Horseplay

Cripes, a whole week without blogging. Well I've been five days without internet access and that was rather annoying.

Mercury must be retrograde because we've been five days without post too. Our bloody postboxes have been vandalised.
Canada Post, in its infinite wisdom, feels it unnecessary to deliver post to our doors, so it makes us have a bunch of pigeon holes with lockable covers. Sadly, they seem to be made from aluminium and thus easy to jimmy open. The Friday before last, mercifully after I'd collected our post, this is exactly what happened. In spite of the Post Office having a legal obligation to deliver your post to you, they don't. In fact, the boxes belong to us, and we have to replace them, at a cost of $4,000 the set. AND....we have to schlepp down to the sorting office between the hours of 10.00 and 14.00 or some equally ridiculous time frame, and collect our own mail.
I did this today.

The lady who helped me kept shaking her head and saying how terrible it is that it's going to take so long to replace the boxes. She said it was down to the property manager. I told her that in fact, the people who make these mail box systems have a backlog - it turns out they are easily vandalised, who knew!? - and we won't be getting a new one until September or October.

She handed me one piece of post. She said that couldn't be right and went off to search in the bowels of the sorting office for more. She came back and shook her head once more. She wondered whether 'he' (presumably the postie) had decided to take the mail out anyway to see whether the boxes had been repaired.
Oh well.

Meanwhile, at the weekend retreat, the trailer which shall henceforth be known as 'The Static', the U.S. Americans seemed to be celebrating the fourth of July on the third of July. Fireworks were going off all day, intermittently, there was a pool party in and around the family pool and somehow, a siren seemed to also be going all day. By the time we woke up on the fourth itself, everything seemed to be still and silent. Well, except for the siren which we could hear feebly going in the distance.

In the woodland area of the park, life carried on much as usual, children played, dogs went for walks along the trails and people sat out in their little gardens, and in the evenings had fires in their firepits.
One of them, having been reminded by friends about a week-and-a-half ago of the existence of Pimms, had been longing for same since then, and had been unable to get any, but she suffered (mostly) silently.

The other side of the swimming pools and tennis courts, there is a covered wagon, such as would have carried families across the wild west. The other side of the covered wagon are the real RVs, the ones that actually go somewhere, and they are all parked on a gravelled area around the garbage bins.

In the 'adult pool', the one in which I swim lengths and then leave, there were some lads and their ladies, probably, I decided, from the gravelly area, messing about. One of the girls told the lads not to splash the lady (me). 'Can't you read?' she asked the lad, pointing at the list of rules, printed at the insistence of Whatcom County.
'No horseplay' it says.
'I definitely think that's Horseplay,' I said.
I love the word Horseplay, it covers a multitude of tentative sins.

The sign also says you have to be 21.

The lads and lasses looked sheepish and then the girls made the boys get out. I think it's because they heard my English accent.
Tim Roth has done wonders for us Brits on this side of the Pond.

Persona

Listen up Ikea, I'm not loving this summer's Pippi Longstocking range of tablewear and accoutrements, you should ask me before going with something as unappealing as red and green stripes. Also, had you run it past me, I'd also have advised against calling a range of pots and pans, 'Skanka', seriously, you all speak English better than many English, you know what you're doing here.

A while ago, I read a book by Sarah Waters, called 'The Little Stranger', it had me hypnotised. So I decided to read another of hers, 'Tipping the Velvet'. One thing I really like about Waters' writing is the quality of it, she is a great writer, but in both cases, she writes in a style that captures the historic period about which she is writing.
'Tipping the Velvet' is set in the late 19th Century and is about a young woman who falls in love with another. Hum, just had to re-type that, since at that point, Whisky plonked his head down on the keyboard. Now Waters herself is a lesbian writer, so it's not like me trying to imagine what it would be like to be in that situation, and so the feelings that the main character Nan has for her lover Kitty, are very honest. What strikes me is how love is portrayed without the socially constructed imbalance between women and men, so that when Nan wants to do everything to please Kitty, it's not because she's debasing herself just to 'get her man'.

Firefox has just updated itself, and it wants to offer me a new persona. I can choose from 30,000 options, and like any secondary school pupil, I spent time actually browsing through them. I couldn't, of course, find any drifting snow, but I settled for Antarctica. I also lost interest by about page seven, so good thing my actual persona doesn't depend on my choosing.

History

The G8 leaders are gathering in Toronto-ish for the G20 summit. On our news, the camera lovingly caresses President Obama as he runs down the stairs. Canadians are disappointed because Michelle isn't with him. Protesters have a special protesters' area with toilets and running water and a police guard. In spite of this, the protesters are upset about efforts to deter them from disrupting the proceedings. It all starts to look like a Russian doll, or one of those Esher pictures.
Personally, I'd feel safer if Gordon Brown were there, but given that he's not, I would settle for Decameron giving Harper a bit of a tongue lashing.

History in the making. Mainly blokes of course. You could argue that since they made this mess, they can bloody well get us out of it, but I feel a better balance would be more likely to come up with a viable and sustainable solution.

David Mitchell has a few things to say about older history. And he's quite right.

Then there's Spartacus. Sounds like an interesting series huh? We missed it the first time round, but it seems to be available for free on Shaw's 'So you missed it the first time round huh?' channel.

I don't like it when history is mucked around with, but if it's not terribly well documented history, I'm prepared for a little bit of wiggle room.
What I'm not prepared for, is something that has both the same quality of dialogue as an eastern European series circa 'Belle, Sebastian and the Horses', that has been dubbed into English, and the same standard of acting as a very small village's am dram group.

This is a three trick pony. Nudity - nowadays almost exclusively used to distract the viewer from poor writing; blood by the gallon, and that rather evocative camera technique where everything goes into slowmo and then suddenly speeds up.

Occasionally all three are used at the same time.

But yet, the unlikely duo of Lucy Lawless and John Hannah, the hope that at some point, the real story of Spartacus will be followed and the Welsh gladiator will lead his band of muscle-bound Aussies into the hills, thence to challenge Rome, and the current TV scheduling that consists of only two other shows worth watching, 'Lie to Me' and 'True Blood', somehow keep us moving on to the next episode.

Springfield

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times....I know, me too, I hated Charles Dickens, although I think I came upon his work at the wrong time. I can't blame reading him at school, I loved the process of literary analysis, those brilliant women who taught us didn't ruin books for me, they made them great.

Digression.

I have friends and family here who are the best of people, but then there are the people of Springfield.

Now I'm not saying the people of Springfield don't exist back in Blighty, far from it. I believe it was the residents of Leigh Park who turned up with the pitchforks when they learnt there was a Paediatrician living amongst them. I'm not making it up.
The thing is, back home, they are easily recognisable.

The people of Springfield here are not plain-speakers, they don't respond well to criticism, hell, they don't respond at all, they go all tight-lipped, neither acknowledging nor challenging, they are spiteful and back-biting, they skulk and they sulk. They understand neither irony nor wit, nor sarcasm, nor long words. And they are passive-aggressive.
There are people who recognise passive aggression, claiming it to be a national trait, but mostly, those who label themselves in this way, are only so in a normal way, to the extent that any human is.
Others wear it like a poncho.

Just saying is all.

Orientation?

Now you can hardly have failed to notice that language is my thing. (As opposed to my thang). Recently, I've been having a bit of an Oriental problem.

On Sunday, a gentleman informed those around him that it (whatever it was, I can't even remember, but had something to do with the buying of staves), was no longer available because the Orientals had taken it over. Now I can see that that way of putting things is really not on, a bit like referring to 'the gays' or 'the women' or 'the blacks'.
However....last week, I queried someone who said he'd realised he'd written about another person, that he 'enjoyed oriental cookery'. The someone had changed it to 'Asian cookery'. I asked him what he felt was wrong with 'oriental', it is, after all, a rather useful word that simply means eastern. His reply was that it smacked of imperialism and subservience.

Now, this is something that doesn't occur to me, but I know it's an important marker in history here, and a negative one. I suppose we were just taught it as part of world history, it happened, then something else happened. It was given neither a positive nor a negative spin. It just was what it was.

I think it's hard to avoid viewing British imperialism particularly without seeing it as paternal, but then, whilst paternalism itself is outdated, there were certainly positive aspects of it in its time.

Interesting to ponder however.

On the subject of matters parental, it seems that, whilst a couple of major eastern countries have shot themselves in the collective foot by selecting to have boy children, in the west, couples who have been going to clinics that offer choice of a baby's sex to prospective parents, (notice how I use this phrase meaningfully, teaching at secondary school, we used to use it stupidly refer to parents who had children, but may like to send them to our large, inner-city comp) have been opting for girls, in some cases in a ratio of 2 : 1. Later in the article, it mentions a 75% preference for girl children.

I think the hyperbole of the article is both short-sighted and premature, but it certainly looks as though the future could contain either many transcontinental marriages and or many more women joining an ever-expanding sorority.

The implied imperialism of BP is starting to annoy me. It stopped called itself British Petroleum in 1997, largely due to the fact that by then, 40% of the company was owned by American oil company Amocco. And it seems as though this part of the global company is the part that has been drilling in the gulf and has had the misfortune to have accidentally caused the current nightmare.

Now, thinking back to my days as a Head of Department at Mayhem, had my department somehow managed to start an international incident, and believe you me, we had the capacity, I can see that the Headteacher would have taken the flack. But I also think, that at some point, said flack would have been concentrated on me. So it seems a little bit bizarre that Tony Hayward - a man who looks rather like the actor who played Tony Blair in the film 'The Queen' (and also the chief werewolf in something else)- has to stand and show stiff upper lip whilst being roasted over the fire by Obama, head prefect of the main culprit. Still, he has shown he has mettle.

Just a thought really.

Jay

I have been practising cruise control. Given that I don't like giving up control over the gears of the car, cruise control has been something I haven't liked the idea of, and yet I need to get used to it. It's scary. It's like someone else is driving the car, but I'm still steering. It does, however, contribute to fuel efficiency, so I have been practising and along the long roads that lead to the border with the States, there has been plenty of opportunity.

The picture is of a Stellar's Jay, sitting in the tree in our garden. Now, Schloss Schneewittchen doesn't actually have a garden, but the trailer we have just bought does. Mobile home, it's a mobile home. And it's very nice. And it's in Whatcom County, Washington State, so we had to brave going further down the I5 the other day to register our ownership and pay our property tax. We're going there this evening - er, to the trailer, not the Courthouse again.

Hot and Wet

I apologise before I say this but I am already fed up with the World Cup. I dunno, somehow, in Britain, it seems you can more easily avoid it, here, not so much.
It's almost as though, because the Canadian men's team didn't qualify, they have to overcompensate, sort of vicarious football victory. Of course, that may very well explain it. There can't be a single country that isn't well represented here.
Canadian women, on t'other hand, are apparently pretty shit hot at the old footie. Let them play I say, let the women get out there and take on the world.

We have had some serious rain, but equally, some serious sun.
Saturday was one of the latter. I was sat in a hot room at the Vancouver School of Theology. This building appears a lot in 'Fringe' and I think it is usually labelled 'Harvard University'. Hmmm...
The workshop, like the curate's egg, was good in parts.
The bus terminus seemed to lack any shade - or in fact any buses to take me back into Vancouver and thus the skytrain, but when one did show up, exodus was swift and painless.

Lie to Me, a wondrous TV series, I have realised wouldn't work in real life, not because there are not really people who can tell instantly whether a person is lying or not, but because everyone behaves too logically. Tim Roth is basically, any Brit, and speaks and behaves like any Brit. The problem is that in real life, outside of Britain, the majority of people don't simply listen to you and respond logically to what you're saying, they go all anal-retentive and block you out.

True Blood is back. The homoerotica seems to be up a notch. I wonder if Russell T. Davis is writing for them.

Dogberry and Dog

How easily we come to expect that all and every piece of information will be instantly available beneath our fingertips. I wanted to show Alex a clip of Adam Faith in the 70s series 'Budgie', saying, 'Leave it out 'aze,' to his wife, Hazel. Could only find three clips of the series in YouTube, and one was just the titles.
Hmmm.

My intensive cleaning therapy has recommenced. I have started from the front door and am working inwards. I cleaned the downstairs loo, and then felt very...well, clean. It wasn't that it was truly horrible, just, it was in need of attention. But the rain is working against me, or, the rain and Whisky are in cahoots. Not that Whisky is messing the toilet, but his wet muddy paws are undoing my floor cleaning as it progresses. At some point, I didn't spot that he'd opened the bug screen and was on the balcony undoing my gardening as well. And then the resulting muddy paws and snout managed to take out another section of floor and the bath mat when I took him up to be bathed.

So, yesterday evening, we went to see the first Bard on the Beach play of the season. We saw the dress rehearsal of 'Much Ado About Nothing'. It's one of the less intricate and interesting comedies, one that I seem to remember was performed by the senior girls at school.
The costumes were insanely wonderful, the acting, as ever, good, but the show was stolen by one actor who had one of those 'moving the plot on' bit parts. It was an English actor who played Dogberry, leader of The Watch, and he had the most incredible timing and mastery of physical humour. He also was canny enough to known that there's something intrinsically comedic about a northern accent, or...maybe the accent reinforces the humour. At any rate, this one man, with his small acting part, but huge talent, made the play.

Foiled

Dammit, a power cut last night meant I couldn't post this.
Foiled again.

My spuds in my Sleepy spud bags, are growing. They have foliage, or as, someone I know once said as though she seriously thought it was an actual word, foilage.
I have been following the written instructions I was given with the bags, and adding more soil to them.
AND...my peas have pods. I didn't even notice this until my friend R said that they had been eating their peas, and I thought...hmmm...better go and check.
Tonight we had a salad that contained spinach, lettuce, basil and rocket from the garden.

On the subject of things people say in all seriousness and without a hint of irony, someone at my writers group yesterday was quoting Sarah Palin, as though anything Sarah says has any meaning or relevance outside of her own head. It was bizarre - and confusing, and more than a little worrying.

Although spring isn't yet over, it's that time of year when all the TV programmes come to a grinding halt. And yet, from the ashes of TV scheduling, arise new series of True Blood - coming next week, and Lie to Me, which started last night.
Fab.
And as series finales go, the last episode in the current series of Glee was pure cheese, apart from one Sue Sylvester. Classic, classic Sue.
And here's some previous classic Sue, 'Sneaky Gays'. Swish it up Sue!

Dead Ears Mate

And....land.
Wham, jam over.
Contract over.
Playing catch-up.

At the weekend we were down in Birch Bay again, against all odds, and because of course, we hadn't taken the kayaks, the sun shone like it was going out of fashion. Sunday, the rain poured as though THAT now was going out of fashion. Either way. It was relaxing.
One thing we can't take across the border, is dog food, so we always stop at a very nice little supermarket on the way to the park. We bought some Paul Newman dog treats that contained good ingredients, Alex has made me very aware of what is in things. The late Paul Newman apparently has his dog food made in Canada and then shipped to the States so that Canadians, who can't ship it across, can buy it with $US.

Russell Crowe, who plays the eponymous hero in 'Robin Hood' has coined a new catchphrase for our households on both sides of the Atlantic. In this interview with Mark Lawson, he responds to Lawson's question about whether there is a hint of Irish in Crowe's Robin Hood accent, by taking extreme umbridge and telling Lawson, 'You've got dead ears mate, dead ears.' I'm told that Holly (nearly 6) can reproduce Crowe's own accent and outrage very accurately.
Our intention on this side of the Pond, is to use it as a riposte when one of us gets accused of being Australian, but then, in practice, I don't think any of us could be as rude as Russell Crowe.

This morning, our TV news crowed that British paper The Torygraph was reporting that Decameron would be taking fiscal advice from Canada. Yes, it seems that under Chrétien, a hard line policy to cut public spending, turned a severe deficit into a surplus.
Nicely done, Decameron, make it look as though you are trying something new, only....isn't that on page 1 of the idiot's guide to being a Tory? First priority - cut public spending.
A handbook in fact, that our own Canadian Tories could well do with having a gander at. Kevin tells me that in his first term, Harper rapidly turned the Liberals' hard won surplus, into his very own deficit.

Ah the Tories, can't live with them, can't cook 'em up and eat 'em.

Traffic Jam

Holy Carp. Tuesday already. My life is currently a traffic jam, complicated by the rain. In amongst this, Whisky has discovered the joy of shredding everything in sight. No, wrong, he always liked doing that, now he has discovered how to shred things NOT in plain sight.

At the weekend we had friends to stay who have now left to drive across country to Toronto. Alex and Seth went to Seattle and throughout it all - the rain. Every evening this week I have appointments, meetings, things that have to get done.
Things that have been getting me up early and keeping me up late.

Books. A friend of mine who writes herself, says that she never pays for books. I find this hard to justify. I have no objection to passing books on, nor borrowing them, in fact because of those two activities, it evens out, but I want to buy books and I do.
But how to choose them. Often I go on the recommendation of someone I know has similar tastes, or again because I have been lent or given a book. This can be interesting because they may not be ones I would have chosen myself. And there's a book I've been avoiding, even though a couple of people I know and whose book judgement I respect, have read it and enjoyed it. But it received quite the drubbing on the F-Word blog. Recently, I found the exact opposite view on another feminist blog, so now I've bitten the bullet and have to make my own mind up. I'm reading 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'.
What? You thought I was going to say 'Wind in the Willows'?

Hell and Earth

Something is rotten in the state of ....hmm...well let's start with the Vatican. Although, amusingly so. The mistresses of forty Italian priests, have written to the Pope, calling for celibacy to be no longer required. About bloody time. Still, I won't hold my breath and nor, I'm sure, will they. El Papa would rather risk the continued sexual abuse by his foot soldiers, than allow what God ordained.
Pope Pillock the ...how many?

Meanwhile, Elton John is being a cheeky little bugger (sic). He is stirring things up with his concert in Muslim Morocco. Nice one Sir Elton.

Yesterday, my friend told me that her partner had been on a plane, returning to YVR from New York. An Hacidic Jew made a fuss, refusing to sit next to a woman. No-one seemed at all sympathetic, and presumably, had a woman (or man) refused to sit next to an Hacidic Jew, all hell would have broken loose. Eventually, another woman went and sat next to the first woman, leaving a space next to a man.
Hrmph.

Today was full of the warm kind of Judaism and this afternoon, the weather mirrored that. It was perfection. Warm, in a just-the-right-temperature kind of way, bright, but not blazingly sunny, a gentle breeze whispering through the trees, and an edge of sultriness.
Blissful.

Happy Birthday Alex

Happy Birthday to my darling daughter. So wonderful to be able to share it with you. Sorry I had to steal the photo.
Bandits are everywhere.

Hope and Politics

Britain swelters under a heatwave. I smile because we're not. Then the sun beats down again and it becomes ridiculously hot here too. D'oh.

Kev and I went down to Washington State at the weekend. There the weather was teasing, cold, hot, cold, hot, hmmm...sounds more like a fever. We swanned past the queues with our Nexus passes, but soon I will have to get another visa waiver. It was definitely worth the minor effort of getting Nexus, to cross the border when the weekend contains a bank holiday.

On Friday, my general ennui with the new government in Britain, suddenly fell away as I learnt that Diane Abbott was to enter the Labour party's leadership race. Holy Carp! I thought, not only is she a woman, but she truly is a dyed-in-the-wool socialist. I immediately wrote to her office expressing my support. Not that it helps them, since I long since let my membership of the Labour Party lapse, so I can't even vote for her, but I'll be cheering from the sidelines. Go Diane, go!

I was also greatly cheered to learn that some subversive Catholics have ordained a woman. Sorry, rebel Catholics. Glad tidings indeed, as Maria Vittoria Longhitano herself says,

""I have opened the way. Catholicism means universality, and without women it is mutilated." " Well said your priestliness, well said.

On a rather distasteful note, a pensioner in Britain has been gaoled for having sex with a donkey and a horse. And in my opinion, that's all it is, distasteful, why the bloody hell should the British taxpayer have to shell out to have a man imprisoned for sex with animals when actual rapists roam free? Personally, I find many sexual things distasteful, for example, the idea that Jeremy Clarkson might be allowed to freely have sex with another human being, but I don't think he should be sent down for it. Oh wait, maybe...no, no, really, no.

Mitchell and Webcams

Isn't Madonna queen of Malawi or something? So why isn't she doing something about this outrage? Why is the British government not intending to stop sending aid? Holy carp, it's not two years since I sat in the dolphin tank room at Van Aq and listened while two gentlemen from Malawi droned on about how men in their country force all the young girls in their village to have sex with them, and the bloody judge in this case has the fecking brass neck to call the perfectly normal and consensual sex between two adults as 'gross indecency'? Aaargh!!!!

However, almost as important, is the unveiling of the London Olympic mascots. I understand they have been reviled by the whole planet. They are, apparently, gender neutral webcam-based lifeforms. Not too inspiring, I must admit, but then the mascots we had were just cheesy and unappealing. I'm not entirely sure why we need mascots at all. I also don't know why we need Sebastian Coe, but there you go.

Whatever, David Mitchell cheered me up. Our advertising industry here is doing its best to break the English language, they have given us such gems as 'Live Healthy!', 'Much more cleaning ingredients' and 'less tissues'. I now add to that, 'two pair glasses'.

Incidentally, after I had had this picture taken yesterday, someone came along and said, 'oh, good old WC Fields!', hopefully they were talking about Winnie and not me.

Blues

So much, so much.
Saturday. The day started early, really early.
At 5.30 the sprayer plane was strafing the area again against Gypsy Moths.

At 7.00, we had to get up, had to be downtown by 8.30. Synod.
Someone joked that we are no longer the Conservative party at prayer. I think it was a joke. But of course we are, of course we bloody are, oh, for sure not one of us is a card-carrying Tory, many might even be card-carrying socialists, but we're the righteous wing of the Tories. When we pray, God fidgets from boredom.

I think we misunderstand the changeless quality of God.
We think that because we change and God doesn't, that what that means is that God has always been as we have always perceived God.
What it really means is that our perceptions of God need to change, because actually, we didn't get it right before. We saw God in our own image, but as out own image changed, we forgot to update.

A Rabbi came to Synod. He gave up his Sabbath to spend it with a bunch of Anglicans. And he was an interesting speaker. He is working on interfaith with the Vancouver School of Theology, who are top bananas on inclusive language, which he used and it sounded so natural.
Since he wasn't observing the Sabbath in his normal way, he forgot to turn his phone off, and thus received a call from a Muslim colleague, whilst hanging with the Proddies.
He chided us gently and deservedly on a bit of Jew blaming that we maybe hadn't noticed.
And this is what I like about us. Despite our blandness, we understand enough to know that Christianity isn't the only answer. The Jews fight amongst themselves, the Muslims fight amongst themselves and the Christians fight amongst themselves. And yet there is at least a layer of each that can find the common ground, or enough shared ground to make it work, and to realise that any way of being spiritual is good and that the important questions like equality and social justice shouldn't be sheltered by nor the purlieu of religions.

At lunchtime, we go and eat at an Italian place, but Italian food is not designed to be eaten quickly, my soup burns me, my sandwich has to be taken away in a polystyrene box. I hate this, but I can't leave food to be thrown away, too cavalier by half.

There was a really good film about how the Anglican church in our diocese had treated Japanese Anglicans during the war. It had sold their churches, so that when they were finally allowed back from internment, four years after the war, not only had their homes and livelihoods been taken from them by the government, but so had their churches.
The bishop apologised formally to them.
This whole apologising for stuff that other people have done leaves me cold. How does it close that wound? How does it address what was done? It feels as though it is supposed to draw a line under the episode, but it doesn't.
Still, I look forward with eager anticipation to the bishop's apology to women for the ongoing discrimination and misogyny within the church, and for the misrepresentation of God as male.

Afterwards, I wander down to Coal Harbour and sit and have coffee outside a café. A young Japanese man tries to get his boxer dog to sit outside the café, but the dog keeps wandering inside. The man never succeeds with the dog, but eventually gets an ice-cream despite the protestations of the server. They wander off and the Boxer attacks a long-haired dachsie, The owner is not amused.

I make my way along the waterfront until I get to the cruise ship terminal. The ships are so big they are frightening. I wonder if this is like the one Dawn and I will go on this summer.

I meet up with Kevin and later with our friends who are moving to Toronto in a couple of weeks.
Kevin and I are passed by Sikhs on motorbikes. Hard Sikhs, allowed to wear turbans instead of motorcycle helmets. It makes sense I suppose, the warriors.
We go past a restaurant soon to be opened. It will be called 'L'Abattoir'. Seriously. I'm guessing it won't be a vegetarian restaurant, but even so, grim name for somewhere to eat.
In the restaurant where we are to eat, the server recognises Steve from a play he was in. That's weird. He's our friend, but he's in TV, films and plays and gets recognised.

We arrive home around 23.00 and there is an e-mail from someone in my writers' group. She is the exact same age as me, and her daughter has died, suddenly. I can't get my head around this. It has shaken me. Then today, an 80s number on the radio makes me lose it because she and I, in different countries on different continents, must have danced to this number as young women, everything ahead of us, and now I think of her on a plane, going back to deal with what awaits her there, the worst thing a mother can imagine.
Sitting in the cathedral yesterday, I looked at the stained glass window. A well-fed, modestly dressed, white Jesus, looks down from the cross, not in agony, but with an expression of resignation. Equally well-fed, white followers crowd around him. Only his mother kneels at his feet, her pose one of agony for the suffering of her son.

Ups and Downs

Today, the local rag reported that the girls from the Little Flower Academy - the school from which a music teacher was 'sent home' to sit out her contract, on account of her being heterosexually challenged - have been themselves experiencing a bit of ostracism. Apparently, bus drivers have been not letting them onto buses. For the love of Marmite, what is the world coming to when actual rich people are being singled out and treated as though they were different.

Meanwhile, over in one of the lesser Provinces, a Bill is being drawn up which, if enacted, would allow Marriage Commissioners to opt out of marrying same sex couple if they have religious objections. Frankly, the Law has been in place for a number of years now, if you object to marrying any particular set of people, then you shouldn't be a marriage commissioner in Canada.

11th May 2010

Oh dear. I suppose it had to happen. DeCameron as Head Prefect. What a big pile of stinking poo.

On the plus side, it has led Austen to start a blog, writing about the general turmoil leading up to the big pile of stinking poo. I hope he keeps writing, I've been finding it very readable and interesting.

Women bishops are in the news again it seems. Apparently we could have some by as early as 2014! Yes, imagine! What I STILL can't fathom is how they can get away with saying shit that basically amounts to, 'but why isn't there any provision for the bigots?' Boo-hoo. Who cares.

Anyhoo, the most important thing about today, is that it's Sleepy's birthday. A big one. So, once more, Happy Birthday my friend! Good luck with 'The Resolution'.

Britsplaining.

I'm trying to make up a word like 'mansplaining', only instead of meaning 'when men explain something in simple terms for the wimminz', I want a word that means 'when people who know someone who knows someone who knows a Brit, who knows better than you, the person who lived there for well over forty years of your life. Maybe 'Britsplaining'.

This happens to me a lot.

Here's an example. Apparently, there is a now (quite rightly) not-to-be-used expression, 'to Jew someone down' and this seems to mean to haggle them down. (I think). I have heard this from a number of sources since I've been here. The other day, this expression was being explained to me again, and I was foolhardy enough to say that I'd never heard the expression before coming to Canada. WRONG!!!! The friend of a friend of a friend, KNEW that it was an English expression from Britain.

I am frequently having to explain how, in spite of having an English accent, I don't drink tea. In fact, coffee drinking is just as usual as tea drinking, particularly in the south. WRONG AGAIN!!!! Someone's grandmother's entire family came from England and everyone drinks tea there.

Then there is the Britsplaining based on TV. This can go hand-in-hand with communication difficulties because of language difference. The other day I had an entire conversation about turnip growing that turned out to be about tulips. But I digress.
Tonight's convo went like this,
'You leave England and come to Canada?'
'Yes,'
'Canada better,'
'No, not really, much the same,'
'Weather much better here,'
'Nope, pretty similar, much the same really,'
'No, no, no, no, no, it always fog in England,'
'No, nope, bit in November but not a lot really,'
'Oh yes, it alway fog in England,'
'Nope, really, no.'

And, sigh.

Gypsy Moth

This is the beginning of my frat-free weekend. Kevin has gone on the frat camping weekend, which makes me scuttle around cleaning and tidying. I imagine that drunken hockey listening is happening.
Do bears shit in the woods?
Most assuredly, but drunken engineers have to too.

The city has been spraying the area to combat gypsy moths, not the first world war aeroplanes you understand, the actual moths. They've imposed a ban on pesticides, so they have to spray with some kind of bacterial agent. And they have to spray at five o'clock in the morning. The plane going over sounds unlike any earthly plane, in fact it sounds for all the world like a gigantic insect flying low over the house and strafing it over and over again for an hour. Disturbing.

I have noticed, since being back at work this time, that the children have become more planet smart. Before Christmas, when ever I would ask them what we always should do when leaving a room or building, I hardly ever got a sensible answer. Since Easter, they have all got it almost straight off the bat.
And another thing that has improved has been the inclusive language of the teachers. I wonder if someone has been reminding them that that is what they are supposed to do. I can't see that the two are connected. The energy awareness was heavily pushed on TV during the Olympics, and then there was Earth Day.

Either way, it's all good.

All Greek to Me

I can simply not get my head round what the hell is happening in Greece. The behaviour of the Greek people seems beyond belief. And yet is it? Faced with having to make even the slightest effort, people bitch and moan, they refuse to change bad habits and would rather the planet died than that they had to drive less, turn off unnecessary lights or curb consumption. The Greeks are merely taking it to an absolutley ridiculous level.

Tomorrow, Great Britain goes to the polls - sadly without me, the Icelandic volcano made it impossible to register to vote from abroad. I'm sure I wouldn't have changed the outcome, but I'd like to have had a voice.

A strange day at work. The same school was due to come in for a programme both morning and afternoon. In the morning, they rang up to say that their bus had broken down and they were having to borrow St. Patrick's. Unfortunately, St. Patrick couldn't lend it in the afternoon. Lucky he was able to lend it all really, he never seemed like a bus owner to me.
We ended up making our own field trip to Iona Beach in the afternoon. Since we had to go to my house to get the car, we also picked up Whisky, who had the most puppylicious time romping through the wet sand. He ended up smelling like sewage and looking like some kind of oil spill victim. I took him straight up to the shower when we got home.

Weekend

It's (almost) the weekend, and Kevin, Whisky and I are taking the kayaks down south later on today.
Smoke us a kipper.

Gay Gordons

Gordon Brown finds himself in the doggie doos as a result of not turning his mic off when he got into his car. He referred to a woman as 'that bigoted woman'. God knows what she said, but he has been and apologised personally.
Good-oh.
Still, the British people should count themselves lucky that this week they have a Prime Minister who not only recognises bigotry, but finds it unacceptable. This probably won't be the case next week if the Tories take power. Their party's name is a by-word for bigotry and hypocrisy.

In Vancouver, the 'Little Flower Academy' Catholic girls' school has 'sent home' a teacher for being lesbian.
Clever.
The Supreme Court of Canada protects the LGBTQ community from discrimination so they certainly couldn't sack her, but her contract will not be renewed when it ends in June. Since they have acknowledged that she's a good teacher, that certainly sounds like discrimination to me.
It's interesting to note, that her sexuality only became known when she asked the employer for parental leave since her partner is having a baby. The next thing we know is that the parents are complaining, you know, the usual thing, if people find out about homosexuality, they'll all want to do it and the next thing you know, the human race has died out. Oh, hang on, didn't this same-sex couple want parental leave because they are expecting a baby?
I know which part of the human race I'd like to die out, sadly they have some kind of objection to contraception.
But the upside of this story is that the comments are mainly sympathetic to the teacher and the majority of those who have read it have said they agree with those comments and disagree with the homophobic ones.
That is quite heartening.

Happy Birthday Kevin

Happy Birthday my love. And thanks Alex and Seth for an amazing meal.

Who?

Seems like the Canucks have won their round - or whatever you call it. So, no more 'Louououou' for a while. This seems to have been in spite of some sports commentator saying publicly how it would be nice to see the LA Kings (whom the Canucks have been playing) win the Stanley Cup.

I have to say something about the new Doctor Who. I mean, they, the Doctor and the new assistant, seem fine. But fine doesn't cut the mustard. David Tenant, Catherine Tate and Russell T Davis were a phenomenon. This was new, it was ground-breaking, it was inspired. Perhaps it's too early to tell, but so far, it just seems, well, fine.

I had one of those e-mails you get that starts with, 'You'll only understand this if you're over 40' and then goes on to enumerate the ridiculousness of modern practices. You know the sort of thing,

"My Mum used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

My Mum used to defrost hamburger (meat) on the counter and I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in waxed paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting e..coli...."

Ok, well firstly, the reason we know about e coli and food poisoning in general is because many, many people did get sick from those things, and the other things the e-mail went on about at length. It seems people didn't get traumatised and suffer emotionally, but in fact, small children were abused by adults and no-one talked about it, women not only WERE paid less than men for the same job, but it was allowed by law. The idea that the U.S. might ever have a black president would have been laughed at. No-one could live openly in same-sex relationships.

People not much older than me had polio, and were crippled or had to spend time in an iron lung.
People drove inefficient cars and didn't recycle, we ran the tap whilst we cleaned our teeth. We burnt coal and pumped chemicals into our streams - ok, well I guess we still do that.

There are definitely things that were better when we were younger, for example, um, for example, er...well, those third of a pint bottles of milk we had at school and...well, our parents were alive, but mostly, I wouldn't want to go back. Except, I wouldn't mind not having things in general droop.
Ah well.

Thin Veil

After church, there was a talk and power point presentation on environmental stewardship. The woman giving the talk has received an award at UBC for her contribution to environmental sustainability. I like the whole 'team talk' thing, it gets your enthusiasm and juices flowing again for the cause, but as ever, only the already converted were there. She started by reaching into the two waste paper bins in the room and the first three items she pulled out of each were recyclable.
She introduced the concept of 'exquisite sufficiency' when talking about consumption reduction.
In spite of being one of the converted, I noticed that of the examples of households that she looked at, the one which most closely resembled my own, was still generating 3.5 tonnes of CO2 per person per annum, whereas the level needed for sustainability is 1.2 tonnes.
I intend to up my game.

Before 'after church', Margaret talked about the places where the veil between the two worlds is thin. I feel that at the moment, that my friend's life hangs in the balance and the veil is thinning around her. I don't want her to go, I so desperately don't want her to go, but maybe it's her time. I have learnt a great deal from the few years I've known her, and I will carry her baton with pride and fervour.
But mostly, I want her to go on carrying it for a while longer.

Hospitals and Hockey

Friday. Went to visit my friend in the hozzie after work. She hardly knew. The hozzie is right down the street from Swiss Chalet, my fave chicken. But then I also had to go to L.A. chicken, because that's Kevin's fave. Waiting for the order, I opened the Richmond News and there was Alex's column, pride, buzz.

The Canucks are in the playoffs. Wishing Sleepy were here.

Stupidity. Why do we allow the krazy kristians to stop the sensible people doing stuff?
In Ontario, the scientists and the people who know, updated the sex education curriculum, they thought this would be a good idea.

Doesn't seem too revolutionary,
"Grade 1 children were to be taught to identify genitalia — among other body parts — using the correct word, such as penis, vagina and testicle.

In Grade 5, children were to be taught to identify parts of the reproductive system and describe how the body changes during puberty.

In Grade 7, the plan was to teach kids how to prevent unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV."

But the Church of the Poisoned Mind decided otherwise, I mean, far better to let kids learn about sex from TV. Not.

Manbitchin'

Our boy Seth is the kind of man that many other men would like to be. He is tall, athletic and ridiculously good-looking (to quote the looks guru Derek Zoolander). Now, were you an advertising person, you might like to pose the Seth-lar, say, cutting wood, to enhance the old standard of masculinity. Maybe he'd be tanned from a few days' outdoor work.
This afternoon, this is the scene you might have come upon at Seth's place of work.
Enter a posse of drossie. Male dross that is.

'That's some job you've got there,' calls out one,
'Tell me about it,' says the Seth, continuing with his task,
'Good thing you're still at school,' says twonk-face,
'I'm not,' says our man, still working,
'Perhaps you'd better go back,' sniggers the chucklehead, soon joined by his co-morons.

When he told me about this, I pointed out that the bloke didn't actually mean school, he meant university.

Not that the likes of these can read, but let's imagine they could and that they drifted onto the blog. Make a sentence out of these words gentlemen,

'pigshit; fucking; thick as'.

Of course you can't do it! It's a trick! You can't make a sentence without a verb, and in the absence of an auxiliary, 'fucking' is clearly being used as a gerundive.
See what I did there?
Out-pillocked them.

Volcanic Eruptions

You couldn't make this stuff up. My ex-husband, the kids' father, came over to take Laurence on a trip to the States. They came back late Wednesday and he was due to depart very early Friday morning. And the rest I don't need to tell. He is of course, now stranded here for at least a week, due to the Icelandic volcano.

Kev and I went down to the States for the weekend. We vegged out and watched some films that Kev had put on his laptop, and local TV. 'Hurt Locker' was a great film. Not so long ago, we watched 'Inglorious Basterds', and that was brilliant too. The local TV in Washington State however, seemed to consist of wall-to-wall old films, and....David Attenborough's 'Life'. Only it seemed to no longer belong to David Attenborough, but rather had been voice-overed by Oprah Winfrey. Now god knows that I am all for the woman's voice on TV and film, but seriously, instead of DAVID ATTENBOROUGH????? Fortunately, Canadians can deal with the English accent and the original is shown on our TV.

Snakes

Usual stuff. We pre-empted the inevitable snake questions. Mattered not.

'Any snakes here?'
'Yep,'
'Where are they?'
'Oh, pretty much everywhere,'
'Any poisonous ones?'
'Nope,'
'Any dangerous ones?'
'Nope,'
'Any rattlesnakes?'
'Nope, not in this part of BC,'
'Just gardener snakes then,'
'Garter snakes, yep, just them,'
'So, gardener snakes, right, the worst they can do is choke you,'
'Only if you try to eat one,'
'What? You can eat gardener snakes?'

There is the most SUPERB article by Gary Younge on the Graun's webbie, 'Republicans are like frat boys in "Animal House".

"The Republican party, in particular, and American conservatism in general, have taken to operating in a similar manner to the Delta fraternity – increasingly reckless, anarchic and strident. Faced with defeat they respond with desperation. "

Restoration

Kev has been bloody horribly ill all weekend. He has a bug that has been doing the tour of his office. Nonetheless, he has fitted a new hard drive in my laptop, and recovered my documents and various other vital stuff from the old one. Normal service will be restored forthwith.
Yay verily, the computer god at the Schloss is male. His name is Kev.
Mwah!

Blankety Blank

This morning I dropped my laptop from a decent height. I killed it. I hadn't even read my e-mail. Kevin is working on the resurrection. Watch this space is all I can say.

The Good, the Bad and the Downright Evil

On the one hand, sportsperson Tiger Woods - are we fed up with that waste of space yet? Gets more coverage than theatre makeup.
On the other, Martina Navratilova courageously sharing news of her illness so that other women will think about getting screening, gets less, not none, but by no means wall-to-wall.

And how much news coverage has vile blot on humanity Eugene Terreblanche had? Yet now that he has been brutally murdered in his bed, it doesn't sit right somehow, as though we should expect better of those he himself brutalised and persecuted.
But why?
Would it have been better had he been legally put to death? Not really, we all get marred by that. And no-one could argue it wasn't justified.
The suffragettes in Britain had to resort to minor acts of terrorism in order to even get their case heard.
And what of the rest of us? What have we done to combat the likes of Eugene Terreblanche? Did our refusal to buy South African goods and our righteous indignation really help to rid the country of Apartheid?
Well maybe it did.
I'd wager that if right-minded people hadn't performed whatever small piece of resistance they could, then apathy would have kept Apartheid in place.

In more uplifting news, Alex now writes a column for the Richmond News. Her first one appeared today. She is fearful that it lacks value, but I have told her that she must trust her editor, trust her contact journalist, just trust their judgement.
Oh, and mine, of course.

In my absence, Gordon has called an election. I now have to register to vote. Home thoughts from abroad. Even with me Gordon may not prevail, but without me, he is doomed.
I hope he realises that.

Spratts

Jill Spratt, for thus she must surely have been named, could, we are told, eat no lean. Not very likely one feels, however, I feel some empathy. I cannot, well, probably could, but certainly do not like to, cook, so when we have a big family meal, I am happy to clear up afterwards. Kev cooks, I clear. Friends and family mostly understand that I like the clearing away, the pottering, this time they did at least let me do it, but the next step has to be that they need to leave me to do it. One of the great advantages of being the cleaner-upper is the tranquillity. The implied tranquillity. The THEORETICAL tranquillity.
I need a scullery.

Easter Sunday was long. It started at 5.15. I had to drive to YVR for 6.00, Lars and his dad were leaving for Dallas. Then straight down to Garry Point for the daybreak Easter service. It feels so esoteric, because it's a shared service and a small group of differing denominations gather just before dawn by the water, dark figures converging. We celebrate Easter as the sun rises, this time, the sun and two great blue herons, rising from the water, so close.

Today I started back at the Nature Park. Little had changed, except that I had long since been blocked from the City's e-mail server, so there was a mess of stuff to plough through.
The hummingbirds were in place, but there were no frogs, no snakes, no bees. And no coffee.
It seems as though the place atrophies in our absence.

Triduum

Maria Desolata. Not really desolata enough, but then, that's women for you, deep, disconsolate pain, but, stiff upper lip. When we weep, we feel embarrassed about it, we feel weak, but it's not our weakness, it's our strength, this ability to feel deeply and to weep.

Good Friday was not so good, the weather was very bad-tempered, gale-force winds, icy cold and torrential rain. Apart from that it was fine. Or maybe meh, yep, it was more meh really.

Alex and Laurence's dad has arrived to take Laurence off on a trip to Dallas and New York, yes, the ultimate British tourists.

We are watching Eve Ensler giving the Vagina Monologues, in some odd way, appropriate after the Holy Saturday vigil.

Jesus

Whilst there's nothing funny about the current news story about a French National, living in Georgia, U.S.A. and who has now fled to Ontario because he is suspected by the police of trying to BUY a five-year-old child, I'm sorry, but for pity's sake, the man is called 'Molesti' ?????

Alex and Seth saw a bus driver actually reading his newspaper while driving, other drivers don't think the Law about not using phones whilst driving, applies to them. Their union think it's too harsh to suspend them for endangering the lives of their passengers and breaking the law at the same time.

There is a fantastic post on Feministing about the achievement gap between girls and boys and the general hand-wringing about it. Figleaf puts a slightly different, but equally well-written spin on it, and he points us to yet another great post on this topic.
Food for thought.

I'm reading a book called simply, 'Jesus' by Deepak Chopra. I was looking forward to reading it, liked the idea of a fictionalised account of Jesus : The Lost Years, involving lots of cultural and historical detail. Well I've reached about halfway and have run aground. The writing is truly awful, impoverished, lacking style and wordcraft. Maybe I wanted too much, the life of an ordinary Jew living in occupied Rome and how this illiterate man came to be the most famous Rabbi of all time. (Sorry Julia Neuberger and Lionel Blue, but he is). What I get is poor characterisation and an unbelievable and sudden shift into mysticism. I feel a little as though I'm crying foul because someone else has written about my imaginary friend, but it just isn't doing it for me.

Drop the Sick Donkey

Heron in a tree. At the top of a tree even. Iconic, but what of?

We were supposed to have a donkey to lead the Palm Sunday procession around the church. We had been assured that the donkey was house-trained, although I was sceptical. Sadly, the donkey, named Eeyore, had to cancel, due to pneumonia. Many people were disappointed, me - meh, you've seen one donkey, you've seen 'em all.

Yesterday we turned off everything we could for Earth Hour. Kevin pointed out that we're pretty good about turning lights off when we're not in a room anyway, but we like the idea and the idea that friends around the world were doing it.
Yeah, around the world maybe - in the neighbourhood, not so much.

You Say Tomato

Cripes. Tomorrow is Palm Sunday, and in Britain, the clocks - très bon - go an hour on.
Tick tock.
Earth Hour soon. A black wave that circumnavigates the globe.

Last night, I was determined not to watch the recorded programmes of Jamie Oliver's U.S. Food Revolution. Jamie may be unpoisoning their bodies, but his sexist language is sure as hell subconsciously poisoning their self-esteem. He also wasn't THAT successful at unpoisoning their bodies. Yes, I got sucked in anyway. The children in the Elementary School couldn't even name a tomato or a potato. They were completely and utterly clueless about anything that didn't come out of a fryer. (Apart from Pizza).
The family he was supposed to be sorting out told him they'd followed his recipes, but much of the food he had bought them was still in the fridge.
But worse was in store. When he did the demonstration of the disgusting things that went into reclaimed meat products, the children all seemed to be horrified....until he turned them into a patty and fried them. When he asked them if they'd still eat it, they ALL said yes. This had never happened before.
He had to think bigger, so he got all the mums (aka, 'the parents')to watch as he dumped a trailer's worth of beef fat into a tarpaulin and then told them this was what was going into their kids' bodies every week. Finally a reaction.
Of course, ultimately he'll win, but I can't see how.

Canadian Karen and I discussed 'Chick Lit' the other evening, surreptitiously of course, so that no-one noticed (mostly). I think she's right. We shouldn't sell it down the river like that. One thing I have come to learn through Feminism, and this is why I now prefer the term 'Gender Equality', is that challenging socially constructed gender roles liberates men as well as women. Ok, they have to give up being the default sex, but they gain so much more.
So if we stopped labelling comedies of manners as 'Chick Lit', it not only avoids the implied 'and therefore second rate', but also opens it up to men to read. And maybe, if they did read it, they'd quite enjoy some of it.
After all, it's by no means just women who watch Soaps.

Nutters

Birds - they're such show-offs aren't they? Watch the eagles just riding the thermals, do they care about us earth-bound creatures?

At the moment, fortunate creatures that WE are, we have the lovely Ann Coulter visiting our hallowed shores. It's not going so well. Now this is odd, because Canadians on the whole are a patient and forgiving bunch, but Coulter, well she just goes far too far. What has been interesting for her to learn from her visit, if in fact she does have any kind of learning chip installed, is that Freedom of Expression means you're not allowed to incite hatred. Oops. Hatred does seem to be her middle name. She hates Muslims, even the nice ones we have here in Canada. She also hates not being allowed to drivel on in the Universities up here, which leads to outbursts such as her telling the Procter of one of them that, 'this Human Rights stuff is bullshit.'
Huh.

So, a pretty easy segue to Hitler really. Kevin told me not so long ago, that all forum posts that keep going, eventually get to Hitler, and that's the endgame, after Hitler, it's over.
Yesterday I was reading a blog by Gay people who were against Gay Marriage. Why, they wondered, do people keep forcing it on us? Of course, the first few comments were along the lines of,
'Fuck Yeah, we're butch, we don't take no shit off anyone, booyah!' type of thing. Then there was a sensible one, which basically boiled down to,
'Er, no-one's forcing marriage on anyone, but everyone should have the same rights as everyone else.'
So then,
'Well there are other things THEY should be pushing for instead,'
'There's no reason why all of these rights can't be addressed at the same time,'
Followed by some sort of non-sequitur that I couldn't quite follow, but the sensible commentator could and said,
'That's like when people argue that Hitler was a vegetarian, so vegetarianism makes you evil.'
And that was the end of that, because the whole bloody thing deteriorated into a disorganised rant by all the nutters about how Hitler wasn't vegetarian at all, so therefore all the sensible person's arguments were wrong. Thus, I would say, proving the point.
Pillocks.

France, Norway, Wales.

The air is full of the smell of Cottonwood.

I took Whisky for an extra walk this evening at 19.00 and it was still light. Right now we're only seven hours behind Britain, but that will change on Sunday.

Elder Stateswoman of France, Simone Weil, survivor of Auschwitz, women's reproductive rights champion, has been honoured by her country and made a member of the Académie Française. Link from Sleepy.

Nice to hear via Feministing, from a young man who really understands privilege. And what a well written piece. And I particularly respect his final sentence,
"Even though I benefit from these labels, it is my responsibility to work to change things for the better."

Norway's minister for Gender Equality and Children's Affairs says that Norway became prosperous (and Norway IS prosperous) because they invested in gender equality. Feminist Philosophers.

And lastly from Bozo5, what happens in a bilingual country when you don't pay attention. That one really tickled me!

Spring, Sunday, Milk, Blood.

Turns out yesterday was the first day of spring. It was certainly very springlike, warm (16°) and sunny. Today, not so much. But we went kayaking anyway. Had to get Whisky's sea-legs back. We managed to be out during the one short spell of sunshine, but by the time Alex and Seth were turning round and coming back in, icy rain had started to fall.

It's Sunday. Today's readings and sermon were about Mary pouring oil over Jesus' feet and then wiping them with her hair. Our vicar preached an amazing sermon, she is softly spoken and approaches God with us, whereas when we have a certain other priest, he protects God from us, he interprets God for us. Cheers mate, the whole of Jesus' life and teaching was about anyone being able to approach and understand God.

Margaret showed us Mary's special relationship with Jesus. To me it's another indicator of inclusivity. A man and a woman able to physically interact just in an ordinary, everyday sense. I was struck last week by the inclusivity of the Peace. There were two new congregants, both of an ethnic group that are often Muslim. Recently I had heard two stories of Muslim colleagues refusing to shake hands with women. As I shook the hand of each of these men and wished them peace, it made me realise that here, in church, was a level of inclusivity not always available to all.

Last night we finally watched the film 'Milk'. Wow. Where was I? I remember all the Vietnam War stuff going on throughout my childhood and early teens, but I had no idea of all this horrific homophobia going on in the States. Powerful film. It also struck me how, looking back, it seems unbelievable that the level of homophobia suffered then could have been tolerated, and yet today, we are still seeing human rights issues being fought for just one step forward. You just know that down the road we'll look back and say, 'My God, did people really object to same-sex marriage and anyone let their stupid, backward opinions affect the human rights of others?' Likewise, 'Did people really use to refer to God as 'He' and object to women in the priesthood?' and then we'll chortle at the backwardness of the times.
But we're living through those times.

Ok, have to stop now.
Too much blood of Christ.

Regardez mon visage

Yesterday I went to have my eyes tested. Just a regular eye test, but the ophthalmologist thought he'd dilate my pupils with drops so that he could look right to the back of my eyes.
Very thorough.
I've never had this done before. He said that he could tell that I have no signs of diabetes and that my blood pressure is normal. Ok, but THEN...I had to walk outside into the most glaring, painful light I could imagine. It was like the sunniest day of summer when the sun is reflecting off everything. Even with my sunglasses on I had to squint.
Considering women used to do this to themselves regularly in the interests of beauty, it seems yet another way of torturing ourselves for no particularly good reason.

I asked my friend Di if I could paste her story about the two Iraqi Kurds she teaches, here it is.

"there are two young Iraqi Kurds in the literacy classes in 'my' prison, former asylum seekers criminalised by our short-sighted processes. Unable to work to support themselves and without benefits, one of them committed 'minor' shoplifting offences (he had to eat) and the other resisted arrest while he was being physically removed from the squalid room he shared with five others in a 'squat'; he had no English at that time and had only been in the country 3 weeks. Their background stories are truly harrowing - one was shot in the face during an attack on his village when he was 13 - but each is apparently considered to be here on the same basis as any illegal economic migrant. Their families took risks and beggared themselves to send these boys here, where it was thought they would have better lives. They are not bad young men, as so many in prison are, but will both be deported automatically once they have served their sentences."

In circumstances like this, it has to be costing the British taxpayer so much more to keep these lads in prison, than to give them some support whilst waiting for their asylum hearings. I think Di's right to use the word 'criminalised', these aren't hardened criminals, they are human beings struggling to survive.

Spring in nearly upon us. I have bought, filled and put out a hummingbird feeder. Hopefully we'll get some hummingbirds. Kevin has put out the solar lights and I've cleaned the chairs on the deck.
Spring - bring it!

Et pour finir, having watched Catherine Tate's 'Our John's a gay man now' several times, I was sucked in to watching 'Lauren's French lesson' classic Catherine the Great, just classic.
Suis-je bovvered?

Lumberjack

I had a lot of interesting feedback from yesterday's awareness raising about the Kurds, much of it positive, people who know Turkish or Iraqi Kurds who have made a good life outside of Kurdistan, but not all. A friend sent me a story of two Iraqi Kurds that she knows, who sought asylum in Britain but who, in circumstances that remind one of Dickensian England, ended up in gaol.

Now here's the thing. There are over 60 million people living in Great Britain. It's very crowded. You literally could not accept everyone into the country who wants to live there. So you end up with the situation where people have to be treated as numbers, faceless, nameless, unless they are the people you know. But when people seek asylum, it's not just because they think they can earn more, it's because they face persecution in their own countries.
Between the western countries, why can't we pass on some of what we have?
It's difficult to share isn't it?
Let's face it, some don't want to share even with their own compatriots. Look at the fight Obama is having to give basic healthcare as a right to the neediest in his country. Look at the lengths the super rich go to to avoid taxes. Look at the salary and payment demands of the famous. Do we ever get to a point where we simply have enough?

Let's go back to Obambi. One of the stumbling blocks seems to be over reproductive rights. Why should public money be spent to fund abortions?
Ok, well, the U.S., like Canada, is very proud of their separation of Church and State. Fair enough, I think I can understand that. But the only logical objection to abortion on demand is a religious one. Even if you are an atheist and yet believe that no life should be taken, although I can't think of any philosophical reason for that stance, but let's say it is so, then the foetus must be able to survive unassisted outside of the mother's body to be considered as a separate life. And considerations of quality of life would also have to be taken into account.
SO why is a religious argument allowed to override a humanitarian one?

And going back to our lovely National Anthem, it seems we are an international laughing stock. Nothing we don't deserve, but I certainly like the suggestion to adopt Monty Python's 'Lumberjack Song' instead.

And a propos of nothing, just that I happened to be reminded of it on Tuesday, I invite you to revisit the classic Catherine Tate sketch, 'Our John's a Gay Man Now', mostly for the sheer brilliance of it, but if not, then just for the superb Northern Irish accents.

Kurdistan

I told my friend L that I would blog today to raise awareness of the continued troubles of the Kurdish people.

Yesterday and today, the 16th - 17th March was the anniversary of the 1988 attack by Iraqi forces on the Kurdish city of Halabja. Over 5,000 people were killed when Iraqi planes dropped chemical weapons. Chemical weapons are part of the notorious weapons of mass destruction.

The massacre at Halabja came at the end of an extended campaign, known as al-Anfal, to exterminate Kurds in Iraq. The 'ethnic cleansing' started in April 1987 and an estimated 100,000 people were slaughtered.

Kurdistan is an area that comprises parts of Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, although Kurds are ethno-linguistically Iranian. Kurds have frequently been displaced from their homeland and so groups exist throughout Europe, Asia Minor and North America.

It is far from rare that despots and just fellow-citizens discriminate against groups within societies.
Kiran Desai in 'The Inheritance of Loss' shows us an example in the Indian Himalayas. Khaled Hosseini does the same for Afghanistan in 'The Kite Runner', and in Syria, the Kurds continue to be oppressed.

There is a petition to show solidarity with the Kurdish people, to end oppression and discrimination, and to uphold the values of democracy. If you feel able to sign it, you can find it here.