Sprawl

Posted this today to an article on urban sprawl at Alternet.
Redefining the 'Good Life'
[Report this comment] Posted by: wisewebwoman on Dec 14, 2006 9:22 AM

And this is what it's all about, right? When did we get it all so twisted and why? I know couples, empty-nesters, living in McMansions of 5 bathrooms. When did we ever think we would need all these space for two people? The word that comes to mind is obscene. A disease of 'more' has taken over the nation, fed by mass media corporate marketing and our incompetent governments who encourage the auto industry, sixteen lane highways running everywhere, lack of funding for urban enhancement, transit and off-the-grid self sustenance. Every time I see a Hummer I look at the driver in shock and awe at the overwhelming moronic instinct that tells him (and they are all 'hims') that this is OK, to drive this gas belching behemoth through a city street on his way to his McDrive in Suburbia to join others of his ilk.
Yes, I live in a small one bathroom in the city, affordable, I rent out half of it to a tenant and have bought some acreage, cheaply in the country and am investigating off the grid living out there for the coming crisis and it will be a crisis, the free sprawling ride is over, wake-up everyone and put plans in motion today. Turn off the TVs, get out in your communities and look around you, stand on a bridge overlooking a highway at oxymoronic 'rush-hour' and think of oil. Ending. Soon.

Gentle thoughts for an estranged child

And child of mine she stays, my baby of nearly thirty-seven who loved ironing and feeding the poor and drawing and writing and expounding on every theory with her encyclopaedic knowledge of just about everything. A fierce scrabble player, Harley Davidson rider, music lover, drum player. And on. She lives in Ireland and there shelives and loves well, I hope.
Written yesterday and emailed to her, my gorgeous, brilliant, Irish daughter.
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Reflections on a Steam Iron

The steam from the iron
Threading the needle eye
Of the crack in
The laundry room window.

Floating upwards to the
Sky above and across
Four thousand miles of sea
And falling softly on

You
There.

Ironing too. Pressing
Cutting butter edges
Into soft cotton trousers
And razor creased sleeves on
To Goodwill linen shirts.

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Disconnection

Disconnection

I was taught in early days
For the good of the whole
Give to the church.
And it would take care of Africa
And those pagan babies.

I was taught in middle days
Me first, live and let live.
I’ll take care of me
And you’ll take care of you
How neat. And end of story.

No and no and no
Is there such a thing
As loving detachment
From the pain of
A limbless child in Iraq.

From the frightened
Face of a teenage whore
On Jarvis Street.
From the smelly mound
Of a sleeping bag on a filthy grid.

I teach myself in elder days
That the child is me
The whore is me.
And I’m inside the fetid bag
Of my own blindness.

Micro Economic Study 1983-2006

Some things are hypothetical only. Like the effects of cheap (read exploited impoverished workers, some children)Chinese labour on the economies of the so-called First World. This was brought into my face in cold hard reality the other day. One of my basic philosophies is that I don't buy big box (Wally World, Home Despot, etc.) and that sometimes results in a so-called 'deprivation' for me (read frustrated consumer with deferred gratification psychosis).

So when a flyer arrives in my email announcing a sale of cappucino makers at Canadian Tire at $24.99 the other day, I just about raced up there. My cappucino maker, given to me by my children in 1983 had been smashed to bits, by accident, by a friend about 10 years ago and I had lived in the desire of a new one ever since. I had never seen one on sale in a non-Big Box store since then. So I secured and tested my new cappucino maker and felt smug and satisfied with my 'bargain'.

However, it set me to thinking of the old cappucino maker and how my kids had saved up for it to make it a really special gift and it had cost them around $250.00 over 20 years ago. Now in the terms of today's dollars that would be over $1,000.00. And here I obtain a very similar maker (actually more streamlined and smooth looking)for the pocket change of $25.00. Good on me.

But wait - at the cost of how many local jobs, how many Canadian/American workers? There is suddenly nothing to gloat over, some Chinese child putting the streamlined bits of my coffee maker together? I look at the unit and ponder on all of this. This micro-image of global market distortion and wonder when the Chinese people will claim their rightful and abundant place on this fragile planet.

A life not a lifestyle

Read something about this the other day. How us baby boomers never grow up, we are trapped in this childlike state that necessitates instructions for all aspects of our lives, like fashion, like furniture, cars and houses. Restaurants, vacations, briefcases, computers, coffee - all so-called lifestyle choices. Got me to thinking about solutions, office solutions, clutter solutions. Not to mention all those silly notices on things - "warning coffee is HOT". Duh. or "don't immerse in water when appliance is plugged in." Right. As if we are all two planks ignorant and more insensate than a turnip. Are we? Do I need a little plaid jacket for my dog? Or a pink Ipod? How about earth tones in the dining room - everyone HAS this year? Are these all the Great Distractions to counteract the Great Decider? Are we so busy with lifestyle we forget our lives? So we drift along as Great Consumers, on to the next Vogue Declaration of what we need? Like infants? Is there original thinking anymore? Is it rarer than a hen's tooth? Can't I have my style and you have yours? Would that be OK? How many magazines would that put out of business? Not to mention TV shows and interior designers and paint shops. Would that mean then that we could be free to collect seeds and march against the war in protest and just grow our hair and use lanolin on our dry skin and make our own soap and.....just wondering.

20 (or more)Things to do before I die

Live to be a great-grandmother
Get a book published (or 3 or 4)
Get a line of cards featuring my photography and poems.
Have a retreat/workshops/organic/off the grid house/farm/centre in St. Joseph's.
Have a small pickup band with my daughter and granddaughter and SING and PLAY music.
Dine with someone every night.
Be married (happilly, natch)again.
Teach knitting and writing.
Grow vegetables and herbs and happy chickens
Grow a great garden
Own a boat
Fish
Build a wondrous kitchen
Be self-sustaining in a simple life.
See the Northern lights
Be healthy and wise
Adopt another dog
Plant trees
Build a labyrinth
Become a good carpenter/cabinet maker
Teach people about longevity
Grow my hair very long

10,000

Well that seems to be the magic number that keeps popping into my consciousness lately. 10,000: it sounds like a lot of anything, doesn't it.

Firstly, I saw it in a health and get well type e-magazine. 10,000 steps a day to health and a positive outlook.

I did some further checking, how much mileage would 10,000 steps cover? It turns out to be around 5 miles, more or less, depending on the length of the stride. And how many calories would that burn? Around 600: Your lunch or a good breakfast. How hard is it to walk 5 miles a day? Well, it's not that bad but you have to map out the time for it. Make it a priority.

And I have, and it's astonishing the sense of well-being I have after a few weeks of this daily 10,000 steps. I actually look forward to the time and get to see and hear my neighbourhood at different hours of the day and night. Not the safest of neighbourhoods, but what is these days. Gentle police on patrol have stopped and said 'be careful' but my dog is insurance, I feel. Only one semi-nasty encounter with a lout and his unleashed dog. (Ever noticed how the owners of unleashed dogs never ever poop-scoop?)

10,000 hours of writing practice was the time given to become a successful writer. Anyone, they said, could become a highly proficient writer with 10,000 hours of practice. I've been writing since I could - 5 or 6 years old. 10,000 hours of it are hard to grasp. At 8 hours per day and clicking these numbers along on the e-calculator that translates (with vacation time) at about 4 years of steady writing. Does school work count? Probably not. Even now (and my output is not dismal), I write about 10 hours week. Not intensive enough by a long shot.

But it sure gives me a lot to think about in the creation of a fulfilling life.

A slice of Spam

My day's beginnings are like many, I suspect.

After breakfast, I go to a little room I have designated as a sacred place for meditation, journalling and contemplation, a place to ease my sanity back into my head when I become too disturbed by the frightful machinations of the insane that we have put in power.

I then ease into emails, thankful for a spam-catcher that takes a full 98%, and counting, of all my incoming emails and deems them garbage. Fully 50% of these trash-emails have the heading "She wants a better sex?" and I wonder in what non-English speaking nation this email has originated and continued blissfully on sliding twenty five of this same old question daily into my ever thickening spam-folder for well-nigh five years now.

It's the 'a' that does it for me. *A* better sex. She would like to be a man? Is that a better sex? Or possibly androgynous or haemophrodite? Would that be a better sex for the lady (whoever she is)?

Who opens these emails anyway? Is it worth the spammers' efforts? I've never wanted a better sex but perhaps some women do. Unhappy with their naughty bits, wanting to trade up to something a little more refined, more classy and upscale. A testicle or three. An extra nipple, more streamlined labia.

Or maybe men open them, baffled as to why the little woman is unhappy with what she's got and hoping to help in this trade-in for improvement.

One of the great conundrums of this IT world.

And, erm, no thanks, I'm really happy with my gender assignment.

Living Life on the Halfbeat

5//Worldpress.org, US--PORTUGAL ANNOUNCES NEW WAVE ENERGY PROJECT (The viability of harnessing waves as a lucrative renewable energy source received a boost last week following the announcement that the world's first commercial wave energy project will begin delivering wave-generated energy to the north of Portugal later this month. The first stage of the European Union-funded program, the result of two decades of research at Lisbon's Superior Technical Institute, will bring the first 2.25 megawatts ashore at Aguçadoura, in northern Portugal, and will power 1,500 homes through the national state run electricity grid system according to an Inter Press Service [IPS] report. Funded by a consortium headed by leading Portuguese renewable energy company Enersis, the venture uses groundbreaking Pelamis wave devices manufactured by Edinburgh firm Ocean Power Delivery, considered the world's leading wave technology. "This project, begun in 2003, is now in the world vanguard," said Rui Barros, Enersis director of new projects, to IPS.)
_____________________________________________________________________________________

such good news from Portugal
_____________________________________________________________________________________

I often wonder why, when I look inside the windows of the local gyms, why all that energy isn't harnessed and used to heat and light the building and warm the water heaters for the showers? Has anyone ever done that? It would turn what I perceive to be a narcissistic self-absorbed energy burn into a reasonably positive and self-sustaining one. Just a thought.

And the half-beat is a good place to be. I'm on the miles and miles of boardwalk tonight by the lake and I encounter one runner and three too-young-for-a-driver's-licence cyclists out there. In a city of 3 million. And it was only 10.30 p.m. and it is staggeringly beautiful and the other nearly 3 million people, I see some of them in the apartments overlooking the boardwalk, TVs (mainly), computers, cleaning up, none that I saw just sitting and staring at their million dollar views. Not one.
And most of the time I feel like the wealthiest woman in the world when I nightwalk this city and breathe it all in.

Random Remarks

I walk past a billboard on the trail, something advertising James Woods in a TV something, a TV being something I rarely if ever watch. And I think, did James Woods ever imagine a day when one could see every crater on his face, every wrinkle around his eyes, every groove along his cheekbones, every sad, sorry, thinning hair like pencil lines on a pink notebook? We were not meant to see this utterly imbecilic magnification of ourselves. It is TMI as my granddaughter would say.
And I buy a red carriage lamp, yep, red glass to hold a fat white candle which looks red within and it casts a red glow around my sunny yellow kitchen and it cheers me up.
Oh glorious YouTube, I can watch Fred and Ginger dance and North Korea and Iran and the White House Moron seems ten thousand miles away and I'm grateful we're still breathing easy on this tiny little planet spinning so effortlessly in space, held by all our positive energies tonight.
And me and my red lantern pray to The Goddess for peace on earth and the goodwill and forgiveness of the Amish to shower us all. Amazing Grace indeed.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/42458

That day has come with the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It provides the basis for the President to round-up both aliens and U.S. citizens he determines have given material support to terrorists. Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Cheney's Halliburton, is constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens of thousands of undesirables.

In his 1928 dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Justice Louis Brandeis cautioned, "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." Seventy-three years later, former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, speaking for a zealous President, warned Americans "they need to watch what they say, watch what they do."

No surprises here for any of is monitoring the installations for the past year. All ready for AGINUS (as in you're either 4US or AGINUS)3 squares and a kip will be a bonus in the post-apolyptic world of the cabal.
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See my response:
End of Days?
[Report this comment] Posted by: wisewebwoman on Oct 9, 2006 10:39 AM

In every sense of the word. Nowhere anywhere do I see that the existing Dems could be in the pockets of the Reps, we know the Diebold machines are and the Supremes are, why not the Dems. It would explain just about EVERYTHING going on at the moment. There is no valid opposition or debate to any preposterous and outlandish seizure and trashing of the Constitution this Vile and Evil Cabal imposes. All we know for sure is they have wealth beyond our wildest dreams and are using it, why not to buy dissident voices? Just a thought. And yes we've passed on info on these new prison camps for nearly a year and no one has believed us. And it's going to get far far worse. Suspension of all civil rights and electoral process. Look at the lining up of nuclear warheads in the Arabian Gulf even as I write. Is it time for another civil war yet?
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Elsewhere, in the world of Toronto and surrounds, warm, warm weather, trees turning colour, long walks on the trails. Canadian Thanksgiving unfolds as it should. A world on the edge brings the gratitudes into focus in crystal fashion. The ordinary is celebrated for another year.

The Beauty of the City

Sparkling cornflowers pressed against the sumach
Brightest blue against outrageous red.
The trails in this city offer feasts for the eyes,
Birds, rabbits, feral cats, raccoons.
Signposts commemorating long gone railway stations.
Old stone seating placed hither and yon.

Dogs greet each other like old friends
Humans hesitate, frown in response to a smile.
Suspicion, slight alarm, armour of citification.
Newfoundland is a universe and beyond from here.
But beauty is everywhere, more resonant when shared.
I'll keep this secret to myself.

Screen Sucking

Sucking the moods of YouTube
Browsing the Well-Tended Bloggers
Feeling Shock and Awe
At the Blazing Lies of the Great Decider.
Seeing the navies arm up, ride high on innocent oceans
Shaking our fragile planet to extinction.

Hearing the pope say no limbo no more.
Counting the lone voice of Keith Olbermann
Telling it like it is.
Wondering if this is the time, is now the time
We should be gathering seeds and one shot pills
To end it all when death storm comes our way?

Limbo

Vatican to review state of limbo

Catholic experts are expected to advise Pope Benedict XVI that teachings on the state of limbo - somewhere between heaven and hell - should be amended.

Some have suggested that the possible change is an attempt by the Vatican to prevent people in developing countries with high infant mortality rates turning to Islam - Muslims believe the souls of stillborn babies go straight to paradise.

Ah Limbo, where the pagan babies went, a frolicking happy place without oversight or supervision. Where babies (and good people without Christ in their lives) spent days tumbling around in the ether but sad because God never visited.

God must surely howl with laughter at the contortions of organized religion to fund their coffers with these rabid pronouncements!

A Mixed Bag

Random thoughts on plastic surgery.

How good is Youtube? Like Google but with sight and sound.
I checked on a few oldies like Dick Cavett and a new show came up and I was surprised as Dick Cavett traded in his perfectly good face for a strange shiny tight one. Sad. Why are we so afraid of aging? As if we can keep death at bay by eliminating our wrinkles and our well-earned greys. All that botox and plastic surgery removes our very characters. The twinkle in our eyes, the softness of the cheeks. We are left with a replica, I think of Lucille Ball and her rigid cheeks and the lips of a drug-addled ho. Joan Rivers in her death mask. Awful Regis Philbin's immobility. Expressionless Tussaud wax dummies.

And on manifesting what we become.
I think of former mayor of Toronto, Mel Lastman and how many, many years ago he named his chain of appliance stores "Bad Boy". And he actually was one. He fathered two children by his mistress, unbeknownest to his wife, and then refused to support them until they came after him years later and established paternity. Bad Boy. Indeed.

And the ongoing saga of US politics

How obfuscating is the Foley:Page Predator business to the real news of liars in power and Kissinger (Mr. Crimes against Humanity himself) actually puppeteering Cheney and this madness of war and greed and torture.

How perverted they all are, all criminals from the top down. Comedy Central but for the needless deaths and suffering they are causing.

Little Abeer and the American Marines

WORLD OF THE LARGE
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Here's the story:
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/40481/

here's my response:

Honouring all lives
[Report this comment] Posted by: wisewebwoman on Aug 18, 2006 7:06 AM

The opportunity was there immediately after 9/11. But instead, in the name of the tragically fallen in the Twin Towers, evil and horrific acts were committed against children such as Abeer. Countless children. The disregard for these lives and those of their parents and familities and the lives of these often mentally challenged, marginallized and impoverished soldiers is appalling. The circle keeps getting wider and wider, atrocity after atrocity. Absolutely no good will ever come of this. The evil empire of the U S of A was formed in the coup d'etat of 2000 (some say even before) and for the republic to be brought to a state of grace takes another in the form of a We the People declaration and a massive insurgency. It starts with self-respect. I don't see it in this current occupation.
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WORLD OF THE SMALL
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I was surprised by Loons this morning, calling across the bay to each other.
Grey and green day here. Sun hidden somewhere in the grey flannel of the skies.

A poem from yesterday with photos of windows from the church across the bay:

Come outside all ye faithful!

Come outside for the glory of God

Is not found within these walls.

Now shout Hallelujah to the sky!



Church at Mount Carmel, Newfoundland
August 17, 2006

To be continued

LARGE
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In response to an article on the crises in the Middle East and commentators still behaving as if there is a free electoral system in the states, I write:
>>snip
You're all behaving as if a free electoral system still exists...
[Report this comment] Posted by: wisewebwoman on Aug 15, 2006 5:01 PM

And it doesn't. Not with the evidence of Florida in 2000 and the Diebold Debacle of 2004 in Ohio and of course the millions of blacks who could change the outcome all in prison for minor offences and with no audit trails on any of the supposedly "free" elections, they were/are and will be stolen. The only way out, in my humble opinion is a revolution and civil disobedience. Democracy has fallen and it can't get up. This is frightening beyond measure. I, for one, am terror-stricken that the world has come to this.
>>end of snip.

I'm SO frightened for the world of my granddaughter and her generation.

small
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and I walk 5 kilmetres by the shore and listen to the waves lap and the sunset so brilliant and am reminded of the old Simon & Garfunkle song:
"The Sun is Burning in the Sky" about a wonderful sunset such as I was seeing, with dragon-flies swooping among the trees and crows cawking as they come to rest and the gulls and cormorants fighting over a scallop shell and the sandpiper teasing my dog as she does every night and I think, this could all leave in a flash. And there is no other "Rapture", THIS is the rapture.
So I stay in the moment and celebrate the now and leave the mulling to others, just for now.

World of the Large and World of the Small

LARGE

Maybe I've found the perfect balance here - to write of both.
Caught Stephen Colbert's devastating satire in front of Bushbaby and the Stepford Wife. Did Bushbaby get it? He got it enough to freeze Colbert out as he left. Can't find the link, maybe it was shot out :>(
Read the latest speech on From the Wilderness http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/042706_paradigm_speech.shtml
Really telling us the state of Peak Oil and whose exactly fighting in the trenches and prepping themselves for a constant state of war (most of the world). Worth reading right to the end. Dropped a comment to Richard & "This Old Brit" on the state of the honours in England http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=12049821&postID=114615810506626660

SMALL


Visited a friend in a home for Alzheimer's patients yesterday. Played some Irish music for him, notice how music changes him, how he relaxes. He has very little to say apart from gentle "OKs" and blessed in the unflagging devotion of his wife, 54 years married. He is 14 years in the disease, took some experimental drugs and stayed home till she couldn't manage him anymore. In this warehouse of our most demented elderly there are no books or magazines, conversation is restricted to instructions from the overworked nursing staff and the mumbled and sometimes terrified bleatings of the inhabitants. Physical impairment strides beside mental and emotional disability. A veritable corpse in a bed beside my friend's gets no visitors and no cards adorn his surroundings. 60 lbs at best, he is on some form of liquid diet and one can see every vein and artery in his skull. He has been dying for months. As I leave I can only ask myself, as I always do "Why? Oh Why?" It is the living who force this form of "life" on them, to assuage whatever ethics and morals and laws demand it. Left to their own devices, they would be dead. And I for one, for me, would prefer it. Rather than this horrendous 1 percenter of existence. Eat, poop, sleep, eat, poop, sleep.

"Living life to the fullest" sez Bush

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/3812455.html
April 22, 2006, 4:07PM
Bush Takes Muddy Bike Ride on Earth Day


By SCOTT LINDLAW Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

LAS POSADAS STATE FOREST, Calif. — President Bush marked Earth Day with a lung-busting mountain bike ride high above Napa County wine country, dodging ruts that sent several of his riding partners crashing into the mud.

The president spent Saturday morning with a small pack of riders in a foggy redwood forest about 90 minutes north of San Francisco. He relished the swampy conditions on parts of the trail in this remote state-owned tract, leading his partners repeatedly through huge puddles and streams running high after weeks of heavy rain.

"I still ride the mountain bike primarily to help settle the soul and to burn off the excess energy one gets when you're living life to its fullest," Bush told an Associated Press reporter who accompanied him on the ride.
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And does he cast a thought towards those who are now unable to do the same thing, thanks to him?
The thousands of Iraqi children napalmed, orphaned and bombed. The inoocent civilians collateral damaged and friendly fired, the young soldiers - luckily dead or unluckily alive and missing hands, legs and their minds. Excess energy, indeed. Could it be leftover from all he fried in the jails in Texas and fuelled by his hundreds of thousands of newer corpses?
Tell us more about how your soul settles little Georgie.....

Shrinking my world perspective

I think I need to do this, I really do. The big picture is making me sicker and more stressed. I think even Richard at This Old Brit is feeling it too, it's making him tired, this whole concern with Dubya and world domination and no oil and poverty and diminishing rights of the masses. I need to make my perspective more manageable and how do I do this? Concentrate more on the articles I write which are of the world of the small not the large. Volunteer more to causes which are dear to me (the homeless, the aged, the blind, disadvantaged young girls) and stop this OBSESSION on things I can do very little about apart from my marches on the US Embassy with placards calling him a murderer and killer and evil incarnate. What good does that do? I am deluding myself. Make my world smaller, take care of my own backyard, I don't expect this to be an overnight thing, I will have the odd global explosion but for now, for now, I will do one small thing to contain myself into a smaller space.

2006 Year of the Dog, Element: Fire. Positive

Well good to the above. Other blogs that I read on a regular basis aren't quite so jolly as what the upcoming Chinese year portends for us all. James Howard Kuntsler as of today predicts further depletion of just about everything and speaking of China, it will be rattling its sabres at us due to the factory closeouts caused by the slower sales of Walmart, Costco, caused by the failure of the housing boom and energy prices soaring. I admit to it getting to me, all the doom and gloom.
I sit here in my last week in the lala land of Newfoundland where the world is always so distant and reflect on the real world, aka Toronto, to which I will be returning in a week.
I boiled my water and cooked my pasta and sauce on top of the wood stove tonight. Brings out my pioneer spirit. I can live on so little out here and not be so tempted by the bright lights. I walked the dog along the shore tonight, the tide was out, it makes it more navigable and the dog was in ecstasy, rolling on the rocks a few times, clambering over a frozen pool. How do dogs know things we don't? She knew it was frozen before she threw herself on it. It reminds me of the stories of the animals at the time of Tsunami 2004. How not one animal died and elephants were seen carrying children out of danger. Dogs were swimming with babies in their mouths.
And then we get to the most viewed news story of 2005: it was the one of the man who died having had sex with a horse and his colon ruptured.
We all need diversions, I suppose and I must confess on clicking on the most sordid of stories first and not the more edifying.
Will they impeach the Bushling? He has horseshoes up his a**, or enough backing and twisting of reality from the powers that be behind him.
Taylor Caldwell had it right years and years ago in her books, always writing of the real powers in the world, the moneyed ones behind the political icons. The kingmakers.
What will be positive about this Brave New World?
A return to basics, to community, to the lack of desire for stuff and stuff and stuff.
A kinder world, unless, of course, we are all blown to bits by Iran who are rattling their sabres. And Russia, lurking quietly, sitting on tons of desired energy and enough nuclear arms to blow the world to bits ten times over.
Are we on the verge of WW3?
Is this the fire element? Reduced to rubble to start afresh. Has this been the cycle for eons?
Will we ever get it right?