Local Mega-Bookstore

"The Local Authors" table at the Square One Mississauga Chapters/Indgo Mega-Bookstore
[Photo By: KPA]

My neighborhood mega-bookstore, the Square One Chapters/Indigo, is now displaying the beginnings of its Fall collection. It has various tables set up with specialized themes. One that intrigued me was the "Local Authors" table, and after I did a brief tour of the store, I settled down to studying the table's displays. Perhaps I can find something to buy toward my collection of fast-growing books, to which I add every couple of months.

The running theme in all these "Local Authors" (seven of whom I have profiled below) is that they are all "from somewhere else," literally, psychologically, psychically, or in any other way to enhance their stories. And each uses Mississauga, or a nearby suburb, as a springboard to accentuate this "somewhere elseness." Most of these "somewhere elses" are Third World countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. But some are right here in Canada, in ethnic ghettos from Toronto to Mississauga to Montreal.

Camilla Gibb, one of two white writers in the list that I've put together below (two out of seven is a very low odd, for a country which is still majority white), may not have been born in the Third World, but she is certainly "foreign-born" and her "somewhere else" is England. As she states in the interview below, "I find resonance in stories of upheaval and dislocation. I find myself in them." Even though she came as a young girl from England, and even though Canada has strong cultural and historical affiliation with Britain, and even though there is a large body of Britons in Canada, especially in Toronto where she settled, she still managed to find "upheaval and dislocation" with this move.

The fascinating information I found about her is that she is a lesbian, whose "wife" (yes, they were "married") left her while Gibb was ten months "pregnant." So, her "somewhere else" is truly a psychic displacement, where she doesn't belong anywhere, even in those African villages where she briefly lived as an anthropology doctoral student, villages who would have no sympathy at all for her lesbianism, and about which she wrote her first book Sweetness in the Belly.

Her book Sweetness in the Belly is set in the Muslim region of Ethiopia, a country which is predominantly Christian. Why did she chose this outpost as the center of her tale? She has a spiritually rebellious reason for this choice. The novel's main character Lilly, who is clearly some form of autobiographical representation of Gibb

...has anything but a stable childhood. The daughter of English/Irish hippies, she was "born in Yugoslavia, breast-fed in the Ukraine, weaned in Corsica, freed from nappies in Sicily and walking by the time [they] got to the Algarve..." The family's nomadic adventure ends in Tangier when Lilly's parents are killed in a drug deal gone awry. Orphaned at eight, Lilly is left in the care of a Sufi sheikh, who shows her the way of Islam through the Qur'an. When political turmoil erupts, Lilly, now sixteen, is sent to the ancient walled city of Harar, Ethiopia, where she stays in a dirt-floored compound with an impoverished widow named Nouria and her four children.

In Harar, Lilly earns her keep by helping with the household chores and teaching local children the Qur'an. Ignoring the cries of "farenji" (foreigner), she slowly begins to put down roots, learning the language and immersing herself in a culture rich in customs and rituals and lush with glittering bright headscarves, the chorus of muezzins and the scent of incense and coffee[Source].

Was it the glittering headscarves the women in Harar wore which tugged at Gibb's/Lilly's heart? Was it the exotic of scent of incense and coffee? It is more basic, more fundamental, than that. "I was not always a Muslim," says Lilly, "but once I was led into the absorption of prayer and the mysteries of the Qur’an, something troubled in me became still [Source]."

Gibb/Lilly is no different from the hundreds of white European Western women who find this stillness through Islam. Their own cultures had failed them spiritually, destroying or demeaning Christianity. Lilly filled this abyss with Allah.

Gibb never defines her religious affiliations, despite her overt sympathy for Islam. Rather, she seems to fill her spiritual void, as this Toronto Star article states, "by the mentally salubrious effects of companionship." Hence her incessant search for "community."

Although Sweetness in the Belly is not a particularly outstanding book (I have read several of the beginning chapters), I'm sure Gibb's personal story is much more interesting. It would provide an intriguing lens into the lives of modern (postmodern) white women who hate their own cultures and try to find salvation in other remote and exotic ones.

For that reason alone, Gibb's book and background is the most interesting of the lot, which induced my long analysis of her and her world.

Liz Worth is another such prime example in my list of a white woman who once again uses a counter (or anti) cultural affiliation to guide her story-telling style, and whose book (this time a non-fiction book about punk rock) tells us more about her inner workings than would have a straight autobiography. Worth's punk rock cultural focus is a masochistic, sadistic, misogynistic culture, and was no haven for women. When asked why she chose Treat me Like Dirt as the main title for her book she gave a roundabout answer with nothing left for us but to psychoanalyze:

I was thinking ‘yeah, treat me like dirt - what a great title.’It's provocative and defiant, and captures a lot of the sentiment in the book. [Source]

But is it provocative and defiant to say over and over again, as do the lyrics to the song Bullet Proof Nothing by the Toronto "proto-punk" band Simply Saucer?

Treat me like dirt, drive me insane,
Treat me like dirt now, tear out my brain,
Treat me like dirt, I'm losin' my mind,
I said treat me like dirt now, cause you're so fine.

Simply Saucer
"Bullet Proof Nothing"

Perhaps Worth also likes this song (these lyrics) because of the mild pleasant melody that connects the words to song. They don't mean "treat me like dirt, surely. They mean "love me!!!" Simply Saucer is a male group (at least the singer is male). It is a woman he is singing to, which in the world of competitive men, the worse a woman treats a man (in the dance of courtship) the more interested in her the man gets. But how badly can she treat him, other than to ignore him or not answer his text messages? And how seriously will she take his treatment with that bouncy melody?

But men treat women differently than do women men. Treating a woman like dirt is a serious activity. It could lead to physical or verbal, injuries, or even death.

And such is the thought process of women who think abuse (physical injury?) has something to do with love.

Treat Me Like Dirt is about the ultimate fringe of society: The violent, abrasive, loud subculture which deliberately aims to be on the outside of white civilized society, forever with a chip on its shoulder. Anything that would find fault with (or even hate) this white civilized society is welcomed.

All these writers have no desire, interest, or a sense of obligation to make Canada the main "character" in their books, using it merely as a springboard to travel back into their psyches and memories to those lands they abandoned in search of greener pastures. They rushed eagerly into the haven of Canada's towns and cities, escaping whatever financial, political or psychological woes they have suffered. But, once safely here, they show no (or little) thanks for the country that opened its hands out and helped them at their time of trouble. In fact, they persistently and continuously demonize it, as though it should have given them more, and more and more. Their dissatisfaction becomes a raging anger (however quietly some may express it), which is woven into their stories.
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List of books



List of books from the image above:

1 Could You Please, Please Stop Singing
By: Sabyasachi Nag

In Could You Please, Please Stop Singing?, Sabyasachi (Sachi) Nag takes a step away from skepticism, blending humour with shock and surprise, seeking a return to childhood in “Mamuda’s Fries,” innocence in “Conversations with the Country Activist” and fractals for the future in the yet to be invented “Seedless Avocado.” In attempting what Tomas Transromer calls “walking through walls,” Nag hurts and sickens himself with awe and rage. The title poem “Could You Please, Please Stop Singing?” purposely evokes the famous Hemingway line from Men Without Women and is central to the overall tonality of this collection, that straddles a path alternately mocking and dead serious, and that occasionally yields to contrary pulls between the banal and the sublime.

Sabyasachi Nag...lives in Mississauga with his wife and son. Nag immigrated to Canada from Calcutta, where he was born, and many of the poems in this collection are about this city.[Source]

2 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl
By: Mona Awad

Born to an Egyptian father and French-Canadian mother, Awad grew up in Montreal with a high school stint in Mississauga (or as dubbed in 13, “Misery Saga”). In a predominantly white, protestant school, being an Arab was rare enough. Yet with her mixed heritage, ambiguity made her “an outsider even to outsiders”. Neither fully here nor there, Awad finds respite in the broader identification of ‘Canadian’. Awad affirms that this does not erase the influence of her parents’ culture upon her own identity, but rather allows for its greater complexity.

13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, in the simplest of terms, is about a woman’s body and self. Awad traverses into a thorny landscape of weight anxiety and desire, illustrating it through the particular nature of key relationships - to other bodies, to female friends, to mothers, lovers, clothing, and food. [Source]

3 Weather Permitting and Other Stories
By: Pratap Reddy

Indian-born author Pratap Reddy captures the immigrant experience, highlighting all the rewards and frustrations facing a newly arrived immigrant to Canada, in his new book entitled Weather Permitting and Other Stories.

According to Mississauga-based Reddy, “It was all the new and unexpected challenges I had to face as an immigrant, which both stimulated and inspired me to write these stories. The publication of the book is truly a dream come true, however clichéd as it may sound. Im happy and excited about my first book, a collection of stories woven around fictional characters who are new to Canada[Source].

4 Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond, 1977–1981
By: Liz Worth

Full of chaos, betrayal, failure, success, and pure rock 'n' roll energy, this layered history is assembled from interviews with those now recognized as innovators, pioneers, and outright legends in their genre. Their accounts go beyond run-of-the-mill anecdotes, venturing into the uncharted territory of sex, drugs, murder, conspiracy, violence, criminals, and biker gangs. Bold and brazen, this compilation also includes a wealth of previously unpublished photographs as well as one of the last interviews with the late Frankie Venom, lead singer of Teenage Head [Source].

Worth herself has contributed to this "noise art" as a performance artist with the duo Salt Circle:
Her website describes Salt Circle:

Salt Circle (feat. Sam Cooper/Liz Worth) is an experiment in frenetic spoken word and haunted, broken sound. Channelling dreams and ethereal invocations, this Toronto duo creates occultish noise and approachable weirdo art that connects poetry, rituals, and hypnotic structures.

Vulgar Ritual
By: Salt Circle

5 Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac
By: Anna Yin

In her newest poetry collection, Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac, Yin brilliantly takes the reader through the seasons of the zodiac year by intertwining Eastern and Western images. She alludes to Sylvia Plath, Margaret Atwood, and Dante—Western poets that influenced her own work—and incorporates them into pieces inspired by traditional Chinese poetry. The blending of the two worlds is congruent with the immigrant identity she explores in “Accent,” where the negotiation of two cultures should not result in one overtaking the other—like yin and yang, both exist in harmony[Source].

Anna Yin was born in China and immigrated to Canada in 1999. She has authored five poetry books, including Wings Toward Sunlight (2011) and Inhaling the Silence (2013) and Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac (2015). Anna has won a number of poetry awards, including the 2005 Ted Plantos Memorial Award, the 2010/2014 MARTY Literary Arts Awards and a 2013 CPAC Professional Achievement Award. Her poems in English & Chinese and ten translations by her were in a Canadian Studies textbook used by Humber College. Anna has been interviewed by CBC Radio, Rogers TV , CCTV and TalentVisionTV etc . Her poem “Still Life” was displayed across Canada for the Poetry In Transit project in 2013/2014. Anna was a “Living book” for the Living Library at the Mississauga Campus of University of Toronto. Anna is Mississauga’s First Poet Laureate (2015-2017) and Ontario representative to the League of Canadian Poets (2013-2016). Her “Poetry Alive” events and workshops are welcomed at schools, colleges and libraries, especially for the Poets in Schools Program. Anna holds a B.Sc. degree from Nanjing University and a Creative Writing Certificate from the University of Toronto. She lives and works in Mississauga, Ontario [Source]

I recently posted (or re-posted) on Anna Yin's accent and my take on her "immigrant" experience here, but I don't think she will be ready any time soon to loose her accent, or her immigrant experience.

I wrote about Yin's accent and her migrant experience here and here.

6 This is Happy
By: Camilla Gibb

In 2012, while eight weeks pregnant with her first child, Camilla Gibb was faced with devastating news: her spouse of more than 10 years announced she had fallen out of love and was leaving their relationship. In her new memoir, This Is Happy, Gibb reflects on rebuilding her life as a single mother and creating a new ad-hoc family for herself and her baby. Gibb, who holds a PhD in social anthropology from Oxford, and is author of the novels The Beauty of Humanity Movement and Sweetness in the Belly, says her unexpected situation made her realize her life had become “unrecognizable,” and forced her to face “urgent and imperative” questions about herself.

Interviewer: Your work has focused on the idea of the outsider, on belonging and identity. Why?
Gibb: I’ve thought a lot about this question over the years, and given myself, and others, various answers to it. But the truth is, I think it’s constitutional. I find resonance in stories of upheaval and dislocation. I find myself in them [Source].

7 Struggles of a Dreamer: The Battle Between a Dream and Tradition
By: Yahaya Baruwa

In Struggles of a Dreamer: The Battle between a Dream and Tradition, the stories of Tunde, a beggar on the streets of New York City, and Toku'te, the son of a farmer in a faraway land, are woven together in a charming tale full of intriguing characters and adventure. You will encounter the struggles of a dreamer as he faces the challenges of the limiting boundaries of his tradition. You will laugh, cry, experience romance, be frightened, and be held in suspense as you find out how Toku'te manages to remain afloat in a world that requires everyone to fit the same mold[Source].

Yahaya is a Nigerian-Canadian Author and Entrepreneur who was born and raised in Kano city, Nigeria till the age of 13. He migrated to Canada with his family of ten in March of 2001 to pursue greater academic and career opportunities. Upon arrival to Canada, Yahaya resided in both Flemingdon Park and Regent Park for the first three years in Canada; however he now lives in Scarborough, Ontario with his family [Source].

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Some of these books (or recordings) are online and here are excerpts from a couple:

13 Ways of Looking Fat
Mona Awad

Growing up in the suburban hell of Misery Saga (a.k.a. Mississauga), Lizzie has never liked the way she looks—even though her best friend Mel says she’s the pretty one. She starts dating guys online, but she’s afraid to send pictures, even when her skinny friend China does her makeup: she knows no one would want her if they could really see her. So she starts to lose. With punishing drive, she counts almonds consumed, miles logged, pounds dropped. She fights her way into coveted dresses. She grows up and gets thin, navigating double-edged validation from her mother, her friends, her husband, her reflection in the mirror. But no matter how much she loses, will she ever see herself as anything other than a fat girl?

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Liz Worth
Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond, 1977–1981
Sound recording of "performance art" by Worth

Vulgar Ritual Salt Circle

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Sweetness in the Belly
Camilla Gibb

Prologue
Harar, Ethiopia

The sun makes its orange way east from Arabia, over a Red Sea, across volcanic fields and desert and over the black hills to the qat- and coffee-shrubbed land of the fertile valley that surrounds our walled city. Night departs on the heels of the hyenas: they hear the sun’s approach as a hostile ringing, perceptible only to their ears, and it drives them back, bloody lipped and panic stricken, to their caves.

In darkness they have feasted on the city’s broken streets: devouring lame dogs in alleyways and licking eggshells and entrails off the ground. The people of the city cannot afford to waste their food, but nor can they neglect to feed the hyenas either. To let them go hungry is to forfeit their role as people on this wild earth, and strain the already tenuous ties that bind God’s creatures.

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Anna Yin reciting In Flanders Fields for Remembrance Day celebrations in Mississauga
November 16, 2015

[Photo By: KPA

Orthospherian Re-Welcome, the Austerian School, and a Website Meant to be Read

Jonah and the Whale
Image from the Touchstone 2017 Calendar

The writers and commentators at The Orthosphere have been giving us their unique and important views on the state of the world for a few years now. I have occasionally commented on their posts and they have a link to Reclaiming Beauty on their website.

I recently commented on their post: The Ultimate Target of Diversity In the latest issue of Touchstone, SM Hutchens identifies the ultimate target of the Social Justice Warriors

My comment was in response to Bruce's thoughts:

Bruce:

Hutchens is terrific (he was kind enough to correspond with me many years ago about an article he wrote on theology). Even so I don’t think your conclusion is correct. They hate us because in the current narrative we “victimized” them.

KPA:

Yes, of course, it is the “humiliation” of the “colonized.” The colonizer is evil. He showed them their weakness, and dared to find the solution by his way, his method, his culture his (the) civilization. It isn’t just the regular victimized (oppressed) who hate the White Man, it is everyone who isn’t white.These days, the Chinese – mainland and “westernized,” who one would have thought would be allies of this White Man – are viciously attacking this white man because he has shown them that he is better than them.

Hutchens has beautifully, and with great insight, shown us the link between spirituality (Christianity) and hatred of any who follow or attempt to follow perfection through Jesus’ perfection. A perfect housewife is hated. Rather a woman leave her home and lives as a masculine in a masculine world. A perfect artist is hated (look at the abomination of perfection in art these days where artists have finally shown clearly that they are following the devil’s direction). A perfect man is hated where young boys and men are being pulled into homosexuality or effeminate ways and made to hate this man. And so on.

Our enemies have now been emboldened into telling us that truth that our battle is a spiritual one. That is because they appear to be winning. But who is more conceited than the devil? Of course it is still, and always, God’s world.

And a little further down.

Thomas F. Bertonneau:

Let me be the first to welcome Kidist to our conversation.

P.S. – Kidist is a kind of “neighbor” of mine, being a Torontonian, sight of whom the curvature of the Earth only just prevents an Oswegonian from seeing directly. But I sense her like-mindedness from across the lake…

Kristor:

And let me be the second. It’s good to have you here, Kidist.

Kidist Paulos Asrat:

Thank you, dear friends for your kind (re)welcome. I am still very active (whether online or off) as a champion of western civilization and “beauty” and just received a new role – promoter of the Austerian View [KPA - actually Kristor said The Auterian School] – as Kristor said in an email regarding my comment registration. What an honorable title!

Please visit my new website where I’ve now added “The Society for the Reclamation of Western Beauty.” It is still a work in progress but I hope to make it bigger than web musings, and into a full-fledged revolution!

http://societyforreclaimingwesternbeauty.blogspot.ca/p/a-beauty-movement.html

As I said to another friend in an email that I had originally re-named my website's address to make it less accessible on the web. But this is a website which I had always intended to be read by the public.

And there is always the "Society" which can hold closed discussions, where we can plan our revolution!

Prince Edward County, Ontario

Lavender Farm in Prince Edward County

Howard Sutherland sent this email (which I've slightly edited) regarding the posts Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town and Barrie for a Day:

My father, although a Texan, spent most of his career working for the now-gone International Nickel Company of Canada (INCO), and lived in Toronto from 1972 to 1983. I was a landed immigrant during those years, and spent a lot of time in Ontario, including odd jobs during my school and college years.

Even in the '70s, native Torontonians were calling their hometown the broken-English capital of the world. As I recall, though, immigrants were largely Eastern European and Portuguese, although the Indian fraction - both West and East - became more noticeable over those years. The Chinese I remember as a trace element only. Broken English or no, I thought Toronto was a great city.

I found Ontario's countryside and county towns very pleasant. I hope that's still true. My father bought a small farm to retreat to on weekends, in Prince Edward County (the hand-shaped peninsula that sticks down into Lake Ontario west of Kingston), near Trenton, Ont.

Those years in Canada were an interesting time - in the Chinese-curse sense. It was the reign of Trudeau-pere, who was busy destroying anything distinctive about Canada - especially any attachment to the Dominion's British heritage. They were also the years of the rise of the PQ in Quebec, with which Trudeau had a bizarre passive-aggressive relationship. On the surface Trudeau's Liberals opposed the PQ and sought to homogenise a (bogus) bilingual Canada a mari usque ad mare, while under the table inciting Québécois official mono-lingualism.

The result was effective affirmative action for French Canadians in government employment nation-wide. At the same time the PQ's antipathy to English drove the transfer from Montreal to Toronto of Montreal's traditional role as Canada's banking centre and leading city. One could almost see the national centre of gravity sliding west down the 401!

The results of all of it have been catastrophic for Canada, which is now a country (if it still is a country) that can choose Justin Trudeau as its prime minister. Pierre Trudeau was very bad indeed, but compared to Justin he was gravitas personified.

So What if I'm Racist?

View of North Vancouver with North Shore Mountains in the background
High rise developments
[Phto By: KPA]

So what if I am a Racist?
September 11, 2016
By Tim Murray
Council of European Canadians

There are many in the environmental movement who have chosen to take the coward’s way out. They know that population growth plays a crucial role in environmental degradation. And they know that in the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom it is immigration which drives population growth and that it will play an even more decisive role in the future.

But they have chosen to take the Fifth Amendment. They have chosen to remain silent and look the other way, focusing instead on campaigns to reduce consumption, promote renewable technologies, greener lifestyles and sideshows to defend this or that threatened habitat, forest or species. By Mark Twain’s definition, they are liars of the silent kind. They know in their hearts that immigration-driven population growth has a profoundly negative ecological impact, but they say nothing. This is ethically equivalent to knowing that someone has planted a bomb in the subway and not saying anything to the police.

Then there are the environmentalists who not only tell the silent lie, but are determined to silence those brave enough to tell the truth. Many of them draw salaries from “green” NGOs whose primary goal is to maintain and grow their bureaucracy. Cynics can be forgiven for regarding them as essentially fund-raising tools which not only solicit donations from credulous innocents, but from corporations seeking ecological dispensation and good publicity. These organizations are case studies of Roberto Michels’ “Iron Law of Oligarchy”. Success transforms fledgling grass roots movements into organizations with salaried staff and directors with a vested interest in the financial viability of their employer. Consequently they will pursue goals to promote the maintenance and growth of the organization even when those goals run counter to the original aims of the movement. Green crusaders become money-grubbing corporate lackeys.

If this wasn’t morally reprehensible enough, some go further. They enlist the services of the Merchants of Smear, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, or the Center for New Community. Hired guns whose mission is to destroy reputations, especially the reputations of environmentalists who campaign for population stabilization.

And finally there is another category of population deniers — those who choose the path of least resistance. Those who are terrified of being found guilty of guilt-by-association. So they distance themselves from sustainable population campaigners to avoid being tarred with an ugly brush.

They do so for fear of the “R” word. Racism. A word that is seldom precisely defined, but always brandished as a weapon of fear and intimidation to shut down debate. It permanently marks the accused with a stain that can never be removed. Ask the widowed husband of the late June Callwood, a famous Canadian journalist who championed progressive causes. Unjustly smeared by an identity group, she spent the remainder of final years a broken woman. To be labeled “racist” and have it stick is professional suicide and the death knell of one’s credibility, no matter how broad and sound one’s perspective may be.

In Canada, more so than in America, Australia or Britain, such is the cult status of mass immigration that to challenge any facet of it is thought in most quarters to be intrinsically “racist”. Mass immigration and the deification of the immigrant is part of the national DNA. As we witnessed in the Republican Primary contest, political candidates love to trot out rags-to-riches, immigrant-makes good stories of how their father came to this country a humble, hard-working man of meagre means and saw his son rise to achieve the American dream. Democratic Presidential nominee candidate Bernie Sanders hit that key too. Many times.

Canadian politicians pull the same emotional string. And it works. It all lends credence to the false narrative that Canada is a nation of immigrants, that immigrants “built this country”, and must continue to build it. The idea that Canada is “over-built”, that we have exceeded our ecological carrying capacity, is inconceivable. It is not on the table — and the growth lobby, in collusion with the media cartel — is determined to keep it there. Obviously, the useful idiots of the Left are party to the plot. Conveniently forgotten is the fact that the working man or woman’s best friend is a tight labour market. But then the Left no longer is no longer the advocate of the working class, but the champion of identity groups and migrant rights. “No One is Illegal” is a slogan born to serve the corporate bottom line.

So how does racism come into the conversation? It’s like this. If you are drawing a third of a million people into your country every year and most of them are from “non-traditional” sources, then most of them — an overwhelming number of them — are going have a skin pigment other than white. Therefore, to propose any restriction, or God forbid, a moratorium on immigration for any reason, is “racist”, and the one making the proposal is a “racist” who automatically is beyond the pale of polite discussion and deserves to be consigned to oblivion. He certainly will never see the inside of a CBC studio.

Well, I’m an environmentalist and I have chosen to make a lot of noise about immigration. In doing so, as one could predict, I am just about as popular as flatulence in an elevator. I talk loudly about the ugly “I” word because I would rather be right than politically correct. I know that if we grow our population by 18% we can’t expect to cut our GHG emissions by 3%. It can’t be done. And I know that if we have covered 20% of our Class 1 farmland in sprawl with this kind of growth that we haven’t a hope of feeding ourselves if immigration rates persist and affordable oil runs out.

Greenfield acreage cannot be adequately preserved by land-use planning (ask Portland, Oregon). We have the highest growth of any G7 country and with Australia, the highest per capita immigration intake in the world. Biodiversity is on the ropes, especially in the killing zones on the perimeter of our bursting cities. It cannot coexist with the tens of millions of extra consumers that Ottawa plans to import in coming years.

In advocating an immigration moratorium, I find myself in the same predicament I did while working in a theatre in a largely Chinese Vancouver neighbourhood. The movies were often times so popular that there were more people waiting on the sidewalk to get in than there were seats available to sell to them. One of my unhappy duties was to close the door when the theatre was full.

Canada is such a theatre. It has a limited carrying capacity, not established by a fire marshal, but by ecologists and biologists who have offered educated guesses as what it might be. Now a theatre manager or owner might propose that more people be admitted off the street and be accommodated as standing-room patrons. He may even propose that newcomers sit on the laps of those already seated. Taking a cue from fake greens, he might even call it “smart growth” or “eco-density” — but.his motive would be purely mercenary.

Similarly, an economist from the Royal Bank would argue that Canada could admit millions, tens of millions more, and the Real Estate Industry would echo his sentiments. Again for commercial considerations. But neither the theatre owner or nor the economist is governed by the concept of limiting factors, of carrying capacity. Just as it takes a fire marshal to impose reality on the theatre owner, it would take an ecologist or a biologist to introduce the Canadian government to the reality of biophysical limits.

One might recall when, in the face of dwindling stocks, the politicians of Newfoundland protested that the cod fishery must continue because the “economy” of the province depended on it. So the boats went out until the cod ran out. Ultimately the issue was not about what the economy of Newfoundland required, but what the cod stocks could sustain — and in this case, they obviously couldn’t sustain any more fishing. That economist from the Royal Bank, and any number of federal politicians, will protest that our “economy” requires these massive annual injections of immigrants, but our environment will simply not continue to sustain it.

At some point, we will have to establish as a nation, a population plan, an optimum population for this country. When we do, someone will have to close the theatre door. Now, I would put it to my critics, when I closed that door was I “racist” in doing so because 75% of the people left standing outside were of Chinese ancestry?

Let me ask another question, suppose I was. Suppose I closed the door for two reasons. One, because the theatre had filled its seating (carrying) capacity and for safety reasons it would be dangerous to allow more people in. And two, because I didn’t like Chinese people. Would the second reason invalidate the first reason? Should the revelation that I am a mean-spirited, nasty, hateful guy who hates children, kittens and little old ladies discredit my argument that the theatre is full?

I want to see the development of a Sustainable Population Plan for Canada, one that would factor in the variables of net migration, births over deaths and refugee quotas. The imperative would be to stay faithful to the desired population target by adjusting any of those variables up or down.

The goal would be to stop biodiversity loss and save biodiversity services. Stop the diminution of farm acreage and wildlife habitat, and meet carbon-emission targets.

But there is another reason for my opposition to hyper-immigration. The one I keep in the closet. I hate right-handed people. I hate the way they have treated me and organized the world for their convenience. Right-handed people make up 90% of the global population. By cutting back on immigration by 90% I know that most of the excluded people will be right-handed. Does this hidden agenda invalidate my previous arguments?

In Canada of late there seems to be a great pre-occupation not with an idea or an action but the alleged motivation behind it. The hate-crimes laws are a case in point. Their logic confounds me. Someone hits me over the head and leaves me with a concussion because he thinks I have a wallet full of cash, and the judge gives him a year. If the same thug hits me over the head and leaves me with a concussion because he thinks I’m gay, the judge gives him a much heavier penalty. Whatever the moron’s motives, my medical condition is the same.

But such is the political culture of Canada. My “motive” for anti-immigration views warrants more scrutiny and attention than the views themselves. I could only wish that critics would take my arguments on their own merits rather than subjecting me to psychoanalysis. And I wish that the network that I pay for, the state broadcaster, the CBC, would entertain the possibility that today’s heresy might become tomorrow’s truth.

Blog I'm in Elite Company

Square One Mall in Mississauga has been pretty active lately, with a newly opened "luxury wing."

The new Mississauga Holt Renfrew at Square One had commissioned an illustrator to make portraits of customers on its opening day .

The line was surprisingly short and the illustrator was fortunately quick and skilled. Within twenty minutes, I had mine.

I looked up Monica Smiley of Eightyseventh St. and found that she has had a long career of illustrating cartoons of various famous people.

I am in esteemed company!



She said it is easier when people have a distinguishable feature. Mine happened to be my big orange hat!

Vogue's Anna Wintour's are her giant sunglasses which she wears even indoors. And of course her bob.



Hudson's Bay across the mall wasn't gong to be left out, and was promoting a new make-up line called Teeez that I blogged about here. Un-hip that was, I didn't realize that a Selfie actually meant me pointing an iPhone or some such contraption at myself. I asked the sales girl to take a photo of me instead (actually, I can take a Selfie with my "tablet" computer).

Here I am below in my "Selfie", getting "ready for a revolution" as the poster behind me asks. Little do they know!



I think I look better than Anna Wintour - at least I have a better smile. And my signature look (my big orange straw hat) is a far more interesting than hers, an over-sized pair of dark glasses.


Anna Wintour at the Spring/Summer 2016 Collection
during London Fashion Week

It's funny, these "power women" when it all boils down, are like frightened little girls underneath it all.

Meryl Streep played it perfectly in The Devil Wears Prada, as a fashion mogul who was supposed to be, well, fashioned after Anna Wintour. At the end of the day, this Miranda Priestly/Anna Wintour impersonation was intimidated, and beaten, by a simple college graduate intern. Now, when will this college graduate intern morph into the monster that Streep's character became, and when will she collapse at some point in her career, unable to rise to some "challenge?" And how many ruins will she have stacked behind her of failed marriage(s), family, and feminine happiness?

Here is a photo op (is it one for Hillary or one for Anna?) taken in 2013, where fashion meets (Democrat) politics. What is a then 64-year-old business mogul like Anna Wintour woman smiling like a 12-year-old? And why so deferential to Hillary Clinton (66), who herself is grinning like a mad woman? So much for modern "strong" women.


Anna and Hillary in 2013

What would they do if they came across Martha Washington, who was the same age as them in this portrait below?


Martha Washington, by James Peale, 1796
Mount Vernon Collections

Blog Fun and Vice for the Contemporary Teeez Girl And Where's the Money?

Teeez Girl in Contemporary Neon and Vampire Teeth
Morphing from sugar and spice to vampire and vice

Photo for a promotional card for Teeez Cosmetics to enter a contest to win make-up
She doesn't look like she's having much fun, and doesn't look like much of a teeez
But she does have her vampire teeth ready.

I wrote yesterday about the regular occurrence of the word "fun" in people's vocabulary.

Fun is everywhere these days. On sitcoms, in commercials, on billboards, and on everybody's lips.

I went yesterday to the cosmetics section of the Bay department store, and noticed promotions being handed out for "complementary make-overs" and a chance to win prizes.

"What should I do?"
"Just take a selfie, and send it to us."

Well not being of the "selfie" generation, I asked her to take a photo of me.

I had intended to send it in but it does not qualify, of course, and when I investigated the prize they were promising, it was a Top Shop gift voucher. Top Shop is Hudson Bay's British import, a boring, dark "goth" place where neon colors do not exist, let alone a pretty yellow or red, with over-priced clothes where prices are actually labeled in pounds and dollars, causing confusion at the cashier. It wasn't worth being associated with one of those self-centered selfie-cover-girl-wannabes.

Here is the Instagram page where I could have posted my photo (had it been a true selfie) and won a prize to Hudson Bay's British import.

Back to more serious matters.

I got a promotional card from the selfie regulator, and reading its message of Teeez giving me the power to "create a killer look you can call your own" prompted me to ask her what I think about the "Teeez" brand (is it three or four "eeeeez"?). She didn't look very powerful to me.

"It's fun," said this twenty-something woman who stood in front of me with pink hair.

That's more like her!

I thought she (or her "team") came up with that word in an attempt at translating the Dutch company's made-up word. Later, I searched online dictionaries and Dutch websites and blogs, but none gave me anything for "teeez" - to tease in Dutch is a completely different word). Perhaps it is the Europeans' propensity to incorporate English words into their languages, sometimes with new spellings and even meanings. Or it could just be a smart business strategy to make the word and product sound (American) English (Europe is fascinated by America), giving it more popularity and therefore business success. Well they've landed on our shores and it is a short cross over from Hudson's Bay to Macy's.

"Oh. I like the pink," I said to the pink-wigged teeez girl.

"Thank you [with a pose - she got my joke]."

This counts for the "beauty revolution" that was advertised on the billboard behind the pink-haired rebel.

I found a make-up lady and asked her what was so great about this new make-up.

"I got 'fun' from the girl in pink hair," I quipped.

She laughed and continued with:

"Well we have a large variety of colors and styles. And we are about fun and bold, with a contemporary edge."

Strangely for someone in the teeeze department, this older woman looked dowdy and bland. But then she is the other end of the (very narrow) spectrum where people either look ridiculously cartoonish or depressingly bland.

What happened to the styled and stylish older woman with her well-fitting suits and tailored dresses? Walmart actually sells such clothes as does Sears and they're not expensive. In fact a pair of Levi jeans (or those "lady" jeans which these women love to wear) cost as much, and add to that the durable sweat shirts with patterns on them (often the only bright color in this get-up) and of course the sneakers, or sneaker-type shoes from Naturalizers, and they're're spending close to $1000 to look dowdy.

And there's that word fun again, and after I joked about it (mocked it really). So "fun" is part of the teeez "meaning," as even this sales lady acknowledges. I suppose she has no choice but to use it on the job, even as she looked adult and serious (and bland), to promote the company's "mission." Either that, or she changes jobs and leaves matters to the pink wigs.

I really didn't hear much else of what she said, looking for "a large variety and styles and colors" in the display counter, unimpressed.

Here is what the back of the promotional card says:

Fashion Vendetta gives you the freedom to overpower any fashion dictate and all the beauty ammunition to invent your own sartorial style. Your partner n crime? A collection loaded with full-on metallics, mattes, enticing neons and edgy pastels, along with provocative transparent and changeants. A powerful palette of prêt-à-porter products to create a killer look you can call your own.

Perhaps it is good that young women are encouraged to look attractive. But they are hardly encouraged to look feminine, where instead they're hit with words like "powerful," "killer," "edgy."

The neon-lit young girl on the postcard above hardly looks bold, or even "edgy." She looks frightened and bewildered. What is she supposed to do? What is she supposed to feel? What is she supposed to wear?

Fashion Vendetta for whom? What does a vendetta and killer looks have to do with looking pretty? What is a young girl to do?

There is a horde of people to give her just that information, and to sell her the make-up.

In the meantime she can cake on that make-up and make some wallets very thick.


Soft as Sin Cream Blush going for CAN$27. Not for your average girl.
L'Oreal and Revlon have perfectly good make-up, which I've used for years, for under $15 (and much less when on sale).

Below is the pink-wigged "teeez girl" who answered my questions and who was much sweeter-looking in person than this. I wouldn't have gone near the monster portrayed below. These "contemporary girls" with an "edge" have to play a role, but the truth is they would rather be sweet, feminine and kind.



The irony is of course lost on these opportunists who call their product "cruelty free," but where they psychically mistreat their young staff and all the other girls who walk by their counters.

Peta describes their "cruelty free" products thus:

Looking for compassionate companies that you can depend on to find quality, cruelty-free products? You’ve come to the right place! These are some of the leading go-to brands that you can be sure do not test their products on animals anywhere in the world. They’re also widely available, which means you don’t have to search too hard to find them!

"We'll just tell young girls to look like, and behave like, monsters, but we will be saving the planet as we do so."

But on further investigation I could find nowhere any written documents from Teeez that their products are "free from animal testing." All the references I could find are either anecdotal or the opinion of an obscure blogger.

This writer from Vancouver Sun's Beauty Bar "informs" us:

Our tester was especially pleased with the fact this brand claims to not be tested on animals. And the majority of the Teeez Cosmetics products appear to be free of parabens and dermatologist tested.

Where is the "claim" of the product's apparent freedom from those alarming chemicals? Where are the dermatologists' statements vouching for the safety of these products? And what about the "minority" Teeez Cosmetics which contain these ominous chemicals, and what do/could they do - cause our skin to fall off?

So who has the back, or more precisely the skin, of these young girls, including the pink-haired promoters?

Blog Fun and Vice for the Contemporary Teeez Girl And Where's the Money?

Teeez Girl in Contemporary Neon and Vampire Teeth
Morphing from sugar and spice to vampire and vice

Photo for a promotional card for Teeez Cosmetics to enter a contest to win make-up
She doesn't look like she's having much fun, and doesn't look like much of a teeez
But she does have her vampire teeth ready.

I wrote yesterday about the regular occurrence of the word "fun" in people's vocabulary.

Fun is everywhere these days. On sitcoms, in commercials, on billboards, and on everybody's lips.

I went yesterday to the cosmetics section of the Bay department store, and noticed promotions being handed out for "complementary make-overs" and a chance to win prizes.

"What should I do?"
"Just take a selfie, and send it to us."

Well not being of the "selfie" generation, I asked her to take a photo of me.

I had intended to send it in but it does not qualify, of course, and when I investigated the prize they were promising, a Top Shop gift voucher (Top Shop is a boring, dark "goth" place with over-priced clothes from Britain where prices are actually labeled in pounds and dollars, causing confusion at the cashier) it wasn't worth being associated with one of those self-centered selfie-cover-girl-wannabes.

Here is the Instagram page where I could have posted my photo (had it been a true selfie) and won a prize to Hudson Bay's British import.

Back to more serious matters.

I got a promotional card from the selfie regulator, and reading its message of Teeez giving me the power to "create a killer look you can call your own" prompted me to ask her what i thinks about the "Teeez" brand (is it three or four "eeeeez"?). She didn't look very powerful to me.

"It's fun," said this twenty-something woman who stood in front of me with pink hair.

That's more like her!

I thought she (or her "team") came up with that word in an attempt at translating the Dutch company's made-up word. Later, I searched online dictionaries and Dutch websites and blogs, but none gave me anything for "teeez" - to tease in Dutch is a completely different word). Perhaps it is the Europeans' propensity to incorporate English words into their languages, sometimes with new spellings and even meanings. Or it could just be a smart business strategy to make the word and product sound (American) English (Europe is fascinated by America), giving it more popularity and therefore business success. Well they've landed on our shores and it is a short cross over from Hudson's Bay to Macy's.

"Oh. I like the pink," I said to the pink-wigged teeez girl.

"Thank you [with a pose - she got my joke]."

This counts for the "beauty revolution" that was advertised on the billboard behind the pink-haired rebel.

I found a make-up lady and asked her what was so great about this new make-up.

"I got 'fun' from the girl in pink hair," I quipped.

She laughed and continued with:

"Well we have a large variety of colors and styles. And we are about fun and bold, with a contemporary edge."

Strangely for someone in the teeeze department, this older woman looked dowdy and bland. But then she s the other end of the (very narrow) spectrum where people either loo ridiculously cartoonish or depressingly bland.

What happened to the styled and stylish older woman with her well-fitting suits and tailored dresses? Walmart actually sells such clothes as does Sears and they're not expensive. In fact a pair of Levi jeans (or those "lady" jeans which these women love to wear) cost as much, and add to that the durable sweat shirts with patterns on them (often the only bright color in this get-up) and of course the sneakers, or sneaker-type shoes from Naturalizers, and they're're spending close to $1000 to look dowdy.

And there's that word fun again, and after I joked about it (mocked it really). So "fun" is part of the teeez "meaning," as even this sales lady acknowledges. I suppose she has no choice but to use it on the job, even as she looked adult and serious (and bland), to promote the company's "mission." Either that, or she changes jobs and leaves matters to the pink wigs.

I really didn't hear much else of what she said, looking for "a large variety and styles and colors" in the display counter, unimpressed.

Here is what the back of the promotional card says:

Fashion Vendetta gives you the freedom to overpower any fashion dictate and all the beauty ammunition to invent your own sartorial style. Your partner n crime? A collection loaded with full-on metallics, mattes, enticing neons and edgy pastels, along with provocative transparent and changeants. A powerful palette of prêt-à-porter products to create a killer look you can call your own.

Perhaps it s good that young women are encouraged to look attractive. But they are hardly encouraged to look feminine, where instead they're hit with words like "powerful," "killer," "edgy."

The neon-lit young girl on the postcard hardly looks bold, or even "edgy." She looks frightened and bewildered. What is she supposed to do? What is she supposed to feel? What is she supposed to wear?

Fashion Vendetta for whom? What does a vendetta and killer looks have to do with looking pretty? What is a young girl to do?

There is a horde of people to give her just that information, and to sell her the make-up.

In the meantime she can cake on that make-up and make some wallets very thick.


Soft as Sin Cream Blush going for CAN$27. Not for your average girl.
L'Oreal and Revlon have perfectly good make-up, which I've used for years, for under $15 (and much less when on sale).

Here is the Instagram page where I could have posted my photo (had it been a true selfie) and won a prize to Hudson Bay's British import Top Shop, a boring, dark "goth" place where neon colors do not exist, let alone a pretty yellow or red. And the over-priced clothes are actually labeled in pounds and dollars, causing confusion at the cashier.

Below is the pink-wigged "teeez girl" who answered my questions and who was much sweeter-looking in person than this. I wouldn't have gone near the monster portrayed below. These "contemporary girls" with an "edge" have to play a role, but the truth is they would rather be sweet, feminine and kind.



The irony is of course lost on these opportunists who call their product "cruelty free," but where they psychically mistreat their young staff and all the other girls who walk by their counters.

Peta describes their "cruelty free" products thus:

Looking for compassionate companies that you can depend on to find quality, cruelty-free products? You’ve come to the right place! These are some of the leading go-to brands that you can be sure do not test their products on animals anywhere in the world. They’re also widely available, which means you don’t have to search too hard to find them!

"We'll just tell young girls to look like, and behave like, monsters, but we will be saving the planet as we do so."

But on further investigation I could find nowhere any written documents from Teeez that their products are "free from animal testing." All the references I could find are either anecdotal or the opinion of an obscure blogger.

This writer from Vancouver Sun's Beauty Bar "informs" us:

Our tester was especially pleased with the fact this brand claims to not be tested on animals. And the majority of the Teeez Cosmetics products appear to be free of parabens and dermatologist tested.

Where is the "claim" of the product's apparent freedom from those alarming chemicals? Where are the dermatologists' statements vouching for the safety of these products? And what about the "minority" Teeez Cosmetics which contain these ominous chemicals, and what do/could they do - cause our skin to fall off?

So who has the back, or more precisely the skin, of these young girls, including the pink-haired promoters?

Blog Fun

Fun is everywhere these days. On sitcoms, in commercials, on billboards, and on everybody's lips.

It is the result of a culture which has nothing serious to think about, or to fight for. We don't take religion seriously, nor family (unless it is the "inclusive" families of aggressive homosexuals) nor country. We are easily bullied and easily coerced by the loudest voice in the group.

So there s nothing left but to have FUN.

Here is the word's origin, and history, from the online Thesaurus.com:

fun 1680s, v., "to cheat, hoax," probably a variant of M.E. fon "befool" (c.1400), later "trick, hoax, practical joke," of uncertain origin. Stigmatized by Johnson as "a low cant word." Older sense is preserved in phrase to make fun of and funny money "counterfeit bills" (1938, though this may be more for the sake of the rhyme); sense of "amusement" is 1727.

It doesn't look like much "fun."

But, all the contemporary synonyms given by the thesaurus are light, bright and airy:

amusing
enjoyable
entertaining
lively
pleasants
boisterous
convivial
diverting
merry
witty

Yet, people rarely seem to be having fun, in a mirthful, merry, boisterous way. What does that say about our times?

Blog Freedom at Holt's

I asked the Holt's perfume lady about the Creed perfume.

"It is a Holt's exclusive," she told me.

Only at Holt's. Creed!

All You Need is To Believe.

Creed Perfume, Luxury Line: Only at Holt's

I asked the saleswoman what the price of a perfume was - "Fleurissimo, or anything with rose scent in it," I asked her, having seen the rose graphics on the perfume.

75ml, with costs $409, and with the 13% Ontario sales tax, reaches $462.

"Don't you have any 50 or 30 mls?" I ask, a little taken aback. I am used to hearing exorbitant prices for designer fragrances, but this takes the cake - or the perfume!

"Well, some have 30 ml travel sizes. The Spring Flower is for $246."

The $246 with the 13% sales tax comes to $277.

And since when is a 30 ml perfume considered "travel size?"

"You're better off buying the 75ml. You get more than twice the value for you money," she said.

She didn't bat an eye. After all, she's not there to converse and joke with customers. She's there to sell.

I found another scent, with "rose" notes, but without the "complementary" 30ml, called Fleurssimo. It started off surprisingly aggressive, but then diluted into a soapy smell.

The Holt's website describes it thus:

Revel in a real-life storybook romance with Fleurissimo Eau de Parfum. The classic floral fragrance commissioned by a royal prince for his American starlet-turned-princess on their wedding day. Created to compliment the bride’s royal bouquet of white flowers as she walked down the aisle, Fleurissimo is a magnificent blend of Hollywood glamour and European royalty. A sumptuous mix of Tuberose, Violet, Florentine Iris and Bulgarian Rose, this regal fragrance will bring out the princess in any woman.

I wonder who is this "royal prince?" Of course it is the Rainier III, Prince of Monaco. I cannot imagine Grace Kelley with this insipid perfume.


Cargo Pants and Luxury Scents

The new "luxury" store at Square One has its (slow) flux of shoppers. This couple was also looking at Creed perfumes.

Perhaps this couple, even with the scruffy cargo pants, thinks it will be royalty if it shops among the regal ghosts. Square One has made a major advertising pitch into neighboring towns and cities. There are some retirement communities in the Mississauga area with moneyed elderly (often looking like scruffy teenagers). As well, there are some relatively wealthy communities, of people fleeing the multi-culti horror of bigger cities like Mississauga and Toronto to the relative quiet and civility of the smaller towns, with easy commuting networks.

How often will an elderly couple, or a moneyed professional, make it to Holt's to buy a $500 perfume? Even with irregular, but expensive, purchases, the final revenue cannot be profitable for the store.

Also the Holt's prices both online and in store are about 1 1/4 times more expensive: even before the 13% Ontario sales tax - $409 vs. $325.

This looks like a scam to make up for other losses in Square One: Add a surcharge to the exclusive, expensive, luxury items to offset the other losses in the mall. Those rich clients wont notice or, more likely, wont feel the difference!

These costs also affect those rich foreign customers which Square One has spent extensive time and money to attract. This foreigner cliente translates to Chinese and Indian (but mostly Chinese). But, the Chinese economy, with its secretive strategy, and even false information, doesn't tell us the whole story. Things are not great out there. And no-one ever really knows how the Indian economy is doing, which now includes those call centers, where people's money is dragged out of them one interest rate increase at a time, and which provides countless Indians with their monthly survival checks.

They also have links to Canada beyond their telephone calls. Many of their family members have traveled those thousands of miles to take part in this great economic and cultural experiment called multiculturalism. And they crowd the Walmart which the savvy Square One promoters haven't removed from this luxury store (Square One is touted as the only mall with both a Walmart and the "luxury" store Holt's under one roof. Imagine that!). These Walmart shoppers barely enter those great doors of luxury shopping, and I doubt the Holt shoppers have much interest in what Walmart has to offer. The difference is jarring. Walmart is over-crowded with a cacophony of languages and customers going for the daily sales and cheap(er) groceries. Holt's, even during its opening days, is empty and eerily quiet.

Square One is connecting with the Art and Culture Centre of Mississauga, the Art Gallery of Mississauga, by displaying images from the gallery's current exhibition "Pattern Migrations" in its "luxury wing." It features work by Muslim artists. It is of course the perfect exhibition and title for this ambitious mall where cultures mingle (and migrate) together to go SHOPPING!

Orwell's 1984 showed us how populations can be seduced to ignore, or lose the ability to notice and react to, mis-information through false wars (enemies that don't exist) falsified language and various forms of placation. Shopping (window shopping) didn't figure n Orwell's list but it certainly is part of our Brave New World.

"War is Peace!" Say Orwell's characters.

"Shopping is Freedom!" we say.

The realty, of course is closer to: "Window Shopping is Freedom," which doesn't buy any freedom at all.


Young multi-culti men, probably students from the nearby Sheridan College, walking by the Bus Depot which is an intricate regional network for cheap and efficient transportation



Zooming around in a luxury sports car. The mall's parking lot has a handful of BMW, Mercedes and Lexus cars, including quite a few of the corresponding SUVs.



Pattern Migration: Square One's Luxury Shopping Wing



Chinese and Others: Designer Shorts and Tiffany Store



Turbans and Patterns



Equal Black Patterns, 24/7



Only at Holt's



I am also a Holt's Shopper!

Blog Alexandra Poppies

These are Alexandra poppies, growing by the Chappell House in Riverwood Conservancy. This wonderful park/forest is a mere twenty-five minutes from Mississauga. Just take the 26 bus East, and ask to stop by the Conservancy (or at the Erindale Go Station).

Labs and Lives

The Complaint of Peace

By: Erasmus of Rotterdam
From: The Complaint of Peace

Plato somewhere says, that when grecians war with grecians, (notwithstanding they were separate and independent dynasties) it is not a war, but an insurrection. He would not consider them as a separate people, because they were united in name and by vicinity. And yet the christians will call it a war, and a just and necessary war too, which, on the most trifling occasion, with such soldiery and such weapons, one people professing christianity, wages war with another people holding exactly the same creed, and professing the same christianity.

The laws of some heathen nations ordained, that he who should stain his sword with a brother’s blood, should be sewed up in a sack, and thrown into the common sewer. Now they are no less strongly united as brothers whom Christ has fraternized, than those who are related by consanguinity. And yet, in war, there is a reward instead of punishment for murdering a brother. Wretched is the alternative forced upon us by war. He who conquers is a murderer of his brother; and he who is conquered, dies equally guilty of fratricide, because he did his best to commit it.

After all this unchristian cruelty, and all this inconsistency, the christian warriors execrate the Turks as a tribe of unbelievers, strangers to Christ; just as if, while they act in this manner, they were christians themselves; or as if there could be a more agreeable sight to the turks than to behold the christians running each other through the body with the bayonet. The turks, say the christians, sacrifice to the devil; but, as there can be no victim so acceptable to the devil as a christian sacrificed by a christian, are not you, my good christian, sacrificing to the devil as much as the turk? Indeed, the evil one has in this case the pleasure of two victims at a time, since he who sacrifices is no less his victim than he who is sacrificed by the hand of a christian and the sword of war. If any one favours the turks, and wishes to be on good terms with the devil, let him offer up such victims as these.

But I am well aware of the excuse which men, ever ingenious in devising mischief to themselves as well as others, offer in extenuation of their conduct in going to war. They allege, that they are compelled to it; that they are dragged against their will to war. I answer them, deal fairly; pull off the mask; throw away all false colours; consult your own heart, and you will find that anger, ambition, and folly are the compulsory force that has dragged you to war, and not any necessity; unless indeed you call the insatiable cravings of a covetous mind, necessity.

Reserve your outside pretences to deceive the thoughtless vulgar. God is not mocked with paint and varnish. Solemn days and forms of fasting, prayer, and thanksgiving, are appointed. Loud petitions are offered up to heaven for peace. The priests and the people roar out as vociferously as they can “give peace in our time, O Lord! We beseech thee to hear us, O Lord.” Might not the Lord very justly answer and say, “why mock ye me, ye hypocrites? You fast and pray that I would avert a calamity which you have brought upon your own heads. You are deprecating an evil, of which yourselves are the authors.”

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much better than they?

Mourning Dove
Pastel Drawing
Kidist P. Asrat
2013

It's been almost a year (a month and and day short - there must be some numerical significance to that number) since I posted on this blog. There are a few drafts (three to be exact), but I briefly resumed activity at Our Changing Landscape, and I started something I called Society for the Reclamation of Beauty (more on this later), but for the most part I have just been posting photos, and the occasional communications with other bloggers.

My silence was not a renunciation, but a way to revive my interest and general excitement when I start a new blog post.

For some reason, I felt tired, as though there was nothing more to say.

What an error in imagination! There is always something to say.

I think what I felt was that there was nothing positive left to say.

As I discussed with a friend, this nihilistic, apocalyptic view of the world is anti-Christian and anti-God.

Who am I to judge, and decide, when things are over?

Even in the midst of horror, God would wish us to live. Each step we take in life is a preparation for harder times, making us hardier and more resolute to keep our world and fight for our world. We are sure to meet our ultimate enemy some time. It is better that we harden ourselves now.

Yet, we should also wonder at the eternal cheerfulness of the little bird.

It is telling that got my earthly resolve back almost as soon as I participated in a "Birding With Experts" walk, a program organized by the Riverwood Conservancy, where we meet and greet (so we think!) or pesky little fowl friends, who may grace us with their song, although it is more often with their flight.

Here are some photos I took of some birds at my last visit, along with the woods now almost fully clothed with their green cloaks, all the more easier for our chirping chickadees to hide in.

The Mourning Dove, elusive and shy,
with its silhouette against the early morning sky,
makes that plaintive cry

I'm not sure what this is. I think it is a yellow warbler.
I will ask at our next meeting.

The Indigo Bunting. It was playing hide-and-seek with us, calling out with its song, announcing spring, until it appeared hight up on the bare branches, above us, and any danger (except for that hawk!).

A Red-Tailed Hawk, glancing at our intruding group. He is ready
to circle and pounce on the rodent he's just eyed

Luc Fazio, our steward, as the conservancy calls him. The pole holding the video camera acts as his staff with which to rescue wayward members. I have slight vertigo, even for elementary slopes. and he called out at one time, pushing the pole before me:

"Just hold on!"
"But you won't be able to pull me with that!"
"Just use the stick as a guide, don't cling onto it."

I did as bidden, barely touching the stick, and sure enough, I was out of my hole!

"It's all psychological," said our kind shephard. "I once had a women in my group in Brazil, who wouldn't do as I told her. She fell, lacerated her arm, and we had call for medical assistance."

God forbid that they would have had to call medical assistance for me!


The Credit River, flowing through Riverwood
[Photos By: KPA]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat

Trump and His Women: The Pop Culture of Politics

Trump National Golf Club, September 15, 2014

Trump, now on his third wife, has his discarded exes who show us how they fared after his attention waned.

Above, he is with Ivana Trump, his first wife and mother of his three children, including Ivanka Trump who is described as his "closest adviser" with a likely post in his potential government.

Here you have it: The America from Washington (and Lincoln and even Carter) degraded to Trump.

Below s a photo of Ivan Trump trying to make things right while attending her son gala event: The Eric Trump 8th Annual Golf Tournament at Trump National Golf Club Westchester on September 15, 2014 in Briarcliff Manor, New York. The money raised goes to the habitual "philanthropic" cause: the St. Jude (hospital) Foundation. Eric Trump talks about his foundation as the "ETF."

Ivana was with him to support her son, and obligingly sat next to her ex-husband, who was by then married to his third wife Melania Trump (from Eastern Europe too, and with an accent just like her).

She was three years younger than Trump, but she looks ten years older, and like those aged rich women who go through countless face, and other, lifts. They put on packs of makeup to look younger, and wear gaudy jewelry and glittery clothes from their small fortunes usually obtained through alimonies from their various divorces. They always miserable.

Ivana has had her string of boyfriends and husbands, but none stuck and she seems back to being alone again. She is a painful reminder of Trump's "love" of women, something (and someone) which he would rather keep out of the limelight. She is his reject.


67-year -0ld Ivana in 2016 vacationing in in St. Tropez with her fourth ex-husband
(whom she divorced n 2009) and who is now her on-again-of-again companion.
He is 23 years younger than her and they were marred only a year.

His second wife on whom me married five years after his divorce from Ivana. He had cheated on Ivana, who confronted Marla on a ski slope in Colorado. Marla later divorced Trump after she cheated on him.

“You b..., leave my husband alone” was the cry of anguish from wronged first wife Ivana on a ski slope in Colorado, in 1989 a year before Trump divorces her for Marla Maples, the woman on the slopes


Goddess on a New York Rooftop, Marla Maples, in 1990, on Vanity Fair
The magazine which published her and Trump's "love story" a year after he started cheated on Ivana with her, and two years before Trump becoming Trump's second wife.
Marla and Trump divorced in 1999, after five years of marriage. She was the alleged "cheater" this time.

The women can't help themselves but to take off their clothes. Or attracting pop culture. Marla became a contestant in the long-running Dancing with the Stars, although her stardom is not clear.

The Trump family continues with its crass behavior.

Here is that future senate seat-holder Ivanka Trump, posing in her version of soft-porn, back when she was a model.


Ivanka Trump on Stuff Magazine in 2006
during her "modeling" years and who also then was
the Trump Organization's VP of Real Estate Development




It is no surprise that Melania's indiscretions are hardly worth a mention in the Trump family account, since most of the family's female members behave in a similar fashion.


Melania Trump on the British GQ Magazine cover in 2000,
pre-Trump marriage

Below are Ivanka's mother and stepmother, at her brother's wedding. Ex-wives are expected to show up at their children's various milestone (her son's wedding in this case). But, there is no rule for this. Ivana would have been better off away. The elderly lady is Maria Zelnicek, Ivana's mother.


Mar-a-Lago Club on November 12, 2005 in Palm Beach, Florida.w
Current wife, ex-wife and ex-mother-in-law joined for Donald Jr.'s wedding
Trump Jr. with Melania seems to be on the way

And the heiress:


Ivanka Trump after her speech introducing her father, Republican National Convention, July 2016