IF I WERE GRAND POOBAH OF THE KNOWN UNIVERSE… Oshawa/Whitby This Week 2006

If I were the Grand Poobah of the known universe, Brussel sprouts would be illegal.  Besides, they are impersonating a cabbage; it’s in poor taste.

The Optical 20/20 store at Brock St. and Dundas would be forced to repaint the exterior of his store.  Obviously, the shame of the current exterior is not sufficiently embarrassing enough to warrant this action on his own behalf.

From this day forward, I would immediately suspend the practice of butchering our beautiful trees along the boulevards of Whitby for the sake of a few hydro wires.  When was the last time you heard of a Maple or Linden tree collapsing on hydro wires?

Adelaide and Manning would be connected the way God intended them to be.  On the eighth day, God created the automobile.

The last time I checked, there was no other planet available with a climate satisfactory to sustain human life.  Therefore, those who complain about composting, and saving the environment in general, should be housed in a “Garbage Gulag” where they can pontificate the sheer mass of human consumption and its commensurate waste.  Litterbugs would likewise be banished to said camps to languish in the resulting morass of their insensitivity to Mother Earth and their fellow man.

People who bring more than 8 items to the express check-out of a grocery store should be charged double the price for each item over and above the maximum of 8.  This action would immediately rectify their selfishness and delight shoppers across the globe.

Half loaves of bread should be available for purchase for single people and couples.

Between Friday, 4 pm. E.S.T., and Monday, 9 am. E.S.T., during the hours of which, there is no stock market trading, the price of gasoline would remain the same.  It would never change, and any gas station that did so would be set upon by the denizens of its community with sabers, pitch-forks, shovels, machetes, batons, and large melons.

People who make unsafe left turns would be retrained by Police officers and E.M.S. personnel, but not before they were shown the photos of fatalities resulting from such demonstrably poor judgement.  What is there not to understand about waiting, unequivocally, for oncoming traffic to clear?

George Bush would be forced alá Alex in the film “A Clockwork Orange”, to watch and read historical anecdotes on the propensity of man to make the same mistakes over and over and over and over…well, you get the picture.

Journalists that sensationalize or practice fear mongering, would be transferred to the obituary department where they would spend the remainder of their career.

Voicemail?  Don’t even go there.  Consumers should boycott any company that has a wholly automated voicemail system.  No, seriously.  I am not being facetious.  I really mean it.  No, really, I’m not kidding.

Aftermarket muffler exhaust kits would be removed from all automobiles and re-installed in the kitchens of said owners.  This would be followed by Penis-Envy counseling.

All land currently occupied by migrating flocks of Canada Geese, particularly the stretch along Salem between Hwy. 2 and Rossland, would permanently be persona non-grata to commercial, retail, or residential development of any kind.  Amen.

The Canadian Automotive Museum would get a facelift befitting of the heritage of its community.  In its current state, it is a travesty of unbearable disgrace.  Combined with the GM murals on the Oshawa bus station – no really, isn’t time someone said so – they suggest Oshawa is terrified of even a scintilla of class or sophistication, to say nothing of pride.

And finally, as Grand Poobah of the known universe, I would make a significant portion of mortgage payments eligible for income-tax deductions.

I remain, your humble Grand Poobah.

WHY MULTICULTURALISM IS IMPORTANT - The Toronto Star 2007

Multiculturalism is important because it dilutes and dissipates the divisiveness of ignorance.  It is important because it encourages dialogue, often between radically different cultures that have radically different perspectives.  It is important because it softens the indifference of tolerance, and embraces it with the genuine humanity of acceptance.  It is a bridge between the divide of tolerance and acceptance.

Famed American writer and civil-rights essayist James Baldwin wrote, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”  Ignorance of and about our fellow man, is, perhaps, the most important challenge facing humanity.  Without the intervention of differences, mankind cannot appreciate what each of us has in common.  Only then can we work toward a truly egalitarian world.

Differences aside, man, regardless of his specific culture of origin, strives, for the most part, to provide the best he can for his family, and to live in as peaceful and harmonious a world as possible.  These two goals unite us all.  Multiculturalism makes the ideal and altruistic notion of loving our fellow man a tangent possibility, rather than a nebulous philosophical concept.

To paraphrase American educator Howard Shorr, “Mankind must make global multiculturalism a cornerstone of education…events occurring in our community could have consequences beyond the borders of our world”.  Multiculturalism is an antidote for ignorance.

What is humanity to gain if we simply endure one’s presence within our society?  Where is the merit in that?  Where is the nobility in tolerance?  There can be no remediate benefits with this narrow-minded approach.

As a species, we are handcuffed by our own cultural myopia if we eschew an ignorance of the philosophical, ideological, or spiritual knowledge of our fellow man.  It is chauvinistic and dangerous if we believe that there is not merit in the differences of our global neighbours.  It is incumbent on us to exploit the best of all of our differences for the benefit of as many of us as possible and, by so doing, establish a climate of trust rather than suspicion.  

We should cherish the opportunity to sublimate the notion of a rigid Western, Eastern, Christian, Judaic, Islamic, etc., viewpoint, and encourage people instead, to look at society and culture from the viewpoint of a globally infused diaspora.  A little nationalism, like a little knowledge, can be a very dangerous thing, and, as history has shown to the point of redundancy, it can be a catalyst for the egregiously barbaric and immoral treatment of our fellow man.  The intermingling of cross-cultural discussion, particularly dogmatic religious beliefs, can only help to diminish the razor-edged threats of nationalist rhetoric.

As a young, often annoyingly inquisitive boy, my father continually reminded me of the need to examine other cultures from a neutral, rather than Western perspective, if humanity is to gain true insight into the brotherhood of man.  This does not mean “tolerate”.  Frankly, I find the word tolerate euphemistically offensive, ambiguous, and a metaphor for insincerity; it also has a patronizing tenor.

It is appreciated that some of us feel a sense of lost ethnic identity as the cultural representation within our community becomes more and more diverse, but man is a migratory animal.  Unfailingly, history continues to demonstrate man’s search for a more harmonious life in times of political, climactic, pandemic, or discriminatory upheaval.  And, as the world’s population continues to mushroom, and the reach of micro and macro economics defies the traditional notion of borders, the importance of global civility becomes not only more important, but essential to our very survival.

Multiculturalism may be the antidote for the inappropriate and destructive behaviour of dictatorial regimes and religious orthodoxy, regimes bent on breaking the will and spirit of their subjects, and antagonizing the benevolence of their neighbours.  The value of multiculturalism must be disseminated likes seeds in a farmer’s field, and nurtured with the fertility of our common goals.

Relative to so many cities and countries around the world, Toronto and Canada are such a model of civility, a model that is envied and admired, and yet one that some Canadians are only too quick to criticize.  Why is multiculturalism sometimes seen as a “dirty word”?

Almost without exception, Canada, but more specifically the GTA, is a respite of harmony and calm in a tumultuous world.  It is a place for those seeking civility in a world of differences rather than those that would use those differences to cultivate a community of exclusion.  Toronto, and Canada, can become the paragon of understanding, and the model by which the rest of our fellow man aspires to live.       

THE OBITUARY COLUMN – Toronto Star 2007

Why don’t we fill every precious second of our lives pursuing what will give each of us the greatest reward for the very little amount of time given to us?

My grade 13 Biology teacher, Mr. Scholtz, used to say, “Life is the maintenance of negative entropy”, a fancy scientific way of saying the moment you are born is the moment you begin to die.  Based on the random selection of death in our lives, it is a profoundly precise and profoundly prophetic observation.

I believe there is only one noble goal in life.  It is to enrich one’s life by enriching the lives of others.  It is not as monumental a task as one may believe.  It may be a gesture so simple and so innocuous as to be rendered invisible by the world around us.  Even the most humble of actions can shape the community in which we live, and, more importantly, the community of man.

The inspiration for this article was the Obituary column, a microcosm of lives crammed into one single page of recycled newsprint; all for a fleeting moment in time; all to be replaced with a new microcosm of life within the next day or so.

We are so determined to serve ourselves that we forget the immense and irrefutable blessing one anonymous soul may have left behind.  Any one of the individuals on the obituary page may be directly responsible for contributing to the traits of the person you most admire, perhaps your best friend, mother, father, or spouse.

It would be easy to address the importance of the Obituary page with shallow platitudes, but that is not the point.  On that one page a vast and possibly incomprehensible amount of good has vanished from our earth.  Who will replenish it?  Who will replace it? 

We look, I believe, at the names, and sometimes the faces, with perfunctory drollness:  “Oh, so and so died of cancer…this one was only twenty-eight”, and “Here’s one, no cause of death and no donations listed…must have been suicide”.  We are benignly oblivious and blissfully detached from what we are reading, even though the impending mortality of every human is staring back at them from that page of newsprint. 

For some, death will hammer them like a sledgehammer within days of their last obituary reading.  For others, it will be devastation of another kind; the sudden death of someone of immeasurable importance to the person, and, perhaps, a person to whom they needed to say, “I’m sorry”, or “please forgive me”.

Observe the comments, the reverie of lives lived with vigour and generosity, and of lives lived mostly for others.  We are staring at pockets of gold; gems in the store; roses in the shop.

Take heed of the causes of death – they are the canary in the coalmine for a good number of us if we do not change our ways.  Appreciate and take action toward the devastation leveled at each and every one of us by the various forms of cancer, heart disease, vehicular accidents, etc.  Make an effort to reduce the carnage.

Let us not live as though events or episodes were a moment in our lives.  Let’s live as though there were lives in our moments.  Do not be gallant.  Let the cavalier activity of perusing a page of death notices inspire us; be anything but cavalier; carry forward the torch of those before you with unrestrained determination; live what may have been an unrewarding life with enthusiastic zeal.  Our time is now! 

The reward that comes from making others happy is the ultimate reward.  Stand out from the crowd.  Make your obituary sing and dance like there is no tomorrow.  Be the standard by which others aspire to live. Be the moment.  Be the seed, and seed goodwill.   The love and friendship that will follow will astonish even the most cynical among us.  Who knows, tomorrow, and the days ahead, can be the best days of your life, and lives to come.

JUJUBES  - Oshawa/Whitby This Week 2005

Why write an article about the jujube you say?  Why not?  The jujube has become part of the lexicon of our culture.  It has now been around for 110 years.  It’s a Canadian invention!  It has no fat.  It is however, a carbohydrate, so be forewarned.

The name jujube is taken from the botanical genus zizyphus, a wide-ranging variety of thorny shrubs and trees of the buckthorn family, some of which produce an edible fruit, the jujube.  Zizyphus trees stretch from the Mediterranean to China and part of North Africa. 

The following may explain the connection to the modern jujube confection:  The edible fruit is sometimes referred to as a berry-like ‘drupe’ which the Oxford Dictionary defines as a “fleshy indehiscent fruit with an outer skin and a central stone enclosing the seed (e.g. a cherry, a plum)”, etc.  An indehiscent fruit is any fruit that does not split open to release the seed.  Other examples include: peaches; apricots; olives; mangoes; and nectarines.  It is probably a coincidence that the colour of the aforementioned fruits is reflected in the colour selection of jujubes with one exception, the black jujube.

In 1892, Charles H. Doerr began making and selling cookies and candies from his small grocery store in Kitchener (then Berlin), Ontario.  The company and family name were legally changed to “Dare” in 1945 to ease pronunciation outside the local community as the company expanded nationally.

Dare jujubes are red, green, orange, yellow, and black.  Interestingly enough, the ratio of colours is two reds for every one of the other colours.  Presumably, red is the most popular.  The mixing of the jujubes for packing however is a random act.  Consequently, and very likely, one may find an uneven balance in the number of jujubes of a particular colour.

The Americans also pronounce jujubes thusly: joo-joo-bees.  The Henry Heide company began manufacturing jujubes sometime around 1920.

Although jujubes have no fat, four ounces of jujubes is the equivalent of 370 calories and our daily recommended intake of sugar.  As a carbohydrate, the same serving represents 39% of the recommended intake.  The nutrient serving size is 1.5 ounces, but I’ve never known anyone to eat 1.5 ounces of jujubes; it’s usually more.  Just in case you were contemplating bringing some jujubes to the gym, they have no protein whatsoever.  They will keep your mouth moist however.

During a fifty-one day stay in hospital, jujubes were my saviour.  Nurses love jujubes!  In fact, not long after I left the hospital I returned to Lakeridge Health Oshawa, and left 11 lbs. (5 kgs.) of jujubes at the nurse’s station as a token of appreciation.  During a return visit I was told the 11 lbs. were consumed in 3 days.  In other words, the nurses ate 16,280 calories worth of jujubes in 3 days!  It was a jujube joust.

Apparently, if your jujubes dehydrate and begin to harden, they can be microwaved for a handful of seconds to soften them up.  However, one should never have hard jujubes in one’s home – this is a sure sign of an ‘occasional, but non-committal’ jujube enthusiast, one that eats jujubes judiciously.  Jujubes should be consumed with wild abandon, copious amounts of jujube juice frothing at the mouth.

Personally, I do not chew jujubes; I savour them.  I suck them, 12 at a time, not 11 nor 13, always 12.  For the first several minutes a coherent dialogue is not possible, but then, why would anyone wish to talk when one has the unadulterated bliss brought on by a mouthful of jujube juice.  They will last approximately 30 – 40 minutes before they finally dissolve.

In conclusion, celebrate your day with a handful of jujubes.  It adds to your prestige and your dentist will thank you.

BITTER PILL TO SWALLOW - 2006 Copyright "The Snow Globe"

I don’t know what to say.

I don’t know what to do

I don’t know if I should pray

Will it ever get me through?

But there is one thing that I know

And it’s breakin’ my heart in two

Life is a bitter pill to swallow

When you love it like I do

I can’t heal what you’ve done to me.

And I can’t forgive it all

There are no more white little picket fences

And no more roses standing tall

But there is one thing that I know

And it’s killin’ me deep inside

Life can be a bitter pill to swallow

When there’s so much hate and anger

Near and far and far and wide

I can’t see my way to reason

Cause there’s no sun up on the horizon

It’s filled with darkened shades of gray

But I’m hopin’ for a miracle

To put a little brightness in my day

But there is something that I know

And it’s savin’ me each and every day

Bitterness is a poisonous pill to swallow

So I’ll have to throw them away

Cause there were angels in my pockets

And I’ve lost a few along the way

But there’s many more to cherish

So I’m selling love and sweetness

Won’t you let me show the way

Cause there’s angels in my pockets

And there here with me today

There is plenty of their love to cherish

So I’m getting love and sweetness

Won’t you let them show the way

Won’t you let them show the way

Won’t you let them show the way

Won’t you let them show the way

IF I WERE GRAND POOBAH OF THE KNOWN UNIVERSE II – Oshawa/Whitby This Week 2006

As you know, the Town of Whitby has a penchant for painting the lovely wood fencing along the boulevards with a grey paint that can only be described as “abattoir grey”, suggesting the persecution of four-legged creatures behind its confines.  The person(s) responsible for this colour is either morose, spent too much time on a battleship, or both.  I would paint the town red, well, perhaps a nice shade of cinnamon.

People who spit in public, or place chewing gum under chairs or tables, would be placed in a stockade between the hours of 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. in the courtyard of the new Whitby library.  You will find yours truly in a kiosk selling ripe tomatoes, cabbages, and filets of rotting carp.  Failing that, spitters would be confronted with a sudden gust of wind that would miraculously appear and blow the spit back into their face; gum chewers would have the bacterial samples of all Petri dish cultures at The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, injected into their bloodstream.

The intersection of Brock St. and Rossland Rd. would be re-engineered – enough said.  The engineers on the other hand, who designed the aforementioned deathtrap, would commence diction lessons compromised of: “Would you like fries with that Madam?” and “Would you like to supersize your order Sir?”  And speaking of supersize, the term is so ubiquitous, it has now become an affront to gluttony.

Residential mail delivery would be 3 days a week.  Business delivery would retain the status quo.

Religious and political orthodoxy of any kind would be illegal.  Orthodoxy is anathema to what is reasonable, logical, moderate, accepting, and loving.

The Young Offenders Act would be reduced to age 14.  The names of the Young Offenders that used a weapon in the commission of a crime would be published in all instances.

Guns used in the commission of a crime would carry an automatic sentence of 10 years with no eligibility for parole, no concurrent sentencing, and no two-for-one pre-trial custody incarceration.

Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney would get married in a gay civil wedding ceremony in Massachusetts.  George Bush would be the Minister – if only.

I would tell Pope Benedict that the constituency of the Catholic Church is not necessarily the constituency of its fellow man, and the constituency of man is not subject to the ecumenical jurisprudence of one man or faith.  I can think of no more egregiously arrogant position.

Landfill sites, refuse collection, composting, and recycling would be subcontracted to raccoons and goats.  The goats will eat anything, and by the time any of us arise from our beds, the raccoons will have already completed their task.

Vegetarians are an affront to meat eaters.  If it swims or walks on 2 legs or 4, I will eat it at some point through the week.  Man is a hunter-gatherer - cows, not humans, masticate.  Vegans are an affront to vegetarians, and speaking of cows, when was the last time you saw a soy cow?  Milk comes from udders, with the possible exception of coconuts, and fruits of the jungles of Borneo that you and I have never heard of or will ever visit.  I rest my case.

Churches would be taxed like everyone else.  Look around Durham.  Many of the most striking edifices being constructed these days are churches.  How is that for egalitarianism?

All Ontario School Boards would be amalgamated, then supervised with regional and district superintendents.

I would build a massive domed arboretum/greenhouse approximately 1500’ in diameter on the waterfront lands of Toronto, as a sort of respite from winter.  It would incorporate flora and fauna not indigenous to temperate zones, as well as a jogging track, walking path, outdoor dining indoors, gazebos, picnic areas, swimming pond, etc.  The arboretum would contain the world’s greatest indoor concentration of rhododendrons, hibiscus, bougainvillea, clematis, and tulips.

Finally, in the words of the inimitable Joni Mitchell, I would take the Regional Councillors still opposed to the Provincial Greenbelt Plan, put them in a politician museum, and charge the people a dollar-fifty not to see them.

SATIRICAL EDITORIAL

Our provincial political pillocks have profoundly pilfered, pillaged, pinched, and purloined the pesos of the Ontario public’s piňata.  Like pigs at a banquet, they have plucked and plumbed the plump plates of the treasury as though they were the plunderbunds of a plutocracy.  Platitudinous; patronizing; patriarchs of plunder, our pecunious Queen’s Park publicans are in the pink of their pathological predatory pecking, pelting the plebes with a paucity of pay. The profligate purveyors of the pampered public office have pounced on the poor and the penniless with unprecedented pomposity.  Their profane pinguescence on the backs of the passive proletariat has reached the pinnacle of perfidiousness.  The pitiable pissants of the Parliament have pitted the treasury with pathetic placatory platitudes.  Like a plague, they have plagiarized the pliant plaintives of the province with pleuritic precision, further perpetuating the plight of the penniless.  Predictably, and with passive prohibition, the pendulum of their greed and the pusillanimousness of their impoverishment, has punished the indigent with polemic projectiles of pustules. Per chance, although probably passé, the politico porkers pouncing on the provinces pork barrel of monetary public pork, that is to say, masticating on the profits of the populaces productive perspiration, might posthumously peruse the profoundly parsimonious and polygamous profundity of their perfect penury.  I remain M.P.P. Napoleon the Pig, proponent of the most perfidious placation of the plebeian masses and their perpetuated poverty.

THE BIRDFEEDER FROM HELL – Oshawa/Whitby This Week 2006

Last year, very dear friends gave me a gift that keeps on giving, indeed…a tri-silo, copper and glass, squirrel-proof birdfeeder, suspended from an elegant wrought-iron frame.  This gift has turned into the ornithological equivalent of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds”.

Were pterodactyl’s to swoop down on our ornithological sanctuary, even at the risk of terrorizing our miniature dachshund Schautzie, I could not be happier – Tippi Hedren be damned.  “Abscond with the ornithological buffet” I say!

You and I, and most mortals, sleep until about six to seven a.m.  Birds, however, have no such inclination.  They are sentinels of the dawn, and it is their job to awaken humanity at the precise moment that even a scintilla of refracted light peers over the furthest horizon imaginable.  This, they do with irritating alacrity.

I have, regardless of where I have lived, patronized doves – no longer!  Not to overstate the obvious, but doves are the equivalent of blonde jokes, pretty but dumb; dumber than a post to be precise…I mean, what other bird likes to nest on roads and driveways and has the flight lift-off acceleration of a C-5 Galaxy Starlifter, not many I can tell you.

One day in September, no less than twenty-nine doves simultaneously perched on, or around the feeder – it was the United Nations of dovedom.  Do you know how much dove fecal matter that represents?  That’s a lot of dove poo, more goo than the love I have for the dove!

Schautzie, my aforementioned tube-shaped canine, discovered, that she too, likes bird feed.  I, her proprietor, discovered, that bird feed does not like her.  Consequently, a fence of trellis was erected to keep the wiener away from the seeds, all in the name of bowel harmony.

On a good day, the birds will siphon off five pounds of bird feed faster than a Vegas tourist can empty a ninety-nine cent buffet.  I am contemplating growing my own field of sunflowers to sustain the bird dietary demands.  I am, it seems, facing extortion, and, possibly, bankruptcy from the ornithological mafia and their leader, the “Birdfather”.

I store the birdfeed in the backyard, in a large rugged plastic container that requires Herculean strength to pry off the lid, unless of course, you are a raccoon the size of a Buick Ninety-Eight.  Mr. Buick Raccoon dropped by at two a.m., and, upon our mutual confrontation, I decided my claws and teeth were no match for his.  The birdfeed is now stored in the garage.

Recently, the Durham region experienced winds over a two day period, in excess of ninety kilometres an hour.  Even a fence of trellis is no match for sixty mile an hour winds.  The winds catapulted the trellis into the birdfeeder, toppling it and the support pole.  Nylon pan-ties used to connect the four corners of the trellis actually snapped in two; there were three ties for each corner!

Today, April 2, 2006, I ventured forth into the murky cesspool of soggy birdfeed where my lawn once resided, four more pieces of trellis in hand, and super strong pan ties at my disposal.  I reinforced the four walls of trellis by fastening the new trellis to the existing pieces.  I then staked each wall and attached the trellis wall to the stake with the pan-ties.

Turning my attention to the feeder, I hammered the support pole into a fresh spot of earth, the rusted support cable snapped (it was not copper or stainless steel wire), the newly replenished feeder crashed to the ground, then promptly spewed its contents.

Oh, and our dear friends?  The state of the art, microprocessor controlled birdbath featuring a bidet and water purification system, should arrive at their home next week.  I am salivating.  Chirp.  Chirp.  Chirp.