Category Archives: Thoughts

Consider, Municipal

Growing Hunger in Abbotsford

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I got an email from a friend about a friend of hers who had lost his job. With the economy in the shape it is he had been unable and is unlikely in the immediate future to find another job. Like so many people he was living paycheque to paycheque with no savings and now found himself looking at not only hunger, but also facing the very real prospect of homelessness.

For someone who had always been able to buy food and pay his rent it was a frightening, yet very real possibility.

Because searching for information about being homeless in Abbotsford turns up www.homelessinabbotsford.com I have been getting emails from people struggling with the prospect of homelessness etc in Abbotsford.

I had a conversation earlier tonight about a friend’s wife who was getting reduced hours at work. Fortunately for her he was still employed so that although they faced reduced income, his wife was not facing homelessness. Unlike the third party in the conversation who would be facing homelessness if she did not get more hours of work than scheduled.

With the economy in the shape it is and thousands of Canadians losing their jobs we face the potential of a tidal wave of new homeless on our streets. Even if they are fortunate and manage to hold onto their accommodations these Canadians will find themselves without money for food and thus hungry.

At the Chamber of Commerce’s recent breakfast it was noted that there were 6,000 people helped by the Abbotsford Food Bank. 6000 people needing the food bank to eat; a number that just keeps rising ever higher. Worse, 2,000 of that number were children.

We know that the Abbotsford Food Bank raises the bulk of its funds for the year during the Christmas Season. We also know that during this past Season fund raising targets were being missed, in some cases by a wide margin. News reports informed us that in the months leading up to Christmas donations of food and funds to food banks were significantly lower than the levels needed to meet the growing demand on food banks.

Which has me wondering what the current state of the Abbotsford Food Bank is and how this next year, which threatens to be one of quickly increasing need, is shaping up?

I suspect the food and funding levels are poor at best with bad, perhaps very bad, being the most likely levels. It does not matter how hard the people at the Food Bank work, the levels depend on the community.

So what are we, the community of Abbotsford, going to do about hunger and hungry children in our city, our community?

Bury our heads in the sand? Let self interest rule as it has recently? Send adults and children to bed hungry?

Or will we do whatever is necessary to make sure the shelves of the Food Bank are stocked so that people do not suffer hunger?

The choice is yours Abbotsford. Choose.

Consider, Federal

MPs are missing in action

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Gord Kurenoff’s column about Tory MPs missing in action raised a few thoughts on the matter.

When did the Langley officials ask MP Mark Warawa to “show them the money”?

Was it before the project began or was it recently as he toured the nearly completed centre? The time to line up funding by senior levels of government is prior to starting the project when you have the maximum political and PR leverage.

While I am not happy that Ed Fast failed to get Abbotsford any federal funds I think that pointing fingers at his failure to be proactive in seeking funds distracts taxpayer attention from those who should face an inquisition over the fact that when it comes to protecting Abbotsford’s taxpayers pocketbook it was to much trouble for even one member of city council to pick up a phone and ask Ed Fast to earn his keep by securing federal funds.

Of course, if council was to engage in such proactive behaviours as asking the local MP to get federal funds it would create work for them. They would have to follow up, make more phone calls, letters to the prime minister … Be proactive, seek out opportunities that would be to the advantage of the citizens of Abbotsford? That kind of behaviour would get in the way of cutting council meetings back to twice a month.

If we are going to censure or impeach our local MPs let us do it for the major failings they have committed recently.

No Conservative MP should have been re-elected after permitting Stephen Harper to call the unwanted and unnecessary recent federal election.

Conservative MP’s turned around and added grievous damage and insult to the injury already done to Canadians when they permitted Stephen Harper’s megalomania to cause him to see himself not as leader of a minority government, but as ruler by divine right of Canada. Canadians are still waiting for the bill and fallout of that reckless cretinism.

Not a peep out of Conservative MPs about Mr. Harper’s recklessness and delusional fantasies of omnipotence. If, as suggested by Mr. Kurenoff, this behaviour of kowtowing to Mr. Harper’s every whim is as a result of Randy Whiteitis and their desperation for political power the fallacy and irony in this behaviour is dumbfounding.

Focusing on avoiding Randy Whiteitis the behaviour of the Conservative caucus and party has become so lemming-like they blindly follow Mr. Harper off the cliff of “how to blow a pending majority government” time and again.

Despite the millions of dollars of spin the Conservatives spent on Stephen Harper’s image, the Canadian people made clear that they did not trust Mr. Harper with a majority government; a judgment bourn out by his behaviour after the recent election.

In leaping from the frying pan of Randy Whiteitis the Conservatives have leapt into the fire of Stephen Harper’s being unacceptable to Canadians as the leader of a majority government and lacking the courage to leap out of the fire.

Hmmm

Be aware to Beware …

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“We need to get those MP3 players purchased and ready” I was told the other day. I had been volunteered to write a proposal for funds to replace the old, bulky and failing cassette-tape walkmans with MP3 players. The proposal was successful and the funds await spending.

I ducked the statement and avoided committing, not because I seemed to have now been volunteered to carry out the acquisition and preparation of the MP3 players, but because I have become aware of the reality and dark purpose driving the iPod/MP3 player revolution. Aware of what the real source of the technology behind the small, lightweight size of current digital music players with their large memory capacity and flexible music loading and playing management systems is.

All of these innovations were designed to maximize the number of people using this new generation of digital music players. The stratagem has worked and the use of these digital audio devices has become ubiquitous within our society. It has become “normal” for human beings to be seen to have a tendril running from an ear or ears to disappear into the persons clothing and for the person to appear distracted or “not all there”.

Seeing a person in such a state we automatically assume that the tendril is a wire(s) connected to a speaker in the ear and that at the other end of the wire(s) is a digital audio player. Since digital audio players are now so small we find nothing unusual in not seeing the device the “wire(s)” are assumed to be attached to.

I spoke of it becoming normal for human beings to be seen with thin tendrils running out of their ears and down to somewhere on their bodies because this digital audio technology is of extraterrestrial origin.

I can hear you and your sceptical “not another wacko alien conspiracy to take over the human race”.

I do not blame you for that attitude. After all, the human race has been brain washed by the government and media to believe that aliens do not exist and that even if they did exist, aliens have the fatal flaw of rushing into their conquest of humanity. Thereby permitting a miraculous, if improbable or impossible, salvation strategy to be found by the handful of humans aware of the impending doom to not only overcome the obstacles presented by the inertia of disbelief of billions of humans and the actions of humans already controlled by their alien masters but to successfully destroy the alien conquerors.

It was with those in media that we first began to become use to seeing human beings with tendrils (wires) leading out of their ears out of sight. It was in media that we also became use to seeing the lumps of what were assumed to be merely electronic devices under the clothing of those with tendrils running from their ears.

The truth is that any race that has learned to cross the vast distances of space has had to learn patience.

Reality is that, faced with the inertia of billions of humans and opposed by those already become hosts, a handful of human beings cannot save the human race from becoming hosts to their alien parasite masters without somehow managing to expose the truth of this slow moving conquest to humans as yet without a “puppet master” alien parasite directing and controlling them.

So begins the defence/salvation of the human race by those aware of the reality, the truth, behind the digital music player revolution and alien conquest strategy.

This awareness cannot be shouted from the rooftops. That would only warn the would be alien conquerors/enslavers, advance the alien conquest by making the shouter and his claims a laughingstock, imperil the shouter and others aware of the slow subjection of humanity occurring and deny those aware of the conquest underway the time needed to disseminate knowledge of the truth and assemble an army to defeat this insidious threat to the future of the human race.

No, this information must slowly be disseminated through out the entire human race so they can be on their guard and become ready to repel this invasion.

Now YOU know. Pass it along quietly and carefully. Be prepared to answer when the call for action to throw off these alien masters and their lackeys comes.

Until then to avoid servitude, avoid anything that would make people use to seeing you with a tendril running out of your brain (ear), as do I. Temporize.

Caveat.

Consider, Homeless

Generosity = ?

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Watching the 11 PM news on Christmas Days as the last minutes of the Christmas Spirit Season ticked away had me pondering the concept of generosity and what generosity truly incorporates and embodies.

In the 2 – 3 weeks before Christmas the news was full of reports of “generosity”. Christmas Day the television news had video and stories of the homeless and hungry being served their Christmas dinner. The front page of the local paper had a picture and story of Christmas dinner being served, with the local politicians et al photographed demonstrating their “generosity” by serving meals to the homeless and poor.

On Boxing Day bringing out cookies brought groans of “oh no – more food” from the homeless who have been so stuffed with food over the past few weeks, their stomachs are full to the point they have no room even for sweets.

The homeless have also faced the “generosity” of being given so many gifts that they need a pack mule to carry everything around with them.

Yet as we move into the New Year of 2009 the homeless and poor will be hungry and in need of gifts once again, but alas “out of luck”. Until the 2009 Christmas Spirit Season opens again and “generosity” is once more a required must do.

So what is generosity? Is serving Christmas dinner or donating a gift to a Christmas bureau generosity?

Or is true generosity something that lives within a person, practiced and reflected in that person’s behaviour 365 days a year – not something switched on for the three weeks before Christmas and put away on the day after Christmas – Boxing Day, the High Holiday of Greed.

Consider that the politicians photographed serving Christmas dinner to the homeless have the ability to take the lead in ending homelessness. Yet year after year they have chosen to make excuses, shuffle paper, point fingers – but not to bestir themselves to create a single bed for the homeless or to provide leadership to end homelessness.

Ponder the question of whether loading the homeless down with gifts to the point they cannot carry it all is generosity or thoughtless behaviour? Would it not be more beneficial to the homeless if this largess was spread out over time? Of course that is neither as publicly visible nor as easy, requiring time and effort beyond the Christmas season generosity window.

One of the casualties of having embraced greed as the economic, operational and philosophical base for our society is having lost the understanding of what generosity is; as we become more self-centred and significantly less generous, except where required or it is politically correct.

What type of society we want for ourselves, our children and our children’s children?

Do we want to continue to have the kind of society we have built with greed as the economic, operational and philosophical underpinnings?

Or do we want to nurture the flickering flame of generosity into an incandescence that lights and enlightens our society?

Generosity does exist, lived and practice by some members of our community.

One of the meals served on Christmas Day was on a small bit of parkland on Gladys Avenue. It was a little late being served because it was first necessary to bring in a front end loader to clear the snow in order to be able to set up the tables, chairs and serve the food.

While this meal was served on Christmas Day it was not served because it was Christmas Day but because it was Thursday and Christmas just happened to land on a Thursday this year. There is a group of individuals who have been serving dinner on Thursday nights come sun, rain or snow.

Ironically, in light of the season, they were serving food to the homeless in the snow and cold because none of the three organizations calling themselves Christian in the area are willing to allow them to use their premises, for the winter months only, to provide shelter from the weather to the people being served dinner.

Ironic that with all the cries about the need to keep Christ in Christmas it seems to have been forgotten, or the understanding lost, that it is not about one day or even a short-lived season but about keeping Christ and the spirit of generosity alive in our hearts and behaviour through the entire year.

As the blank pages of the New Year unfold, what will you choose to write upon those pages in 2009?

behaviour, Consider

Path to Hell paved with “for their own good”

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A chill went down my spine and across my soul listening to Vancouver’s new Mayor Gregor Robertson talking about forcing people, “for their own good”, to behave in a manner he judges is an appropriate and wise.

Frighteningly no one on the news report disputed his statement and others echoed the “force them for their own good” sentiment. Hopefully this lack of a disagreeing cautionary voice was a result of editorial decisions by news staff and not from a lack of those questioning the wisdom of going down the “force them for their own good” path – no matter how well intentioned the steps onto that very slippery slope may be.

The police officer who let her light her candles made the correct decision. Someone was appalled that I would give candles to homeless people living in tents or other makeshift shelter. I know how important they can be to providing heat to survive in frigid weather.

The same day the news had reports of people killed in house fires. Does that mean that we should force people not to live in houses because fires will happen, houses will burn and people will die?

Yes the death of the woman who died in the fire in her modified cart was tragic, but the tragedy was not that she refused to come inside. The tragedy is that we as a society have failed to put in place the resources that would have allowed for the building of a relationship of trust with the woman and the existence of housing/shelter she would have found acceptable.

The true tragedy will be if we heedlessly, thoughtlessly plunge down the “force them for their own good” path. History is full of examples of what happens when we as a society decide what is good for somebody or a group and force them “for their own good” to do what we, not they, want.

Just ask members of our First Nations who were forced into residential schools “for their own good” while looking at the damage done to our First Nations and their cultures and society in the name of “their own good”.

In this case forcing people to behave in a manner “for their own good” is not about their own good but about making society feel better, salving society’s conscience over the consequences of its decision to abandon these most vulnerable people and all to often avoiding having to invest the time, resources and effort to deal with the issues in a manner that would truly be of benefit to those in need.

I have been one of the people who Mr. Robertson wants to “force for their own good” to behave as he sees fit.

While I acknowledge that appropriate housing and supports would have been helpful, what I really needed was the time and personal space to find my way to recovery. “Forcing me for my own good” would have denied me the chance to find that path and to find recovery and myself.