Hurrah, it's time for the Greens!

With Blair Wilson announcing his own 'Green Shift' -- from the Liberal Party to the Green Party, we now have a Member in Parliament.

The best part about this? Elizabeth May can no longer be shut out of the televised Debates. Where it looks as though we'll be having an election mid-October, this is wonderful timing.

All the more reason to spend that $100 BC-Liberal bribe (oops, incentive cheque) from last June on a donation to the Greens.

Piper on the wharf

What a time to be stuck without a camera! We're out on the dock at sunset, and a man approaches, walking down the pier, carrying a small suitcase. He opens the case and starts pulling out various pipes and connectors. We start chattting and he explains more than I ever knew about bagpipes and how they work. There's still some light in the sky, and looking out over the sailboats moored at the marina, I'm thinking about my friend, Jackie, who died of a heart attack so recently. And then, those magical pipes begin. Oh Jackie, you'd have loved this night, camera or no.

Those silly Conservatives

Not wanting to promote Canadian artists abroad? Whose great idea was this one, anyway?

Peacekeepers' Day

No more Nagasaki as the marker for today's date. Even Canada has now recognized the importance of observing Peacekeepers' Day.

Sea Festival at White Rock

White Rock used to host an annual Sandcastle Festival. But then too many rowdies started showing up and it turned into a headache -- and an expensive one -- for the locals. One year, I remember walking through the shallows, admiring the many constructions, taking a few photos...only when I stepped out of the water and onto the sand, I realized my feet were bleeding. I'd been cut by bits of broken beer bottles embedded in the flats. That was probably the last year for the event.
But wait a minute, now it's 2008 and White Rock's decided to give it a go again. This makes the Sea Festival feel complete. Oh, and besides sandcastles, there's all sorts of music and vendors -- even fireworks!

Snowbirds over White Rock

Photos don't do them justice, but...

Camping at Chez Hoser

Really, how many people are able to camp in their own yard? And yes, this is a plain old regulation city lot. We're just fortunate that so much of it is covered in trees.

88 and its meaning

Hugs and kisses.

For me that's what 88's always stood for. It goes back to something I learned from a girlfriend whose uncle was a ham radio operator. The shorthand used by those radio operators (early version of texting?) employed various compressed abbreviations or numbers as quick substitutions for commonly used phrases. After all, for the most part, they were sending their messages in Morse Code.

For my girlfriend and me, numbers were fun to use in coded messages, and 88 was one of my favourites. Hugs and kisses were a great way to close a note.

Only now that number's meaning has changed, as yet another Canadian soldier -- James Hayward Arnal -- has died in Afghanistan. His death takes the number of number of dead Canadian soldiers up to 88. And no, I cannot refer to Cpl. Arnal as a 'casualty' -- there is nothing casual about death.

A perfect evening for a ballgame!

Sitting in the outfield bleachers, in amongst players from the Czech Republic, it felt a little bit like already being at the Olympics. This was the closest I'll be getting to Beijing, but just think -- I was able to walk to this event!

I wasn't the only one happy to focus on the game -- I loved these people who decided on taking the worm's eye view.

And to top it all off, the Canadian women beat the Australians, 8 - 2.

A bad day for Canada

In fact, a day of shame.

The freshly released video of CSIS interrogating the then-16-year-old Omar Khadr in Guantanamo raises more questions about Canada's complicity in allowing a Canadian -- and an underage one at that -- to spend so many years in an unsanctioned prison.

As if the release of that video wasn't enough cause for shame, today was also the day Canada deported Robin Long, one of the 200 or so American soldiers who have come to Canada because they disagree with Bush's war on Iraq.

The most fitting comment on these events seems to be a section from Keith Maillard's "The Intervention of the Duke" (a piece from his book, Dementia Americana, Ronsdale Press, 1994 which also appears in Crossing Lines, an anthology from Seraphim Editions, 2008). The brilliant leader referred to in the poem is none other than Pierre Elliott Trudeau, a Canadian prime minister who was unafraid to stand up on behalf of Canada and the country's code of honour.

-22-

He doesn't look half bad twenty years later --
the only statesman in the western world
who would allow himself to be photographed
upside down above a trampoline. He said no
you may not inquire of any young man arriving at the border
as to his status in the armed forces
of the United States of America.
We thought Canada meant peace.
My eyes filled with tears when I crossed
into Quebec and saw the Maple Leaf flying.
As soon as I could, I became a citizen.
For all my jokes about maple syrup, I was proud.
Now it makes me sick to see my country play the yapping cur,
chasing the tail of the American dog gone barking into war.
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O, Stephen Harper, if only you could take a page from the annals of your predecessor. What a great country we might once again be.

drupelets galore

I'm pretty sure the first reference I heard to the word drupelet was in some book by Kurt Vonnegut. Maybe Cat's Cradle, with all its Boko-Maru. Wherever, today was a day for gathering many tiny karasses -- drupelets of beings that make up the fruit we know as raspberries.

While we were picking, a clatter of crows kept engaging in a series of family disputes. Doing anything else, their noise might have bothered me. As it was, I just took refuge by reaching further into the shadow of the leaves and finding some the biggest, softest berries -- the ones that roll off into your hand like fuzzy marbles.

A beautiful day well-spent, and one that will taste good all the way to next March.

Miniature golf the natural way

No tiny windmills, no indoor-outdoor carpet. No trolls or other hunks of concrete formed as creatures. Just lovely, grassy greens, complete with real sandtraps. Remarkable.

This magical place is Dundas, Ontario's Rock Chapel Golf Course, where even a terrible golfer like me can have a great time.

And the putting course is only part of it -- there's a driving range, practice areas for chipping from grass, and even an area of sandy bunkers set up for practising getting up and down onto the green. Oh yes, and a beautiful 9-hole executive course for playing on after you've practised yourself into it!

And to think our local course has the jam to say it was voted the best practice place in North America. Not a chance.

Go Canada Day

Henry Morgentaler's getting the Order of Canada. My brother-in-law Leo is turning fifty. My sister turns forty-nine. And I'm going to read in the sunshine on the deck.

Summertime...

And, like the song says, the livin' is easy.

Especially here at the treefort, Chez Hoser.

Seven Words for George Carlin

He stood up for freedom of speech.

Solstice on the Prairie

Complete with angels.

Finding Jack Dingle

Crikey, he's heah.

Jazz night for Lorna

It was late last fall that White Rock lost one of its most energetic and talented citizens, Lorna Graham. She worked as a band teacher, mainly at Earl Marriott Secondary, for what must have been twenty years. It's hard to conjure a list of just how many young people she inspired into pursuing music.

Wednesday saw a reunion of a whole bunch of retired (or not) band teachers -- men who had worked with Lorna, men who knew and respected her as a colleague and as a musician. The gig was a fundraiser, looking to drum up monies to support young musicians through a bursary that will remember Lorna's longstanding contributions.

Helluva great time.

Like mother, like daughter

Even though last Sunday's weather felt freezing, Heidi McCurdy and her accompanist Doug Towle performed at the Farmers' Market. No, he isn't praying -- he's trying to warm up his hands so he can play!

Then on Tuesday, Heidi's daughter Sabrielle performed at Iguana's, a restaurant down on the White Rock beach. She was a finalist in a local talent competition.
Even if she came in second, her singing was -- as it always is -- impressive. Lots more to hear from both generations of this talented family.

Bobby Kennedy was shot 40 years ago

Actually, 40 years ago yesterday. Here, if you're up for it, is a long rant that partially documents how that event had a profound impact on my life.

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People used to ask, ‘Where were you when Kennedy was shot?’ Always a good conversation starter, it was assumed you’d have some kind of story about where you were and what you were doing on November 22, 1963.

That particular Friday became a kind of touchstone for change, one that marked a country’s loss of innocence. It was the end of an era that had been portrayed by the Cleaver family on Leave it to Beaver, and later, by the Cunninghams on the series with the overly rosy name, Happy Days.

I think of that Friday in 1963 as only the beginning of the change. Because the date I see as being more profound is June 5, 1968. That’s the date another Kennedy, Robert – or Bobby as he was known – met the same fate as his brother John.

The first months of 1968 had seen the beginnings of a shift in the general public’s attitude toward the ongoing war in Vietnam. Early in January, the much-respected baby-and-child-care expert, Dr. Benjamin Spock, was indicted for promoting draft evasion. Month’s end saw the sweeping Tet offensive, a series of attacks that reached as far as the US Embassy in Saigon. People were finally starting to realize just how pointless America’s war efforts were. When, at the end of February, CBS newsman Walter Cronkite made comments on the apparent futility of the exercise, then-president Johnson supposedly remarked on the significance of the newsman’s words: “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.”

I’d been on the fringes of an organization in Milwaukee that offered advice and other assistance to draft resisters. Being part of such a milieu, I couldn’t help being around people who were working on the campaign to put anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy on the presidential ballot. They were a dedicated and interesting mix – speechwriters, organizers and a slew of pamphleteers.

The spring of ’68 had also been one where more than the weather was heating up. In part, due to the previous summer’s inner-city riots, and especially after the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. in April, there was an ever-increasing sense of living in a police state. Many of us found we couldn’t go out without spotting unmarked police cars trailing us; police photographers seemed to be at every war protest and be-in; men with long hair were routinely stopped as they walked down the street, with the demand that they show their draft card (men who couldn’t produce one were arrested on the spot, as this was a serious offense). Yet despite all that, and despite the ever-increasing death count in Vietnam, there was an optimistic atmosphere of promise in the air. Promise that things were going to take a turn – and for the better.

Only then, on the cusp of summer, Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed. And for many of us, that event made it clear: no dreams were safe.

About a month later, my son Jeremy was born. Giving birth, especially to a son, did a lot to shift my perspective. Suddenly, I understood that I wasn’t going to be going to Chicago with my friends to be part of the protests outside the Democratic Convention. All of us understood that Chicago wasn’t going to be just another protest; this one would have Mayor Richard Daley’s specially trained riot forces on patrol. I understood that as a single mother, I now had responsibilities that meant I couldn’t risk getting myself arrested and thrown into jail. I also realized that my little boy was no different, only younger, than all those other boys being drafted for Vietnam.

It wasn’t very many months later that Jeremy and I were sitting in a very bright room in the bowels of the airport in Toronto. As I remember it, even though it was late in the evening, the immigration officers were super nice as they asked me questions and filled in the blanks on what seemed to be a very long form. They were coochie-cooing Jeremy and nodding with approval at the fact that I’d taken a few French courses. Of course it helped that Jeremy and I had a sponsor, no matter that the sponsorship eventually didn’t work out. So, bingo presto lucko – we were in, and told to expect our landed immigrant papers in the mail in just a few weeks.

But lately, things are different. The news keeps reporting changes to Canada’s immigration policies. And I see that 25-year-old war resister, Corey Glass, has had his application to stay in Canada refused. He’s the ex-soldier who signed up to be part of the US National Guard, thinking he’d be helping out in humanitarian causes like flood relief. But instead of being sent to New Orleans, he was sent to Iraq. When his conscience wouldn’t let him stay, he made his way to Canada. Younger than that son I brought to Canada all those years ago, Glass is an American deserter, not so unlike those soldiers who despaired over their experiences fighting in Vietnam. Yet unlike members of that earlier wave of sanctuary-seekers, he is one who Canada seems unwillingly to accept as one of its own – Canada, a country once known worldwide as place of safe haven for those who love the idea of peace.

So, I wonder: What is happening to this country that I chose? And I think, if those of us who came to Canada during the Vietnam War era were applying to come here today, just how many of us would be allowed in?
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