The harsh reality of childrens' funerals

There’s no getting around it; if you’re making a career in teaching, you are, sooner or later, going to be at the funeral of someone who died way too young. Or multiple someones who died way too young. Yesterday I attended the visitation for a kid who died way too young. He was a teacher down in Walkerton, where I put in a few years early in my teaching career. I wasn’t particularly tight with him, but on account of having worked with his Mom for many years, I felt a sense of duty. He might have been a teacher, but he was barely ten years older than the four highschool athletes who died with him in the car he was driving. This kind of stuff leaves scars in these small rural communities. My initiation into teen funerals came when one of my kids tragically died in a snowmobile accident early in my career. That was followed a few years later by an entire carload of recent grads, all former students, racing a train to a level crossing… They lost. Life’s a crap shoot. Some people win… …and other people win until they don’t.

King Charles III drops by to reassure Canadians they are a sovereign people

And you know it’s absolutely gotta be true if the King of England doth decree it! If you ask me, all this unholy fuss over our sovereignty is indicative of our never-ending identity crisis. BWAAA!!!… Donald Trump called us the 51st state! Won’t somebody stick up for us? Er, ahem… yes of course! The King of England will give that glorified real estate hustler a good sharp yank on his fake-gold chain. When the King speaks, people listen! That Canada needs to fall back into the trappings of our colonial past tells you everything you need to know about our sovereignty! This is not a serious country.

Israel's magical disappearing genocide makes brief showing

There was a sea change in Gaza reportage this week. We went from total news blackout to limited news coverage, and that was across multiple Western legacy media outlets, including CBC. At CBC the week started with multiple reports from Gaza on the hourly news, whereas for the past year and a half CBC has mostly ignored the ongoing cavalcade of war crimes on display there. Who knows why? Is too much becoming too obvious? Is it impossible to any longer pretend we don’t see the mass murder, the ethnic cleansing, the, let’s get real for once, genocide proudly committed by Israel? Perhaps the joint letter from France, Britain, and Canada calling out Israel's genocide was a bridge too far… is it too late to stuff the genocide genie back in the bottle? Perhaps not. No sooner had our mainstream newshounds acknowledged Israel’s ongoing warcrimes, than the towelheads ‘o terror had to prove yet again that, when it comes to terror, they’re not about to play second fiddle to the Chosen People. So let’s murder a couple of innocent Jewish kids at the museum… and the world will feel sorry for Israel again!

The downward spiral continues-Neumann gets a rider

Since we took possession of this hundred-year-old pile of bricks twenty years ago, I have prided myself on using nothing but an old-school push mower to trim the expansive lawns. Everybody I know has, for twenty years, told me I’m an idiot. I tell them right back I get 3x the recommended exercise for a man my age just by pushing that sucker back and forth across the grass… no $200 a month gym membership for me! Nosiree! An old-school push mower is just the ticket if you want to live forever! Or so I thought. Needless to say, my recent CHF diagnosis has kyboshed that theory. I’m trying to contain my outrage and disappointment because that shit can just ruin one day after another… better to breathe deep and just keep pushing…oh, I forgot… I’m breathless after thirty seconds of breathing deep. As the kids used to say, that fuckin’ sucks. But every cloud has its silver, or in this case, “Cub Cadet Yellow,” lining. As I’ve been reminded many times, that cup-holder they put on every lawn tractor of every brand has the potential to transform a drudgey chore into an excellent adventure! What the hell… if I can’t work lawncare into my physical fitness routine, at least it can be part of my entertainment regimen. NEWS FLASH: Retired teacher busted for drunk lawn mowing. The downward spiral never ends…

Going swimming in your snowmobile suit

And I’m not talking ice-fishing here; I’m talking let’s hitch up the boat and get out on Georgian Bay! I’m sitting in my car by the boat launch in Wiarton, just a couple blocks from the hospital that provided me such a hospitable (!) stay a month ago. It’s a bright sun-drenched morning with a brisk breeze blowing straight up Colpoy’s Bay out of the North-East. It’s gotta be friggin’ cold out there! According to Environment Canada the air temp last night was 4 C, and the water temp was 3. That’s a scant two degrees above ice forming on the surface. There’s a medium chop and the waves are at a half-metre. Nobody in their right mind goes out on a day like this. Of course, anyone who knows “serious” fishermen, or “fishers” if we must, will know that serious fishermen are by definition not in their right minds, and as if to prove my point, at that very moment a small aluminum boat comes bobbing around the end of the breakwater, heading for the boat launch. I can’t be sure, but it looks like Billy-Bob from Desboro, his brother Darrell, and his other brother Darrell, and get this; the three of them are bundled up in snowmobile suits! At least they’re getting more than three weeks use out of their winter gear! I wouldn’t want to vouch for the buoyancy of a water-logged snowmobile suit in a worst-case scenario, but hey, maybe these lads are really strong swimmers. Just as a point of interest, I’m a mere two kilometres from the Wiarton International Airport. This must be one of Canada’s smallest international airports, but I did some digging, and they are an official entry point to Canada. As far as I know, never in its history has Wiarton ever hosted any regular scheduled foreign flights. The Canadian Border Services personnel posted here must have one of the sweetest gigs in all the land. Bet they have lots of free time for fishing! I like to come here to contemplate the sorry state of our world. It’s impossible to follow current events without getting mired in grim foreboding. Maybe that new Pope can bring some hope? He’s from Chicago, after all! Just like Barry O, another purveyor of empty hopes. Then again, Rahm Emanuel, Richard Daley, and Al Capone were from Chicago too… The Trump Circus, meanwhile, has become a full-blown three-ring international extravaganza. Mafia Don has thus far failed to end the war in Ukraine or the genocide in Gaza, but did manage to stop a Pakistan-India war nobody even saw coming. I’m guessing that’s relatively easy because Pakistan is effectively a US dependency, whereas both Israel and Ukraine have proven far less dependent than many assumed. If there is any hope at all for the Palestinians in Gaza it lies in the fraying of the Israel-USA relationship. Polling shows a majority of the American public across both parties now disapprove of Israel’s policies of ethnic cleansing and mass murder. Prominent Republicans as well as some Dems are balking at criminalizing criticism of Israel. If polling trends continue, there’ll be a stampede of congress-critters abandoning the Chosen People as midterms get closer. The arc of history may not be bending towards justice quite yet, but I detect a shift in the wind. Meanwhile back in my world, I’m focused on recovering some of the strength I’ve lost to CHF. I’ve got a two km track laid out- the first km on the flat, the second up the Burgess Sideroad hill. First timed it at 45 minutes a couple days after I was discharged. As a reference point, that used to be my time for a a 5 km walk. Anyway, I’m doing it in 20-25 minutes now, so obviously some recovery is possible. When there’s not a whole lotta hope, hold tight to what you can find.

The bong people

The Holy Father passed to his reward on Easter Monday. Of course he did! Funny how his health management, or should I say, death management team, managed to make his demise rhyme like that. The only possible dates more apropos for the death of a pontiff are Good Friday and Easter Sunday. A week before, on what is known in households more pious than mine as Holy Monday, my earthly father went to his reward. He was a modest enough man and made no claims to holiness. In fact, he would have seen his demise on Holy Monday as a happy accident rather than pre-ordained. It was only a week before that a keen young doctor had informed me, after a brief hospital stay, that I was fast in the grip of congestive heart failure, or CHF as the acronym-happy medical profession shorthands it. That’s something I’d normally consider a newsworthy development, but under the circumstances I decided to keep it under my hat for the time being. Dad only gets to die once, and I don’t want to steal his thunder. So, the Pope’s a goner, Dad’s a goner, but, at least for now, I’ve got a life to live and many medical appointments to attend. In fact, I had one in Guelph the day after Dad’s funeral. Decided to get a room and stay over instead of making the five hour round trip afresh the next day. Set up camp at the Super Eight out on Woodlawn. It’s right next to the former Holiday Inn Express. I say “former” because during the Covid times the city leased the property and turned it into a homeless shelter. I shit you not! Homeless in Guelph? Y’all come on down to the Holiday Inn and take a load off, courtesy of the Guelph taxpayer! Stay as long as you like! That boondoggle must be over, because they’ve tidied up around the joint and it sports new Hilton badging. Jeez, you just wanna hope they had the fumigators cranked to eleven! But what a beautiful Easter story… death and resurrection! But I digress. At the edge of the parking lot Super Eight’s got a couple picnic tables and a gas BBQ under an enclosure, with a sign; Designated Smoking Area. Don’t let anybody tell you Super Eight has no amenities! I had a good view of the set-up from my room, and it appeared many of the clientele took the sign literally. Nevermind an old codger guiltily pulling on a ciggy, or perhaps even a joint - this crowd brought out the neon-coloured two-foot-tall glass bongs! Oh, well, live and let live, I always say. Next morning, long before anything is astir, I’m the old codger guiltily puffing on a smoke at the picnic table. Somewhere a door slams. There’s three pre-teen girls heading my way, wearing pajamas and carrying a Walmart bag. I quickly stub the smoke because I’m acutely aware I’m setting a bad example. They sit down across from me and pull out a two-foot-tall neon orange bong out of the Walmart bag. Holy shit! Now I’ve seen everything! At some level you want to scream, where are the friggin’ parents, but you know it’s way too late for that. What I learned at my medical appointment was I have two options. One. Put my feet up, fire up a bong, and wait for CHF to carry me to a better place. Two. Put my feet on the ground and lace up the walking shoes. Between diet and exercise I’ll get another ten-fifteen years out of this mortal coil…Or die trying!

Trump-Zellensky and the Angels of Death

I’m pretty sure the entire script for Trump 2.0 is coming out of Dana White’s WWE writer’s workshops. If you can get your mind around that, it explains a lot of otherwise inexplicable shit. Like how a scene that was cut from Godfather III showed up at the Pope’s funeral. Everybody knows that’s how history works. The protagonists sit down alone, and hammer out the future mano a mano. The future of Crimea is Russian. The future of Odessa is Russian too. Unless… As the Great Men of History shape the future there in the Vatican, it’s just Trump and Zelly and some random dudes in swishy floor-length black gowns. Those are the angels! Alas, not all of the angels are working in the employ of Heaven. In fact, there is reason to believe that at least some of them are Putin loyalists. Not sure how Dana’s people will handle that plot twist. Remember in that infamous beat-down in the Oval Office how JD and DJ were tag-teaming Zelly with the “you ain’t got no cards” mantra? Today Trump was admitting he doesn’t have any either. Which leaves the Free World with a stark choice. Do we admit defeat? Or do we make a deal with Putin and call it victory?