Night Music: Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad

Such a gloriously theatrical torch singer!

Poem: First Date

 

it’s dark and smoky in the back

of the old Lincoln;  smells of old leather

and cheap perfume, nostalgia for the old

days sweep over me like the steady progression

of clouds wheeling around the planet.

And there she is beside me, showing me

more thigh than I can possibly handle;

an immense superstructure peeps

from the straining buttons, and I see

with the clarity of hindsight how this present

future follows the paths of the past.

 

 

Image: Details #1

The Hypocrisy of Greed

The whole western world has gone nuts over ISIS or ISIL or the Islamic Caliphate. The pundits and the politicians and the military leaders say we have to stop them taking power or keeping power, have to stop them becoming a permanent presence in the middle East.  Why? Because, say the talkers, their way of life is unconscionable and needs to be eradicated from the earth.

Apparently, ISIS wants to be a sovereign state that runs itself along strict fundamentalist, not to say fascist, religious guidelines, that has a tiny elite with all the power, that wants to keep women down by imposing moral and sumptuary laws, that have religious police who are above and beyond the ordinary law, that imposes public executions and beatings, that believes all other religions are evil and need to be exterminated.

I can see exactly why people would be opposed to that — after all, we have an example of what it will be like if it succeeds: Saudi Arabia.  Read the last paragraph with wahabbist Saudi Arabia in your mind and tell me if I have gotten anything wrong?

So, we already have a fully-ISIS style government in place, And the odd thing is, the west (UK, France, US, Canada, etc) faun over the leaders of Saudi Arabia, sell them billions of dollars of advanced weaponry, conduct trillions in trade, kneel to their unelected (and unelectable) leaders.

What’s the real difference between ISIS and Saudi Arabia?  The latter has agreed to fund its personal profligacy using our money, while ISIS has not.  In other words, there is profit to be made in Saudi Arabia, but not in ISIS. It is the hypocrisy of greed.

Night Music: Yesterday

Image: Fog At Sunset

It Is Buy Nothing Day!

Night Music: Look What You’ve Done To Me

One of my truly favourite recordings.

Welcome Back, Jak

It seems like a dog’s age since I wrote anything substantive in here.  But I haven’t been lazy, just very busy with other stuff.

Most of the last five or six days has been taken up with creating maps from the corpus of data now in the Grandview Database. These maps will show versions of the historical development of Grandview from its founding in the early 1900s through to today.  But they sure eat up the time!  My plan is to present some of these maps at the January 21st meeting of the Grandview Heritage Group — come along and see for yourself!

I have also been entering almost a thousand new data points ready for the 1st December upgrade of the Database. It will seem a lot fuller and chunkier now, along with some reformatting work.

There has also been a lot of work behind the scenes for the NO TOWER Campaign.  For example, the emails concerning the failure of the City to supply requested information go on and on.  The matter is now in the hands of the Commissioner with a formal complaint.  I am hoping this ties in with the Commissioner’s own announced audit of the City of Vancouver’s compliance practices. We’ll see how that plays out.

There have been a long series of NO TOWER meetings with politicians and others; by Christmas, the Coalition members will have met with just about ever Councilor, for example. I tend to avoid the meetings themselves, but there is always a lot of discussion and preparation that goes into them. There is also a lot of other material to write and prepare for all the various facets of a community-based campaign.  The NO TOWER website is full of the results of these efforts of the entire group.

And that’s not to mention Thanksgiving (for my half-American family) and getting ready for Christmas and just keeping warm. It’s been busy!

 

 

Image: Street Art #12

Night Music: Unit 4 Plus 2

Back when this was new, I remember swapping a copy of the Stones’ “Not Fade Away” for a copy of “Concrete and Clay“.  Ahh, the foolishness of youth!

Image: Kayaks In The Mist

Poem: Aromamore

 

was it the jitterbug perfume

she poured on my soul

— the fragrance of an everlasting kiss —

that keeps me staring

into the dark?

my neglected work

— lying angry like an abandoned maiden

scattered across my desk —

shivers with jealousy

as I part the curtains once more

and stare into that scented slice

of memory

 

Night Music: God Bless The Child

Image: City Walk In Fall

Night Music: Miss You

Joe Hill

 

 

Today is the 100th anniversary of the murder by execution of the great Wobbly songwriter and martyr Joe Hill.

 

A minute’s silence, and then back to the work that still remains unfinished.

Image: False Creek Lagoon

Select image for a much better view of this wide panorama.

Night Music: In A Moment

I always believed that Ray Davies was the equal to Lennon/McCartney. Here’s a fine example of his later work.

Image: Red Tulips #4