To thine own self be true

Long the subject of SF pulp fiction now coming to a bank, grocery store, hardware store, and other public places near you. All, of course, for the bottom line and greedy profiteering by companies and corporations. So much for customer convenience, keeping the customer satisfied, and happy business relations with the public. (I have long been on the side with employees and told them I’d rather they have a job than some soulless machine or bot.)

And companies and corporations are madly competing for the remaining declining citizen bucks remaining. There is an increasing frenzy as this terminal cash grab spirals toward a black hole in which ordinary people can’t buy anymore and owe too much to buy all the latest gimmicks and entertainments. No question that a lot of folks are setting themselves up for financial failures.

And that includes small to medium businesses as lights continue to go out for all the Hallmarks and the like who can no longer compete with the populace hooked on buying online instead of real stores. With all the increasing and forthcoming unemployment, how will people be able to pay for all this gotta-have-it stuff?

Get ready for shopping mall failures and numerous bankruptcies and takeovers ahead as the economy starts this inevitable implosion. Too much greed at the top, no sense of common sense, decency, sanity, balance, and reciprocity. No question the angst and mental illness cases will go way–up amongst all age groups. Especially now that nobody, who cares for the country and ordinary people, is in charge in either Washington and Ottawa.

This Blatchford crap. Now trying to build ‘green’ condos to sell at half a million with other taxpayers subsidizing the project. To be followed (absolutely no doubt) by problems with the new homes (to cost taxpayers more), culminating in Blatchford turning into a green ghetto (complete with bike lanes). Can anyone else see where this mess is going and how it will turn into another city council disaster?

Citizens are more than welcome to come out to Mill Woods to see the unused-for-a- decade bike lanes (even in summer) where this whole massive disaster began. Yes, that much history, stupidity, ignorance, folly, and nonexistent judgement.

Don Iveson: what a man of vision, what a great city planner (as our roads lay completely in ruin thanks to an LRT of ghost ridership that’ll never get fully budgeted to completion and crumbling roads everywhere (thanks to blind/’smart’ calcium chloride soakings).

Change the city entrance signs again. Edmonton: City of Champion Politician Dopes.

1

Sparrows chirp
and pluck at scraps
of empty gutters.

2

An old man leans
on a rake
and contemplates
his dead spring lawn.

3

Two lovers pass by
their care-less laughter
rising from the lane
as they disappear
from view.

4

Oblivious are they all
to the cunning cat
that stalks its prey,
the shadow lurking
by an old man’s garage,
and the slow, steady ticking
of two lovers’ watches.

Friend and songwriter James Mireau. Conceived, created, and made by James. He does the narration, music, and sound, too. Dedicated to his late cousin Father Catfish of Edmonton.

or making money. Thank God. There are far more important emotional, mental, and spiritual matters to ponder. That and an appreciation of Nature, life through the senses, people, love, art, and language.

(The only classic poems more directly about money and materialism per se I can think of are Wordsworth’s “The World is Too Much with Us” and Auden’s “The Unknown Citizen”.)

Mental manipulation/conditioning has been a major issue since WWII. We have seen, of late, how Western citizens are under a siege of agendas, many being political and economic. There are no shortage of self-aggrandizing companies and corrupt individuals who want to control your mind and pocketbook endlessly and everywhere. People have to stop and ask themselves how free they really are and the extent to which their lives and freedom are controlled or have been usurped and exploited by others. The state of one’s mental health, consciousness, autonomy, freedom, and critical literacy are the last bulwarks against this insidious onslaught.

A drowsy fly trembled on the worn wooden window screen. The April breeze was cool and, looking down to the breaking ice on the river below, I wondered how many times both my cancer-stricken parents had stood there, by day and night, contemplating the familiar, yet ever-changing panorama.

Behind me were piled some fifty boxes of packed belongings that represented their now-gone, irrelevant past. My inheritance. Ready for moving day. Lit by the sun from another window in the living room, the brilliant pink hydrangeas I`d bought her the first day I came to stay lived blithely on without my mother.

The ceiling fan stood still, though a black clock–a gift from the newspaper–ticked monotonously. On the floor, a cooler from long ago picnics inquired about the possibility of another summer. A cold heating pad sat aimlessly on a chair for her return. In the corner stood the crutches from a fall she never told me about. On the floor a dark braided oval rug my father, weak from chemo, had lain on nine years before, lovingly cleaning it with a tiny vacuum. By the window, the tv screen was clean once more, its nicotine haze wiped off.

On the wet lawn outside, two deer edged up the bank cautiously–one male, one female, nibbling the grass. Life was, indeed, tough enough though spring had chosen now to return. In the end, there was no choice, you see. I spared the fly and turned away from the window.

An Eloquence of Daffodils

Hot cross buns in March.

the opioid crisis was laid at the feet of companies like Purdue Pharma that made billions touting opioid safeness and “pseudo-addiction” for several years. Everybody else has been blamed: pharmacists, doctors, patients themselves, and no one followed the money until now, amazingly.
Pharma has 1000 lawsuits against it in the States and, in Oklahoma alone, there were more prescriptions than citizens! The billions mattered more than millions of people’s health and lives. Sick.