And a little more on yesterday's subject...

A short story from CBC on the daring heroics of our Mounted Police...

...and a press release from the AHF below.

OTTAWA, March 29 - Assembly of First Nations (AFN) National Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo and AFN Regional Chief Bill Erasmus today issued a call for all governments and the private sector to support the Aboriginal Healing Foundation so it can continue to fulfill its critical role in supporting Indian residential school survivors and their families.

"We cannot heal one hundred years of abuses in twelve years. Ending projects supported by the Aboriginal Healing Foundation now will create a gap in support at a time when it's needed the most," said National Chief Atleo, noting that projects delivered by the Aboriginal Healing Foundation will be especially important as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission launches its national hearings and commemorative events. "The Aboriginal Healing Foundation is a proven institution that's highly accountable and effective and should be given the opportunity to continue its good work in supporting health and healing for the survivors of residential school and their families."

Federal funding for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, which currently provides culturally appropriate community-based services to Indian residential school survivors and families across Canada, ended as a result of this year's federal budget. Without support, 134 projects across various regions will end as of Wednesday, leaving entire regions without these healing and health supports, including Manitoba, Yukon, Nunavut and Prince Edward Island. This is in addition to the 1,211 projects that have had to end already, impacting thousands of residential school survivors and their families.

"The AFN is working with Health Canada on a broad health and healing support plan for Truth and Reconciliation Commission events, but more needs to be done to assist our people and communities," said National Chief Atleo, adding that the uptake on the Common Experience Payment (CEP) and Independent Assessment Process (IAP) has exceeded projections, also increasing need for healing and health supports for former students and their families.

"The Aboriginal Healing Foundation supports a range of diverse healing and health supports that are needed in our communities, as identified in the 2007 Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement," said AFN Northwest Territories Regional Chief Bill Erasmus. "The important work of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation is far from complete and we need to walk together on a healing journey to address the legacy of the residential school system and work towards reconciliation. This is consistent with the 2008 federal Apology to residential school survivors and their families."

Indian and Northern Affairs Canada released its evaluation of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation this March - one day following the federal Budget. The evaluation, which identifies an ongoing demand for healing, outlines a management response and work plan and reinforces the point that the Aboriginal Healing Foundation has been very effective and efficient in its delivery of programming.

Just as this Government committed 125 M in 2007, a renewal of this investment over the next three years would extend the Aboriginal Healing Foundation until 2013, providing the opportunity to continue to deliver First Nation-driven, community based healing and health supports to those impacted by the Indian Residential School system.

The Aboriginal Healing Foundation provides resources to Aboriginal communities that promote reconciliation and support in building and reinforcing sustainable healing processes that address the legacy of physical, sexual, mental, cultural and spiritual abuses in the residential school system, including intergenerational impacts. It has operated 1,345 quality projects since its inception in 1998.

“How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself?... There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light." Barry Lopez, ‘Arctic Dreams’

Until the early 1990’s I had never heard of the Residential School system in Canada. It had, after all, been dismantled in the 60’s, and the Canadian government had done a pretty good job of trying to bury the horrific truth of what had happened.

The Residential School System was an official national policy, enacted by the Federal Government and solely designed to destroy first nations culture and ‘integrate’ first nations peoples into our European culture. Starting in the 1840’s and continuing for over 120 years, First Nations children were forcibly removed from the homes of their parents for ten months per year, subjected to punishment if they spoke their own language, subjected to unsanitary conditions that resulted in tuberculosis epidemics and, in some cases, a 69% mortality rate. And, of course, most infamously, there was the rampant incidence of sexual and physical abuse perpetuated by the Catholic and Protestant ‘teachers’ that the Federal Government farmed the actual task of assimilation out to.

It is, in my opinion, the darkest episode of Canadian history. The schools, funded by Federal grants, mandated with the systematic ethnocide of a people by the Federal Government, and knowingly staffed with sadists, pederasts and pedophiles by the willing churches tasked with that ethnocide, are a dark stain on Canada's history.

Awareness has grown over the last fifty years as courageous First Nations people brought the issue to the forefront of public discussions. It was a fight. The evidence was overwhelming that the abuse, that the ethnocidal policies had existed, but the ability of a government and a nation to live in denial should never be underestimated. It took until 2008 for a reluctant Prime Minister Harper to offer a long-overdue official apology from the nation to the peoples they tried to destroy.

A decade before that apology though, way back in 1998, perhaps as a way to try to silence the protests, or maybe as a form of bribe to shut them up, or perhaps, just possibly because somebody had a sane moment and thought it was the right thing to do, the Canadian Government provided funding for an organization named the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. The original funding mandate was for eleven years. It was extended last year to make it twelve. But this year the Federal Conservative administration of Stephen Harper has cut all funding to the AHF effective March 31. Not all of the programs that the AHF funds and supports will be closed because of the AHF’s funding being cut, but many will, and all of them will suffer. Many of the programs that the AHF funds are the most progressive and successful residential treatment programs in existence, and the AHF has received praise and commendations for being one of the most fiscally responsible organizations of its kind in Canada.

To be fair, the Federal Tories say that other systems and programs will be mandated to fill the void left by the AHF, but those programs are not run by First Nations peoples and have a far broader mandate than to focus on the victims of residential schooling. They may care, but they won’t care enough, aren’t mandated to care enough, to do the job right. The organization that does care enough to do it right, that has been doing it right for twelve years, is being gutted by a government that, in spite of that fake apology a couple years ago, apparently still doesn’t give a damn.

And in case you’re tempted to walk away from this thinking, “that damned Harper government again”, remember that we still all own a piece of this. If we get to be proud of the soldiers in WWI and II, if we get to be proud of our Peace Keepers, if we get to be proud of the Penticton Vees and the National Junior Team and the Olympic Gold, then we also have to – HAVE TO – own this disgrace as well.

And it lives on, every time we turn our head instead of look at a person living on the street, every time we ignore articles about things like the end of funding for the AHF or think that it’s not very important, every time we grumble over the entitlements provided to First Nations people in terms of education or taxation. And even every time a First Nations person assumes what a person of European descent thinks about them. The old prejudices still exist in all of us.

It’s part of our heritage. It’s part of what makes us Canadian. It’s part of what makes this our home and native land.

I don’t believe much in the value of guilt, but I do believe in remorse. Guilt holds us frozen, trapped in our own self-flagellations, but remorse shows that we see, that we can learn and change. I have a hard time not feeling guilty about what my ancestors did though. I try to focus on the remorse, to focus on learning and supporting change, to focus on leaning into the light as Mr. Lopez so eloquently puts it, but damn… some days it’s hard.

****

You can find out more
here,
here,
here,
here,
here, among others places. Try a Google search if you want more.

You can also find a petition through this Facebook page.

I don’t think that our government’s responsibility, our responsibility, is fulfilled yet on this subject. Perhaps we can apply enough pressure to make them do the right thing for a change.

‘It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars.’ Arthur C. Clarke

I’m not a fan of nationalism in any form, extreme or otherwise. That’s a hard position to explain during the Olympics when everyone is actively encouraged, by our Prime Minister among others, to forego the traditional Canadian sense of composure and modesty to wave flags and cheer unabashedly. (Not that I’d follow Harper’s exhortation advice on anything.) It get’s even more complicated when I admit that I love the sport aspect of the Olympics. I told one friend that I’d be cheering the athletes and booing the IOC, VanOC, Harper and Campbell every chance I got. So, fair to say I found the Olympic festival to be a challenging time, full of conflicting emotions and a guilty sense of admiration.

Let me clarify by saying that I admire Olympic athletes for their athletic ability and the purity of their performances. How could you not admire some of the stories that manifested themselves? A young skater whose mother dies suddenly goes on to skate the competition of her life and take a medal; a guy throws himself down a skeleton track head first at 145 km/h to come from behind and win gold; a couple in ice dancing (is that really a sport?) pull off a gold medal in a competition perennially dominated by Europeans; both men’s and women’s hockey teams come through to take the gold medal in “our game”. And that’s a very incomplete list. It was heady stuff, and I cheered along with everyone else when Sid potted the golden puck yesterday.

I’ll admit it; I was proud to be Canadian in that moment.

The feeling hadn’t been there the entire last two weeks though, and it isn’t there today. I’m still overwhelmed by the disgrace of our government’s arrogance and their lack of integrity; still ashamed that we are lapdogs to the Americans practically everywhere except on the ice; still ashamed that the spectacle of the closing ceremonies may be a swan song for the arts in BC because of our government’s desire to line their pockets instead of support programs that made that kind of expression of artistic ability a possibility. I still consider nationalism, in even its most benign forms, to be an evil thing, pitting nation against nation at a time when cooperation should be the only word on any politician’s lips.

On top of that nationalistic fervor, seen as a positive aspect of the games by so many, there’s the fact that athletics are only a part of the spectacle. They are the draw that corporations use to attract and entertain so that we are watching all that advertising, using our Visa cards exclusively, eating the least healthy fast food possible and shopping at all the right stores for all the right products. Do you think that this is the spirit of the Olympics? Is it the true spirit of athletic competition to sell out the games and everything pure they are intended to be so that corporations can sell product more effectively, and so that local real estate investors can get rich on the public dime?

Can I share a secret? To justify watching the game yesterday, I had to think of it in terms of which team had more of my favorite players on it, clinched by who was playing my favorite goalie, rather than by what national colors the players were wearing. I’ve written before about the evils of nationalism and patriotic fervor. I won’t start again here. Suffice it to say that nationalism magnifies our differences instead of celebrating our similarities. I had to try to ignore the commercials and strategically time my smoke breaks.

This morning on CBC they were talking about the political ramifications of the games and how they might trigger an election, with Harper and his conservative slaves riding high on the euphoric high of the mass hysteria and group hypnosis brought on by the games. How sad. How cynical. They were talking about how happy everyone was too. How we threw a “good party”. One politician was impressed by how the games drew us together as a country. All for the low, low price of roughly seven BILLION dollars. How many homeless people could have been helped with seven billion dollars? How many programs like Insite could have been carried on in perpetuity or created in other places? How many jobs, permanent ones, not six-month, part-time ones, could have been created? But there’s no profit in that kind of social altruism, is there? No commercial opportunity or advertising rebound.

There are times when I sort of mourn what I see as a loss of innocence. I remember my unadulterated joy when Canada struck gold in Salt Lake City and look back on it now with a bit of nostalgia. I found myself wishing that my enjoyment of the moment yesterday afternoon wasn’t toned by the more expansive context that I see the games within now. I wished for a moment, to make a pop culture reference, that I had taken the blue pill.

But I didn’t, and I wouldn’t if I had to do it again, and how I see the world is irreconcilably changed. I still celebrate what athletes from around the world were able to accomplish these last couple weeks; the adversity they overcame, the excellence they achieved. They are amazing and heartbreaking and wonderful (especially if they did it without drugs or gene therapy or blood doping).

Forgive me if I don’t get a Canadian flag tattoo though. That part of the spectacle just makes me depressed.

‘Whenever we need to make a very important decision it is best to trust our instincts, because reason usually tries to remove us from our dream, saying that the time is not yet right. Reason is afraid of defeat, but intuition enjoys life and its challenges.’ Paulo Coelho

Ah, it’s been a while. Let’s see if I remember how to do this.

I came across this quote last night and fell in love with it, especially in light of some recent decision making I’ve had to do. I’ll try to provide some brief background to put some of this in context.

I’ve mentioned before that, about a year ago now, I quit my ‘good, solid career’ at a casino in Alberta, sold or gave away almost everything I owned (except the laptop, climbing gear and the library, of course), and took a job care-taking a remote ski lodge for the summer and fall. I did this so that I could finally, finally, finally write the novel I’ve been putting off for, oh, the last dozen years or so (145,000 words and counting, so it’s at least really long).

It’s been a liberating experience in far too many ways to start listing here, one of which is that I’ve had the time and freedom to start listening to my intuition again; to start paying attention to the intrinsic me that I’d effectively buried under the excuses of being too busy, too successful, too focused, too material and too completely unhappy with all of the above. I chose to pursue being a ‘me’ that I preferred to the one I’d been living as for the previous decade, even though that ‘me’ was only hypothetical then, a distant memory of me that I kept polished on a shelf like an old trophy.

I should say first that I’m a fan of using a reasonable logic tree to make decisions and always have been. My brain works fairly well most of the time, and I enjoy the process of turning the Rubik’s cube of a problem around in my hands for a while so I can really know all of the sides before I start. What I’ve started to notice and appreciate this year, more than ever before, is that I usually come back to my instinctual preference in the end anyway. And while it could be argued that I’m engaging in self-fulfilling prophecy, the logical part of me double checks for that too, so I think I’m being relatively accurate.

Rarely in life do we come across a hard decision that is clear cut or black and white. They usually involve permutations and dynamics that leave us with a choice to make, and usually a hard one commensurate to the nature of the problem we are facing. The pros and cons sometimes just don’t reveal a strong enough advantage for either option to make the decision easy. But I’d relied too much on the ability to reason to make decisions for the first ten years of the 21st century. My reason and the accepted measures of North American consumerist culture had conspired to lead me into a string of decisions that looked good on my CV and revenue stream, but were making me unhappy, unfulfilled, a bad friend and a bad son.

And then I dropped out. That decision, back in February of ’09 was an intuitive one. The care-taking position was in the tube, a possibility but not a guaranteed bridge yet, and then a few circumstances conspired to allow me the moment of clarity I needed to make the jump. According to reason and societal matrices it was the wrong decision at the wrong time, but it was instinctually correct and it proved very, very right for me.

It was a challenging experience, breaking out of that rut. I found that the writing process I’d longed for was hard to establish, that I had a deeply rooted fear of failure to try to dig my way around (I’d known it was there, but foolishly thought it would just run away crying when I finally made the ‘big move’). Focusing more on family and friends came easily, fortunately, and that was an anchor while I floated around trying to find my groove. So I spent large pieces of the summer hiking and being quiet, alone in a beautiful lodge on top of a mountain with the trees, pine martins, eagles and Harriett, the lodge cat to divert my attention when I needed it. It was the best thing that could have happened, and that time and solitude was invaluable in my personal journey from the self-inflicted constraint and restraint of my professional career to a new freedom that could be, and is, liberating and productive at the same time.

I wanted to value creativity. I wanted to prioritize writing. I wanted to focus on the close and valuable friendships I’d been fortunate to cultivate and maintain. I wanted to be there for family. I wanted to live a life with as few compromises as possible. I wanted to make a difference somehow and not use a foolish responsibility to a corporation or lifestyle that didn’t care for me or anyone else at all as an excuse for not chasing my dreams. I wanted to achieve escape velocity and pursue a better version of myself; one that I knew was in here, somewhere.

Just last week my father, who lives in the UK, was rushed to the hospital with a cardiac arrhythmia. I found out about it four days later, by which time he was hours away from heading home with a new regimen of medication to control it, so it wasn’t an emergency by then. I had been planning a visit to him this spring already. Much of the timing of that trip was dependent on when or if I would be needed back up on the mountain and I’d been wrestling with the itinerary for several weeks, waiting for word from the lodge about whether they needed a care-taker this year, trying to figure out how to make the trip and avoid as much sideways rain as possible, wanting to fit my visit around my dad’s busy schedule so I could spend time with him. All of this was swirling around in my head for a few days after I heard about his condition and I was getting nowhere.

Then I stopped and asked myself, “What was your first inclination?” It was, of course, to rush to him and help. And I knew what I had to do.

Racing across the pond isn’t required, but there will be a period this spring during which my presence in Jolly Old will be helpful. It isn’t at all the most convenient time for the lodge or for me, and might just make the lodge impossibility this year, but it is the best time for him. That’s the priority and that was my instinct in the beginning. Reason led me to worry too much about my summer job and become distracted from that priority, if only for a few days. I was distracted by that cultural conscience that tells us, especially those of us in North America, that we have a duty to our society to work hard and be busy beavers. There’s nothing wrong with working hard, but it’s not a priority that can compare to family or friends. My decision became very easy.

So I’ll be posting blogs from the UK for a few weeks this spring, later than I’d first intended, when I might have been on the mountain already, and I’ll be as happy about it then as I was the moment I stopped reasoning and trusted myself. Instead of hesitating in a sub-conscious nod to reason, I’m enjoying a life of making the right decisions without compromises. My bank account might suffer, but my heart is singing.

‘Can this Onion Ring get more fans than Stephen Harper?’ Facebook Fansite Page, 02.04.10

Yesterday a Facebook group started asking this very question and inviting people to join up. By the time I found it yesterday afternoon membership had already exceeded 45,000. This morning it has exceeded 64,000 fans and is growing at a rate in excess of 1000 fans per hour.

‘We cannot be too earnest, too persistent, too determined, about living superior to the herd-instinct.’ Author Unknown (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)

A couple things happened this week that made me think of this one, both of them while I was surfing around on Facebook, and both of them connected to the kind of viral diffusion that social networking is capable of. While that viral dynamic can be a powerful tool and is probably the last truly free form of expression and dissemination left to us, that same freedom carries with it potential for manipulation, desensitization, vapid distraction and the perpetuation of a continual state of irrational fear, even if said state is mild. In a closed environment it’s usually easy to filter out the crap, but in a free one we have to be more careful and discriminating or we can be overwhelmed by a combination of obtuse ignorance and intentional misdirection.

If we fall prey to the BS, we will end up just following the herd, and that’s both boring and disgusting. I mean, if you aren’t at the front of the pack, then your nose is crammed in someone else’s fuzzy butt. Who wants that?

Neither of the two catalysts for this rant was substantial or dramatic in nature, but both were potentially dramatically viral, commanding trends that were noticeable. The first was completely benign drivel, a viral marketing ploy dressed up to be a game in the form of a chain thread encouraging people to do a search on their name in a small, slang-style urban dictionary, and then re-post the directions, and the ostensibly humorous or felicitous result of the search, as their status. As I said: benign, possibly even funny except for the utter innocuousness of the ‘game’. I think, most often, that while these kinds of viral marketing campaigns are meant to drive site hits, they are also something that the marketers behind them take evil glee in, sitting back, watching the hit counters surge, and chuckling over the utter manipulability of the populace they are paid to dupe and coerce.

On those grounds alone, I object to the ploys and strategies and refuse to participate. In fact, I find that I enjoy the sardonic responses to these threads far more than the thread itself. For this one, as soon as I saw it start to trend, I posted a modified version encouraging people to follow the instructions and substitute ‘SHEEP’ for their name. The result describes exactly what this kind of viral marketing counts on: the behavior of a creature devoid of reason that follows the fuzzy ass in front of them just because, in all absence of self-possession or independent thought.

The second example involved a scare chain thread warning people that they should perform a search for a certain phrase in the security block section of their privacy settings. The entry brought up a list of names of people you would never have heard of and the post suggested that these people somehow had access to your profile and personal information. They didn’t. The privacy block field was just acting as a search engine, pulling up the names of people who had expressed association to a certain company on their profile. So tons of people were starting to block other people simply because someone told them to follow a few semi-arcane and techy instructions. The list of people to block, which started at around 20, was up to around 75 by the time I checked it out, growing because the search was starting to draw on the names of people that had posted the status warning and were subsequently associated by reference with the company mentioned. Yes, I checked it out, right after I Googled the topic and found out it was a farce.

This is a less benign form of viral dissemination. I can only make guesses regarding the intent of the original publisher, but I can’t see it being a positive one. Taken to an illogical extreme, everyone on Facebook could have eventually posted the status, become associated with the company in the search engine, and we’d all have to block everyone. Stupid. And all it took to find out that the scare was a farce was to do a one-minute search and read an article.

My point? I mean, really, neither of these examples was going to result in a complete collapse of society, and the first one even had the potential to be mildly diverting and entertaining, right? Okay, if you say so… Don’t get me wrong, I like having fun. And having fun in general, being occasionally diverted by a good movie, book, game, concert, whatever… can be a good thing. Hell, I want to be a novelist, so I hope I can be diverting enough to sell a few books. My point is that we need to be conscious of when attempts are being made to divert our attention. If we are being entertained, we need to make choices about how and when that happens.

If you do this, pursue your entertainment with a bit of conscious awareness, then you will be declaring open war on the marketers of the world, just so you know. Their intent is to keep you dumb and make your choices for you, manipulating your attention and usurping your freewill. And it’s not just about diversion either. This concept applies to politics, consumption, social conformity, religion, self-development, fashion, fitness, self-perception and body image… the list could go on and on.

Our time, our generation, has been called the Age of Persuasion by Terry O’Reilly. We are all about ‘getting to yes’ and learning how to ‘make friends and influence people’. What we rarely take the time to realize is that, while we’re running around increasing our influence, everyone else is doing it too. We’re all running around trying to get one up on the other guy, be smarter, sneakier, horde more. We’ve been duped into this self-defeating behavior by ideologies and marketing philosophies that treat people as demographic targets and potential revenue sources instead of, well, people. We are deep into the process, in a very real way, of abdicating our humanity in favor of ‘greater profits and mechanical amusements’.

I’m not saying that you should forgo all forms of amusement. I certainly don’t plan on doing that and I need every one of you to buy my book if and when it gets on the bookshelves. We need that diversion sometimes, a chance to decompress and laugh or sigh or cry. What I am suggesting is that you keep your eyes open. That’s right, open ‘em up. A bit more now. There. Keep them that way. You make your choices instead of letting them make your choices. You see through their lies instead of them leading you through the fog. Take control of your life and your mind and your decisions. It’s empowering, trust me.

You may not always like what you see when you stick your head up out of the herd, but it has to be better than the fuzzy butt you would other wise be staring at.

‘Free advice is worth the price.’ Robert Half (part deux)

Dear Mr. Obama,

Whew, you’ve been one busy beaver (in Canada that’s not dirty) this week: The SOTU, dangling the spending freeze, then this latest, the question and answer period in the dragon’s den. Er, I men, the congressional GOP room. It made for some exciting television unless you include the media coverage. (Couldn’t we just outlaw big media? They suck.) I managed to avoid most of the infotainment coverage however, and stayed with online feeds as much as possible. I visited my mom yesterday and she had CNN on, but I managed to escape with only a slight hemorrhage behind one eyeball and felt gratified by the knowledge that I’d squeaked out of a really close call.

Although I know you didn’t read my last missive, I think we were on the same wavelength on a few points. In the spirit of bi-partisan ship, even if I don’t qualify for that dynamic on account of my Canadian-ness, I thought I’d write another note to let you know how it all went down in my eyes, and to offer some more free advice. This also allows me to re-use a quote, which I love doing – it always makes me feel cheap and dirty in a sexy kind of way…

Anyway, in regards to the SOTU, I have to say that you almost lost me. The first half of the speech was so… so… motivating, but in an anti-motivating, ‘I’m listening to a speech intended for ten-year olds’ kind of way. And all of those disingenuous and fallacious standing ovations by a bunch of middle-aged corrupt men and women? Blech… It made my teeth hurt a bit in the way gorging on Halloween candy does. I was ready to rush myself to the hospital at one point to demand a shot of insulin. Instead, I said just about this very thing on the Whitehouse FB page and felt immediately better.

That desperate act allowed me to hang on for the second half of the speech which was, I’ve got to say, much better. When you started calling them out, each group, one by one, and instead of cheers garnered mutters and grumbles, then you had me. The looks on the faces of the Joint Chiefs and the Supreme Court made me feel giddy. And when you finally got around to threatening all of their corrupt asses by targeting the lobbyist system? That was beautiful, man, just beautiful. Like I said in my last letter, I think you’ll know that you’re getting somewhere when they all hate you utterly.

And the GOP question and answer session? Well, the Whitehouse blurb called your performance “inspiring”, but my impression fell a bit short of that. Gutsy, for sure, and very adequate. You did a hell of a job there, no doubt. I’ll be inspired when you do the same thing, just as publically, with the DNC representatives. When you call “your team” to the carpet just as directly and vociferously, then I’ll really be impressed. One of the CNN pundits suggested this very thing, in fact, but said that you should do it behind closed doors “obviously”. Not obviously, not at all. Make it public. Be a real leader and expect, nay demand, more of those on your side of the room than of those in opposition to you by ideological default.

Which brings me to today’s free (and worth every penny, dammit) advice.

I think you need to go much, much farther. Frankly, while the SOTU touched on a few nerves, you stopped shy of where I’d have enjoyed seeing you go. Too much wiggle room, my friend, too much. Same with dressing down only one side of the room in the Q&A: Not far enough by far. Thus, my advice to you, the thing that, I think, would make you an instant icon and the adored leader of the majority of the country, is the following:

Go independent. I’ll say it again: Cut your ties to the DNC and go independent.

No, seriously, I’m not kidding. It was the independent voters that elected you after all, so drop this façade of partisanship altogether and send the congress and senate a real message. You’ve been so politic in the way you’ve criticized the DNC and I think that you have to drop the gloves with them the way you’ve been willing to with the GOP. I think that, as much as I know that it might be political suicide, you should give the American population a sure sign that you are beholden to no one other than them, so take all of the red and blue ties out of your closet. Go with some really cool colors or, for serious occasions (they all seem to be serious ones these days), try some nice gray ones. And that’s only if you absolutely have to wear one because, like I suggested last time, those of us that think the system is a joke hate ties anyway.

You told the GOP representatives that you weren’t an ideologue and I like that. It mirrors much of the “whatever works” rhetoric from your book and I prefer believing that you are serious about that stance, so take that final great big leap and declare it to the country and the world in a tangible way. I’ll even give you a politically expedient out: If you really think that you can win a second term, wait until after the next election. Frankly, considering how massive your bottom-up support was, I can conceive of you running as an independent and winning. Now wouldn’t that be historic?

You keep saying that you want bi-partisan support, cooperation, and a non-partisan attitude, and this way you could really, really show you mean it. You could condemn the whole system then, without any doubt that you consider both sides of the aisle equally complicit in the corruption. You could declare a level of Presidential autonomy that would eliminate any appearance of ideological favoritism or compromise. I’d stand up and cheer. Hell, I’d apply for citizenship (whatever little hope I have that you can really change things down there, it is infinitely larger than the faith I have that Canadian politics can ever be redeemed). I’ll go straight to the border and swear my allegiance to the flag right there, and I hate, hate nationalism (outside of amateur junior hockey) with a passion, so I’m talking about a real sacrifice here.

I know what you’re thinking: It’s too soon; it would eliminate any chance to accomplish anything; I’d lose any momentum I have and betray the responsibility I have to put the public interest first; they aren’t ready for it yet. Excuses, all of them. Well, maybe not, but I keep hoping that you can be to the “last remaining super-power” (who the hell came up with that and how can they ignore China?) what Gorbachev was to the USSR. Break the broken system so much that something new has to be constructed to replace it. Shake ‘em up so bad they can’t go on like they have. Make it impossible to continue down this path of denial and corruption, and possible to actually move forward.

Then you might really change things. Aw hell, that might actually change the world.

Yours sincerely,

Michael

CC. The Whitehouse

‘The surprising thing about young fools is how many survive to become old fools.’ Doug Larson

Today is my birthday, my 43^rd to be specific about it, and I want to talk about that a bit, but I also made promises last night on Facebook while watching the SOTU regarding today’s topic. This will be a two-themed blog entry then, so I picked a quote that can do double duty.

I’ve gone on record as saying that birthdays are one of the annual celebrations, along with New Years, that I still respect. That’s because it has changed so little over the years. While the last century has seen many of our national holidays turned into consumption orgies, birthdays and New Years always were ones, so I respect them for being unchanged by our worship of materialism, even if the compliment is backhanded.

Birthdays are, I think, kinda cool. Especially the milestones. I’m personally excited about 45, far more so than about 43, because the five-year markers are somehow more significant. I don’t have a really good reason for that other than that they are moments to be proud of in an “I survived 43 years and all I have to show for it is this crumby birthday” kind of way. It’s a “look at what I can do!” kind of pride, like walking on hot coals or eating a 40-ounce steak.

It’s more than that though, obviously. Time allows us the opportunity to either learn and move forward, proving that we are cerebral and intuitive beings capable of transcending the simple material and animalistic urges that drive our bodies, or contrarily prove that we are incapable of that little trick, and thereby dispel any doubt that were are little better than monkeys with refined tool-making skills. The population of the earth provides ample anecdotal evidence that both dynamics are at work, and if you look closely, even that both dynamics can be at work in a single human organism.

Take me for example. I am 43 today, and it is really only in the last year that I have foresworn the distractions offered to us by modern existence in order to finally pursue what it is I think I was made to do (or at least the part of it that I know about). And this in spite of at least three other pivotal points in my life that I can see, from the perspective of 20/20 hindsight, when the opportunity to embrace the real me was presented in full glory, yet was successfully ignored or lost. I’d allow myself to be distracted, get caught up in the hoopla and hubbub of all the baubles and shiny lights thrown at us to keep us entertained and mesmerized, and subsequently lose the mission. I have, at times, even been confounded by the shame I felt for not fulfilling my potential and reaching for my dreams. How’s that for counter-intuitive.

And yet, in spite of missing the opportunity in the past on several occasions, I think I’ve managed to get a good grip on it this time. I’ve never been poorer or, paradoxically, richer than I am today.

So time is a good thing. It provides a frame of reference that allows us to suggest and hope that it is never too late or too early to reach for something better, to become the ‘us’ that we have it in us to become, and to know that this ‘us’ is a destination we will never truly reach in the time that we have. It is always the process that is important, always the journey that makes the journey worthwhile. The only final place we will ever reach in this lifetime is death, so why are we rushing to get to the end? I hold with Peter Pan that death will truly be a great adventure, but I’m in no rush to start it.

I like my process, like it more every day I walk it and talk it. I like knowing that the more I know, the more I know how little I truly know. I like that I am finally to a place where I recognize that I know just enough to be a danger to myself, but that I have time to continue to learn, and enough experience to appreciate the opportunity.

So birthdays are good. I look back and see that I have been a fool, and now I’m looking forward to the process of becoming an old one.

Oh yeah, the other topic, the one I promised to write about last night: Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada. I considered doing a full blog on him, but a) couldn’t find the motivation to waste too much time on him, b) have deep-seated shame issues in regards to his position as Prime Minister of the country I live in, and c) feel I can say everything that needs to be said about him in a relatively small space. Here it goes.

He is an embarrassment; a democratic leader that has gone on record saying that he only needs 40% of the vote, which translates to approximately 25% of the eligible voting population, to retain power for his party, and that, subsequently, he doesn’t care about the rest of the people in this country. His only goal is maintaining his minority government and the privilege it provides to him, his party, and the corporate handlers that own his soul. He has driven Canada to the point where our fellow commonwealth nations have started a movement to expel us from said Commonwealth because of the draconian position that Canada has now taken in regards to industrial and petro-chemical development, green issues like sustainable infrastructure development, and international carbon controls. He cares for the Canadian public, for the nation he is sworn to protect and lead, not one bit.

He is an old fool, so I am assuming that he was a young one. Shame he doesn’t see it.

I may be looking forward to becoming an old fool, but at least I recognize what and who I am. I’d hate to be a fool and not know; to think that people respected me when they only hated and vilified me. Better to be a fool and know it, I think, than to be one and not know it. 

That would just be deeply, deeply  embarrassing…

‘Free advice is worth the price.’ Robert Half

Dear Barack Obama,

On this, the day of your 2010 State of the Union address, I would like to offer you some free advice regarding your speech.

First and foremost, shoot from the hip. We all know you could talk the garter off of a nun, but speak plainly this time. By all means, exercise your rhetorical skills and impress us, but do so as if you were speaking over coffee or a couple beers. Don’t spin anything or try to dazzle. Frankly, as inspiring as you can be, the shtick is getting a bit old. You need to be heard being sincere, not presidential; plain, not fancy. The people that elected you are pretty plain, you see. They are the moderate, independent middle of everything. They are the disenfranchised that saw in you and your beautiful speeches the possibility of a politician that was not one. Someone who saw what they saw.

So be that guy again. Talk plainly, even coarsely. I myself think that you should swear a few times. You should say ‘bullshit’ at least three times, and one of those should be in a sentence in which you are describing the disingenuous and partisan practices of the Republican Party. You could also call your own party to task while you’re on that topic, maybe throw in an F-bomb when describing how frustrating it was to watch your own party’s congressmen tear apart your health care bill like hyena’s squabbling over a kill, each one taking a nibble to appease one of their big money/no conscience, financial backers, leaving a proposal that is ultimately neutered.

And ‘balls’… use the word ‘balls’. As in: ‘I promise to grow a pair of balls in my second year as your president’. I mean, I truly admire the commitment you have made to non-partisanship, but come on; the GOP will be pouting over their loss for at least another six years, even if things continue as they have been and they reclaim the Whitehouse in three, so offer the olive branch every time and, when they blubber and cry about how unfair it all is, take it back and hit them over the head with it. Perhaps repeated concussions will improve their IQ.

I mean, I know that there isn’t really any difference between the Dems and the Reps, the blue and the red. Pretty much all of the elected officials (oh, please not you too – say it ain’t so) have corporate and special interest hands so far up their asses that they are practically muppets (to muppets everywhere – I apologize for the insult), but we, even those of us who just watch and have no say in US politics, all hoped so hard that you’d be different, that you’d do what you said, walk what you talked. I read your book, read and listened to your speeches and, dammit, I still want to believe that one person can beat the odds, make it all the way up there without completely selling out, and when they have the chance, will actually use it to make a real difference. I want to still believe that.

I want to believe what you said in your book about rising above it all, about throwing the old school out and ushering in a new era in the way politicians can work in service to their country instead of using their country and position in their own service. I thought you might be that guy. Lord knows, plenty of your fellow Americans thought you were that guy too; someone that actually cared more about getting shit done than what the polls said; someone who would sacrifice a second term if that’s what it would take to get the job done. You made them think you really care. Don’t let them down, okay?

So this is your chance to turn it around. Don’t wear a tie (I distrust people that wear ties), and go for that town hall look, only grubbier. Be earnest and sincere and that adorable bit of a geek that you are. Most of all, tell it like it is – no varnish, no illusion, no misdirection – just that facts. And then, after you say it, actually do it this time and damn the torpedoes. Do it not because it’s politically efficacious, but because it’s the right thing to do, because it’s honest and real. Be that guy and they’ll follow you. Right now they can sense the fear and smell the ubiquitous stench of the bullshit. You can’t keep doing that and think there will be a legacy worth leaving behind. Do something that’ll make the bad guys mad, mad enough to take a shot at you, and then you’ll know that at least you’re doing it with gusto.

The fact is, everyone that was so enamored of you back in November of 2008 is still waiting to see the guy in office that they saw in the campaign, and they are eager to follow that guy! So be him again. Start tonight. Take off the gloves and fancy ties and the smart suit jacket and put on a baseball cap and talk to them. They’ll follow if you can be strong enough to lead them. I promise.

And we, the rest of the world, will be hopeful too, if you do and they do, because if someone can actually redeem the US, then there’s definitely hope for everyone else.

Yours sincerely (mostly),

Michael

‘I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.’ Charles De Gaulle (1890 - 1970)

There has been a deluge of pundit opinions regarding Mr. Obama’s (that’s right, ‘Mr.’… he isn’t my president) administration’s first year in office lately, especially in light of the recent senate elections in Massachusetts and the even more recent declaration of a spending cap. The range of these opinions varies, from those that have declared Obama’s administration an utter failure through those who see problems and issues, but have not called it DOA just yet. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is saying that his administration has done a stellar job.

With the election of a Republican senator in perhaps the most Democratic state in the union, the Democrats have lost their super majority in the Senate and may (will) now be subject to the unpleasant reality of endless filibusters, effectively crippling the Senate of any efficacy whatsoever. In retrospect, some of the pundits are saying, Obama should have used the majority to ram his measures through, but that opportunity has now been lost.  Of course, this ignores the reality that he had to ram things through the Congress to get it to the Senate, and that proved impossible enough. Too many Democratic Congressmen were drooling too much at the thought of all of the political might they had, and how much they could translate that into favor for themselves and their election campaign contributors, to make any real effective use of said might. In essence, Obama’s own party undermined whatever efforts he was making. Of course, there wasn’t a supportive Republican to be found anywhere, they of the corporate right refusing to do anything but pout and point fingers.

And so, facing the first real crisis of faith in his presidency, Mr. Obama reacts by announcing a spending cap to appease whoever finds that decision appeasing. The first year in office showed that the administration’s offense was weak and ineffectual. This year has started with a demonstration of an equally fragile defense.

I’m not ready to call the Obama administration a failure. He does, after all, have three years to fix things a bit, and I haven’t forgotten that he inherited this ridiculous mess rather than create it. That said, a tragic history is only an excuse until you admit it and recognize it; then it either becomes motivation to not repeat that history, or a crutch to mitigate responsibility.

I also remember that Mr. Obama and his sidekicks are politicians. When he won in November of ’08 I told everyone that would listen to not forget that simple fact. For all of his fine words and inarguable rhetorical ability, there is no way that Mr. Obama and his handlers maneuvered him into a position to claim the Oval Office without him being a fierce political animal. He still believes in a system that is corrupt to the core and devoid of integrity, and that makes him corrupt too.

While many thought he would be immune to that dynamic, at the best of times I hoped he would simply be less corrupt. Now I’m not so sure. I’m still hopeful in an “I’m not in denial at all” kind of way, but that hope is eroding. While I still believe he was the better choice in ’08 (I respect McCain, but nobody would have been able to handle another 4 years of corporate and military  cocksucking the likes of which George W and Dick were capable of, and which the Republicans would have no doubt forced their candidate to engage in), I’m sadly back in the place where I recognize that saying the Democrats are better than the Republicans is like saying that the second rung on a thousand-foot ladder is higher than the first rung – there just isn’t much of a difference, and rock bottom is still within easy reach.

Maybe Jefferson was right and we do need a real, old-fashioned revolution. I’d vote for a bloodless one born out of the consciences of the masses, a grass-roots effort to promote equality and egalitarianism, but I think we’re getting to the point where we can’t be too picky. Or maybe Obama’s administration can pull this out of the fire…. If they have the will to do so.

That, folks, is a mighty big ‘if’.

‘Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them.’ Henry David Thoreau

So, the renovations are done for a couple weeks. The process has been exhausting but a balm to me nonetheless; I love the smell of sawed wood and the satisfaction of building things. But I’ve already said that part, haven’t I? My friends’ home, which I am helping to refinish, is a beautiful place, full of kind and giving energy. It belonged to my friend’s grandmother, who I knew and loved, and was willed to her. It is an older house, the core of it built of cinderblock with several additions made over time, so the process of renovating it can be a challenge: updating what has been patched together and building over concrete with wood and drywall and paint.

They have chosen to fill the house with real hardwood floors and earthy colors, all things that remind me of them in many ways: Strong, solid, warm and generous. It is and will be a visually beautiful space, updated to be pleasing to the eye and built properly and to last.

But perhaps the most impressive part of the process is to see and feel the foundation that they laid before the renovations began. Before a piece of drywall was removed, or an outlet placed, or a paint color chosen, they built a foundation of trust and compassion and love in this house, one that they parade unashamedly for everyone to see. They have framed this place with caring and a sense of what is sacred to them that overwhelms any of the choices they have made regarding color or texture or product. To walk on its floors is to feel trust under your feet, and the walls are warm with integrity. I am biased, no doubt, by the generosity and support they have shown to me, but I think I am correct in my impression just the same.

It is a good house that has not and will not be one of Thoreau’s ‘unwieldy’ properties, the kind we see rising around us more and more these days as people attempt to fill voids of compassion and integrity in their own lives with the impressions of wealth that drive us into debt and beyond our means. That drive to build an edifice that impresses from the outside is so often built at the expense of what is inside. A good renovation can cover over crooked walls and update appearance, but it can’t fix relationship out of level or sprits that aren’t plumb. In an age of superficiality our houses often reflect our perspectives – something made pretty to distract us from what is not; a house made to provide the appearance of home, but unable to compensate for the lack of a home that it really is.

But not this one. This one is filled with good memories and being filled again with new ones, and it is not a prison in any sense of the word. It is a sanctuary, a sacred place made so by the intentions and actions of its owners. It is not ostentatious, but rather beautiful. It is not just a house, but is, instead. a true home. And if I am blessed to call it my home too, if just for a time, then I am fortunate indeed.

‘I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.’ Henry David Thoreau

I read a blog by a far more experienced and successful blogger today praising the virtue of being busy. He made a good argument and, for some, it might even be a right argument, but it’s not the whole story. I remembered and used this quote by Thoreau in my response, and remembering set of a cascade of thoughts about what I’m doing this year and why I’m doing it.

My recent biography in a nutshell: After nine years in the casino and gaming industry, seven of those in middle and upper management, I quit last February, sold almost everything, and took a job caretaking a remote ski lodge for the summer so I could write a novel. The novel is going well, I didn’t write “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” once while secluded, and I haven’t regretted the dramatic change in my revenue stream once (well, maybe once, but I can wait for new tires). I opted to chuck all that stuff, all that busyness, in the trash can in favor of a simpler, less rushed and far more satisfying life. I’ve written here before that one of the things I know about myself is that, while I can multi-task effectively, I don’t enjoy it. Nor do I think that I do my best work while engaged in it. I am a good, three-ball juggler at the best of times, and while I might not drop them if I juggle more, it certainly isn’t as graceful to watch.

So, ‘simple’ works better for me, even if I have to make some sacrifices in terms of social conventions, fiscal security and conformity. I want to live a creative life that leaves lots of time to do nothing more complicated than walking in the woods, reading a book, or doing yoga with friends. I think that, while the ‘busy’ and ‘successful’ mentality permeates and suffuses our culture, it is neither particularly efficient nor lucrative in terms of our meta-lives. I’m not one to pin high hopes on the bible, but I do agree with the statement, “What profit is there for a man to gain the whole world at the expense of his soul” (not the King James Version). We trade an awful lot these days to be ‘successful’ and secure, and how much is too much to pay for a nice car, house, bank account or sense of accomplishment if we have nobody to share them with, no love to experience, and no sense of our own character and dignity?

So, yeah, I’m all for being busy if the cause is right. I like hard work. I just question the causes that are popular in our culture. I’d gladly give up security, wealth and the high estimation of my banker for a profound sense of intellectual strength and freedom; happily drive a beater and pound out a novel on a six-year old laptop than punch a clock, own a new car and have a company Blackberry; joyously sacrifice a long list of accomplishments for just one that really, really made a difference; blissfully abandon days full of meetings and power lunches for those spent being with, helping and being helped by friends.

Perhaps I’m arguing semantics with my fellow blogger. Perhaps he means ‘busy’ in a healthy way too. I just worry that the healthy definition is out of common usage, replaced by one that is an illusory lie, a hologram that looks like abundance and efficacy but is actually just a matador’s cloak, sucking us into a chase for financial or commercial success that is designed to not have a finish line, that is really designed to suck us into getting a sword in the heart. Like the proverbial carrot on a stick that we are told we might reach one day but never do and never will, once we start down that road, enough is never enough.

I wish to refute that lie with every breath I take for all the remaining days of my life. I know in my heart that, if I do this, though no other person would ever hear or take note, I will have spent my life successfully by the only definition I care to use – my own. Maybe not very busily, but it’ll do for me…

‘Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.’ Seneca

I’m helping a good friend with home renovations this week (which is my excuse for the longer drift between blog posts). He has a week off in which to get two weeks worth of deconstruction and reconstruction completed, so the days have been long, admittedly longer for him than for me (which is probably a good thing, my 43-year old body is reminding me), but we’ve still managed a couple 12-hour days of framing and dry-walling. Demolition didn’t take as long (which always pushes me towards some interesting observations, but I’ll leave those for today). I wake each day noting my pant size shrink proportional to the stiffness of my back and, well… everything else too. But it’s a good sore, like that earned by a difficult hike or climb: it notes that something worthwhile has been accomplished.

When I was in my early twenties I worked construction and carpentry for a few years and, in terms of job experiences, they are probably my favorite to look back on. As Seneca and countless others have noted; clean, hard labor may not always be the most pleasant task while you’re doing it, but it has very definite virtues. It’s a great workout, but that’s minor. Like climbing, its greater value lies in the combination of a tendency to show up our limitations and possibilities, and the satisfaction of seeing something worthwhile spring into existence before our eyes. There are few things more satisfying to me than to see something my hands have made, something that would not exist were it not for my efforts, at the meager price of some sweat and a bit of stiffness. There is something to be said for ending the day being able to look at what we’ve done, be able to see it and feel it and touch it, to know that we’ve stretched our limitations and maybe even pushed the line back a bit, and know that a good job has been done.

This quote doesn’t say that as well or specifically as some others, but I like that it refers to our minds as well. When I went fishing for a quote today, I was thinking about a) how stiff I was this morning and, almost completely unrelated to a), b) how the circumstances of our lives shape us. Specifically, I was thinking about the 6 years I spent in a bad marriage when I was young, during those construction years, and the motorcycle accident that ended my carpentry days and resulted in at least some of the reason for my current stiffness. I won’t go into details about either, at least not today, but what I found myself thinking for the billionth time was that I was thankful for both of those rather dark and equally life-threatening episodes of my life. I wouldn’t trade a day of them. Without the accident I would never have had to retrain, go back to school after squandering my opportunities out of high school, and wouldn’t be in a position to try to be a writer now. And without the marriage, I might never have been pressured by circumstance to individuate the way I did; to start looking for less comfortable truths and cultivate a healthy dissatisfaction with institutions and the status quo.

When things get difficult these days my first response now, as often as not anyway, is to ask myself what it is I’m supposed to be learning. I’m not suggesting that difficulties exist simply to teach us things – it’s more likely they exist because we did something dumb, forgot something, or made a bad choice – but if we have to experience them, we might as well learn something through them. (It’s harder, but just as valid, to ask the same question when things are wonderful and everything seems to be falling into place: Ease can make us intellectually and spiritually complacent.) Difficulties, however, tend to spawn questions like CNN spawns inane and redundant commentary.

I have to admit; I prefer the ease. But I don’t mind the difficulties so much these days. They remind me that I’m alive and still learning. More specifically, they remind me that I’m about to learn something new, or be reminded of something I should never have forgotten. Difficulties are an opportunity to become better, to ask questions about and of ourselves that probably need answering, to grow and become stronger, and maybe even a bit wiser, even if that wisdom has only to do with our selves. That’s good enough, a good enough reason to labor at hard but satisfying work, and a good enough reason to embrace the hard times in hope of the person they will help us become in the good times.

So, what are we going to learn today?

“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.” Bertrand Russell

I’m visiting my mother today. This is both a joyful and frustrating experience for me. Joyful because I like my mother and, until I started my life inversion experience, I’d been separated from her, except for one or two visits a year, for seven years thanks to my former ‘career’. Painful because my mother is a bit of a CNN junky. It could be worse I suppose; if she was a FOX News junky I’d have serious problem, although the truth is that I think that CNN is just as bad these days.

I alluded obliquely yesterday to the Dec. 25^th ‘airline terrorist incident’ when I made the racial profiling joke. Today CNN is all a-buzz regarding the story in light of Pres. Obama’s official speechifying. The infotainment rhetoric is rife with references to partisan maneuvering during an election year (senate and congress) and plenty of reminders that this is ‘scary stuff’. I’m so grateful that they drive that point home every five minutes, because, heaven forbid, we might stop thinking that we should be in perpetual fear, all the time, every second. We might be able to shake our heads clear and understand that, while terrorism is horrific, it is statistically less dangerous that homelessness, car safety, climate change, cancer, taxation, and (arguably perhaps) crossing the street.

The infotainment industry does a better job of terrorizing the public than anything al Qaeda is doing.

I’m also left wondering what it is in Yemen that the US suddenly finds so attractive that they need to manufacture this excuse to intervene. I mean, when the prez suddenly declares a renewed commitment to defeating al Qaeda, you can just imagine the smiles spreading across the faces of the world’s banks and arms manufacturers. It was a good day to be an industrialist or capitalist.

Our governments, the mainstream media, both on TV and in print and, grinning in the wings, the banks and corporations, eat this stuff up. They love it when we’re scared, and they love having a reason to scare us. Scared is good when you want to misdirect and control people, and that’s what they specialize in. I was guardedly optimistic when Obama was voted in, and he at least shows well on TV – more presidential and less stooped than G. W. – but under the shine, the news and direction is pretty much exactly the same. Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss.

And another thing while I’m ranting; Do those personalities on CNN actually believe the crap they’re peddling? Or are they actually smart and just completely compromised and subverted to the cause? Probably a mix, yeah? Most likely, some of them really believe in what they are doing, believe that they are journalists, while others are aware that they get a juicy cheque for doing absolutely nothing but blow a band of smoke chosen by their owners up as many asses as possible.

If you think that CNN, Fox News, CTV News, CBC Newsworld, CBS, NBC, ABC or any other major news network, not to even mention the major papers and periodicals, actually engage in real journalism, in a sincere seeking after the truth, then please give your head a vigorous shake and wake up. They want you afraid. It might not be a much better emotion in general, but I’d suggest that getting angry might at least reflect a better grasp of the truth.

And if you choose this option, be angry at the ones who deserve it – those that purport and purvey the lies, and do it with a smile. 

“I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.” Rita Rudner

It was moving day today for me. Not that it was much of a move; just downstairs from the guest room ‘A’ at my friend’s place to guest room ‘B’. I’m not being demoted (room B is actually bigger than room A and has a better wireless signal, so it’s really an upgrade), but I have to get out of the way for the renovation blitz we will be inflicting upon said room ‘A’ starting Saturday. I was going to go the coffee shop to write this afternoon, but by the time I moved some of my books (just some – I have a lot) to get ready to move the shelves (they are fostering my library while I do all this 'life inversion' work), it was getting too late to make the trip practical, so I found my way into my favorite chair hear at the homestead and decided to blog.

Drifting back to that coffee shop comment, don’t ask why, but the coffee shop is one of the best writing places for me – maybe I perform better under observation. I get my tea and a muffin, find a seat by an outlet so I can plug in my ancient laptop, check some e-mails, read a few blogs, and then, earplugs firmly plugged into ears and iTunes playing dissonant alternative sounds, I drift into a nice working state of mind. This is, however, something I never managed to do today, but promise I will do tomorrow. For those of you on the manuscript reading list, chapter 19 will be coming your way Friday at the latest.

One of the really nice advantages of a day like today is that, while I was moving books and clothes and getting the new room ready, I was also baby-sitting Dax. Dax, if you missed it or I didn’t mention it before, is the 7-month old puppy my friends own. Dax is a brindle coated, hound/shepherd/lab cross that, at seven months, has already eclipsed the 50-pound mark that the vet anticipated by twenty pounds. He most closely resembles a hound in his face and body, but only if said hound had been given the legs of a greyhound, rapidly progressing into the legs of a great dane. He’s a big, friendly, smart (and increasingly well-trained) 70-pound kid, and he’s a joy to be around. He inspired frequent fetch and tug-o-war breaks, allowed me the honor of watching him frolic in the snow (he goes literally insane), and even laid his head on my lap during neck scratching time (his neck, not mine, although if I can teach him that trick I’ll be bragging about it). Dax also conquered his nemesis, the basement staircase, today both descending and ascending several times. It was a big day.

As I write this, he’s lying at my feet asleep, long, gangly legs twitching as he chases some unfortunate rabbit through his dreamscape. This makes me, in turn, smile. I want a dog, but that has to wait another year or so while I get the niggling business of starting a new life out of the way. In the meantime, I’ll just borrow Dax once and a while for my canine fix.

Oh, the quote. It doesn’t really have anything to do with anything, except that I thought it was funny and it mentions dogs. I could have made it a serious blog about racial profiling (you see the connection, don't you?), but I felt frivolous instead.

Cheers…