Buoyant blog of septuagenarian Kanadian poet and haikuist Chris Faiers/cricket. People's Poetry in the tradition of Milton Acorn, haiku/haibun, progressive politikal rants, engaged Buddhism and meditation, revitalizing of Callaghan's Rapids Conservation Area, memories of ZenRiver Gardens and annual Purdy Country LitFests (PurdyFests), events literary and politikal, and pics, amid swirling currents of earth magick and shamanism. Read in 119 countries last week - 5,387 readers last month.
Posting from the Al Purdy A-Frame Association newsletter yesterday. I drove to Ameliasburgh in late summer when the project looked extremely daunting. So it was a pleasant surprise to get this email update from Jean Baird yesterday!
December 18, 2024
Double, Double
Looking back at 2024 it has been a year of surprises and great opportunities.
Because of the significant work happening at the A-frame there was not the usual coming and going of poets and writers but, as reported in earlier newsletters, we did organize a number of events locally and online including workshops, readings, literary walks and a song-writing workshop.
But our focus has been the Foundation Project at the A-frame. You will recall that the Purdys built on the flood plain and that over the years moisture had taken a toll so the decision was made to raise the house and put a proper foundation under to preserve the building. Our most ambitious fundraising campaign was launched with a target of $300,000.
After we successfully raised a good portion of that target, and with discussions with the contractor, we realized that raising the house would also create the opportunity to winterize and thereby extend our season. The fundraising target was revised to $330,000, a goal that was met (with some pledges) in spring 2024 and work began in July. Up, up it went.
The Flying A-frame
And the writing shed also soars
Then the next opportunity was revealed. With the house raised there was the option, instead of a 1.5M crawlspace (the original plan), to create a full basement that once finished would be useable. Double the floorspace.
We reviewed the implications and the budget. Double the space and double the residency season. How could we say no? The commitment was made and the basement was created.
The A-frame on its new foundation
New basement
Work will be ongoing through April 2025 and the new basement will have as much finishing as our budget allows. Some things—for example, cabinetry, archival storage space—may need to be deferred until a later date when funds become available.
If you make end of the year donations, please consider the A-frame. As you can see in the photos, the building is now on its new foundation so the place will be dry and protected for years to come. But we still need to raise funds to finish that newly-acquired basement.
Windows in, and the start of the upper tier of the new deck
Sometimes people make donations to note an important event. Recently many have donated in Celebration of Eurithe Purdy's 100th birthday. Since the announcement of the Steven Heighton Fellowship donations have been made in his memory. That guy was much loved.
Or you could make a donation in Celebration of Al Purdy’s birthdate, December 30, 1918.
In times of turmoil we need the Arts more than ever.
How’re you guys doing? I keep pretty quiet over the hols - actually most of the time now. Been keeping a regular schedule and going to bed at 11 after watching a DVD every night. Last night I fell asleep just after 11 and then a tapping sound awoke me. Didn’t have the energy to investigate, but wonder if you came by to visit?
Watched the 3 part Lord of the Rings a week ago, and then binge watched the entire TV series Ted Lasso this week about a soccer team in England. It was filmed in my old hangout of Richmond on the Thames.
Been exchanging emails with a UK writer, Cassie Steward, who is writing a novel based on my memoir of those days in Richmond and Kingston, when I lived on Eel Pie Island. According to her my book is popular in the UK, although I don’t receive any royalties on it. Aargh
Went to Callaghan’s on Tuesday for a couple of hours. So far it looks like the barricades are keeping the ATVers out! Still the fallen tree on the path to the bridges, though. In the cold weather I was too stiff to bend under it and had to walk around. Growing old sucks!
A poem for The Donald: two of our slogans in the 1970s Canadian Liberation Movement were Yankee Go Home and Continentalism is Treason. Maybe it's time for the CLM to regroup.
I spent last Dominion Day in jail in a cold cell on a steel bench - cold, sleepless, angry and proud tho almost wanting to feel foolish.
Fed a cheeseburger and a coffee in 24 hours fingerprinted stripped of my shirt frogmarched - mugshot insulted.
All this for the patriotic crime of daring to say YANKEE GO HOME! to the Yankee Shriners parading thru downtown Toronto. They thought it was the 4th of July (Canada Division).
Cold, sleepless, hungry, angry PROUD that I was cold, sleepless, hungry, angry and not enjoying the July sun lounging on the green grass in Queen's Park or lining the parade route for the Shriners. This growing pride made my solitary jail cell a celebration of Dominion Day.
Chris Faiers
some publication history and notes:
This poem tells the true story of my arrest in 1975 for the heinous crime of wearing a bright yellow teeshirt emblazoned with YANKEE GO HOME as part of a protest against the Americanization of Canada. Our pro-nationalist group, The Canadian Liberation Movement, had recently adopted this slogan.
I was charged under the new Ontario "hate crime" laws, an example of the police misinterpreting a new law to suit a political agenda. Several other CLM members were also arrested as part of this somewhat misguided campaign - the Canadian people were definitely not of a mind to rise up and bear witness against the ongoing assimilation of our country into the United States.
We fought the charges all the way to the Supreme Court of Ontario, a process which took well over a year. I was acquitted by the Supreme Court, and the judge admonished a testifying officer for his lack of credibility.
In 1978 I started the literary press, Unfinished Monument Press, with intentions to publish more radical poetry than was generally published in Canada at the time (with some notable exceptions, including Milton Acorn and bill bissett).
The first collection I produced was my chapbook, Dominion Day in Jail. The poem was subsequently included in further collections of my poetry as well as in the Steel Rail Publishing poetry anthology Poems for Sale in the Street, edited by Tom Clement and Ted Plantos, 1979. The idea and title for the anthology were mine, suggested to Tom, who was boarding in the house I rented at 2128 Gerrard Street East in Toronto. A new generation of poets made appearances in this collection, including Jim Brown, Rosalind Eve Conway, Mary di Michele, Len Gasparini, Greg Gatenby, Gordon Gilhuly, Gwen Hauser, Jane Jordan, Julie McNeill, Robert Priest, Alfred Rushton, Sara Spracklin, and Kris Sri Bhaggihadatta. Steel Rail Publishing was founded by former members of the CLM house press after the CLM splintered and dissolved over issues of sectarianism and social fascism shortly after the ill-fated Yankee Go Home campaign.
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) strike has now lasted a month. Coincidentally we’re entering the twelve days of Christmas. Long gone are hopes of getting my traditional batch of Solstice cards mailed on time. For several decades these cards have been my way of keeping the barest of contacts with friends left behind on my too many moves. If you are one of the annual recipients, well, Season’s Best! . . . and now you don’t have to send me a “guilt” card in return ; )-
Two weeks ago I began joining the small band of CUPW picketers at the Marmora Post Office. Union members decided it makes sense to focus on a central and high exposure location - highways #7 and #14 intersect by our post office, while the P.O.s in Tweed and Stirling are hidden off their main drags.
old man
with walking stick
hobbling the picket line
walking stick
waves to honking cars
young picketer
rests in a snow bank
old picketer
blows smoke
into freezing drizzle
stranger’s passenger seat
carries a tray
of Timmy’s coffee
Yesterday, Friday the 13th, after a month of picketing in the cold:
This haibun was buried in a much earlier post. I decided to retrieve it and add a pic of pine trees. The best pic I could find was from my visit to Egan Chutes Provincial Park last spring.
I'm so pleased with the success of the inaugural Al Purdy Literary Festival, especially the the involvement of so many poets who were willing to bare their souls at the reading on the Marmora dam. The highlight for me, though, was our picnic with Al Purdy at his gravesite in Ameliasburgh.
I've been involved with Buddhism for over forty years, especially with haiku and haibun poetry, but you never know how seriously you are taken by more experienced practitioners. I took two of our visitors to the Purdy Festival to meet Thay, the Buddhist monk who oversees the Zen Forest Buddhist retreat in Actinolite north of Tweed.
I showed Thay some photos of my neo-Buddhist retreat, ZenRiver Gardens, with some trepidation. Thay is an extremely venerated Buddhist monk, the descendant of generations of Zen masters, and I was concerned he might consider my efforts silly. Thay smiled while looking at the photos, commented that ZenRiver needed more trees, and offered to give ten pines from the Zen Forest to the ZenRiver!
ten pine trees march through the night Zen Forest to ZenRiver
Last weekend I visited Toronto to care for an old friend recovering from a breast cancer operation. On Saturday I visited the Snow Lion Buddhist Shop by the Pape subway station. The steward of Snow Lion is Theodore, and again I was concerned that the neo-Buddhist/ shaman conversation I had previously shared with him might have seemed silly. Theodore hugged me when I arrived, showed me their new Zen garden, and told me that holding a picnic with the dead is very much in the Buddhist tradition. He then gave me an incredibly valuable bronze Buddha statue for ZenRiver Gardens.
So the dharma road is wide open and ZenRiver Gardens has apparently been accepted as a valid retreat among fellow Buddhist practitioners. The positive follow-ups to PurdyFest have manifested themselves in so many unexpected ways, for so many people, we'll definitely have to do it again next year.
more rare than the cougar snow lion comes to water at ZenRiver
My friend, author Marilyn Garson, just published her new book Jewish Not Zionist. The book is brilliant, luminous and revealing. Garson, who grew up Jewish in Halifax Nova Scotia, Canada, writes, “My Zionist upbringing was quietly based on the myth that we would be exceptionally wise and look: we are not.”
This is precisely what "official Jews" do not like to hear. They do not want to hear they are not exceptional.
Garson's new book
Garson points out,
“We had emerged from genocide. I suspect that any community would respond as we have responded to four generations of hot-wiring religion to power; of militarisation, structural violence and racism; of enacting such heady radicalisation with impunity. The problem is not that we are in any way worse, but that we are just like any other people so conditioned.”
“What will I believe: everything I’ve ever been told or the world in front of my eyes?”
MARILYN GARSON, WRITER AND ACTIVIST
Garson left for Toronto, and then travelled the world in her early 20s. More recently, she worked for four years for a human rights and employment agency in Gaza. Even years before the current genocide, what she was told by Israel and what was the reality for millions in Gaza were very different things. Garson noted she had to unlearn zionism, “What will I believe: everything I’ve ever been told or the world in front of my eyes?”
Garson has lived in New Zealand for half her life. She is a co-founder of New Zealand’s Alternative Jewish Voices that calls for justice in a pluralist, anti-racist Jewish voice. AJV is affiliated Global Jews for Palestine, an alliance of anti-Zionist Jewish activist groups based in a wide range of countries. In Independent Jewish Voices Canada-- to which I belong -- is also a member of Global Jews for Palestine.
One line in the book she wrote deserves a column on its own. And this is it: “Palestinians are my equals.”
I was shocked by its simplicity and its truth. The whole reason that Israel has been able to kill 45,000 (at least) Gazans, with just about total impunity, is because to Israel and to Jewish Israelis, politicians and the powerful --Palestinians are not human beings. To diasporic Jews who still support Israel and born-again Christians who insist they love Israel -- Palestinians are not human beings. Not really.
Clearly to the pro-Israel lobby, to many Canadian synagogue members who avert their gaze, to anyone who is affiliated to the “Jewish federation”, who are the “official Jews,” none of the above has happened in Gaza. Israel is merely rooting out the Hamas operatives; 43,000 have not died, nor have more than 10 children a day lost one or both legs to amputation
The response of Canada’s “official” Jews is to deny, to insist on their privilege, to raise the spectre of antisemitism, to dissemble, to get Israel’s critics disciplined or fired at work, and to undermine their careers. To name just a handful, read about Birju Dattani here, Dr Yipeng Ge here, and NS-NDP who removed candidate Tammy Jakeman here. All had their careers upended by the "official Jews" who are trying to muzzle anything negative said or written about Israel. They initiate legal cases against people, and behind closed doors, the official Jews convince universities and even governments to simply not hire people-- like Birju Dattani -- already offered the job. The ""official Jews" do this in two ways.
First, known pro-Israel columnists and contributors have regular gigs in the media. One example is The Toronto Star features Michael Levitt as a monthly contributor. Levitt is a former Liberal MP, and now is the CEO of Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a group that rabidly touts Israel at every opportunity. His point of view and his interest in soft-pedalling every murderous thing Israel does is evident in his columns.
Second: Israel's supporters must attack, denigrate, silence, discipline, fire anyone, even prominent individuals who criticize Israel. The list is too long to reprint here. But I cannot remember one anti-colonial struggle in the last 40 years in which every western country lined up to ignore a genocide.
The idea that acknowledging “Palestinians are my equals” is so far-fetched. If they were our equals, would Biden and Harris just have sent $680 million in weapons to Israel last week to kill more and more Palestinians. One hundred people in Gaza were massacred by Israel missiles on Sunday alone. The UK has sent components for F-35 fighter aircraft; one British manufacturer sent two shipments of ejector seats for the F-35s in mid-October. Between 2019 and 2023, Israel was the 15th largest importer of arms globally. The biggest arms exporters to Israel were the United States, Germany, the UK, France and Spain.
On the other hand, 124 countries including Canada have signed the Rome Statute, which means the 124 have the legal obligation to arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Min. of Defence Yoav Gallant if those two Israeli politicians step foot in those countries. That’s a little something to celebrate.
Photo at the top: Palestinian teacher Israa Abu Mustafa took the initiative to set up a classroom in a tent on the ruins of her destroyed home with the aim of teaching children as the new school year began, Sept. 12, 2024. (credit: Saher Alghorra—ZUMA Press)
Tai published two of my poetry collections, Eel Pie Island Dharma (2012) and ZenRiver: Poems & Haibun (2008), with his Hidden Brook Press.
The Parrott Gallery invites you to join us for a free travelogue presentation of Richard "Tai" Grove's exhibitions "Two Favourite Ontario Provincial Parks" on Saturday, November 30, 2024. Meet Tai at 2:00 p.m. and enjoy light refreshments before the presentation begins at 2:30 p.m. This photography exhibition and sale is part of the Armchair Traveller Series and is on display in our Corridor Gallery until until January 2, 2025.
Michael published this on the Medium site with the title Artificial Intelligence Under the Lens of Astrology (my apologies to Michael for sexing up his title)
A Short essay by Mike Zizis
November 19, 2024
AI is probably ruled by Neptune. This would be analogous to money being ruled by Neptune. Take the most advanced artificial intelligence of the moment or of the future. These tools are not a product of wetwear 500 million years and refined in the making. All of our senses regardless of what manner of creature must go through an emotional component hunger, fight/ flight, lovemaking, reproduction etc. Thinking is not any old whatsit we want to label as thinking. We are as a species in a hurry to assassinate emotions. Don’t believe me? Bring out the limitations of artificial intelligence to someone working in the field and you will be barraged by emotions and emotional response.
Collective beliefs are assigned to Neptune. This includes entrenchment of collective beliefs. Ask your screwdriver, wrench, bread knife, wheelbarrow, or drill press about a tormented spouse driven to murder and whether they should be imprisoned and possibly executed. You know where this is going. If we blindly allow machines to decide the fates of people including their executions… Well you know. Take any state actor that promotes state-sponsored executions and then give them AI to make decisions. Biases don’t get wished away, but they do get programmed into machines.
Take the most advanced form of artificial intelligence now or 30 years future — put it in a building with the roof burning and will still go on its merry way mimicking and emulating some form of non-human function. And it will burn down with that building. We have replaced Angels and Demons and The Greek gods with the new god on the block artificial intelligence and its cadre of true believers without any critical analysis of its extraordinary limits. It is shocking how much AI gets wrong; true Believers say what they always say someday someday someday… It is our common mistake to label sensing types as thinkers. And so it goes.
