If Music Be The Food Of Love

Posted on 2014/12/12 by danneau

Duke Orsino:
If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.

Twelfth Night Act 1, scene 1, 1–3

Two posts on the SF Gate caught my eye this morning, one about the highest paid musicians of the year, and the other about the music that U.S. interrogators used to torture suspects caught up in the web of renditions and extrajudicial lock-ups of terror suspects

I didn’t cross reference the two posts to see if there might be some overlap, but extrapolating from the titles gives me cause to bemoan the state of culture, and particularly music, in our current version of what passes for civilization. I wonder if the torturers had this in mind as they blasted eardrums with the abrasions of what their victims might otherwise have been able to have passed off as simple bad taste:

Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,
To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.

–William Congreve

It reminds me, in a way, of many conversations I’ve heard over the years, in some of which I’ve been an active participant, about who is the best musician, the best instrumentalist, the best technician, the best whatever, until somehow some of us arrived at the point that this was primarily a matter of personal taste and stopped scoffing at other people’s assessments and also stopped particularly caring what others thought of what pleased us, or displeased us. Somebody likes almost everything and let ’em have it, but the desire to label the music that sells the most as the best (isn’t that what it is?) speaks really poorly of a culture that bows down to common taste and forgoes discussions of the content of the music. Conversely, it is almost perversely appropriate that we should torture captured souls from other cultures with the worst products of the sick society against which they are likely railing, such that they would know the righteousness of their cause even as their minds turn to jelly and scream out for relief before they move on to the next dimension. I once really believed that music was a force for good in the world until it became so commodified and misused that it became part of the destruction attendant upon people so distracted that they fail to see that their cultural icons, if they follow the mainstream, are most often in cahoots with the authors of the breakdown of any sense of community. Oh, darn, I’m starting to sound like Tipper Gore crusading against the moral breakdown of society through naughty lyrics in pop music.Torture and Big money: something to consider (now I’ll go back to my Eric Dolphy recordings).

Sowing The Seeds of …

Posted on 2014/12/10 by danneau

One of the great joys of the approach of winter is allowing myself to dive into the seed catalogues and place orders for the coming season. Some seed lines we save and redistribute, some we replant from purchased seed, and every year there are a couple of new varieties that get a trial in the garden. Seed catalogues are a lot like other inducements to buy with glossy pictures and glowing descriptions of the plants and their edible bits, on the same order as wine labels, and I suspect that there is some of the same mystique generated by the anticipation of the pleasure of growing as there is with imbibing.

Earlier, I was in contact with Baker Creek Heritage Seeds about the possibility of a donation of seeds to our local seed library, run by the Food Group of the Alberni Valley Transition Towns Society, Vancouver Island Health, and the Port Alberni Branch of the Vancouver Island Public Library. Shortly after I made the request, I got a call from Charles, one of the group, wondering about an invoice he received from the Baker Creek folks, but with zeros showing at the bottom line: the donation had already shipped. It was a generous variety of different seeds, for which we are thankful, as we are thankful that there are outfits like BCHS that promote seed saving, open-pollinated and heritage varieties and who staunchly oppose genetic modification. My dealings with them over the last decade have all been of a positive nature and I continue to place substantial orders with them so I can play more effectively in the dirt when the weather improves.

I haven’t gotten my order from Baker Creek, but I did get an order from West Coast Seeds, who, I believe, have donated already in the past year (I’ll check and strong-arm them if they haven’t). Again, it’s a seed house I’ve dealt with for a couple of decades with nothing but positive results. I made a point of ordering larger quantities of seeds than I would likely use, and what you see in the above photo is my little kitchen table operation for breaking out small packets of seed that I will take to the library to share with others who might be thinking of getting started at providing some part of their own food. It hardly seems fair to encourage others to donate if I don’t have a bit of a stake in the game.

There are several groups in town who are involved in starting up community gardens, and I suspect that some seeds may find their way into those plots, but it is also my hope that we’ll see plantings in back yards of both renters and owners, that there might actually be initiatives to share surplus produce,and that some people will take the time to become knowledgeable about saving seeds and restore their withdrawals to the seed library as a return or deposit.

Between droughts and floods in some of the primary agricultural areas, food scarcity is a real problem, and price rises may have the same effect with the straitened budgets that many are experiencing. I know from my own growth as a player in the dirt that becoming a gardener is an ongoing process and takes not only sweat and sore muscles, but also thought and good information, gathered through reading, through talking with other gardeners and through personal experience: the donation of seeds will likely not be enough to promote successful food production. Gardeners will have to share time and labour to help others get started and then nurture the neophytes to ensure that the experience is as rewarding socially as it is nutritionally.

Meanwhile, along with the garden initiatives, there need to be efforts to get as many people as possible into a constructive engagement with the community, including the economic phase of life so that food, and other basic needs, are available to all lest we become a physical grouping of individuals rather than a community.

Neither, Nor

Posted on 2014/12/09 by danneau

BHO

Angela Merkel

A most frequent occurrence, there’s a lot of telling material for your reading pleasure at Salt Spring News, the latest instalment dealing in considerable depth with recent moves involving a developing alliance between Russia and Turkey, doing something of an end-around to counter NATO moves in the Ukraine and Syria. Mr. Scott has run this most excellent aggregator site for more than a decade, providing not only the material for rumination, but a short rumination of his own from time to time. He has often featured pieces from Pepe Escobar, a pundit who is the diametric opposite of what we see in our closer-to-home press, that is to say, a fine researcher and a scribe who looks under all the rocks before informing his readers of all aspects of the subject of his enquiries. His latest piece can be accessed at SSN (link above) or here, so now we can get to the point of the mainstream of tonight’s symposium (h/t Tom Lehrer, An Evening Wasted With, c. 1959).)

Pictured above are some of the prima ballerinas in the current dance macabre working through Eastern Europe and the Middle East, with Erdo and Vlad finessing some slick stuff on Merkie and Obie of late. For those of us who don’t like the meddling of NATO in the affairs of the Ukraine or supporting sworn enemies to unseat Assad in Syria, there is this tendency to gloat at the undoing of the narrative that the West is promoting in this region, as well as others around the globe. There is also a tendency to forget what sort of people Vlad and Erdo have shown themselves to be through the repressive actions against minorities in their own countries as well as the sequestration of wealth and suppression of human and general social rights at home and abroad. The sad part is that, for the ordinary citizen who believes that we should all have a say in the affairs of our land, there may be no viable choice from those extant, and there is a readjustment in thinking, one that takes us from an alignment with existing organizations to a sense of belonging to a broader human group of fluid and changing nature in which we provide our own leadership and delegate freely as long as those to whom we delegate work toward agreed objectives. When objectives are not met, or the effort goes astray, we withdraw our support and realign. Anyone who felt the upsurge of interest and energy attendant upon the “hope and change” campaign of 2008, who sensed the stark contrast between the mumblings of the Bush and the soaring oratory of Obama, it continues to be something of a bleeding sore to see that Obama has, for all intents and purposes, become Bush, other than the words. We saw this play out on a lesser scale a couple of weeks back when we saw the loyal opposition in Victoria sign on to a tax bill that even some of their members qualified as a sell-out. It was a no-brainer: the measure would pass with or without their vote, and instead of taking a stand against the bald giveaway of what should be common resources, the opposition became the same corruption by voting with the government. Weaver stood alone is asking the rhetorical WTF? and the sitting was over.

The difficulty lies in building community activity to counter this massed stupidity and betrayal, a process that seems to require a good deal of patience, but there remains the question of how much time do we have to be patient, given the pressing nature of the challenges we face.

A Misdirection On A Confabulation

Posted on 2014/12/08 by danneau

Yes, my sort-of-kind-of-favourite-Premier-because-she’s-the-only-one-we’ve-got is holding forth over on the Globe and Mail about Gomeshi and abuse. Not to want to seem unconcerned, but let’s deal with Gomeshi the same way we should have dealt with Rob Ford: if he’s guilty of a crime let’s enforce the penalties and have done with it. Is this Ms.Clark suggesting that comments by the leader of the opposition amount to abuse? Serious problem, especially coming from one who has abused the political process, the levers of government, the justice system and the English Language. But, then, we might have to admit that being straightforward doesn’t seem to be in the Premier’s toolkit.

So here’s some Misdirected Blues from one of my fave players:

Sincerely

Posted on 2014/12/07 by danneau

Ian Anderson, spokesman for Kinder Morgan in a current ad campaign…

IA-KM

So this character gets on the tube telling us about the hundreds of conversations and how they’ve engaged with First Nations and that they will continue to listen to make their project the best it can be, but it’s meaningless because the part of the conversation he’s not hearing, along with his pals in Victoria and Ottawa, is that it shouldn’t happen at all. If KM wants to do some good and make a buck or two, how about doing something with geothermal: it should be right up their alley. I would still prefer that we do all this locally and that Kinder Morgan and all its carpetbagging cronies disappear back into the landscape in Texas and Oklahoma, where they might also want to consider other forms of energy so that their descendants can have something of a future.

It’s also galling that these campaigns, with all their half-truths, deceptions, misdirections and faux sincerity end up being paid with our money, as they write it all off their revenue stream as a cost of doing business, further enriching the media Mob who happily broadcast this shite and pocket the proceeds. Look-here, you get to tie your own noose!

I like this Ian Anderson better…

…at least his bluster and buffoonery is musical and utterly avoidable and its consequences are pretty negligible. I actually like a lot of Jethro Tull. I also like Blodwyn Pig and Jack Lancaster…

Ya Cain’t Lose Watcha Never Had

Posted on 2014/12/05 by danneau

Mounted

The Toronto Star, amongst others, reported on the phenomenon of the RCMP having routinely filed falsified flight reports, committing various transgressions against the general rules of flying. The report was touched off by reports from a whistleblower and was the subject of an inquiry by the Federal Integrity Commission whose leader, Mario Dion, has a rather tart comment on the RCMP failing to uphold laws it was designed to uphold. And, in typical fashion, the federal government didn’t want this material to get out to the public.

The investigation began in November 2013. The report remains under a legal challenge from the federal government, which wanted to quash the findings before they could be made public.

According to a report on The National, the rationale for burying the report was that material such as this would lead to a loss of confidence in the force. Wait, do we want to place confidence where it isn’t warranted?

Again, it’s a mistake to violate Transport Canada’s regulations about the operation of an aircraft, but the nature of the falsifications seems to point to a willingness to play somewhat fast and loose with the laws of physics, and specifically those relating to gravity, lift, thrust, mass and proximity to terra firma, laws against which there is no right of appeal. As Georges Brasssens stated so eloquently:

La loi de la gravité est dur, mais c’est la loi.

Less inevitable is the question of whose law the RCMP upholds, as we have seen when the force becomes the Pinkerton squad for energy companies, international banking schemes, bogus conferences and the like, such as we witnessed in recent confrontations on Burnaby Mountain where the force upheld the wishes of Kinder Morgan when the Law, in all its wisdom, issued an injunction against the City and citizens of Burnaby should they have had a notion to impede KM’s desire to do exploratory work leading to the expansion of a pipeline going under said Burnaby Mountain. In the old days, KM would have paid for the Pinkertons, but the RCMP enforcement came from the policing budget of Burnaby, meaning that taxpayers are paying to KM to forge ahead with its profit-driven scheme, a project that has dire consequences as part of the Carbon Crime of The Century (Millennium, All Human History). No worries about loss of confidence in the force there, but that would imply that the confidence was there in the first place.

Worth noting: I have known members of the RCMP, all of whom have been responsible caring people, solicitous of their place in the community and the well-being of the people they are tasked with protecting. I hear, as we mostly likely have, people complain about police personnel, about civil servants, teacher, doctors, lawyers, dentists, politicians…there are quacks, cranks and crooks in all walks of life, and it is not my intention to tar broad swathes of any group of people with the sticky brush of shame. It is plain that many of our institutions need to be revisited.

How Can These People Sleep At Night

Posted on 2014/12/04 by danneau

Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it.

—Samuel Butler

In relation to most of our governing hierarchy and the corporate pyramid that supports the hierarchy, I have often wondered what these people learned from their parents and subsequent interactions with schools, faith organizations, business connections and general interactions with other members of society. A quick look at the ideals that are plastered all over every surface of our society would call for an empathy quotient sufficient to apportion opportunity, wealth and societal value according to some criteria other than Al Davis’ infamous “Just win, Baby!” Such seems not to be the case when the cadres holding the reins of political and economic clout clearly suffer from a deficit in their EQ and a blindness to reason that might show them that they are taking us (some of us kicking and screaming) down a path to oblivion (the original category of post pertaining to World Spiralling Toward Hell was originally meant as a bit of nasty silliness, but has become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy). They seem to be incapable of hearing that sucking sound as they and theirs go down with the rest of us in what will clearly be the pyrrhic victory to literally end all others, or, if they hear it, they are plainly incapable of anything like a competent interpretation of the signs around them. It is a truly Herculean undertaking to educate the expediters of doom, and perhaps even more daunting to contemplate awakening the legions of their victims, those who cheer as breeches are opened in their own hulls, and the walking dead who blithely continue down the trench of consumption, blind to the cesspit into which we are all about to plunge.

What Comes Around

Posted on 2014/12/03 by danneau

(AFP Photo)

I used to be a nut for airplanes, particularly fighters, so when I saw this photo on Common Dreams this morning, I was taken back to the Sixties: these are F-4 Phantoms, a mainstay of both the US Air Force and Navy for a decade or so during the Vietnam War and beyond, more or less. The trick is that these craft are operating for the Iranian Air Force, likely having served since before the 1979 revolution. I suspect that they were part of the arms largesse lavished on the Shah and got left behind. It’s a head-scratcher that they’re still flying, and I would have to say that it’s a tribute to the ingenuity of Iranian flight support crews that they might still get off the ground, or to the wiles of arms dealers that they can still find spare parts. It’s also a bit of a laugh that Iran finds itself ranged on the same side as the US in the current struggle against Sunni ISIS. We must fight religious fanaticism, mustn’t we? Oh, wait, it’s the wild and crazy Christians and the Fundamentalist Shi’ia in pitched battle against the Extreme Wahabist Sunni. Not much to like in any of these poxed houses, but I’ll wish them a Pax (real, not Romanus or Britannicus) on both their houses, or, perhaps we could gift them all with F-22/35s, in which case the whole conflict could just grind to a halt as one warplane after another crashed and burned.

Once again, I have to harken back to reading Catch-22 in my much younger days: this is not a satire, it’s a user’s manual.

There’s Always A Way

Posted on 2014/11/12 by danneau

So Michael Byers had a piece in the Globe and Mail that seemed to confirm reports that the Pentagon had leaked a missive that the Canadian government was going to go ahead with the purchase of a mere four F-35 Joint Strike Fighters. There still has been no competition to replace the F-18 aircraft we currently deploy, and considerable fuss arose when the plan to buy a whole fleet of them came to light a few years back as it became clear the the Defense people weren’t being particularly candid about the cost of the program and about the notion that the aircraft itself is not particularly adapted to the ideal mission for Canada. On top of that, the whole program has run decades behind schedule and has run over its original budget by orders of magnitude. The problem with buying four of these beauties is that the JSF then is likely declared the winner of the competition that never happened and the standard for further procurement.

I recall distinctly the feeling I had in the pit of my stomach when I learned that the Chrétien government had signed a contract to acquire four British submarines back in the late ’90s.

There is much I love about Britain and the British, but their engineering and construction of mechanical devices has left a trail of broken hearts among all those who’ve experienced the joy of owning an MG, or a Triumph, or a Handley Page Halifax, and the Canadian experience with these vessels would seem to bear that out. The original price quoted by Chrétien & Co. was on the order of $750 m, but by the time any of them was declared fit for service, our own poor little exchequer had disbursed several times that, and we had lost lives when one of the things caught fire in Mid-Atlantic on the way to Canada. Our little dabbling with the JSF looks like a similar story, aside from the price tag running over $100 bn., and it seems hard to locate any discussion of this in the House, a phenomenon that would have demonstrated a modicum of consideration following all the previous upheaval over back room dealings and the desire of AirShow McKay to have his Mission Accomplished moment. Nope, a leak, sort of like our submarines.

Sadly, we have a government that won’t take no for an answer and that will trip around the back door or under the toilet seat togged what it want, even through chicanery and pure skulduggery.

To Market, To Market

Posted on 2014/11/11 by danneau

Lots of ink spilled about respect for the fallen who gave up their lives for our freedoms. Peter Mansbridge is solemnly pontificating in the next room, falling in line with Mr. Harper’s bid to gain votes by sanitizing the slaughter of millions for the sake of the Empire, a benefit for industrialists and (ig-)nobility. People not attending the ceremonies will include those trading on various stock markets around the globe because, after all, it was really all about money anyway, wasn’t it? (Aside from Royal pissing contests.) Markets are up, and here’s the eventual payoff for our august leader…

Rub Eyes, Shake Head

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