To thine own self be true

Compression gloves

has totally abandoned us. All government vaccination and Covid signage in the province has been removed. The pandemic is officially ‘over’.

-Marcus Aureius

No kidding. This has been much of how I have tried to live my life and informs the sorts of things and experiences that have spoken largely to me in past and present. The world of Art also reflects Aurelius’s belief.

(Hanging in the front hall,  a clever multi-media wall-plaque representation by artist-friend Don Pimm, interpreting William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow”:

Naturally, he’s prepared to withhold educational funding, though, if schools have mask policies. ‘My way or the f’ing highway. Choose your poison: funding or kids’ deaths’.

An incredibly evil, thoroughly nasty en masse hostage-taker, doing something fascistic Jason Kenney now would/might consider doing in ‘No Covid here. folks’ Alberta.

This decline in respect for authority/authorities/experts started in the early 2000s as truth suddenly became more fashionably “relative” and subjective.
There has been a similar decline in consumption of more objective truth via newspapers and journalism.
One major problem with all this distraction and decline in the ability to focus and process critically is that most people can’t make distinctions in perception, understanding, and appreciation.
‘The Other’ is automatically distrusted and to be resisted and dumped on. So much for empathy, sympathy and ‘walk a mile in my shoes’.
Complaining seems to be more hard-wired.
People have become more simple-minded and as Covid works its numbing way this past year, there’s been a serious decline in cognitive skills being reported.
And, of course, the great dumbing down that has accompanied e-media supplanting print and books of olde.
Quite a negative, cynical, toxic mix.
A far cry from the Youngbloods’ “C’mon people now, smile on your brother. Everybody get together, try and love one another right now.”
Money/economics and lust for power continue to drive ending restrictions, insurrections, injustice, and larger chaos generally. (The Liberals’/Canadian government’s response to residential schools: give ’em billions for their water crisis to shut them up again.)
And climate change has already come home to roost.

the day that strikes mortal fear in teachers everywhere. Moreso, this 3rd school year affected by Covid and now Delta. There’ll be a lot of older teachers out there counting down when they can get out for good.

got me wondering if a Provencal squirrel, similarly, gnawed off the head of one of the sunflowers van Gogh was immortalizing in paint, and lugged it off for his own private sunflower-seed pig-out.

While walking this morning, I glimpsed a boy about 12 playing golf in his backyard. Brought back memories of being 10-12, doing the same in my smaller yard, digging out a couple of holes and playing with my lone club–an old 7 iron which I used for all kinds of shots, long before I got my first set of Spalding clubs in grade 7 with my own money.

Ah, the power of the imagination of an only child, spinning entire worlds just like that, inspired then by KCND tv–an upstart American station beaming Sunday PGA golf tournaments into Winnipeg homes. Suddenly I was like Arnie, imagining similar ‘armies’ of fans hanging on every one of my shots.

Yes, I grew up that way and imagined a lot of my personal entertainment outside, occasionally joined by real others. But, no, I didn’t need anyone else and there was a private bliss to being left alone that much, free to imagine whatever I wanted: a Wordsworthian childhood in many ways.

So, yes indeed, I knew how today’s golfing boy likely felt, far from the problems of the world: Covid, heat waves, wildfires, vacillating health restrictions, social isolation from peers, wars, numbing climate change, the threats to democracies, and discovery of residential school graves.

there are 2 main world issues now:
1. climate change
2. the survival of democracy/democracies.

In the States, adhering to rule of law has become the current issue with steps being taken by Democrats of the Dept. of Justice to hold the guilty responsible for the Jan. 6 insurrection. Law and order must be maintained. Justice must be doled out. Trump and his supporters must be held to account.

Also, voting rights are on the line (relative to democracy), and the only path forward may be to get rid of the filibuster before the midterms.

the more you see how people are like them and vice versa.