Sunday, January 27, 2019

The boy in the hat



The picture in question — the video, actually — electrified social media over the weekend. In it, a white high school boy wearing a “Make America Great Again” cap, confronts an older Native American man who is beating a ceremonial drum and singing a Native song. The encounter took place Friday on the National Mall. The man was there as part of the Indigenous Peoples March. The boy was with a group from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky that was participating in the “March For Life” anti-abortion rally.
The man sings. The boy smirks. Some of his classmates mock the Native man. Someone yells, “Build the wall!” And there was, for many of us, something starkly symbolic in all of it, something that spoke of American fracture.

And there still is, because even in the story that the boy has been telling — the story that’s supposed to exonerate him and leave him with “nothing to apologize for” he is still the one who escalates this into a confrontation.

The students began what they described as a school spirit chant to drown out the black men. Tensions were high. And into this cauldron of ideology and identity stepped Nathan Phillips, a 64-year-old elder of the Omaha people and a Vietnam veteran. His aim in walking through the crowd, he said, was to settle things down. As he told The New York Times, “I stepped in between to pray.”
The crowd, he said, parted to let him through. All except for the boy, since identified as Nick Sandmann, a junior. Phillips said the boy blocked him when he moved left. When he moved right, Sandmann did the same.

In a written statement, the boy denied blocking Phillips. “To be honest,” he wrote, “I was startled and confused as to why he had approached me.”

But the boy in that video, smirking, trying not to laugh, is not startled or confused. He looks, rather, entitled and smug.
If you’re walking down the sidewalk and someone steps directly in your path, refusing to move, and when you try to step around them, that person moves to block your way, which if you is causing a confrontation? Sandmann is just a Pool Patty who happens to have a PR firm and media connections.

Excerpts from a column by Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald commentary by Mark Sumner, Daily Kos

Yabbut.
I used to be a high school teacher. Admittedly I’m not American, and my culture isn’t either Kentuckian nor American Catholic.
Consequently, I don’t understand this story at all.
OK; I get that they’re from a Catholic private boys’ school, and that their values might not be mine. Nevertheless.
This took place on a Friday, when schools are normally in session. The boy in question is obviously young, apparently a “junior”, which in our system makes him a Grade 11 student. In our system Grade 11 students aren’t considered sufficiently civilized to send off on their own, and certainly not in a group.
So I have some questions:
1. What is the point of sending a group of teenaged boys from Kentucky to an anti-abortion rally in Washington DC? Field trip?
2. Who allowed them to wear those hats, which immediately identified them as Trump acolytes? What point did their supervisors, assuming they had some, think they were making?
3. Where are the supervising teachers?! Doesn’t this incident make a mockery of the Catholic in their school name? Doesn’t it speak volumes about the school? Would you send your kid there?
4. The Reverend John Stowe, Bishop of Lexington, apologized for the incident and made the relevant case:
"It astonishes me that any students participating in a pro-life activity on behalf of their school and their Catholic faith could be wearing apparel sporting the slogans of a president who denigrates the lives of immigrants, refugees and people from countries that he describes with indecent words and haphazardly endangers with life- threatening policies," he wrote.
5. So it is interesting that the Most Reverend Roger Foys, Bishop of Covington Diocese, would have a different take, illustrating where his moral compass is set: "We should not have allowed ourselves to be bullied and pressured into making a statement prematurely, and we take full responsibility for it," Foys wrote. "I especially apologize to Nicholas Sandmann and his family, as well as to all CovCath families who have felt abandoned during this ordeal."
6. There’s still no apology from Nick Sandman, the boy caught on camera most prominently. Instead, his parents hired a PR firm, and everyone spun. Interesting life lesson, that.
7. I haven’t been able to find any statement by the school or its administration. Except this, an email to parents:
“The incident that took place at the March for Life in Washington, D.C. is being fully investigated by an
independent third-party investigator. Based upon and following an investigation, we will be taking the appropriate action regarding this matter,” the email reads. “Please know that the administration is currently working with the Diocese, local police departments, and local authorities to ensure the safety of our students, faculty and staff.”
8. Mind-boggling, I’d say, and totally foreign to my experience of some 35 years in public high schools.

Saturday, January 26, 2019

Letter to Minister of Fisheries, Oceans, and the Coast Guard


Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson,
Minister of Fisheries, Oceans, and the Canadian Coast Guard
House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6

cc Rachel Blainey, MP
House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6


383 Frances Avenue
Campbell River, BC
V9W 1Y1

January 26, 2019


Dear Minister Wilkinson,

I wish to add my name to the long list of people who object to the roe herring fishery that takes place annually off Hornby and Denman Islands.
As you are from the west Coast you will be aware of the historic and current importance of herring in the viability of Chinook salmon and the orcas which feed on them.
You will also be aware that these two species, once so numerous, are in real danger of disappearing, and that the Hornby/Denman herring spawn is the last of the many that occurred on our coast as recently as the 1970’s, when they first started to be fished in a concerted way and also started to disappear.
You will also be aware that this is no longer a winner for what is left of the fishing industry on our coast.
Please use your office to stop this fishery before it too disappears.


Yours very sincerely,

Saturday, January 5, 2019

Another rejected letter...

The Globe didn't like this enough to publish it when I sent it to the editor on December 31; however, I just came across it again, and I still like it, and still think it both concise and relevant:

On this side of the Rockies we're getting a little tired of Albertans whining about their economy and oil glut and pretending it's somehow our fault.
Alberta's in trouble? Their per capita GDP in 2017 was $20,000 more than Canada's, $21,000 more than ours.
They need their pipeline? Not at the expense of our coastal economy, they don't. If there's an over-supply, stop producing so much. The resource won't go away.
They're paying more than their share in equalization? They're just paying their federal taxes, like the rest of us. What the feds do with that money afterwards is Canada's problem, not Alberta's.
They're having trouble paying for their government services? That's what taxes are for. The rest of us pay sales tax; they don't.
Enough, already! 


Also, I haven't seen any of the arguments presented  here refuted.