SONGS OF STARK REALITY

Blake had his Songs of Innocence and Experience.  I am proposing to write a series of little ditties under the heading Songs of Stark Reality.  One goes like this:

I'm a little brown cat
sitting in the window.
A little brown cat watching how the wind blow.
There's a bird in the maple tree.
If I were outside
there'd be no more he.
O I'm a little brown cat sitting in the window.
Miaow miaow miaow.

Or this:

There are snakes at the bottom of our garden
happy keeping all the slugs at bay.
Out near the garden wall
you sometime see them crawl
but only 'cause they're trying to run away.
There's a mower with big noise and whirling knife blades
and sometimes accidentally it chops
a little snake in two
which makes me feel quite blue
'cause I hate slugs that lunch upon my crops.

Sometimes reality gets too stark for me and today is one of those days.  It is a headshaking day indeed.  I simply do not understand how such unmitigated fools get to run the world.  And even more puzzling, why we let them continue to do so.  Blowhard pronouncement from the leaders of the country to the south of us on the Iraq situation.  The likelihood of our own fools giving the nod to Enbridge.  It is all in the name of oil with the added "be afraid, be very afraid" threat of economic woe.  But doesn't anyone else see that if all the money  invested in oil companies was invested in alternative energies, we wouldn't have the huge reliance on oil and thus the wars over its accessibility?  Yes, we will probably always need some oil.  But with alternative energy sources, not nearly as much as we do now.  And what about all the money that will be spent, not only on arms and armaments and personnel to protect oil resources, but on the lawyers' fees that will go into the court challenges over pipelines?  I know there are better uses for all that money.  Sigh.

But there is one spot of hope shining for me today.  This morning I heard about a teacher at a middle school in Victoria who has developed a music notation system, based on colour, that enables children with a form of dyslexia that makes it impossible for them to read regular notation actually learn to play music on any chosen instrument.   What a wonderful thing!  And a fine example of the change for the better that one individual can make.  This is the human spirit we need.  Not megacorps making the rich richer.  Not big governments riding roughshod over the world.  Just small changes that bring joy and quality of life to people in their day to day lives.  That is what really makes people happy.

THE SECRET SOCIETY OF SARDINE LOVERS

I have decided that I belong to secret society.  I love sardines.  I have done since I was a kid.  Those nice big fat sardines that are canned in Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick.  A hark back to my roots, as it were.

I only know one other person who likes sardines.  But he prefers those scrawny little Norwegian brislings. No accounting for taste.

When I was pregnant for my first child I craved sardines.  A lunch of sardines with mustard on toast and a 7-Up became a regular ritual.  Then many years later I would sometimes take a sardine sandwich to work for lunch. Admittedly they do have a strong odour but the only person ever to complain in our lunch room was someone who would have benefited greatly from eating them herself.  She had inherited high cholesterol and the omega-3 and polyunsaturates in sardines would have been good for her. Sardines do not taste as strong as they smell either.  But I digress.

Back to the secret society.  If only one other person admits to liking them, how come both varieties are always in stock on grocery shelves?  There must be hundreds and thousands of other sardine lovers out there buying them.  But not once have I seen another shopper reaching for the telltale flat can.  Not once do I remember seeing  a can of sardines in another shopping basket or on a check-out counter.  Thus my conclusion that I am part of a society so secret we do not know the many other members.  Okay sardine lovers.  Time to stand up and be counted. There is no shame in eating those fabulously healthy little fish that are chockablock full of calcium, protein, vitamin D, selenium plus the aforementioned omega-3's.  And the icing on the cake so to speak?  They are Canadian!