Gardening! SunFest. Release of the big project. No more Jersey Milk. Military reactionaries. Happy Pride! Border bullshit. Every day is TACO Tuesday.
In life: I’m sad, angry, disheartened about the news about the death, injuries, lawless secret police in Carpinteria and the precautions put in place at CSULA have me exhausted. Watching terrorists on my former patch is stressful when all I can do from here is bear witness.
I used to work in the CSU and have many friends and colleagues at CSULA. Like the Dodger stadium protest and the Home Depot harassment it’s very close to my former house. My late wife’s family live in Carp right off Casitas Pass Road next to the fields where shit went down. I have spent a lot of time cycling the beautiful back roads and swimming the beach there. It is clear California is occupied. Feeling some survivors guilt for leaving the country.
The big event for me here this week is my big project finally went live to the world.
I woke early Sunday to take advantage of the cooler morning shade covering the front garden beds. I’ve managed to do more gardening than usual this year. It brings me joy and peace to putter around in the yard. We all need to have our positive things as the world gets ever more dangerous..
Pain has been minimal. I tread lightly and ice and Rx naproxen as soon as I finish in the yard for the day. There’s always a big list of to-dos re: landscaping at the Manor. Due to ability I can manage to stay on top of the grass moving. Things like weeding, edging, trimming are more difficult for me. My neighbours are so kind to not be judgey about how things can look ragged.
Porch re-finishing work got underway this week. Which meant clearing a path around it for my contractor to have access. Major weeding and soil turning already done. Now it’s laying down landscaping cloth and covering it with cardboard to bake the fuck out of the errant grass and perennial weeds. I have dreams of planting pretty things. Most likely it’s going to live as soil and mulch for this season.
Other joyful stuff: got my bike tuned and I’m ready to ride again. London has AMAZING bike paths. K and I went to SunFest and spent time enjoying world music sipping local craft beer. There’s a festival of some sort nearly every weekend in Victoria Park, right in the heart of the city. SunFest is the biggest and best. I can easily do the ten minute walk there from my place and every time I do, I marvel at my good fortune to be where I am.
In Canadiana: Legionnaires’ disease has broken out in my city and they haven’t yet pinpointed the source. One dead and 40 sick. Meanwhile the rampant corruption at our hospital is ever more exposed. The London Health Sciences Centre is suing the grifters who sucked away millions in an insider scheme with contractors.
“Neilson” stops manufacturing of Jersey Milk. It’s not my thing and I don’t really care since Dairy Milk is the same thing. Neilson was a Canadian company. Now both Cadbury and Neilson are owned by the same international conglomerate. And both are made in the same factory in Toronto. Oligopoly grows.
In politics: Don’t think for a minute that we’re safe from fascism in Canada. Our military is infiltrated by conspiracists willing to violently take power. Four Armed Forces members diverted weapons and planned an attack to take land.
Alberta, our answer to Texas, continues it’s right wing attacks and book burning desires. As we know, anything queer is inherently deemed sexually explicit. Happy Pride week! It’s our local parade and festival this weekend. You know I’ll be walking over to the park to catch it. Our visibility and resistance is ever more important.
A U.S. green card holder was turned back at the border in New Brunswick. It’s hard to feel empathy for a Trump supporter when they said they were going to do these things before they were elected. And come on, he’s lucky he wasn’t detained and disappeared and has his white privilege to thank for it.
The Canadian-U.S. trade deal deadline keeps getting pushed. The orange menace keeps waffling. Because TACO. More tariffs loom. This time it’s copper. And the threat of a 35% across the board tariff on everything not within CUSMA. We know it’s going to be tough. We’re ready with elbows up, keeping our boycott going.
Enjoying the local seasonal strawberries and cherries with my morning coffee as I send you, as always, love and courage my friends!