Freedom

Watching the Olympics, athletes from all over the world competing against each other, puts me in mind of the pandemic, and how we were all in it together, some of us not making it, including a friend who got COVID in late 2022 and died in early 2024.

Did he die of COVID? No. Did he die when he did because he got COVID? I think so. He was immuno-compromised, and thanks to a propaganda campaign by anti liberal democracy operatives, latched onto by every opportunistic Conservative politician from coast to coast to coast, he was against vaccine mandates.

Freedom.

We don't talk about it nearly enough but thousands of Canadians are still experiencing the effects of having had COVID. A lot of them don't have doctors either because the pandemic decimated a healthcare system that was already under strain.

Under strain. More like under attack. I would lose my mind.

My friend who died told me about the many nurses he interacted with believing the vaccine was causing COVID. I told him nurses had been heavily targeted with misinformation, but he was more inclined to believe them than me.

One of the most attention whoring of the Freedom Convoy assholes is in custody in Ottawa for violating his bail conditions, which they all do regularly. One of our housing association residents, a retired nurse with whom I maintain friendly relations, is all in with their anti-vax nonsense. I don't know why I can tolerate it but I can and she seems to know better than to bring it up.

Freedom.

Another housing association friend is moving away because she's afraid to live here now. She and another friend, women living alone, experienced attempted home invasions this summer. A couple of thugs hammering on their doors at 2:00 a.m. One friend has them on camera saying, "When she opens the door just push your way inside." They were wearing gloves. She called the police, turned over camera footage, so we'll see.

The apartment building down the street just managed to get rid of a drug operation keeping other tenants up at all hours, anybody who could having moved already, but the single mother of three I see all the time still lives there. We were in a similar situation several years ago when I lived downtown, the kids coming every weekend. They called me the Mayor of Crackhoville.

A friend at the pond just got back from a planned two week vacation in Jasper that only lasted one day before she was evacuated. We were talking about climate change happening whether we acknowledge it or not. Instead of refunds for some activities she was told to come back in October. It sucks, but I get it.

Another friend told me about an elderly resident of her building with dementia probably ending up in a nursing home in Timmins, where he knows nobody, because that's how it is now. People don't matter.

Army reservists have PTSD now thanks to being deployed to our nursing homes during the pandemic.

Freedom.

Barbara Ehrenreich, one of my favourite authors, wrote about toxic positivity and sometimes I feel like I'm surrounded by it, the pressure to get over it, on with it, back to it. I'm not depressed or negative or even down. I'm just not going to pretend everybody and everything everywhere isn't fucked up.

The pretence there's even a normal to return to is crazy.

Trigger Warning

Triggered

After a lovely lunch out, at which I ate all my pizza and drank a Spark non-alcoholic beer - even Farm Boy has non-alcoholic beer now that's indistinguishable from all the expensive craft beers I used to drink due to a hi-falutin' substance use disorder - I decided on a whim to take a break from the Olympics and listen to Gabor Mate.

So glad I did.

I've heard him say it a hundred times, it's not about the trigger, it's about the explosives we carry around inside us.

Finally, it clicked. It's not you, it's me.

Then I watched another video, this one on attachment vs authenticity, a video I must have viewed a dozen times over the past couple of years, and how the need for others to care about us can get in the way of the need to be true to our values, who we are, not who we've adapted ourselves to be.

It clicked, too. It's not our fault, it's not anybody's fault, it's tricky not losing ourself in the various roles we take on, are assigned. People pleasing is a survival tactic, being who other people want us to be, ignoring our values to avoid confrontation, to fit in, be wanted, loved.

I enjoy hearing the stories of Olympic athletes who walk away from the dream, sometimes for a decade, and come back, gut, heart, brain in sync like maybe they weren't before. Anybody, really, who switches it up like that, goes on a journey, returns knowing who they are, what they want, how to be.

Millennials joke about adulting, but by adulting they mean acquiescing to the demands of a capitalist system increasingly beyond the regulatory capacity of government, a capitalist system stacked heavily in favour of their retired parents, trampling our world's heritage sites, cruise by cruise.

I feel propagandized to want a life that doesn't make sense to me.

Millennials also wander around our cities like zombies, using bolt cutters to steal bikes, the lowest form of theft, so low our police services ignore it in favour of chasing down stolen cars.

TVO's Steve Paikin did The Agenda from my hometown of Sault Ste. Marie, where the addiction crisis is so much in evidence.

Nobody knows what to do about it.

Dr. Mate wants us to use compassionate inquiry to understand addiction, whether it's our own or someone else's, starting with the problem the addiction initially, at least, solved. So not a harsh, "Why do you do this?!" but a curious, "Why do you do this?"

When I said to my ex's boss at a party, "I drank to make myself interesting", he joked, "I drink to make you more interesting, too."

Is boredom pain? I think it is. Loneliness. Those of us who take public transit here in Ottawa, who live downtown or go downtown often enough, see people of all ages, but certainly Millennials, drugged into oblivion, lying on the sidewalk, unconscious. Are they trying to keep themselves alive or trying to kill themselves?

How did we let it come to this?

Ottawa police who aren't busy chasing down stolen cars have set up shop in the Rideau Centre, a show of solidarity with business owners in the Byward Market. I think my panic attacks, which would happen after a meal out downtown, were my gut, heart, brain upset by the juxtaposition, me eating in the restaurant, unhoused addicts lying on the sidewalk outside it.

Where I live people are moving because they're afraid of the men wandering around at night, testing doors, often carrying bolt cutters. I just found this out today from my neighbour I complain about on the regular, who has his eyes and ears on the street, so maybe I'll give it a rest.

In both cases my (female) neighbours had to call police to get them to leave, that's how aggressive they were, and apparently even then they took their time moving on, taunting them all the while.

I see a lot of sketchy looking guys riding pretty nice bikes these days. It makes me mad. Hard to sympathize with them when they're causing other low income people such distress.

I grew up being told I was a citizen of the world. Well I don't feel like one. Nothing is sitting well with me right now. Gut, heart, brain, they're all out of sync and I'm trying to remember a time when they weren't.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I figure I may as well put it out there. Maybe it will help somebody else feel like it's not just them. Below is a painting from 1914 called "The Drinker" by Erich Plontke depicting addiction and despair. A Facebook friend posted it so I thought I'd share it here.

Angry Young Men

Watching Danielle Smith's crocodile tears at her press conference with regard to the forest fire that's devastating Jasper National Park a terrible thought occurred to me.

What if her cutting of Alberta's fire fighting services was deliberate, as in, not just reckless, but calculated?

The ground is so dry out West fires smoulder year round now. So it's not as if even a sociopathic loon like Danielle Smith wouldn't recognize the need to invest even more in Alberta's fire fighting services.

Instead she cut them.

I don't know why, but it's as if we don't want to remember how the Conservative Party of Canada came to be, but it was birthed by Alberta separatists, its creator, Stephen Harper, signatory to the Alberta Firewall Letter, his 2003 creation one of guns, the Bible, and white nationalism.

And lest we forget too, his disciple, Pierre Poilievre, helped him cheat his way to a majority in 2011, his #1 priority being to destroy our gun registry as per the want of the American NRA, most likely the funders of his leadership campaign way back when.

Stephen Harper, Prime Minister, was a sore winner, a surly, vain, and arrogant autocrat, the opposite of advance man, Tom Flanagan's p.r. of humble, modest, policy wonk.

He vowed to make over our country ffs, travelled - extensively - with a personal stylist.

HE WAS RUDE TO OBAMA!

It's all been one big lie.

We can only imagine what a sore loser he is.

So... what if his Conservative government of Alberta - because he's the boss of all the Conservatives of Canada, this humble, modest, policy wonk - is really in the business of sabotaging the government of Canada, its goal being sovereignty on behalf of the same fascists behind the US Republican Party, and the same fascists he works for at the IDU, the same fascists at the NRA who funded his leadership campaign way back when?

Stephen Harper is in the business of electing Donald Trump and sabotaging the election of Kamala Harris. He's the enemy of liberal democracy just as Vladimir Putin is the enemy of liberal democracy.

We only ever had his word for it he talked tough to Putin and his actions completely belie his words.

The Freedom Convoy came out of Alberta. As does Pierre Poilievre who marched with its neo-Nazi insurrectionists, a very public show of whose side he's on, complete with Trump's man, Paul Alexander, over his right shoulder.

Handler?

The Conservative Party even worked to eliminate Pierre Poilivre's (alias Jeff - just as J.D. Vance has changed his name, so to has PP - rite of passage to radicalized tool of global fascists?) only real rival to ensure his leadership victory - complete with video endorsement from, of course, Stephen Harper.

Boys from Brazil came to mind.

We who experienced the Freedom Convoy's attack on us, the torture and terrorizing of citizens living and working downtown, the denial of access to public services, the sabotage of our economy, also witnessed the complicity of our publicly funded police, Ford Nation, and the Conservative Party of Canada, its leaders past, present and future - along with Donald Trump - giving it the thumbs up.

Shortly after the Trudeau government invoked the Emergency Act to clear it out, Russia invaded Ukraine.

This was meant to be an entry about angry young men, many of them in our publicly funded military - vote Conservative and for tax cuts? stop pretending to give a shit about vets - somebody somewhere having convinced them they're victims, victims of discrimination by refugees, transkids, liberals, democrats, feminists.

Young women.

Because that's what this is - a war on young women.

And the fascists are using young men to wage it.

Cat Ladies and Other Tales

Apparently, J.D. Vance is only 39.

I thought he was in his mid-50s.

I guess that might explain his sophomoric politics.

I'm not sure what explains his desire for a male only society, female citizens shut away at home with children, but he wears a lot of eyeliner, eye shadow, lipstick, foundation, and blush for a man accusing Drag Queens of leading America's youth astray.

Does he want the US to be a Christian theocracy to rival the Islamic theocracies US Republicans and Russia's Vladimir Putin have been in a Crusade against for decades now?

Lest we forget, Stephen Harper's desperate gambit to prevent Justin Trudeau from winning the election of 2015 was to drop the mask and go full on Islamophobic in hopes Canadians would respond favourably.

Another man who wears a lot of eyeliner, eye shadow, lipstick, foundation, and blush, by the way.

It's creepy, a well-documented rapist with a predilection for young teen girls, like 12 and 13 year old girls, Donald Trump, by his own admission sexually attracted to his own daughter, Ivanka, and since she was a baby, is the standard-bearer for the Grand Old Party, his young apprentice, J.D. Vance, rounding out the woman-hating sexual predator ticket with sophomoric outbursts aimed at women who don't have children.

Not men, though, just women.

Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance's billionaire Peter Pan sugar daddy, doesn't have children, while his other billionaire Peter Pan sugar daddy, Elon Musk, has a dozen of them but isn't in any way a father. 

Hope his baby mammas raise 'em right and they grow up to be Liberal Feminists.

Anyway, Republican voters will fall once again for the bullshit that awful men like J.D. Vance and Donald Trump care about them and their kids.

They don't, but fortunately, cat ladies do, and they're trending upwards in great style.

Biden Time

So I've been watching Emma McAdam (Therapy in a Nutshell) videos on YouTube, scatter-shotting her 30 week course on anxiety, and last night I skipped way ahead to the 29th week, which reminded me about purpose and meaning being found in giving back, bringing to life ourselves what we want from it, and from others.

Belonging, connection, caring.

I want people to behave more responsibly so I've decided to help out on our housing association again. It's something I can do that I'm good at, like blogging, but more practical and local community oriented.

I've been engaging a bit with a couple of Facebook friends on the situation facing the Democratic Party right now with regard to Joe Biden and whether he should step aside. It's interesting because I'm quite partisan and have a heaping helping of confirmation bias but I've actually come around to adjusting my opinion on this.

They say the best time to plant a tree was 50 years ago. The second best time is now.

So to make the analogy, the best time to start laying the groundwork for a transition in leadership was in 2020. The next best time is now. Yes, it's late in the day, and it will be a scramble and a gamble. But so is doing nothing. And at the end of the day, Americans who believe in democracy will just have to unite around whoever replaces Joe Biden, and get out the vote to defeat Donald Trump.

Again.

And they'll have to make up for the Republicans, who no longer believe in democracy, who are indecent, and who cheat, in order to put Kamala Harris over the top. Because yes, go big or go home. Trust in the American people to want leadership, not despotism.

Have faith.

It's hard, though, isn't it. Our housing association had a coup of sorts a few years ago now where a fellow (a Rightwing bully and vocal Trump supporter even though Canadian) muscled out more decent members and installed a couple of his cronies to more or less do whatever the hell he wanted, joint use agreement be damned. I'd worked with him before and always managed to rein him in, with the help of another member, but it was too hard to do anything about him from outside the committee and the other member was long gone to Toronto.

In the end our association managed, all of us together, to get him out, fire the property management company that had benefited financially from his reign of terror, and restore order, although a lawyer advised us that the unauthorized changes he'd made shouldn't simply be reversed, as it wouldn't be righting wrongs, it would be making yet more unauthorized changes.

Whatever.

So we lived with what he'd done and life carried on. Some people were mad but some people are always mad, and a new committee and property management company, which I helped hire and which turned out to be much worse than the previous one, managed to take us through the pandemic until last fall when the committee mostly resigned and a new committee was elected in its place, shortly after which most of them resigned so that now it's half unelected volunteers, of which I've offered to be one.

Everybody and everything everywhere is fucked up and we aren't giving each other the due we deserve for trying to sort shit out and restore order. Living in Ottawa I can tell you we ceded public space to the likes of the Freedom Convoy and we're having a hell of a time taking it back because the decent among us have mostly retreated to our private domains, naively believing the public one isn't our problem.

It is both our problem and our solution so we need to get back out there and reclaim it.

Yes, Joe Biden did his duty well, but the people calling for him to pass the torch are doing their duty, too. I know what I see, in spite of my own denials, and I see the Joe Biden referred to some time ago now in a written report by a doctor as elderly and confused. A Joe Biden who slurs his speech so badly he's too hard to understand. A Joe Biden who can't turn his head without turning his body. A Joe Biden who moves like Tim Conway playing an old man in a Carol Burnett Show sketch.

A Joe Biden who's tired and cranky and instead of taking a nap is insisting on running for President of the United States.

It's the obstinacy, the anger, the feeling betrayed - the paranoia - that gave it away for me. Joe Biden, Mr. Reasonable, isn't being reasonable. He's not the only one who can defeat Trump just because he managed to do it in 2020. And so the task of convincing him to make as gracious an exit as possible is being left to people other people are excoriating for taking it on, as if Democrats can't be trusted to vote for a ticket with the accomplished Kamala Harris as the nominee. Meanwhile, I'm reading my young middle-aged Facebook friend in Texas vow he'll vote for the elderly man with signs of dementia over Trump, thanks, and do his best to convince others to do the same, and not sit it out or pretend it's hopeless because the task at hand is saving democracy.

Like I say, it's hard, but once I checked my partisanship, my confirmation bias, I felt a lot calmer about it all. Also, recognizing it's not up to me to save America, it's not even up to Joe Biden, it's up to Americans. Meanwhile, I can do something to improve my own little corner of Canada, which will go a long way towards making me feel better.

Emma McAdam points out that when we stop doing what makes us anxious it just confirms to our brain that what we were doing was dangerous. Well being on the committee isn't dangerous, going to see a musical at the National Arts Centre isn't dangerous, taking the train to visit relatives isn't dangerous, meeting friends for lunch isn't dangerous, doing my part to take back public space isn't dangerous.

The stuff of life isn't dangerous.

My belief is Joe Biden will step aside and I hope he does so graciously and with a humble apology for not having done so sooner because he needs to do what he can to absolve of blame the people he's put in the position of appearing to push him out.

My hope is Democrats rally around the new ticket and people get involved on the ground to get out the vote like democracy depends on it because it does. Meanwhile, I'm going to go back and forth viewing Emma McAdam videos on YouTube and put into practice her advice on dealing with anxiety by doing a little more each day to bring to this life what I want from it.

I survived a pandemic ffs. The best time to pay it forward was yesterday. The next best time is right now.

Please Somebody Alert CBC

I haven't watched any of it of course but I imagine our media coverage of the Republican Convention in no way suggests it's actually a fascist hoedown, a proudly broadcast threat to liberal democracy and statement of solidarity with the well-documented murderer of Russian democracy activists, journalists, and opposition leaders, Vladimir Putin.

Even CBC is both-sidesing democracy and fascism for some reason that escapes. Kind of makes me wish Trudeau would axe it now instead of waiting for Poilievre to do it. 

But I lit on something while looking at a photo of J.D. Vance, the Republican Party's chosen running mate for Donald Trump: He, too, wears make-up, including eyeliner, lipstick, and blush.

Look at a photo of him. You can see it. It's not the usual make-up of men on tv either.

It's the make-up of women.

A while ago, looking at a photo of our former Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, I noticed he wears a lot of it, too. You can plainly see it in the photo gracing the website of global fascism's laundromat, the IDU.

That's what I figure the IDU is, anyway, as I can't discern any other purpose for it.

He's my age, pretty much exactly, and I don't wear any make-up at all anymore. If anything, he's wearing even more than he did in middle-age, and that was a lot. It was so much, in fact, he had to bring his personal stylist along with him on his many travels while he was Prime Minister.

(And this is where I interject to say everything we were told by his advance man, Tom Flanagan, turned out to be bullshit. He's not modest, he's not humble, he's not a policy wonk. He's vain, arrogant, and a reckless idiot who locked us into a terrible trade deal with China. He didn't hate travel, he loved it. And money. He loves money. And I'll eat my hat if he ever talked tough to Putin because every single one of his actions indicates the exact opposite.)

Now, there's nothing wrong with men wearing make-up, of course, but I think it's noteworthy that they do when they're such haters of Drag Queens (as is their ideological leader, Vladimir Putin) and so, so, so jealous of women they essentially want to eliminate us from society, as is the goal of Men Going Their Own Way, the women-haters Pierre Poilievre recruited to his Conservative Party leadership campaign.

Do these men hate women because they want to BE women? Do they hate women because they're mad at mommy for however she didn't measure up?

Or do they hate women because we can choose to reproduce ourselves.

Or not.

Certainly it would explain their zeal in punishing us for our life creating choice by taking it away and putting themselves in charge of whether we do or don't reproduce.

Please note: The flip side of men eliminating abortion is men making it mandatory.

Nazis.

Please, somebody, alert CBC.

It's a Sad Sad Sad Sad World

I'm a book collector, as it turns out, and have several bookcases housing my eclectic collection. Many of the books I've read, but many more I haven't. And I'm starting to wonder if I ever will because in addition to my private collection, I've become a regular borrower of library books. And because library books have due dates, I read them.

I know, I know, the due dates aren't like they used to be, but I feel guilty if I don't abide by them anyway. Besides, I can't borrow more until I've returned the books I have.

Also, I love the library. It's my happy place. And free.

In the past few days alone I've read three library books: "The Dog of the North" by Elizabeth McKenzie, "The Last Remains" by Elly Griffiths, and "Fight Night" by Miriam Toews.

Staff picks are always a good bet but I think only "Fight Night" was a staff pick. The other two were just random selections that helped take my mind off myself.

And all the women-hating fascists running for public office nowadays.

I don't worry about having so many books, although I'm going to whittle them down a bit, most likely divesting myself of nostalgic keeps after lighting upon the following, "The less you have, the more you do."

That little gem came to me when I was assessing all my "learn to draw" and "learn to knit" books.

Who needs more than one of each? It's not like knitting and drawing have changed over the years.

I've gone back to watching "Therapy in a Nutshell" videos. Also, of course, Gabor Mate, who, when he speaks of being free means freeing ourselves from our egos, working through our trauma, being who we are, not who we think we should be.

I listen to him in interviews and he never puts a word wrong. He can also correct an interviewer's question to make it and his answer more helpful.

Emma McAdam, of "Therapy in a Nutshell" offers practical help, and last night's viewing was about willingness, the willingness to feel our emotions instead of trying to keep them at bay. I was thinking of a friend but then realized it's me, too.

I'm sad. Loss is hard and I've experienced, am experiencing, loss. We all are. But we live in a culture where we're supposed to get on with it, deny our sadness, drink it away, toughen up, harden ourselves to it.

Then we wonder where our aches and pains come from, why when we eat well, sleep well, get plenty of fresh air exercise, we still have "issues".

For a long time I thought of myself as a victim. It happens in divorce and is why they say the best likely outcome is one in which nobody is satisfied. But I've been turning that around, owning my responsibility for it, and it feels good.

Why not be the hero of my own story?

I had to reassure a friend the other day, I'm in the best shape of my life, and I am. I do an excellent job of looking after myself, thanks. But I can't, I won't, pretend I don't feel how I feel anymore. You shouldn't either.

It's okay to be sad. We're living in a sad sad sad sad world. Be sad.

A Swing and a Miss

Hurricane Beryl caused a broody mood around these parts but it seems to have passed through now. For the past couple of weeks I've been dealing with a fungus issue in my heel but it seems to have cleared up. No sooner did it clear up though than I stubbed the toe next to my big toe and either broke or sprained it.

A friend at the pond (where I likely picked up the fungus) told me about a guy he knew who broke his toe, then got shingles, then developed congestive heart failure, then died. All that time he wouldn't got to the hospital. Refused.

I get it. We still advise each other to make an appointment with our doctor or go to the hospital like it's the olden days and not 2024. I'm so sorry if you need medical care. None of this is fair or makes any sense.

Go to the corner store I guess and drink yourself stupid on cheap beer.

Doug Ford doesn't drink himself so don't expect him to give a shit about your liver.

Last week, while NATO was meeting to harangue us about our military spending, Russia bombed a children's hospital in Kiev. So I think we should withhold any spending on NATO at all until NATO admits we're in WWIII, calls Russia's nuclear bluff and attacks it with everything we've got.

Also, our provinces seem to have endless money for police. Why not hook our police forces, I mean, services, up with our armed forces? Just nationalize them and let people find their own stolen cars.

Or get a fucking clue and stop buying them until car manufacturers make them theft-proof.

I am so fucking tired of paying for suburbanites to drive their gas guzzling tanks to and fro like they have zero responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions destroying life on Earth.

I've been weaning Facebook friends, one of whom is a devotee of Twitter. She joined an attack on a journalist at CBC, a young woman. Liberal Twitter, as it's called, regularly attacks journalists when it doesn't like the news they report, claiming a Conservative bias, just like the fascists claim a Liberal one.

I call Conservatives fascists now because they share a party with them. It's my opinion that Conservatives were always on the side of fascism, but because they were our neighbours and relatives, and we were supposed to maintain cordial relationships and not discuss politics, we pretended they weren't all about reversing civil and human rights for anyone who wasn't white, male, and Christian.

Fuck that. Republicans are why Donald Trump in the US and Conservatives here are why Pierre Poilievre - who may as well be Rob Anders, ffs.

So far, I'm proud of my Facebook friends for not pretending we have to care somebody supposedly took a shot at Donald Trump, although I'm not buying any of it yet. A recently deceased Facebook friend would be appalled, but he never understood how indefensible Donald Trump is.

I accused him once of being a Conservative and he was so mad it pretty much ended our friendship.

But I was right. It's bred in the bone, isn't it, as Robertson Davies would say. I denied I'm a Liberal for years, but I am, so now I just own it. My New Democrat colleagues at Queen's Park would regularly accuse me of it, being a Liberal. And really, I was only there because of my undying love for Bob Rae, who turned out to be a Liberal, too.

Americans terrify me now, millions of them all in with fascism. But maybe this latest Trump stunt, attempt on his miserable godforsaken mobster life, whatever it was - and again, I'm not buying any of it yet, maybe ever - will turn off the (inexplicable to me) fence-sitters and they either won't vote or will vote for the demonstrably frail Joe Biden.

No, stop with the excuses and own it. Joe Biden is frail. Believe your eyes and ears. But we're in a war whether we want to be or not, so whether he runs or someone else does, it's either fascism or democracy.

Dear Alice

I've read a lot of Alice Munro stories over the years, as well as about her, and including interviews with her. And I'm not sure, but I think at one point I was surprised to learn she was a mother. And again, I'm not sure, but I think once I did, Alice Munro became less about being a writer and more about being a mother who didn't seem even remotely interested in discussing her role as a mother.

It wasn't just me. It was me, her interviewers, and every Tom, Dick and Mary who wrote about her.

And the reason for this, I think, is because Alice Munro was so vague on the subject of being a mother, so reticent, because the reality of her life didn't match at all the expectations we all had, that naturally, being a mother her children were her priority.

So how did she fit her writing around her children?

Meanwhile, the idea that a man might be her priority, and not her children or her writing, never occurred, although my guess is a re-reading of her canon and it would fair leap off every page that it was ever thus.

I do know I found her vagueness about being a mother - because she was nothing if not vague about it - endlessly frustrating. I don't care if you're one of the greatest short story writers in the world, I want to know about you being a mother now that you're being so mysterious about it. What kind of mother are you? What about your kids? What's it like for them, you being their mother?

Well, now we know, don't we, because her daughter, Andrea Munro, has told us.

It wasn't about being a mother at all, not even a bit. It wasn't even about being a writer.

It was all about being a woman with a man.

It's an Alice Munro short story if ever I read one.

We can be shocked about Alice Munro's betrayal of her daughter to the man who sexually abused her, not to mention the other little girls her second husband Gerald Fremlin sexually abused, sure. But anyone my age knows fully well, Alice Munro was not unlike a lot of mothers of her time, a time before reliable birth control and no fault divorce.

And lest we forget, there's a reason we had to bring in a law that an adult in a position of authority must report any suspected sexual abuse of a child by another adult in a position of authority.

Which brings us to Jim Munro.

When Andrea Munro returned home to her father Jim Munro's house after her summer visit to her mother, she told her stepbrother about her stepfather Gerald Fremlin's sexual abuse of her. Her stepbrother told her to tell his mother, her stepmother, which she did. Her stepmother then told her father, who, for whatever reason, didn't tell Alice Munro.

Then Jim Munro continued to knowingly send his daughter every summer into the sexually abusive hands of her stepfather, Gerald Fremlin.

No one seems to be asking, so let it be me, but what kind of father was Jim Munro?

But no, everyone is correct, of course. Alice Munro standing by her man, a man guilty of serial child sexual abuse, including that of her own daughter, is the worst. It's not just rejection, although it's certainly that, it's betrayal.

I grew up knowing I was planned because my mother made a point of telling me when I complained of probably being an accident since my parents already had a girl and a boy.

"Actually you were all planned so you'll have to find something else to complain about."

And I know she was telling the truth because otherwise she was pretty much Red from That 70s Show.

Well, a lot of people my age and older weren't planned, and they grew up with resentful mothers and absent fathers, people who should never have become parents, fathers who would sexually abuse them and mothers who would betray them, and on and on and on it went and still goes, although not so much now we have more choices.

It's sad, and we all feel let down, but what, for the love of all that sustains us, does any of it have to do with art?

On the Bright Side

A meteor could hit Earth.

But did the Republican Party really need their Supreme Court appointees to put Donald Trump above the law, in law? I mean, he's been committing fraud and treason in plain sight for years now, and although he's had financial penalties applied against him, it's not like he's ever had to actually pay them, not out of his own wallet, anyway.

Seems to me the ruling putting presidents above the law is likely in response to the recent unanimous decision by a jury of ordinary Americans in a criminal proceeding that Donald Trump was guilty.

Shameful betrayal of those jurors but I guess we should have know this would be coming.

My question is, why would anybody who isn't Donald Trump want him to be above the law, in actual law, and not just as he's always been for whatever reason he seems to have been, raping, libelling and defrauding countless of his co-citizens?

No sooner was he found guilty in a criminal court by those same co-citizens than his toadies on the Supreme Court ruled against them. Why? What's the deal?

Who other than Donald Trump benefits by him having an exemption from ever facing any real consequences for his rampant criminality? Four years of a Democratic presidency and still no justice for the millions of Americans defrauded by this piece of shit mobster.

So what the hell is going on? No sooner do we think there will be just a modicum of justice than <whoosh> the rug is pulled out from us again. If I were those 12 jurors I'd be wanting to sue everybody who's anybody. They put their lives on the line and for what.

Something is rotten in the big ol' swamp south of our long and unprotected border and it's not just Donald Trump.