Where does it come from?

"You're too much of a bitch to die," I said laughing.  Had lunch recently with a friend from the pool.  She has stage four lung, brain and liver cancer.  Other than that, she's in fine fettle and good humour.  The first person to befriend me at the pool four years ago, she is someone with whom I clicked. 

We compared funeral notes.  Both of us have ours organized and paid for -- right down to the headstone.  All that's missing is the date of death.  We agreed we don't want our children cursing us as they try to tidy up our messes and stick us in the dirt or throw us over the water.  But I have to admit, I would not be as cheerful were I in her situation.  She is remarkable. 
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Toronto son left yesterday morning after a week-long stay.  Miss him already.  He spent two hours polishing the ancient, pocked headlights on my Civic while he was here.  Hitherto, I was not certified to drive at night because they were so bad.  He also swept out the garage -- which I have not done in more than four years.  What a lazy b-tch I can be at times!  We had a grand time, voici a couple of snaps:

Visiting the famous Ranchmen's Club.

Some of the whimsical painted mounts at Spruce Meadows.

     

More native woes

I know I bang on about this, but native issues continue to arise and continue to piss me off.  Here's a letter of mine, published yesterday in The Calgary Herald:

"Dear Editor,

"Both the issue of AFN chief Perry Bellegards's never having voted in a federal election and his on-going objection to bands having to disclose financial information are rooted in the same reality:  as a rule, aboriginals* do not identify as "Canadian".  If one is a Canadian, one`s civic duty is to vote; if one is Canadian, one must declare all income to the Canada Revenue Agency.  There is nothing "heavy-handed" about either of these obligations.  Frankly, Mr. Bellegarde`s stance is high-handed."  (The last sentence was deleted, but the rest of the letter went in as written.)

If you read a recent blog of mine, you know that Bellegarde refuses to vote, but urges all natives to.  Complete bullsh-t.   

On the heels of this nonsense, the first-ever native college in Canada was destroyed by arson recently.  Located on the Blood Tribe Reserve in southern Alberta, Red Crow Community College was an $11 million total write-off.  Immediately, the chief jumped in front of a microphone and blamed "faulty wiring", but when the professionals looked into it, it was clearly arson.  With native leaders screaming for better educational facilities and more money from the rest of us, why would they burn down this breakthrough building?!

Definitely more "forked tongue" speak. 

Sad. 
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*I used the word "natives" in my original letter because there are no aboriginals in North America, but the editor changed it. 

Social life at the pool

Unable to fall asleep last night, I began to think of all the fabulous men and women I have met at the pool.  Going early every morning at roughly the same time, I have met serious working girls (no, not that kind) in the locker room -- all in great shape.  Then I began to count the number I have become closer with and met outside the pool for lunch or coffee.  Ten!  That's amazing to me because only two socialize together; the rest I know one-on-one and they don't really know each other. 

My late mother taught me one invaluable skill.  "Speak to a person," she would admonish me under her breath, with a huge smile pasted on her face.  This started when I was very young, as we walked into a roomful of strangers.  I was maybe three or four, but was expected to proactively engage adults in conversation, which I did because she gave me no choice.  Being "shy" was simply another word for "rude" and was not permitted.  This ability to talk with anyone anywhere led me to my first career as a journalist, where I had to walk into Toronto conference rooms filled with hundreds of strangers, walk up to them, stick out my hand, introduce myself and get the story.  I was in my early twenties. 

With my acquaintances at the pool I do the same thing.  I "interview" them about their work, their lives, their kids, their parents, their husbands, their ex's and they open up.  People love to chat about what they're up to, no exceptions. 

My pool buddies are all younger than I -- some much -- ranging in age from their twenties to their fifties.  I am the oldest by far and flattered they deign to consider me acceptable enough to hang out with.  One's a doctor, two are nurses, another a university professor, one the head of "Clinique" here, one a fire-fighter, two are teachers, one an accountant and one a retired professional.  No slouches they.

However, were I not a decent swimmer, other than "hi", they probably wouldn't speak much to me.  There is a certain camaraderie in the lanes that only occurs if you can swim well and obey lane etiquette.  Woe to those unfortunates who don't. 

Oh, and there is one man I have had lunch with; the rest of the males I chat and joke with only in the water.  Seems to be a gender line, which is rarely crossed.  Nevertheless, they are a great group of people.      

Heavy-handed?

There has to be something terribly wrong with AFN Chief Perry Bellegarde's brain.  The man cannot apply logic or reason to anything, a fact becoming increasingly-clear every time he opens his mouth.  The latest nonsense surrounds his bizarre and unreasonable pronouncement that, although he himself has never voted federally, he urges all natives to do so. 

Really?!  "I just haven't done it," he bragged.  "It's a real personal thing."  See how the logic falls apart?  I'm telling you to do it, even though I say it's personal -- something which, last time I checked, was....well....personal.  His lame excuse is "because as first nations' leader, I want to maintain an appearance of non-partisanship."  Guess he hasn't heard that Canadians vote by secret ballot.  Guess he also forgets that he slams the federal government every-which-way-to-Sunday every time he opens his mouth.  Clearly, by urging natives to vote, he is in effect telling them not to vote Conservative, to throw the bums out.    Again, logic escapes the man.

"Even though I may not vote, I am urging young people to get out.  I may, or may not, but that's why. (Huh?).  That's what I am wrestling with personally."  Man, there a statement of crystal-clear clarity if ever I've heard one!  Makes me long for good old reasonable, sensible, calm, intelligent, rational, judicious, even-handed, wise, level-headed Shawn Atleo.  Alas and alack, he was thrown under the bus and kicked to the curb by the likes of Bellegarde and his cronies for sitting down with the feds to work out crazy things such as educational funding -- the very battle cry Bellegarde is touting now.  It completely defies sense.

Bellegarde's other bug-a-boo is the federal obligation that bands report their finances.  He calls this "heavy-handed".  Really?  To ask natives to account for the money given them is heavy-handed?  The First Nations Financial Transparency Act requires 581 bands to post audited financial statements on the internet.  Apparently, 191 bands will not receive non-essential funding because they have not complied.  They will receive "essential" funding, but Bellegarde claims, "a lot of those people in those communities, you're going to make them suffer.  It's not proper.  It's not right," he said.     

What's neither "proper" nor "right" is Bellegarde's high-handedness in having the gall to believe he is above the law and does not have to comply, as all the provinces and territories must.  Claiming his people are a "nation" while at the same time refusing to act like one is the height of it.  If you do the basic math, 500,000 natives receive $8.5 billion every year from Canadian taxpayers, theoretically $1,700,000 each.  Insane!  And Canadians bitch about paying $1.60 each for our Queen.   

The real problem, as I have said before, is that natives do not identify as "Canadian", so they don't vote and they don't pay taxes -- two things the rest of us do because the former is our civic duty and the latter the law.       



 

Now I understand....

...what my late father was talking about -- sort of.  Everything in the universe was perfect, he used to say, which was why he was a devout Catholic, while at the same time a brilliant mathematician.  I couldn't understand how he could be both when I was a questioning teenager.  "There is so much we don't understand dear," he used to say, "but perfect math and numbers underpin everything, which means there has to be a God to have made it all so perfect.  Nothing is random."

Just watching 'The Code', a brilliant BBC series about how mathematical patterns and numbers govern everything in the universe.  And they are consistently uniform, regardless of whether applied to plants, animals, sea creatures, insects, people, flora, fauna or the planets and stars themselves.  Amazing!

Don't ask me to explain anything, but watching the series I am cluing in a tad.  I was terrible at math -- much to his patient and loving chagrin -- but I am now beginning to understand prime numbers and what they can and cannot do.  I also now have a clue about "pi", the infinite number formula.  My Dad lived in a "math" world and wrote about it every day of his life-- both before and after he retired.  He was not of "this world" and I think without my mother he would never have eaten, got dressed or left the house.  But she gave him an orderly life and he repaid her by pretending to be "normal".  A kinder, more patient and loving gentleman you could not meet.  In fact, I never saw him lose his temper or say a critical word about anyone.  Ever. 

He would have been 115 years old and I am only just figuring him out.              

Finally questioning their own

"The salaries should match the governance structure.  It doesn't make sense that politicians are paid more than $90,000 each to govern an on-reserve population of 7,000," said Harley Frank, a former Blood Tribe chief in response to revelations that the current chief and 12 councillors collectively paid themselves more than $2 million last year. 

Finally, the natives themselves are waking up to reality within their midst.  When you factor in travel claims, the total hits $2.13 million.  Chief Weasel Head's total remuneration and expenses were $133,130, while one councillor actually hauled in....wait for it....$210,982!

Just so outrageous.  "If you're getting paid that kind of money, I expect tremendous results," Frank said.  "And then you have people on that reserve living hand-to-mouth."  Yes folks, chiefs and councillors are raking it in, while their subjects live in shacks and defecate in buckets.  And whose fault is it.  Never mind, that was a rhetorical question.

No wonder they don't want their theft to be revealed in audits.  The Blood Tribe's biggest expense in fiscal 2015 was salaries and benefits, which clocked in at....wait for it again.....$45.96 million -- a figure that topped last year's by $669,850.  For governing 7,000 people?

Maybe now that natives know what their leaders are up to, they will start to demand reason, reality and accountability from these carney barkers.     

   

"...going forward"

What's with that new fad phrase?  Just dumb.  "I hope that next year is better, going forward."  Why do we need the "going forward" part?!  We don't.  The meaning is obvious without those two superfluous words, but one hears the expression everywhere out of the mouths of every expert on everything on every TV and radio show.  G-d!  Almost as hideous as the repetition of the word "is", as in, "The thing is is......"  G-d again.   

I do despair when it comes to grammar.

We're all huddled in our homes with the windows closed and furnace filters changed, trying to escape the smoke from forest fires in Washington.  The Rockies halt the spread of the BC smoke, but winds have pushed Washington's smoke up into southern Alberta and I'm pissed off about it.  Not that it physically bothers me -- thanks to my heart/lung capacity due to swimming -- but one has to keep everything closed, as dust accumulates on everything.  Guess we'll all have to pay for the smokers who have to get emergency oxygen.  Can't believe our young, dumb neighbours still sit out back smoking?! 

You should have seen the shape my filter was in when I changed it!  Absolutely clogged.  Supposed to clear by Thursday, which leaves me another day to binge-watch BBC on Netflix.