Canadians too "hedonistic"

In the news today I read an article about American head of the Free Congress Foundation comment's regarding our recent election of a minority Conservative government.
Canadians too "hedonistic"

I had never heard of this guy, Paul Weyrich, so I looked him up. Earlier this week on the Free congress Foundation he wrote the following piece:
Conservative Canadian Prime Minister-elect Espouses Positive Change

In his opinion Canadians need "to correct some premises of Cultural Marxism, which Canadians have espoused, such as same-sex marriage and abortion-on-demand". He says that after he personally investigated the situation he found:
"The people of Canada have become so liberal and hedonistic that the public ethic in the Country immediately could not reversed". Gee, he makes it sound like we've got the clap or something.

When I hear the word hedonistic or hedonism I envision scantily-clad people cavorting on some desert isle, sleeping late, engaged in frivolous play and coveting every petty indulgence or luxury. Hmm, almost sounds like a TV show...

Just so I would understand exactly what hedonism meant, I looked it up. The Living Webster Dictionary defines hedonism as: The doctrine that the chief good and man's primary moral duty lie in the pursuit of pleasure.

Pursuit of pleasure? Hmm, where have I heard a similar phrase? Oh yes, it's all coming back to me...

Second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, writen almost 230 years ago says:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Ok, the Declaration actually says happiness and not pleasure but I always thought the two words were closely related so once again, I looked it up.

My Gage Canadian Thesaurus lists the following synonyms for happiness: beatitude, blessedness, bliss, cheer, cheerfulness, cheeriness, chirpiness, contentment, delight, ecstasy, eletion, enjoyment, euphoria, exuberance, felicity, gaiety, gladness, high spirits, joy, joyfulness, jubulation, light-heartedness, merriment, pleasure, satisfaction, well-being.

I don't know about you but some of these states don't sound so awful bad to me. However since I found this list in a Canadian reference book and some may think it biased, (especially as it used the word "gaiety" as a synonym), I looked up happiness on an on-line reference and found similar results.

In light of this research, I take no offense to Mr. Weyrich's characterization of Canadians as hedonistic. We can't help it - we are fun-loving folk. That may be as a result of our "cultural Marxism" but I like to think it's because we have stronger beer.

Electoral Dysfunction

As I left the polling station today in the village of Colchester, I had a hot flash. At first I dismissed it as yet another menopausal hormone rush but as the beads of perspiration cooled in my sagging cleavage, I began to realize that since I had just voted for a party with no hope of forming a government, I suffered from a more powerful malady - electoral dysfunction.

Sadly, there is little chance that I will learn at the end of the day that my riding will send someone to Ottawa who shares my political beliefs or vision for Canada. I may have the right to vote but with the current election system, my vote counts for little (if anything). No wonder only 60% of eligible voters even bother.

No wonder the 9th question in the Frequently Asked Questions of the Registration and Voting section of Elections Canada's web site is: "Is someone allowed to eat a ballot?"
Canadians are starving for a change in our voting system.

So, as I sit in the comfort of my Lakeside Lair, washing down my calcium supplements with a creamy soy beverage, watching the election coverage I know that tonight I, like many other Canadians will go to bed hungry.

Soda Biscuit

From as far back as I could remember I have loved animals. On one trip to the Bronx Zoo I saw a baby elephant and just had to bring it home with us. I cried when mom told me that I couldn't have it. She told me that the baby needed its mother and if we took the baby home we'd have to take the mama too. She said she didn't think they allowed elephants on the subway so we'd just better leave the elephants at the zoo and we could visit them there. It all made so much sense the way she explained it.

Since I couldn't have an elephant of my own, my love of animals was diverted to more accessible critters. Mom was so patient and never turned away any of the strays I collected or the ones that “followed me home”.

At one time I had three cats - one named Chopped Meat, three dogs - Lady, a collie, Bullet a bulldog great dane cross and another nameless hound of the Heinz 57 variety, ten puppies, one pregnant snapping turtle I picked up from the side of the road on the way home from Bear Mountain and a fish tank with five hundred or so guppies. We always lost a few of those guppies down the toilet whenever we cleaned the tank. When I saw those little fish swirl down the toilet I wondered if they would get eaten by the baby alligators everyone knew lived in the New York sewers. Sometimes I'd catch a few and flush them down just to see if an alligator would come up the pipe looking for more.

One spring day just before Easter as I was walking home from school with a friend, we stopped at her place to see the baby ducks her father had brought home. They were so soft and adorable and when her dad asked me if I wanted one, I was thrilled.

I can't say my mom was thrilled to see me bounding through the kitchen door with a duckling in hand, but, being the farm girl she was, took it in stride and let me keep it in a cardboard box in the cellar until daddy got home. Of course I had to make it feel right at home and find it something to eat. Ruminging through the kitchen cupboards I found a sleeve of soda biscuits and ran downstairs to feed my duck. He or she – never did figure that part out – gobbled them down so I called the duck Soda Biscuit.

That weekend daddy made an enclosure in the back yard for Soda Biscuit and I discovered that ducklings grow up to be ducks pretty fast – especially when fed a diet of soda biscuits.

Late that summer my aunt and uncle who lived on the farm outside Montreal came for a visit. I just couldn't wait to show my cousins my pet duck. They grew up on a farm so they weren't very impressed but I thought it was very cool that I had my own little barnyard right there in the Bronx.

After they left and I had said my goodbyes, I ran to the backyard to play and noticed that Soda Biscuit was missing. I ran screaming into the house, “Soda Biscuit's gone!” Hysterically I insisted that we form a search party to find the duck. My mom calmed me down and told me that my duck had gone to live with my uncle Gerry on his farm. She said that ducks were not meant to live in the city and that Soda Biscuit would be happier on a farm where s/he could play with the other animals. I was sad to see Soda Biscuit go but I knew mom was right and knew I could visit Soda Biscuit next summer.

Summer turned into fall and fall into winter and at Christmas my uncle Gerry and family telephoned with their seasons greetings. The phone was passed around so we all could say hello and when it was my turn I asked my cousin, “How was Soda Biscuit?” “Delicious”, she said and I was horrified. I was kin to a bunch of cannibals!

Don't make me any promises

Next Monday Canadians go to the polls in yet another federal election. As a woman, especially a woman of colour, I believe I have a duty to those who came before me, who fought and were imprisoned on my behalf (see these two resources - Iron Jawed Angels and Women's Suffrage in Canada), to get my butt down to the polling station. Exercising this right is not something I take for granted. So, this Monday I will be one of the only (and expected to be less than) 61% of Canadians who vote - see article Shades of Voter Apathy.

The theories about the reason for voter apathy abound but the only one that rings true for me is the theory that Canadians are cynical and jaded. I know that's how I feel.

Do politicians really think they can buy my vote by making me promises that I know they can't or have no intention of keeping? "Vote for us, we'll lower your taxes. Vote for us, we'll put more cops on the streets. Vote for us, we'll get you that knee replacement in no time. Vote for us, we'll put a chicken in every pot." Oh please! I don't want to hear your promises because I don't believe you.

And don't try to win my vote by telling me why I shouldn't vote for the other guy. That tactic is even more insulting to me than making empty promises. Why is it that every campaign advertisement I have seen and heard is nothing more than a put down of someone else? "Don't vote for that guy because he said blank about your mama." I want to know why I should vote for you not why I should vote against your opponent.

You want to know what will remedy voter apathy and win my vote? It's simple - a vision. Canada needs a leader with a vision. A vision which will engage our youth, offer security to our seniors and inspire the rest of us. A vision which will inform our economic decisions and foreign and domestic policy. A vision which will strive for solutions to repair our social safety net. A vision which will protect the human and civil right of every citizen and ensure the separation of church and state. A vision which will safeguard our natural resources and look beyond today's profits to tomorrow's environmental legacy.

Until we have such a vision, such a leader, Canadians will continue to vote in knee-jerk reaction against something rather than for something.

It's the end of the world as we know it

I'm reading an article titled, The American Empire Meets Peak Oil, in the latest issue of Canadian Dimensions magazine and I'm getting depressed.

The article explains how the British Empire's economic expansion, and I would imagine the Industrial Revolution, was fueled by coal. Much of the teeth of the British Empire was lost with the shift from coal to oil. Since the US had its own source of oil, after the Second World War, America really began to build its economic empire.

Today, just about everything in our economy depends on oil – manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, electricity, agriculture, transportation etc. Here's a quote from the article: “Our vehicles, our roads, our cities, our power plants, our entire social organization has evolved on the promise of an endless supply of cheap oil.” Without oil, everything will eventually come to a grinding halt.

We've all heard that the world's supply of oil is shrinking, but what most people don't realize is that it is estimated that the world's oil production will peak within the next ten years. If we intend to continue to live the standard of life we have been living, something's gotta give.

Just today I was forwarded another article titled, 2006: The Year of Oil Collapse? which predicts the demise of the American economy. The writer explains that the reason for the recent housing boom is an attempt to strive for normality in an environment of increasing insecurity. He says despite these efforts, “fundamental comforts were what many Americans actually stand to lose in a reality-based future.” It is this, the inevitable loss of our fundamental comforts, which I find most distressing. Not just for myself, but for my children and their children.

I am reminded of a PBS program, Affluenza, which aired in 1998. The program describes Affluenza as:
1. The bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Jones. 2. An epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by dogged pursuit of the American Dream. 3. An unsustainable addiction to economic growth. 4. A television program that could change your life.

In essence, the show traces the history of consumerism in America and our obsession with having bigger, better and more. It cites the oil embrago of 1973-74 as a “wake-up call” for consumers and the genesis of the environmental movement. While we saw how the embargo of the 70s caused much economic turmoil, we tended to snicker at the environmentalists calling them “tree huggers” and branding them as anti-establishment throw backs to the days of incense and peppermint hippies.

For the past thirty years we have treated environmentalists with the same disdain as Chicken Little, dismissing their warnings as nothing more than, at best, hysteria and at worst an attempt to subvert the global economic agenda. Perhaps this explains why governments have not begun a vast endeavour to reduce consumer consumption, conserve oil and gas and develop viable and cost effective alternatives.

I don't know about you, but I am scared. What will be our next “wake-up call” and what if we've already received it but have been hitting the “snooze” button for the last thirty years? As I see it, the sky IS falling.

Elsie's Back

Retired Conservative member or Parliament Elsie Wayne has been named Atlantic chairwoman of the right wing Vote Marriage Canada lobby group. See news item here.

Vote Marriage Canada would like to overturn the decision to alter the traditional definition of marriage which has allowed same-sex couples to marry.

Elsie says that the reason George Bush doesn't want to do business with Canada is because same-sex marriage offends his moral sensibilities. Well I don't know about Bush but corporate America doesn't seem to have any problems doing business with us. Canada and the US are the world's largest bilateral trade partners. Two-way trade between us is approximately 2 billion dollars per day! All Elsie has to do is take a drive down Huron Church Road in Windsor to see that offended moral sensibilites or not, the US is still doing business with us.

See what I don't understand is how my marriage in any way diminishes anyone else's marriage. Look at us. We're happy. We have jobs. We pay taxes. We have children who have not grown up to be thieves, axe murderers or pedophiles. We watch Commander in Chief. We watch our cholesterol. We've got a mortgage and car payments. We like to BBQ even in the winter. How does us living our mundane life as a married couple take anything away from any other heterosexual married couple? Do straight people feel any less married because gay people can get married? If anyone can give me a rational and compelling reason to divorce Lise and return to “living in sin”, please let me know.

TV Westerns

When I was a little girl I wanted to be a cowboy. The most popular shows on TV those days were westerns and we watched a lot of them – Rawhide, Wagon Train and Gunsmoke. My mom liked Roy Rogers and Bonanza was almost a ritual.

Because I was just a kid, I didn't know anything about movie or TV special effects. I believed that the people really got killed in the westerns. Being an animal lover, I was particularly distressed when ever they showed horses falling down or getting shot.

Around that time I heard a lot of the grownups talk about the electric chair. A skinny man named Oswald had shot the President and everyone said that if it hadn't been for a man with rubies, he should have fried in the chair.

I couldn't imagine anyone sitting in a chair that would fry you, surely you'd jump out! So I figured the electric chair must be something like the high chair that mom strapped my baby brother in so he couldn't get out. All the talk of frying scared me because I'd think of some poor bad guy frying just like the pork fat daddy put in the greens. I couldn't believe that grownups could be that mean!

One day as I was watching a western on TV the truth hit me. They didn't really fry all those bad guys, they just brought them to Hollywood and put them in a western. At least they got a fighting chance and when they died, their families got all that money from them being movie stars.

Yeah, I really wanted to be a cowboy. Some of my mom's family lived on a farm near Montreal and we'd visit in the summer so I even knew how to ride a horse. Well, pony actually, but I knew that when I got bigger, my uncle would let me ride one of the horses. Hey, that was more than those fools back in the neighbourhood who said I couldn't be a cowboy. What did they know anyway? The only horse they ever rode was the one over at the A&P and you needed a nickle for that. So what if I was a girl? I could rope and brand too. I wasn't going to be just another Dale Evans, nah, I was gonna wear chaps!

You know, it never occurred to me that I never saw any black cowboys. Of course now I know differently but back then I never saw a black cowboy on TV.

Mom used to play her Eddie Arnold records and the occasional Charlie Pride. I don't know when I first heard of someone being called a credit to his race, but I think it was either about Charlie Pride or Sidney Poitier. Did ya ever notice that there have never been any black female country singers? I guess all we can do is sing the blues.

I Love Lucy

doe eyes widened by
my movement of the bedclothes
anticipates food

Winter at the Lakeside Lair

Just got in a little while ago and thought I'd take a stroll down to the beach to watch the sunset. This is virtually the same shot as the one that I use in my blog title. Sure looks different in winter eh? Just as pretty though.

This is looking just to the right of this breakwall. I thought these ice floes looked neat.















Here's a view of the Fermi nuclear plant. On a clear day you can also see another nuclear plant across the lake in Ohio.

I've always told my children that when I go, I want to go fast. When my son saw how close we were to the nuclear plant he said, "Mom, all you'll see is a big white flash".














And here's the sunset near the mouth of the Detroit river.

Growing up nappy

My daddy was a Southener, raised in the Carolinas. Folks say I get my charm from him. My mom was a French Canadian farm girl from Northern Ontario who wanted to be a nun but left home at nineteen and wound up working in New York City.

Those were the days of sit-ins and marches, speeches and rallies. The time when the world discovered a place called Topeka, Kansas and holy men of colour lifted their voices, lifted their fists, set a nation on its ear and a farm girl got swept up in the twister.

I was born in the Bronx in the late 1950s. Though I haven't been there in years, I still remember many things. For the first years of my life we lived in an apartment in the projects. I think that was on Westchester but I'm not sure. Anyway, Westchester sticks out in my mind. We had an apartment on the 17^th floor and had to ride an elevator that always smelled like pee.

Mom had one of those grocery baskets you can pull behind you and I was small enough to stand up in it and ride to the grocery store for the weekly shopping. If I behaved, mom would buy me a lolipop for being a good helper and I always asked for a second one to give to the little girl who lived down the hall. I can't remember that girl's real name but her mamma called her “Chicken” so I did too.

Chicken had lots of little braids sticking out of her head with tiny plastic barretts clipped on the ends. Some were little white ducks and others were pink bunnies. Her mamma did my hair like that once. I remember her putting this greasy stuff in my hair then pulling it really hard with a comb. This new hair-do didn't last long because the little braids bugged me as they kept whipping me in the ears.

So my mom kept my hair in pigtails. She said that was the only way to keep my hair under control. I guess I was pretty young when I became aware of the fact that I had problem hair. What the problem was, I wasn't quite sure but I remember my mom seeking the advice of her friends about it.

One day one of her friends came over to help with my problem hair. They put olive oil in it and rubbed it down to my scalp until I thought they'd rub all the hair off too. After I sat like that for awhile, they stuck my head in the kitchen sink and shampooed all of it out. That didn't make sense to me. Why put the oil in there in the first place if they were just gonna wash it all away? After I had been shampooed and cream rinsed, they worked in about half a tube of V05, then just about ripped the hair from my head trying to get all the tangles out. In the end, I still had pigtails.

I think we lived in the projects until I was about five. Around that time we moved to a big house with a veranda on East 222^nd St. I'll never forget the day my mom's friend, Mary Nell, came to help mom do my hair. I didn't particularly want to have my hair done that day. I was quite content with my pigtails, and besides, a kid has a lot more to do on a summer day than to sit around and be tormented by grownups.

I was inveigled to cooperate by being told that once they were done, I would have beautiful straight hair like the lady in the Prel commercial. I was always partial to magic tricks and couldn't resist sticking around to see Aunt Mary Nell transform my nappy head to silken tresses.

After a careful examination of my unruly mop, a cup of Chock Full O' Nuts and a slice of Sara Lee that mom bought especially for the occasion, the initial assessment had been confirmed - I'd have to get it processed. I had no idea what they were talking about but I soon learned what a process was.

With me planted on a stool in the middle of the kitchen, Mary Nell proceeded to mix up a foul smelling concoction that was a little bit thicker than the runny icing they drizzle over coffee cake. Painfully my hair was parted and the creamy mixture applied to each section of my head from roots to ends.

In about five minutes my scalp began to burn and I started to cry. But relief was another five minutes away for each section of my hair needed to be combed until straight. Well, it straightened my hair alright; it was like a corn broom and just as brittle.For several weeks after I was picking the scabs that formed along my hairline where the lye mixture had burnt my skin.

I think I was still picking those scabs when I started at my new school, Our Lady of Grace. We had nuns for teachers but the priests came in every week to teach us catechism. They said, “As the twig is bent, so leans the tree”. I took that up as a personal challenge and with my never ending questioning was constantly told that my soul was in mortal danger.

One really good thing about going to a Catholic school was that we used to get sent home early on Wednesdays so that the poor unfortunate Protestant kids in the neighbourhood could get religious instruction. As good Catholic children we didn't mind giving up a half day of school for the Protestants – after all, it was to save their mortal soul.

Occasionally our classes were interrupted by drills. We had fire drills like all schools do but we also had air raid drills. The nuns seemed to be working with something called the Civil Defense. They told us that the ungodly Communists might drop atomic bombs on us and that we had to prepare for that. I wasn't sure what a Communist was, but if they were ungodly, they were probably Protestants.

I remember crouching under my school desk until we got a signal then being marched around the corner to the church cellar. The classes that were the quickest and quietest were rewarded with scapulars or holy pictures. Is there a patron saint against radioactivity? They told us that radioactivity would make all of our hair fall out. That's what I thought they meant by fallout and although I didn't want to be bald, to me that wasn't so bad. Maybe I'd grow in the good stuff.

Racism, Herpes & Dog Shit

When I started this blog it was not my intention to dwell on heavy topics all the time. I have a finely honed appreciation for the absurd (perhaps as a result of too many SCTV episodes), and I wanted to share that lighthearted side of myself here. Recently however, I keep having these really good conversations around racism so I thought I'd share some of my thoughts today.

Last night, my partner and I were discussing the pitfalls of pointing out their racism to liberal friends. Because they are liberal and often well-intentioned, they really have a hard time hearing that some of the things they say or do or attitudes they have are racist. They are insulted and think that you are categorizing them with cross-burning, tree-lynching fanatics. And when that happens, it stifles any further conversation which is unfortunate because the opportunity to alleviate ignorance is lost.

The way I see it there is ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance is simply not knowing about something but having the ability or desire to learn. Stupidity is having the knowledge about something but choosing not to act on that knowledge. Ignorance is treatable. Stupidity is terminal.

People who consider themselves liberal like to think of themselves as pretty smart cookies. So when you tell them they are racist (or hold racist beliefs or attitudes), and that their racism stems from ignorance, they tend to get riled and defensive. I know that you are not personally responsible for slavery. I know that you never use the “N” word (at least in my presence). I know that you are not a cross burner. That's not the racism I'm talking about. It's the subtle words (some said in jest), actions and attitudes that betray a person's racism.

I've often referred people to a little book I picked up years ago at the Michigan Women's Music Festival (that obligatory lesbian pilgrimage). The book is titled, “Cultural Etiquette: A Guide for the Well-Intentioned” by Amoja Three Rivers.

To find Cultural Etiquette in a library click here.
To find Cultural Etiquette at Amazon click here.

Chapter 6 is titled, “Just Don't Do This, Okay?”. The first “Don't Do” item listed is my personal favourite: “Do no grab, pat, pull on, feel caress or touch the hair of a person of color, unless you have a personal, equitable relationship with him/her; unless you know them well enough to flirt with them, unless invited to do so. ... Remember, people of color are not specimens or exhibits, and this is not a petting zoo. Touching the hair is considered a very personal thing to many people.”

Amoja writes a very good chapter on ethnocentrism. My Oxford dictionary defines ethnocentric as: “regarding one's own race as the most important”. Dictionary.com defines ethnocentrism as: “The tendency to evaluate other groups according to the values and standards of one's own ethnic group, especially with the conviction that one's own ethnic group is superior to the other groups”.

As I move through my menopausal milestones and slip into my dottage, my experience has been that everybody tends to “evaluate other groups according to the values and standards of one's own ethnic group”. I think it is human nature to seek others like ourselves and to be guarded when we encounter those not like ourselves. I don't know if this is a primitive protection mechanism or simply learned behaviour but when you honestly examine it, do we not tend to associate with others with whom we can identify or share common beliefs or experiences? Of course by saying this I am not making an excuse for racist behaviour or attitudes but simply acknowledging a point of human nature.

We live in a world which seems to be sustained by continually reminding us of “otherness” - look at them, they look funny, they wear strange clothes, their food smells different, they talk with an accent, their skin colour is not like ours, their religious beliefs are mysterious etc. We are conditioned to be racist.

I remember years ago hearing an anti-racist worker saying that it was impossible for minority people to be racist. Her rationale was that since minorities had no real power in the dominant society, they could not perpetrate racism. I say that's bullshit. Let's think about this minority thing for a moment. Yes, it's true that here in Canada and the US, people of colour are in the minority. But if you look globally, people of colour actually constitue the majority of people on this planet. So why don't we call ourselves, “World Majority People”?

My point here is that since we live in a society which conditions us to recognize and fear anything unlike ourselves and our experience, all people are infected with racism.

Racism, to me is like a strain of the herpes virus. There are seven strains of herpes viruses known to infect humans. I'd like to mention two of them. The first is the Varicella Zoster virus. Varicella is commonly known as chickenpox while herpes zoster is known as shingles. You ususally get chicken pox as a child but later in life the virus can reappear as shingles. The other is the Herpes Simplex Virus.

This is the virus that causes things like cold sores and genital herpes. Incidentially, for more information about genital herpes visit this link.

I'm not a virologist but I'll try to give a basic explaination based on what I remember from my university days. Virtually 100% of adult humans have antibodies for the herpes simples virus. That means that we all have been exposed to it and the virus resides somewhere in our bodies. As far as chicken pox, I don't know anyone of my age group who didn't get chicken pox as a child. So that means that we also carry this virus within our bodies.

The thing with these herpes viruses is that although we may recover from an initial episode and go on to show no symptoms, the virus lies dormant in our systems until some stressor (possible stressors include: stress, febrile illnesses, menstruation or immunosuppression), triggers the virus to resurface. Hence the cold sore popping out the day before your wedding or the bout of shingles you get just when you think you've recovered from the flu.

In this way racism is like these viruses. Even though we hate to admit it, we are infected with racism. The antibodies of etiquette or political correctness may keep our racism at bay until a stressor is introduced. I don't know a better way to illustrate this than to compel you to see the movie Crash.

“Having racism” doesn't necessarily make you a bad person. Archie Bunker wasn't a bad person, he was simply ignorant. As a matter of fact, Archie is the perfect illustration of the ignorance-stupidity thought. Watch a couple of re-runs and I think you'll understand what I mean.

Finally, in another conversation I had with a friend about racism in Canada vs the US, I told her there is a big difference between the racism in the US and in Canada. In both countries the racism is systemic but in the US they will call you a nigger to your face where in Canada, they just whisper it behind your back.

I think I like the US brand of racism better.

I say it's like dog shit. When it's out on the side walk in plain view you can step around or over it. But when the shit is hidden in tall grass, you can't see it so you're more likely to step in it. In Canada, the shit's in tall grass so you can be going merrily along thinking everything is fine when, squish, you step in the shit and didn't even see it coming.

Once in the late 80s I drove down to Daytona Beach, Florida. It was a long drive but we took our time and traveled through Tennessee and Georgia stopping occasionally for gas, food or a little shopping. I immediately became aware that in every store I visited, if I was not outright followed, I was kept an eye on by the store's staff. This has only happened to me once before on a trip to Chicago.

In one restaurant while waiting for the hostess, I noticed that all the white people were sitting on one side of the restaurant and the black people were seated on the side closest to the kitchen. When the hostess came to seat me, of course I was seated in the section with all the coloured folk. Later, when my white traveling companion arrived to join me, she asked if we wanted to switch tables and seemed quite uncomfortable when we refused. None of these incidences really bothered me as I expected to experience some of this in the US. I actually found it rather amusing and when things like this happened I made a point of engaging the person in pleasant conversation.

In the early 90s I had the opportunity to work in a Canadian community north of the Arctic watershed. (that's a whole other blog) My kids and I would spend weekends at a coworker's camp by a lake. Every weekend my friend and I would visit in the little country general store to shop for provisions and chat up the women who ran the store. I thought these women were very friendly and were nice to me whenever we stopped in. One afternoon I went to the general store by myself to use their air compressor to blow up a couple of inner tubes I brought so my kids could play with them in the lake. When I asked to use the compressor they told me it was broken and I should try driving up to the lodge and maybe they would let me use theirs. I drove to the lodge and funny, their air compressor was broken too.

When I returned to the camp with the still deflated tubes I told my friend, who by the way was white - hmm, I believe she still is - that the compressor was broken. She wondered how that could be possible when she saw someone filling their tires earlier that day. So she took the inner tubes to the general store and guess what? The compressor was working! See what I mean? Dog shit in the tall grass.

Post Millennial Musings

Happy New Year!

I've had a house full of company these past few days so I've been unable to spend much time at the computer. Today however, I've spent the entire day creating a slideshow from one of my poems. I took me all day to do this because I've never used this program before and my learning curve was interrupted by having to do several loads of laundry (sigh).

Anyway, I wrote the poem "Post Millennial Musings" on January 1st, 2000 and since then thought it would be kind of neat to "digitize" it.