Winter Solstice, and the snowflakes are out in force

Dear Father Christmas,

All I want for Christmas is attention. (And a pronoun of my own.)

I want recognition of my identity. And validation of my neuro-difference. After all, I am a survivor. And autistic and marginalized and BIPOC. Please keep that in mind when you put the goods into the stockings. I'll send you a list, okay?

You'll remember I'm two-spirited, right?

Speaking of spirit, a stocking-full of spirits would be great. Or wine. (Organic grapes.) Chocolates too if possible. (Fair-traded.) I look forward to having my needs met by your largesse, Father Christmas. After all, snowflakes are your world, right?

You can just leave the stuff by the hearth when you do your Chimney-Dash. (But nothing triggering, okay?)

Thank you, and Happy Intersectional Multiculturally-Diverse Holidays.

(PS: I don't care for that sexist title you use, by the way. Why not Mother Christmas, or something Trans? I can't call you Santa Claus because “santa” means saint which sounds Euro-centric and colonialist. You need to work on your intersectionality, FC. In time for next year, okay?)

(PPS: Is there any way you could let me know when you're coming so I could get a photo of you giving me the stuff? Except without you in the picture, of course. I like selfies best.)

Santa Clause's Retirement Letter

(From  Short Humour Magazine:    http://www.shorthumour.org.uk/10writersshowcase/santa.htm )

Dear World,

Boy, have things ever changed in the toy-delivery field since I started my career. Remember when people wrote letters to Santa? You didn't expect to get one from me, but here goes ... I need to give you notice of my imminent retirement. I used to deliver a sleigh-full of dolls, teddy bears, train sets, roller skates and pencil sets on every magical Christmas Eve. (Pencils! Can you imagine?) But no more. Gifts have gone electronic. It's all game-boxes now, and fit-bits, gift cards and peculiar little digital devices that fall to the floor and get lost at the bottom of the sleigh.

I used to be able to park right beside the chimney I would be slipping down. Now there are few chimneys left, only “smart heating” and roofs cluttered with solar panels. Last year, one sported a poster saying “REINDEER SLEIGHS EXPLOIT UNGULATES”.

Some houses even have notes on theirs roofs warning “mask is mandatory”. A mask, over a beard like mine?! No one needs a mask if they're already muffled by a deep thicket of white facial hair.

I used to find thoughtful treats like cookies and warm milk waiting for me beside people's hearths, but now everything they leave is stuff I'm scared to eat, like Guatemalan Keto Shark-free Spice Balls, and Dirty-Snowman Vegan Nut-free Kumquat Squares. And whatever happened to a nice cup of tea? Now I find a note advising me there's a Pomegranate Gingerbread Iced Latte in the fridge, or a Jagermeister-Curcumin Espresso Shot in the microwave.

And no one's decently in bed taking their long winter nap while I lurk in their living rooms; they're all hunkered down with smartphones and laptops. I see the light from their digital devices glowing at windows and under doors. Even the kids aren't asleep, dreaming about what might be in their stockings while visions of sugar plums dance in their heads. They're texting their friends from under the covers.

No: Christmas Eve isn't what it was when I started out, apprenticed to Great-grandfather Claus. Nor is the elf staff! Not one knows how to wield a hammer and nail. The North Pole is all immigrants and refugees now and many don't speak English. Some elves are illiterate and can't even write the lists I need, so I can't check them twice. Luckily every kid wants the same thing anyway: digital stuff. High-tech robotic amazon wares. I might as well retire, I'm beginning to feel, and be replaced by a drone. I'm just not as jolly as I used to be. I guess drones do go further and move faster than anything a bunch of reindeer would pull. They're much more efficient ... So, Tallyho-ho-ho, drones!

Still, I can't help thinking something magical is being lost.

Yours truly,

Old Man in a Red Suit

Santa's Workshop is Hiring Seasonal Helpers

HELP WANTED

Santa's Workshop Is Hiring!

Seeking experienced reliable elves for the busy season

Must be available for weekends and overtime

Skilled craftsmen only need apply (this position is not about

building bits of carpentry and painting wood)

Certificates in Electronic Toy-Making, 3-D Printing,

Advanced Digital Design and Robotics are mandatory

(Applications from Robots also considered: we guarantee

equal-opportunity for the artificially intelligent)

HazMat, SafeShop and Group-Thought certification is mandatory

Steel-belled work-boots and tassel-topped helmets are required in the shop

Our workplace encourages neuro-diverse two-spirit applicants

We guarantee non-misgendering allyship with the elven BIPOC community

Dr. Seuss Invents Christmas-Cancel Genre

Christmas Cancelled, 2020

    Dr. Seuss said it would happen, and he was right. It did, although everyone else had thought stealing Christmas was just a horror plot from a kids' book. 

    Dr. Seuss invented Christmas-Cancel lit, featuring as his main protagonist Cancel-Cultural hero The Grinch. Dr. Bonnie-Lou Who saved the day however, by leading the people of What-the-Heck-Happened-Ville in quiet renditions of “Be Safe, Be Calm, Be Kind”. 

    Everyone is encouraged to mask up and stand around a huge tall tree to sing it on Christmas Day. Just don't hold hands.

Is Kid-Lit Too White?

 How long before “systemic racism” comes for children's literature, with its shamelessly sparkly-white characters such as Snow White, Caspar the Ghost, and Frosty the Snowman? Christmas is of course already beyond the pale (if one may use such triggering language) and children's literature has always been a target of censorship, but formerly for reasons of eroticism or fairy-tale gruesomeness. The attack on all things white-suggestive is new.

Comfort-characters such as the shy, polite and kindly Rupert Bear, and T. H. White's “Wart” (boyhood name of King Arthur), are no longer vouchsafed to children, and innocence (“in-nocere”, not-knowing) is equated with silence, which is now considered "violence".

Rupert the cheerful bear-child was once in fact a brown bear, but was made white by editors who wanted him to show up well in illustrations when the Rupert Annual was printed in colour. He set forth each day in his yellow sweater and plaid pants for Nutwood Forest, where he had adventures and Did Good Things. It's surprising there hasn't yet been a march demanding the publisher “Make Rupert Brown Again”. (1)

In T. H. White's youth novel The Once and Future King, Arthur upon becoming king took up nobility as a “glorious doom”. Originally, to be noble meant having a known name, plus character traits like magnanimity and moral excellence. We however are only interested in “inclusion, diversity and equity”, which aren't necessarily magnanimous, moral and excellent. To admit the existence of excellence would be to acknowledge that not everything is equal. Nobility has toxic connotations, today.

No wonder everyone's at loggerheads, adding to what Matthew Arnold in Dover Beach called the confused alarms of “ignorant armies that clash by night”. (2) Some might say that the violence lies in that – manifested as street rallies and online attacks – not in the wise restraint of silence. Only the kindly decency of a simple hero like Rupert could sort it all out -- but we've moved a long way from Nutwood.

1 For the story of Rupert's transformation from brown bear to white, see:

http://www.canterbury-archaeology.org.uk/tourtel/4590809564

2 For Matthew Arnold's poem see https://poets.org/poem/dover-beach

First Day (Never Do Anything By Yourselfie)

First day of the term, and Mom drives you to the University. She wants to meet all your new teachers. She wants to make sure they all have her email address. She drives you up to the main door and says, "Now don't move 'til I get back, don't get lost while I park the car."

She manoeuvres around others parents' vehicles, and then dashes back waving a large bag: "You forgot you lunch!" You enter the building together, crowding in with other students, parents, grandparents, social workers, guardians and counsellors. 

"Is there a 'fridge where you can keep your medication?" Mom asks anxiously. 

First day of kindergarten? No: first day of university. 

Remember the old days when First Year students went to University by themselves? Finally free of adult supervision they could pilot their own educational boat and plot their route through adulthood.

They didn't need counselling because the buildings were big and there were other students they hadn't met before, and they had to find a room on a map and choose a desk to sit at, all without consulting a therapist. They arrived in their own second hand car, bought with money made in summer jobs. Or maybe they arrived by bus, and picked up its schedule because they'd be coming here every day -- by themselves. With parents here, they wouldn't have been seen dead.

Maybe they'd be living in Student Residence -- where Mom had not performed a hygiene-sweep ahead of time. Or maybe they'd still be living at home, but no one would tell them when to get up in the morning and what time their first class was; they just had to know that, as if by magic!

What has happened to independence and growing up? To being "able," instead of fetishizing "disability"? Such nostalgic concepts for those who started University in the 1970s and '80s. High school classmates melted into memory as we left our home river for the big ocean, like human salmon (me, I was entering a Biology program …) Salmon have a juvenile stage and adult stage in their life cycle, but it seems humans have evolved an endless recycling of juvenile stages. (An evolutionary decline?)

For us those first heady days of university were a rocking roll-over from grade school to independence, experienced against the throb of The Stones, Queen, Led Zeppelin. We picked up our course reading lists (we read books back then) and checked out the masses of cute guys who had materialized all around us. 

Today, Mom is here, asking, "where are your anxiety pills? Have you got your smartphone? Have you taken any selfies yet? Here … let me take one of me! Got one! Straight to YouTube! Here, let's take one for your ex-step-father who said he'd be here but of course isn't ..."

"Look at all these cute guys!" adds Mom, and she doesn't mean the 18 year olds; she means other parents. "There's one heading for the Starbucks across the street," she says. "You know what, I should get a double latte to celebrate -- this is such an important day for me! So I'll just pop into that Starbucks -- if you'll be okay on your own for a bit? Have a look around, but don't get lost. I'll be back soon -- text me if you need anything, okay?"

Project Amnesia

Welcome to Trigger Town 

-- but enter at your own risk. You may see a sign, place-name or something colonial that offends, like a statue, library, court house or legislative building. We're doing our best to get rid of them. History is trouble. A noxious weed. Best to re-write it. 

Should the name “Victoria, BC” survive? It commemorates a Victorian monarch, which triggers PTSD for some. Arguably, native Victorians should have their birth certificates changed. (“Place of Birth: FORMER-Victoria”, like "Former-Yugoslavia) The Province is demanding the federal government come up with COVID funding for this (since history too is a nasty virus.)

Trigger Town will eradicate street names so people don't get a shock every time they read Douglas, Tolmie, Blanshard and Finlayson. Few know anything about the character, achievements, education and dedication of these people (history hasn't actually been taught all that much), but they've got to be disappeared.

Since it's safer to forget than understand History, the education system has launched Project Amnesia, to help students come to proper conclusions (i.e., forget about) the values and accomplishments of "settlers" who had put too much emphasis on things like parliamentary democracy, habeas corpus, education and mass literacy. In the school setting, enquiry is dangerous but group-think is safe, less likely to trigger curiosity or independent ideas. Ideas offend. Best to ban them, inclusively.

The Alphabet War

The world is "swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight/ where ignorant armies clash by night" wrote Matthew Arnold in Dover Beach in 1867. 

That was the year Canada was born. However it was in 1867 England, in 2020 Canada "struggle and flight" seems a pretty wide-ranging war among alphabetical armies who fight with non-civil slogans slashed across walls in CAPITAL LETTERS. 

Ordinary people (you know who we are) are tired of constant confused alarms from BIPOC and LGBQT, tired of being told that ACAB, and that BLM (like all lives; we know). We feel like we're being sloganized to death by the PC with OCD, although we know we'll be labelled with all sorts of "-isms" for pointing it out. (So, best to speak as ANON, if at all.)

We're already tired of COVID, with it's self-isolating work-from-home blending of days into sameness and a sort-of-working, sort-of-alone lifestyle … We can't even keep that TGIF feeling we used to have at the end of the working week. How's the end different from the beginning and middle, now? What's a week, in life lived on  ZOOM and SKYPE?

So we're not in the mood-disorder for warfare via wall-splashing graffiti and text-abbreviation. Texting isn't writing, and slogans aren't thought. Capitalized abbreviations are sub-literate amputations for an ADHD generation.  If I see one more I'll get PTSD.

You might think that arrogant and don't want to hear my plea for peace and whole syllables, but nevertheless that's my final WORD, delivered, of course, as ANON. 

Please don't RSVP.

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Does society suffer from hypo-adultism?

Many of the psychological ailments people complain of today (and get disability allowances for) are normal phases in childhood:
mood swings
anxiety and uncertainty
social awkwardness
identity confusion

Taken together, these are normal signs of immaturity. In theory children grow out of them: they become adults. In practice however, many no longer do. Does contemporary society nurture a culture of perpetual childhood? A condition of hypo-adultism?

It's fashionable to claim some form of "disability", which has in turn spawned accusations of "ableism" ("discrimination or prejudice against people with disabilities"). To be disabled (or "handicapped" as they used to say) once meant being blind, deaf or in a wheelchair. Now it includes gender dysphoria, bipolar disease, OCD, generalized depression and anxiety, substance addiction, and "racialization". 

People used to be praised for overcoming handicaps (polio survivors, for instance, common in the mid-20th century). The Helen Keller example was the gold standard of "rising above". Now people are encouraged to cultivate emotional disabilities, in other words to prolong childhood, perhaps forever. This is the "puer aeternus" or perpetual boy syndrome (whence "puerile"). What people feel threatened by now is adultism -- the expectation that youths become adults.

Maturity, self-reliance, independence, life-long character development … once considered normal goals, these have fallen into disrepute, an ideal of a suspect culture, a "privileged" or "non-inclusive" one that inequitably tries to dominate other cultures. 

If adulthood doesn't dominate, then childishness will. Immaturity will be rewarded in an increasingly dependent class, probably a heavily medicated one. And self-medicated. From the practice of pharmaceutically treating behaviour disorders in children has grown the habit of self-medicating in adulthood. 

Screen-addiction is notable for feeding into this, of course: life as distracting entertainment is another juvenile desire. Demotion of literacy is also part of the pattern -- but that's a larger area of research to explore. Suffice it to say that kids' vocabulary is shrinking in a zooming and texting era, yet kids who know few long words have learned the word "dysphoria". Their disability is not dysphoria however, but hypo-adultism: the fear of growing up. There always was something creepy about Peter Pan.

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Getting Over Name Disputes

We name things to take ownership of them. When we build or buy a house we may give it a name. Someone else decides on numbers but a name is bestowed by you, and may reflect hope, celebration or nostalgia.

As soon as you adopt a cat or dog you give it a name. Children of course are christened with care, and children themselves spontaneously name places to make them more real, more significant. In one neighbourhood there was “Jumping Cliff”, where kids jumped into piles of leaves, “Witch's Garden” on which a stooped old woman looked down from a window, and “Midnight Boat”, a boat-shaped rocky outcrop on which many imaginary journeys were taken. The naming habit isn't lost in adulthood: one couple (probably many) call the BC Ferry on which they met “the Love Boat”.

The trouble starts when public buildings or sites are named for historic figures, events, or places from which settlers arrived. Always, some group comes along wanting to re-name them. The purpose of re-naming is to take a place away from someone else. It's about possession.

We could avoid this by choosing nomenclature not from historic figures or episodes, but from names of non-human entities such as the plants and animals found in a place. We could raise the process of labelling above the level of human squabbling to the level of flora, fauna, geology and weather.

How about naming streets Raccoon Row, Wild Dog Way, or Storm Street? And if someone objects to “privileging” the English language, how about (instead of privileging another one) using a language no one now speaks, such as Latin and Greek? How about Ursus Alley (where bears used to roam), Mt. Quercus (where oaks still grow), Canis Court, or Fort Felix, standing where cougars still sometimes prowl? (In schools, a teachable moment about classical languages?)

We already name some places after natural features. Consider Trout Lake (in Burnaby), Sunset Boulevard (in California) and Oak Shade Lane, Oaklands School and Willows School in Victoria. Why not stick to that? Today's heroic historic figure will be tomorrow's villain – to someone. But a trout's a trout and a willow's a willow – and no one need stoop to childish nomenclature conflicts which amount to “he took it – I had it first”.

Naming schools, buildings, libraries, streets and towns after other species acknowledges that we disputatious humans are only one species among millions, and that the landscape belongs as much to the others as to us. By naming places for natural features rather than for human history, we recognize that nature (Earth) owns itself. In Earth-time, we are creatures of a moment. No ethnic group “owns” a place for we are all but tenants here, quickly passing through.

If schools were named for local wildlife and trees, especially endangered ones, the students could take ownership of campaigns to protect them. Think of all the science and art projects that could be built around it, if schools were named for intriguing plants and animals rather than for a person that someone, somewhere, will dislike.

Toppling Statues of Privileged White Guys -- Civic Bylaw is in the Works

VICTORIA CITY COUNCIL EXPECTED TO HAVE 

BYLAW IN PLACE THIS WINTER

In case we're to be cursed by a snowy white winter this year, Victoria is introducing a bylaw forbidding Frosty the Snowman figures in private yards and public parks. Families are asked to respect the multi-cultural sensitivities of their neighbourhood.

"Frosty is a snow-white icon of privilege. The sight of him triggers PTSD in some members of the community when they walk by," say councillors. "This symbol of oppression has no place in our parks and gardens."  

"And why is he always male?" ask #metoo supporters.

"And why does he get a scarf when our homeless population is experiencing coldness?" ask activists.

"And why, what with the CRD smoking ban, is he smoking a pipe?" ask health officials.

Pro-Council journalists ask and answer the classic journalists' questions:

Who?      White male

What?     Middle-class throw-back

When?    Colonial dark ages

Where?   Gardens of single family dwellings

"The detached house and garden harbour negative anti-social elements," declares Council. "Housing should be crowded, inclusive and multi-use."

A local university History prof agrees: "Frosty snow-statues are a dangerous symbol of privileged white-guy supremacy. Topple them!"

"With that top-hat, Frosty even looks like John A. Macdonald, whose statue was fortunately removed from public view outside City Hall to spare passers-by the obscenity of its presence," added the prof's colleague.

"If you build a Snow-White-Man and someone throws red paint on it, don't come to us with complaints," say Councillors. "We will begin with public education, but continued non-compliance with the Frosty Ban will result in fines."

Home-schooling Grandparents Create Educational Breakthrough

Literacy rates set to rise! TheNews interviews grandparents who home-school the kids while their parents are at work:

Experts predict improvement in literacy and factual knowledge among students who are outside school classrooms and learning at home with grandparents who were themselves educated when schools taught "the 3 R's". 

"We used to sit in rows as a matter of course," says one Grandma, "with desks at any spacing the teacher said they would be. We walked down hallways in lines, too. Not forming an unruly mob, shouting in each others' faces … I daresay there was a lot less spreading of germs back then."

"We used pens and paper and read books with pages that you turned," adds her teaching partner, Grandpa.

"We can't wait to tell our grandchildren that penmanship exists."

They are not alone; this new breed of grand-teachers is changing the face of Education. In what ways, exactly?

"We read books!" says one Granny who sits in a rocking chair reading aloud from ancient legends and modern poems. The kids at her feet sit mesmerized. "We memorize verse," she says. "What you memorize at age ten will be with you at age 80. I call it our EFL class (English as a First Language)."

"And we do arithmetic," says Grandad. "We count back coins for practice." (What are coins, asked one grandson?)

Another Grandad was once a naval engineer. "We re-enact great sea battles in the backyard," he says. "Even the pre-schoolers. We plot them on paper-boards."

"All hands on board-books!" says Granny.

And for these home-schoolers, it's all hands off cellphones, ipods, laptops. 

Another great-grand-step-parent favours Outdoor Ed. "I give the kids out-of-home-work," she elaborates. "I send them to local parks to bring back a feather, a deciduous leaf, a piece of lichen, an acorn. Next week we'll start an ant farm."

It's good for physical distancing, to be outdoors, one assumes.

"Yes," she says, "and we language-distance too, from words like 'misgendering', 'woke', 'identity' and 'marginalize'. 

(Here, safest is "no comment".)

"It's not only the plague of COVID we're getting away from."

Promises to be interesting, the educational "new normal". 

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(See also: How toys have changed: 

and: How Books Are Still Magic:

The more John A. Macdonald gets knocked down the more newly-famous he becomes

In the fame-game, the more your statue gets pulled down the more important you must have been, and the more famous you become again -- as a de-platformed statue.

Historic figures were given statue-status ("standing") because contemporaries or descendants wanted to com-memorate ("remember together") their heroes.

You'd think remembering together would be something any group would be free to do, in a free society. We're also free to forget, but paradoxically the more publicity the statue-destruction causes, the less forgotten a historic figure will be. John A. Macdonald has more in the Victoria BC news this week than he has for years -- given the scarcity of History classes in today's schools.

Indeed, if a statue hasn't been pushed over or had paint thrown on it, the person it represented, were s/he alive to know it, might feel quite rejected. Enemies confer significance; only the most banal non-doer never made any. There's something to be said though for anonymity, and probably more than a few of the commemorated wish they'd never become so famous. (see John A. Macdonald's imagined reaction to his statue-removal here: https://satiroceneage.blogspot.com/2020/02/what-john-macdonald-thinks-about.html )

Some of those newly reviled by ideologues would probably be happy to Rest In Peace  (obscurity) but they're paradoxically being revived. When they lower your memorial stone they raise your profile. Maybe the long-forgotten deceased are guffawing in their graves. Others might think, like the poet Alexander Pope:

Blest, who can unconcernedly find

Hours, day and years slide soft away

In health of body, peace of mind,

Quiet by day

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;

Thus unlamented let me die;

Steal from the world, and not a stone

Tell where I lay

We could think of statue-tackle sport this way:

Manufacturing new consent,

new ideologies have their say,

other figures from the past today

are the ones raised high, to stand (to "stare")

from an unaccustomed height

These icons make a gaudy sight

but don't take them for granite,

they too will stand on feet of clay

and topple like last year's heroes,

media darlings and falling starlets ...

The new leading men are placed on sand

as shifty as the ground of Ozymand

                 (NOT by Alexander Pope)

SBJ

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Municipal Munificence and Parks-Policy

In its munificence, the municipality gifts its citizens with things they don't want: dog-free beaches, wine-free parks, a ghostly gallery of spy cameras watching them perform their private lives.

Much rule-making seems to be about the perfidy of animals. A sleeping settler-cat on a front porch is deemed a threat to indigenous bird species. Take your Hound of the Basking-villains to the beach and he'll be accused of plotting mass-murder of gulls. The birds don't care about the dogs, but the humans are squawking.

They also squawk about garbage cans: raccoons and bears get into them. So ban the beasts, or at least spy on them with surveillance cameras. But wait … the cameras are showing a different bin-vasion: homeless tent-people rummaging and plundering.

Oh, well that's different ... don't ban the tent-slums. It's the bears who are homeless though: they preferred forest-food to garbage-can food but their forests were logged bit by bit as the suburbs spread and human housing took over. So they moved next door to us.

The parks sprinkled around suburbia are heavily monitored and planted with a forest of signs sporting red circles slashed with black lines: NO SMOKING, NO PARKING, NO CARS HERE, NO BALL-THROWING, NO DRINKING, NO FEEDING WILDLIFE, and above all: NO DOGS. And if you do smoke, there will be NO ASH TRAYS, although this doesn't mean less smoking, only more butts on the ground.

If you take a sip of wine at a picnic in these parks you could be fined, but if you buy, sell and inject hard drugs in a homelessness tent-encampment you'll be enabled, because you're vulnerable and disadvantaged. (If you're a kid playing in a park with tents, don't take your shoes off because you never know what will be lying on the ground.)

Eventually you keep right out of the park. If you drive a car you're committing mass murder via climate change, but you have no other way of getting to a different park or a beach where dogs are permitted and tents aren't -- it being hard to take a dog on a bike.

Some citizens ask whether we need all this surveillance and these prohibitions? The Municipal Council held a meeting about that and decided to form a committee whose minutes would be sent to a bigger committee who would report back to Council at a future meeting (or ten), after consulting municipal staff who would first commission a study and host an interactive meeting … 

So don't stay tuned. Just stay home -- if you're lucky enough to have a back yard. Feed birds and squirrels, throw a frisbee and watch comical raccoons knocking over your garbage can. Plant tall trees and big hedges to block out the neighbours' CCTV cameras. When you do slip off to the park for an occasional meet-up with friends, hide your wine in your yoga-class juice bottle. And if you smoke, bring your own ashtray. 

The Mask and the Crown of Life: a Brief Amusement

A funny thing happened on the way to the grave, and I couldn't keep a straight face, despite my destination. Of course no one really believes in the destination, and maybe that's the funniest thing of all.

Life is all play and we're all tricksters. We put on masks, try roles, tricking ourselves as well as each other -- Prosperos all, but not wanting to abjure our rough magic. We put on a mask, for instance, as magical protection against the "corona" (crown) of the pandemic virus that stalks us today. It's an act of faith, but certainly not faith in the government bodies and experts who told us to wear the mask, after telling us for months it would do no good. Oh well -- it can't hurt, we decide.

Funny things keep happening, in life, over the lifespan:
You spend the first half building your brain and the second half de-menting it (with substances, grief, wear-and-tear). But often old-age de-mentation is but a time of deeper wisdom (of "the best of brains, the worst of bodies").

When young we used to say we wanted to find ourselves, but today's young seem obsessed with finding shared identity, not self -- a programmed thing, not an individual thing. Bullying is often part of sports, and "anti-bullying" was briefly a movement. Now bullying's part of the rules of the game of censoring and de-platforming the wrong rights-movements. (Never trust a movement.)

Agatha Christie played a disappearing game at one point. Hide and seek. She left home and everyone ran around looking for her and coming up with theories about her fate -- and then she was back. Many people want to do an Agatha-disappearance, or at least to play-act one through dis-guise. Some people seem to have quite taken to hiding behind COVID masks, making a flag for the face covered with playful symbols. Shapes, colours, diagrams all mean something. At first we all felt awkward wearing a pandemic mask, but now we're beginning to feel naked without it.

That's one of the funny things: you disappear behind a mask, or you disappear into thin air like Agatha did, but then you resurrect. You are re-born. If you were born in the first place, that is. Some apparently weren't. If you were born in a place where earlier tribes lived before you, they say you weren't born in your natal place, but "settled" there. Where you came from is not explained, but you can only be native to the place where you were born. Maybe some of us are laughing on our way to grave because we won't be dying there, never having been born. We laugh at this thought, funny-humorous and also funny-strange.

We wear the crown of immortality then, and the double laughing/ weeping masks of theatre as we follow the muses through our comedy-drama -- never born, yet having the time of our life.

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY CANADA! Are you being wished many happy returns?

Today we celebrate the birth of Canada. Usually a birthday isn't considered a day for hurling insults, it's usually reserved for compliments and good wishes -- but not for Canada on July 1st 2020.

On early morning radio detractors start the day by explaining why they don't celebrate Canada's birthday, and others, who do, apologizing for it. (How Canadian can you get? Maybe that IS the celebration.)

One commentator says Canada is "racist", another that it's "colonialist", which seems to amount to the same thing in current social justice-speak. It's interesting to deconstruct the word "colonial" however: a colony is but a collection of people who live, work and share resources for mutual support in what may be a hostile environment. (Even ants and beavers do it.) The Canadian climate and wilderness was certainly hostile for the first farmers, traders, communicators, town-builders, arts-creators and social service providers who settled here. 

"Social services" meant orphanages, hospices, food charities and such as provided by women from backgrounds where "care and share" philosophies were valued (Quaker, evangelical, communitarian, convent-based or whatever). The "communicators" used written words and felt it was worth setting up schools to teach young people to read and write them. 

Gradually these early settlers joined up their colonies up into a nation (note for those who don't read history: we haven't been a colony for quite some time) in which prosperity and voting rights were eventually made available to everyone, constitutional equality and freedom of conscience were protected, and all without a single bloody national Revolution. Tolerance, accommodation, learning to adjust to irrational or resentful criticisms of other citizens were part of the colonial equipment -- and still are. 

So Happy Birthday Canada, and congratulations for being born! No wonder millions of immigrants from all over the world clamour still to settle within your boundaries.

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Grave Thoughts on the Levity of Life

From where I sit on a bench the seaside graveyard climbs a gentle hill. The graves, headstones, crosses, bouquets of flowers fresh or wilted, have a calming quality. The silence of underground folk makes them seem wiser than they were in life. They have acquired gravitas, of course. All of them, however wise or foolish they once were, took some sort of knowledge to the grave, took life experience. If you could gather all the knowledge and memory lying silent and hidden here – cryptic in the crypts – how bulky would your treasure trove be? How would we measure the weight of it? 

The birds are hushed and even the trees stand motionless for a windless moment. Wisdom gathers just out of reach, below ground, an existential state away. I chat with the dead.

I knew some of the people buried here, before they arrived at this final place. As a Memoirs Coach I helped them write their life stories. I did unofficial surveys of their beliefs (as I still do of their survivors' beliefs). What is the secret of your longevity, I would ask clients in their 90s? How do you stay young and active?

“Don't drive. I walk everywhere.”

“Exercise kills. Never run or do aerobics. I drive (or better yet, get driven) everywhere – I relax, I smell the roses.”

“Play bridge, it keeps the mind alive.”

“Never play bridge, it's an old folks game.”

Maybe it's a matter of diet, I wonder aloud when I'm chatting with these wise elders.

“It is indeed: eat protein. Lots of meat.”

“It is indeed: never eat meat! I'm a vegetarian.”

“Oils. Olive, sesame, coconut, grape-seed ... I'd be dead without oil.”

You'd be dead without food, I point out. It doesn't seem to matter which kind we eat.

“That's because we don't live by bread alone. (By the way, don't eat bread, carbohydrates kill.) Try prayer.”

“Meditation.”

“Friends and family.”

“Solitude.”

“Knowledge.”

“Innocence.”

“Duty.”

“Wealth.”

“Freedom from possessions.”

“Doing what's right.”

“Doing what you want.”

“Laughter.”

Yes, I reply, you're right.

Afterwards, my memoir clients drift off to their own lives and purposes, to solitude or family, bread or no-bread, walking, driving, roses, bridge ... leaving me none the wiser. Now I sit in the cemetery where the wise lie silent. So many purposes they too had, back then in Life.

Purpose itself keeps us getting up in the morning. I noticed that memoirists who had proclaimed purposes that made them unhappy were tense and tight. Those who were pleased with choices freely made seemed fortified, balanced, calm. Whoever is pleased is healthy. People with a sense of humour live on after death: I hear them chuckling down there below ground. There's levity inside those heavy coffins. Why not? Who said the afterlife would be rational?

I am pleased to sit in the sun in a park-like cemetery, viewing the natural world, living off-line. For this, my "platform" is my bench, from which I survey the beach and a bit of ocean to my left, and the grassy expanse of the graveyard to my right. Video sites (“I see” in Latin) in fact provide no vista. Cyber-life has no physicality, no flesh, no touch or scent. Virtual isn't real. 

The underground folk are real, and I hear their murmurs. Their city-state is stable, their country will last forever. They have time to be wise, now.

I turn to the seaside view on my left. A reviving breeze is coming off the ocean, its salty tang just noticeable up here on my bluff. The sea heaves gently. The life below the surface is as mysterious as that in the soil around the graves beside me. There are worms and micro-organisms in sea as in soil. The ocean floor crawls with them. Crustaceans hunt them. Fish slip through underwater forests of weed, nosing the swaying curtains apart in a silent search for food. Above, kelp forests bloom. A few otters and seals break the surface, calmly pursuing their otter-pleasures, seal-purposes, oblivious to us, our graves, lost loved ones, fears, plagues and sudden prohibitions. 

If You're Not Confused You're Not Paying Attention

In the middle of town the Cacophonous Zone is set up, a discordant place, there being so many behind the creation of it. Leadership they didn't like, for it sounded elitist, colonial and privileged. Yet the founders knew the wrong followers when they saw them, and evicted them.  

Anti-capitalists jostled for space with libertarians, while indigenous interests denounced both as Euro-centric. 
Communists notwithstanding, a gaggle of entrepreneurs appeared, creating a pop-up market in one section when the Cacophonous Zone took over a square hectare of the city. Business opportunities abounded here. Marchers need equipment and protestors need stimulation.

Stimulants were offered under a big old urban survivor-tree in a corner. Someone set up "aSIGNations" in the marketplace, which offered instant signs for those who forgot to bring a placard or who (if they were politicians perhaps) suddenly changed their allegiance, and needed a new placard. These knew when to abandon a sinking allyship (as CTV News called allegiance, when they stopped having any for Jessica Mulroney who sunk from TV because she said … what was it again? Does anyone remember an outrage of an hour ago?)

Not remembering an hour ago, few here remembered anything at all about distant history, if they'd ever learned it. They only knew it was Bad. They joined with gusto in the new sport of statuecide, which was (as far as most could tell) a response to genocide, which was all that ever happened in history. "Take that, War Hero!" shouted the crowd, as one granite figure after another was pulled from its plinth.

One entrepreneur did good business selling Statue Lassoos, so that anyone could join in the pulling. Someone else started an instant translation service which would translate your placard slogans into rap. It could also purge your messages of any lingering grammar (grammar being elitist). The instant printer produced Certificates of Gender Identity, in case anyone in the LGBTrans corner suddenly needed to transfer theirs that very day.

There was a herbal products table which sold drops that turned tear gas into tears-of-laughter gas. This could be aimed at the riot police, making them die laughing.

There was a used clothing outlet that sold … used clothing. The product came from the homelessness tent city where it had arrived after being liberated from a different used clothing retailer. Originating thus in the trendiest district of town the used clothing fetched top dollar, and was displayed on a table labelled Riotware. (That entrepreneur was getting a free government start-up COVID grant to trademark the name.)

Someone spray-painted "Cacophonous Zone" on a wall at its entrance, but someone else covered that with Robotonous Zone, which was at length recognized as a criticism, and erased. Those deemed the perpetrators of Wrong Labelling -- a bunch of Golf Hooligans whose skin was as white as white marble -- were captured and knocked down (we thought they were statues, their assailants told police).

Some English as a Second Language teachers turned up with a peace sign plus a message saying "Clear Language Matters". The crowd ripped up their banner accusing them of disrespecting ethnic groups and calling them cultural appropriators, not to mention demo-jackers. The teachers texted their union from the Zone for help, but the union merely responded (via media) by saying that "Canada has systemic racism". 

One man's placard read "Non-Cause in Search of a March". He wandered about aimlessly, anonymous behind a pandemic mask that looked so scary the other marchers left him alone -- except for one old lady who called out "Hi George" while walking through the square because she always walked her dog through the square. 

"Stay safe", he called back.

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Let's de-fund the language police, and remember that Private Lives Matter

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-cbc-host-wendy-mesley-apologizes-for-using-a-certain-word-in-2/

De-fund the Language Police

   Some months ago, retailers downtown demanded more police presence due to an epidemic of shop-lifting. City Council refused to increase police funding, so retailers hired private security. Then residents and businesses called for more policing in other neighbourhoods as well, when homeless camps arrived and drug-dealing, break-and-entering and fights became frequent.

   Now that demand for “police visibility” has fallen right off the table. When news broke of ugly police assaults on Blacks in the U.S., the pieces on the civic board game were moved. Now we hear “de-fund the police” in Canada too, some claiming that we are “just as racist” as the U.S. Calls for increasing police presence were no longer popular even though shop-lifting had been increasing. During 2020 – the COVID period – business break-ins increased by 567%.

   "Ethnic minorities” are not uniquely targeted by the overzealous security industry which replaces police and plainly stalks and spies on all shoppers. Plenty of incidents of police harassing white people are listed in Canadian Police Complaint files, although discussion has been shaped around the “black lives matter” theme.

   Whatever the reality of police behaviour, the censorship of discussion is real. Anti-white, anti-government graffiti on walls are permitted, while their opposite would not be. Print and broadcast media are running with the censorship ball, fearing to become targets themselves of popular rage if they don't play the right game. These media should be platforms for discussion, not shapers of discussion. Case in point: the CBC has dropped Stockwell Day, a participant in its discussion panels, for expressing the view that Canada is not, in terms of policy and institutions, “systemically” racist.

   Freedom of opinion is not wanted on Canada's taxpayer-funded broadcaster. Yet what, we might ask, is the point of an “open” panel discussion if the moderator tells the participants ahead of time what they must say? Are media outlets platforms for free speech, or for authoritarian dictatorship? If a publicly-funded organ of communication is going to fall on the anti-free-speech side, it's not doing its job. Should we de-fund it then? A few days after the Day fuss, the CBC suspended veteran broadcaster Wendy Mesley -- for using “a word”. Coyly, they refused to identify the word, but never mind, the language police are happy to throw Mesley to the wolves without specifying the crime. Guilt is assumed -- like that of a hooded black man when seen on a city street on a dark night.

   To point out that the CBC is behaving dictatorially (dictating which diction is permitted) in the Stockwell Day example, is not to be a champion of Stockwell Day, who not surprisingly has detractors (isn't he the guy who gets his knowledge of science from the Book of Genesis?) The point is that whatever the public policy of a government may be, everyone has the right to think independently.

   Canada's Constitution, government and public institutions protect equality among ethnic groups: in terms of “system” Canada is not racist. That doesn't mean private thoughts aren't racist, but these cannot be forbidden, for they are private. Personal. Free opinion is by definition idiosyncratic rather than ideological, free-range rather than herded. Denunciation can't make race-based private thought less race-based, only more private. Public policy rests on the views of the majority – the "demos" of democracy – but a healthy democracy also protects dissenting views. We hear a lot about “diversity”, but government and media fear diverse opinion. 

   Few Canadians defend aggressive, let alone violent, behaviour toward others and few support non-equality under the law, considering that both repugnant and irrational. One can respect others' rights without liking them however. One person might have good reason to despise another. It's a personal feeling. Do we really want to criminalize feeling? Do we want to live in a nation where citizens have no right to private thoughts? Private Lives Matter.

   We are entitled to weigh evidence, make observations, develop hypotheses. In schools they teach “critical thinking” but they also impart the message that you can only be critical of white people, politicians, or those you perceive as “privileged”. It's censorship, then, that's systemic.

   The root meaning of the word privilege is “having access to privacy”. Let's strive to make everyone privileged then, by protecting everyone's right to private opinion. It shouldn't be banned by thought-control ideologues. The latter shout loudest, while many of humanity's best ideas have been passed down the ages in whispers. Someone, somewhere, had disagreed with them, and tried to silence them.

   Our world is riddled with thought-police. A TV News channel asks a 21-year old black man who organizes a rally whether he believes racism exists, knowing how he will reply (he having organized a rally to oppose it). He speaks of being profiled by police in a case of mistaken identity. Some of us have white friends who have been detained by police in cases of mistaken identity and who, when taking the police to court, were brushed off by the courts. If a black person sues police in the present climate, they won't be brushed off, for officials would fear being called racist.

   Maybe, however, some black people don't want to be poster-figures for a movement. Maybe they too want a private life. They have their own work to do (as scientists, scholars, explorers, novelists or whatever) which may have nothing to do with politics. You, Reader, might have a problem with the idea that “Private Lives Matter” because you presume I express it as a white person. But am I a white person? You don't know, and being not “racialized” means you don't need to know, because it doesn't matter.

   What matters is to let thought itself be free. Police do need to be restrained in their treatment of citizens. The language police also need to be restrained. Every dictatorship begins with censorship, but you cannot legislate feelings. 
A.J.

Governments' Apology to Nature

Governments, churches and corporations are falling all over each other to apologize to whoever demands it. Is it some sort of self-help exercise -- admitting guilt to groups they have ostensibly harmed? 

If they wish to apologize for harm done, Government (and public bodies) should be apologizing to Nature:

Sorry Forests, for logging you

Sorry Ocean, for filling you with plastic

Sorry Soil, for stealing your water and covering you with concrete

Sorry Wildlife, for stealing your habitats

Sorry Birds, for poisoning you with pesticides

Sorry Fish, for genocidal fishing that's wiping you out

Sorry Whales, for stealing your fish supply

Sorry, Factory-farmed and Laboratory Animals, for false imprisonment and cruel treatment

Sorry Fur-bearers, for not outlawing leg-hold traps

Sorry, Human Children, for depriving you of experience of nature, beauty, and quiet private outdoor places 

We admit that in the pursuit of profit and ethics-free corporate alliances, and by irrationally ignoring conservation science, human psychology and animal ethology, we have trampled on everything that many hold dear. We promise to restore what has been stolen from other species, compensate victims, and hold ourselves to a higher standard in future. We ask for your forgiveness -- and hope you'll consider us in future elections.

Education Comes Down With Absurdity-Virus.

Christmas seems a long time ago (everything pre-COVID seems a long time ago), but I well remember the dire annual Christmas warnings from lifestyle coaches and mental health experts who flooded the media with warnings about the "depression and anxiety" we we're suffering due to "seasonal stress". These experts fell all over each other giving us tips for "survival". What a relief to find when it all died down in the new year that we had survived. How glad the mental health Cassandras must have been to have a new bundle of warnings to issue, when by late February COVID had raised its crowned (corona) head. 

With the lock-down phase came a whole new raft of stresses: isolation, loneliness, financial anxiety, boredom, fear of the future, fear of coming within six feet of others ... Then, the schools were closed. Now they're partially re-opening, but unfortunately the stress-and-anxiety industry is telling parents (and kids) to be fearful and worried -- because it will be "different". 

Telling kids they can't survive something being different, that they're allergic to change, is a recipe for emotional enfeeblement. Tell the kids they'll be fine, and they will be. The desk is in a different place? The hours of attendance have changed? That's not a reason for mental breakdown. But of course to say this is to reveal uncaring insensitivity toward … whoever. Yet someone has to mention the un-mentionable: stiff spines, bravery under bombing, and so on. (You want stress? Ask a WWII survivor.)

Some of us are old enough to remember when kids always lined up at the school door before entering. (Remember not running in the halls??) Being told by a teacher that something's going to be done differently never used to be a reason for a nervous breakdown. Teachers ran classrooms, and students didn't have a daily meltdown when told what to do. Those meltdowns are more contagious than coronavirus, that's for sure. Just see one and the next kid catches it (copies it).

Sitting in rows of desks at a distance instead of clustering around a table for "group work" was routine in the old days, and kids learned to work independently, not to mention to spell, use a pen, read books and do math. A therapist in the emotionology trade recently announced on CBC radio that schools during the COVID partial re-opening must practice "emotion-focused learning". That is code for no learning, or for learning to whine about feelings like the adults around you do.

It would be more reassuring for students to look outside themselves, to study a subject other than "feelings". How about … Geography! Learning where mountains and oceans are, and learning the capitals of ten countries a day. Or history! Memorize the kings and queens of England since 1066 (okay ... of Israel, India, Morocco or whatever ethnic place you favour). Learn how many moons Saturn has, how many substances appear in the Table of Elements (and what an element even is …).

The post-pandemic "new normal" in Education is to avoid the "old normal" of disinterested knowledge. There was already fear that knowing stuff is a privileged, elitist and colonialist affectation that marginalizes those who need to tend to Self due to stress and anxiety. If you shrug and turn your mind to impersonal study, well then you're just stigmatizing … someone.

Whether new or old, the word "normal" comes from "norm", a geometrical term for an exact angle, such as a draughtsman needs to know. A right angle is the norm because there is only one measurably correct right angle. The word "correct" is linked to rectitude of course, and implies standards as well as exactitude, and is therefore not a concept people feel comfortable with. It's not "emotion-focused" or marginalization-concerned. (Interestingly, teachers used to graduate from what was called "Normal School", meaning a college upholding established standards in skills and knowledge.)

But sarcasm aside, it would be helpful for kids to focus on math as something inarguable, measurable and reliable. If they're bobbing around on the sea of adult emotionology, something impersonal and outside self could be a life-raft. They won't be scared of germs, of school, of every minor change in routine, if we don't tell them they should be.

What's So Bad About Being Marginalized?

Politicians, publishers, spokespeople and advocates of all kinds try to rescue the "marginalized". Congregating tightly in pursuit of an apparently high-minded goal of inclusivity, they've made a big new centre. Observing this, some people prefer to stay on the edge, outside the fray.

Some margins seem nicer than the middle. A middle is an undifferentiated blob. The mainstream's a deep river you could drown in. Margins are more defined, tentative, subtle and geographically interesting.

A margin is the sandy shore beside the sea where the messenger birds drop hints. It's the grassy verge along a highway, a strip of green standing out against the concrete-grey. It's the white space on the printed page surrounding the text where you pencil in your own ideas. It's the vantage point at the theatre from which you scan the whole room. Take advantage then of a good position. 

"It's often true that those who sit in the wings can see more than the players," said Nellie McClung. 
If you've been "marginalized" then, don't be too quick to give up your space. 

Door Knob Phobia in COVID-time

Psychologists have noticed the emergence of a new mental illness, and wonder why it doesn't get the attention all the others do. People suffering from Door Knob Phobia need help. They need understanding. They lose the ability to work, socialize and make a living. A Foundation has formed to apply for funding to help them.

What door-knob-phobics fear is germs on door handles. As we know, coronavirus can be anywhere. It hangs in the air, it lands on surfaces, it seethes in lobbies, shops and buses … and door handles. Not only should you not touch these, you shouldn't even go near them. Shouldn't even look at them. When you go through doors that open automatically, shut your eyes. The danger though, is that you might bump into someone coming the other way. And they might have coronavirus. And you might die.

So you don't go out.

The sight of door handles is so distressing that you can't even touch the door handles inside your house, those that only you have touched before and that you've scrubbed a hundred times. You know you're being irrational but you can't help it; you're addicted to imagining germs multiplying obscenely on door handles, no matter how often you wash them. In fact, the more you wash them the germ-ier they become.

You're told by experts a hundred times a day to wash your hands (hand-washing is itself no longer obsessive-compulsive -- it's now healthy) but what's the use of washing, if you have to touch a door handle? So you're trapped inside. You have nightmares in which you're desperate to get outside -- you must go outside -- but you can't escape because going out means going through the door. Which you won't do.

People with claustrophobia are especially hard hit by this mental illness, because their knob-phobic desire to stay indoors now has to do battle with their desire to go outdoors, and the stress of keeping their phobias straight can be overwhelming. It can lead to divorce and family breakdown, especially when family members are unsympathetic.

Sufferers however just can't stand being inside and can't stand going through the door. Not if they have to open it. But when they consider not closing it in the first place, they fear being watched. They feel exposed, and then they get agoraphobia. These pan-phobic victims are ripped apart as if by a pack of wolves: claustrophobia, agoraphobia, and doorknobophobia battling across their precarious mental universe.

They are told to join self-help groups -- online of course -- but research has shown that those who fear door handles also come to fear invisible germs on computer keyboards and cellphones. Experts are studying the linkages but research is in its infancy, and is under-funded. Sufferers therefore have appealed to donors to kick-start some crowd-funding, but donors have failed to respond. They suggest sufferers have a door kick-down instead.

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"Be Well" -- Or Be Unwell?

       "Be well" we sign our emails now, even in business messages to total strangers. But what does it mean? How do we "be well"? During the coronavirus epidemic it means don't get coronavirus, and the sub-text is "stay away from me". Go home. That's what the doctor ordered, and fear has made us obedient.
       But is it making us more well or less well? "Well" is one of those ancient monosyllables with a richly suggestive host of meanings. In English the word comes via Saxon from the Old German "welle", meaning wave. Health and good fortune well up like water in a well, or waves on the sea, or they sink like the water table in a drought.
       Famous wells such as those at Bath, Wells Cathedral, or Struell Wells in Ireland are fed by actual underground springs, and carry spiritual connotations. Religious structures like cathedrals are built on them. They illustrate the inseparability of the physical and the spiritual.     
          The COVID19 pandemic has licensed a hazardous flight from the physical. From the biological world we flee to cyber-space, and find that an easy, slack, undemanding and habit-forming place. We are rewarded for withdrawing indoors in front of computer screens, pretending that online networking is no different than meeting others in a cafe or lecture theatre. 

 Sedentary idleness too is an epidemic, and spreading ever-faster. Something is lost when scholars, knowledge seekers and philosophers don't communicate face-to-face. “Virtual” life is sterile life. We need body language, unconscious perception of hidden cues, the emotions below words, the expressions on faces. Our sensory-neural equipment evolved along with our need to be social, adept at sensing moods of those around us.

We also need cues from other species: the scents we pick up while forest-bathing, the pheromones of plants and animals, the sound of birds whose songs probably birthed human language. Did early feminid mothers not chirp at their infants, lulling them with the lilts of birdsong? In the fullness of time lullaby became verbal and words spun epic stories: religion, drama, literature were born.

       These could all but die in isolated cells where people merely watch computer screens. Poets made verse to the rhythm of walking, musicians created wind instruments with the living breath in their lungs: we've always tied creativity to physicality, we've never been robotic – until now. Now that we've created robots we've let them become the teachers. We follow them, instead of the peregrinating philosopher talking to the crowds in village after village. Maybe our future world ruler will be Top-Robot-Doctor, who welled up from the poisoned springs of digitalia. 

       There's no agora in the middle of town now; it's closed. No village green for the players to entertain us on, no spicy, sensuous and variegated Silk Trail, only the online retailer. Its delivery drones save us the trouble of going outside, getting up from the couch, being physical. It's not only our muscles that get flabby but also the parts of our brains that register muscular sensation, and the parts stimulated by smell, touch, vision and hearing.

Fearing that our bodies might catch a virus, we abandon bodies. We live without enchantment, a word related to “chant” and “cantare”, to sing. We don't sing and we don't recite; we merely speak to “Siri” and “Alexa” in their language: cybernetics. We have abandoned our inner animal, but our wild selves still keen and howl at night in dreams of lost physicality, dreams of longing.

The region of the brain supporting memory lies alongside the area devoted to smell. Leaves and flowers, humus-y soil and salty seas give off smell for a reason. They trigger communication among species, and they stimulate memory. Without physicality we become dumbed-down prematurely senile amnesiacs.                                       

Solitude too deepens life and mind, and hibernation provides rest, but immersion in online chatter is not real solitude, and the point of hibernation is to wake up refreshed. Let's not consent therefore to the theft of sensation and the freedom to roam, for physicality is our robust core (“robustus” -- strength). Without strength you cannot fight any virus. So let's call up our physical being, out of doors. That's what “be well” means.

  Stay strong - let nature be your guide