Large Fierce Mammal

To begin, I offer this summary from an article posted Wednesday by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation:

A Lunenburg man has been fined $5,000 and is prohibited from owning animals for 10 years after his Portuguese water dog died when he left it inside his car in Wolfville during a hot day last summer …

… Remai said he got the dog, named Jackie, when he was a puppy and went so far as to look for a vet who would avoid using drugs and vaccinations. He said he was stressed the day his dog died — for a number of reasons — and said sometimes bad things happen.

Remai told the court he’s not good at multitasking and was distracted that day. ~ Lunenburg man fined $5K after dog dies in hot car

And this, posted today by CNN:

What sounded like the most tragic of accidents — a dad absentmindedly leaving his toddler in the car on a scorching Georgia day — is now being treated by police as a horrific crime …

… Later that afternoon, around 4:16, Harris left his workplace near Vinings, outside Atlanta. Within minutes, he pulled into a shopping center asking for assistance with the toddler, who had been in the car for about seven hours at that point, the warrant says …

… The second-degree warrant says Harris “did with criminal negligence causes (sic) a child under the age of 18 cruel or excessive physical or mental pain.” …

… “There’s a difference between negligence and gross negligence,” Cobb Police spokesman Mike Bowman said at a press conference. “The thing about the negligence is that it could happen to anybody. The gross negligence shows that there’s some other circumstances revolving around this.”

When a reporter directly asked if authorities think it’s malice or negligence, Bowman said, “I honestly don’t have an answer for that question.” …

… When Harris was charged with felony murder and child cruelty, there was vigorous debate over whether the heartbroken father should be punished. Surely, he had suffered enough, many thought.

Erin Krans of Marietta started a change.org petition asking Cobb District Attorney Vic Reynolds to drop the charges. It garnered hundreds of signatures.

“This could happen to anyone. Anyone. Charging a grieving father is abusive,” wrote Susannah Waldron of Universal City, Texas.

Another signatory, Molly Greenwood of Centerville, Ohio, wrote, “I think the accident alone is enough punishment for the man. I cannot imagine.” ~  Tragic accident or murder in hot-car toddler death?

“I was stressed that day and sometimes bad things happen.”

“I’m not good at multitasking.”

“This could happen to anyone.”

The world is awash with excuses, uttered daily in concert with unbelievably serious efforts to make them acceptable and reasonable, no matter how horrific the outcome. The rebranding of negligence as mistake is a growth industry, so we daily encounter people whose primary daily motivation is the avoidance of responsibility. Unwillingness to commit to anything and living every moment with one foot over the safety line. Belief that it is the duty of someone else to protect you from your own stupidity. To take a stand against the downward spiral of it all invites attack as being too judgmental and laying false claim to perfection, whereas what the naysayers are really doing is paving the way to the day they themselves do something equally idiotic. Sliding that foot over the safety line. (more…)

A beautifully ripe specimen, obviously recently harvested. (Source: http://www.birchbarkcanoe.net/images/furtradetop.jpg)

I have gone on record here many times as having a propensity to fuck with people, particularly when it comes to the Lore of the Great White North. Here is yet another example.

I once had cause to drive with a passenger from Miami, Florida to Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. You may recall that I have previously chronicled another incident from that very adventure. Story wise, that drive is the gift that keeps on giving.

It was in the early Spring and, as we drove ever northward, my Floridian passenger grew progressively riveted to the gradual appearance of more, and then still more, snow in the woods. Even more so when the Birch trees began to become more commonly seen, ultimately asking, “What ARE those white trees?”

“You’ve heard of Birch bark canoes?” I asked.

“Of course!” she replied.

“Well,” I said, “Those are babies. We harvest them in the fall.”

A conveyor belt in a German supermarket, photographed from an unforgivingly low angle. No mysteries here, of any kind. (Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Conveyor_belt_in_a_supermarket_in_Germany.jpg)

Totally Organic

By LFM

Conveyor belts at checkout stands
Are monuments to careless hands,
For as each turns it brings to view
Smears that range from “Yuck!” to “Eww!”

It may be water, maybe not.
It might be drool, or might be snot.
One critter’s blood? Another’s jizz?
No way of telling what it is.

So items bought are placed between
These smears that won’t soon be unseen.
Take care so nothing soaks it up
To float atop your coffee cup.

The secret’s in the timing dear.
If you have that, there’s nought to fear.
Await the dry as belt turns ’round,
And take no GROSS’ry homeward bound.

But wait! Now here’s a better though!
Why not clean the fucking lot?
A pause from moving cash to till
Might just give chance to fix this ill.

So grocers all, attention please..
Don’t make us wonder … spill or sneeze?
You keep the mung from off your shelves,
Why must we mind your belts ourselves?

Left to Right: Cst. Dave Joseph Ross (32), Cst. Fabrice Georges Gevaudan (45), and Cst. Douglas James Larche (40) of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police – Killed in an ambush in Moncton, New Brunswick on the evening of Wednesday, 4 June 2014. Click the image to enlarge. (Photo source: RCMP release via CTV News)

For the information of anyone who has somehow missed the news of the tragic events that played out this past week in Moncton, New Brunswick, I’m going to recap here. For a complete time line of events as reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), see here.

The infamous photograph of 24 year old Justin Bourque, taken by a witness on the evening of Wednesday, 4 June 2014. (Click the image to enlarge)

On the evening of Wednesday, 4 June 2014, 24 year old Justin Bourque dressed in camouflage, armed himself with what reports from witnesses say was a collection of weapons including at least one knife, a crossbow, a rifle, a shotgun, and a supply of ammunition, and walked brazenly out of the trailer park where he lived alone. The timing of his actions made it a certainty that he would be seen by many witnesses, one of whom shot the picture at left.

Police responding to reports of an armed man, dressed in camouflage, walking through a residential neighbourhood, found themselves ambushed when they were fired upon from a concealed position. Seconds after their arrival at the scene, Constables Dave Joseph Ross, Fabrice Georges Gevaudan, and Douglas James Larche were dead or dying, and Constables Darlene Goguen and Eric Dubois were wounded and down. By all appearances, the suspect let himself be seen near the selected site of a planned ambush where he then set himself up to wait for his selected targets – law enforcement.

The police reaction was, not surprisingly, swift and massive. The portion of Moncton where the initial assault occurred, along with a large portion of the surrounding area was placed under lockdown. Everyone was asked to remain inside, and at night to leave all exterior lights on, while the area was gone over with a fine toothed comb. Citizen cooperation was pretty much universal, and finally, in heavy rain at 12:10 hours Atlantic Daylight Time on Friday,. 6 June 2014, a soaking wet and unarmed Justin Bourque surrendered to RCMP with the words, “I’m done.”

Speaking for my own part, I believe the fact that Bourque was still breathing so he could utter those words – innocent until proven guilty notwithstanding – stands as a testament to the professionalism and self-restraint of those RCMP members who took him into custody.

As usual in any case where someone turns a firearm against other people, particularly when the targets are members of an identifiable group suggesting their execution to be part of the assailant’s agenda, the political grist for assorted gun control mills – pro and con – is inevitably going to be ground with vigour. It was with this in mind that I was disappointed (to say the least) at the nature, and most particularly the timing, of the statement from the Canadian National Firearms Association that struck the first blow in this sadly undying rehash of an age old argument, even before the bodies of the slain were cold. I was not alone.

In an article posted yesterday by the CBC under the headline Moncton shootings: National Firearms Association response ‘premature’, we have this:

“I thought it was pretty premature,” said Tony Bernardo, executive director of the Canadian Sport Shooting Association, adding that discussions about the causes of the Moncton shootings should “not [be] about gun control.”

He said the focus has to be “on identifying people who have mental health issues.”

On Thursday afternoon, while the manhunt for suspect Justin Bourque was still in progress, the NFA released a statement saying that while it “deplores the terrible actions by a clearly deranged individual,” the killings demonstrated that “Canada’s excessive firearms control system has failed again.”

Despite his misgivings about the timing of the NFA statement, Bernardo said that shooting rampages, which happen more frequently in the U.S., always result in finger-pointing at the gun lobby.

“When this kind of thing happens and the immediate talk is, ‘Let’s put more regulations on the law-abiding,’ you can understand why the NFA might be feeling a little twitchy here,” said Bernardo.

Most important to my point today are the words quoted in the article from University of Toronto sociology professor Jennifer Carlson, “… who said that given the high emotion surrounding events like these, it’s inevitable that talk will quickly turn to regulation.”

It’s to Professor Carlson that I’ll give the next to final word because I couldn’t have said it better:

“Part of the reason for why this debate is reproduced ad infinitum in the U.S. is because shootings have no intrinsic pro-gun or anti-gun meaning: both sides see them as vindication of their own perspectives.

“Unfortunately, it seems like this same deadlock is also at work in Canada.”

So for now, let the grinding of the mills be silent. Beyond that, let’s use this latest human tragedy as an opportunity to learn something, once and for all, about realistic, effective, and most importantly relevantly contextual response that doesn’t end up looking, yet again, like entrenched lines of wild eyed zealots jabbing accusing fingers at each other from behind their respective shield walls.

Spirit Messengers. The term conjures images of animals sent by a higher power to offer guidance toward the right Path. A Google search will turn up reams of pages identifying the characteristics of each creature, along with its “meaning” should it choose to make itself seen to you under a variety of circumstances.

As with publications that purport to assist you in the interpretation of dreams, I personally hold that this “if A then B” approach at once trivializes and over complicates something my experience has shown to be both subtle and powerful, as is Nature Herself.

To clarify, let me relate some encounters of my own. The first I wrote about back in the Spring of 2009, and published here under the title Moments of Magick (read it by clicking the title). The last line in that piece defines my point:

“… For this to be experienced I needed to be exactly where and when I was. So simple and yet so profound.” ~ Moments of Magick

In the Spring of 2011, two years after I wrote of my encounter with the Damselflies, came my article, Blessed by Birch and Eagle , that contained familiar echoes, and evidence that Spirit Messengers need not be animals at all. (more…)

I personally espouse and teach what I hold to be the necessity of being as self-sufficient and savvy as one can possibly be in seeing to the welfare of you and yours. I believe in community and lending a hand in defense of those who can’t help themselves, and in knowing how to recognize evil under all its masks; but none of this make me responsible for, nor entitled to force my personal philosophy on, anyone else. I take responsibility for my own actions, and the outcome thereof, and I expect all others to do the same. Weakness, sickness, age, infirmity, or a present shortage of real world education or training do not represent Human conditions deserving of the endowment of sheephood. However, willful ignorance, in hope that whatever ails you will be cured one day when “THEY” find a solution, certainly, to my mind, is characteristic of another term I do enjoy – that being “sheeple“. ~ I’m Not a Sheepdog – I Have Sheepdogs for That (Part 2 of 2)

What do an incinerated homeless man, a missing Python, and homicidal outbursts involving weapons that occur on school premises have in common? Good question. Let’s take a look. (more…)

Here’s a little entertainment to give you a send through the rest of this Friday. Whatever your flavour of spiritual philosophy that explains your place in the Universe, assuming you have any such thing, this uplifting little ditty by Rusty Cage (“Where the occult meets folk.”) offers a toe tapping go it alone approach that’s free from any expectation of Heaven or Hell. It’ll get stuck in your head. I promise. (more…)

Hank Snow was the musical idol of my late Father, who sounded a lot like him when he sang. You’ll notice that the new stamp honouring Hank Snow bears no mark of monetary value. That’s because here in Canada, we don’t know the latest postage price increase from one minute to the next. (Source: Canada Post – click the image to enlarge)

Last December I posted a piece here called Drying Up and Blowing Away that spoke to my contempt for the Canada Post Corporation. From that, you won’t be surprised that I greeted last Friday’s announcement of a commemorative Hank Snow stamp with a snort of mirth born of irony. The choice was perfect.

For those of you who don’t have a grounding in good old country and western music, Hank Snow (AKA The Singin’ Ranger, back in the day before  the term “Ranger” had any widespread public connection with Chuck Norris or anyone named Strider) was a native son of Liverpool, Nova Scotia; a small town located about a half hour drive west of where I’m sitting, and from such humble beginnings grew a country music legend.

Where the irony comes into the issue is how perfectly a couple of ol’ Hank’s more famous hits fill the bill as theme music for the Canadian mail service. (more…)

This was inspired by a CBC article Mrs. LFM brought to my attention today on the subject of those items of produce most infused with pesticide contamination.

Ode to the Marketplace

By LFM

The money’s spent, the thing is built,
It’s time to market, screw the guilt.
Though testers, testing, met their ending,
Still they sell it, patent’s pending.

303 Squadron badge

Bloody Foreigners is the name of a four part series that aired on British television beginning in 2010. It tells the story of how pivotal events in British history were brought to a successful conclusion in no small part through the efforts of non-British people. The series title alone spoke to me because I am the direct and proud descendant of bloody foreigners from Germany who answered Britain’s call for people to settle the strategic port of Lunenburg, and dd just that in 1753, but one particular episode hooked me completely in my capacity as one who has a passion for military history, aviation, and most particularly, is proudly Polish by marriage. The one titled Bloody Foreigners: The Untold Battle of Britain.

While it’s open to dispute whether it actually represents an “untold” story in the overall historical sense, the episode chronicles the exploits of a small band of pilots who survived the German invasion of Poland, and made it to England where they were formed into RAF 303 Squadron. Untold or not, when I played selected segments of the documentary for Mrs. LFM, she was delighted, and admitted that she had never heard about any of it before. Well dear reader, that’s “untold” enough for me, and my beauteous specimen of Polish Pulchritude is now even prouder than ever of her national heritage. (more…)