Large Fierce Mammal

“Her captain spies with hard shut eyes, glass safe within his pocket. The course he steers with stoppered ears that any voice should mock it.” ~ The Maelstrom, Stave 2 ~ by LFM (Image credit here ~ Click to enbiggen)

The title of today’s offering refers to the signature dish common to meals served here when subjects of a certain gravity are up for discussion. Prepared as only Mrs. LFM can from exclusively dark meat, and set before the invited few in a spirit not unlike the peaches doled out at town meetings hosted by Al Swearengen at his Gem Saloon in Deadwood. So welcome, Goode Reader, to our feast of gustatory delights, where you will find the bill of fare affords necessary counterbalance to the piquant aftertaste of these dark deliberations.

My choice in content and format of delivery came out of a supper meeting we called and hosted a week ago today. You won’t be surprised to learn that discussions far outlasted the abundance of hot oily hens laid out for the repast (a joke of course — everything Mrs. LFM makes is to die for, not from … unless that’s her point).

This will be the first in our treatment of assorted common afflictions, uttered from a Canada-centric point of view. This is because first, that’s where Mrs. LFM and I live, work, and raise our Sons; and second because Canada more than amply serves as a canary in the mine most of us share, the Stygian darkness of which could well use some illumination right about now. I am sure you will agree, or come to, wherever you are.

Canada is circling the drain in a convergence of calamities that can no longer be ignored in the spirit of simply wanting to be left alone, and can’t be escaped by treating it all like a rip tide you can evade by swimming across the flow until you’re out of the current. The Federal Liberal Government of Justin Trudeau and those of the body politic who even now would still vote for its members in the next election seem at this point in history to personify the old saying, “Everyone wants to ride the train but not everyone wants to lay the tracks.” And that’s ignoring provincial and territorial governments, which we won’t, believe me.

So grab a drumstick or four, a fistful of wings, and a heaping helping of potato salad Goode Reader and regard this as you chew.

Our Bill of Fare

By LFM

We’ve got rail blockades, and unmarked graves, injustices real and hand made,
All flavours of “‘isms”, unbridgeable schisms, and falsehoods imperfectly laid.
Cries of sedition, and left wing contrition for sins of our forefathers past,
Ideology driven apologies given that grant absolution once cast.

We’ve essentials to life that won’t bear any strife, born at home or a far foreign shore,
Those who’d rather be weak, and to turn or spread cheek, than remember what soldiers are for.
We’ve a treasury spent and a government bent on dissolving the national glue,
A post-national state, the first ever to date, and a saviour with voters to woo.

We’ve got trucks that can’t run parked in Ottawa sun, bouncy castles in Capital snow,
There’s official derision further sowing division, and truckers with nowhere to go.
We’ve those that would lead, and demand that you heed, wrapped in flags oh so perfectly draped,
We have “jabs” that aren’t votes, lots of sheep turned to goats, and some goats that refuse to be scaped.

We’ve got “expert” predictions, ignored contradictions, oft times from the same source and day,
And the few that cry foul faced with raising the howl it’s their “‘isms” that made them that way.
We’ve got bullying beasts from the near and far Easts, faced by kids with no study of  war,
And last but not least, just to round out the feast, we’ve some nuclear options in store!