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I live near downtown houston and every year on Thanksgiving, my mother and I go down and volunteer at the George R Brown convention center [they give out meals to the homeless on that day. So these past winters have been really biting, right?

And the end of november is NO different

Im put in charge of the mashed potatoes, right? (dont you laugh too long, thats important) . Well,this lady comes in, and shes nice and pleasent enough, but when she holds out her tray for the mashed potatoes, i can see that her thin fingers are so cold, theyve cracked and are slightly (if not recovering from) bleeding. At the last minute I remember my gloves in my jacket pocket (the jacket which is tied around my waist) so ive gotta fumble around, acting like im not suspicous, while taking forever with this ladys mashed potatoes (she MUSTVE thought i was crazy).

Finally, i find the gloves and slip them on the tray, under the bowl of mashed potatoes and hand the tray back to her

She had no idea

We don’t have to go to the Congo and watch as little boys are raped, or Darfur where men are butchered in front of their children. We can stay right here in Toronto where thousands of children go without 3 solid meals a day.

Poverty and hunger is rampant in Toronto. It is out of control and as the million dollar condos go up so too does poverty.

What would happen if we were all conscious of what was really going on in our world? What would happen if each one of us decided that we really could not stand aside while terrible things happened around us, and instead took a courageous stand to stop them?

I include myself in this question for I think that I have been a safe humanitarian, a computer d0-gooder and I’m tired of it. I have been witness to the great courage of mighty people in the world, individuals with children, who put themselves in harms way to help others. That is not me.

I am not being self-deprecating only trying to be honest and encourage you to do the same. Very few of us are righteous Gentiles, righteous Jews, righteous Muslims, or righteous atheists. Very few. From time to time you’ll meet someone who consistently hurls themselves in front of a streetcar to save another life, somehow surviving and going ahead and doing the same thing the next day.

So with all the talk of saving the world, rescuing it from ourselves, not enough has happened, is happening or likely will. My guess is that every century has had those few chosen individuals whose balls were larger than watermelons, big enough to allow the person carrying them to stand up against the Knight, challenge the church, and grab a sword by the blade so as to save a child’s life.

Does it have to be that way? I don’t think so. I believe those people exist to remind us that we can achieve our own level of greatness; they remind us that lofty actions can be done by human beings.

And from time to time, all of us are faced with something lofty, but we hope with all of our heart that we can run from anything like that again. If we are to save our world from ourselves; stop war, famine, rape, murder, diarrhea that kills millions of children just like pneumonia does and malaria – then we have to decide that Wall Street and Bay Street are only streets, and that yachts, boats, pools and jewels do not go to the grave with us. We have to remind ourselves that our good name does; and our deeds do; and the life we saved or rescued is always ours.

What with the diamonds and the Mercedes? How does it feel to wear a 5-karat VVS rock and drive in a half-a-million car? I don’t know. Is it fun? Special. I imagine so. But there is no doubt, that saving 10,000 women from being enslaved as prostitutes (as the most recent CNN hero has done) is a shit load more fun…you’ll pardon my use of ‘fun’.

Because it is then you have saved a life, and out of that comes other lives, and out of those come more. And if you were to follow the slave’s lineage backwards and forwards you would find worlds upon worlds upon worlds. Just imagine indeed..Not winning a fucking lottery, but saving a 12 year old from a life of rape and prostitution.

It’s time for me to have some balls, to be stronger and braver. It’s time for you to have the same. If we all mustered up the courage to change things, things would change. This is the truth. This is what religions try to teach us, and strong valiant men and women try to show us.

One day you will come face to face with yourself as I will and I hope I/you will see something special….really special. I hope we will be able to say, we gave a shit and did everything we could to help the crying and shouting man tortured in a prison somewhere by a gutless and ruthless despot.

This is history. This is the present and while everything seems okay outside my window, it’s not.

There’s puke there, dripping down the windowsill. It’s been barfed up by all of us when we were witness to terrible things, but we just let it stay there.

We didn’t clean it up, like a women who’s drunk and too wasted to undress or wipe her face off. History is full of piles of puke, mountains of barf. We sure enough have the energy and ingenuity to destroy; why shouldn’t we use that to create?

Why?

Today I saw a mother who cried tears of joy knowing and  seeing her son, who had been  subjected to so much bullying and stereotyping, achieve greatness. I say greatness for if it were not she would not have cried in the way she did. She has known great tragedy and  has grown so much because of it and through it and therefore her tears are reserved for something very special and  sacred.

Today I saw the rawest side of parenting one could imagine. Watch ‘Autism: The  Musical’, a movie about  autistic children and their participation in a musical put on by a very  talented woman who is the mother of an autistic child. One mother said she hopes her daughter dies before  her. Why wouldn’t she ? She is terrified to leave her alone in this world. Why wouldn’t she be? Fill her  shoes for a moment. She is a mom to a person who cannot run their own life.

It is because when we do, as we are with Mel Gibson, we are privy to the destructive forces within a human being taking over the creative. Rarely, if ever, in past generations have we been witness to the personal collapse of a human being. The internet and mass media have allowed us to be in the front seat of other people’s lives.

I am not aggrandizing in anyway our vantage point; the chance to see something which is generally very sad, either for the individual  falling apart or for those affected by his/her free fall, or for both.

Not at all.

In fact, what I am saying is seeing Mel Gibson go off on anti-Semitic tirades, racist binges and abusive rants toward his current wife is a picture into our own psyche. While most of us do not suffer from the type of anger Mel has, we do have the ability to melt down in our own way, and that is what is so riveting and scary about seeing Mel do it.

When we watch leaders like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe go from being a ‘freedom fighter’ to a heartless dictator we are allowed into the mind of another person and given the chance to understand how life affects others and how they deal with it.

Mugabe’s meltdown has affected millions of people. We’ve been there for all of it. He has displayed an insecurity that only a world ‘leader’ can, having all that  power and simply becoming drunk on it and unable to handle it.

The vast majority of us will never lead a country but we all lead something - whether it be a family, a company or traffic. And within us is a bit of Robert Mugabe. The question we ask ourselves as we see Mugabe melt is, is that me as a leader, as a father, as a boss? Can I loose it like he has? Can I take the control I’ve been given and misuse it?

Meltdowns are commonplace in our world. At some point in our lives we’ll all experience one. They come in different shapes and forms and they are hard to duck and weave. I’ve had my fair share of them and know that they are never pretty.

Mel Gibson is slowly running out of gas. He is doing so in front of us and it is nauseating and terrifying to catch a glimpse of.

On some level, despite the fact he is so hated by so many of us, we do wish him well because the suffering etched over his face is just terrible to see. Really what we’re saying is we wish ourselves well because his meltdown and yours reflect what can happen inside of me.

2. Canada’s Governor General apologized to the Rwandans for the world community, which includes Canada, not being involved in stopping the  genocide there in 1994. It’s nice but means very little. We need instead to apologize and launch a world wide entity that ensures dialogue and an understanding of ‘peace tools’ so that such genocides are pre-empted. Words mean little, although it’s nice.

3.  Warren, a homeless fellow who lives on Eglinton and Yonge, is very sweet. Please note that. He is childlike in nature and is much beloved on the street, because, I think, people want to take care of him. He’s that type of guy.

4. Today my boy is 3 1/2 according to him and tomorrow he’ll be 4. It’s his birthday. Are  you kidding!!!! I could write a trilogy on my feelings. 4444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444

Tiger Woods is a man who likely has a hard time being himself.

He has been a showman all his life; he has been watched, studied and idolized. Inevitably he had to have moved into that role. So today when he apologized to pretty much the entire universe, cosmos and more, there was something about it that  was so admirable, sad, and compelling and there was something about it that  was contrived, overly-penciled, and repetitive.

He apologized so much that one wonders if that much apology lies inside any man.

Tiger Woods is a superhuman being. If you think otherwise than look closely.  He is one of the most known faces in the world, ever, and has accomplished that through brilliance.

If not, wouldn’t more people being doing it? He is black, Asian, Buddhist, composed and a changing force in golf, and therefore in society. 

He orchestrated that apology, or so it seams, trained for it and choreographed the sentences, around the paragraphs around the hyperbolic emotion. But I believe it was real never-the-less. Some people can say sorry and feel it as they do, and cry and beg and get all snotty.

While others are so used to public adulation, oratory and performing — there apology script will be exactly that.  But I think he is suffering and deeply sorry for hurting his wife, mother and children and maybe others. 

Tiger Woods is right. He has along road ahead of him to get better; to uninstall his strong sense of entitlement about being our royalty. But he is a master many times over, and people like him have the ability to go deeply and powerfully in many different areas of life.

I say Tiger comes back, is a kick-ass golfer, stays with his wife and chills out a little bit. The public will know him better and he will understand his fans and those who love him as a role model. His road is one in which he needs to take a look at himself and then be at home with himself. The fact he was so private all these years played a role in his downfall.

And I believe he is sorry.  

Ps. I would like to call a revolt against newspapers and journalists. I think the fact Tiger Woods 2 ½ year old’s school location was published in the newspaper is criminal. There seems to be little to know recourse when a paper commits a crime, perhaps some of which are felonies. The revolt and rebellion are called. Demand classic journalism, void of gossip, allegations and no need for sources or accountability. More to come on this.

P.P.S. Notice that so many of the giants in sports and entertainment are melting down. The pressure these folks must be under appears to be so great. The stardom environment is not as golden as it seems.

2. Isn’t the news supposed to let us know about the very important things going on, asking us to digest the facts, and then determine for ourselves how best to respond, how to incorporate that news into our lives? Isn’t it supposed to make our  world better? Ask yourself: when did a newspaper article last made you pick up a phone, or write a letter and try to help a situation. Perhaps once, twice or three times? But is that enough for all the serious trashing that we need every day, in every newspaper? What is the ultimate affect newspaper reading has on our psychi? Does  it motivate and encourage us to create a  better self and world? Or does it influence us in such a way that  we become more discouraged and jaded?

3. How would you design, write, layout a newspaper? What would it look like? What would its voice sound like?

People have taken a stand on the issue and either consider Michael a ‘murderer’ or see Darcy as a person who instigated and therefore was not killed but caused his own death.

Couriers and bikers have taken very strong positions on this. Many bike couriers have gotten out on the street to protest, sometimes very aggressively. They see this situation as representing what they go through very often and obviously, many of them hold drivers in great distain.

Michael, according to the media, is building his case and team. Apparently he is drawing upon the contacts he has made throughout his shiny career to deal with this so that he does not end up going to jail. For some reason many people seem to be critical of Michael for doing this – for defending himself. There was a letter to the editor in the Toronto Star yesterday, however, saying that it makes sense he is utilizing all his resources; wouldn’t we?

So this is a pivotal case and will in many ways define the relationship between drivers and cyclists and ‘haves’ and ‘have-not’s.

At the end of the day a man’s life is done…way to young. Darcy seemed to have suffered throughout his life and tragically his exit from the world was not at all pleasant.

Sadly a very capable man who has made huge differences in our society is suffering greatly and has cast a giant shadow on his future.  His situation reminds me of Ted Kennedy R.I.P.  and Chappaquiddick.

Ted did  not become president because a girl in his car drowned after he drove into a body of water. He took off and did not report until the following day. I don’t think Michael will be the premier of Ontario – as he seemed to be hoping for.

Strangely, when I was on the streets for 3 days, we held a BBQ at Evangel Hall, a local drop-in and temporary housing agency. I was sitting at a table with Jackie Stein, who accompanied me, and Darcy came to our table. He was looking for vegetarian burgers or something he could eat, which we didn’t have – and decided instead to take off.  How eerie.

R.I.P. Darcy.

Our prayers go out to the Sheppard and Bryant family. Life can be so very tragic.

2. I had lunch today with an old friend who seems, in many ways, to have come into her own. She has always been a tad shy but has overcome some of the challenges that come with shyness. She is humble and terribly in love with the Jewish people and Israel. I asked her a lot about parenting (she is a Mother of three) and her responses were very satisfying. She said it’s okay to tell your children that you are having a bad day; and it’s fine to cry in front of them (‘not always,’ she said, ‘if someone is sick or died, that is fine. But if I’m having a personally really lousy day, I may hide my tears. I don’t want to burden them.”).  I was happy for her because time moves on and so has she. It’s a drag to meet an old friend and detect that they are in the same place as they were 20 years ago.

3. I met a doctor today who told me about his three year old and five year old. I asked a few questions about child rearing, one of which is what do you tell your 3 year old about death. He said his father died two years ago, when his eldest son was three, and they told him that: some people believe that when we die we go to be with God, and some people do not believe that, instead thinking that our lives are over, and that is it. I was surprised he was so ‘option oriented’ because I figured the best thing to tell your 3 year old is something very simple -like, “Grandpa has gone to heaven” or ‘Grandpa has gone to be with God”. Your thoughts? How would you/or have you explained this?

Not Rocko my Mechanic

I CAN’T HELP IT. THAT’S THE WAY I THINK…

1. I’m sitting home and it’s quiet. Sometimes it becomes quieter than it should be, or perhaps ever was. The other side to the loneliness of stillness is that I realize I am closer to me. The louder the quiet becomes the more self aware I am. When I am able to mask the hushness then I am fooling myself.

2. I wonder if people in Darfur ever have the chance or the time to think about what I wrote in #1. I am so blessed that I have the time to be introspective?

If that is so, if I am blessed to have the gifts of freedom that facilitate and allow for wonderment, then what do I do with my findings of introspection, so that they are not wasted? Simply to allow them to exist, to be inside of me seems terribly wasteful. So I try to discover myself, more and more chapters, and then share my discovery with others. I try.

I cannot believe the disparity that exists in our world. One moment one person in Canada is considering the silence in his 1100 square foot condo, with redwood floors, and the next a woman is being killed in the thorny bushes outside of her village, while collecting wood to burn, if there is any. I can think and suppose while she is busy surviving.

I can’t help it. This is the way I think.

3. Rocko, my friend at the garage where I take my car refused to eat a chocolate bar today because he ‘stuffed his face with sugar all my childhood’. He is overweight, doesn’t work out and had a heart attack. So on one hand he is disciplined and on the other, reckless. How does that work?

Rocko has always been good to me. He’s one of those people you and I have in our lives that doesn’t charge us for a new spark plug; doesn’t make us pay right when we pick up the car; and will give us solutions for life outside of his expertise as a mechanic. Where does your friend work? Where is your Rocko?

4. Damn it’s raining a lot. I love the rain and even more so in this season. I’ve loved the rain ever since I read a very provocatively sexy scene in Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Today I bought an umbrella. It was $5.00 and a rainbow of colors. I watched as an avertable sea of umbrella people walked toward me this morning, as I walked toward them, and noticed that most of them were muted in color. Every once in a while though an umbrella would come along full of  silliness and with great panache, flair and flamboyance. Umbrellas with ears as an example. An umbrella with ears has, for some reason, a lot of character and is one of those things that makes people smile. What else does?

When somebody slips on a banana peel. Or a kid tells a bald man he’s bald. My son did that recently. The bald guy was okay with it though.

2. Two people told me their lives were ‘ordinary’. I wondered what that meant. Does that mean there is nothing Hollywood about it – not lights!? Does it mean that they live and grow quietly and surround themselves with few people? Not sure. Your thoughts?

My New House One day

Moving is generally an onerous task that most people do not look forward. Much is said about it and the culture surrounding this lack lustre task such as: if a friend  helps me move, then he/she has really proven his/her commitment to me. Further, what is the time called when your furniture and belongings are not in your old house anymore, and have not been delivered to your new place? Is that the moment we are closest to being homeless? Do you have good memories, or not so good, of moving? Some people look forward to it as it is refreshing to them. Do you? Your thoughts on moving?

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The Chafetz Chaim, a 20th-century sage, was visited by a friend who commented on how sparsely the wise man’s home was decorated.

He asked the Chafetz Chaim where all his worldly goods were. The Chafetz Chaim replied, ‘Where, my friend, are all your belongings?” The visitor said, “Why, I am simply passing through.” The Chafetz Chaim responded, “Indeed, that is my reason as well for having so few material things. I, too, am simply passing through this world and need very little.”

This lofty approach to life is one seldom practised by most of us. I have just gone through a move and was disappointed with the number of boxes required to hold my worldly belongings – “Avrum, downstairs study, CDs’; “Avrum, upstairs kitchen, cookbooks.”

Boxes were everywhere, filled with things I have amassed over 40 years. Some of them reflect moments in my history, such as my collection of tapes from 10 years of  working in radio; others are packed with reminders and keepsakes.

Things, things and more things. I own three-dozen shirts, five suit jackets, five guitars, two sets of bongo drums and 12 harmonicas. While I was moving, I looked at the boxes and two things struck me: my father took nothing with him, and most of the things I own do not make me happier.

Moving – I was intrigued by the movers. They were skinny but strong, like the Sherpa (an ethnic group from the mountainous region of Nepal, highly regarded as experts in mountaineering and often hired as employees for expeditions in the Himalayas), able to manipulate a solid wood shelf with four drawers around a tricky turn in our hallway and down a set of stairs, with a keen geometric understanding.

The youngest of the movers was 21 years old. He told me he scored 94 in high school English. I encouraged him to read and write a lot. He seemed surprised I had taken interest in his intellect.

Another of the movers was more seasoned and rough. He told me he had furnished his house with items he’d received from individuals he moved. Recently, he bought a 42-inch Trinitron TV for $50. I gave him my old motorcycle gloves. I sold my bike this summer after my son was born. It seemed wise.

The third mover was in his mid-40s but appeared older. He’d been a mover for 15 years and the strain of lifting pianos (which pays an extra $20 per mover) and moving entire homes had affected him physically, like an old quarterback.

Moving – it is generally unsettling and high on the scale of things that cause people stress, especially when you are neither rooted in your new place or your old home. On the other hand, there is something exciting and refreshing about moving. A friend told me it allows him to cleanse his life, throw away the old and useless (a popular rule is, if you haven’t looked at it, touched it or used it in one year, toss it) and file and organize those things that make up one’s personal archive.

There are those people who move regularly. A colleague told me he had moved 15 times in 25 years – from continent to continent and then neighbourhood to neighbourhood. We all know people who live today in the very same home they lived in 40 years ago. Speak to them about moving and the best they can come up with are  distant memories.

So with all of this, why do we move at all? Perhaps we do because the old Jewish adage meshaneh m’akom, meshaneh mazel (change your place, you change your luck) is true. Each move is a bid to make our lives better through change and fresh walls that allow us a new start and a homeful rebirth.

I said to him, ‘Life is difficult eh! I’m sorry that it is so hard for you.” His response was neither a ‘yes it is’ nor a head shake. It just simply was. He stood, looked at me and didn’t say much when I arrived at my floor. It was the answer of the weary.

His feelings are likely a consequence of his age. I have often thought that God did not make life longer – why are we not all Methuselah who lived until he was 969 – because the challenges we all face are tough. When compacted into ’120 years’ (really about 80) they are far more  doable.

“No more shall an infant from there live but a few days, nor an old man who has not fulfilled his days; for the child shall die one hundred years old…They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for as the days of a tree, so shall be the days of my people, and my elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands.” – Isaiah 65:20, 22

Clearly, though, this man is having a tougher time of things than perhaps a normal senior might have.  He is not single. I have seen him with his wife. Perhaps that is part of his problem. Could it be that he has spent the last 50 years or more with a woman he does not terribly like and has been plagued with a miserable spouse?

While many people say that one needs to find happiness from within and not blame their sadness on their spouse (see this link to review a thread with this sentiment), I say humbug. I have seen people who divorced at 75 years old who became much happier once apart from their lifelong weight of a stinky relationship.

Maybe he should get divorced and party a tad.

http://www.enotalone.com/forum/showthread.php?t=212181

So what advice can anyone give this man on HOW TO LIVE IN OUR WORLD?

Perhaps what one could tell him is to focus on the development of the self – to grow as a human being in directions he always wanted to. Could it be that he should buy a telescope and gaze at the celestial beings…become the astronomer he always wanted to be.

Maybe he should rent an RV and travel to PEI and then to Vancouver, down to Seattle and and then dip into New Mexico. Is it possible he would be happier if he took a pee by the side of the road in Texas – although the punishment for this could be capital punishment – or have a flapjack in Wisconsin? (See the recipe for the Wisconsin Wisconsin Cheddar Flapjacks With Apple Maple Syrup).

www.eatwisconsincheese.com/recipes/article.aspx?rid=1396

Maybe this man would be happier if he was traveling the open roads of Canada and the United States, at 80 years old, on his own, or perhaps with a 5 year old mutt from the Toronto Humane Society. (Every year close to 11,000 animals arrive at the THS)

www.torontohumanesociety.com/

How is one supposed to live in our world? The stock answer is by recognizing the beauty of it, especially when the very ugly comes along; The Oprah-ish philosophy is by ensuring that you are healthy, physically, mentally, emotionally etc.

Both these sentiments strike me as being true and worthwhile. What happens however when one hits 80, or 30, and none of these ideas are working?

I would say then the best thing to do is take up the harmonica, otherwise known at the harp. (see this  link on youtube – a beginners harp lesson)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aG29RnTmU4

The harmonica is a simple instrument. You can carry it in your shirt pocket or jean jacket. The beauty of the harmonica is that you are always ready to jam. Wherever you go you’ll find musicians and all you’ll need to do is reach into your shirt and pull out your Harp in ‘C’ (the best one to carry around because it is middle of the scale, hence middle of the road).

Members of Levittown Harmonica Band

Jamming is an exercise in breathing and achieving a certain freedom that only comes when playing music with others. Drop by an open mike session anywhere and watch the people on stage: be aware of their interaction and passion.

I have heard musicians say that jamming, playing in concert is often better than great sex!

Better than great sex! If that is the case, then I would suggest very strongly to the man in the elevator who is pursuing a dangerous diet that he finds the simplest path possible – an unplugged approach to life - learning to play the harmonica.

It could set him free by moving him into a world where his breathing becomes easier – an essential thing for happiness and spirit (it is said that God is the breath within every breath), his friends become more varied and richer, and his pursuit of something new and the possibility of having something to look  forward to, becomes his main focus.

Do you think life would be better if we lived to 900? What would you do with all that time? Do you think life would be better if we learned how to play the harmonica? I think it would.

If I see the man in the elevator again, I’ll give him one of my harmonicas. which means I need to carry two around..but that is okay because they are small, smaller than a cello, and more diminutive than a Fender Stratocaster and Marshall amps.

God bless the elderly, especially those who can play an awesome blues lick on a harp.

I would be most happy if the summer weather is not metaphorically fraught with some chilly winds – those of war and strife in our consistently shrinking world…you know the days when you sit on a cottage dock listening closely to the silence.

And the silence ticks in your head loudly and what becomes audible is the voices of the captive Israeli soldiers and the children of war are sitting and crying on a stoop somewhere. That stillness is shrill.

Judaism says we must take advantage of the majesty of our world. Enjoy life. When you come upon a merry lake, dive in. Pick the apple about to fall from the tree and taste it with eyes closed, appreciating the sweetness of such a faultless creation.

Judaism also says that while the community is suffering, it is forbidden to go home and feast. One must fight the inequities.

What does one do then?

 Do we dangle our feet in the soothing waters of Georgian Bay, ignoring the unbearable pain Jews and non-Jews are going through? Do we remain forever aware of the dying, the tortured, the starving, fearful that we are indifferent to the plight of the millions in our world who are hungry…who are starving.

I am a Jew and therefore frequently canoe with guilt.

The sun will tan my nose this summer and a novel will sit at my fingertips waiting to be read. But I know myself….my mind will flit off to Israel, Sudan, Congo and the homeless. I’ll dive into the water, the one we spoke of, and be mesmerized by the underwater world – the schools of fish and the shimmering rocks – and then the realization of the rest of the world will reawaken inside of me. I will then surface. Ugh. Cut me loose world, suffering.

Sometimes I’m able to forget about the Iraqi children whose limbs have been blown off by wicked bombs and evil men, and then boom! But then the images reappear and once again I remember the world’s pitiful predicament.

I don’t know. Tell me iss it okay for us to enjoy and celebrate while the world is in this whirlwind of lunacy? Was it okay for our grandparents to do so in the ’40s when that insanity was have been acceptable, when the world was shrouded in insanity?

Some of us look for the balance.

We do this through ritual that encourages us to remember the troubles while enjoying and feeling pleasure. For this reason we break the glass under the chupah (the marriage canopy)  symbolizing our recollection of the destruction of the Temples and ensuring that even at our most joyous moment we consider those who suffered and those who are in turmoil now.

Others are consistently aware of the troubles and rarely, if ever, relax.

The reality that women are being raped, one per minute in our world; that kidnapped South Koreans are being executed by those mutant Taliban – these things they can never hide from.

These people are blessed. They are the cursed. Blessed because when you are plagued by awareness at that level, you can’t help but respond. Cursed, because when you are aware at that level, the lake is never placid and the sky is neither blue nor grey. Its colours are insignificant to them as they seldom look up to the heavens unless questioning or praying to God.

Soon it will be the summer of 2009. Do we frolic or do we fight? Did we do both?

2. Mexico has re-opened her schools, bars and business and we in Canada are still proving to our citizens that it’s okay to eat pig (unless you’re religiously oriented then you better stay away from bacon, even though it smells so damn good) by making BBQs on our  government Hills.  How come?

3. Imagine in the days when communication was basically a messenger on a stallion riding from town to town to town – until he/she dropped. Today, how lucky are we that the internet alone can ensure an immediate response. So pandemic? Is one possible today? Isn’t containment of such an ‘outbreak’ something we can ensure because of our sophistication in the area of communication?

4. Doesn’t it seem like the World Health Organization (WHO) was so scared about getting it wrong – i.e. not being prepared as well as possible – that they ramped up the fear almost on day one. If you were running the WHO would you do the same thing? It seems to me everyone was worried because the rumor on the street was that we didn’t fight SARS well – but is that the truth? Mistakes were made, but it was contained and governments and the medical world were all over it within days. Couldn’t have been worse?

5. When did we start calling it H1N1 and why? I think we were trying to protect pig farmers who were disturbed by how this condition would cut into their livelihood – understandably. Egyptian pig-farmers got really pissed off eh!? Read this.  www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hYolUUv3mSkHkS3537SkR9RYOmZA6.

And the worst of it all is those who died from Swine Flue…God bless their souls. To say it didn’t ‘take’ in the way we feared is not something the families who lost someone would say. They would state, it ‘took’ our loved ones – and indeed it did, and we are sorry for them and wish them peace some day soon. I am a Dad and was so sad hearing about the children, the toddlers, who died – such an investment in love gone.

So is it over? What do you think? And…what was that all about?

A youtube video from the CDC on what to look for to determine you might have Swine Flu.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wK1127fHQ4

Play, Play, Play!

I saw squirrels running around behind my condo, seemingly having a great time. Were they playing, mating, or aggressively chasing one another? My guess is they were playing. It seems we have a natural inclination, humans and animals, to play.

I wonder what that is all about?

According to www.highbeam.com (an online referrance service) the reasons animal play is because: “Puppies love to run and tumble. They chase each other around the yard. They wrestle and nip each other gently. A kitten will pounce on a toy mouse or leap high for a piece of yarn. Why do animals play? For the same reason YOU playbecause it’s FUN! But there is more to animal play than just fun. For animals in the wild, play is important to their very survival. Young animals have to learn about their world. They have to exercise their muscles and practice all the skills they will need to be successful adults. Sometimes a young deer will leap and frolic. With each twisting, twirling dance, the fawn’s legs are getting stronger. It is learning how to run fast and zigzag to confuse predators. … “

According to www.wfum.org (Michigan television) children play because “While some benefits of play are obvious—fitness, fun, negotiating skills—the subtle, even sacred, ways play sustains spirit resist easy articulation. Excitement builds when children of all abilities are included in a playful and rich engagement with each other and the living world. Although societies tend to identify children and nature as property rather than as process, we are interconnected and patterned early on in ways that define us as adults. The observation and antics we bring to our first environments are transferred to every landscape of endeavor that follows whether in business, science or the arts.”

Comment: I think we play so that we can interact in a positive way. “No man is an island” indeed and the best way of bridging our ‘pieces of land’ is by tossing someone else a ball, or playing ring around the rosie. Playing encourages exercise which our body craves and it helps us discover life and its many splendors. When we pick up a stone we discover that the world existed thousands of years ago, and something made that rock roundish, and full of pock marks. It connects us to history and the present, and makes us wonder. Playing. Do you still play? How?

Love Hate Baby

From Bernie Farber: The Director of the Canadian Jewish Congress

I have learned that those who feel power behind a computer screen and use the keys to malign are nothing but the old version of the school yard bully. It took some time but I now choose to ignore them …trust me it drives them nuts…while libel-masters were busy looking in the dictionary for better adjectives with which to attack me…I was elsewhere …as if they didn’t exist…they are so used to having people react to their craziness.

A Comment from Me

People who hate shoot an arrow of xeonophobia (or however their hate manifests itself) and then draw a circle around it, of unsubstantiated facts.

An Anonymous Comment

Yes, because if you actually looked at facts you would stop indiscriminately hating whole groups of people. knowing the truth would make that kind of hatred impossible. So how do you make the truth attractive and desirable?

When Max, my German Shepherd nutcase dog that was with me for 13 years, was alive he would bite all the time. But he passed away about four years ago and since then I haven’t been bitten once.

Today I was.

The details are insignificant. A dog bit me today. 

And when the dog bit me there were dozens of things I could have done of significance, like lectured the owners on the danger they have unleashed to society; or placed a complaint with the Security Fellow.

But I did neither…none of what I could have done.

Instead I just gave the owners a very dirty look for a long time – 5 seconds, maybe 10 – and walked away in disgust with a look of utter shame in them, and anger toward Fido.

Why was I so lifeless in my response? I figured I know those people. I know them because I was them.

My dog Max bit my nephew and niece.

He was a biter, perhaps a hard nipper. So I was easy in my response and gave them a break. Your question of, ‘yes but won’t this dog keep biting?’ It is a good question however I am hoping that like me, once their dog bit me, there were all over him like a dirty suit, training, or re-training him and if need be placing a comfortable muzzle on him. 

It was embarrassing when my dog bit someone. I felt ashamed. And the truth is no matter what anyone said to me, I agreed with them. The bottom line was my Max bit them and that is not good and it became my job to make these people happy again.   

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Do you have any ideas how many people out there have dogs that have bitten someone. Read this from www.cyberpet.com

About 4.7 million people (American stats) experienced a dog bite last year. Most bites that occur are from someone’s precious pet and not by strays! Also, many more kids are bitten each year than anyone else. Kids should be taught what manners are necessary around dogs, and small or young tykes should never be left alone with any animal.

Most people immediately think of postal carriers and other uniformed service workers when they think of people who are tortured by biting dogs. It is estimated, however, that for each postal carrier that is bit, just under a thousand children are too!

TEN TIPS TO HELP AVOID DOG BITES

1. Always ask permission before you approach any dog and owner –both on or off leash.
2. Don’t enter into a strange yard to go chasing after a ball or to check a meter.
3. Never leave kids alone with a dog. Always have supervision.
4. Don’t make quick moves around an animal.
5. Don’t reach out to pet a dog. Let the dog approach you if they want to.
6. Don’t lean forward over a dog to pet it.
7. Don’t look an aggressing animal in the eye.
8. Don’t tease any animal.
9. Always control your animal on a leash. If you are not sure of a situation, move back, the dog will have to move back with you.
10. If you have an animal that is hard to control, go to dog school and put your animal into a head halter device.

To read the entire article click on:  http://www.cyberpet.com/dogs/articles/behavior/dogbite.htm

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I have had the privilege of knowing Giselle for 10 years.  I have always always been impressed and inspired by her commitment to social justice, her vision, and her tireless drive to create change in individuals, institutions and systems.  But it as as we have grown closer in the past couple of years that I have seen the true depth and beauty of her character.  She lives her values every moment, in every aspect of her life.  She is always thinking about how to bring people together and strengthen movements to make the world a more just and equitable place.  She is an endless well of compassion, love and kindness.  People who meet her are immediately drawn to her goodness and humour and gentle spirit, and I have never met anyone whose life hasn’t been enriched by knowing her.   I feel profoundly blessed to have her in my life. (Joan)