Poppies Whispering - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Poppies Whispering

“I have no desire to make windows into men’s souls”

-Elizabeth I

The freedom not to wear a poppy gives
A man another good reason to wear it

Mandating public patriotism gives
A man just one reason not to wear

A poppy in remembrance of those lads
Who died among red poppies far away

Canadians who chose to serve our Canada

And so

I choose to wear a poppy for them all

And for you

God bless Canada

For Friends in Canada

Canada Day? Just One?

With love from an ‘umble Yank

But every day is Canada Day!

The afternoon plane lands in Halifax
When the hatch is popped, cool air rushes in
Even the fog is happy in Canada

The Muskogee never made landfall here
And so we pilgrimage for her, complete
Her voyage from ’42 to Canada

Wolfville, Grand Pre’, Le Grande Derangement
The Deportation Cross and beer cans
Well, God forgive the Redcoats anyway

Newfoundland
Is a bold
Anapest

The church spires in a line, the light is green
The bold young captain shoots the narrows wild
Can you find your way to your painted house?

To walk again the cobbles of Ferryland
And smell the very blue of the Atlantic
The sea-blown wind is cold in Canada

Blue Puttees and a mourning Caribou
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord
Good children sing “We love thee, Newfoundland”

Quebec – royal city of New France
May Le Bon Dieu bless the Plains of Abraham,
And may God bless
The signs an English driver cannot read

The Coca-Cola streets of Niagara Falls
Yanks laugh at made-in-China Mountie mugs
And buy them, happy to be in Canada

A cup of Toujours Frais from – well, that place
But to us in your southern provinces
Below Niagara, Tim too is Canada

But Canada goes on; these scribbles must not -
Your grateful guest wishes only to say
That every happy day is Canada Day!

"O Canada, We Obey the IOC"

Mack Hall

P.O. Box 856

1286 County Road 400

Kirbyville, Texas 75956

409 423 2751

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

“O Canada, We Obey the IOC”

 

Last week Penguin Books pulled Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: an Alternative History from circulation in India, and destroyed copies still in its supply chain.

 

Professor Doniger’s book is almost surely boring – any book with a colon in its title is going to be a yawner.  After all, from our high school lessons in anatomy and physiology we remember what a colon is full of.

 

But Penguin didn’t destroy its own book because it is a doorstop; Penguin meekly surrendered to a religious group which didn’t like the book. 

 

One might expect self-censorship by a company in India, but surely not in Canada, the nation based on that whole thing about The True North Strong and Free.

 

USA-ians wanting a frozen-moose report from Newfoundland or another exploding-train-in-Quebec news item from north of The World’s Friendliest Border will not be hearing anything on CBC Radio via livestream.  To call up CBC radio on the ‘net (rather like Macbeth calling up those witches in Act IV?) is to be greeted with Hamlet’s “The rest is silence.”  The electronic page is there, all right, but nothing happens except a sign reading “From Feb. [sic] 6-23, CBC Radio One live streams will only be available to Canadian listeners due to Olympic rights restrictions. However, you can visit cbc.ca/radio/ to listen on-demand or download podcasts.”

 

Whatever amount of money was exchanged between the International Olympics Committee and the CBC apparently wasn’t sufficient to buy enough letters to spell out “February.”

 

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which Canadian taxpayers must fund through taxes, chose to silence its own livestream outside Canadian borders.  The bit about listening to on-demand to podcasts is not technically a lie, but until the IOC gives Canada permission, no new podcasts are being generated.

 

If this self-censorship by the CBC applied only to live Olympics broadcasting, well, fair enough.  Bribes…um…money has been exchanged from oily hand to oily hand for the games.  However, the CBC has silenced all its livestreaming outside Canada’s borders – weather, news, recipes for roadkill moose, and the latest rumor about the whereabouts of the elusive Lyuba Orlova.

 

The last news USA-ians heard of the abandoned Russian ship Lyuba Orlova was that it was infested with giant cannibal rats and drifting toward Ireland.  Until the IOC gives its colonial minions in Ottawa permission to broadcast again, no one will know if the giant cannibal rats on the Lyuba Orlova are reading up Irish stew recipes in Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” or Rod Serling’s To Serve Man, or innocently rehearsing choral routines from The Flying Dutchman.

                                                                                        

Canada is this nation’s biggest trading partner and a solid ally.  Every day thousands of Americans cross the border to work and shop in Canada, and thousands of Canadians cross the border to work and shop in the USA.  All along that 3,000-mile border people cross this way and that for lunch with the in-laws.  Tons of food, manufactured goods, raw materials, and the occasional moose are daily traded via rail, roads, and air between our two great nations.  That Canada can be bribed or bullied into silence, compromising friendly relations, suggests not incompetence by a few functionaries but malicious intent by a third party.  Who?  And why?

 

Emails to several CBC address were not answered.  Well, maybe all the headquarters gnomes were too busy listening to the games.  Certain the CBC leadership listens to the IOC.  The emails were not impertinent; they did not ask if some CBC vice-president’s daughter or son recently received a full scholarship to an exclusive private school in Switzerland or France, or if another CBC executive suddenly sported a shiny new SUV in his driveway.  To ask such questions would not only impertinent but wrong.  No rude questions were asked, and the respectful questions were not answered.

 

Perhaps CBC Radio shares the same ‘tude toward listeners that Air Canada displays toward passengers: “We’re Not Happy Until You’re Not Happy.” 

 

-30-

Why Americans South of the 49th Parallel Like Toronto Mayor Rob Ford

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Why Americans South of the 49th Parallel Like Toronto Mayor Rob Ford

“You in the West have no idea what it’s like to be ruled by peasants.”

- Mihai in Balkan Ghosts

1. Rob Ford on that wrecking ball with Miley Khardassian and Kim Cyrus would pretty much epitomize contemporary pop culture.
2. Rob Ford appeals to the sort of person who, without any sense of irony, uses “hater” as an expression of opprobrium.
3. Rob Ford makes Glenn Beck seem almost reasonable.
4. Any mention of “Toronto Mayor Rob Ford” on the Orwellian telescreen updates the old Bob Newhart (“Hi, Bob!”) game.
5. Our Darwinian friends are reinvigorated, and can shout with Merry Generic Winter Holiday glee to the rest of us “Aha! The Missing Link at last! We told you so!”
6. USA-ians tend to perceive Canada as a nation of kind, thoughtful, industrious, educated people who, after a hard day of building igloos and cuddling harp seals, put away their red coats and spend their leisure hours exchanging Shakespearean bon mots in both English and French while cataloging the origins of Newfoundland sea-chanties in a Tim Horton’s across the street from Canadian Tire, compared with whom we are a lot of indolent slobs who care only for football and takeout; Rob Ford is an occasion for schadenfreude, our one opportunity to point a disapproving finger due north and crow “Nanny, nanny boo-booooo!”
7. Given that south-of-the-border Orwellian telescreen programming favorites include Duck Dynasty, Jerry Springer, and Doctor Phil, Rob Ford seems to be a real tater-chip-sody-water Yank.
8. In this coming season of Black Friday Weekend (which replaces the old, colonialist, imperialist, eat-animal-flesh Thanksgiving) one can fantasize about Rob Ford visiting Martha Stewart and knocking over her perfect Christmas tree while cracked out.
9. Consider Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in a sumo wrestling match. Hey, it’s a thought. Strange thought. Okay, maybe not.
10. Parents no longer threaten naughty children with the bogey-man; they threaten ‘em with Rob Ford.
11. Whenever sub-49th-parallelians feel depressed about unemployment, the Affordable Health Care Act, the scorn with which their decaying nation is held by others, and the sad reality that the death penalty does not apply to the man who invented reality shows, they can always lighten the mood and, indeed, elicit sustained laughter by using “Rob Ford,” “Justin Bieber,” and “Canada” in the same sentence.
12. The existence of Rob Ford convinces even the loopiest racial supremacists in Massachusetts and Idaho that God really doesn’t consider them to be His last word.
13. Rob Ford and Honey Boo-Boo – soulmates? Or simply cousins somewhere along a DNA continuum we just don’t need to know about?
14. Those who exist on the New York-Chicago-Los Angeles Axis of infobrainpuddingment are grateful to Canada for introducing them to high culture – Moulsen’s, hockey, Rob Ford, and swerving around dead moose on the Trans-Canada Highway.
15. Finally, the USA and its New Model Army of Plain Women can be grateful that General Isaac Brock, Chief Tecumseh, and the lads kicked General Stephen Van Rensselaer III, the other lads, and all their blunderbusses back across the Niagara River in 1812. The possibility that Rob Ford could have been elected President of the United States gives anyone a dead-moose-in-the-road feeling.

-30-

Fabrique au Canada

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Fabrique au Canada

Those of a certain age – born when giant hamsters roamed primeval swamps – will remember when Niagara Falls was a cliché’ honeymoon spot.  If in a newfangled talkie film anyone mentioned Niagara Falls, that was code for a wedding, and at the end of the movie, all conflicts resolved, Jimmy Stewart and Myrna Loy drove Pa’s sputtering 1935 Ford roadster north to Canada.

Niagara Falls, Canada, is great fun, much like Disneyland, only without Disney's understated elegance.  The center of jollification is Clifton Hill, or, in French, Rue de la Moulson’s et la barfe-on-les-sidewalks. 

Okay, that’s not really French; I just made that up, but I’ll bet you couldn’t tell.

The views of the Falls are better from the Canadian side, but very expensive.  The free parking lots of only a few years ago are gone, and now the amateur hydrologist must slosh $20 into the wet kitty (or la chat) in order to park his Ford and spend some quality time with the water.  Lots of water.  Beautiful water.

The views from the American side are also quite good, and parking that ’35 Ford is much cheaper, but you also get the idea that you probably don’t need to be there after dark.

One New Yorker faulted the Canadian side for being too commercial; his idea of the natural and free was reflected in the broken glass of abandoned buildings on the American side.

Niagara Falls is a romantic fashion again, but now folks want to be married when they get there, not before.  A young couple of my acquaintance made the pilgrimage to the Holy Land of Ontario, and their families and friends dusted off their passports and their Christmas accounts in order to join them for the happy occasion.

The couple were wedded one beautiful autumn morning on a wet Maid-of-the-Mist boat wetly sloshing around at the wet foot of the wet American Falls, the wet Horseshoe Falls, and wetly back to the wet American Falls, thus adding to the occasion lots of hydrogen and oxygen molecules in proper portions just in case not everyone aboard had been baptized.

One thought perhaps the boat captain would perform the rites, but he was busy enough avoiding a low-budget Titanic finale to the wedding, and so a wet rent-a-reverend-doctor (he also teaches t’a chi and is a motivational speaker and a singer/songwriter) in a Roman collar and sporting a big, shiny Celtic cross wetly said some things to the wet couple on the wet fantail. 

The Very Impressive Clergyman must have spoken the right things though mostly unheard among all the racket of engines and water, for the happy (and wet) couple kissed, surrounded by several hundred wet friends, most of whom were Japanese and Korean (and wet), along with Kate and Lily, those adorable (and wet) little scene-stealers.  Even now, in Seoul and Tokyo, folks are happily passing around hundreds of photographs of the young American couple who made their vacations in Canada, God’s second-favorite nation, even more enjoyable.

After docking, the wet couple and the wet VIC sat at a (dry) table in a café’ and spent a half-hour signing and witnessing lots of papers, and, finally, by the rules and regulations and august majesty, and, like, stuff of the Province of Ontario and the Dominion of Canada, not to mention the Maid of the Mist company, Frankie and Sarah were well and truly united in the wet institution of marriage.  When last seen they were catching a modern Canadian train, not a 1935 Ford, to Montreal, where no one can speak Spanish where no one will speak English.

But they’ll be fine.  In Montreal and in other destinations, geographic and spiritual, in the young couple’s lives, “all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well” (St. Julian of Norwich), for Frankie and Sarah will make them so.

Eh.

-30-

12.9.1012, What Evil Lurks in the Mayor's Refrigerator?

Mack Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

What Evil Lurks in the Mayor’s Refrigerator?

In the Village of Charlo in New Brunswick, the local government is arguing as to whether or not the city council may keep their beer stash in the mayor’s office refrigerator.

New Brunswick, as you will recall from third-grade geography, is a Canadian province that borders Finland and Ulan-Bator, and is famous for Mounties riding in sleighs drawn by reindeer while chasing polar bears.

In merry Charlo, according to the CBC, the councilors are accustomed to meeting in the mayor’s office to bend an elbow and continue discussing village business after concluding the official council meeting.

In the USA we used to called folks elected to a city council councilmen, and now city councilmen can still be councilmen unless they are councilwomen and sometimes councilpersons.  Councilor is shorter and neater. 

The leader of any meeting back in Ye Olden Times used to be called a chairman, but the position was shortened to chair.  Visitors on the agenda are allowed to address the chair, which could be awkward if no one is actually sitting in the chair.  If the mayor has stepped out for a moment perhaps the speaker may address some other object: “Thank you, Madame Table, for allowing me to speak today,” or maybe “Mr. Ashtray, I wish to urge this committee to consider…”

Anyway, the mayor of Charlo, Jason Carter, thought that councilors shouldn’t be discussing village business while treating the mayor’s office refrigerator as the local franchise of the Long Branch Saloon.

Mayor Carter told the councilors to stop it.  They didn’t.

He then removed the wine, coolers, and whatever 40-ouncers are from his office refrigerator; the councilors told him to put the booze back, and he did.

Councilor Roger LeClaire said that he and his fellow councilors “sometimes have a drink after public meetings, but only on special occasions.”   Like, maybe, days ending in “y?”

Mayor Carter, shocked, shocked that there was drinking going on in council, tendered his resignation, which the council joyfully accepted, not with “Aye!” but with “I’ll drink to that!”

Charlo seems, from the information available on the ‘net (and the ‘net is always accurate, right?), to be a pleasant little town of about 1300 folks on a bay off the St. Lawrence.  Its first Euro types, in 1799, were Cajuns, and French remains the dominant language.  The area features a nice little airport, commercial and sport fishing, tourism, forestry, agriculture, skiing, hiking, and numerous motels, B & Bs, and restaurants, and suffers almost no crime.  In the summers the highs are in the 70s; just now Charlo is an invigorating 24 or so. 

In 1943, flower-class corvette HMCS Rimouski chased away German sub U-236, which had been lurking in the bay off Charlo in a blocked attempt to take on board escaped German prisoners-of-war.  The Rimouski was long ago turned into beer cans and fenders, but you can visit her sister ship, HMCS Sackville, in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Charlo, New Brunswick sounds like a great place to relax for a week or so, not only for the many attractions for both the active and the sedentary visitor, but because the worst political squabble they have had in recent memory is about what might be chillin’ in the mayor’s office refrigerator.

-30-

 

Rush Limbaugh's Bedroom and Other Meditations

Mack Hall


With the arrival of spring, or as springy as this part of the world ever uncoils, folks go outside and do outside stuff – fertilize the lawn with that bag of crumbly stuff leftover from an autumn sale, talk to the apple blossoms, comment on the bits of green poking up tentatively through November’s sere leaves, and sometimes simply sit on the steps and marvel at another new year. At such times one’s mind, unleashed from the ‘net and the radio and the telly, begins to, well, think:

Evolution is Really Real in Canada

Canada’s current national anthem, which Americans got to hear over and over during the Olympics, may soon suffer another change. Once upon a time it was “God Save the Queen / King / Labour Electorate Along the London-Birmingham Axis,” and then multiple versions of “O Canada.” The original was written by a woman and afterwards modified several times by men. Just now there is a line about Thy Sons or something, which someone says should be Thy Persons or something, and folks in Canada are arguing about it. Perhaps Canadians won’t mind a Yank weighing on some word changes:

“O Canada, What Are the Words to Our National Anthem This year? Eh.”
“O Canada, We’re Not the USA. Eh.”
“O Canada, Built on Hockey and Tim Horton’s. Eh.”
“O Canada, We’ve Got More Olympic Gold Medals Than the USA and Russia Put Together So There. Eh.”

Ooooh – I hope I’m not beaten to death with made-in-China Anne of Green Gables dolls the next time I visit Prince Edward Island.

The Death Penalty

These two headlines were one above the other in a recent web news site: “Mother Dumped Newborn in Trash, Went to Party” and “Judge Declares Death Penalty Unconstitutional.”

Swinging Singapore

Tom Taschinger of the Beaumont Enterprise, upon which The Times of London models itself, reports that Singapore still bans chewing gum. Tom finds this harsh, but, hey, it’s not as bad as some geriatric hippie in a hula shirt playing a guitar in church because, like, 1968 was so, like, y’know, happenin’.”

Spring Break – Saints Gone Wild

An Irish tourist board recently promoted ten ways to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day without going to a pub. Not one of the ten suggestions included attending Mass that day. The English tried for hundreds of years to suppress Ireland’s ancient faith; left alone the Irish destroyed it themselves.

Kiss me – I’m not Irish.

Spring Break – Body Scanners Gone Wild

Jeremy Clarkson of The Times of London writes: “We now think it’s normal to take off our clothes at an airport.”

Spring Break – Amish Girls Gone Mild

How did Amish caps become an almost requisite accessory on the covers of romance novels? Lucinda no longer swoons passionately in the arms of the Byronic pirate / Indian / outlaw; she sits demurely on a wagon seat next to some fellow named Aminadab while sporting a white beanie with strings hanging down.

One can anticipate a Hallmark movie: Amish Spring Break – Girls Scrub Floors While Fully Dressed.

Lock-and-Load Voting

Iraq voted for parliamentary seats last week, and the Religion of Peace wasn’t having it. Through bombings and shootings they murdered more people than show up to vote in some county elections in the USA. Alas that more Americans complain about the governance of the country than actually do something about it.

Where’s a Sky Marshal When You Need One?

Last week an air-traffic controller at JFK, nee’ Idyllwild, allowed his young son to radio instructions to pilots.

This is probably not permitted in advanced nations.

Rush Limbaugh’s Bedroom

Rush Limbaugh is apparently selling his New York penthouse. A purported photograph of his bedroom shows a foo-foo space possibly modeled on Cleopatra’s boudoir in the Elizabeth Taylor film, but subtly influenced by Elvis Presley’s jungle room and the poetry section of the Austin Barnes and Nobles. And the low-prole ceiling paintings and Florida beach motel murals are to die. Not to die for. To die.

It just doesn’t look very, um, Republican.

-30-

Fish Sticks, Hockey Sticks, Canadian Chicks

Mack Hall


Last week a pet whale killed its third human at about the same time the Canadian women’s hockey team won a hockey match, which hockey teams have been known to do. This hockey match, though, was for the Olympic championship.

Curiously, the girl-eating whale enjoys a better chance at praise, honor, and a picture on a cereal box. The Canadian girls (I can call them girls; I’m old) are in BIG trouble for excessive merriment, which must not be tolerated.

No, not everyone was happy to see those young Canadian women sing their national anthem with joyful tears in their eyes. American hockey fans, for instance. And a number of Canadians in the audience didn’t even bother to take off their obligatory baseball caps during “O Canada,” while Prime Minister Harper looked as if he had lost a particularly beloved looney in a wager with his driver.

Things got worse for the plucky pucksters when, later in the evening, after the fans and almost everyone else had gone home, they returned to the ice to celebrate with champagne and cigars. The photographs of this innocent jollification outraged the oh-so-easily outraged. The public relations would have been worse only if Canada’s gold medalists had killed and eaten a baby harp seal in front of a kindergarten class.

According to the BBC, the International Olympic Committee, that unimpeachable role model to the world in matters of probity, is “looking into the incident.”

Incident? The Canadian equivalent of an end-zone dance is an “incident?” Horrors.

An organization styling itself Hockey Canada apologized for the offense given by Team Canada to a frail and delicate world heretofore innocent of the lurid knowledge of champagne and cigars. Perhaps Team Canada will be required to dress in white pinafores and stand meekly before some rubbishy EuroCourt and sing “I Am Sixteen, Going on Seventeen” as penance.

In contrast to the shabby treatment given Canada’s merry hockey players, the orca (“orca” sounds so much more, like, y’know, environmental and, like, stuff than “large stupid fish”) who kills folks will enjoy a continued career in show business with Sea World, whose corporate heart is colder than Viking DNA mouldering beneath the frost at L’Anse au Meadows. Hey, so what if a loyal employee is drowned and partially eaten by a cetaceous carnivore? Such must not interfere with profits, though the Dinner with Shamu concept may need a little re-working.

Some have asked what made the critter snap? Snap? What are they going to do, give the varmint therapy? A gold medal for killing the most humans?

Others blame the victim, suggesting that her ponytail provoked the animal. Ah, yes, the ponytail defense. And will they say that the victim’s clothes were too tight?

Perhaps even now Sea World lawyers are investigating the victim’s past to determine if she once smoked a cigar or drank a glass of champagne, or was taking secret orders from Ottawa.

How curious it is that women’s honor and even their lives are less important than profits from a freaky fish show for tourists in knee-pants and Avatar tee-shirts.

God bless Canada’s women’s hockey team. They know who they are and how good they are, and so do we, and so do their truest fans: this week in Windsor, Nova Scotia, and all over Canada little girls are slipping Bambi-like on the ice with their half-litre-size hockey sticks, dreaming of Olympic gold, not of being eaten for profit and amusement. To paraphrase Mr. T, I pity the poor fish that gets in their way.

As for the stupid whale, let it be rendered into fish sticks, and soon.

-30-

Lobsters on a Plane

Mack Hall


So why do the lobsters get to ride for free?

You find your seat with your small carry-on, sit as assigned as part of the herd, and then observe that while United Air Lines has required you to pay $20 to check your suitcase, other passengers are entering the cabin with bags larger than the one you checked, multiple bags, and even large cardboard boxes containing lobsters. Live lobsters. Critters. All for free.

In Halifax, Nova Scotia a shop in the airport sells live lobsters to the sort of people who wear God Bless the USA baseball caps made in China: “Look what I brought ya from Canada, honey – a live lobster!”

Oh, yeah, a clicking, clacking crustacean. Just what everyone wants as a souvenir.

Not only does United Air Lines interpret their own baggage rules loosely, so does the United States government. Everyone entering the country must complete and sign a form stating that he is not bringing in any agricultural products or varmints. So what’s with ignoring the lobsters?

Did the lobsters have to sign a document stating that they were not bringing any parts of humans into the USA?

Is there a possibility of Mad Lobster Disease?

Are the lobsters patted and wanded? Do they have to take off their little claws while scuttling through the metal detector?

And speaking of claws, if I can’t bring my little Swiss Army knife on board, why aren’t the lobsters disarmed too? Could this be part of a plot? Is Dr. Doom lulling us to sleep with real lobsters and waiting to take over a United States aircraft with evil robot lobsters sold through a secret agent pretending to be an ‘umble dealer in live food at the Halifax airport?

The poor cabin attendants on airplanes have to deal with all the humans, excess luggage, and lobsters, trying to close the cheap plastic hatches on too many bulging bags and boxes. During the flight folks get up and open the hatches to let their excess junk drop on other folks below them.

AT DFW the lobsters got off all right, but United Air Lines whimsically offloaded the checked luggage at diverse places. When I and my party finally found ours, no one was watching it and no one asked for our claim checks. Anyone could have walked out of the airport with my dirty shirts and my loose loonies and toonies.

Shame on you, American Air Lines. Your baggage-handling practices stink as badly as those lobsters. I want my money back.

What really happens to the lobsters who were carried out past the baggage carousels with no delay? Do happy spouses or significant others clap their hands in glee and exclaim “Oh, wait until I show this exoskeletonal varmint to the neighbors!”?

Are the children sent to take their new little friend Sparky to the back yard to play?

“But Daddy, I wanted a Sergeant Preston of the Yukon action figure with a machine gun and a rocket launcher!”

“Sorry, son; Canada ran out of Mounties, but I brought you this swell lobster!”

Does the United States Department of Agriculture send a S.W.A.T. team based on a neighbor’s anonymous ‘phone call about unregistered foreign livestock?

I heard a rumor that next year halifax is going to upstage Pamplona with an annual running of the lobsters down Water Street, past Tim Horton’s, and down to Murphy’s Wharf, eh. Any fatalities will be carried out to sea on Theodore Tugboat and dumped into the water at George Lighthouse with full military honors.

Either that or stuffed into the overhead bins on United Air Lines