Image: Post-Modernist Phallusy

The Development of First & Commercial

I have today published a new research essay on the 15-year fight for the development of the old Grandview High school site at First & Commercial.

The essay can be found at: https://grandviewheritagegroup.ca/2022/05/16/battle-for-the-school-site-1940-1955/

I hope you find it of interest.

Poem: Southern Comfort

 

It was a slam bam thank you ma’am kind of night.

“It’s alright,” she said with a slight frisson of uncertainty perhaps

as she unwraps and taps the money-box on the dresser.

He pays to caress her, to possess her as she bumps and grinds

and too quickly finds the kind of passion paid for.

He wants more before he’ll leave: sixteen and still hard.

But she’s on guard, body barred against free love.

Push came to shove.  Above his pleas she screamed and screamed

until the apartment teemed with neighbours and passers-by

who wondered why this nigger came by and by to be in a white girl’s room.

 

It’s a warm, hormone-rushing, mosquito-swarming kind of night.

Fox-fire bright, passions tightly wound and sprung.

No brass bells are rung, no masses sung, but masses gather to enjoy

the black boy toy with the last of his time on a slippery slope

as the hempen rope grips and gropes for his hopeless neck.

 

Image: Curves

Nakba Day 2022

On Nakba Day — the day of the catastrophe — we remember the millions of Palestinians violently displaced from their homes at the creation of Israel in 1948.

We remember this year with especial importance as the carnage continues in full force this week and every week, and celebrate the Palestinians who have survived almost 75 years of State-sponsored apartheid, genocide, and general brutality at the hands of a regime financed and supported by almost every Western government. and media organization

Snacks Tonight #50

Tiramisu for the weekend!

Britannia Renewal Open Houses

Getting to the nitty-gritty of renewal issues. If you are interested …

There is more information at https://britanniarenewal.org/

Image: Teepee

Image: Duck Intersection

Image: Yellow Red Blue Green

Poem: In The Time Of The Dying

 

In the time of the dying of the leaves,

when summer’s solace is a memory passed,

and deepening shadows of evening cast

their pall ‘cross rich man’s roof and beggar’s eaves,

colours primary, raw, blast out a last

spectacular fanfare:  embroidered sleeves

to counterpoint the widow’s darkling weeds

shows off to the night no matter how vast

eternity approaching, no matter

no one escapes the black hole’s pull of doom,

and each lifes’ cloth will be cut from the loom,

no matter this, ‘tis only now that matters;

the now that paints the tree with red and gold,

regrets nothing, wants only to stay old.

 

Image: The City Paints Itself

Image: Roofs

Rally At City Hall

Image: Red Wood

Smallpox! Grandview’s Isolation Hospital

.

I have today published another research essay, this one tells the history of the smallpox Isolation Hospital erected in Grandview in 1892 and which stayed in place until it became part of Templeton Park in 1912.

The essay can be read at https://grandviewheritagegroup.ca/blog

Poem: Harvest

 

It’s raining;

trapped in the house again

with a bottle and the balance

of the sandwich

from yesterday:

I’ll stretch the bread from here to tomorrow.

Harvesting the crumbs

from carpet and cardigan,

I will not be worried

in the midst of such plenty.

It’s raining again.

 

Image: Light At The End of the Path

International Day of the Worker

 

In most parts of the world, May 1st is recognized as the International Day of the Worker and we celebrate it as such. Labor Day in September is a North American tradition, encouraged by President Grover Cleveland so as to distance American labour from socialists and anarchists.

Image: Line #1