I THINK THAT I SHALL NEVER SEE / A BILLBOARD LOVELY AS A TREE (Ogden Nash)

Somewhere in Stanley Park

A tree is a tree. How many more do you need to look at?

Ronald Reagan, speech to Western Wood Products Association, 1965

∞

Tree worship . . . was India’s primordial religious practice. Yakshas and Yakshis, male and female tree spirits, were honored and their blessings sought because they represent the fertility of life. When Buddhism emerged, it did not set itself in opposition to this adoration of nature. It did not say “Cut down the groves” as Jahweh commanded when the Hebrews moved into Canaan or as Rome ordered when its missionaries spread out to convert Britain. The Buddha’s followers simply, comfortably, used the much-cherished tree to represent the central event of the Buddha’s life and the source of the truth he taught.

Joanna Macy

Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.

Czesław Miłosz

∞

We also know that in our former lives we were trees. Maybe we have been an oak tree ourselves. This is not just Buddhist; this is scientific. The human species is a very young species — we appeared on the earth only recently. Before that, we were rock, we were gas, we were minerals, and then we were single-celled beings. We were plants, we were trees, and now we have become humans. We have to recall our past existences. This is not difficult. You just sit down and breathe and look, and you can see your past existences.

Thich Nhat Hanh

HISTORY AS MYSTERY

Xanadú Mansion, on the San Bernardino crags of the Hicacos Pensinsula (present-day Varadero), Cuba, built in 1930 for Irénée du Pont I, who had purchased the land for less than one cent per acre. In the 1920s, Irénée was the president of the DuPont company, whose many gifts to the world include nylon, teflon, lycra, corian, kevlar, Agent Orange, napalm, and other varieties of toxic sludge that have fouled up Mother Earth forever. In December 1963, following La Revolución, Xanadú reopened as “Las Américas” restaurant, with Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the only woman ever to have been on a solo space mission, as guest of honour.

YEARS OF THE PLAGUE

 

JUNIOR PLAYING WITH HIS FORTNIGHTLY SUPPER

Judging by the papers, life is dreary all over. They say that there’s a cholera epidemic in the Transcaucasus and that Paris has had one too. Before you go to Constantinople, find out whether they are quarantining ships from Black Sea ports. Being quarantined is a surprise I wouldn’t wish on anyone. It’s worse than being arrested. It has now been tenderly dubbed “a three-day observation period”.
Horses in central Russia are suffering and dying from influenza. If you believe that there is a purpose for everything that happens in nature, it is obvious that nature is doing everything in her power to rid herself of all weaklings and organisms for which she has no use. Famines, cholera, influenza . . . Only the healthy and strong will be left.

Anton Chekhov, letter to Alexei Suvorin, May 28, 1892

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PANDEMIC PROFITEERS

President of the United States et al.

Pusateri’s

Your Government Won’t Protect You From Corporate Predators (They’re Too Busy Protecting Them)

Chiropractors

Landlords

Big Pharma

Debt Collectors

Health Minister of Alberta

Fraser Institute et al.

Banksters

Ontario Hospitals

Payday Lenders

United States Senators

Skip the Dishes, Door Dash, Foodora

Bell, TekSavvy (Internet Providers)

Mike Harris (former premier of Ontario)

Mike Harris’s “drive and passion to provide great services and quality care to our aging population”

Mike Harris makes out like a bandit

Cargill (world’s largest food company)

Drew Barnes (Alberta MLA)

Banksters (again)

Jim Pattison

Jim Pattison’s “never been in better shape”

Kohl’s (largest department store chain in the USA)

Collier Project Leaders

Amazon

Toronto-Dominion Bank (again)

Home COVID-19 Private Diagnostics

Entire fucking Ponzi scheme aka The Economy

There are 43 newly minted billionaires since the beginning of the pandemic

Capitalism is intended to trickle up

Gougers ‘R’ Us

A catastrophic moral and public health failure

THEY USED TO TELL ME I WAS BUILDING A DREAM

DE GOLDENEH MEDINA

In 1843 Linus Yale, inspired by something the Egyptians invented four thousand years before, patented the most invulnerable lock ever made.
Yale went on to secure the doors and gates of nearly every country, and became the greatest defender of property rights in the world.
These days, cities ill with fright are nothing but gigantic locks.
Few hands hold the keys.

Eduardo Galeano, Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History

∞

Exclusivity . . . is still an attractive, even compelling, feature of paradise because certain people, the unworthy, are not there. Boundaries are secure; watchdogs, gates, keepers are there to verify the legitimacy of the inhabitants. Such enclaves are cropping up again, like medieval fortresses and moats, and it does not seem possible or desirable for a city to be envisioned in which poor people can be accommodated.

Toni Morrison, “God’s Language”

∞

The prevailing greeting at that time, on every block you passed, by some poor guy coming up, was: “Can you spare a dime?” Or “Can you spare something for a cup of coffee?” . . . “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” finally hit on every block, on every street. I thought that would be a beautiful title. If I could only work it out by telling people, through the song, it isn’t just a man asking for a dime.

This is the man who says: I built the railroads. I built that tower, I fought your wars. I was the kid with the drum. Why the hell should I be standing in line now? What happened to all this wealth I created?

I think that’s what made the song. Of course, together with the idea and meaning, a song must have poetry. It must have a phrase that rings a bell. The art of song writing is a craft. Yet, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” opens up a political question. Why should this man be penniless at any time in his life, due to some fantastic thing called a Depression or sickness or whatever it is that makes him so insecure?

In the song the man is really saying: I made an investment in this country. Where the hell are my dividends? Is it a dividend to say: “Can you spare a dime?” What the hell is wrong? Let’s examine this thing. It’s more than just a bit of pathos. It doesn’t reduce him to a beggar. It makes him a dignified human, asking questions—and a bit outraged too, as he should be.

Everybody picked the song up in ’30 and ’31. Bands were playing it and records were made. When Roosevelt was a candidate for President, the Republicans got pretty worried about it. Some of the network radio people were told to lay low on the song. In some cases, they tried to ban it from the air. But it was too late. The song had already done its damage.

Edgar Yipsel (Yip) Harburg (1896-1981),
song lyricist and writer of light verse;
blacklisted during the McCarthy era;
the man who put the rainbow in The Wizard of Oz

∞

I invented the phrase: “Music not to be listened to.” That was my commercial phrase with which I sold Muzak. It was the first music deliberately created to which people were not supposed to listen. It was a new kind of background music. That’s why my mother, who was a fine musician, held it in contempt. She wouldn’t have it in her apartment. Anybody who knows anything about music holds Muzak in contempt.

I owned Muzak for twenty years and sold it for a profit of many millions . . .

William Benton,
US Senator from Connecticut;
Assistant Secretary of State;
Vice President of the University of Chicago;
Publisher of Encyclopedia Britannica;
and, unforgivably, a member of the brain trust which inflicted Muzak upon the world

∞

I know a good musician who worked for Lawrence Welk. The man must be terribly in need of money. It’s regimented music. It doesn’t swing, it doesn’t create, it doesn’t tell the story of life. It’s just the kind of music that people who don’t care for music would buy.

Bud Freeman, saxophone player, quoted in Studs Terkel, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (New York: MJF, 1972)

∞

I have now heard — and am powerless to describe — reggae elevator music.

David Foster Wallace, “Shipping Out: On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise”, Harper’s (January 1996)

∞

INTERVIEWER: Do you think you’ll ever get a job playing for Muzak? The best musicians do that work, Bob.

BOB DYLAN: Well I’d give it a try if they ask.

Sing Out! interview, 1968

CLIMATE DEBT? WHAT CLIMATE DEBT?

Developed countries are in an environmental debt to the world because they are responsible for 70% of historical carbon emissions into the atmosphere since 1750. Developed countries should pay off their debt to humankind and the planet; they should provide significant resources to a fund so that developing countries can embark upon a growth model which does not repeat the serious impacts of the capitalist industrialization.

Alternativa Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América, The Declaration of Cumaná, April 21, 2009

∞

Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist.

Sir David Attenborough

∞

The dream of unlimited progress is in reality a nightmare of savagery and death.

Elena Ferrante