The Madness

You'd have to be mad not to understand that we are on the brink of another world war. There are a bunch of megalomaniacs in the US (and elsewhere) driving these forces of world domination. Trump has been the useful idiot. All of this feeds into his narcissistic sociopathic personality. He has no empathy or compassion; he is the tool, the face. Some report he gets all his information and biases from Fox News (or as I like to call it Faux Nooz). And to add to his disdain, he wore a cheap Trump baseball hat to the reception of the dead military returning to the US a couple of days ago. He promises there will be loads more. But *shrug* that's the cost of war, ya know. But that's not a war, he contradicts himself. 

Iran is not going to take this endless provocation and deaths (now at least 30,000, including countless children). They have better military equipment than the US and can hold out far, far longer. 

Meanwhile, the world pays for this folly, with skyrocketing energy costs affecting everything, food, travel, and survival.

Today's headlines cover men getting cheap hair transplants in Turkey and Americans overloading therapists' offices for sessions dealing with Trump anxiety.

Canada is under threat too, and we are very aware of it. Every mouthful of venom he spurts brings us closer.

Cuba is next on his menu. Followed by possibly Ecuador. Then Canada.

Here's the full list:

• Greenland: Frequently mentioned for acquisition due to its natural resources and strategic location.
• Canada: Cited as a target for absorption as the "51st state" through economic pressure.
• Venezuela: Following proposed invasion, the administration claimed it would "run" the country.
• Mexico: Mentioned in the context of territorial acquisition in the Western Hemisphere.
• Panama: Specifically, control of the Panama Canal Zone.
• Gaza Strip: Referred to as "property" for potential redevelopment.

Also known as the "Donroe Doctrine" after the Monroe Doctrine of Annexation.

We are in dark, unknown territory in these nuclear times. Netanyahu and Trump are busy keeping themselves out of jail on criminal and war crime charges. They don't care who gets in the way as the bodies mount to horrifying levels.

We can't shut our eyes to it. Many in Canada are buying guns for the first time. Daughter is a good shot. I was not bad in my time. But neither of us ever felt the need to own a gun.

Overreacting you might say? Realistic, I'd respond.

Maybe now is the time. In all my born days, I never thought I'd be writing about defending Canada. The most polite nation on the face of this earth. Except when we're threatened. 

Elbows Up!

Lurch

What would you like to be doing, wouldn't you like to be auditing and software training?

No.

So what's next. You just had a birthday.

What I'd like to be doing is writing. And knitting when I'm not writing. And going to movies in the afternoon. Daughter gave me a loaded movie card.

There's not much money in writing.

Yeah, I know. Or knitting for that matter. That's why I need to sell my house. Then I can write.

So what are you doing to facilitate that?

I listed my house for sale. I took stress leave from my municipal time-consuming, enraging position. I backed away completely from stifling, drunken massive social events. I spaced my PGs a little better, gapped out some time for myself.
And yeah, I forgot to mention, I'm lying down for an hour in the afternoon. It's a brilliant revitalizer.

But you're not happy?

No. I'm easily irritated. I'm impatient. I'm snarky. I can't believe the world is not going along with my intention for a peaceful, blissful, last few years: Nazism? Ku Klux Klan without the masks? Anti Fa? (aren't most decent human beings?) In your face racism. Worst forest fires ever in BC? Domestic terrorism in the U.S.? And need I mention the occasional occupier of the White House?

I wish this lonely wee planet would get its act together and its useless and vile janitors thrown off it.

Maybe then I might be happy.

As if.

It Goes Like This

So yeah, I'm getting a grip. I'm lining up the acceptance modules. Pragmatism is on order. I'm drawing the zen bubble around myself.

I was away for a week. And on returning home, I was faced with this newly dug crater next door. Crater? It measured about 60' X 20'. It matched the other former crater (now a ginormous shed) up the hill beside my tigeen in size. Oh lawd, sez I, another mother of a shed, this time plonked beside my house. Many more trees had been removed. Some extraordinarily old, over 100 years. A great wind barrier against the fierceness of the weather which at times blows in off the ocean. Now gone. Irreplaceable.

Yes of course outrage set in, rapidly followed by a kind of hopeless depression as the people who bought this land many years ago are perfectly entitled to do what they want with it as there are no land use regulations or zoning laws in this town. It's a haphazard mix of commercial and residential. Even though industrial blazes in the past have nearly wiped out the residential sections. I've brought up this high risk zoning on more than one occasion to be met with raised eyebrows and zero interest in changing the status quo.

So now I listen to happy residents sawing up these beautiful old trees for winter fuel and the sounds of diggers all days long, adding to the fill across the read which may accommodate more sheds.

I propose the new name of our lovely old town could be Shedsville.

So there you have it.

A Fresh Eye

For this reader, it is sometimes important to re-read books that I originally read forty years ago. That is the case with my current read: "Death Comes for the Archbishop" by Willa Cather, written in 1926.

It basically tells the story of two Catholic priests converting the "natives" and "aboriginals" to Catholicism in New Mexico and Texas in the 1850s. The descriptions of landscape and culture are superb.

But it is the recounting of the white man's ways that take my breath away, particularly in the light of today where we are somewhat more aware of what we do and the evidence of our never-ending destruction of land, sea and water is far more deleterious than it ever was back then.

"...it was the white man's way to assert himself in any landscape, to change it, make it over a little (at least to leave some mark or memorial of his sojourn), it was the Indian's way to pass through a country without disturbing anything; to pass and leave no trace, like fish through water, or birds through the air."

Also, our sense of "decoration" compare unfavourably to aboriginals wherein they contented themselves with decorating only their bodies:

"....upon their blankets and belts and ceremonial robes they lavished this skill and pains. But their conception of decoration did not extend to the landscape. They seemed to have none of the European's desire to 'master' nature to arrange and re-create. They spent their ingenuity in the other direction; in accommodating themselves to the scene in which they found themselves. This was not so much from indolence, the Bishop thought, as from an inherited caution and respect."

I wish I had taken notes back then on books I read as I've done for the last five-six years. But again, with two small children and a full time job, I'm consistently amazed at how much I did read back then.

A journey of self-education, never regretted.

Reboot

A view from the Tigeen today. Gorgeous November weather.

Thanks for all the support, some private, some commenting on my last post.

I surprised myself by climbing back on the saddle almost immediately and I must say my output has been prodigious in the last while. Two short stories, one brand new and a play sent off for performance in February. Off. Did you hear that? Off.

I do apologise for not visiting all of you as frequently as I did. But amends will be made.

I have to put the head down and novelize in the next wee while as the creative juices have never been better. In quite a long while.

I wish I could bottle it when I feel this engaged with writing and over the hump of personal misery and/or writer's block you know? And give it away for free to all you toiling writers out there.

I decided to move the writer's domain out of the office and into what I call the family room (the old kitchen). I keyboard and edit in front of the fire with a rolling unit that holds printer and laptop and files and binders I can shove out of the way as needs be. It seems to really work quite well. I shut down the Tigeen today. The lowering sun does not charge up the panels in the winter and the outside rain barrel hosepipe to the sink freezes in the frost.

A friend and I are working on a small supplemental wind turbine to provide additional power.

And this, my friends, is what's happening next door. In its third month of digging. The camera can't quite capture the vastness of landscape destruction. I just about cry when I look over. So I won't.