It's hard to imagine...

 

..just how the City of Surrey managed to wangle its recently-announced designation as a "Tree City" as when I look around I see small forests and big trees coming down, down, down.  

One of the most reliable spokespersons for the trees -- for years now -- is a woman named Deb Jack. When she speaks, our know-it-all mayor offers his usual lip service and then votes in a way that shows he's yet again ignoring the things she says.  

The photo above shows one of a batch of trees that bordered the edge of a property where a little old house was torn down, no doubt to be replaced by a giganto, absurdly big one. 

I'd have thought that trees that close to the property line would not have had to be chopped, as there are some limits (too small, but they're officially there) as to how much clearance there needs to be between the building and the line. Besides, the next door 'neighbour' is an elementary school, so the 'natural fence' provided by trees would have meant shade, privacy, and a cushion from the noisy play outside of a school.

The "Tree City" designation requires a city to show a plan for evaluating specific trees, for having a policy that requires replacement of trees that have been removed -- and yes, Surrey has these, but they're plans as thin as the paper they're written on. They're often ignored, and as for replacements -- huh? How does a 3-foot cedar shrubbery replace a tree that's over 50 years old. 

I'm not the only one who feels our Council's approval of trees falling everywhere is unacceptable, but with the current 'representatives' sitting, neither we nor the trees seem to stand a chance. 

Surrey: good for making promises as hollow as a tree gone rotten with disease.

Share a poem today

Sometimes it seems that there's a designated 'Day' for just about everything. 

Yesterday was (and it came as news to me) the International Day of Happiness. That seems like a day we could use more often than once a year. 

Today is another such observance. In 1999 the United Nations declared this date World Poetry Day. Some years, a specific theme is declared. In 2017 the theme was 'Freedom'. 

This year, while there's no specific theme, the preservation of languages plays a role. 

Since I don't write much in anything but English, the best I can offer for a poem today is a small piece particular to this challenging year we've been enduring. 

Haiku in isolated times

sitting at the table

so many days together

we remain in love

They're heeere!

It's always a glorious day when a box of new books arrives. Especially when they're my very own latest, Glorious Birds. 

Looking back over this less-than-glorious year, with its various stages of lockdown, I feel lucky that I found myself engaged in a project where I'd not only learn so much, but where I'd have such a great time. 

And now, on to the launch event, happening later this very day. 

Maybe it's time...

...that God needs a new pronoun too. 

My uncle often used to lead a prayer when we sat down to eat. And I loved that he generally began, "We thank thee, blessed Father/Mother..." an opening that acknowledged a being beyond the boundaries of a single given gender. 

On this day when we recognize one of the most intense complexities of mathematics, pi, it seems like a good time to grant a broader expansiveness to that most complex of all human constructs, the idea of God. 

And, if we're the sort who sometimes offers thanks to such an entity, we need to be grateful for Their (rather than Her or His) generous ways.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is International Women's Day, a day when I'll be celebrating with a reading from my book about Amelia Earhart, Flightpaths. 

Her accomplishments as an aviator would be enough to make her a worthy mentor, but I admire her as well for her courage, especially in the many ways she stood up for and spoke out for the rights of women.  

Even though she was speaking about opportunities (or rather, the lack thereof) for women in the field of aviation, this statement of hers from 1934, sadly remains somewhat relevant today: "If and when you knock at the door, it might be well to bring an ax along; you may have to chop your way through." [from Susan Butler's excellent book, East to the Dawn]

The photo above is one of the monuments to her in Atchison, Kansas, the town where she was born. They like to celebrate their most famous citizen by having a festival in her honour every summer (every summer except 2020, of course; fingers crossed for this July). 

This weekend's edition of the Globe and Mail offered an interesting idea for a way to celebrate Women's Day. The article made the suggestion to read a book by a woman author. While that doesn't sound too radical a thought, the article reminded me that men don't always read books by women writers. 

This is something I've wondered about before, as women and girls certainly aren't afraid to read the works of men. Is this just another of those double-standards we continue to live with?

Tomorrow -- and by that, I don't mean only tomorrow, March 8th -- but all the tomorrows on into the years when things can only continue (we hope) to improve for women around the world. Onward!