I could write, tonight, about some of those things that Nature uses to suck you in, like the pleas­ant sun­set I just saw. It was mel­low, rather than spec­tac­u­lar. A glow­ing tan­ger­ine sun descend­ing slow­ly behind the ridge, with clouds daubed onto the sky by some minor 17th cen­tu­ry Dutch mas­ter. The sort of sun­set that makes you feel the sphere of the Earth rolling under your feet, but does­n’t look like it was con­jured up by Indus­tri­al Light & Mag­ic. But I would rather write about the nas­ti­er side of Nature. Read more »

I took the dogs out after a late after­noon show­er, and there was a quite spec­tac­u­lar rain­bow, con­trast­ed against the retreat­ing storm clouds. I let the crit­ters romp in the wet grass and clover while soak­ing in the sym­phonie fan­tas­tique of smells the rain had brought out.

So when I returned to the house, I felt I deserved a feast. The prop­er ingre­di­ents were at hand. I put on some Haydn, and dined on steamed beets and cau­li­flower, and a fresh­ly made tour­tière. Tour­tière is a meat pie, usu­al­ly game or beef or pork, served by French Cana­di­an fam­i­lies through­out through­out the coun­try, and occa­sion­al­ly mak­ing an appear­ance in New Eng­land or Min­neso­ta. There are hun­dreds of vari­ants (that of the Sague­nay region being par­tic­u­lar­ly bizarre). In some places it is made “à l’é­cos­saise”, with oat­meal added, and some­times “à l’ir­landaise”, with pota­toes added, where Scot­tish and Irish influ­ence made their mark. It is wide­ly said to have been devised to cook pas­sen­ger pigeons — which flew across North Amer­i­ca in great black clouds of mil­lions before they became extinct. How­ev­er, I sus­pect that this was mere­ly one con­ve­nient fill­ing for an all-pur­pose pie brought by Canada’s ear­li­est Nor­man and Bre­ton set­tlers. In Cana­da, meat and game were sta­ples for the inde­pen­dent habi­tants, though back in France, such dish­es would have been only for the rich. In France, today, the word tour­tière means a shal­low pan for mak­ing pies, though I don’t think any­thing much like the Cana­di­an dish exists there now. It doubt­less descends from the Mid­dle Ages, since the meat is slow­ly sim­mered with onions, sage, rose­mary, savory, nut­meg, cin­na­mon, cloves, all­spice and plen­ty of black pep­per before it is enclosed in a thick, flaky pie crust… a very medieval style of cook­ing. True to this archa­ic pat­tern, it should be served with some­thing sweet on the side: pick­led beets, a sweet rel­ish, or even a chut­ney. In this case, I had some beets handy. At a Christ­mas réveil­lon, it would be served as a desert course, com­pet­ing with the apple and blue­ber­ry pies. A doc­u­ment­ed recipe from the year 1611 is vir­tu­al­ly iden­ti­cal to the one used in my family.

Do not, under any cir­cum­stances, imag­ine that a frozen tour­tière pur­chased in a super­mar­ket gives even a hint of this del­i­ca­cy. Those are fraudu­lant abom­i­na­tions, no mat­ter how folksy-look­ing the package.

The Com­mu­nist Par­ty in Bei­jing is broad­cast­ing care­ful­ly staged fan­ta­sy images of “cel­e­bra­tions” in Lhasa, as the Olympic Flame makes it’s appear­ance in Tibet. In real­i­ty, the city is locked down. All traf­fic is stopped, Tibetans are not allowed to walk about with­out spe­cial per­mits, and a huge for­eign army patrols the streets. Tanks, guns, beat­ing batons are every­where. Near the Pota­la, a hand­ful of hand-picked stooges are present to be pho­tographed cheering.

This is the real­i­ty of the “Olympic Spir­it” — at least the ver­sion of it approved in the Age of Cor­po­ratism and Dic­ta­tor­ship. If I hear even one oth­er per­son using that sick­en­ing phrase, I will turn my back on them and walk away. There is no sense talk­ing to peo­ple who live in a world of lies, and aban­don their fel­low human beings to slav­ery, then spew out pro­pa­gan­da garbage claim­ing they rep­re­sent noble values.

For the next three weeks, I’ll be at my friends, Steve and Ruta Muhlberg­er, mind­ing their farm while they’re away. A pleas­ant atmos­phere, and not much work involved, as there are only three hors­es, two dogs and some cats to care for, nowa­days. And the fields are so lush from rain that the hors­es can pret­ty much fend for them­selves. There is also an infi­nite sup­ply of blue­ber­ries and rasp­ber­ries, unless the bears vac­u­um them up before I can pick them. Fresh berries, fresh eggs, milk straight from the cow. Sun­light, star­ry skies, crisp clean air. Boy, do I ever need a dose of this stuff. I have a small amount of con­trac­tu­al work to do, while I’m here, but for the most part I’ll be work­ing on my own stuff ― a rare and blessed lux­u­ry. Read more »

Cana­di­ans are notic­ing a dra­mat­ic rise in food prices. The price of rice has dou­bled in a few months, and prod­ucts made of wheat are about fifty per­cent more expen­sive. I live on a very tight bud­get, so it affects me direct­ly. Not as direct­ly, of course, as the mil­lions in unluck­i­er coun­tries who will expe­ri­ence food shortages.

My par­tic­u­lar sur­vival strat­e­gy depends on cir­cum­vent­ing glob­al state-cor­po­rate agribusi­ness. Instead of serv­ing my stews, chilis, and veg­eta­bles on rice, I am reg­u­lar­ly buy­ing njeera (or injera, enji­ra, etc.) at the local Ethiopian/Somali shops. There are sev­er­al bak­eries in Toron­to that pro­duce the deli­cious East African sta­ple food, which, since it lies out­side of the con­trol of glob­al agri­cul­tur­al col­lec­tivism, has not sig­nif­i­cant­ly risen in price. Not only does it taste delight­ful, but it is high­ly nutri­tious. And the dish­es I put on the njeera? They are made, as much as I can man­age, from sea­son­al local pro­duce. Giv­en a choice between pay­ing mon­ey to an hon­est Cana­di­an farmer and pay­ing mon­ey to some loath­some glob­al gang­ster who hires death squads to ter­ror­ize serfs, I know what choice is both moral and patri­ot­ic. Read more »

In a speech, today, Canada’s Prime Min­is­ter, Stephen Harp­er out­lined his plan to force our coun­try down the same path to bank­rupt­cy and self-destruc­tion that the Unit­ed States has relent­less­ly pur­sued over the last gen­er­a­tion. It’s first pur­pose is to destroy our domes­tic indus­try (espe­cial­ly in Ontario) and reduce us to abject sub­mis­sion to “Big Ener­gy”, the glob­al com­mu­nism of oil sheiks, dic­ta­tors and multi­na­tion­al gang­sters. It’s sec­ondary pur­pose is to esca­late eco­nom­i­cal­ly par­a­lyz­ing mil­i­tary spend­ing, and make us even more avail­able as mer­ce­nary canon fod­der to our glob­al mas­ters. Canada’s indus­tri­al base is rapid­ly dis­in­te­grat­ing. Just today, the clo­sure of anoth­er major indus­tri­al facil­i­ty in Ontario was announced. Canada’s cur­rent­ly “strong” econ­o­my is being propped up by oil and gas pro­duc­tion, and pros­per­i­ty is con­fined to the exportable resource regions. Oil, gas, min­ing. The Con­ser­v­a­tive regime is forc­ing us back into the pathet­ic “hew­ers of wood and draw­ers of water” sta­tus that it took us a cen­tu­ry of strug­gle to free our­selves from. The decade of bal­anced bud­gets and sur­plus­es gen­er­at­ed by Lib­er­al gov­ern­ments has been can­celed out ― pil­laged by the Con­ser­v­a­tive regime ― and we will soon be plung­ing into debt. This is the result of import­ing the obnox­ious, free­dom-hat­ing Con­ser­v­a­tive ide­ol­o­gy that has crip­pled and dis­hon­oured the Unit­ed States ― an ide­ol­o­gy that would far more accu­rate­ly be named “Neo-Com­mu­nism”. Read more »