To thine own self be true

One of the last vestiges of Canadian history, culture, and sports. Decidedly unAmerican and fun to watch or attend.

-Thousands of surgeries cancelled/people declining and dying untreated, because of unvaccinateds filling up the hospital–people who were given carte blanche by UCPs.
-Ignorant, two martini-lunch LaGrange in charge while Kenney and Shandro blithely holidayed for 3 weeks after declaring Alberta open with Hinshaw’s blessing, resulting in innumerable hospitalizations and totally unnecessary deaths.
-UCP blowing up ambulance services in Alberta; numerous people untreated and dying. Firefighters and police abandoned without ambulance support everywhere in the province.
-UCP haggling with nurses over piss-poor salaries to begin with, driving nurses out of the profession and Alberta. (UCPs will be patting themselves on the backs for saving bucks when they start closing hospitals.)

Albertans have been abandoned and left to the wolves. Government by could-care-less-ness and conspicuous absence. A government taking it out on Albertans everywhere repeatedly.

Shameful, irresponsible, morally careless and destructive choices from the get-go. There is not a single reason to praise anything UCPs have done toward/about health care.

Another stupid UCP idea: setting up drunks in 7-Elevens to mix with young kids coming in for Slurpees. What’s the idea there? Pick up a kid and a beer? Or when drinkers get intoxicated, have them wreck or hold up the store?

going to 3 holiday parties. The premier has “suffered greatly” and need to/is allowed to come up for air.

Ah, the politics of personal convenience and “I’m all right, Jack” contrasted to the potential suffering and death of all you other lowly peons. Rules do not apply, apparently, to fat gods, only you poor schmucks and schmoes.

from a loose piece of a truck ahead of you, flying off and taking you out for good, as has happened to a nice young woman-mother lately. Imagine the very real possibility of being taken out by someone else’s carelessness and negligence.

Neither are you expecting to go to work in a Kentucky candle factory, demolished suddenly by a tornado last night. As one woman-survivor put it, “I don’t live to work; I work to live.” It also suddenly dawned on her afterward that she could have been killed just from going to work.

now with the gang of 20 otters nearly killing a man out for a morning walk in Singapore. 26 nasty bites; he feared for his life; but survived/is ok after treatment. Yet another example of “fair” becoming “foul” in our topsy-turvey, chaotic modern world.

A found picture and unsent note from Dean McKenzie, The Legend, in 1992.

Spiritus (an Edmonton performance poetry trio): Dean on right, Glen Kirkland in the middle, and me on the left).

Note: “Hail Spiritus! Its genesis takes on even more mythic qualities as our hejira toward truth and beauty continues.” Spiritus had a fabulous, wonderful run over two decades. And I have no doubt that Glen’s and Dean’s hejiras toward truth and beauty continue elsewhere as much as mine does here, likewise.

Very special thanks to Elana Hope Aaserud for finding and sharing this special moment of being–Dean’s gift of self beyond time. Trust Dean-o to speak to her, me, and us from another, transcendent, spiritual dimension. Remarkably, Daddio is still happy, intact and with us this Christmas–giving of himself as always.

Did ‘crazy gun-crazed America’ kill the harmless, pro-peace-Beatle trying to live quietly ‘like other/ordinary folks’ in the States?

(John’s fatal error was in believing he would always be safe and unharmed in liberty-loving America. He likely didn’t expect that–simply because of his fame–that he was automatically ‘eligible’ to be taken out much in a similar, tragic, unguarded moment like the Kennedys, King, and Lincoln by looney-tunes, gun-totin’ assassins.)

ps: Is/was anyone surprised this needless, insane tragedy happened in America?

(picked up at Robert Frost Farm on a visit to Derry N.H. in the early 1990s; key lines of “The Road Not Taken”, one of the  most popular poems in English in the world)

to Edmonton city council stupidly wasting money putting down concrete blocks in cyclists’ lanes (that was the council’s stupid #1 priority once upon a time), then spending more dough to collect them after the cyclists complained.

to the federal government being asked to pay for better food (!) and diapers in quarantine hotels. If these people are stupid enough to travel abroad now, they should pay for these things as usual, not the feds. Canadians are wimps for asking the feds to pay for their stupidity and self-inflicted inconveniences.