Halloween Dogs

Yes I know its late.  This is going to be my new thing. I am going to post on everything after the fact.

We had 26 trick or treaters this year, which is 25 more than last year. We had minions and zombies and Iron Man. We had kindergarteners and teenagers.  Everyone said thank you.  It was fun while it lasted.

It made me think of Bandit.

Bandit was a husky/heeler cross, which meant he was smart but oh so stubborn.  He was also gentle and he loved children. But he was terrified of fireworks, which made Halloween a terrible mixed blessing.  He loved to go to the door to inspect the costumes of the trick or treaters, which if he was allowed also included tasting ears. He must have found ears delicious, because he licked everyone's ears he could get near.  

Bandit's best friend was a shepherd/rottweiler named Kodi, who also liked to see little kids but he also thought there should be treats for dogs, if we were doling out stuff, thank you.   

One particular Halloween, there had been a lot of fireworks really nearby, and they had started early in the evening.  Poor Bandit was practically attached to my knee.  I couldn't make him go away, because he was so frightened but I was getting kind of exasperated.  And then the baby bear arrived at the door. He was three or four, and he had the sweetest round brown eyes I have ever seen on a little boy.  He was with his dad, who was just a man in a ski jacket - not a bear,  and he loved dogs. He saw Bandit just behind me, waiting to check things out and exclaimed, "Oh! A Puppy!" Which Bandit took as his cue to muscle by me to do an ear examination. Kodi danced around behind me, wanting to get in on any fun activity or treat that happened to be going on.  I told the little boy, in my exasperation with all the dogdom going on in the small space and poor Bandit's mental health that evening, "That is not a puppy. That is a chicken in a dog costume."  The baby bear stopped giggling and petting Bandit and eyed him critically. "Really?....Then.....Is that a dog?" he asked, pointing doubtfully at Kodi, behind us.  I don't remember any of the rest of the exchange, but I often wonder what kind of conversation that boy and his dad had after they left my house.  

Nothing fun like that happened this year, but that's okay.  It was fun anyway.  

Wednesday Work Post

So I have only been semi-employed since last February.

Six years ago my scaffold employer asked me to write a training program for the company.  There had been a bad accident in the company and during the investigation the question, "what training did this employee have?" was asked.  The answer was none, because at the time none was being done in the province.  My boss had been bugging and bugging the union to get some training together and the union had been dragging its feet, so the boss went looking for someone else to do it.  I wrote a 2 week program that turned into 3- 2 week courses for carpenter/scaffolders, a one day inspection course for people who work ON but do not build scaffolds, and a 2 to 5 day course offered to mills and mines and such for their employees to build small, tightly configured scaffolds.  I wrote an in-house fall protection course too. Two years ago the training department was run by me and a department head and we had two other instructors and an administrative assistant.  We had trained over 400 scaffolders and supplied the inspection and in house training to over 200 workers in dozens of companies in the three western provinces. 

 A year and a half ago, the scaffold company dissolved its training department and sold the training to the union.   The union hired the department head full time to get their training division off the ground and me for 24 hours a week to do curriculum development and teach.  Last February they decided the department head could do everything and I was laid off.  

While I was at the scaffold company, I also taught forklift operation, which they offered externally too.  One of our clients was the City.  I began going to their worksites to do the training and I developed a good relationship with their training department, and so when I left the scaffold company, they asked me to continue to do their training through the union.  When I was laid off at the union,  my guy at the City told me he'd continue to use me if I wanted to do my own thing, which I did.  

When I went from 40 to 24 hours a week I found I had too much time on my hands and I was whining about boredom one day to a friend.  She happens to own a yarn store, and she offered me some hours in it.  (Beloved, when I told him I was going to work in the store said, "Oh no. We cannot afford for you to work in a yarn store!") 

So  for nine months I have been teaching forklift, selling yarn and teaching people to knit, and doing the occasional scaffold course for either the union or the scaffold company when they are overwhelmed.  None of it is full time and some weeks all I work are a few shifts in the yarn store.    

I am looking for something else.  In the next few weeks I will submit the last assignment for my provincial instructor's diploma.  I have 15 miscellaneous first and second year courses, mostly in psychology, biology and sociology.  I am a Red Seal carpenter.  I am 49.  

I am feeling quite freaked out, to be honest.  There has not been a great deal of heavy construction in my area for several years now, and there is no word that anything is going to start before spring.  I hate framing and would rather do anything else than build houses. There are currently no jobs available for carpentry/scaffolding, etc instructors anywhere in my area.  Further, I feel quite strongly that I have given enough effort to this construction thing anyway.  It's time to do something else, but I really don't know what the hell that is.  

All I Have to Say About That

How doth the little crocodile

Improve his shining tail

And pour the waters of the Nile

On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin

How neatly spreads his claws

And welcomes little fishes in

With gently smiling jaws!

Joey Bats #19

I know, I know. It was three days ago now.  This was a great moment for a Blue Jays fan (not to mention Bautista and the team!) and that is all there is to it.

My mom, at 72, is perhaps the best and most faithful Blue Jays fan in Canada.  She has been watching them since before they won a World Series and has stuck through all the trials and disappointments.  She knows and remembers all the statistics on all the players - and keeps track of most of the rest of the American League.  If you go to mom's house on game day the conversation will have to keep pausing while we catch the action. If you invite mom over to your house on game day, she will go where the tv is, (even if, like my house, it  is in the basement). She may not stay with the tv the whole time she is over, but she will go and look at it fairly often.

My mom's brother is a court reporter. He works for an international company and the last few years he has been working in Singapore and Hong Kong.  He amasses a lot of airline and hotel points.  This past August he gave her a trip to Toronto and a room in a nice hotel.  My dad doesn't fly.  Mom would never have gone alone, so I went with her.

Our hotel was far enough out of downtown that it was about a 50 minute train ride to Union Station.  The first day we went up to Dundas Square - Mom needed to get a Hard Rock Toronto t-shirt for my uncle.  We had a late lunch and then walked to the Stadium.  When we got within sight of the Dome, she said she thought she might cry. Once inside, as we crossed the concourse and the field, bright and green and lovely under the open roof, came into view, she clutched at my arm and really did cry. She was so excited I thought  her knees might actually give out.   That was August 28.  Mom's 72nd birthday.

We saw the whole series with the Detroit Tigers.  On the Friday night the Jays had just finished a fabulous road trip and the fans were overjoyed to have them home.  That might have been the funnest thing I have ever done in my life, spending three hours with 46,000 happy people.  It was definitely the highlight of my mom's decade.  She was excited almost to tears dozens of other times that weekend, but the last and best was when her all time favourite Blue Jay, Mark Buehrle, took the mound on Sunday.  

I remember watching baseball when I was a kid. (I had a rebellious crush on George Brett when I was  10? 12?)  I was never as interested as my mom, but I like a good game and I cheer on the Jays because they are mom's team.  Mom's been on the bandwagon for as long as I can remember, but she has always held seats for the rest of us.  I haven't missed a game since she invited me to go to Toronto, and every game I see on tv now is so much better because I can conjure up that Friday night in Toronto.  

I love watching the Blue Jays this last half season.  They seem absolutely connected to each other.  Every great bullet Bautista throws in to third, or Donaldson fires to first, every lightning quick play by some combination of Goins, Tulo, Colabello, Smoak and Pennington, every great diving catch made by Pillar (2/3 of the planet is covered by water; the other 1/3 is covered by Pillar!) and every great at bat (Encarnacion hat trick anyone?) just looks like choreography.  Having been in that crowd of 46,000 happy fans, I am happy for them that this is happening.  I am happy for these Jays, who also seem like genuinely nice guys (R.A. Dickey diving into the stands to hug the fans).  And I am happy for my mom, who is able to just really enjoy great ball playing - and this time for a longer season!

PS.  Read my friend Ken's great post on the Blue Jays from a few weeks ago - complete with George Carlin's wonderful take on why Baseball is better than Football!

So Much Ado

All right, I suppose I will wade into the fray on this one.  I don't really get the problem.

How is this

more problematic than this?

One is a fashion accessory and the other is a religious statement. Except, apparently the other is not necessarily a religious statement.  It is a convention, a tradition.  It has not really been a fact in my lifetime, but there was a time when western women and men covered their heads as a matter of convention and tradition.  

Oh, but the other up there, that is more than just a matter of tradition and convention.  There is a reverence in that.  When a woman dons that other bit of fabric, she is expressing a kind of obedience, of preserving something of herself.  Huh. You mean like this? 

It really is about The Other, though, isn't it? 

I hope to god that the stupid conservatives step in it again before the election, because I'm scared of the kind of country they seem to want.  I'm pretty sure history has seen this before, and it has never turned out all that well.  

I Do Love Blue Rodeo

Feeling Small and Helpless These Days

      There was an article in the Washington Post on Friday written by a man who fled Kosovo when he was 16 years old. It contained quote that I Immediately understood and have been trying to convey in my real life, which sadly, seems to contain a few (thankfully only a few)  fearful, hateful racists.  It was this:

        "Abandoning your home during wartime is not a choice or a political opportunity. It’s a survival instinct, a frantic attempt to protect yourself and your children from violence, starvation or death. "

      I am tired of people with such small imaginations and such luxurious lives that they cannot fathom what suffering must be like, and worse, cannot even consider helping. I am furious that harper's first response was that continuing the war effort in Syria was the most helpful thing Canada can do. I wondered why no one commented on the fact that we had just agreed to sell a whole bunch of arms to Saudi Arabia. (I hate Stephen Harper and his supporters with the heat of a thousand suns.  He is a small, small nasty man with no heart and I will never forgive him for the social damage he has done to this country.)

      I can go to meetings to get 2 freaking years worth of paperwork started to be able to bring a family to my community.  I can give money to the Red Cross.  What I want is to do this:

        I want to get between all those people and those bullets.  I want to shout "STOP!" And what real use would that be? How can I get between a whole neighbourhood and a barrel bomb?  

     When I read about people who think the refugees are a bunch of jihadists and that North America is in some kind of peril I think it is nothing but a self fulfilling prophecy.  I think the more we react to this situation with hate and fear and unkindness, the more reason we give them to fear and hate us. There has been  a great deal of war and destruction throughout history in Europe, Asia and Africa. I often wonder how long it will be before it comes here. Because it will come here.  

      Climate change is a huge factor in what is going on in Syria.  Climate change is driving great masses of people out of their homes. No nation is addressing its contributions to climate change quickly or thoroughly enough that we will ever stop that. When our homes become utterly hostile to our existence, we have no choice but to leave.  And when we in the north who have NOTHING BUT SPACE! for Christ's sake choose to turn the fleeing away, I think we are only ensuring that we will eventually be met with violence.  

     The right thing to do is feed and shelter and care for our fellow persons. 

     The whole history of humans is about subjugation to some small, hateful group.  It is always a struggle for some kind of freedom.  I doubt that its going to change.  Maybe I'm an idiot, but when I don't know what to do, I ask myself, "what would love do?" And then I just do that.  Today I just feel so monstrously impotent.  Some day I hope I will figure out which tank I need to stand in front of.  

     Last weekend Michael Enright played a reading of Warsan Shire's poem "Home."  I knew two lines of it, but I had never heard the whole thing.  

Home - by Warsan Shire

no one leaves home unless

home is the mouth of a shark

you only run for the border

when you see the whole city running as well

your neighbors running faster than you

breath bloody in their throats

the boy you went to school with

who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory

is holding a gun bigger than his body

you only leave home

when home won’t let you stay.

no one leaves home unless home chases you

fire under feet

hot blood in your belly

it’s not something you ever thought of doing

until the blade burnt threats into

your neck

and even then you carried the anthem under

your breath

only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets

sobbing as each mouthful of paper

made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.

you have to understand,

that no one puts their children in a boat

unless the water is safer than the land

no one burns their palms

under trains

beneath carriages

no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck

feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled

means something more than journey.

no one crawls under fences

no one wants to be beaten

pitied

no one chooses refugee camps

or strip searches where your

body is left aching

or prison,

because prison is safer

than a city of fire

and one prison guard

in the night

is better than a truckload

of men who look like your father

no one could take it

no one could stomach it

no one skin would be tough enough

the

go home blacks

refugees

dirty immigrants

asylum seekers

sucking our country dry

niggers with their hands out

they smell strange

savage

messed up their country and now they want

to mess ours up

how do the words

the dirty looks

roll off your backs

maybe because the blow is softer

than a limb torn off

or the words are more tender

than fourteen men between

your legs

or the insults are easier

to swallow

than rubble

than bone

than your child body

in pieces.

i want to go home,

but home is the mouth of a shark

home is the barrel of the gun

and no one would leave home

unless home chased you to the shore

unless home told you

to quicken your legs

leave your clothes behind

crawl through the desert

wade through the oceans

drown

save

be hunger

beg

forget pride

your survival is more important

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear

saying-

leave,

run away from me now

i dont know what i’ve become

but i know that anywhere

is safer than here