Garage Sales and Soccer

For Sale: 25 cents Or Best Offer

Sunday morning. Town's quiet. Our B & B guests are getting acquainted over omelets and toast.

When God declared a Sabbath for rest from our labours, I don't think he had in mind the rigours of garage sales and soccer.

Rosthern's population doubled on Saturday. The under-8s and under-10s soccer tournament brought in 600 kids along with parents and brothers and sisters. We and about a dozen other residents had determined that it would be a great weekend for garage sales and some of our customers had made a day of it. Two office chairs went to the Prud'homme Library, for instance, carried back home by a soccer mom.

I'm not sure what's behind the impulse to frequent garage sales. It's apparent to me that some (hoarders maybe?) come out with a few dollars and a hope that they'll be able to fill their trunks with neat stuff for next to nothing. Some are looking for treasure and some actually need items that are bound to appear once in a while at a good price. 

Others, I'm convinced, are voyeurs; garage sales give them an opportunity to snoop into private lives. It's obviously a simple diversion for others: the Garage Sailors.

I remember driving through Somerset county on a leisurely Sunday and seeing a “Boot Sale” sign pointing toward a meadow with cars parked in two rows. “Need boots?” I asked Agnes, but it was curiosity that made us turn off. The cars had their “boots” open, of course, from which they were selling, well, the same kind of stuff we sell at garage sales.

Another version of the flea market, a concept older than Dickens.

We live in an age where recycling, reducing and reusing are taken for granted. Our landfill sites are bursting with our 'stuff' and our resources are depleting. To see a table we can no longer use go to someone for whom “it's perfect!” provides some satisfaction, even if the item cost $300.00 and you're selling it for $50.00. And the office chairs will do well for Prud'homme's library, especially since, like all libraries, they're starved for cash.

A young boy—probably about 12—picked out a book for which he paid $0.50; it was a very old German, Mennonite hymnbook. I didn't get that. Maybe he liked the smell or the heft of it.

Another man said he'd decided to spend $5.00 but so far had only reached $4.00. He was looking for another $1.00 item to add to his cache. I didn't get that either. We had plenty of change.

Anyway, meeting people has to be the highlight of sitting on your driveway for two days like children with a hopeful lemonade stand. The 8-year old soccer stars in their cleats and knee socks cuddling the stuffed animals with which our kids used to play, well, that's priceless.

Murphy's Law of Soccer and Garage Sales reads as follows: Put on a garage sale or tournament and clouds will gather, the temperature will drop and the wind will pick up. The forecast for the Sunday after: sunny with a light breeze and seasonal temperatures.

I think we sold a few blankets to moms watching the soccer from the sidelines.

Omar Khadr - Child Soldier

Found Glory

The granting of parole to Omar Khadr and the Canadian government's attempts to stop it was big in the news a few weeks ago.

There's no disputing that Khadr was a juvenile at the time of the incident for which a military court tried him at Guantanamo Bay. There's no dispute about his having been on the al-Qaeda side of a firefight with US Special Forces. There's still uncertainty about whether or not it was he who threw the hand grenade that killed US officer Speer largely because the interrogations and the trial of Khadr included torture and the denial of basic rights like access to legal council for the first two years of incarceration and a three year delay in laying charges.

In other words, Khadr's “confession” would be thrown out in any legitimate court.

Human Rights Watch wrote a letter to Stephen Harper on February 2, 2008 outlining the degree to which the trial of Khadr violated international—even US—conventions on the treatment of juvenile offenders. Click on the link above to read it for yourself.

For me, an open question has always been this: in a war situation where combatants are firing at each other, is it a crime under international law or the conventions of war to kill one of the enemy? If so, should the US soldier who shot and wounded Khadr also be brought to trial for committing a war crime?

Should Khadr have been released on parole? Of course, but the more relevant question is whether or not he should ever have been imprisoned, tried and convicted as he was in the first place. A 15-year old brainwashed by his father and al-Qaeda, fighting to save his life in a combat situation, surely falls under the conventions of child soldiers and juveniles generally:

“International law recognizes the special situation of children who have been recruited or used in armed conflict. The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (“Optional Protocol”), which Canada ratified in 2000 and the United States ratified in 2002, requires that all states parties provide for the rehabilitation of former child soldiers within their jurisdiction, including all appropriate assistance for their physical and psychological recovery and their social reintegration.” (HRW letter to Harper)

Canadian government appeals to quash the decision to parole Khadr were dismissed in short order by the courts. Nevertheless, these actions provided the government with a couple of really useful narratives for the election campaign: “We are the party that protects you from terrorism,” and “The courts in Canada are interfering in democracy; now they're making law instead of judging it!”

For Canadians who like simple, black on white narratives, such campaign scripts may be encouragement enough put an X beside the Conservative candidate's name on the ballot. For voters who understand that the rule of law exists for very good reasons, not so much.

Who needs birds anyway?

According to The Nature of Things, hosted by Dr. David Suzuki, the official stance in the neurological sciences has long been that animal minds are “black boxes,” that the existence or non-existence of thought and emotion in animals is unknowable. 

Dog owners, particularly, would always have objected. The antics of their German Shepherd when he sees the leash and collar come out is just too much like the elation in a child upon seeing mother come through the door. It's difficult to dismiss as something other than joy. The baleful look and the cowering of a dog being scolded is too characteristic of human behaviour in such a situation to be dismissed as something other than an emotion.

 

The documentary goes on to talk about recent research that points in the direction of rethinking the “black box” assumption. We humans have brains with left and a right hemispheres; the left controls the right side of our bodies—including our faces—and the right controls the left. But the left also houses our affective (emotional) controls and when we meet a stranger of whom we are apprehensive, we unconsciously focus on the right side of the persons face; it's where emotions first reveal themselves.

Interestingly, dogs do the same thing when they meet a person-stranger. So even if they don't experience joy, sadness, anger in the same way we do, they obviously recognize these emotions in us.

I suspect the “black box” sentiment was more a defense against the guilt of killing and eating animals than pure science. If animals experience fear, anger, joy, love in a similar way to humans, slaughterhouses begin to seem more and more like NAZI death camps. Furthermore, the bond that grows between people and their pets surely argues for more “feeling” than that between a human and a china cat.

Something we no longer practice—or are even conscious of, seems to me—is the reverence for living things and the elements that sustain them. Major world religions lack a doctrine of the interconnectedness of life on the planet; these days our relationship to living-things-that-are-not-us has been dictated by economists, lawyers and corporate entrepreneurs through manipulation of our governments.

The numbers of those who have embraced the dream of a more humane and sustainable world are increasing but we're nowhere near a tipping point. My personal hero in the struggle is Trevor Herriot and one of my favourite books is his Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds. Herriot is the advocate general for the birds that lived in abundance on the Saskatchewan prairies before agricultural and industrial “progress” forced them into smaller and smaller habitats.

Like the canary in the coal mine, the elimination of species with a cavalier “who needs birds anyway” attitude is a signal of enormous loss that will both haunt and bite us back in the future.

Anyone who has seen a tiny bird's antics in protecting her nest can surely see that birds want to live; they struggle to protect their lives and those of their loved ones. What part of that can't we humans understand?

I'm grateful to CBC and to Dr. Suzuki for championing a better way to be in the world through The Nature of Things. Hopefully, more and more of us will begin to turn away from Two and a Half Men to The Nature of Things to learn about the world—but how many crises will it take to make that happen?

I haven't a thing to wear.

“Spaghetti straps. Ultra-short skirts. Excessive cleavage. Midriff-baring tops. Shorts with a hem shorter than where a person's fingertips graze when they are standing.”
     Here we go again! That old what's-appropriate-for-girls-to-wear-to-school-and-what's-not debate. True, school boys are required to “dress appropriately,” but when the question resurfaces—as it's done constantly since coed education was invented—it's the girls who make it into the news.
     The CBC story about 17 year-old Lauren Wiggins being sent home from school for wearing an off-the-shoulder, full-length halter dress to school elicited the old saws about what clothing is appropriate for the classroom and what isn't. “It's a sexual distraction,” her teachers said, and others said that assuming boys to be helpless against bared shoulders, cleavage and belly buttons isn't helpful in their development as women-respecting men.
     I went to a high school where school uniforms for girls were mandatory and boys couldn't wear jeans or shorts to class. 60 years later, they all wear “uniform” clothing to class, but they have choices among a number of prescribed items. 
     The most compelling argument for uniforms in my day was that they relieved anxiety about what to wear, particularly for girls. I guess the fringe benefit was that girls wouldn't dress to provoke and distract the boys.
     Surely, attracting or distracting, being noticed—or at least fitting in—are what dress and fashion are about. Lauren Wiggins certainly got noticed; she made it onto national television! She'll be lucky if the on-line taunting doesn't undo her in the end, though.
     Wearing a ball gown to class is not a crime. But for appropriateness, it has to rank with the wearing of high rubber boots to gym class.
     Individualism has been given a boost in the post modern age. It's not unusual for people to play the “I have my rights” and “you can't make me” cards when confronted about their behaviour. Surely education is partly about teaching the balance between individual rights and community needs. Lauren Wiggins hasn't accepted the need for such a balance, yet. But she's only 17, right in the middle of her Sturm und Drang period.
     Often, I find, these teapot tempests are symptomatic of unresolved social tensions. In this case, it's the ambivalence about human sexuality. This confusion, in turn, can be traced back to the simple fact that we have, over the centuries, evolved dramatically in our capacity to reason, to organize and to assume mastery over ourselves and our environments. Meanwhile, our procreative instincts remain unchanged; our biological “progress” has hardly surpassed that of the Bonobo monkey. This discrepancy represents a Gordian Knot that we are having a hard time untying.
     The Christian Bible is clear in its admonitions of sexual restraint. But restraint is not a watchword in currant Western cultures; permissiveness, maybe. But I fear that a tug-of-war between permissiveness and restraint (externally applied, if necessary) is not ever going to resolve issues involving sexuality.      
     Until Lauren Wiggins sees conformity in the area of dress as beneficial and satisfying, I expect she will continue to seek attention in an “off-the-shoulder, full-length halter dress” manner.
     And the restrainers will feel forced to pounce.

Are you an antisemite? Am I?

A blessing found in a ditch

I am an anti-Semite . . .

at least according to Minister of Public Safety, Steven Blaney,  who has characterized criticism of Israeli actions as a new antisemitism. I support the efforts of Christian Peacemaker Teams as they accompany Palestinian children to school to protect them from harassment by West Bank settlers and Israeli soldiers. I applaud the United Church and Quakers for speaking up for a humane, negotiated settlement of the Israel/Palestine question.

Ergo, I am on the side of Jew haters . . . according to Blaney.

If Blaney is incapable of separating genuine concern for the future of all people in the Middle East from holocaust-style antisemitism, he ought not be in charge of a government department. Antisemitism exists, of course. Terrorism and extremism too. Guarding against both is logically an important task for the Ministry of Public Safety. In his naivete, Blaney has actually encouraged the conflating of Jewish ethnicity with the secular state of Israel, an action that will promote rather than discourage antisemitic sentiments in people.

These pronouncements can't, of course, be separated from the election campaign. Indeed, all utterances coming from politicians from now until October have to be seen in the light of that reality. The rhetoric surrounding terrorism and related subjects coming from the Harper government recently seems to be painting the world as a place pervaded by evil, where citizens are in imminent danger and the current government is very decisively and wisely taking the necessary steps to protect them.

Something had to be found to redirect our attention when the economy began to tank.

I know persons who staunchly believe that the citizens of present-day Israel are the living remnant of the Children of Israel in the Old Testament. That's not an illogical conclusion as regards genetics and religious tradition. Another reading of the history will show that the Children of Israel were being punished for their error as often as they were being blessed for their faithfulness. Either way, any conclusion about the legitimacy of the state of Israel as it exists today can't possibly exclude the raising of concerns regarding those actions it takes that directly affect its neighbours.

A hallmark of naivete is the promotion of simple answers to complex questions. If campaigning politicians are banking on the electorate swallowing simple answers, they may well be shrewd.

Shrewd, however, is not necessarily wise, and to attempt to castigate and muzzle organizations that promote a negotiated settlement and the rule of law in Palestine is clearly a case of shrewdness trumping wisdom.

Short-term gain for long-term pain, I'm afraid.

conversation is not just talk

Blackstrap Lake

Obviously, there's a lot more to conversation than the words that are spoken. You put yourself in the company of friends and you can safely assume that there will be conversation, although the range of topics is unpredictable. Maybe the point is not the topic but the interaction, like a friendly game of tennis. One serves, the other returns, repeat, repeat.

Too much non-interaction feels awkward and we all have the experience of “groping for a topic” when the silence gets uncomfortably long. You can't play tennis without a ball. It would look stupid.

All around the country men are going to coffee in the mornings—some in the afternoons and evenings as well. They obviously don't need the coffee; they've got coffee at home. It's conversation that's the real need here, especially for retired folk who no longer have a regular workplace where a full quota of interaction used to happen routinely. A bit of tennis is what's wanted.

Although the topics may not be the important components of coffee or party conversation, the choices aren't insignificant either. If you've little knowledge of machinery and the dialogue seems always to wander toward engine displacement, transmission lubricants and horsepower, you very soon begin to feel like you're on the tennis court without a racquet.

Someone speculated that conversation falls into three categories. In descending order of quality are conversations about ideas, things and people. Engagement in ideas, then, is the highest order. Gossip the lowest. A somewhat elitist view of the world, others would say, but there's merit to the concept in that idea conversations are more likely to include everyone around the restaurant table or in the living room.

As an example, take ideas about how we design our houses. Everyone lives in a house, must maintain it and deal with its idiosyncrasies. Talking about the best doorknobs available, though, is a “things” conversation; debating whether or not we generally build our houses too large is an “ideas” conversation. Exchanging information on how poorly the Jones maintain their yard is a “people” topic. It's easy to see that idea-dialogue provides scope for imagination and invention; the other topics may seem mundane in comparison. The last one may even prove destructive.

Thing is, we generally end up in groups that are conversationally compatible, individuals that share common interests, that naturally veer toward topics in which all can participate. Groups in which attention is paid to ensuring that everyone has a racquet.

Should the art of conversation be a school subject? History tells us that Cleopatra was a persuasive conversationalist, fluent in six languages, a student of history and culture and oratory. Alexandrian education was not so much job-oriented as it was geared to personal development. In a time when Roman women were chattels for trading, she so adeptly won Roman emperor Caesar to her cause that she was able not only to bed him but to bring his battalions to her aid.

Alexandria was obviously not Rome.

Because in the end, it's a satisfactory, rewarding, uplifting interaction that we came for. Isn't it?

Power corrupts . . . sometimes

Tea, anyone?

It's inevitable. If you eat 1,000 more calories than your body needs every day, you will gain weight. If you drop a plate on the driveway, it will break.

     British Historian, Lord Acton (1834-1902) famously said, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." I imagine most of us would take exception to the last part, at least if it comes without a definition of “great.” Furthermore, women should take exception to the inference that only men can be corrupted by power. Chauvinist!

     Emperors and kings, dictators and oligarchies don't figure much in our world, at least not in the West. But through the ballot box or by appointment we bestow the burden—or privilege—of power on all kinds of people and too often what I call the Acton effect reveals itself rather quickly.

     Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin, Allison Redford come easily to mind, and now Brad Wall is being charged by the opposition with spending taxpayers' dollars frivolously by sending emissaries ahead on trade missions to arrange his meals, accommodation, etc. This runs into a whack of money when the mission is to Asia. (The option of using travel agencies comes to mind.)

     We've been watching episodes of Wolf Hall on PBS periodically. It's centered on the court intrigue during the reign of Henry VIII; the manipulations and compromises of Thomas Cromwell in service of the king and the exercise of monarchial privilege wielded by Henry make for fascinating studies of the Acton effect in an earlier time.

     Meanwhile, I'm also reading Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff, a biography that takes us back into the century before Christ. Cleopatra inherited the throne at 18, conjointly with her 10 year-old brother (to whom she was also married for a time) and grew up in a family where members murdered one another in order to achieve and hold power. Yikes!

     Kings and dictators historically have assumed a privileged morality: kings do whatever they want—whose to stop them? Furthermore, in order to preserve the kingdom the ruler must exercise his power. He has to be, and be seen to be, leader and protector of his subjects.

     But that hardly explains Mike Duffy's finding ways to charge even his personal trainer's fees to the public purse. Many of us find ourselves entitled to expense accounts from time to time. Work on committees, appointment to leadership positions require that the personal costs we incur in order to carry out our responsibilities are reimbursed. 

     The temptation to be overly generous to ourselves is real, particularly because it's an honour system in part and cheating is easy. It is, nevertheless, theft, hardly distinguishable from shop lifting . . . ethically, morally. It's also easily justified under the rubric of “I work hard and long for this (company, committee, institution), they owe me.”

     I can also hear Mike Duffy say in his defense, “To do my job, I have to be fit; ergo, the personal trainer cost is really my employers' (taxpayers') expense.” (Politicians also need orange juice to do their job, even when it's $16.00 a pop!)

     We generally shorten Lord Acton's pronouncement to “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Maybe it's too cynical by half. I've known a lot of hard-working board members in charitable organizations who donate not only their time and work as well as their personal expenses to the cause they're supporting through their participation.

     Corruption is not inevitable, not like overeating that leads to obesity.

     But when politicians of any stripe confuse their status with people like Henry VIII or Cleopatra, we have good reason to protest. 

     Corruption has no legitimate place in a democracy.

Alberta election ruminations

I've no first-hand experience with the dynamics of transition when a new party is elected to power, but I imagine that very soon, Alberta Premier Jim Prentice will have to go back to the premier's office with cardboard boxes to clean out his stuff, and Rachel Notley will very soon arrive with cardboard boxes full of her stuff, she'll hang pictures, move the desk slightly, sharpen pencils.

I also imagine that the outgoing premier and all cabinet ministers will meet with their incoming counterparts to brief them on what is current and pending in their departments. Dossiers will be handed over, emails will fly back and forth, deputy ministers will fear for their jobs, some MLAs may lobby discretely for certain cabinet positions, the incoming premier will meet long with advisors, and. . . and . . . and.

A few new MLAs will need a guide to show them where everything important is but will wander into closets and bathrooms by mistake anyway.

 In one of the most shameful acts in politics that I can recall, Jim Prentice resigned as PC leader AND as the representative in the legislature for Calgary-Foothills constituency—before the ballots electing him had all been counted! How could constituents not come to the conclusion that their representation had never been of any interest to him; that he would be premier or nothing?

The transition in Alberta shows signs of being difficult.In elections where the governing party is in danger of losing, I expect there's always a strong temptation to sabotage the winning rival's chances of succeeding. Short of putting bear traps under desks, there's always the option of cutting taxes and initiating expensive, vote-getting programs as part of an election platform. If the voters like these measures, you'll get re-elected. If not, you'll have made it difficult for your successors to govern without raising taxes or cancelling programs that are just not affordable, thereby improving your chances in the next election!

Our federal government is busily laying these bear traps at this moment.

I give a great deal of credit to the citizens of Alberta for placing their future into the hands of a new crew of people and out of the hands of tired corporatism. No matter how loud the protests, the idea that if the top prospers, the rest will benefit remains an invisible plank in Western conservative politics. That, or an even worse consciousness that the establishment shall always get what they want and . . . please pass the butter. Jim Prentice's actions imply that the ideals of representative democracy simply never figured in his agenda.

What is uplifting about the Alberta election, for me, is that it might set loose a consciousness in the rest of Canada that same-old, same-old doesn't have to be. Would that the young people, the ones trying to establish themselves in the grown-up world, would be more involved but then, how many Canadians of any age have a good grasp of the platforms, philosophies of the parties?

And tomorrow Great Britain elects a new government, and if the polls are as dead-on as they were in Alberta, they may find Tories and Labour in a dead heat . . . with the Scottish Nationalist party calling the shots. 

Remind you a bit of the Bloc Quebec a few elections ago?

Alberta rethinks itself . . . maybe

Gospel Hymnody recalled

The Eastern pundits were out in full, royal regalia on our national network last night, expressing loud incredulity that the NDP was leading in the polls in Alberta before next Tuesday's provincial election. True, Albertans have elected PC governments without a break for over 40 years, but the implication in all this amazement was that Alberta is the red-neck capital of Canada, a stereotype that it doesn't deserve. 

I lived in Alberta for ten-plus years, a few of them in Edmonton, the rest in the nearby bedroom community of Spruce Grove. There was plenty of progressive thinking going on in that part of the province; NDP candidates were winning some seats, were competitive in others. The view from there—uttered with a sigh on occasion—was that corporate oil and ranching agriculture represented the hard right-wing position in the province. Calgary, in other words, was the red-neck capital if any place was. Not Alberta.

There's propaganda that goes around and around during election campaigns: the NDP is a tax and spend party; Conservatives are the astute fiscal managers. The fact that history proves this to be a false analysis doesn't stop it being repeated in campaigns.

The other half of that lie is that low taxes equate to good governance, and high taxes to its opposite. This is a false consciousness: low vs. high is not the relevant criterion. Fairness and equity are the foundation for finding the right levels of taxation, understanding at the same time that taxes should be sufficient to maintain public infrastructures and ensure sound, equal health care, education, meaningful work and safe domicile for everybody.

It's social democracy. It's the difference between seeing people as widgets in an economy and acknowledging that the economy is the set of tools that can provide a satisfactory living for every citizen. What's happening in Alberta—and may happen writ large in Canada in October—is that people have begun to see the chinks in the conservative armour. For poverty, homelessness, youth unemployment, aboriginal treaty obligations, regional disparity, their world view simply can't picture answers. Their vision doesn't tend that way. Witness the mess our federal government is making in the areas of veterans' support, aboriginal relations, youth unemployment. In recognition of their failings, they can only tinker and devise absurd policies like increasing punishment as the answer to crime, income splitting, and a host of ill-advised bills struck down by the supreme court because they violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 

And then during election campaigns, they resort to smear campaigns and to the handing-out of gifts to the demographics where they deem their support base to lie.

Alberta voters may panic on Tuesday under the barrage of propaganda, hold their noses and revert to the status quo. It happened in the last election, but three premiers later and an early election call by Prentice after a budget that had no answers, they just might break old habits this time.

I lived in Alberta in the 90s during which a bumper sticker was precipitated by an economic downturn, deficit budgets and wage claw-backs from civil servants: “Please Lord, give us another oil boom and this time we promise not to piss it all away!”

It's not hard to argue that, by golly, they pissed it away . . . again.

Stuff!

Getting ready to move. Downsizing time. Condo living is going to be a big, big adjustment for us. The perks? No more need for snow shovels, lawnmower, garden tools and such. The downside? I'll get back to you on that--some time this fall.

I'm reminded how much technologies have changed since I became interested in photography, for instance, back in the '70s. I've gone through about 10,000 slides, paring down from three or four big boxes to about 500 slides. I'm not sure what drove me to take all those pictures of trees and churches and waterfalls; my criterion for keeping/discarding has become this: if it doesn't have a recognizable face on it, is over or underexposed, is poorly composed, I must have had landfill in mind when I took it. 

Anyone want to buy a 35mm slide projector or a mint condition Super 8 movie projector, cheap?

George Carlin's routine called “Stuff” is not only one of his funniest sketches, but really brings home what we're going through as we begin to sell, box, discard, destroy most of our “stuff.” If you've never seen it, click here and then consider that if you haven't yet gone through the agony of down-stuffing, trust me, you will. 

Take the library we've accumulated over the years. What motivated us to buy books, read them, and then put them on a shelf. A dictionary maybe, but a novel? Who reads novels twice? 

In Saskatchewan these days, every public library is one library. Any book you want can be ordered on line in a few minutes and picked up at your local library toot sweet. Oh we say things like, “Well I just love the look and the feel of a book; I can't read from a screen!” But if feeling and looking at a book is where it's at, you really need only one book, one that looks and feels (maybe even smells) really, really good. 

Unfortunately we have book shelves our brother made for us. They're really quite lovely with their glass doors. We're giving away or recycling most of our books but we've decided to pick out some that have really attractive spines, place them tastefully on the shelves, set them off with whatever brick-a-brac stuff we haven't thrown away and . . . and postpone one bit of down-stuffing for yet another time.

Dealing with disposal of stuff is a real headache. Fortunately, we have a spunky local gal who maintains a buy/sell Facebook page and this has really worked for us. The local nursing home came by today to pick up the electric fireplace we may have used five times since we got it five years ago. (That averages out to once per year.) My snow blower has found a home with an RCMP corporal in Saskatoon.

But then the temptation to put on a garage sale rears its ugly head. So here's a packet of 7- #8, 1½ inch screws. Put them on the for-sale table? Chuck them in the garbage? So many decisions; so little motivation!

But having stuff, I mean, really good stuff has always been so comforting. Windowsills full of plant pots, shelves and shelves of books and knickknacks, ten comfortable places to sit for two people, techy stuff that makes short work of any problem, outfits of clothes for every occasion, garden gnomes and ornaments, cars and vans and pickup trucks and on and on.

Here's a rule of thumb made clearer while down-stuffing: whatever you paid for a given piece of stuff will lose 75% of its monetary value when you take it out of the bag, drive it off the lot, see the Purolater truck stopping at your door.

Tempted back to the shopping channel or Amazon? Do watch Carlin before you buy any more stuff.

An appeal to be generous to the people of Nepal

Photo taken from World Vision website

The pictures from Nepal are horrifying; if you haven't seen them, watch the news tonight. CBC has a photo crew in Kathmandu, a place that's become extremely difficult to get in and out of. After you've seen them, imagine what it would be like to be in that vulnerable city, those vulnerable villages along the line where the European tectonic plate meets the Asian. 

We're told the movement beneath people's feet measured a full meter, so imagine yourself on one of those moving sidewalks in an airport, where someone turns on, then reverses the direction every second for a full minute. Buildings made of stone and un-reinforced concrete can't survive such motion and all around you are the excruciating rumble of stone and concrete collapsing and the screaming of parents and the wailing of children pouring into the streets.

As the worst shaking subsides for a moment, your attention is drawn to the homes of family members and friends and you begin frantically searching for them and you find some but others are nowhere to be found; you know they didn't make it out.

And every few minutes, the aftershocks remind you that this is not going to be over for a very long time. When you've done all you can to find friends and family and the rescue crews are beginning their work of searching for the dead and the living, you make your way to a place where no building can fall on you, gather your children around you and try to calm them. It's not easy because you yourself are on the edge of hysteria.

The buildings that were your refuge have become savages, you dare not shelter in the ones still standing.

The crowds begin to gather in the open space you've found, a kind of common in the heart of Kathmandu. Eventually, relief will come in the form of emergency tents but for two nights, you sleep under the stars, huddling with your children under a thin blanket, shivering in the drizzle that's just begun to add to your misery. Your son is coughing and you know there's nothing to give him except to keep him as warm as possible with your body.

The tents when they come are a great relief, at least you can be dry. The blankets feel like an angel's touch after the cold and damp. By now the aftershocks are beginning to feel normal although the rumble of stones and concrete falling somewhere fills with despair: will there be a life left for you when this is over? Or would it have been better if you had all died and were lying at peace under the rubble?

And then there are food and sanitation to figure out. Earthquakes crack roads and runways and food relief can sit at airports in India or on parking lots far away, unable to proceed to the afflicted area. Stores can be raided from some buildings lucky not to have fallen, but this will suffice for a few days at best. Hidden spaces between rubble piles become open toilets that hold the promise of cholera. Despair is everywhere.

What does this mean for us where food is plentiful, the ground is flat and never moves, where incomes are high, healthcare is excellent and always nearby, and our homes aren't adequate unless they have at least two bathrooms? Relief organizations and governments have turned their attention to helping; our best help will come in giving them the resources to make help happen. It's not an occasion for twenty bucks; we ought to dig deeper, out of compassion and thankfulness that we are able to be generous.

Let's think $500, $1,000, $2,000 or more, even if we have to borrow it or pay it off in installments on our credit cards. That bit of hardship for us will be easy compared to the tribulations of the Nepalese communities struggling to survive. 

To donate, click on one of the links below (or find your own preferred organization) and follow what is usually a “To Donate” or "Donate Now" button where you can designate your gift to Nepal Earthquake relief. Donated this way, the funds will be available immediately.

Mennonite Central Committee Canada

Canadian Red Cross

World Vision Canada

Thank you!

Hockey? Me? Really?

The Montreal Canadiens eliminated the Ottawa Senators in NHL first round Stanley Cup playoffs. I rarely watch an entire game, but of this one I missed only five minutes or so at the beginning of the third period. Having seen that first and decisive goal, I could appreciate the sentiment candidly expressed by Carey Price in an after-game interview. He seemed to attribute a large part of winning and losing to “the way the puck bounces for you.”

Luck, in other words.

More astute hockey watchers will protest that you make your luck; you can't score from the penalty box and you can't get lucky at the opponents' end when the play is always at your own end. This may or may not be a metaphor for life.

The arena was full, sold out. Fans were dressed in Senators Jersey's and did the “swinging white towels over their heads” thing, chanted “Go Sens Go” in unison, and occasionally did that piece of musical doggerel borrowed from soccer, I think: “Na na, nanana, Hey, hey, hey, Clog bangh flome! (Don't know what these last three words are, never figured it out.) 

I'm not sure what fans paid to get in, but I know that prices for the Eastern Final games range from $220.00 – $445.68

I've heard sports called “metaphors for life,” and although I find it hard to apply any such definition to professional sports, I can see that in the playing of games the striving-to-win, learning-to-lose features could be said to replicate in a nonthreatening way the stuff we're about when we're active in the world.

No doubt, cheering for a team that's winning provides a pleasurable feeling as if you yourself had conquered. Carousing in the streets after a winning game looks a lot like soldiers celebrating a battle victory. Fans seem to “live” or “die” vicariously through the success or failure of their teams.

Of course, the corporate business side of all this can't be ignored. Professional sports is not dissimilar from any other production/consumption model; a corporation produces a product (entertainment) that consumers (fans) will pay good money to consume. Last night, I consumed an entire hockey game—almost—along with copious commercials including our federal government touting it's achievements using my tax money.

Meanwhile, I probably missed a really great documentary on the mating habits of chimpanzees.

Land, justice, treaties and Christ's church.

Mennonite, Lutheran and Young Chippewayan leaders sign a Memo of Understanding on Stoney Knoll

It seems that the newscasts I watch, listen to and check out on line are more than necessarily focused on politics and government. That's why it was refreshing to hear this morning that we don't always have to depend on and wait for government to fix what's broken, to prevent what's bad and encourage what's good.

MC Sask, MCC and Rosthern Junior College were cooperating on a day of student education regarding aboriginal/settler relations, Treaty 6 and specifically on an area of farm land that is occupied by descendants of Mennonite and Lutheran settlers but was in the late 1800s an Indian Reserve which the federal government confiscated for settlement. The Young Chippewayan that were granted this land in a treaty signing in 1876 were apparently desperate for food and had left the reserve temporarily to hunt in the Cypress Hills area; when they came back, their reserve had been obliterated and they were forced to scatter to other reserves as squatters. 

Only much later did their descendants begin to agitate for recompense for the injustice done to them; so far, the federal government has done nothing to right this wrong and it's only through dialogue among Young Chippewayans, the settlers of the area, MCC and Lutheran leadership as well as a handful of individuals passionate about justice for landless aboriginal neighbours that an understanding about the need for a just and honourable settlement is being pursued.

About 40 RJC students in attendance heard Chief George Kingfisher speak about the issue from the perspective of one who lived it. A residential school survivor, Kingfisher recalled how his father had said to him, “Don't bother the people living on that land; it's their home now.” Ray Funk, Leonard Doell and Lutheran pastor, Jason Johnson, filled in the historical details of the Stoney Knoll story.

Presenters seemed to indicate that if a just reclamation/reconciliation solution were ever to be reached, it would not come from government initiatives but from the people involved. If the finding of compensatory land for the Young Chippewayan happens, it will likely be as a result of the actions of local citizens motivated by good will and a desire for justice.

Our current government hasn't taken up the challenges of treaty justice. The budget, I'm told, is literally silent on the most pressing issues facing aboriginal Canadians. On the Stoney Knoll matter, the attitude of the government seems to have been, “Don't do anything unless you're forced to.” They've come up with excuses, a major one being, “If we gave land as compensation, to whom would we give it?” The response locally has been to take on a genealogical project to answer this excuse, by finding and documenting the descendants of the Young Chippewayan scattered across the province.

In a way, this news is also about government, but only in a way. The real news is about people of good will doing what needs to be done. The governments, in this case, must surely be dismissed with a dishonourable discharge, unless both their attitudes and their actions change.

 

After a meal of bannock, bison burgers, three sisters soup and ice cream with Saskatoon Berry sauce, the students were taken out to Stoney Knoll to “walk on sacred ground,” and to sign their names to a letter—if they wished—to the council of the Laird Municipality petitioning that all signs pointing to Stoney Knoll be altered to include the Cree name for this historic site. 

 

A small start toward a better future

 

(For more information on the Stoney Knoll story, click here.)

Truth or Truthiness - take your pick.

2 / 35,344,962 Canadians live here . . . for now.

In an article posted on the CBC website today, Don Pittis applies the Stephen Colbert definition of truthiness to the budget and the opening salvos of the 2015 election campaign. Truthiness is defined by Colbert as “something expressed as a truth because it is a feeling from the heart without evidence or logic.” Something like, I guess, repeated statements that “this budget is balanced,” even though no family or business, for instance, would make such a claim if selling off assets and raiding the savings account had to be included as revenue in the calculations.

“There is nothing new in the accusation that politicians are economical with the truth. In fact, in a system like Canada's, where caucus solidarity is so strongly enforced, the ability to lie with a straight face is essential for survival. That's because no matter what your true feelings are on any issue, you must always speak and act as if the party line is actually your own.”

We're going to hear a lot of truthiness in the next six months and many Canadians, I expect, will jump on one or the other truthiness bandwagons simply because they either don't have or can't process the facts. In politics, that includes believing in a party enough to vote for them on the basis of a slogan like “We're better off with Harper.” It's true that certain parts of the population will have more money to spend as a result of recent tax reductions, senior-care concessions and income splitting coming on top of the reduction of the GST earlier on. (Except for the GST reduction to 5%, none of these initiatives benefit me.)

 
The truthiness in all this is that reducing the size of government services is good for us, never mind that it selectively benefits only parts of the population, allowing them to eat a bit higher on the hog. The truth is that you can't decimate your revenue base without cutting into the services these revenues previously provided.
 
Fact-seekers will take a close look at where expenditures are being redistributed to make tax reductions possible. They'll note, for example, that funding to CoSA crime-prevention programs is being eliminated while expenditures for incarceration capacity is increasing. Others will simply continue to insist that “we're better off with Harper,” or Trudeau, or Mulcaire.
 
The truth behind the Conservative Party of Canada rests on an ideology, an ideology that's as old as the Old West in America: call it individualism to oversimplify shamelessly. The NDP platform, similarly, will reflect a worldview, an ideology, that is different from that of the CPC: collectivism, loosely described. One sees individual initiative as the key to a better world, the other sees us struggling together to achieve common goals. Somewhere between their truth and their truthiness, the Liberals tend to cut their policies to fit the occasion. That practice, too, expresses an ideology, or at least a political approach.
 
And what of us who will cast our ballots? If we don't have or don't comprehend the facts, how do we decide where to put the X? Most Canadians decided years, even generations, ago. Loyalties to a political party are probably as strong as our commitments to our various religious denominations used to be. We easily swallow the truthiness of that with which we have long associated ourselves. 

Voting is not so much an exercise in sober calculation for most Canadians as it is a contribution to a hope that “our team wins.” And “our team” is that brand with which we've come to feel at home.
 
Elections are decided by that minority of Canadians who happen to have no such long-standing loyalty—swing voters, that is.
 
A final point: The Mike Duffy trial is demonstrating again that there are flaws in the way our democracy works and doesn't work. Our inability to reform it to make it better is surely a demonstration of the entrenched value the flaws provide to the partisan system we've inherited. As long as the traditional governing parties benefit politically from the whole population being screwed by the system, there's no likelihood for change toward proportional representation, senate reform or the partisan way even parliamentary working committees function.

Mike Duffy, ho-hum.

 

Constitution making tool

It appears the Mike Duffy trial is going to dominate domestic news on the networks for the next month and more. I've been keeping up with what's being reported, but I'm beginning to suspect that the reporters sitting through the courtroom proceedings are starting to get really bored. Arguments and counter-arguments about what constitutes genuine “residency” and debating where government business separates from party business are predictable, but the fact is that both are muddy waters—or so it seems in the trial proceedings to date.

Let me clear up the confusion: place of residency is where you call home, where people go when you say, “Come on over for a coffee and a chat.” And when it comes to party vs. government business, assume that all business done by a politician is party business: wars have always been and always will be fought in order to promote a party's fortunes, for example. Budgets will be set to enhance party chances in the next election. Very seldom is there an utterance heard in question period whose first objective is not partisan.

Now I know that there is such a thing as “primary” and “secondary” residence—for the very few who can afford it—and that politicians have to have a domicile outside their constituency for periods of time. I also know that the times they are a'changin' and that in a time when a politician can give a speech in Ottawa in the morning, have lunch with a colleague in Regina and be interviewed in Vancouver in the evening, the rules as imagined when we first established Canada's bicameral parliament are bound to seem fuzzy and archaic.

Mike Duffy's trial will demonstrate in spades how poorly we've kept up with changes to our politics that would better fit the temper of the times, how hide-bound we are by tradition, our habits of thinking and the archaic ceremony of it all. A glaring example: suggestions for abolishing the senate are scoffed at because our constitution requires a level of unanimity that can't be achieved (or so it's surmised). In other words, our past dictates our future on that issue. Constitutions and Bills of Rights and Confessions of Faith and bylaws, etc. are all necessary, but when we treat them as law books rather than as living, advancing processes, they inhibit us more than they help us.

Mind you, we're still party-animals in our attitudes and ways of making decisions; some of us think more conservatively and some of us more liberally and that will affect how we react to change, how we make decisions collectively, what we assume to be necessary for our national and individual well-being. Harper's, Mulcair's, May's and Trudeau's behaviours are governed in large measure by non-identical, stable underlying worldviews. No matter how we restructure, there will always be conflict, negotiation, quarrels and dissatisfaction-with-outcomes.

The Mike Duffy trial may alert us to the degree to which we've failed to address restructuring to make the best use of our talents in governing ourselves as amicably and as fairly as possible, given the fact that we'll never be unanimous . . . on anything. The bickering over residency and party vs. government business are merely symptoms of this failure.

Abolishing the senate, inaugurating proportional representation in government would be good starts in a good direction, in my opinion.