'Interesting' Times

 

As I scroll through the online groups I belong to, it is easy to become depressed at the state of the world right now.

Can't help but think about a half remembered poem 'This is how the world ends - not with a bang but a whimper.'

The world seems to be falling apart right now.  Little 'liberal' victories are happening here and there, but other places?  Not so much.

What do I do about it?  What *can* I do about it?

In reality, not much.

In the end, our country counted as one of those tiny 'liberal' victories, although the bad actors have not gone away - and won't.  They were so close to victory they could taste it, as they say.  And we have the added 'bonus' of media promoting the 'both sides' doctrine instead of trying to report the facts.  

How do I find meaning in my life?  A way to continue?

I come back to what I *can* do as a way to fight off the worry/anxiety about what I cannot change.

I can share hope and love.  I can stay as positive as possible, and encourage others to do what they can.  Not everyone can do much, and it is wise to remember that, when we ask 'why isn't someone doing something to fix this?'

The only person we can 'control' is our own selves, so I suggest that people take a long hard look at what is happening, and what they can actually do.

So, here is my approach:

Stand up and tell people what you believe in.  Stay positive, as best you can.  For every election, find out as much as you can about who is running - what they actually stand for, not mealy-mouthed platitudes which can be interpreted in various ways - what do they *actually* mean?  

If you know something about history or politics, cast a wary eye over anyone who promises that everything is broken and only they will fix it - without actually saying anything of substance.  Slogans are not platforms.  A document like Project 2025 is a platform.  And our Canadian Conservatives have adopted it for their platform, too.

I do NOT want to be 'annexed' - which is a weasel word for 'I want your resources and I'm going to come and grab them'.  I am not USian, I am Canadian, and I have zero desire to be 'forced' to join the US as a 'state' - no doubt without voting rights.  For all the USian 'liberals' saying that Canadians will force the US to become more 'liberal'?   That means we would have to be given the vote - and I rather doubt the anti-liberal president would chance that happening.

A few minutes ago I saw an interview with a self described Trump supporter, who is now shocked that ICE isn't looking to deport 'criminals', but anyone who looks Mexican.  And he was appalled.  What 'woke' him?  Trump and his minions, doing what they promised to do all along.

I refuse to watch the alt right media.  I don't need to, I'm well familiar with their message of hate and aggrievance.  I need to focus on the messages of hope and positivity.  And prepare myself to make sure I vote in a way that mostly helps, rather than hurts.  If someone offers a simple answer to the world's problems, I will be extremely skeptical - because humans are complicated and very seldom do 'simple' answers work for every person.

In my daily life, I will continue trying to teach about textiles, and weaving.  Never mind the piles of tea towels etc. I already have on my shelves.  At some point this chaos will resolve, one way or another and perhaps I can sell more of my stuff.  But if not, I can keep writing (for so long as someone wants me to write for them), and weaving 'samples' to illustrate what I'm writing about.

Counting my blessings sounds trite, but sometimes it is A Good Thing to remember the things that are meaningful and pleasing in our lives.

And when I get tired, I am allowed to take a break and try to rest.

Sending hope and love to everyone who wants it.  If you need a cup of kindness, I will offer what I can.  A positive word.  A virtual hug.  Will continue to tie a knot in the end of my rope and hang on...but don't give up.  Keep 'fighting'.  #elbowsUp

It Takes Two

 

Ever danced?  Ever danced with someone who didn't want to?  Or wasn't very good at it?  Sometimes it is just 'easier' to walk away and find a new partner...

Right now I see multiple people advising the 'left' to find a way to 'work with' the alt right.  Except, how do you manage to 'dance' with someone who doesn't want to be an equal partner?

How do you convince someone to set aside their demands, rational or not, and be flexible?  How do you dance a tango when they want to, I dunno, 'break' dance?  The only 'victory' is a zero sum game of 'you' gaining everything you want and letting the other person not 'gain' (or win) anything at all?

How do you build a relationship when they don't want a relationship with 'you' (insert 'reasons') and would rather see you dead?  When they call whole classes of fellow human beings 'useless eaters'?  Who want to take away, in the case of the Canadian alt right, universal health care and social safety nets (which are already too flimsy, in my opinion.)

The paradox of tolerance is a look at what happens when someone who will not tolerate another and keeps demanding you meet them in the centre - but every time you try to, they move the 'centre' further 'right'?  Eventually dragging *you* into the realm of the 'right'?  So there comes a point when you have to stand up and say, I'm not tolerating your voice of hate and vindictiveness...

I *know* not all USians are alt right.  Not all Canadians are alt right.  And yet, somehow their angry voices, demanding 'justice' because something something gazpacho, seem to get all sorts of media coverage, lies get repeated ad nauseum until people who are primed to believe those lies accept them as truth.

Some of the alt right in Canada are already throwing shade at PMMC, saying that the whole problem with Canada is NAFTA, and blaming Justin Trudeau - and the Liberals - for NAFTA.

Which is a bit hysterically hilarious, given NAFTA was Brian Mulroney's 'baby', along with Ronald Reagan.  And the two of them famously singing When Irish Eyes are Smiling (yes, there is video.)

Whatever transpires today at the White House, I am relieved that our PM is willing to talk, but not mess around.  The president has constantly accused Canadians of 'ripping' the US off and the way he's 'punishing' us is to destroy our economy - or try to.   But PMMC actually knows how the economy works and he is willing to protect Canada and Canadians, and is already making deals with countries other than with the currently bad faith president, who has bankrupted 6 (or is it 7) businesses, and seems determined to bankrupt the US and destroy hundreds, nay thousands, of small businesses of *his own citizens* in order to trash Canada's democracy, too.

The effects of the tariffs are already being felt in the US marketplace.  Instead of dozens of container ships docking in the US, many are re-directing to Vancouver, BC.  The evidence will soon show up in the stores, with empty shelves because no one wants to, and many more cannot *afford* to pay tariffs in the triple digits.

So if Mr. Carney walks away from Washington, DC today and turns his (our?) back on the US?  Pretty sure the majority of Canadians are going to be just fine looking elsewhere.  No doubt he'll have Down With Webster on his playlist...

May 5

 

I have very few photos of my dad.  This was one that mom had in a double frame - one with her at 16 years of age, this of dad in his Canadian army uniform, no doubt early in the war.  The smaller photo is of dad at age 10, around when his mother died of breast cancer.

He was the youngest child in the family, and as such considered a 'mammy's boy'.  I suspect dad was a menopause baby, and perhaps was treated differently from the rest of the kids.  I will never know because anyone who can tell me is gone, now.

At any rate, he was conscripted, and nearly turned down (according to my mother, but her 'stories' were frequently suspect) because he didn't express enthusiasm about going to Germany to kill the 'Hun'.  (What I did find out was that the recruiting soldier marked down on his file that dad was 'thick' - because dad had no schooling and could not read or write well.  'Thick' he was not.)

Dad's family identified as 'German', although they immigrated from Belarus prior to the first World War.  The story about the family arriving in N. America varied, especially as mom 'dressed' the story up.  Eventually I just stopped believing her about a lot of things, especially when they seemed improbable.

But the fact remains - dad served in the Canadian Army, posted first to the Aleutians, then, when they were scraping the 'bottom of the barrel', he was sent over to England and found himself on Juno Beach.

The only time he ever talked about the war was when the Winston Churchill 'series' The World at War aired, which was yearly for a while.  Dad would park himself in front of the tv and both of us kids were warned that dad was watching 'his' show and we were to be quiet.

We learned early that dad did not answer questions about the war, so stop asking.  But when the film showed the landing on the beaches that day, dad would sit quietly, elbows on the arms of his Lazy-boy recliner with his hands gripped together, fingers 'tented', and leaning his chin on his clasped hands.  As the footage of the Canadians landing on Juno beach played, he would lift his head from his hands, point to the tv and quietly say 'I was there'.  Three words.  With such power.

I honestly don't know if dad would have swallowed the current fascist propaganda.  All I know is that he 'hated' war, but did his duty anyway.  Plus he survived, which was the 'important' part - for *me*.

Whatever the truth of his opinions about what is going on now, I'm actually glad I don't have either parent to deal with right now.  They wouldn't 'get' computers.  Dad barely used the telephone, never mind a computer!  Mom did have a computer, but we made sure she never went online.  

People ask 'when did you become politically active' - and I hardly know what to answer.  Politically, my parents were not party members, but voted according to their conscious on the day.  But my mother (who was willing to discuss such things - dad wouldn't) believed some things I could not.  When did I 'wake' up?  I think I came out of the womb thinking, questioning, deciding some things simply did not make sense (considering I went to Sunday School every Sunday, and attended Bible classes to be confirmed into the church).  Plus I read.  Non-stop, mostly.  Anything.  Fact.  Fiction.  Didn't matter.

Now we have a group of full blown fascists in our neighbouring country, threatening to 'annex' us by 'breaking' us financially/economically.  Today we learned about the tariffs on the movie industry - targeted primarily against all Canadian 'production'.  Given how many Canadians actually 'grew' Hollywood, it's just a tad ironic - but not shocking, if you've been paying attention.

Anyway, we now have 'new' (American) labels for various significant dates.   Like today.  My 'resistance' will remain low key due to my age/health restrictions.  But I will not follow the current president of the US, AND I will continue to use my 'British' spellings (eg 'neighbour' never 'neighbor').  I will continue to boycott US products - as best I can - and support Canadian businesses.  At this point I can see no possibility of crossing the border with the double jeopardy of Covid and fascism...

#elbowsUp

Leaders

 

Life, as we know it, is going to change.  

How?  We don't know - yet.   But we have been 'warned' what is about to become a priority in our lives, and what is not.  We will have to navigate our way through to some kind of coping and managing of the stress of the new world view that is coming our way.

Early in my career I started to assess the various bits of advice I was getting from different people.  The first thing I had to do was weigh the value of their suggestions in view of my personal goals.

The more I learned, the more I had to sift, and the more I tried to put my own personal bits of advice into context.

I learned to stand back and let people be, not insist that they do things 'my way'.  To give them suggestions to try.  To encourage them to find their own best processes.

As we enter a new world view with politicians everywhere sliding ever more to the 'right', someone observed that it was 'scary to have him lead me'.

But here's the thing.  A politician can only 'lead' an individual as far as the individual is willing to go.

I have plenty of practice taking advice from others, deciding if what they are advising is true to my personal set of values.  And then following that set of guidelines or my own moral compass.

So I will continue to light candles for people.  I will do my utmost to approach people with kindness.  To accept people who are different from me.  Since I was raised a Christian, I will ask What Would Jesus Do and then do that, even though I'm no longer a church going person.   (Yes, I still have a bible.)

We are all going to have to figure out how we go forward.  If you need light, I will light a candle for you.

Knock On Effects...

...or the law of unintended consequences.

I am currently reading Adrienne Mayor's Gods and Robots and it is illuminating.  She begins with the myth of Talos, a made being, not a born one.  It is a story I was not particularly familiar with although I knew of the Jason and the Argonauts tale.  To have her dissect the story in greater detail, especially the section on Talos, has been fascinating.

Over and over again human beings have done amazing things, surprising things.

I am an avid reader as regular readers of this blog will know.  My first dip into science fiction was I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, so the concept of artificial intelligence has long been a staple of my background awareness.

Other authors have explored the consequence of automation, both modern and in antiquity.  Lindsey Davis has done a masterful series set in early Roman times, and much of the technology she details turned out - much to my surprise - to be completely accurate.  Metered taxis, dispensing machines, and the automatons included in temples and just for show.  Guy Gavriel Kay also includes levels of technology that I found surprising for their sophistication - levitating thrones, musical/mechanical birds?  Yes, they were part of our historical record.

So it is with every decision a human being makes - consequences.  Some desired, some completely not.

I made up this chart in an effort to explain to students how the different aspects of cloth construction can be adjusted.  Tweaking one of the areas will, like a bug caught in a spider's web, reverberate around the entire diagram.  Because change one thing, everything can change.  We just anticipate it and further adjust, or we don't know and our results may not be entirely what we were aiming for.

So it is with climate change.

I am old enough to have carried wood and coal from basement to the wood cook/heat stove upstairs.  We burned carbon in it's rawest form and pretty much every house in town did as well.  Some had furnaces that burned sawdust.  A few had oil.  But we all burned carbon in one form or another.

Today?  Still burning carbon, but in the form of natural gas, for the most part.

We got rid of the smoke pall from burning wood that hung over the town, but we didn't reduce the carbon load being dumped into the atmosphere.

As the 50s rolled into the 60s and on into present day, oil/petroleum products became more and more prevalent.

I am old enough to remember that food came wrapped in paper or in glass or metal containers.  Now?  Plastic.

I am old enough to remember wool clothing.  During the winter we were all wrapped in it.  Now?  Polyesters of various degrees (iow, petroleum product).

I am old enough to remember being told in the 1960s that oil was a finite resource, unlike wood.  And that the oil industry suppressed the development of alternate energy sources.  (Blowout by Rachel Maddow)

Last night we watched a NOVA program called Polar Extremes.  The presenter Kurt Johnson (I think was his name) did a pretty detailed summary of where we are now in terms of the effects of climate change due to heavy carbon loading in the atmosphere.  No, climate change is NOT a myth.  The data speaks and speaks loudly.  If we don't do something soon, like in the next few years, we may be facing some pretty grim scenarios (witness Australia and the bushfires, flooding in Indonesia, etc.)  Monsoon rains are now unpredictable and food sources are at risk.  Sea levels rise, permafrost melts, glaciers fade away.  The knock on effect is going to be disastrous.

So what are the alternatives?

Many countries are transitioning to wind turbines.  There is research being done to harness wave action to create electricity.  Solar power.  Some individuals have been installing heat pumps, drilling down deep into the earth to access the stored heat there.

Not everyone can make good use of solar power unless they also install huge battery banks.  Unfortunately the manufacture of batteries has detrimental effects to the environment.

Not everyone can install a large wind turbine - and again battery banks.

Much of society has become tied to gasoline powered vehicles.  People push for more transit, but when living in remote areas, transit is not always reliable.

I have been looking at hybrid technology, but that is only a stopgap as it still relies on gasoline and again...batteries.  But as an individual, all I can do is try to mitigate my impact on the environment with what resources I have at my disposal.

So I recycle.  I compost.  I do not buy 'fast fashion' and look for 100% cotton clothing.  (Which also has knock on effects, but at least isn't fueling the polyester market.)

I wear my clothing until it is worn out, sometimes taking years to get to that point.  I spend little and want for little.  Mostly what I buy is yarn to weave with.

I have been limiting my travel, partially for personal reasons, partially because of the cost to the environment.  So no, I won't be going on any cruises any time soon, or flying unless it is for 'work'.

I don't know what the answer is.  All I know is that we have to do something.  

Another Day - and thoughts on politics and the human condition

After a few overcast and dreary days, today dawn brings us blue skies and a sun that is noticeably moving through it's cycle back towards the north.  A few weeks ago, the sun was coming up in that gap further to the right, a couple of houses down the street.

Politics has been much on my mind of late. 

When I was a child, my elders would talk about the world going to hell in a hand basket (or sometimes cart, depending on who was speaking).  So it seems this premonition of impending doom I have been feeling is nothing new.  It does seem to have worsened over the past few years - or maybe it always was this bad and I'm only just now noticing.

Journalists were supposed to be the eyes and ears of the world, although that romantic notion ignores the roots of 'yellow journalism'.  Seems people always need something to be enraged about and a certain subset of journalism is more than happy to provide it.  I only have to glance at the racks of magazines at the check out tills at stores to see it - oh the horror!  This person was mean to that person!  This person is nasty!  That person is (gasp!) fat!  (Usually a woman.  Men seem somehow immune to comments on their degree of 'fatness'.)

I'm old enough to remember Disney's Bambi and Thumper's mom saying that if you can't say something kind, don't say anything at all.

I remember Sunday School and that Jesus loved the little children of the world, didn't matter their colour.  I remember 'turn the other cheek'.  I remember 'feed the hungry, heal the sick'.  These were all tenets of the branch of christianity I was raised in.

It seems a certain slice of society, not just here but everywhere, is bent on grabbing as much 'pie' as they can for themselves while denying any to others.  Especially others who are a different religion, colour, sexual orientation.  They pound the bible and I wonder which bible they are referencing because in my bible, there was nothing about LGBTQ+ folk going straight to hell.  Any negative mentions were in the old testament, not the new, which as far as I am concerned supersedes the old where they diverge, philosophically.

Jesus gave us the example of caring for others, from washing the feet of other people, feeding the hordes who had no food, healing the sick.  He did not ask if they 'deserved' any of those things.  He saw their humanity and loved them through his actions.

And that was the biggest lesson I learned as a child - go ahead and pray, but sometimes the answer is 'no'.  Go ahead and pray, but not for god to magically answer your prayer with what you were asking for, but pray for the strength to do what is necessary.  Because in our house god helped those who helped themselves.

Late last night after thinking about many of these things I posted a long comment on Facebook.  I was tired and there was so much I wanted to say and yet...how to say it?  One of the things I learned in school was the power of emotional trigger words and I wanted to very carefully discuss some of the issues I was seeing in action without triggering instant anger in those who would disagree with me.  There is no point in trying to discuss things if people who need to hear the message cut you off without even considering what you have to say.

Shortly after posting it, someone posted a meme about planting seeds.  That you never know which seeds will take root and grow.  But that doesn't mean you shouldn't go ahead and plant them.

I took some comfort from that thought.

It is kind of how I feel about all the 'rants' I post here (and elsewhere) about weaving principles.  Not everyone will hear my message.  Not everyone will agree with me.  Not everyone will change their minds.  But I am not trying to reach those who already have their minds made up.  I'm trying to reach those who do not yet have an opinion.  And I don't insist that they do things my way, just that they think about what they are doing and maybe change their approach if what they are doing isn't working for them.

While I was raised christian, I no longer go to church.  But I cannot remove the basic principles I was taught in Sunday school, especially since those core tenets are central to pretty much all the major religions of the world (except some which seem to think some people are more deserving than others.)

If you are white in North America (and elsewhere), you have benefited from colonialism and - whether you recognize it or not - a level of privilege.   When people stand up to say they are being racially profiled or discriminated against, you cannot say they were not simply because you have never been.  In fact you have been racially profiled to your benefit.

If you do not understand how a reality bubble works, you can begin by reading Ziya Tong's new book The Reality Bubble.  It will be uncomfortable.  Read it anyway.

Here are some examples of a reality bubble.  "I cannot see the curvature of the earth so it is flat."  or  "I don't know anyone who has even had polio, so I'm not going to get my children vaccinated because vaccines aren't necessary."  "I am a man who has never raped a women, so all those women are liars when they say they were raped."  There are ways to see beyond your bubble of reality to the larger truth.  But you have to know that the bubble exists in order to see beyond it.

Your reality is not someone else's life experience.  Therefore to understand what other people are experiencing, you have to set aside your lived experience in order to understand theirs.

I think that because I read voraciously, indiscriminately, my life experience became more than my own.  I am willing to listen and hear of other lives and accept that they are living their truth.  Sometimes their truth makes me uncomfortable, but that is my burden to bear, not theirs. 

Toni Morrison's quote comes to mind frequently - do the best you can and when you know better, do better (I paraphrase).