STUFFIT BOOKS

Oh no! Sarah really knows how to hurt a person.

After asking me what to do about Spring Housekeeping
and STUFF, she just had to come back with what to do
about books. All those books we collect over the years.

I almost cried. My Hives suddenly all popped out. My
heart almost came to standstill. She never said anything
about books.

Ohhhh...be still my heart.

Books, I replied, are STUFF. We love them, we treasure
them, they become a lot of who we are as human beings.
They form a large part of our personality: they make an
immediate statement about who we are.

Yes, I had 10,00+ books. They were everywhere. On shelves,
on tables, on chairs, on floors, I was drowning in books!
I had lovingly collected every book I'd ever owned, from
childhood onwards. Hardcover books. Expensive books. My
libarary of memories. I loved those books. Every single one
of them.

Get rid of them? May as well ask me to cut off my right arm.
Or worse, go running naked through the streets in my birthday
suit. Exposed! What can be more vulnerable than that? Oye.

Came the day I was seriously contemplating moving far, far
away. With my precious library all intact. I called the movers
to come in and give me an estimate. That was sobering.

The left me with their Estimate. I read it, carefully. The
bottom line? Cost just to move the library: four-thousand dolars.
($4,000.00)

Do I look like Donald Trump's wife?

Let him move all my books.

I sat down hard, gulped, choking back tears, I started dialing
phone numbers. "Where could I send all my books so that they all
ended up being together, keeping each other company as they had
me all those years." I didn't want a single one of them alone.
They either had to go all together or not at all.

Sounds easy enough, after a week of conversations with schools,
libraries, universities, anybody who had libraries and who would
benefit most from getting 10,000+ hardcover books, not just any
ole books either.

I had First Edition books, books signed by their authors, a first
edition of Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin in mint condition,
antiquarian books, books on just about every subject from aardvark
to zoology, all in excellent condition.

I grew weaker with each exercize. So many phone calls. It grew
more complicated each and every phone call. So many questions being
asked. I'm not a librarian I kept saying. Either you want them, or
you don't.

It was painful.

Not wanting to keep you in suspence, the end of the story is nigh.

Nobody, but nobody, wanted my old books. And the things I'd have to
do was unspeakable. In a moment of inspiration I called the last
number on my list: The Montreal Institute for the Blind. I knew
that the school was for children from kindergarten all the way
through university. Perfect. I spoke with the Director. He was
thrilled. He'd send somebody to pick up the books as soon as
possible.

He did, true to his word. A little old man showed up in a van.
He knocked on the door and said he was there to collect books.

When he saw all those boxes, he nearly fainted. "They said that
I was going to pick some books. They didn't say that there are
a hundred boxes of books."

"Oh, so sorry."

He said that he'd have to come back with a moving truck.

STUFF AND WHAT TO DO WITH IT

The Ole Junk Pile and what to do with it all.
It can be overwhelming.

Here's a little trick I learned years ago:

Touch something twice, throw it out. It's simple.
Don't think about it or you'll never be able to do it.

You have to HEARTLESS.
Not easy to do.

Anything that you touch every day, you keep.

Anything that you've touched twice means you never really NEEDED it.

Yes, getting rid of STUFF we treasure will cause heart palpitations
and darn near fainting.
But it will be worth the trip. You will feel LIGHTER. Travel FASTER.
Be less nailed down to your STUFF.

You know what houses are for?

STUFF.

And when we have too much STUFF we all need BIGGER houses to keep
more STUFF.

It never ends.

I have STUFF.
I throw STUFF out.
Get more STUFF.

It is painful all that STUFF.
We love our STUFF.
Save yourself from STUFF.

Now go get rid of your STUFF.
More STUFF is coming.

Get STUFFED.

*******

Thanks to my friend Sarah for the inspiration
about STUFF. Wouldn't have thought about it
right now. Now I do.

THE TIMES WE ARE IN

What has been happening in Japan is tragic,
horrific, sad and we are profoundly moved to
offering our deepest condolences and prayers
to all the people there who have lost so much
in such cruel ways.

Having said that --

One of the problems with instant everything,
in real time at that, is that we get to know
what happens in Japan (terrifying enough) is
more than we know about our own next door
neighbours in our own cities.

We are shaken off our foundations and tossed
into a kind of reality check that is impossible
to escape. Our anxieties develop anxiety in this
relentless pursuit of being informed.

Canadians are the most connected people on the map
having more ways of communicating with each other
than anywhere else on earth. We tweet and twitter
on all the electronic gadgets everybody owns, and
we do it with each other endlessly.

All this communicating is unhealthy. It throws
perspective out the window. It has become a disease
that is qualitative and classifiable. We are
dis-eased.

All shook up.

SARAH

Sarah is my Muse.
She makes me smile,
She nudges me on,
With a wink and blink,
She keeps her eye on the ball.

Sarah is smart, Sarah is bright,
Sarah is a friend who also delights.
And poets are made of fools like me,
But only God can make a She.

Thanks, Sarah. :D

No comments:

EATING LIFE

EATING LIFE


Lover's play games of Yes and No
A quick caress, a sigh...goodbye
And why?

Lovers play games of Yes and No
Of Stop and Go
Of Wait and Fate
Too late

They laugh when they want to cry
Leave when they'd rather stay
They quit when they need to try
And lie...when they walk away

Lovers play games to save face
So I will tell you what we'll do:
We'll play Monopoly, you and I
Just for a change of pace

You grab the Railroads
And buy up Boardwalk
And I'll hang onto Park Place


(c) Gwen Beauregard - 1969 - All Rights Reserved

----------------------------------------------

It's easier to believe that you are in love
than to accept that you are alone.

ARPEGGIO

"Arpege", CDX
11.01.1982 - 04.17.1995

Let her epitaph read dear:
That from this day onward
A gentle light burns less brightly
For all those that she's now left here.

Goodnight sweet friend
What precious times we've spent.
Your smiling, liquid eyes -
Such trust and deep affection -
A vision in white, your jaunty gait
And swift obedience made of you
One neverending heartpride.

You had so many friends, so few enemies,
(not worthy of the count) of Joyousness,
Intelligence and Courage unflagging,
And now you lie in your starlit cradle in the sky
Lying cold while your loving spirit sleeps.

Goodnight, goodnight sweet friend, goodnight
My heart's delight, we'll met again one day,
We'll walk along the river's edge
As we always did, and thank God for
Our four-footed friends that kept us company.

(c) Gwen Beauregard - 1995

~*~*~*~

Arpege was a Maltese Terrier who was for many
years my tiny "Super Dog" who never ceased to
amaze and delight everyone who knew her as she
titled in every obedience competition we entered.

TO FACEBOOK OR NOT TO FACE BOOK

Monday was my sister's birthday. As I have done every year for decades,
I phoned her. We had our usual good time together, albeit s-mile-s
apart, like a couple thousand s-mile-s apart.

Eventually, we should both know after all these decades that we are
going to get onto the subject of computers and all things computing.
Sigmund would have had a lot to say about people who keep repeating
the same mistakes hoping for a different outcome. The subject of
Facebook arose for a lot of different reasons that I won't
tire you with.

I'll tire you with the pathetic admission that despite all my ranting
and railing against this site, yours truly ended up signing onto it
for the second time around. The first time I got out of there faster
than the weather changes here.

I should have stayed in bed, which is where I was, when my sister
phoned me back after I was unable to reach her. Never you mind, there
I was on Facelessbook, connected more or less with a few people I've
known in bygone days and spent most of the night and the next day
trying to figure the madness that is Facebook. It makes my StumbleUpon
WordPress, Blogspot, Tumblr and TweetTweet look like a Montessori
school for pre-schoolers. It took about five minutes for a thousand
people to show up for my party. And Nero fiddled.

Oddly, both my sister and I have always agreed, for precisely the
same reasons, that we were not candidates for Facebook. All that I
can think of into day three are platitudes. Day three and I'm ready
to shut the whole operation down. Again! I would beg, on both knees,
that should I ever make that foray again that somebody would please
use a silver bullet and put me out my miseries.

I can see, as I always did, that there is a good use for Facebook
for some people. Just not this people. All it's done is give me a
very bad case of hives, a sudden desire for a copious quantity of
Prozac and an even greater desire to take this computer of mine
and park it on the sidewalk with a sign on it: "Take this computer
and vamoose!" Or maybe I could convince someone to take it over to
the railroad tracks and let a freight train roll over it. My that
sounds good.

I have reached terminal Blogitis and that's a fatal desease for
which there is no cure except to go into Computeritis Rehab for
a whole year. I hated Facebook the first time around. Want to
hear me scream? You don't need either a computer or a telephone
to hear me roar.

The only thing I'm enjoying doing now is right here. It's just
the right speed for me. I can ramble on about nothing and nobody
is there to talk back to me. Keeps my finger bones loose and my
mind focused, and it is sufficiently challenging to keep the
brain cells from dying faster than they need to.

So, hello Cold Press and goodbye Facebook.

Both my sister and I were correct. As far as we are concerned.

Now, how do I get back into Facebook to delete that account?

Right away. Done!

PICTURES IN THE SNOW

What? You don't like fish?
Fish are good for you.

You can even go fishing in my little aquarium,
down there, at the bottom of this thing. I just
added them, for heck of it.

Pictures..photographs...images...call them what
you may...why do some people seem to like pictures
so much embedded within their blogs? I've often
wondered.

Are weblogs supposed to look like magazines? Or
comic books? Or newspapers? Or television? Or..
or...or...is it style over content? That is the
impression I've always gotten out of them. I call
it "flash and dash". glitz.

Usually these blogs that contain hundreds of pictures,
are also accompanied by hundreds of quotations, as if
by adding a picture to the quote is going to strengthen
the quotation. Serves no useful purpose, and might
even serve to diminish the orginal author of the
quotation's orginal meaning and intent, and too often
the quote is so out of context, it serves neither
blogger, nor orginator.

Sometimes I can't help but thinking that a lot of
bloggers were raised reading comic books and never
read a solid book in their entire lives.

Or just maybe they don't have an original thought of
their own and wouldn't know how to express it if they
did. So they lean on other's thoughts, whether it's
worth quoting or not.

There are only four subjects in the world worthy of
writing about: birth, life, love, death. All the rest
are variations on the same themes, stated with any
luck at all, in a different way. That is the trick,
isn't it? How to say something that has been said
a hundred million times before in a different way.

A picture should support a thought, not the other
way around. It should be illustrative of something
the author was attempting to convey by adding a
sub-text to it. But if the text is not orginal, but
something borrowed, and the picture isn't original
but something borrowed, why bother?

Maybe it would be better to go spend some quality
time reading all 52 of the Great Books of the World.

I wasn't raised on comic books, or even illustrated
children's books, so I have a natural disinclination
to pepper my weblog with an endless supply of pictures
with my text which didn't even come out of my own
little camera.

Can you imagine a Normal Mailer, a Tom Wolf, an Ernest
Hemingway, Sigmund Freud - all of his works - a Virginia
Woolf, William Shakespeare, Francoise Sagan, Marcel Proust,
Socrates, Irving Layton, my mind is swimming with names
of authors/poets/playrights/journalists free-floating
around, can't think of a one who illustrated their musings
dotted with pictures in their work. Not a one. Wonder what
they would do today had they had weblogs?

Never mind. I'll get over myself. And probably you.

WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHY?

Wherein Beauregard experiments like crazy
trying different things, seeing what works,
what doesn't, what can safely be pitched out,
who goes there, and finally:

Why do I need this?

And, if I don't?

Well, there it goes.

Where does it all lead to?

Will find out soon enough, eh?

Rome wasn't built in a day.
But when it burned, it burned fast!

Sure did. And I might go down in flames.

THE TECHNICALLY INCOMPETENT

Notice anything in what I ignorantly choose to call my "weblog"?

Well, I do. And it's called being technically incompetent.

I have never understood the mechanics of how these weblogs work
without having to take a Ph.D. in Computer Science. Not something
I have ever been the least interested in doing. I already own enough
vellum to wallpaper the National Library of Congress in Washington,
D.C. Or more appropriately, McGill University's library.

I don't know how to write code, I don't know how to do pretty things,
I don't know how to write proper "tags" anywhere, I don't know how to
link things to other things, but my worst sin of all is perhaps that
frankly my dear, I don't give a damn. Seriously, I don't.

I still write longhand, on yellow lined legal sized pads of paper,
and whatever else is at hand, and use my good old fashioned manual
Underwood typewriter, on which I can type 120WPM, no sweat.

On my very first personal computer, a cute little NEC notepad, circa
1987, Windows95, I had thrown in a copy of Microsoft's Office Suite
which came with, of course, a Word Processor. I still laugh about it.

The whole damned thing, in 1987, came to over four-thousand dollars.
Correct: 4,000$ ++. cash! Wonder what this in 2011 dollars?

I never got the hang of any of it, and the very first time I tried
using that Word Processor to write a poem, I soon realized how useless
the damned thing was for me. I didn't need Excel. I never excelled in
math. I still count on fingers and toes. Thank heaven for calculators,
or I'd need to grow more fingers and toes.

Ever try writing a poem in MS Word? It's a joke.

That was the end of my using any kind of word processor. Give me a
typewriter. I miss the sound that a typewriter keyboard makes. So
much so that I used to have a little app that added the sound of
a manual keyboard to my computer keyboard. It was neat and comforting.

I also find that computer keyboards are slower than typewriter keyboards
if you, like me, are a speed typist. Another thing that I have found
over the twenty years or so experience using computers is, that for me,
they cripple my ability to think creatively. There is something cold,
impersonal, and hard about a computer. Nothing but zeros and ones.
GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out.

Typewriters aren't like that. They adapt beautifully to their owners
over decades of use. My typewriter "talks" to me and smiles a lot with
every carriage return. My computers - four in all - never did any such
thing. Mostly they call me "stoopid". And they are right. I am when
it comes to computer software.

In order to anything really well, one has to have a passion for it,
and the patience that goes along with developing the skills required
to do it all well.

I have my passions and my skills in the those things that I am
passionate about. When I am good, I am a force to be reckoned with.
But when I am bad, for lack of interest, I am horrible. I balk, I
groan, I moan, I witch, I become obstructionist.

I have a Printer than can do everything but make my breakfast in
the morning. It sits right on a filing cabinet here in my office
right next to me. It isn't even connected. Oh, I used it a few times
only to discover that even in draft mode it ate up the National Budget
in ink. To heck with that! So it sits in glorious silence. I fondle
it and turn it once in a while just to see if it is still alive.

It is.

Carbon paper is so much cheaper. (laughing)

I have a new computer that would be a lot of people's dream machine.
It isn't mine. More like my worst nightmare. It came loaded with
Windows 7 Premium OEM - the damned think isn't backward
compatible with WinXP and goodbye Outlook Express, say hello
to Windows Live Mail. Get Win7 Pro, you'll be glad for my caveat.


That's where I end this, before I blow a gasket.

Oh Underwood...

BLOGGING FEAR

Saturday, May 15, 2004

Whenever I'm afraid, I think of Guillaume Apollinaire
who wrote:

Merlin motioned, "Come to the edge."

But they held back and said, "It's dangerous."

He beckoned, "Come to the edge."

And they said, "We may fall."

Then he commanded, "Come to the edge!"

So, they went to the edge and he pushed them...
And they flew.

Well, that's just about how I am feeling right now.
I don't know where I am going just yet, but I am at the edge,
trying something new. Maybe I'll fall. But then, maybe I'll fly.
I won't know until I try. The only difference is that I don't
have a Merlin to push me, I'm pushing myself.

Posted by Gwen Beauregard at 5/15/2004 08:20:00 PM

LAD-A-DOG

Saturday, June 12, 2004

I AM OH SO GOOD...

I was born on February 2, 1999 and I am a West Highland White Terrier.
I think that it was a blessed day when the lady chose me over my two
brothers.

I heard her say she was looking for a little girl Westie but I only
had one sister and she had already gone to her new adoptive home.

Then she rolled me over on my back while in her hands and because I
felt oh so good I just relaxed and enjoyed her tummy rub. Then she
put me down and picked up my brothers, each in turn, and did the same
thing to them. Oh how they squirmed and wiggled!

She sat there watching the three of us for the longest time gazing
intently at our antics. I just got going right up to her hoping that
she would pick me up again. But she didn't. Instead she clapped her
hands and waited to see what we would do. That didn't bother me a bit.
I walked up to her again. Then she blew a whistle and again I wasn't
at all bothered. I was on my best behaviour. I sensed that she was
looking at me a little more intensely than she was at my brothers.
Her steady gaze was focused on each of us and I saw that she had very
kind eyes. She smiled a lot.

She took out some toys and dropped them on the floor and waited to
see who would go for the toys. Well we all went for them of course, but
my brothers were all over each other to get the toys for themselves. I
just picked one and was playing with it. Then the lady called each of us
one at a time. One of my brothers ran over to her and the other one
stayed a little behind.

I just sat there and waited for my turn.

When I wasn't paying attention suddenly she called me to her and I ran
right up to her and she scooped me up in her arms and gave me a hug and
I quickly gave her a quick little kiss and settled in her lap and that
is where I stayed while she asked a lot of questions from my breeder
about each of us.

She wanted to know who was the firstborn, who was the biggest, who was
the smallest, who was the most outgoing, who was the most dominant, who
had the best appetite, oh so many questions. She really did have an
awful lot of questions. All the while I was snuggled in the warmth of
her lap as she sat cross-legged on the floor playing with us all in turn.

Still she did not put me down with my brothers.

The lady seemed to be searching for something out of the ordinary. I
didn't know what then but it was a happy day for me, when finally after
what took most of the afternoon, she decided that I was the one for her.
I could see that she felt sad that I had to say goodbye to my two baby
brothers so, she let me have some time with them alone, while she settled
things with my breeder.

I wished both of my siblings a good home, and with that the lady picked
me up in her arms and with me snuggled deep inside her warm leather jacket,
she carried me out.

I didn't where I was going, but I was happy.

Oh happy day, going to my forever home!

Posted by Gwen Beauregard at 6/12/2004 04:15:00 AM

SOME DAYS

Friday, July 02, 2004

Some days...

it just doesn't pay to get out of bed. The trouble is
that I can't get into bed, never mind out of it!

It all started with my neighbour Lesley. I say "hello" and
we stop to chat a bit. He informs me that his computer won't
boot up and that he thinks he's got a virus. Novel idea, eh?
Imagine. So I volunteer myself right into the box and offer
to have a look at his computer.

Big mistake!

"What exactly is not happening with your computer Lesley?"

"It boots into the system and then stops at the Windows
screen and then nothing."

"Sounds interesting to me Lesley. Let's have a look.
What are you running?"

"Windows '98."

"Got a virus checker Lesley?"

"I don't know."

"How's that again? How can you not know?"

"I just don't. I'm not good at this stuff."

"Have you got a recovery diskette?"

"No, I never made one."

"That might be a problem. I have a dozen of them for Windows 98.
Trouble is, I haven't worked with Windows '98 for several years
and that's going to be tricky. Veddy tricky."

I look a his set-up. He's got not one but two computers daisy
chained on a hub and two hard drives on the system that's not
working. I know nada about working with two hard drives installed.
It's about Masters and Slaves. It's about partitioned hard drives.
It's about -- I'm beginning to not want to know about his problem.
But I am a sucker for a challenge so I tell him to bring his computer
over to my place and I'll kick start it with one of my boot disks
and have a look at what's under the hood using my computer.

Right.

"Can't promise you'll get this back any time soon, Lesley. If I can
boot into your system and get into Safe Mode I'll be able to run a
few things and figure out what's what and who's who in the zoo."

Uh huh.

His problems started, he said, when he decided to go with broadband.
Seems he ran into trouble trying to configure the software that came
with his new high speed modem. But we are using the same service
provider and I had no problem installing anything, so I don't think
that is where the problem is.

So I've got his computer and it's a beaut alright! I take his CPU
apart and open his case.

Dust bunnies! Breeding like mice. Not any more. That baby is as
clean as the day he bought the system. Dust bunnies! I hate dust
bunnies. I think they breed at night when no one is looking and when
you get up in the morning, there they are!

I boot up his system which takes me right to where his problem was.
I shut it down and restart the whole thing and boot up with my
rescue disk. Gets me right onto his desktop.

Let the good times roll. My Logitech Internet Keyboard is on but
I can't type a thing with it. Nada. No problem, I have another keyboard.
Doesn't work either. Futhermore, he has password protected his computer
at log-on and I don't know the password! Forgot to ask him. There's more
than one way to skin a cat, so I set up a different user account.

My keyboard is typing some really weird stuff.
The qnick brown fbx jumps ovxr...won't go any further.

And that's where this ends...
have to go take care of some business.



There's always tomorrow.


Posted by Gwen Beauregard at 7/02/2004 11:01:00 AM

THE GO TO GIRL

THE GO TO GIRL

Had no idea I was going to leave you in the dark about
my neighbour's computer woes.

I had to inform Lesley that I needed some information,
and his keyboard, from him and that it would take a couple
of days for me to get around to fixing his problems. I did
have other matters to attend to and his computer was not
exactly on my high priority list of things to do. It took
him a couple of days to get back to me and, once I had what
I needed from him, I had his system up and running.

We didn't cross paths again for another week which didn't
seem all that urgent a matter at any rate as he never used
his computer himself, he had told me. It was basically used
for his very young son who liked to play games on it when
he came to visit his father.

He got his computer back and that was the end of that.

Almost.


Posted by Gwen Beauregard at 12/25/2009 08:26:00AM

FOLLOWING THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD

Friday, December 25, 2009

FOLLOWING THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD

"How did we get into this mess, Jones?"

"I can't properly say, Beau. How?"

"I'm of two minds Jones, and one it out searching
for the other."

"What's the problem now, Beau? You going to tell me?"

"I'm thinking about it, Jones. When I know the answer,
I'll know what the question is."

Old Jones sighs and, the sensible person he is, walks away
shaking his head and muttering to himself.

I'm doing the same thing, maybe a few expletives to underscore
the dilemma.

This much I know about yellow brick roads, this one:

COLD PRESS I is related to COLD PRESS II.

There must have been a method to that madness.

There's always tomorrow.

"QUEBEC'S ICE STORM OF THE CENTURY"

Jest to get this morning's ball rolling...

MARCH 4, 1971

Today marks the anniversary of

"QUEBEC'S ICE STORM OF THE CENTURY".

Well at least that's what all the Newspaper headlines screamed.

No ordinary North of the 49th Parallel storm that was: 50cm (1.6 ft) of snow,
combined with gale force winds leaving Quebeckers in the dark without
either heat or electricity for weeks in some areas.
That's when you find out who your friends are.

Not everyone owns a home size power generator, and those that were
lucky enough not to have one to mushed their Huskies and sleds to
their local Home Depot, raided every generator they could find.

I said: There's nothing like candlelight to warm the cockles of
one's heart. Creates a nice warm glow and maybe even some foolin'
around time under mounds of blankies and duvets.

I don't know anything about heart-less-ness, so I got in touch with
just about every organization that was calling for help for people
who needed a warm place to stay and maybe a cuppa. Turned the
house into an army-style barracks with a bunch of strangers
wandering around amidst the antiques. Translate: me, antique.
Yes, yes, obviously we own a generator.

Those of us who remember March 4, 1971 have not only wonderful
memories and stories to tell, but fondly recall how our American
neighbours just to the south of the Border sent a small army of
their own firefighters, telephone linesmen, emergency technicians
in all sorts of fields and generally behaved as good neighbours do.
It's what's refered to as "paying it forward". Canadians and Americans
on border Provinces and States often work together on disasters
of all kinds.

International Cooperation is alive and well.

Those were the day's my friends.

PLUS CA CHANGE...

I have often joked, more or less seriously, that
when I was born I came out speaking in whole
paragraphs.

~*~*~*~

Three things that you must do
to live in this world:

Love what is mortal;
Hold it against your bones,
knowing that your life depends upon it.
When it comes time to let it go.
Let it go.

A CASE FOR LOVE

The following poem is
the very first I ever wrote, at age 4.
It had no title, for certain.


A CASE FOR LOVE

We met one Spring
my love and I

When our eyes met
I breathed a sigh
I held him fast
I held him tight
I squeezed him close
With all my might

Our love was true
Our love was strong
To tell him so
How much I longed

Yet although only three
There was no truer love
Than between my puppy
And me

~*~*~*~

N.B.

My mother had been an English teacher
before she met my father. I was home
schooled, by my mother, for three solid
years before I entered Grade 1. She had
once had a newspaper column in
The Harold Tribune in Chicago named,
"As I See It". I'm quite certain that my
mother most probably corrected whatever
spelling errors in that poem that were
there. I can't imagine otherwise.

I don't recall writing the poem, preserved
by family for years, until it was given to
me by my brother many decades later.

IF WISHES WERE

I'd give you a constant crimson sun.
If I had the wealth of an Arab sheik,
I'd give you the crescent moon.
And all the stars in heaven,
Just for you to play upon.

If I were your one true love,
I'd give you some goose-down pillows
To lay all your earthly troubles on.

But all I have on earth to give you
Is one small and very tender heart,
To meet and to greet you,
And not be trampled upon.

If you were God,
I'd surely ask for all the birds in the sky
To sing to me your one exclusive song.
If you were as rich as an Arab sheik,
I'd ask for all of the seven seas,
Just for us to sail upon.

If you were my one true love,
I'd ask for two matching turtle doves.
But of all the things that you could give,
I'd ask for nothing more than my hand in yours,
To walk through God's own Eternity.


(c) Gwen Beauregard 1971 - All Rights Reserved

SELECTED RESULTS FROM THE DIGNITY

:: 49 per cent of Canadians say that if poor people really want to work, they can always find a job.

:: 43 per cent agree that "a good work ethic" is all you need to escape poverty"

:: 41 per cent say that if we gave poor people more assistance, the would "take advantage"

:: 28 per cent believe living in poverty "usually have lower moral values"

:: 25 per cent believe people are poor because they're lazy

:: 37 per cent agree that people living in poverty in Canada "still have it pretty good"

:: 24 per cent say they don't see many people in Canada who are "truly poor"

:: 18 per cent say poverty is a problem we can't do much about

(Angus Reid Public Opinion Poll, January, 2011)

Read on...

OH, CANADA!

The poor ye shall always have with ye!

~*~*~*~

Buried deep within our local newspaper, The Gazette
the following headline screamed out to me, Bias against poor
widespread, report finds

Charming...I dug in...page A12... "More than half of Canadians
believe lack of work ethic linked to poverty".

Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. I'm thinking: why isn't this article on
the front pages of the newspaper? reading on, stopped several
paragraphs in:

"More than half (54 percent) of Canadians believe a family of four
can survive on $30,000 a year or less - including 21 percent who
think $20,000 is enough - but Statistics Canada's poverty line
averages $34,289 for urban communities and $22,783 in rural areas."

It goes on, "Statistics Canada figures show that the average family
of four with two (2) working parents brings home $84,800 annualy and
the Salvation Army says, it is "extremely difficult" for a
family to live on less than $40,000 in an urban area."

Not to worry, it gets better: "at the same time, the report shows that
89% of Canadians agree that people in poverty deserve a helpig hand
and 81 percent say helping poor families sets up their children
for success. Almost all (96 percent) agree that everyone deserves
a sense of dignity though 65 percent believe being poor
robs people of their dignity.

Those figures have remained largely unchanged over the last decade,
about 1 in 11 people live in abject poverty.

Angus Reid Public Opinion conducted the poll in late January with
1,025 Canadians included. The results carry a margin of error of
3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

~*~*~*~

Clearly there is a profound disconnect between the "halves" and the
"have-nots" and attitudes towards poverty are so entrenched that
sometimes those of us who are so far removed from the struggles of
every day life that we find it impossible to understand that those
"every day things" we take for granted really do contribute to
a sense of self-respect, and sense of self-worth.

We live in a land of abundance without a clear moral commitment to
being our brothers' and sisters' keepers.

We aren't mean spirited , of course not, we are just more
comfortable in our ignorance and refusal to admit to ourselves that
the solutions are greater than the problems.

This attitude of "I'm alright, Jack, screw you, get a job
and that will solve everything" is all too familiar.

Lest you are comfortable feeling smug about it all by now, you
needn't bother, the Canadian reflection crosses the divide and
reflects American attitudes as much as it reflects our own.

Right. Got it.