To thine own self be true

The Ten Million Dollar Man vs. The Six Million Dollar Man. Khadr wins the jackpot for killing an infidel, while Nuge has to work and risk injury to earn his money.

using a strong de-icer on roads this winter that will corrode motorists’ vehicles more rapidly.

started in grade 5 with an early survey book, followed in high school with another Social Studies take on CanHis. Then I took a senior course in it at the U of W. So three rounds of foundation and basics.

Yesterday I received a book in the mail–one of many over the years ordered through ABEbooks, my go-to site for anything of consequence and hard-to-get–from around 1910 (yet another official antique–over 100 years-old) entitled Victoria, B.C. The Beautiful City of Western Canada, and it is, still after all these years..
Some 30 pages of photos after the Parliament Buildings and the Empress had been built. Victoria is my favorite go-to city for a quick getaway to a land of harbours, gardens, and quaint culture. I was curious–something which makes life interesting every day for me–to see what the city looked like when it was getting started. Many of the landmarks are familiar, of course, but there are also quaint photos of the Gorge, ships, native peoples, Beacon Hill Park, and even Indian Canoe Races in the harbour by the legislature.

(Government Street–still the main drag of quaint shops)

(above 2 views of the Empress completed about a year before this book was published)

I have similar rare turn-of-the-century books on Winnipeg (my hometown) and Edmonton. (For the record these are one-of-a-kinds worth hundreds of dollars online.) In a sense, I have become a ‘keeper of the past’–a fact borne out by my extensive book collection which features many signed books, many antiques, books by well-known classic American, British, and Canadian authors, as well as film and art books.

I have never forgotten what I learned from hearing Paul Simon’s “I Am a Rock” in 1965 (grade 11): “I have my books and my poetry to protect me”‘ and they long have sustained and inspired my love of literature, reading, history, culture, The Word, poetry, consciousness, great men and women (signed Virginia Woolf, Rachel Carson), Canadiana, Western civilization, and the best that has been written and created by the worlds I am and have been most familiar with.

“I am large…I contain multitudes.”
–Walt Whitman

“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

Three households. Last Fri-Sat. during the sunny hot spell.

Crowds were good and we moved a lot of stuff. Our most profitable one ever.

Into take-down mode now. Some to go to Good Will and some to Eco Depot.

Garage sales offer opportunities to create family bonding, to edit the glut of material living, to help others, and to build relationships with community and others at large. They free up space and free up the otherwise ‘frozen’ values of things creating an uncongealing, moving-forward affect, generating extra dough for other, positive possibilities. In a number of ways, they are also a throwback to sixties’ Happenings!

(The BC tourist industry will be toast as well.)
And the recent hot spell comes to a halt after the smoke, clouds, and rain roll in for a long stay. The Edmo air advisory should continue for weeks with over 200 fires to put out next door.
Good thing Justin’s on top of things now that BC has declared a provincial emergency. Hope he remembers to wear his chic Muslim hipster socks in honor of Omar. Politically correct, but oh-so-damned-stupid.

reading, writing, and understanding words/language. Nor should it be confused with language used as thought and ideas. Nor the ability of people to express themselves clearly and coherently. Nor with seriousness, significance, or purpose necessarily. Digital literacy is merely a ‘flashy’, ‘sexy’, deluded, limited and limiting view of the physical world and history. Digital literacy is a ‘fun’ diminishment like Netflix with its unbelievably slim offferings of all the major and significant films ever made. It is Less not More or Most. It is a visual surface essentially with no consequential depth beyond flashing lights and wowy-zowy visual effects. It has nothing, finally, to offer of great consequence and enlightenment to the development of the arts and Western civilization. It has basically turned new generations into blithering, asinine self-important zombies.

Fidget spinners.

People now lack the imagination and patience to amuse themselves without a technological gimmick. As in Huxley’s comment that people would rather do anything else than think.

A unique, original poet-artist for sure. Kultur has done many strong videos on famous artists and this one does a nice job outlining and explaining Blake’s life and achievements.

He started having visions when he was young, which continued into adulthood and inspired his best work. He was truly one-of-a-kind combining engraving, watercolors, and poetry in his own self-published illuminated works. Despite having only one modest, loyal patron, Blake cobbled a career, with the help of his devoted wife, during the late 1700s-early 1800s. He is, unquestionably, the first significant artist of English Romanticism.

The video shows many of his works from beginning to end with comments and opinions by English art critic-Blake fans. They all comment on his apprenticeship, his departure from classicism, his Gothic influences, his unique swirly style (shades of van Gogh and Emily Carr), and his own strange personal (religious) mythos. They emphasize his imaginary powers, his unconventionality, and integrity in not compromising or selling out.

Simply put, there has never been anyone who created poetry and art like William Blake. He is a true Master as this 50 minute documentary argues successfully.

Other artists in the English Masters series include: Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Turner, and Constable. Highly recommended and not a waste of time like all the unfunny, rude, crude, asinine current tv sitcoms.

Best article ever written about Trudeau was Rex Murphy’s in Saturday’s National Post., “PM Trades Theme Socks for Slippery Manoeuvre”.

Anybody else want 10.5 million tax-free? Natives? The military? The elderly in Canada?

Interesting how he gets as far away from Canada as possible when egregious errors (like the Khadr boondoggle) are made and major conflicts like the fate of pipelines in BC  or the BC wildfires emergency crop up. This guy is all about selfies, tattoos, and socks. Nothing else beyond aggrandized personal image. Has done nothing of consequence or lasting value for Canada and Canadians. A major smiling fraud.

An absentee clown with politically-correct socks while the Canadian West Coast burns down in over 200 fires. (So much for the priority of a political stand against the pipeline by all the Greeners in B.C. Nothing like violent chaos in Nature to obliterate human agendas.)