Large Fierce Mammal

The Schooner Courtesan
(A ribald shanty)

By LFM

The schooner Courtesan was fast,
A spirited ride was she!
An’ if ye’d fain be named “a ride”,
Well, that’s the kind to be!

“Voluptuous” can scarce describe,
Nor “pulchritude” befit,
The goode ship’s naked figurehead,
Both legs wrapped ’round the ‘sprit!

Her back was arched, her hips just so,
Affording glorious view
That raised morale upon the deck
Through any wind that blew!

Blowing every yard of sail,
Each crewman’s soul astir,
She’d ride with joy the greatest swells
Because they swelled for her.

Where lesser ships would falter,
An’ their crews might n’er survive,
She surged and bucked beneath her men,
And brought each through alive.

She’d no mere “crew”, the Courtesan,
So cast that from your head.
In truth, instead of crew she took
Her lovers on instead.

The Courtesan’s now legend,
But for Men who knew her well,
Her memory will stir their loins
Until each sails to Hell.

Their kind no longer live except
As stories told of yore,
By those wot’s never been to sea,
An’ only blown ashore.

“Humans, like metals, are malleable, and you can deform a sheet of metal with hammer-blows and then tap it out flat again. But any metallurgist will assure you that the whole sheet has changed, and only melting it down and rolling it again will undo it.” ~ Freedom & Necessity, Steven Brust & Emma Bull

In this era of quick fixes and humans know best, what I’ve quoted above could just as easily be applied to the “training” of Dogs. In its reference to malleability, the words of the eloquent Ms. Bull and Mr. Brust also posit that forceful methods of modification come hand in hand with an intrinsic change from the Natural state of the raw material. A condition that can be reversed to its original and undeformed condition, but at what cost?

Everyone recognizes the term “Dog training”, but evidence garnered from my own observations leads me to the conclusion that little in the form of a standardized understanding exists in society. For clarity then, let us begin today by defining it. Quite simply, the concept giving birth to the term arises from the need for Humans and Dogs to live and function together in harmony and for mutual benefit, therefore necessitating a set of guidelines that are both understood and understandable by all parties. Keep that in mind as we go forward.

As most of you know, Mrs. LFM and I have Dogs in our family that would have been dead, or otherwise condemned to life in an animal shelter, if not for having met us. For each of them, the genesis of becoming a treasured part of our family was a combination of the serendipitous involvement of some very fine people, and  human misunderstanding. Ham handed cluelessness. Even the base malice of the bully against a perceived weaker target. I don’t say this with any intention to wrap our Clan in a mantle of nobility, but simply to point out that not a one of these Dogs was branded a failure by society through any fault of their own, and none carried any genetic or temperamental predisposition to destructive outbursts. As with all Natural things, they simply needed to belong to an understandable world, and in the condition they each arrived in, that world needed to be patient and unhurried. They needed to find Respect, both given and received, in a spirit of what the Esteemed Silvia Jay refers to as “Mindful Leadership”.

Mindfulness, Goode Reader, is a language we speak here, and that you are well advised to pursue to whatever level of fluency your own Nature permits. I’ve written of it more than a few times. It’s at the root of the Way of the Wild, and governs every encounter between creatures of Nature, whether those involved be species of like or unlike kind.

Every living thing in Nature, flora or fauna, has a Way that defines its ideal state of being. That balanced equation of form and function forged by generations of evolution against the anvil of environmental reality. This ideal state of being is, for each species, its own unique expression of the greater, all encompassing Way – the Way of the Wild – the Way from which all others spring. ~ Worldly Wisdom Wednesday – The Way of the Wild

The making and raising of Mindful Leaders, of Humans worthy of being defined as such by the Way of the Wild, has motivated us LFMs to do the most Natural thing there is – conceive, birth, and raise up a kid or three. In this pursuit, we have taken a step back from our professional hands-on outpatient activities as heretofore offered by Golden Mountain Dog Solutions, and this hiatus has offered a perfect opportunity for reflection on the Dogs, Humans, and situations we’ve met over the years. The successes and failures, measured against the Truths, “truths”, half-truths, and overt lies we’ve heard spoken, although never by the Dogs involved.

“There’s facts about dogs, and then there’s opinions about them. The dogs have the facts, and the humans have the opinions. If you want the facts about the dog, always get them straight from the dog. If you want opinions, get them from humans.” ~ J. Allen Boone

The road so far has led us to a number of conclusions that I will no doubt expand on in the future, but today I will focus on one deplorable parasitic industry that owes its success to people who for one reason or another are “too busy”, or otherwise (though always self-excusingly) unwilling to be truly present in their relationship with a Dog. These people would be dead, maimed, unhappily married or (probably repeatedly) divorced, jailed, or (hopefully) have their children seized if they brought the same mindset to their interpersonal relationships with other Humans, and yet society accepts the methods they embrace in Dog “training” without a blink of an eye.

I’ve written before of a related industry now generically referred to as “invisible fence“, but today I speak in the broadest of strokes on the application of shock collar based aversive training methods, and its general acceptance as THE WAY to that perfect relationship between you and your Dog … or rather dog, because I only capitalize the name of a thing when the reference is to the thing in its entirety, and that is not what those who follow this path are looking for.

Early in the present century, while Mrs. LFM was finishing her last year of University, we rented an apartment in Halifax near the Dalhousie campus. In the neighbourhood lived a woman who was regularly encountered walking her Dog, off lead, on sidewalks that lay adjacent to busy city streets. The Dog never strayed from being in a perfect on the left, shoulders even with handler’s legs, position, and never looked right or left. Neither did it make any kind of eye contact with the woman, and nothing that happened around it was ever seen to break the spell. It was an automaton that just looked like a Dog, and while the woman appeared content, there was no detectable joy in the relationship for either of them.

We’ll never know for sure what methods were employed to kill the Spirit of a Dog to the degree necessary to convert it into a piece of walking furniture – although it had the earmarks of electric shock collar aversive “training” written all over it – but the Dog in question had clearly learned that its only hope of happiness lay within very narrow and strictly enforced limits of behaviour. The animal called Dog simply didn’t live there any more, in a manner I find reminds me of what I’ve read describing the assimilation philosophy underlying the Canadian Indian Residential School system – “Kill the Indian in the child.” ~ Worldly Wisdom Wednesday – Nature’s Rules?

Consider this:

“No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels.” ~ Gregory Bateson – Steps to an Ecology of Mind

All Teaching, of whatever sort, must be Mindful of this singular Truth, so that anything learned will mesh with the Way of the Wild as it expresses itself in the Student. Think on this, Goode Reader, and as you do, keep in mind what is left of Dogs at the end of shock collar and other aversive “training” methods, engendering as they do a requirement to be conscious of every motivation lest it end in correction.

It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that I’ve been more than a little sparse in my utterances of late. Let me tell you a little about that.

We of the LFM Clan are a healthy and robust lot, descended from a bunch of tough nuts. When we catch a cold or flu, we take the proper measures and get over it post haste. Mrs. LFM carried SFM Viktor to term without a sniffle, and the Heir himself made it well past his first birthday in the same fine fettle. That is until recently when we capped off more than  two years of perfect health with a cascading series of viral infections that had to be experienced to be believed.

The kicker for it all would appear to have been the SFM starting daycare; an event that inevitably brings everything that’s going around straight back home to the family household. We understand that, and expected it, but there’s nothing like two and a half months of non stop illness – starting a month BEFORE the introduction of daycare – to make you lose your sense of humour about the whole thing.

If I were to pick a singularly annoying thing out of the whole phlegm, vomit, and liquid feces soaked affair, it would have to be the oh so knowing looks given by everyone from medical practitioners to mere passers by in explanation of what we were all going through – “Oh yes, it’s common for children starting daycare to bring home anywhere from seven to ten infections a year!”

Yes well, be that as it may, and timing notwithstanding, our experience is far from unique in this present Winter, and afflicted no small part of the population whether they had kids in daycare or not.

It all began with cold symptoms that first appeared in early October and lasted the month, no matter how hydrated, well fed, or well rested we persisted in being. After a brief period of faux respite, that morphed into a period of renewed cold symptoms accompanied by laryngitis. Next came increased nasal congestion with post nasal drip producing a lung emptying gagging cough that routinely triggered vomiting.

Next came more cold symptoms, another brief faux recovery, and finally, only a couple weeks ago, a 24 hour period of that kind of gastrointestinal infection that leaves one wondering which end to stick in the toilet, accompanied by sweats, tremours, and overwhelming physical weakness. The SFM got it first on a Thursday with two explosive vomit episodes, Mrs. LFM early the following Saturday morning, then me starting south of the border before moving north in the afternoon. Viktor recovered quickly, only to present with projectile vomiting one more time the following week. He was pretty much back to normal after that, but that last episode left us wondering if this was something new, or a relapse of the late unpleasantness.

So here I am writing to you, in my seventh day phlegm free, in a house wherein nobody is coughing, and everyone is passing their food and drink the way it was meant to be. I can only assume we’ve bested our microscopic enemies so there are none left for this season. Time will tell.

Archaeological evidence suggests that we Humans of today owe our success as a species to the forging long ago of a wondrously strategic alliance – comradeship with the ancestors of that most noble thing called the Dog. Alas, the benefit of that linkage has not served our four legged counterpart so well, but that is not the point of today’s bit of ear bending. My point is that the Human of today, and the Dog of today, are stirred in their motivations and reactions to stimuli by instincts honed to assure competitive success in the world that existed in a time when “home” and “cave” or “tent” were synonymous.

I’ve spoken of this before, most notably in my poem Hunter’s Soul, inspired by another Man and his Dog, and placed here for your edification back in the waning days of 2012. What I present today was inspired by a recent, and actually quite brief, incident shared by me and my Dog Milo, he with whom I appear on the banner that forms the masthead of this piece.

One From Two

By LFM

The slivered moon casts meagre sheen,
Upon the trail our feet have been.
Now resting under shadowed Tree,
We watch that trail, my Dog and me.

The Winter forest’s perfect shroud
Doth take each step and cry aloud
That something walked and passed this way –
A page to read in hunt of prey.

We know of this, and something more –
What tracks the one who’s gone before,
And follows him so upwind goes
Will soon bring scent to Trusty nose.

Lest any thing with hunger yen
To taste the flesh of Dogs or Men,
We’ve passed upwind then doubled back
To see what might be on our track.

There we watch, my Dog and me,
Shadowed by accomplice Tree.
Tuned to judge who comes to sight,
And set our minds to flee or fight.

A scene as old as both our kind,
Inspires thrill from primal mind,
As Comrades poised in hide of shade
Ready teeth and gleaming blade.

There beneath our looming Tree,
We feel the ties, my Dog and me,
Built of Blood and Trust and Heart,
That shaped our kind back to the start.

No Dire Wolf is on our trail,
No warring clan of dark travail,
Yet what we call modernity –
It matters not beneath our Tree.

One hand ebon coat doth stroke,
The other, Walnut hilt bespoke,
We rise for home, in Nature bound,
  One Creature made from Man and Hound.

Blasphemy
Noun (plural blasphemies)

The action or offence of speaking sacrilegiously about God or sacred things; profane talk: he was detained on charges of blasphemy.

Two incidents of punishment for “blasphemy” have been in the news of late – one meted out by judicial decision of a Saudi Arabian court against blogger Raif Badawi who ran a website promoting debate over religion and politics in his country, and the other at the hands of Muslim zealots who took it upon themselves to exact “vengeance” by shooting to death most of the editorial staff of the French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo for violating Islamic law by creating and publishing cartoons depicting The Prophet Muhammad.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/30849977

In the first instance, Raif Badawi’s convictions for cybercrime, disobeying his father and insulting Islam, earned him a sentence of 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison – the lashes to be administered publicly, fifty at a time, on Fridays. The second fifty were set to land this past Friday, but were stayed after, “…the Saudi king said his case had been referred to the Supreme Court after protests over the flogging.”

According to Amnesty International, the flogging sentence was postponed, “on medical grounds”.

In the matter of Charlie Hebdo, enough has been spoken, depicted, and written that I feel safe in not wasting your time, Goode Reader, in rehashing any of the gory details here, no matter how much you might enjoy my take on it. My singularly selfish reason for presenting both the matters of Raif Badawi and Charlie Hebdo today is to use them as a launching pad for presentation of my own definition – what I mean – when I speak the word “blasphemy”, and how these two events compare to it. (more…)

A True Leader, Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (1874 – 1922) turned the failure of his Antarctic expedition into a resounding success by bringing every one of his stranded men home alive. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

In his 9 December 2014 article, How Ernest Shackleton can help world address climate change, Paul Kennedy wrote:

A hundred years ago, Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton failed — in absolutely spectacular fashion. But some believe the way he turned failure into a historic triumph is inspiration for world leaders dealing with the crisis of climate change.

“Shackleton inspires us to look deep inside ourselves to see if we have the right, bright stuff to navigate the risks of climate disruption,” says Dr. Joe MacInnis.

The physician is an expert on leadership in high-risk environments, and a deep-sea explorer — he was the first person to dive under the North Pole and he accompanied James Cameron on his mission to plumb the depths of the Mariana Trench. Dr. MacInnis visited Shackleton’s grave recently on a pilgrimage to South Georgia Island aboard the National Geographic ship Explorer, along with a group of botanists, ecologists and scientists from around the world. ~ Paul Kennedy, How Ernest Shackleton can help world address climate change

Of Shackleton and his Leadership methods, he goes on to say:

Five thousand British adventurers applied to be part of the expedition. Those who went were selected based on somewhat unorthodox criteria. Meteorologist Leonard Hussey was known to play a mean banjo, for example. Physicist Reginald James was chosen partly because he could sing.

Choosing a team with diverse skills to meet unexpected challenges and pressures was part of the brilliance of Shackleton’s leadership.

On Jan. 19, 1915, those skills were called into play when their ship, Endurance, became trapped by ice. Ten months later, the ice crushed the wooden hull of the vessel and the men watched as it sank into the frozen ocean.

Under Shackleton’s guidance, the men built a camp and spent the next five months drifting on the ice of the Weddell Sea. Finally, they made their way to Elephant Island.

Knowing they had to find help, Shackleton came up with an audacious plan. He refitted a lifeboat and set out with a handful of specially selected men in a desperate attempt to reach a whaling station on South Georgia Island, more than 1,000 km away across one of the world’s roughest stretches of ocean.

For 15 days they faced the ugliest of weather and violent seas in a tiny boat. A 500-tonne steamer, bound from Buenos Aires for South Georgia, went down in the same hurricane-force winds.

Miraculously, Shackleton and his men made it. They found tiny South Georgia Island, a feat in itself, and walked 56 kilometres across its uncharted mountains and glaciers to reach the station.

Shackleton commandeered a whaling vessel to pick up the rest of his expedition from Elephant Island in Antarctica. He ultimately turned the dismal failure of losing his ship into a resounding success by rescuing every one of his stranded men.

As this series goes forward, I will have more to say about the Leadership lessons taught by the Goode Sir Ernest, but in the mean time, invite you all to listen to the CBC Ideas Broadcast, Shackleton’s Grave. Oh, and keep notes, because Nature may be administering a test when, or possibly before, we’re done here.

So waste no time settling back and clicking here to soak it all in.

If only it was that easy.

The expulsion of evils, from being occasional, tends to become periodic. It comes to be thought desirable to have a general riddance of evil spirits at fixed times, usually once a year, in order that the people may make a fresh start in life, freed from all the malignant influences which have been long accumulating about them. ~ Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941); The Golden Bough, Chapter 3. The Periodic Expulsion of Evils. 1922

An excellent bit of enlightenment from Sir Frazer, and while we don’t do it annually, 2015 is an election year in Canada – a good time to start a new series on Leadership. If you come here even semi-regularly, you’ll know none of this is uttered because I hold a sliver of hope for enlightening or redeeming any politician or bureaucrat. That sort has long since convinced themselves they’re right about everything, and even if they’re wrong, spinning that wrongness into rightness by redefining what’s right is right, right?

Wrong, and there’s only one flavour of it.

I’ve long found it irksome to hear elected political officials referred to as “leaders”. To my mind, whether I approve of the person holding the office or not, the Prime Minister of Canada is no more my personal leader than would be the CEO of a corporation in which I was a share holder; so when I hear about a summit meeting somewhere that’s to be attended by “world leaders”, it never fails to make me snort in derision.

At the present time, we are sitting atop a ticking time bomb, waiting for the right combination of Natural pushback, economic dishevelment, and blatant social disparity to trigger the avalanche. Whether or not it can be averted, or if any or all of us get swept away in it, will not be decided by wringing hands while “world leaders” meet to dole out the life boats among the chosen few deemed most important to the “world economy”. We cannot look to politicians to “lead us” out of anything, and the kinds of events I’ve been observing over the past twelve months alone have only confirmed my belief that the really big threats to this planet and everything on it will need to be solved in spite of the way governments currently operate.

I hold that the survival of Humans as a species – of Man, the animal I mean – is, and always has been, born of our adaptability.

“Man has a large and highly adaptive brain – nearly as smart as a Crow – along with this pesky opposable thumb – one on each side unless you’ve gone through life being called “Lefty”. We Man critters can imagine and build solutions to problems that Nature didn’t give us the speed, wings, teeth, fur, claws, armor, sense of smell, or eyesight to solve otherwise.” ~ Worldly Wisdom Wednesday – Archaic Revival

In every age, in every culture, Human societies have understood Leadership, for this principle is an adaptation in its own right that gives the better Led an edge against all dangers. Yet in this ever so “enlightened” and “evolved” age, one who would put his or her name forward to become “leader” of a nation need offer little more than a “clean” criminal record, a reasonable university transcript, well concealed closet skeletons, and a good sales pitch to qualify for the label. By its True Natural meaning, Leader is decidedly NOT merely a label.

So, Goode Reader, as we go forward together I will be delving deeply into the True Nature of Leadership, and as usual, I sincerely invite your spirited involvement by way of comments on what you read.

To speak of the Warrior Path is to conjure images of life and death. Of strife and struggle. Of blades and guns and martial skill directed toward a goal of death and destruction. But as the Warrior walks the Path, it will soon become clear that if his reason for being there is to subjugate others or right perceived wrongs through mastery of hurtful arts, then the full right of Warriorhood will as swiftly be denied. The True Warrior treasures Life, and lives it in the gift of every day. He understands that his greatest struggle will forever be to come to grips with his darkest self – not as an enemy to be destroyed, but rather as an ally that, once brought to a point of mutual respect, is best to be cultivated. That the greatest enemy of all is ignorance, willingly bought. ~ The Forest of Truth

Today is what modern Western society has deemed to mark the end of a year. A calendar year actually, because speaking in celestial terms, the next cycle began 10 days ago. For reasons of business, I find it necessary to maintain a foot hold in the former artificial structure of time measurement, but for all True reasons, only the latter is of consequence. (more…)

Source: http://digital-art-gallery.com/oid/105/640x397_18164_Cinderella_of_the_Ashes_2d_fantasy_concept_art_illustration_horse_warrior_dark_female_lava_elemental_picture_i.jpg

The past calendar year has been a cacophonous clamour overshadowed by ominous storm clouds. It spawned this.

A Parable

By LFM

The Horsemen four we’re taught to fear,
The “quiet ones” we’re told to ward,
But hearken not the storm crow’s cry,
That seeks to blunt both wits and sword.

The children of Apocalypse
Are daughters, and but two my Son,
Worth a dozen horsemen each
Know them both before they’ve won!

Cacophony, the first is called,
Her voice belies her name to thee.
So silky soft, ‘twould rule your mind,
No urges left to fight or flee.

Seductive is Cacophony,
With thrilling words to fill the ear.
She seeks to make a slave of thee
Ere meaning of her name is clear.

And when her voice is all you hear,
This sister’s task is nearly done.
The clock ticks down, the sands run out –
Prepare to meet the other one.

All warning of her onset drowned
By clamour of Cacophony,
Swift and sure, the end has come.
This sister’s name – Catastrophe.

Eat me. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobster)

The season of Yule, wherever and however it may be observed, is one festooned with traditions, not least of which are those affecting food. My own heritage comes from German and English influences, and since my blessed induction into the Polish fold, the flood gates have truly opened!

Celebrations and observances surrounding the Winter Solstice predate recorded history, and many of the culinary traditions included in today’s holiday feasts carry forward ingredients and methods of preparation that remind us of harder times. To me, this is part of the charm; but what is not part of the charm is the introduction of revisionist history into this otherwise mouth watering sequence of events.

I revel in being old enough to have “been there” when certain events transpired, and this coupled with my absolute disdain for revisionism, be it uttered through ignorance or design, routinely gets me up on my hind legs with teeth bared. A big contributor to the frequency of my outbursts is that fount of lower case knowledge and truth known as the internet, but source notwithstanding, I am here today to speak to you on a faux holiday “tradition” involving an ingredient my family has enjoyed from my earliest childhood rememberings, but that is widely held in the current era as THE traditional Maritime holiday feast – the Lobster. Quite simply, it’s not. (more…)