To thine own self be true

Calgary woman sentenced to 6 1/2 years for abusing her cats.

The abuse of pets, animals, and young children (The vulnerable who cannot protect themselves) is egregious, unconscionable, and totally evil. Sentences need to reflect that, as the above one does.

Much like our shrinking Earth features (air, forests, etc.), our individual worlds have ‘smallened’ since the pandemic began. People are travelling less, especially out of the country, even out of their own homes (as we are in the case of the latter).

Large chunks of experience are diminished or now. Consider briefly how limited public school students’ exposures are now to books, classics, the past, country history, etc.

People are reading books less and less, watching mostly the current, prevailing loud, violent FX crap that dominates various media platforms.

Large numbers of populations are lining up under their own chosen special interest flags (e.g., GOP/Trump/Freedom Convoy) without much interest in other experiences, other people, and other points of view. Again, the world ‘smallens’.

Thoreau’s quote about the mass of people leading lives of quiet desperation has never been truer. People are broker, going bankrupt (like many businesses) and destitute; we have increasing poverty and too many folks living on the streets with no place to call home.

T.S. Eliot figured civilization would end with people killing each other in the streets. This has never been truer with mothers attacked in school playgrounds, old people mowed down in residential intersections, and random attacks just about everywhere on innocent, unsuspecting people even in daytime or in crowds.

The only places one might know the past to some degree is at home, in families, with really old friends, or through one’s choice of reading, viewing, and travel experiences.
Adventures have, likewise, shrunk, along with the capacity and availability for safe, healthy adventures.

As Robert Frost once posited, What can one make or do with a “diminished thing” (such as our daily lives and society have become)?

Certainly one needs to focus and organize for starters with one’s own life and family, then outwardly as much as possible. (Charity and helping others is important, thus.) Hope is also pretty basic; as is focusing on what remains positive in people, relationships, and other social contacts. Imagination and independence are perhaps more important than ever in human history. We need imagination for creative responses and solutions. And we need independence and personal responsibility to stay free of pointless blaming and laziness in daily choices. Ultimately, what we are left with is our selves, first and foremost, and our attitudes and peaceful, healthful approaches to every lived or survived day.

Polievere holding Wetjet passengers hostage and forced to listen to his shameless P.C. rhetoric. Polievere’s ‘right’ to ‘free speech’ trumps the rights of captive passengers.

Likewise, he considers the Westjet union as against free speech for their protest of his commandeering the air waves of the same flight. He can say what he wants wherever he wants. Very Trumpian. Taking others hostage to further a personal agenda.

These dictators live in their own little airtight worlds and no one else has any rights. New Hampshire’s “Live free or die” has come to Canada at long last.

Basically just a bus driver with no real control over the LRT crisis, the homeless crisis, and the continued failures of downtown renewal.

His uselessness is symbolized by his lack of comment and apology to the foreign woman who was brutally assaulted on the LRT this summer.

He has failed at everything of consequence in this city since being elected. Even his rubberstamping Katz’s takeover of Boyle Street has led to clients being forced onto the street for a year without any alternate accommodation.

are simply not interested in any crises or issues in Edmonton. Good luck hospitals, universities, and schools in prying any extra money out of them for the next 4 years.

Their snub of the capital city was obvious at the beginning of wildfire evacuations when Edmonton was not initially named as a go-to place, while Calgary (a city further away) was listed off the bat.

The unsubtle price of Edmonton voting NDP.

With all the Boyle Street clients having nowhere to go for one full year till a new facility opens. All public buildings, heated garages, and underground tunnels will be packed with the displaced trying to survive another Edmonton winter with no place to go. Social disturbances, thefts, robberies, and assaults downtown are about to rise for a year. Take pity on all those who work downtown.

Common sense says ‘Take in no more immigrants if the governments can’t house them.”