Riffs & Ripples from ZenRiver Gardens

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 - 22,924 readers in June.

Wednesday, 25 June 2025

New Moon in Cancer: Michael Zizis

This Saturday, June 28, I'll turn 77! Can't believe I've made it this far ; )- One of the privileges of having a blog is I can post what I want, and it's my birthday, so I'll party if I wanna.

George Thorogood - I Drink Alone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E9ydw_aDMg

you gotta listen and watch this one! Gracious George features a slide better than him . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--AvCsh48bk&list=RD--AvCsh48bk&start_radio=1

New Moon in Cancer

Michael Zizis

4 min read20 hours ago

an essay by Mike Zizis

Each New Moon — every 28 days, gives us the chance to begin again, again. Please keep it simple.

Wednesday June 25, NEW MOON 04' Cancer — 6:31pm EDT / Toronto

Attention astrologers; please relocate this new Moon to your local coordinates.

Today I am curious. Tomorrow I am brilliant. The next day I am clueless.

This is what it’s like having a moon-ruled character. A solar ruled person just gets stuff done, regardless. Get up early — write everyday in the morning for 3 hours — it ain’t me, babe.

I am dreamy, procrastinating, and romantic. My character is ruled by the moon.

“I’d jump in the Mersey, but it looks like rain.” Ringo Star — Cancer.

The Sorrows of Young Werther - Wikipedia

The Sorrows of Young Werther (; German: Die Leiden des jungen Werthers ), or simply Werther , is a 1774 epistolary…

en.wikipedia.org

There is a novel written by Goethe, called The Sorrows of Young Werther. In it, Werther’s beloved woman rejects him, and he commits suicide. After reading this book many young German men took their own lives. This shocked Goethe, as he tried to create the opposite meaning.

Deserted Cities of the Heart: CREAM

https://youtu.be/wn5DZ6Uk7bA?si=JCZYl6qFtScpJ9BH

The previous new Moon was in the capricious sign of Gemini. (Adjacent astrological signs have nothing in common, not even their differences with the possible exception of Capricorn and Aquarius, both are ruled by Saturn, and yes the ‘modern’ ruler of Aquarius is Yoo- RAHN — uS.) Gemini is ruled by Mercury.

The sign of Cancer is ruled by the moon.

Ancient Greek astrologers, and probably the Egyptians and the Babylonians before them, considered the sign of Cancer to represent the soul’s entrance into this world, to be born into this world. Analogous to this concept, is the idea that we are dying away from the astral world. There is said to be a lot of grieving by others upon our departure from that place.

The previous sun and its new Moon, contain metaphors of mind, and a kind of playfulness ascribed to scrabble, chess, checkers, and treating everything lightly, and often with playful and sometimes immature humor.

If the previous sign represents the capris of the mind, Cancer symbolizes the ferocious, wild, beautiful and sad emanations from the heart. There is a Gemini-esque statement that goes something like … Sincerity, that’s the thing. If you can fake that, then you’ve got it made

…

Nothing is more terrifying than re-inhabiting the deserted cities of the heart.

That is the sign of Cancer — as if we were serenaded by a lover with a mandolin under a full moon. Beautiful, sweet, sad, nurturing music that is sometimes in the shadow of simple fear, or even dread by acknowledging loss.

“From time to time
I realize
That I was sent here
To perfect All men.”

- Leonard Cohen

About a decade ago, I got a kiss from my Lover. She made funny squeaky sounds with her lips. I asked her if she kissed me with her mind or her heart. From that point on her kisses became more beautiful, and heartfelt each and every time.

“What comes from the heart, goes to the heart.” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

What would it be like if we sold air conditioners to others, rather than killing each other. After we kill each other to death, we have also murdered the chance to sell them anything. This is not good commerce.

During this new 28 day cycle, it is good to overcome your fears of loving this small blue miraculous planet.

Monday, 23 June 2025

Be on the Right Side of History (from Judy Haiven's blog)

Be on the Right Side of History

JUN 23

READ IN APP

What does it mean to be on the right side of history?

Well, today it means siding with the Palestinians in Gaza, in the West Bank – and siding with Iran to stop Israel’s growing madness. And that of the US. As of Friday, more than 400 hundred Iranians are dead, thousands injured, from Israel’s bombing and drone attacks. Iran sent missiles which injured 40 in Haifa, and all but destroyed a hospital in Israel’s southern city, Beersheva. The US bombed what they thought were Iranian nuclear sites, but the Iranians had cleverly emptied them prior to the US attack. The US planned to use the Bunker Buster bombs to destroy Iran’s biggest nuclear site – Fordow. According to The New York Times,

“only the U.S. military has the 30,000-pound GBU-57, or Massive Ordnance Penetrator, that may be able to destroy Fordow[Iran’s nuclear installation]. And [the US] is the only armed force with aircraft that can carry out a mission with it.”

Trump decided to bomb all three sites including Fordow with massive Bunker Buster bombs. No worries: the other day Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) announced it is “ready” for a “prolonged campaign” of attacking Iran. IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir congratulated himself and his forces for assassinating Iranian commanders, damaging Iran’s nuclear capability, and killing thousands of civilians.

Jewish Canadians – at least more than 50% of them – could care less. A study released by Canada’s New Israel Fund six months ago noted that while 51% of Canadian Jews consider themselves Zionists, 84% of Canada’s Jews say they are “very” or “somewhat” emotionally attached to Israel. counts for many Canadian Jews are they, themselves and Israel. Somehow they are either unaware of the reality about what the Jewish state is doing in their names, or they deny it outright. They look incredulous when I – a Jew – speak about the ongoing genocide by Israel. It now includes Israel’s bombing of Iran.

One Jewish professional I spoke to asked me if I thought the Ayatollah was a “good guy” or a tyrant. He told me the Ayatollah is a tyrant and must be killed. He’s out to destroy Israel. Really?

*Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport is empty of passengers following an Israeli military strike on Iran, in Lod, near Tel Aviv, Israel, Friday, 13 June, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)*

Of course, if Israel kills a head of state, then Israel itself can’t complain if someone takes out one of theirs. What about a nasty, reactionary, lying leader (like those in the G7) as long as they are a friend of Israel’s no problem, I guess.

Another Jewish person told me how horrible it was that Iran bombed Beersheva’s hospital—placing all those patients at risk of death. But the same person was unaware (or missed the memo) that Israel had dropped more than 697 bombs on Gaza’s 36 hospitals since Oct. 2023. Only 19 of the 36 hospitals are at all functioning today. In late May 2025, Israel again bombed three hospitals in northern Gaza. In southern Gaza where most of the injured and dying are, only the Nasser Hospital is still more or less fully functioning after having been bombed repeatedly over the last 19 months. In central Gaza, Israel attacked the Al Aqsa Hospital three times on 3 June 2025.

And then, if that weren’t enough, Israeli several times set fire to tents of refugees on hospital grounds, burning many people alive. [citation]

Another told me that the Canadian doctors I noted here who lost jobs or were suspended because of their support for Palestinians, were antisemitic.

If you’re on the right side of history, you care way more about the deaths of 57,000 Palestinians, including the more than 17,000 children than about prosecuting a handful of “antisemitic” students, including Jewish university students who lead Passover Seders, at the encampments last summer in cities across Canada.

You care way more about 4,000 Gaza child amputees – and the tiny piece of land that “is now home to more child amputees per inhabitant than anywhere else in the world.”

If you are on the right side of history you blame Israel for all the Palestinians’ deaths, the maimings, the destruction of Gaza. It is estimated that the vast majority of dead Palestinians trapped under demolished buildings are women and children.

You are on the right side of history if you protest the fewer than one hospital bed per thousand population in Gaza. Contrast that with Canada with its 2.5 hospital beds per thousand or Israel with 3.1 beds per thousand population. Of course that number of beds assumes those beds are operational, which is definitely NOT the case most of the time in Gaza.. And of course the millions of people in Gaza are enduring bombings, malnutrition, illness and starvation tens of thousands of needless yet deliberate Palestinians’ deaths.

Most of the politicians in Ottawa think they are on the right side of history. Our prime minister, leaders of the UK, France and Germany gobble whatever lies an vitriol Israel dishes out. Not just them, in Canada just about every university president, board of governors and administration, every school board, most public facing agencies (including public libraries) are in lock-step with the pro-Israel lobby in Canada. No one wants to be accused by Jews of being an antisemite. No one can afford to be run out of office, fired from a job or denied an opportunity, for standing up for Palestine – and now for Iran.

Toronto high school protest

Yet isn’t standing against war, against colonialism and racism –isn’t that being on the right side of history? Yes – and no.

The story over the weekend in the Toronto Star told a tale of Islamophobia dressed up as an exercise in democracy. Grade XII graduating students at Ursula Franklin Academy in Toronto discovered the photo of a student who wore a keffiyeh in their yearbook photo had a sticker placed over their picture in the yearbook. The principal blamed the printer. “There was a picture in the yearbook that was covered up because it was a misprint from the yearbook company,” the school’s principal babbled. But don’t mind me if I doubt that a printer with a lucrative contract to print yearbooks for the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) would tamper with any photo. TDSB backed the principal (of course) and said it had to “keep political bias out of classrooms”. Two students, October in Gr. XII and Sage in Gr. XI, organized a protest picket of 60-70 graduating students and friends in front of the school last week, on the graduates’ last school day of the year. They demanded to know who decided to cover the photo and why, “along with how much money and time went into the decision.”

The critical high school students were on the right side of history but never got serious answers to their questions. But the students made a valuable point: look how far the largest public school board in Canada will go to make sure there is no whisper of support for Palestinians. Even one yearbook picture at a time!

Image at the top: The B-2 Spirit is a stealth bomber that penetrates enemy defenses undetected and deliver nuclear munitions. In this case the B-2 were each loaded with two Bunker Busters (credit: Bobbie Garcia/US Air Force).