, your new house, your upcoming nuptials, and on coping admirably while on that rediculous cleanse ...good lord*+;...at least I know you got real food in you today.

To read a few words from the man himself, may I direct you to the following link:
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2006/09/30/arrivederci/


You will be missed Mr. Tanzola.

Take care and keep in touch.

Crossing the Blue

A novel by Holly Jean Buck

I had some down time when I was without Internet, and a functional computer, but I was given this book...

If you ever have so much as a weekend...so much as an inkling, curiosity, fascination as to what we might all experience in the future...

the future...post-petrol

the future...post-American-empire

The future... post-infrastructure

I highly recommend you take the Kerouac-road-trip of the future now....while there's still infrastructure enough to send you a copy by post, and while you can enjoy a bevvy or two, to try and distance yourself from the impending, most likely, reality generations after us face...without such luxury.

All that said and done...

Crossing the Blue is one of the most beautifully written books, despite subject matter...I have encountered in a long time.

It is us.

It is the future.

It is both unreal and real...

There is hope, there is love and connection, there is life as it happens when one travels...

...but most of all...

there is a sense of realness.

The characters are as real as anyone you know.

The images of the future is as real as there is likely to be.

The situations continues to be as surreal-but-real, as life tends to be.

The reality is as honest as we see...

...despite the horrors that will bring.

Should you be inclined, and might be looking for an interesting 'read'

may I highly recommend that you pick up 'Crossing the Blue' by Holly Jean Buck

It is a wondrous insight into what can, might, and will most likely be.....our future.


for more information go to: http://www.lulu.com/content/3327469

Labourious Diem

I think I'm back therefore I blog!

I have missed letting my nonsense ooz out in text form.

I have missed railing at what on earth I might come up with to blog.

I have missed all TECHNOLOGY and all the modern inconveniences they serve!

I have laboured, fussed and fumed and - as ever - discovered it is always the last thing one could imagine or think of that was causing the bain of my existence....I believe after much trouble, and shooting...dust bunnies had gnawed
through actual cables ....though I managed to get this montage of madness working, it remains riddled through and through with other ailments....but who cares about that?! I have typed-text at my finger tips once again!!

So much water under the bridge....so much life, and time has passed I cannot go back...

....so I will commence by going forth.

Welcome to September folks.

This is the slippery slope seasonal time that finds us deposited with a thump on the doorstep of Christmas before we even knew what has happened so be sure to drag your butt and dig in your heels to enjoy every single day as it needs to be enjoyed.

Slowly.

Peaceably.

...with grace.

Enjoy enjoy enjoy

Carpe diem