Ont. farmers urge halt to wind turbine development | Canadian Cattlemen

Ont. farmers urge halt to wind turbine development | Canadian Cattlemen

It looks like some folks are catching on that wind turbine generated electricity causes as many problems as it cures.

The Boer War by Thomas Pakenham

Pakenham’s very thorough history of The Boer War (1899-1902) reads like a novel and I could hardly put it down.  In my mind that puts him in a class with Barbara Tuckman and other reviewers have made the same comment.

The book was written over 30 years ago (published in 1979), so the author was able to interview a great many survivors from both sides, as well as access a mass of documents that were not available when the original histories had been written, just after the war. Pakenham regretted that there was not as much material available from the Boer side as from the British.  That is understandable as their army was purely volunteer irregulars, without the massive bureaucracy of the British military machine. There were also only 50,000 Boers vs 250,000 British.

Wars are not fought in abstract but fought by people.  The book is filled with dozens if not hundreds of characters all skillfully drawn, (though sometimes hard to keep track of, without a war room of maps and pins). While it is the politicians and officers whose names we remember from history…Asquith, Balfour, Chamberlain, Lloyd George, John Buchan, Roberts, Kitchener, French, Haig, Allenby, White, Buller, Baden-Powell, Wolseley, Churchill, Rhodes …Kruger, De Wet, Cronje, de la Rey, Botha, Smuts…Pakenham writes a great deal of his narrative from the perspective of the men on the ground, both Boer and British, as well. Their view of the war was one of deprivation, boredom, sudden death and frustration with both the enemy and their own commanding officers.

There are many conflicts within a war, not just between the side dubbed “us” and the side dubbed “the enemy” or even with the weather and the terrain.  Pakenham weaves them all into the larger struggle.  In England there were The Imperialists vs. the “Pro-Boers” as they are labeled; Colonial Office vs. War Office vs. Treasury; the “African Ring" under Wolseley vs. the “Indian Ring" under Roberts. In Africa, there were too many personal conflicts to mention here.  Initially it was Milner vs. Kruger which set the stage for the war. Then it was Buller and the other field Generals vs. Roberts/Kitchener; Rhodes vs. Milner and on it went.  Plots within plots.

It was a new kind of war Pakenham described.  Perhaps rightly called “the first modern war”.  The British, used to fighting poorly armed and organized natives in Africa and India, as usual underestimated their opponents.  (Was there ever a war that was not going to “over by Christmas”?).  The British had shed their red uniforms for khaki. It was the first war fought with smokeless powder.  Soldiers and artillery were now invisible to the enemy.  High velocity, small bore, magazine loading rifles, Lee-Enfields and Mausers, had replaced the old single shot breech-loaders. A soldier could aim and fire a clip of shots in the time it used to take to fire once.  Concentration camps, used by the Spanish against the Cubans, were used by the British who rounded up women and children as part of their scorched earth tactics against the Boer guerrillas.

The British were taught “no end of lessons” as Kipling put it, but they failed to learn the crucial one – modern weaponry combined with trenches put the advantage on the side of the defenders.  That lesson was brought home at great cost in France and Belgium during The Great War.  Buller had learned how to deal with this new way of war through the series of defeats he suffered in attempting to relieve the siege of Ladysmith.  No more one-day set-piece battles.  The new war required creeping artillery barrages, more individual initiative, better use of cover, and day after day of constant pressure.  But the pro-Kitchener crowd made Buller the scapegoat for initial British reverses and he was fired at the end of the war.  Histories are written by not only the victorious side but the victorious cliques.

Pakenham redeems Buller and illustrates that his replacements as Commander in Chief, Roberts and then Kitchener made as many if not more blunders under far easier conditions. A soldier in the field must have wondered (as I expect all soldiers do) who the real enemy was, the men facing him trying to kill him or the men behind him sabotaging his ability to do his job with endless wranglings for political position and endless blunders in supplying necessary provisions.

Without even trying, Pakenham has written an anti-war, anti-imperialism book.  Not by preaching or pointing out the obvious but by simply telling it like it was.  Another useless war.  For all that it was to be a “White Man’s” war; the Africans paid the greater price in loss of life, property and rights.  For all his Machiavellian plotting, Milner’s dream of a white non-Africaner British-only South Africa came to nothing.  The Liberals won the next election, restored self government to the four colonies and the Boer/Afrikaner parties won majorities. And in the end, Africa got her revenge on Milner who was bitten by a tstse fly and died of sleeping sickness. 

For a better and shorter review,  I suggest reading Jeff Cordell's review on Amazon at the link above. This was totally a learning experience for me, as previous knowledge was based on Canadian highschool history which was sketchy at best.  

Source for map here

Blessing of the Water

Today is Epiphany or Theophany in the Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox Church (January 6th on the Julian Calendar falls on January 19th on the Gregorian Calendar).  Beginning at midnight last night, many believers took plunges into icy water to cleanse their sins of the previous year and experience a sense of renewal.  Cross shaped holes are cut in the ice and the water is blessed by the priests prior to people taking the plunge. Pictures from several countries are HERE and HERE.

Tanya and I went to the local well where the community get their drinking water and pulled out two larges jugs of water which we will use for drinking and cooking over the next little while.  The reason is that many people, Tanya included, believe that all water is blessed or renewed this day. 

The following is lifted straight from Wikipedia;

Russia and Ukraine

The Epiphany, celebrated in Russia and Ukraine on January 19, marks the baptism of Jesus in the Orthodox Church. Believing that on this day water becomes holy and is imbued with special powers, Russians and Ukrainians cut holes in the ice of lakes and rivers, often in the shape of the cross, to bathe in the freezing water.^[76] Participants in the ritual may dip themselves three times under the water, honoring the Holy Trinity, to symbolically wash away their sins from the past year, and to experience a sense of spiritual rebirth. Orthodox priests are on hand to bless the water, and rescuers are on hand to monitor the safety of the swimmers in the ice-cold water. Other less intrepid Russians may limit their participation in the Epiphany rites to those conducted inside churches, where priests perform the Great Blessing of Waters, both on Epiphany Eve and Epiphany (Theophany) proper. The water is then distributed to attendees who may store it to use in times of illness, to bless themselves, family members, and their homes, or to drink. Some Russians and Ukrainians think any water - even from the taps on the kitchen sink - poured or bottled on Epiphany becomes holy water, since all the water in the world is blessed this day. In the more mild climate of the southern city of Sochi meanwhile, where air and water temperatures both hover in the low to mid 10 degree Celsius range in January, thousands of people jump into the Black Sea at midnight each year on Epiphany and begin to swim in celebration of the feast.^[77]

What is a Sunday without a Sermon?

Tom Weisz is a friend of my brothers and now a friend of mine.  He delivered this - his first and very likely last - sermon at the Unitarian Church in Saskatoon back in October.  I have his permission to reprint it. A bit of a lengthy read but I hope you find it worth the time.  I certainly did.

******************

Truly, no-one is more surprised to see me up here than I am. First, other than in my professional capacity, I have no great comfort in public speaking. Second, I must ask myself, just in case you’re not doing so, what the heck am I doing in some place that calls itself a church, presuming to speak? After all, I am an unrepentant cynic, who has over the years come to believe that while many individuals might well be fine and good as individuals, groups and organizations, especially when tied to a specified and common belief system, are uniformly a potential, and very commonly a literal, danger. So how to explain why, of all the options, has this one particular place become my choice to stand up before you all, doing something like this for the very first time?

First, please allow me to outline my convoluted journey to here and now - it is a considerable part of the answer.

Born in Hungary to survivors of the Holocaust, I came to Canada during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. We came to Canada, a land of refuge, as refugees.

I grew to adulthood in Montreal, in La Belle Province, cheering for Les Habitants, Nos Glorieux, Les Canadiens de Montreal, at a time when it was still the standard routine for the priests to preach at Easter time that it had been the Jews that had crucified Christ, and all that followed that belief. I learned that in the 1930s, after only Germany, Quebec had the largest Nazi party membership in the world. It was only in the 1960s that McGill University stopped having an openly quoted Jewish quota. Lest we get smug around here, I have also learned that Biggar Saskatchewan was the Canadian center for the Ku Klux Klan, and that the Klan is presently active in Regina and Calgary, at the least.

I have seen Pulitzer Prize winning photographs of Hindus or Muslims bayoneting each other during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1972. I have watched over the years the rise of the Protestant Fundamentalist movement, when books entitled “God Wants You To Have An SUV”, and other such were sold in the front lobbies of megachurches, even as our planet’s temperature rises through our actions.

I vaguely remember hearing about the deaths of First Nations people at Wounded Knee, and in June of this year read about a group of faithful First Nations Christians on a reserve in Northern Quebec who burned down a sweat lodge because it offended their beliefs, despite the sweat lodge being used to help their own people reduce their drinking and other harmful behaviours.

I have learned some of the sad history of the residential schools, created in the name of God to bring a new civilization to a people who already had one.

And I still see some Arab states and other organizations calling for the eradication of Israel and all the Jewish people, and increasingly overt examples of the old anti-semitism all around the world, and the State of Israel still taking obviously unjust actions in the name of its very survival.

And let us not forget the most recent atrocity, the targeted massacre of those young adults in Norway, yet again because of the fear of and therefore loathing of those identified as “the others”. Even if we can agree that the immediate cause was the psychopathic nature of one individual, it was the expression of a commonly identified and openly expressed hatred that was his trigger.

This is an important point, because even crazy people are connected to their historical time and environment. I recall a psychotic young man I once worked with, who believed that the unknown “they” were speaking to him and giving him directions from outer space through the satellites, which they then channelled through the television sets to him, telling him what to do. Think about the specifics of this young man’s psychotic point of view - this particular expression of madness could not have existed a hundred years ago - there were no satellites or even TVs then (yes, children, it’s true. And no internet either - there were barely telephones and they were all on land-lines!).

These examples have ranged across many of the belief systems that we are all familiar with, and I don’t doubt that with a minimal effort we could find many more. The sad old joke used to be that only the Buddhists were truly good - if they became sufficiently upset at what someone was doing theywould kill - but only themselves. And the Buddhists have their own issues of getting along.

All these evils I have just spoken of are based on the belief, held equally firmly by each one of those groups, that only they and their fellow believers have the singular specific answer to the question, “What is God”. All of these atrocities, stupidities and inanities are based on the concept of “The Other”, one who is not us, therefore to be feared, hated, judged and, if at all possible, eradicated.

So, I have come to rather firmly believe that I have earned my cynicism honestly. Sometimes I think that it can only be the blood of my father flowing in my veins, who despite his personal tragedies was the most cup-half-full individual I ever knew, that keeps me from forsaking even the concept of the possibility of finding goodness, or at the least an absence of direct malevolence, in the world.

So, what exactly am I doing in some place that calls itself a church? And why here?

The first time Chris and I came here was to listen to a topic of interest to us both - to be honest, I no longer recall what it was. I came somewhat reluctantly - as I have said on many occasions, I’m not much of a joiner, but Chris was interested in the topic, as was I.

To my own vast surprise I felt comfortable and welcomed. Not simply by the individuals here, which I had no difficulty accepting, but also by an organization that had made a deliberate, conscious decision to specifically consider how to welcome those such as I. And I was welcomed not because I share a history or belief with all of the others here, but precisely because I don’t. Here I have felt welcomed for what I have to bring, for good or ill. Here, to my vast surprise, the roots and cause of my cynicism have been understood, sometimes even shared, and more importantly, challenged. Here, the phrase “yes, I see what you’re saying, but…” is welcomed. There appears to be no singular meaning of God held here - each individual’s understanding is just as likely to be correct, or not, as anyone else’s, and all the possibilities are equally deemed valid. Here, more than anywhere else that I have wandered, I have found that being “The Other” has made me welcomed, not shunned.

There are some quite specific reasons why I so celebrate this welcoming of those so often and easily defined as the “Others”. As I had mentioned, I am a child of Holocaust survivors. The murder of the Jews, as well as of the Gypsies, homosexuals and anyone else not on the Nazi OK-for-this-week list, is an extreme, but historically hardly unusual use of otherness to justify atrocities. Yet in the case of the Jews, and so many of the others, what was it all about - just an unshared belief, a different way of life, a different faith, or a different amount of melanin in the skin. Faiths, religious or otherwise, can be so closely clung to that there are always those who are prepared to kill or to die to prove the worthiness of what is, after all, simply one out of the innumerable choices of particular sets of shared beliefs. And all of it unprovable, unknowable - the very definition of faith.

My father’s faith in religious belief did not survive the Nazi work camp that he survived, but somehow his faith in humanity, in people, did. He had been raised in an Orthodox household in Tet, a small village in western Hungary. By the time the Hungarian Jews were being rounded up he had married and had a child, my father’s daughter, my sister, and neither she nor her mother survived. It is a peculiar aspect of my own thinking that I have long realized that I owe my very existence to the death of my father’s family.

My father spoke of his war experiences only once to me, long after I had already formed my own opinions. He told me then, that after what he had seen and experienced, it was impossible for him to accept or understand how, if the Jews were indeed the chosen people, much loved by God, they could have been so obviously abandoned by the aforementioned Almighty. He found the world had been too cruel, too haphazard, too arbitrary, to accept the idea of an all-seeing, omnipotent, omnipresent supreme being. Some survivors found that their faith had been strengthened through their experiences, but my father was not among them.

Even so, somehow, in spite of all that had happened to him, my father remained one of the most “glass-half-full” individuals I have ever known. Perhaps it was his ability to find, recognize, and accept love and hope that nurtured his innate optimism -- for he remarried and went on to a long and deeply loving marriage. Not to mention, of course, the unmitigated joys of having my sister and me, who were, it goes without saying, exemplary children. At least I was, as I recall.

After my mother’s death, when my father was already 95 years old, he moved into a Jewish seniors’ residence in Montreal. He was a rarity - a male in good mental and physical health for his age. Often he would be called upon to help have a minyan, the formal requirement for 10 adult males to be present to be able to hold prayers. He never hesitated to go, despite his personal lack of faith. And I know why, and this might yet be the central secret of it all. He went for community. He went to support the people whose lives he now shared. He found it agreeable to be useful to others. It gave him, even so late in life, purpose and satisfaction. I hope that I might be echoing my father yet again - here, in this place that calls itself a church, I may have found a community where I am comfortable, where I can fit, and even though we don’t share a single, central God-belief, we do share many other beliefs and hopes.

When I was a young man I had taped to my bedroom door the two works we just heard. John Donne’s “No man is an island entire of himself…” serves to remind me that I do not live in isolation, I do not stand in isolation on my individual island. I need, am needed by and share a responsibility to a larger community; however I choose to define my community.

Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” reminds me that decisions have a price, yet freedom demands that decisions will always need to be made. And sometimes the price is discomfort with the unfamiliar, in getting out of our comfort zones.

So it was, that when Liz put out the call for volunteers to speak here, I didn’t manage to clamp down quickly enough on the voice inside my head that said --- put up or shut up.

Next Year Country: World Peace Hanging by a Thread

Next Year Country: World Peace Hanging by a Thread: By Fidel Castro Ruz Cuba Debate Jan 14th, 2012 Yesterday I had the satisfaction of having a pleasant conversation with Mahmoud Ahmadinej...

Reposted from NYC

The End of Holiday Season

Today is old calendar New Years Day in Russia, Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe which used the old calendar up to the Revolution. Last night the kids all came for supper - one last holiday feast.  Roast goose, roast pork, liver cutleta, cabbage rolls, mashed potatoes, three kinds of pickles, lots of fresh veggies filled the table to overflowing.

Goose meat is very dark but tastes wonderful. Lots of fat melts down into the bottom of the roasting pan which the dogs will enjoy today. We bought the village raised goose in the market.  When we went visiting on January 2, the village streets were filled with chickens, turkeys, geese and ducks all out enjoying the mild winter.  I saw at least two breeds of everything.  Chickens that looked like the Rhode Island Reds of my youth and Bronze turkeys which I didn't know they even made anymore. 

Today, Tanya took down all the Christmas decorations. Kuchma was busy casing the attic while Tanya stows everything.   She put them up while I was in Canada so they have been up for over a month.  Last night she went around taking pictures of the decorations and of all of us in various states of recovery from supper. That is what I get for putting fresh batteries in her camera.

We didn't wrap any gifts this year.  Bagged them all (thanks, MayB)

Ewwww.  They're kissing.

2002 - The Year from Hell - 10th Anniversary

Ten years ago yesterday morning, 11/01/2002, my mother dropped dead of a massive heart attack, two months shy of her 81st birthday.  This was the opening salvo in a year like none other.  She had gone into the local hospital in Biggar 50 km away for a couple days of tests and they found nothing out of ordinary so she was being discharged that morning.  Dad was driving in to get her and they met him at the door with the news.

Ella and I were in Edmonton when we got the phone call from Dad.  We were at Ella's cousin's, having arrived late the evening before.  Carolyn was in the last stages of an 8 year battle with breast cancer and we wanted to spend as much time with her as possible.  She and Ella were closer than cousins, closer than sisters.  Her battle was Ella's battle for eight years.  Carolyn's funeral was mid-February.  Ella was devastated.

Two weeks after Mom's funeral, Dad went in for replacement of his right hip   Something to take his mind off being a widower after 56 years.  He recovered pretty well and was adjusting to being alone.  He was actually able to seed the home quarter in late May.  His 60th crop planted but not harvested.  On June 27, in the afternoon, he was driving into Biggar, hit a gravel ridge in the middle of the highway, rolled the van and it was all over.  The construction was well signed but in the glare of the sun, the gravel was the same colour as the road.  We learned later that friends of ours almost hit the ridge earlier.

My Uncle Frank, husband of Mom's youngest sister, came out to the farm the day of Mom's death but he never got to her funeral.  He was admitted to hospital with a brain tumor.  His funeral was in October. His wife had remarked at Christmas that it was so wonderful that the three sisters and their husbands were still alive and well.  Ten months later three of them were gone. Such is life.

About a month after Carolyn's funeral, Ella started bleeding.  Badly.  This had happened eight years previously when Carolyn had been diagnosed.  She should have had a hysterectomy then but whatever meds the doctor gave her at the time did the trick. We assumed they would work again this time so I took off for Ukraine where I had a four month contract, two in spring, two in fall.  The meds didn't work.  D&C didn't work.  She was VERY sick and MayB carried the load because I was away.  Finally had the hysterectomy just before I got back from Ukraine.

Can't recall whether it was just before Dad's funeral or just after but the biopsy report had come back and Ella went into see the surgeon.  I sat in the waiting room.  She sat down and the Dr asked if she had anyone with her who could sit in on the meeting. It was not going to be good news. 

There are two kinds of cancer, Carcinoma and Sarcoma.  You can look them up.  If you have to have cancer, carcinoma is the kind you want.  Sarcoma is BAD news.  Fortunately it is rare.  Not only that but there is a very bad kind of Sarcoma, the name of which I cannot recall, which is even more rare.  Not rare enough.  Most cancers are rated by stages 1-4 or a-d.  This one had no stages.  You got one cell in your body it is all over but the crying.  They hoped they had it all and would use radiation to make sure.  So they did.  All summer. Things were looking good.  I went back to Ukraine.


Got back in late October.  Ella met me at the airport looking scared to death.  She hadn't told the kids.  Her abdomen was so full of tumors you could see them. Oncologist said we'll try radiation but take lots of family pictures.  The stuff they put her one was pretty deadly.  The handlers gowned up like it was nitric acid.  One week a month, then hope her blood count would recover enough to give her another treatment. There was a limited number they could give her before the treatment would kill her.

One thing about having a cancer no one survives is that someone has got to be first.  So we all put our hopes on that and carried on.  The kids painted the kitchen while she was in having a treatment.  Our friend, Lois, whose house at Christmas is dubbed Little Las Vegas, came and decorated our house for the holidays while Ella was in having her third treatment.  No. 1 Son and LynnieC late one night cut David Letterman's picture out of the paper and hung it on the Christmas tree to see if anyone would notice.  We didn't but DL's picture is now a family tradition ornament. Ella even got her annual Christmas Letter out.  We survived Christmas.

Not a year I would care to repeat.

I'd like to end the story there but need to close it off better than that.  2003 was a pretty good year for 10 months at least.  After 6 treatments, they could find no sign of cancer.  Nothing.  Nada. She was the poster child of the cancer ward.  Ella even went back to work half time for six months and had the opportunity to clean up a problem that had been bugging her for several years.  Alas, the first survivor had yet to be and the cancer was back in November this time as a brain tumor.  The operation paralyzed one side and it was time for a wheel chair.  Then the abdominal tumors came back with a vengeance and April 9, 2004, Ella lost her battle.

A roller coaster ride I would not care to repeat either.