Born on a mixed subsistence farm in rural Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia, Canada. Moved to Ontario in 1967 to attend University at what was then Waterloo Lutheran University and moved to Oakville, Ontario in 1971. Without intending to live up to the name became a letter carrier the following January and have worked for Canada Post ever since. I retired in August of 2008.

Sunday, July 16, 2017

Who is Trump making the world better for?

An American Senator is quoted as saying that he believed in climate change until he learned the cost of fighting it. But he ignores the cost of doing nothing. Already thousands are dying from the effects of pollution and heat, those who survive add to the cost of health care.

Floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, fires damage property and that increases insurance rates North America wide not to mention the personal costs. The same phenomena damage highways and other public infrastructure adding to our taxes. Droughts threaten the lives and livelihood of millions, rising sea levels threaten to change the world's geography engulfing all of Bangladesh, much of Florida and many islands in Oceaniana, some already ankle deep at high tide. The cost of fighing forest fires exclusive of the loss of personal property is staggering. The loss of a fire team only serves to emphasize the dangers.

Donald Trump is like an osterich burying his head in the sand. If he could send all those foreigners home who would build his highways, office and apartment towers, clean his home and maintain his pool, mow his grass, nanny his children. Is adequate health care really the preserve of those who can afford it ensuring they get prompt attention.

Corporate America cares only for the bottom line. If they keep sourcing cheaper products off-shore who is going to be left with a job to buy them. In Canada thousands of Sears workers are losing their jobs and even severance pay, those on the verge of retirement their pensions but at the same time executives are being offered bonuses to stay. Shades of the Mortgage Banking Debacle. Why does a CEO earn $500,000,000 while his store clerk scrapes by on $25,000 and probably works a second job to make ends meet.

Corporate Greed is destroying our world. What's the point of a tree if I can't cut it, a whale if I can't harpoon it, a wild creature if I can't hunt it, a nature reserve if I can't bulldoze it, mine it, drill for oil.




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State of the Union

Poverty, malnutrition, ignorance, unemployment are the banes of our society. Anyone who feels they have to define their self-worth in terms of the people to whom they feel themselves superior has a fragile sense of being. Racism, xenophobia, bullying, sexual harassment, assault, are all manifestations of this lack of self-worth, a sense of meaningfulness. The ultimate expression of this nihilism and depression shows up in the mass suicides of young people on our Canadian Reserves.

That a young native female feels her situation so desperate that she resorts to becoming a sex trade worker is one thing, that someone should feel that this makes her less than human and therefore the object of rape and murder... ? What makes a person so insecure within himself that he feels he is threatened by another's alternate lifestyle. Be it sexual orientation, race, nationality, religion. And remember being homosexual is a matter of birth, not choice. Pregnant woman now appear regularly in public and later breast feed their infants publicly as well. Those with disfigurements no longer hide in closets and wheel-chair accessibility has become an issue as an increasing segment of our society choose to lead very active lives. The growing number of Vets in America have helped drive this issue. After all, we trained them to be agressive.

Visible minorities are obvious targets, the fact that African-Americans arrived as slaves makes them uniquely vulnerable. However something as simple as an accent or turn of phrase can define one as an outsider.

Alcoholism and Drug Dependency are another means of escape for many people. The use of marijuana has become so general that we are moving to legalize it. The use of recreational drugs prescription or otherwise among the general population has become epidemic. Concomitant with this rise is the crime that supports it. The youth offender act has led drug pushers to utilize children to peddle their wares. The easy money is tempting to the youthful unemployed. Learning that you have a meth lab next door when the house blows up.... That your tenant used your rental property for a grow op.... Or going for a hike in a National Park and discovering that meadow before you is a massive pot farm.... Unfortunately all these scenarios are very real.




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Crime and Poverty

Poverty, malnutrition, ignorance, unemployment are the banes of our society. Anyone who feels they have to define their self-worth in terms of the people to whom they feel themselves superior has a fragile sense of being. Racism, xenophobia, bullying, sexual harassment, assault, are all manifestations of this lack of self-worth, a sense of meaningfulness. The ultimate expression of this nihilism and depression shows up in the mass suicides of young people on our Canadian Reserves.

That a young native female feels her situation so desperate that she resorts to becoming a sex trade worker is one thing, that someone should feel that this makes her less than human and therefore the object of rape and murder... ? What makes a person so insecure within himself that he feels he is threatened by another's alternate lifestyle. Be it sexual orientation, race, nationality, religion. And remember being homosexual is a matter of birth, not choice. Pregnant woman now appear regularly in public and later breast feed their infants publicly as well. Those with disfigurements no longer hide in closets and wheel-chair accessibility has become an issue as an increasing segment of our society choose to lead very active lives. The growing number of Vets in America have helped drive this issue. After all, we trained them to be agressive.

Visible minorities are obvious targets, the fact that African-Americans arrived as slaves makes them uniquely vulnerable. However something as simple as an accent or turn of phrase can define one as an outsider.

Alcoholism and Drug Dependency are another means of escape for many people. The use of marijuana has become so general that we are moving to legalize it. The use of recreational drugs prescription or otherwise among the general population has become epidemic. Concomitant with this rise is the crime that supports it. The youth offender act has led drug pushers to utilize children to peddle their wares. The easy money is tempting to the youthful unemployed. Learning that you have a meth lab next door when the house blows up.... That your tenant used your rental property for a grow op.... Or going for a hike in a National Park and discovering that meadow before you is a massive pot farm.... Unfortunately all these scenarios are very real.




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Getting Into a Jam

Making gooseberry jam is not about the cost but a labour of love. From the time I left to pick up 3 L of berries, to stemming and blossom ending them, to cooking the berries with lemon juice and sugar to topping the final glass, 9½ hours. In the meantime I also made 2½ quarts of Gazpacho, and 2 L of lemonade. And watched Brokeback Mountain one more time. The lid on at least one of my jars has already noisily snapped--that's a good thing. Given its history Wyoming is one hell of place to be gay, Texas not much better. Ironic that in the movie Jake Gyllenhaal's character dies while in real life it was Heath Ledger who didn't survive Hollywood. Oh, 12 jars of Gooseberry Jam and the lids all snapped.





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Chesapeake Bay Bridge

So being that it's in America it has to be the ----iest.  Typical of America is the shopping centre in the middle of the Bay. The Jets taking off from NAS Norfolk Roads directly over my head at KOA Virginia Beach....

Have you seen the Confederation Bridge? Driven the High Mountain Road, HWY 1, through the Rockies from BC to Alberta in spring with its avalanche sheds and no stopping avalanche warning signs. Red Mountain Pass, 1300 ft with 90 switchbacks, 15 mph caution signs and 5000 ft drop offs at the edge of the pavement--no shoulders and definitely no guard rails. The million dollar highway into Durango has one looking for a pullout to cool ones' brakes and driving in low gear at that. On a clear day Chesapeake Bay is a walk in the park.

When I drove into Ashcroft from the Blueridge Parkway losing 3000 ft in one mile I passed 5 suicide lanes. On the drive from Prince Albert to Flin Flon I passed through 3 hours of frozen fog. Have you driven at night on a prairie highway and waited for an hour until you finally met that car coming toward you? Driven in Northern Ontario where the nearest settlement is another 200 miles. Met a moose in the road at Plaster Rock Game Reserve  again, 250 miles of rocks, trees, lakes, and moose. And then there's reputedly America's most dangerous highway from Helper to Provo Utah, I drove it in February, the pass a balmy 9 above.




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Friday, July 14, 2017

Armageddon

We have a sick joke in Canada about the Tim Horton's Cups on the moon.

If we could find them the tracks Franklin's men and sledges left in the high Arctic still exist. Chernobyl's radiation infects the reindeer lichen. In the Antarctic the bones of Amundsen's Dogs (which he ate and Perry's  gas fueled sledges (which he couldn't eat) litter the ice. The Amazon Jungle shrinks ignoring the fact that the Sahara was once a Rainforest. The bodies and oxygen bottles of adventurers litter the Himalayas. The wilderness has been beaten back until little remains of the Boreal Forest but the 200-ft tracks adjoining major highways. Four Billion and counting clutter the Indian subcontinent and China. The remotest ocean reaches are littered with millions of tonnes of our plastic waste. Cities such as Montreal and Vancouver use our waterways and oceans as a convenient sewer. And we wonder why our whales are dying. Forget global winter or melting icecaps, if the phytoplankton should collapse, we lose the engine that provides the majority of the world's oxygen. Pristine Wilderness no longer exists anywhere on earth.

The space surrounding our planet is littered with thousands of bits of space junk; from lost screw drivers and wrenches to defunk rockets, satellites, and boosters. Various landers and explorers litter the moon along with Mars and several other planets. Satellites have crashed into asteroids and comets. Two voyagers have even left the environs of our solar system. We may quarantine materials brought from space but we do space no similar favours.

Politicians such as Trump argue that the world's economies cannot support the fight to save our planet, meanwhile they spend trillions on Weapons of Mass Destruction and complain that others do not contribute their share. Be fruitful and inhabit the earth. It could be argued that mankind is a blight upon the earth that is rapidly working its own destruction.

The biome has and will rebalance itself after an asteroid impact; global sea rise; earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions; nuclear winter; tornadoes and hurricanes; global plagues; droughts, heat waves, global winter. The question is will our species survive the readjustment.




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