Do YOU know what time it is?

Whatever Happened to All the Clocks? 

Every self-respecting town square used to have one. Now everyone's supposed to look at their cell phones. The clock tower once bound the townsfolk together in shared chronological awareness. Now there's no tower to orient by (in space or in time), only the gadget in the pocket. But the cellphone-free holdouts never quite know what the time is ...
http://www.short-humour.org.uk/10writersshowcase/youare.htm

Virus Causes Ladder Shortage

If "the first casualty of war is truth", the first casualty of an emergency is civil rights.

Healthy people not diagnosed with any illness are being told to turn their homes into jails and keep themselves imprisoned. Sheep-like, many do. Free-thinkers are in danger of being criminalized. The concept of personal adult decision-making is fragile, likely to collapse at the first puff of panic.

This has led to unintended consequences. Everyone has forgotten the shortage of masks due to a new shortage: ladders. People jailed at home have taken to their roofs as platforms for fresh air and a view of something other than a computer screen. To get up there, they've bought all the ladders. Suppliers are running out. Even people afraid of heights and without roofs have stockpiled some "just in case".

Unfortunately some roofs are steep and an increasing number of jail-breakers have fallen off them. Injured, they've had to be taken to hospitals where they're filling beds that might be wanted for virus patients, so Government has issued a new bulletin: 

LADDER PURCHASES FORBIDDEN. TRESPASSING ON YOUR OWN ROOF IS A CRIME. TEAMS WILL BE SENT OUT WITH BINOCULARS TO FIND HOUSEHOLDERS DEFYING THIS PROHIBITION. EXPECT FINES OR JAIL TIME -- AS IN, HOUSE ARREST. (PM clarifies - sort of: You can't be sent to public jail because you're not allowed to congregate publicly. If you didn't want to be sentenced to house arrest, you should have stayed inside.)

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Health Officer Recommends --To escape Covid-19 AVOID DIGITAL DEVICES

Ha! Scared you, didn't I? Although the virus does indeed land on surfaces like keyboards and smartphones, they aren't telling us to "stay away from crowded websites" yet, or "maintain distance from computers".
What would life be like if they did, if "computer virus" became a biological as well as a digital thing?
What if the Chief Medical Officer told everyone "YOU MUST IMMEDIATELY DISTANCE YOURSELF FROM YOUR COMPUTER BEFORE IT KILLS YOU"? Imagine the panic then - and the wailing about the economy.
Maybe we'd spend more time outdoors, enjoying nature and fresh air, and less hunched over our digital devices. That would be healthier indeed.
Maybe, without email, we'd communicate with hand-written notes, dropping them into each others' mail slots like characters were forever doing in Victorian novels.
We could have message boards in every community -- physical ones that is, on suitable walls.
We could escape the group-herding of Facebook, the mindless trash-talk of Twitter, the surveillance of Google.
This is looking better by the minute. Maybe we'd learn to remember things again, instead of just Googling them. We'd keep mind and memory in our brains instead of out-sourcing them.
We'd avoid the prison camp of Smart Cities like the one Google-Alphabet is planning for Toronto's Waterfront district -- a prison worse than any hospital, one where it's civil rights that are on life-support.
We would no longer be stalked by our devices which track us around cities and stores, reporting our movements to police and advertisers alike.
Maybe the old-fashioned Soap Box Orator would come back to the parks and squares -- anyone with ideas to share would stand up and speak, keeping free speech alive in the "agora". (Stand at the edge of the crowd to listen, if you insist on avoiding physical contact -- at least you could get to see the faces of other regulars. Actual facial recognition!)
Being outside so much we could watch birds coming and going, and the colours of trees changing, and at night notice the movement of moon and stars.
I don't know about everyone else but I'm feeling healthier already! I do get the irony of what I'm saying though: I'm telling you online how great it would be if we all went offline. So far it's but a health-work-in-progress. But thanks for the possibility, "corona" virus: if only you really did crown our lives with this silver lining.


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When the Colonials Leave Canada

"You stole our land - now go away," said a Canadian First Nations protester recently to the descendants of colonial settlers. So, what if 37.6 million Canadians agree to leave?

"Be careful what you wish for, in case it comes true", goes the old saying. Let's do a thought-experiment: what would happen next, if First Nations people got their wish and non-aboriginal Canadians self-exiled?

With descendants of Colonials the more recent immigrants also depart -- including the very last one from wherever s/he came in the world whose people Canada had welcomed in. After the 37.6 million Canadians leave, one and a half million First Nations people remain.

What's life like now, for the 1.5 million? The tax base is gone: no federal or provincial governments are left, meaning no more subsidies, no support for Band Councils, no welfare, housing programs, native health services remain.

The hated "colonial" education system is gone. Illiteracy grows, quickly and alarmingly. Roads deteriorate, no engineers remaining to maintain them. Ferries stop running. Avalanches are not cleared nor bridges repaired. Auto repair businesses are gone: no brake checks, no oil changes. No oil is refined or imported.

The railways, closed down by protesters in February 2020, stay closed for good. Food, gas and heating fuel are no longer distributed. Universities are abandoned. Professionals in all fields disappear. Their buildings -- universities, hospitals and offices -- are emptied, and then looted. Police forces have left -- sent away like everyone else employed by colonial institutions. Air traffic controllers too are gone, their towers abandoned. Planes from elsewhere cannot land. They try, and collide, and everyone on board is killed.

Parliament and Legislative buildings in each capital are abandoned. Homeless people move into them. They quarrel. One invention aboriginals were glad to inherit from "settlers" was guns. They use them. The justice system that ran the courts has disappeared, de-populated of experts. Anyone can be a lawyer now -- practicing indigenous law. People don't feel that justice is being done, so the tribes replay the wars of the past. Raids happen, rivals are killed, slaves are taken once more.

With skidoos, all-terrain vehicles and ferries un-serviced, breaking down and their parts not imported, and grocery stores emptying of food, aboriginal people are now able to return to "traditional lifestyles". The Nature they considered themselves the guardians of no longer seems welcoming however, for winter temperatures kill when there's no heating fuel. Only foraged wild plants are available to eat, once food-importing colonialist grocery chains are gone. Animals are killed with extreme cruelty, once the bullets are used up: now spears and primitive traps do the job -- slowly. Off the west coast, some people decide to hunt orcas again. Calves are killed, mother orcas mourn, hunters drown.

In the decaying cities, elevators get stuck, often with people inside them, trapped until they die there. Rats take over the high-rises. Banks are closed; no money can be withdrawn from cash points. On reserves, pipes freeze and crack in the houses. Hot water heaters aren't replaced. Once the plumbing fails hygiene goes out the windows -- which aren't replaced when they break. Drug stores run out of medication; what's left is looted and sold on a black market. People begin burning books as fuel, looting them from the public libraries with relish, as hated records of "colonialist" thought and culture.

The printing presses fall silent, newspapers die, the whole publishing industry dies with no means of production and no customers for consumption. No service providers remain to maintain cellphone coverage. Gradually, tablets and laptops reach their planned obsolescence and aren't replaced. The Last Nations gather around their book-fueled fires, beating drums and telling stories about the time they got what they wished for: the time when the colonials were banished and their traditional lifestyle came back.

In Canada, every day's Apology Day

My Apologies

    I want to say I'm sorry for your loss. I heard you'd lost inclusion and respect, and possibly my ancestors were responsible. I'm sure my ancestors would be very sorry had they known more about inclusion back in the day when they were alive and people didn't fret enough about exclusion and inequity and such.

    I'm sorry you feel dis-entitled and disrespected -- if you do -- my apologies if I've got that wrong and you're actually perfectly fine. Although it must be a burden if you are unfairly excluded from victim-hood. Sorry about that. I didn't mean to be insensitive. My mistake: sorry.

    I apologize if my race has had anything to do with it. My race is something I inherited unconsciously, but I know that's no excuse. I apologize for my ancestors having the genes they did, I'm sure if they'd realized all the trouble their genes would cause they wouldn't so thoughtlessly have passed them on. Some of them even had the bad taste to get their names on monuments and statues, not knowing how offensive monuments would become (or even that their names would be on them), but again, that's no excuse. I'm sure they're posthumously regretful and that they’re perfectly okay with having their statues torn down. Sorry about historic names and places. Sorry about history, it should never happen.

    But don't worry, the politicians will apologize for it, they're in training for the Apology Olympics. I'm only a recreational apologist myself. But it's puzzling that an "apologia" originally meant a speech in defence of something, explaining and vindicating when no offence had been intended. But sorry: I know intent has nothing to do with it and that making amends means you must pretend that offence was intended, even if it wasn't ...

    But sorry, I'm losing the thread, I apologize for not sticking to the point which is my guilt and your victim-hood. Sorry for being obtuse, for it's clear that the insulted have a right to feel insulted and no one can take that away from them, for that would be to pile guilt upon guilt and even all the hand-washing of Lady Macbeth would fail to wash the stain away.

     I'm sorry that that lady was so entitled by the way, she being titled. And not only that but heterosexual and Anglo-Saxon, so her descendants would be settlers of a particularly accomplished, educated colonial type, which is elitist. No wonder she couldn't stop washing her hands, perhaps anticipating the unclean doings of her race.

    But sorry Lady Macbeth: maybe it's not all your fault because you had to deal with toxic masculinity in your partner. So you don't need to hate yourself as much as I do. If only I could hate myself enough maybe I could finally stop apologizing. 

    But sorry -- let's get back to you. You have every right to feel aggrieved about ... your grievances. I hope you'll forgive me. I'll follow the political leaders in learning what you're aggrieved about – or would that be cultural appropriation? Sorry: by “learning” I didn't mean I'd become in any way elitist-ly "learned" (mea culpa).

     I don't know why, since we have a national “day” for everything else, Canada doesn't have an Annual Official Apology Day. We have a day for every disease, we have Oceans Day, Bee Day, Orange Shirt Day, Seniors, Child, Multicultural Day, and dozens more. If we had an Apology Day everyone could celebrate it by surging into the streets and blocking traffic (so the traffic knows we're serious) and waving signs saying I'M SORRY. A blanket apology would let all the offended people feel included at once by the apolog-industry.

     But wait -- I am begin to feel something new: I believe it's the onset of apology-fatigue. I even foresee the day when I will retire from this tearful wallow. Sooner rather than later, I think. In fact: why not now?! I feel that my sorrow-stamina has suddenly run down. I'm afraid I may not make it to the next national apolog-orgy after all.

Please accept my regrets,

FJ

"Never retract, never explain, never apologize; get things done and let them howl." -- Nellie McClung

Is it time Canada listened to this one-time Member of Parliament?


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The Writer Needs to Be a Non-Writer As Well

“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing” – Benjamin Franklin

Re. CanLit and Canada Reads 2020 -- when considering it here's an old-fashioned and unpopular concept: "writer" isn't a career category. It never used to be, when writers were brilliant and literature could be "classic". People used to write about their areas of expertise. Writing was a tool, and such luminous novelists as Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontes, the "Bloomsberries", early Canadian writers and countless others would have been puzzled by the concept of a university degree in "Creative Writing". Writing was what people did to explain what they already had a vocation in, or to get an idea across -- or it was imaginative storytelling. Storytelling was done in the "room of one's own" after the home was maintained, the family cared for, the income secured. Perhaps it was done around the fireplace on a winter's night before television hi-jacked imagination. Since anyone can do it, whether well or boringly, can storytelling properly be called a profession?

Apparently rapper, addict and refugee can be (if Canada Reads 2020 is anything to go by) and one can also be a professional queer, two-spirit, or aboriginal. There's nothing wrong with identifying as these things, but are they job categories? When did an identity become a career?

If we count as a profession anything you get paid to do, presumably these things are indeed professions now, because plenty of people get paid for talking about their identity. How does this affect professionalism as a concept? The word used to suggest high qualifications. Can we assume that it no longer does? Logically this would follow from the everyone's-a-writer proposition.

It used to be that only someone with something to impart wrote a book, that writing was a tool and a process. Young writers are less interesting than old because they have less experience and knowledge to write about, and too often end up writing about writing. They lack fuel, meaning subject matter. Life experience, expertise, research and scholarship create subject matter. Maybe the label "writer" should be reserved for people over forty. The top of the line practitioners are generally over sixty.

This is not about limiting free speech. Anyone of any age should scribble, practice constructing eloquent sentences, record memories, experiment with verse forms (ideally not "free verse", until they've learned the forms to get free of), but to be called a "writer" you need to be other things as well. You need something substantial to offer readers. You need emotional maturity and at least one body of information to be master of, and to pro-fess interestingly about.


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Canada Reads Something Else

Who chooses the books for "Canada Reads", or rather, who chooses the choosers? As a book addict among book addicts, I don't notice many fellow readers reading Canada Reads selections. The CBC seems to be on a self-appointed mission for what they consider the "marginalized". Maybe they're trying to be hip, or "woke" -- but I suspect that illiterately ugly syllable doesn't describe the mindset of most Canadians (most of us didn't even figure out what it meant for the first year it bounced mindlessly around the social media echo chamber).

But as for the Canada Reads book list: last year's winner (holocaust survivor Max Eisen's By Chance Alone) was a relevant personal story about historic events we all need to understand. Most people who survived the holocaust are unfortunately not surviving the relentless passage of time: they're old, so they're dying off. So, it's a matter of urgency that their memories be recorded.

This year's Canada Reads list seems repetitiously to gush out what doesn't need to be recorded -- or not recorded yet again. It seems like the list to miss. So what Can-Lit to read instead, for the CBC's stated goal of "bringing Canada into focus"?

Michael Layland's In Nature’s Realm: Early Naturalists Explore Vancouver Island 2019) is top of my list. I'd accompany it with an older book about early Ontario naturalists (and immigrant farmers in the bush), Charlotte Gray's Sisters in the Wilderness (1999), the sisters being Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill. 
And then I'd go back to those authors' own works: Roughing It in the Bush (Moodie) and Studies of Plant Life in Canada, which Traill wrote in 1885 when at 83 she was the oldest writer then publishing in all the British dominions. That was when "Can-Lit" was truly breaking upon the wider world's literary horizon. Canada read Catharine Parr Traill for decades, but today the book trade ignores authors like her (i.e. "colonial").

More's the pity. We should not, in aid of re-focusing the public's attention, be forever hustled on to the next thing; let's re-read what's already good. For example Margaret Atwood's Hag-Seed (2016), is spritely and clever but overlooked, there being no television version of it. (Of course there was that play of which it's a modern version -- The Tempest, by that 16th century guy -- Shakespeare.)

As for new books, I'd go for the non-identitarian, unpretentious mysteries with plots, such as William Deverell's  or Peter Robinson's latest -- not things that would ever turn up in Canada Reads, although they're what Canadians read. 

We're better, I would venture to suggest, at non-fiction. It's interesting that looking at new fiction turns one back to the older titles, and then one wonders why the new are always a nine-day-wonder. Who remembers the Canada Reads winners from two, three, four years ago? But the old stuff which made its own way over time, without influencers and thought-engineers combatting each other on the radio, are still the most appealing.