Tai Grove's Photos at Parrott Gallery - in Belleville Public Library

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.

 

I've Had Enough: Patrick Connors

 I’ve Had Enough

The world is on fire.

It is ready to explode.

A piece of it probably just blew up.

If we are silent while our brothers and sisters scream, 

then we are part of the problem.

I am tired of being responsible or somewhat 

to blame or even a semi-innocent bystander.

I am fed up with the well-rehearsed rhetoric of leaders who claim they want 

opportunity, safety and security for all people, 

but continue to support the way things are.

I am numbed by a world which can never have enough. Enough things, enough pain, 

enough destruction, enough conquest.

Enough of the desolate hunger of greed, enough of the misery of the vulnerable, 

enough of the primacy of systemic hatred.

Enough!

Fear and loathing of AI: Michael Zizis

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.

Astrology

Human Rights

Beliefs As Blinders

Written by Michael Zizis

136 Followers

·10 Following

https://michaelzizis.com/ Over 40 years as a professional astrologer, I am ready willing and able to craft trends in your journey.

China beating up on 76 year old Hong Kong activist Jimmy Lai

 

from PEN Canada member email today #FreeJimmyLai His trial resumes tomorrow in Hong Kong. Jimmy Lai, a journalist, writer, media publisher, and pro-democracy activist, has been in solitary confinement since December 2020.   PEN believes that Lai’s ongoing detention is emblematic of the devastating impact the 2020 National Security Law (NSL) has had on freedom of expression across Hong Kong. His case is illustrative of the government’s willingness to use the legal system to silence dissent. Tomorrow his trial resumes. The charges he faces—including two under the NSL—could result in life imprisonment.  Madeleine Thien writes to Jimmy Lai Madeleine Thien is the author of four books, most recently Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Folio Prize, and won the Governor-General’s Literary Award for Fiction, among other honours. For PEN's Day of the Imprisoned Writer campaign, she wrote a letter to Lai. It reads in part:    "You became what the government called, with all the force of its contempt and violence, a troublemaker. We both know that, in China, as in many other places today, a troublemaker must be publicly shamed and paraded so that others will choose silence; so that others will, out of fear, relinquish the moral world within themselves. This moral life is their only true possession, for it is their character, their selfhood, and their legacy; to lose it is to denude oneself."   HER FULL LETTER TO LAI Write your own letter Take action for these four imprisoned writers. A letter of solidarity encourages their spirit, reconnects them with the outside world, and is often long-remembered after release.  PEN will send the letter on your behalf. You have until November 29 to write alongside us. Take inspiration from these letters from renowned authors and PEN members:  Margaret Atwood to Jimmy Lai Viv Groskop to Alaa Abd el-Fattah Gioconda Belli to Jose Rubén Zamora Marroquín Elif Shafak to Kaciaryna Andrejeva SUBMIT YOUR LETTER HERE Join the call to #FreeJimmyLai Time is not on our side: Lai is 76 years old, in solitary confinement, diabetic, and will face trial tomorrow.  Spread the word on socials (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn) using the hashtag #FreeJimmyLai alongside this image:  NEW: UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention finds Jimmy Lai is unlawfully and arbitrarily detained and calls for his immediate release Last week, the UNWGAD concluded, in relation to all of the cases Mr. Lai has faced since August 2020, and continues to face, Mr. Lai’s detention is unlawful and arbitrary.   Accordingly, the Working Group calls on the Hong Kong government to: immediately release Mr. Lai; take steps to remedy Mr. Lai’s situation without delay; accord Mr. Lai an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations; and conduct a full and independent investigation into Mr. Lai’s arbitrary and unlawful detention and take appropriate measures against those responsible for the violation of his rights. MORE ON THE FINDING ICYMI: Son of imprisoned Jimmy Lai pleads with Canada to put pressure on Hong Kong to show mercy STORY IN NATIONAL POST SUPPORT PEN JOIN PEN Copyright © 2024 PEN Canada, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you signed up for the PEN Canada mailing list and/or are a member of PEN Canada. Thank you! Our mailing address is: PEN Canada 401 Richmond St W Suite 244 Toronto, ON M5V 3A8 Canada Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list

Support New Ojibway National Urban Park

 

Dear Chris,  We are almost there, thanks to you.   Already, with your support:   Parks Canada has acquired Ojibway Shores Funding for the new park is over $36 million. The City of Windsor and the Province of Ontario remain committed to contributing lands.    Caldwell First Nation is working towards co-governance Parks Canada launched the planning phase of public consultations.    Now, the private member’s Bill C-248 to establish legal protection for Ojibway awaits final Senate approval.  It has already received all-party support in the House.     It’s crunch time! Protection for Canada’s most endangered ecosystem, the tall grass prairie is so close. The final Senate vote is coming up and there are no guarantees Ojibway will ever be established if Bill C-248 isn’t passed during this Parliamentary Session.    We need just one last push. 🤞   We need to keep the momentum up. Support permanent legal protection for Ojibway now!   Sign the petition Thank you for your support! Dave Pearce Senior Forest Conservation Manager Copyright (C) 2024 Wildlands League. All rights reserved | Privacy Policy You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website, campaigns, or other communications. Contact Us: Wildlands League 371-401 Richmond St W Toronto, ON M5V 3A8 Canada 416-971-WILD (9453) Toll free:1-866-510-WILD e-mail: info@wildlandsleague.org Our registered charity number is 11878 2317 RR0001 Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe

A Levitation with Ed Sanders

 from World BEYOND War

Podcast: A Levitation With Ed Sanders

• Culture of Peace, Immorality, Nonviolent Activism, Podcasts, Poetry, Technology, World BEYOND War Podcast

By Marc Eliot Stein, World BEYOND War, October 28, 2024

“Out demons out!” On October 21, 1967, poet, activist, singer and DIY publisher Ed Sanders led an exorcism of the Pentagon in USA’s capital city to protest the disaster in Vietnam. Purely by coincidence, or perhaps due to the contrivance of mysterious spirits, we were honored to be joined by Ed Sanders from his home in Woodstock for a conversation on the World BEYOND War podcast on the same morning 57 years later.

How much has changed between 1967 and 2024? We talked about nuclear madness and humanity’s self-destructive nihilism, Sanders’s youthful protests and arrest for attacking a nuclear submarine, Herman Kahn’s depressing 1960 book “On Thermonuclear War” and how President Lyndon B. Johnson’s hopes for a progressive presidency were destroyed by war. We talked about the deep state, the absurdities of USA’s looming Harris vs. Trump election, Africom, Chernobyl, Elon Musk, the current disasters in Ukraine and Gaza. “It all leads in one direction: World War Three”.

Ed Sanders is a hero and inspiration to me and many others for his joyful and eclectic spirit of protest, and for his brilliant early innovations as a do-it-yourself publisher who used a mimeograph machine to self-produce a groundbreaking poetry journal that could not be censored and ended up publishing some of the best poets of the 1960s. “When in doubt, publish!” Sanders says. He found his first mimeograph machine while volunteering at Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker in New York City, and tells the story of how he eventually made up with Dorothy Day for once using her machine without permission.

A lot of today’s interview is about other great pacifist souls like Dorothy Day who influenced and inspired Ed Sanders (and, still, many of us today): Allen Ginsberg, Bradford Lyttle, Phil Ochs, Pete Seeger, Abbie Hoffman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso and Judith Malina.

Ed Sanders with Phil Ochs

Ed Sanders, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and other protestors against the US war against Vietnam

For me as a podcast host and member of the confused generation that came after the hippie era, it was an absolute thrill to talk to a cultural figure who inspired me tremendously in my own formative years. The most moving parts of this interview for me were when we talked about the need for humor, balance and moderation in a lifetime of furious protest.

As our conversation ranged from William F. Buckley to Jack Kerouac to Caryl Chessman to Muammar Gaddafi to Vladimir Putin, I only regret that we forgot to shout out Sanders’s fellow Fug Tuli Kupferberg, even though the episode begins with the 1968 song “Dover Beach” by the Fugs, featuring the final verse of Matthew Arnold’s poem. The episode ends with a recording of the 1967 exorcism and attempted levitation of USA’s military headquarters from the Fugs album “Tenderness Junction”. Thanks to Ed Sanders for talking to us on the World BEYOND War podcast!

The World BEYOND War Podcast page is here. All episodes are free and permanently available. Please subscribe and give us a good rating at any of the services below:

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