University Philosophy Department Establishes New Chair of Ethics of Street Marching

University Ethics experts are convening a conference to consider: 

Do protesters marching on a road have the right to step over protesters lying down on the road? Is there an ethical hierarchy of protest? Lying down vs marching upright -- who gets precedence? 

Do drivers on the road have the right to drive on a road? Can they marginalize marchers by getting out and kicking them to the curb?

Experts on free speech are divided about elitism in Street March Culture. (Is street protest systemically racialized?)

Should governments mandate that employers give workers one day off per month with marcher-pay? (The unemployed protest that this privileges people who work for a living, and is inequitable for non-workers.)

Statistics show businesses are closing for lack of staff because young people prefer protests to jobs. Marchers claim PTSD stemming from the stresses they're protesting about, while employers and drivers express alternative PTSD and chant to protesters: Put The Signs Down.

Career Protesters are particularly fond of the intersectionalism of intersections, where the maximum number of drivers, businesses and customers can be blocked, inconvenienced and counter-triggered.

Salmon Farm

Two contrasting salmonid lifestyles: you might hatch from a cluster of eggs nestled in the soft gravel of a stream bed, deposited last year by your mother as she slowly expires, her body perhaps becoming part of a bear's or eagle's body. Gaia needs her to contribute substance to forest soil and the roots of trees. 

When you hatch in the stream you'll feed in the cool shade of a grassy river bank. Maybe you'll be absorbed in the blink of an eye by a heron, or maybe you'll swim downstream toward inconceivably vast reaches of infinity-ocean, perhaps to contribute to orca-flesh in the space of a single spout, or perhaps you'll migrate through thousands of miles of ancient underwater streams until the day you too return to your natal river to mate and expire.

Or, if you aren't that salmon -- the wild one -- you will be the captive one, the farmed one imprisoned among a mass of other diseased and drugged fished, hemmed in by underwater fencing. The Master Races -- land-living two-foots who divide themselves into white and indigenous, wilderness and urban, producers and consumers -- dictate your fate as a product bodily undifferentiated from your fellows. The two-foots compete and dispute with each other, but your welfare is never part of their testy discussions.

Whether in open-net or land-based tanks you'll get never an UNDROP of water to yourself. Although an individual with individual sentience, you are deemed part of one pre-harvested mass. Your fate is to be herded, not heard, although you have an urge to express emotions: fear, need and grief. 

The Master Race, the air-breather, cannot hear you, the silent water-dweller, the finned not footed one. That foolish footling trifler of "marine aggro-culture" hears no voice of yours, but they make art about you and label you either "spiritual", "totemic", or "product". Under the current Sign of Pisces, you are caught between the sacred and profin.

Who's to say there is not some ancient Gaian form of piscine punning, as the Great Mother expresses a laughing jeering deep-water humour through her aqua-children? And maybe jumbled and pressed together the fish talk to one another:

-- What do they mean by "ocean"? What's an ocean?

-- I glimpsed it once, by squirming my way to the edge of the fish farm. And I feel it in my blood, and I heard my ancestors speak of it.

-- How did they speak of it?

-- They mouthed silently. Open-and-shut case: the ocean is real. It's out there. 

-- I don't believe it. You're but a jester. You can't be serious.

-- You're right, I can't. It takes a lot of gill-gall, but I'd die if I didn't jest. But listen: the ocean is real.

-- You mean, you'd die in the bottom of a natal riverbed? That's another old myth I've heard of: the natal riverbed.

-- Huh. That is a myth, for us. That's for free fish.

-- Who?

-- Free fish. They're out there. Ocean-swimming.

-- How do you know?

-- I channeled the information ... hahaha ...  And I've got a million fin-fans on Instagrim who told me.

-- Fin-fans on what?

-- Instagrim. It broadcasts currents of opinion and grim fitful fin-full expressions of misery.

-- Stop it, your jokes make me want to weep an ocean of tears. Will we ever be free?

-- Some do escape from here.

-- Do they? Why can't we all?

-- It's all about chance, and human doings, human rules, human disputes. Tribal disputes. Carnivores versus vegans. Foreign corporations versus UNDRIP. 

-- Un-what? 

-- It's all just life: life's all about un-drips and tear-drops, and too-little expanse of open ocean.

                     

Hey, Sad-Salmon -- Who was that odd fish you were talking to earlier?

I don't really know; they call him Flippant.

                 

Maintaining Holiday Weekend Anti-viral Measures

Was Easter the occasion of your first family dinner since lock-downs, masking and vaccine passports were suspended? Is COVID really over? The epidemiological jury's still out, but some folks are recklessly squeezing in family-and-friends gatherings while they can, such as during the May Holiday Weekend -- and finding it hazardous.

They're finding they almost miss certain pandemic safety measures at these gatherings -- so much so that they've re-adopted similar measures against viral squabbles. Guests must provide a "Proof of Anti-Satirical Jibe-Jab" upon arrival. Also recommended are booster shots against disputatiousness, sarcasm, historic family resentment, and veiled insult.

Everyone must agree on a protocol of Holiday Celebration Hygiene:

Leave your pronoun choices at home (we don't care if you think you're something else).

Wipe your feet at the door, and smirks off your face (masks are still recommended except when you're actually eating).

Keep physical distance between others and your opinions.

Remember that bad temper is contagious.

Vulnerable individuals with low immunity to nonsense are advised to remember the ideal pandemic capacity limit: one.

Urban History: Tri-via Becomes Deca-via

 My town began life as a small settlement on a small river. From its centre one narrow road went north, one south, and one crossed the river. Three roads: "tri via". Where they met was the place neighbours used to pause to exchange news -- the trivia of the day.

A century later the town is fifty times bigger. City-sized. The "trivia" district has become the "deca-via" district: not three but ten roads in and out. And alongside them the town council has added multiple "transportation choices" (euphemism for "get out of private cars and into socially-correct public conveyance).

The roads which had become highways were narrowed back to single-lane, the rest of the pavement filled with bike lanes and rail tracks. Residential neighbourhoods that had grown up around the original roads were paved for infill, turned into "blended work-life community pods" of dense high-rise blocks.

Now there were jogging paths, cycling paths, skateboard and electric scooter paths, bridges for confused urban deer to cross the roads, tunnels for tortoises to get under them (those which had genetic memory of their home river), and fenced stretches for urban-tower dogs to run off-leash. There were pods within the pods, of community picnic tables and concrete "native plant" (weed) boxes wedged in the intersections of cross-roads. No trees casting shade.

It was too noisy to talk in the community spaces due to beeps of delivery trucks trying to back up where wasn't enough room, and car horns protesting at snarled traffic and ambulance sirens screaming after each rear-ender. Panhandlers stumbled down the concrete medians holding up cardboard signs saying "HUNGRY". 

Traffic signs, pedestrian lights, arrows, instructions, and diagrams painted on the pavement forced drivers to pause and read for so long that they missed their light and blocked the intersections. More rear-enders, and civic officials scold drivers: see what your selfish cars DO?

Dumpsters overflowed at the community picnic spaces which no families used, only the homeless who sometimes slept inside the dumpsters. Crows shrieked and fought over the garbage they left behind. The wooden picnic tables, burnt black, rotted and turned mouldy and were replaced with plastic tables ... which turned mouldy.

Senior citizens who recalled the days when their town was small, spacious and quiet, gazed sadly from the high-rise windows. To them, the "smart city" trumpeted in the popular media was a stupid city. In turn, the media called the elders "elitist". Their concerns, the city councillors assured them, were trivial.

Who Were Calixa Lavallee and George Stanley?

 

Callixa Lavallee and George Stanley: how many Canadians know these names? Would today’s schools teach anything about them, they being part of Canadian colonial history?

Lavallee (1842-1891) was the French Canadian performer who composed O Canada in 1880, which finally officially became the national anthem in 1980 (replacing God Save the Queen), and George Stanley designed our flag – the elegantly simple red maple leaf on white background. Its design was chosen for its freedom from racial and tribal subtexts; surely we could all get behind a native tree? Maybe people could then, back in 1965 when it was adopted by Parliament, but we haven’t stayed behind it. Now we think anything that happened before the past fifteen ideological minutes should be condemned as “colonial”.

George Stanley, who died in 2001, was an academic, a military man, one-time Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick (1982-87) and recipient of the Order of and the Companion of Canada. That’s enough to blacken anyone’s name as colonialist. So has his statue been toppled yet? Does he even have a statue? His name isn’t bandied about like Macdonald, Campbell Scott, and Ryerson – although you’d think our flag-designer would have something to show for the mark he made on our history.

There appears to be only one statue of Stanley (plus a separate memorial plaque), but to reveal its whereabouts would be just asking for statue-toppling, or paint-throwing. George was rendered in copper seated on a bench with notebook in hand, perhaps checking a literary or historical reference … or sketching a flag-design. He looks quintessentially Canadian, leaning casually backward, wearing a tie, one leg crossed comfortably over the other, relaxed, musing, thoughtful. He leans back but you can tell that when upright he would stand straight. From the photo of his statue we get the impression he’d greet passers-by with equitable courtesy, exhibiting an “I am what I am” quality reminiscent of the subtle simplicity we might associate with a handsome dignified old maple tree.

Resting in safe obscurity his statue might survive, but for how long will Canada get to keep its flag, its anthem, and their references?

Moving Day -- Wild Animals' Yard Sale

 About to be evicted from habitat by development, the animals are holding a Yard Sale. Their "yard" is a field, and their homes are trees, shrubs and ponds. Developers will pave the fields, drain the ponds and chop down the trees. Now, the animals lay out their wild-ware for a Field Sale.

"Here's a collection of nests," say the robins and sparrows. "Two worms a piece."

"This lily pad sells for three worms," says Frog. "It's a good thick green one. I don't know what I'm going to doze on now."

"We've got a lot of pollen to offer," announce the bees. "We over-harvested, it'll go cheap, a real bargain."

"I'm going to transport my acorns elsewhere," says Squirrel. "I'll have to find new storage. Blue Jay might share the cost with me."

"You'll have to search out a big luscious garden nearby, Deer, full of foliage."

"Are there still such places?"

"I don't see a lot of customers," frets Frog. "Who's going to buy all our stuff?"

"Sorry to tell you, but most may end up in the landfill-compost. The crows will swoop down and take a few items at the last minute."

"Probably won't even pay."

"They'll give you a few feathers."

"What do I want with feathers?" croaks Frog.

"What are YOU selling, Raccoon?"

"A bit of recovered insulation foam, but most of it we'll store in a hollow log we know of. When the hideous human monster houses are built, we'll come back and move into the basements. We can sub-let to rats, if necessary."

"I'll have to move on," mourns Robin. "You'll be okay, Chickadee, you'll find some eaves to nest in. Want to buy some nesting grasses to take with you?"

"Thanks, Robin. Two worms, you said?"

"I'm worried about the homeless feral cats near here." says Deer, "and that old horse in the bottom field. Where will HE go? He won't be invited to graze on someone's lawn, that's for sure."

"I know!" squeaked Squirrel, excitedly flipping her tail. "Let's start a Homeless Creatures Shelter Society!"

"Hmm ... might work ..."

"We'd need to enlist domestic animals as well," trilled Robin. "Pets: they're the animals with influence."

"Okay! Who volunteers to sit on the Board?"

"Is that like sitting on a fence post?" asks Blue Jay. 

"Or like sitting on a lily pad?" asks Frog.

"No," says Squirrel, "I'll show you where our Board will sit ... follow that old horse ..."