Let Freedom Ring: Toronto City Hall Ends Strike

I am reprinting today, with indebtedness to Martin Luther King Jr., an amended [changes in blue] version of his great speech, I Have a Dream, which, as every great speech will attest, lends itself admirably (I hope) to every crisis:

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five weeks ago, a great North American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed a strike declaration. This momentous declaration came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of government slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one thousand hours later, the government employee still is not free. One thousand hours later, the life of the employee is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One thousand hours later, the employee lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of immaterial prosperity. One thousand hours later, the employee is still languished in the corners of North American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our fair nation wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution, they were signing a promissory note to which every North American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, union men as well as non union men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that North America, and Toronto in particular, has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of City Hall are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, North America has given the Employees a bad check—a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind North America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of Miller’s – oh no, I mean God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Employee's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Two thousand and nine is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Employee needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in North America until the Employee is granted his rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Employee community must not lead us to a distrust of all union people, for many of our union brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of city hall rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Employee is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of garbage hauling, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the employee's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Union Members Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as an Employee in Toronto cannot vote and an Employee in Etobicoke believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cubicles. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to North York, go back to Scarborough, go back to Little India, go back to the Beach/es, go back to Rosedale, go back to the slums and ghettos of our city, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the North American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of PEI, the sons of former union employees and the sons of former non union employees will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the city of Toronto, a city sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, sweltering in the mists of steamy garbage heaps, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my our little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by their union or non union status but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in City Hall, with its vicious councillors, with its mayor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in City Hall little non union boys and girls will be able to join hands with little union boys and girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the office with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if North America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of Leslieville.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of High Park.

Let freedom ring from the heightening businesses of the Junction.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped coffee shops of Mississauga.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of New Toronto.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Ward’s Island.

Let freedom ring from the Toronto Zoo.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of the Scarborough Bluffs.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every suburb and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, union men and non union men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, gays and heteros, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Employee spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Folk Art Jesus

I just emailed my son about this, because it is -- or was -- a conundrum of epic proportions.

It started this way:

Every week after our volunteer night shift has ended, a group of my favourite women and I scoot about town trying out the various gelato/granita stores. (One store per week, I mean, not all at once.) The very first place we went to, in fact, is on Mount Pleasant Road -- they have a lemon granita that is to die for -- tart enough that it burns all the way down. Among all the other intolerances I have, I am lactose intolerant, so I am always happy to see dairy-free treats with my name written all over them.

This all means that over the past four weeks I have been to Il Gelatiere as many times, three times with mareseatoats and once with our friend, Susan. The night we went with Susan, we happened to window shop along the short block between the car and the gelato shop, along the way discovering many enticing trinkets and toys, including a turquoise ring (enhanced, as it turns out, by the lateness of the evening); a straw carry-all bag made in Morocco (which I now own), and a window filled with folk art items, among them a small wooden statue of Jesus.

After we got home I said, "Wouldn't Jesus look great up on top of the white bookcase? What with that vivid red coat he's -- excuse me -- He's wearing, don't you think it would be a wonderful match?"

"Well...I'm really not sure."

"What do you mean -- you're really not sure? You think people would be offended by a wooden Jesus?"

"Now that you ask, yes. They might not understand."

"What's to understand? Do they live here? I happen to think he's -- excuse me -- He's funny, and, although moderately irreverent, I think there's something quite lovely about h--Him. You don't?"

"I don't know."

So I set the whole thing aside. Until today. When I went back to the store to see about purchasing Jesus.

The first thing I did when I went in was pick Him up. I held Him in my hands and rolled Him around a bit, trying to feel the heft of Him. I also looked for a price tag. There was none.

As I walked toward the counter and the serious-looking woman standing behind it, I glanced at the price tags hanging from the many small folk art pieces. By the time I reached the woman and she was asking me, sternly, if she could help me with anything, I braved to say that I thought the prices might be a little beyond my means but I would like to know how much was that Jesus in the window.

"The one with the red coat?"

"That's right," I said, and then I half whispered, "I do hope that Jesus's for sale."

"Well," she said, "There's another red Jesus over there. You could look."

"Where?" I asked.

"Up there," she replied.

Not seeing Him at all, I said so, to which she replied, "The red Jesus -- UP THERE."

The fear of her acrid tone sent my eyes upward to a much taller Jesus who was, in fact, wearing a gold-coloured coat, not a red one.

"I'm afraid that His coat is gold."

"The red-coated folk art figure UP THERE? He is much less expensive [$425.00, if memory serves] than the Jesus in the window. The Jesus in the window was made by the famous folk artist _________ [I'm afraid I have forgotten his name already]."

"I am afraid," I began -- I confess to small feelings of indignance -- "that I am not used to your prices. I have a friend with a store on Queen Street West and --"

"What kind of items does she have?"

"Well, her store is retro and -- "

"Retro is not antique." (The woman does have a point.)

"I know," I said, "but it's an eclectic mix of oak and teak and --"

"Teak is not 1800s."

"Yes, but she has bottles like these [this woman's marked at over $100.00 and up, my friend's under $20.00 apiece], and many of the same kinds of items you have in your store."

The woman ignored me. It was clear that I wasn't going to get Jesus.

In the end, two things struck me: this was all Susan's fault for bidding $60.00 on an auction folk art cow, a Holstein, and winning him, thereby raising my expectations, and Jesus' fault for not having the right heft or up-close colour that he appeared to have from the darkened street when my happy belly was full of granita. Oh yes, and the fact that He cost more than what He would have had to pay for a 1000 robes back in the old Bethlehem market.

Anyway, tonight the women and I will be trying a gelato shop up near Yonge and St. Claire -- Xococava -- but if I see so much as a hint of a wooden Jesus I am hightailing it home -- empty-handed.

<:^)

Toronto Weather Report

And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. Oh oh.

Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.

Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.

For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights (true to His word); and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth. Oh oh.

And Noah did according unto all that the Lord commanded him. Well, wouldn't you?

And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth. I ask myself -- how is that possible? And yet I know this is how old I feel some days. Perhaps it's a metaphor.

And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives (name two!) with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood.

Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth,

There went in two and two (inch by inch, row by row) unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.

And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.

In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month (I think they have their dates wrong), the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. and forty days and forty nights -- where would I be without my woman? Oh...sorry.

In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham (great...now I'm hungry) , and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark; they, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort. And that includes Boots, Galoshes, Sneakers, Slippers, and Ralph. And Pooh Bear.

And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life.

And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the Lord shut him in. Oh oh.

And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.

And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters.

And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth (they really know how to hammer home a point); and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.

Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. I want a piece of cheese.

And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

News at 11.

Archived Friday, August 8, 2008 -- just to show you how much things don't change all that much (or something like that)

Recycling

I was talking with an LGBT counsellor a couple of weeks ago about the ratio of grandparents who are not permitted in their grandchildren's lives. I assumed that the numbers would probably be higher for grandparents whose lives do not meet what we still, in this country at least, regard as social, familial and cultural norms within the context of sexuality.

What she told me, however, took me outside the boundaries of sexuality and into a world I have known all too well myself.

Adults who, as children, were sexually or psychologically abused and emotionally and physically abandoned, carry with them the added burden and stigma of the scapegoated individual who, because they were deemed throwaway when they were young, are too often perpetually abused in repeating patterns that permit people to deem these once-abused children dispensable. Does that run-on attempt at an explanation make any sense? Let me try again:

People who were dumped on as kids are seen as garbage containers by those family members -- and sometimes by friends (especially by friends who themselves were abused) -- who are badly behaved and looking for excuses to blame someone else. You might know an adult, for example, who has spent a lot of her life in silent or overt apology -- which is apparently what a large proportion of abused children grow up and do -- who is the first person her family members blame because, after all, if this woman had any true worth, would she have been treated so badly when she was a child? (Mind you, in some instances, I think the whole thing can be relegated to laziness and lack of imagination: "I'll choose her, because everyone knows she was hated when she was a kid" sort of thing.)

I suppose it's similar to that pecking order things, a hierarchy we all know if we have ever joined a group midway in its evolution, or gone to school, or belonged to a moderately-sized family. Someone always wants to be head cheese, but in order to do that they need baby cheeses who are willing to fall in line behind them.

I have written elsewhere about hierarchies and scapegoating, but I had not heard it spoken of in this pervasive child-to-parent pattern way -- a way that can repeat itself eternally, like falling dominoes, among family members, and is often used by adult children against parents when those adult children are clearly aware of the abandonment issues their parents have dealt with and might still be dealing with -- even and sometimes especially when those parents do not speak about their childhood abuse.

What scapegoated adults need to learn to do in these situations, in order to reclaim their own place and role among their larger family, is decide whether they are capable of confronting the people who are continuing to abuse them. In some cases, this will mean taking a trip to visit those family members; in others, it could mean hiring a lawyer. In still others, a person will have to decide whether she is capable of enduring any further trauma; whether she has already had too much.

I suggest to anyone who is trying to deal with children-to-grandchildren issues that they find a way to combat ostracization. It isn't just because you have a right to know your grandchildren, it is that they have a right to know you. By the way, if you happen to be gay and are living with a same-sex partner, your partner has grandparental rights, too. And if you're fortunate enough to have a compassionate lawyer, this can be made affordable for you and, more important, made safe for your grandchildren. I always hear that the cycle of abuse has to stop somewhere, but I think a more insidious problem exists when we don't understand the myriad ways abuse can, and does, replicate itself.

And go round and round and round in the circle game.

~ Bi Lines ~

Lake Erie

The waters of Erie are green or they're gray,
Or blue, when the sky's blue when seen far away;
At nighttime, they're black; in a storm, they're like wine;
In the sun, shards on pavement, all shatter and shine;
And sometimes they're angry and cruel, like the Devil,
As they endlessly push east in search of sea level.

But the waters of Erie are giddy today;
The waves have come home to dance in the bay,
And, though they're not drunk, I think they've been drinking,
And become a bit thoughtless and become a bit thinking,
And they hold one another, and they weep their fond tears;
It's been thus for these waters, for years and for years.

Don Ives
1952-2004

Plan B

Most days I am satisfied with my present life. Most days I find something for which to count myself lucky. But some days -- and it's almost always on a Friday, and I don't know why -- I feel a little resentful over where life has taken me, which is too far removed from the generic land of friendships.

Most of my closest friends, in fact, don't even live in Ontario, and I wonder (usually on Fridays) would I see them any more than I already do if they lived close by? (Yes, I would, but let me save that part for a non-self-pitying day.)

Maybe I wouldn't feel so bad if the people I consider my friends weren't so often -- usually on Fridays I realize, now as I type this -- telling me about the plans they have made with all of their wonderful friends: camping plans, music festival plans, party plans, concert plans, picnicking plans, and so on.

It wasn't all that long ago that two friends -- one of mareseatoat's longest-standing, in fact -- sat in our living room and told us about their fabulous adventures in Prince County and how they had rented a cottage and had invited eight friends from Toronto (we live in Toronto!) to come spend the week with them.

I confess, I don't expect to be included in everyone else's plans. I know that I have no business interfering in lifelong dynamics, and I have learned the hard way that I am on the wrong side of the hetero-/homo- question. But do people really have to tell me, over and over again, about all of the fun-filled group events they have planned or have been invited to over the weekend? Couldn't they just talk about the weather and how irritating all these strikes are and about their favourite summer movies?

And I do say this with a bit of a shamed faced. Tomorrow we are going to a friend's for lunch, and another friend just emailed to ask if we had any free time for a visit, and on Tuesday I am having dinner with five fabulous women who are my friends, and I know that we always have lots to do and that I have some lovely family members left and new and less-new babies to celebrate.

Still, in my head it's a matter of what should be customary politeness and feeling as if I am worth enough for a) an invitation, or b) an absence of reference to them.

In the meantime, I am just going to sit here and choke down a few more sour grapes.

<:^)

Doppelgangers

Don't you think Uma Thurman looks like Eve Arden's granddaughter? And what about Kathy Bates and Janeane Garofalo as mother and daughter? And is it me, or do Shirley MacLaine and Jenny O'Hara look like sisters? And as I've said a hundred times before, how about Margaret Colin and Elizabeth Perkins? They're practically ringers in my head.

I know for a fact that Mary can't get through half a day without being told how much she looks like Ellen Degeneres, but I wonder how much a person's odds are reduced -- or enhanced -- if they roll up the pike resembling someone who is already famous. Or worse, what if you're absolutely lovely but you look like Adolph Hitler? (I suppose you could always shave the moustache.)

I have heard it said at least a dozen times that everyone has a doppelganger, but I am not sure I believe that is true. I do recall, however, back in the '80s in Charlottetown when several people came into the bar where I worked to see if I was still alive. Apparently, a young woman my age had died of a stroke, and she, everyone said, looked identical to me (and vice versa, of course). Subsequently, I often wondered about her life, and why she had had to die so tragically young. But it is true -- I felt more connected to her because of our resemblance -- which isn't exactly a positive trait, if you ask me.

People have often come up to my daughter and me to ask if we are related. A waiter at The Tulip Restaurant on Queen Street East, for example, wanted to know if we were sisters. I nearly dropped an entire handful of mashed potatoes, I was so pleased. (I'm not sure Sarah felt quite as flattered, given our twenty-two year age difference.) Anyway, it isn't that our features are so much alike, but our habits and ways -- the turn of our heads or the way our eyebrows go up at almost everything or the way we gasp and laugh -- things like these that make us recognizable as family.

A few weeks ago, Sarah and Mary and Lainey and I were having lunch on Queen Street West, high above the ground overlooking old City Hall, and from (his) behind we saw a man who looked exactly like Don -- bald pate, brown/grey fringe, identical build, same suit jacket and pants, similar watch (and, like Don, no other jewelry), polished black shoes, cozy but elegant socks, feet resting at odd angles to one another, hands intermittently clasped and unclasped -- I couldn't stop staring at him. When we left the table Sarah and I turned around to see how much he looked like her father from the front, and were surprised that not one of his features was similar to Don's. Frankly, I was relieved, but I am not sure all of the reasons why.

Anyway, I am also not sure why I began this thread or where it's going, except that I was listening to Call-Me-Raif Fiennes on television this afternoon, and he looked like another man named Don that I used to know from long long ago, and I suppose one thing led to another. Which also reminds me of the time Shirley MacLaine was in Toronto doing a film, and Danny (you don't know him, but you probably wouldn't want to: he had tip-up fingernails) happened to walk by her -- she was decked out in frumpy rain gear as part of her role -- and he said, "Nice boots, Shirl." I can't remember whether she laughed, but I would have -- although I confess to a general aversion to flipposity.

Which now reminds me of Bob (you don't know him, either, but he introduced me to Danny) and I racing up Yonge Street back in the '70s chasing after Henry Morgan from I've Got A Secret. We panted our way up to Yorkville Avenue a few steps in front of him and plunked ourselves down onto a sidewalk bench. As Mr. Morgan approached I looked up at him and asked, breathlessly, "Aren't you Henry Morgan?" He pointed to his wife and replied, "No, she is." I gasped, and then I laughed.

Actually, Bob and I followed many legends in those days, including one poor man named Sam Groom -- I think he was a soap opera star, but I no longer remember -- to the point where he had to run to get away from us. We, idiots that we were, had no idea why he was galloping at such a pace. We must have scared the bejesus out of him hurrying up barren Church Street on a cold and windy November night.

Anyway, years ago people used to tell me that I looked like Carolyn Jones, which absolutely thrilled me when she played Morticia because she was so divinely thin. Now I get names like ________ (because of my hair) and ________ and even ________ (her mother, maybe) -- which has to be better than the Friday night I was bartending back in the '80s -- we were swamped with customers -- and Bobby Falls looked up at the muted television movie, Popeye, and yelled, "Hey, look everybody! It's Jennifer!" After the laughter died down about twenty minutes later, I offered up a short impression of Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyle singing, "He's large." (If you can't lick 'em sort of thing.)

Come to think of it, Uma Thurman could have played Olive Oyle equally believably, although in my opinion, she and Shelley Duvall don't much look like one another at all. But she does have that high forehead (did Olive Oyle have a high forehead?) and those long legs and those googly eyes. And didn't Uma Thurman also play in a move called Jennifer Eight (ooh, that's my name and my number) and wasn't she blind and didn't I work for an ophthalmologist and...

The ants go marching two by two, hurrah, hurrah
The ants go marching two by two, hurrah, hurrah

<:^)

Archived Tuesday, November 13, 2007

The Essentials of Proofreading

Toronto on strike: building permits to resume partially
Posted: July 21, 2009, 11:01 AM by Allison Hanes

Toronto Mayor David Miller will announce later today details of a plan to revive the process of issuing some building permits, with a strike by civic workers now in its fifth week.

No building permits have been issued up until now under the city's contingency plan, the reason being the qualified inspectors had all walked off the job and not available to issue them.

New construction projects and renovations have been on hold since June 22, when the strike began. Deputy city manager Richard Butts said several weeks ago, any one (see non-compound modified pronoun + prepositional phrase rule) waiting for a permit to begin work should cool their jets until the labour disruption ends. With no end in sight, the city is now taking action to allow some of those projects to get under way.

Which ones and what kind will be revealed at a briefing later this afternoon at City Hall.

Just yesterday the Mayor told the National Post that the only way the process of issuing building permits would only be reinstituted if enough trained staff were back on the job – ie: that enough building inspectors had crossed the picket line and returned to work.

"We can't do the building permits. We looked at that last week. That's not possible yet," he said Monday. "But as some people have come back to work, it does give us a little flexibility. So if we are able to broaden the range of services, we certainly will. I'd certainly like to. I'd like to have all of the services being delivered. But it's contingent upon whose coming back to work in what areas. So at the moment the answer is no, but if we are able to bring back some services we will do it at the earliest opportunity."
__________________________________
No wonder our newspapers are being downsized. I am appalled by the laziness in this, and in other, reports I have read recently in your newspaper. I am not surprised, however, that the first item I saw (regarding the building permits) on the Internet today was Allison Hanes's tweet about same. Perhaps relegating her to the world of Twitter is your best option.

Sincerely,
Jennifer Coffey

My daughter has worked at a Canadian newspaper for eleven years, and she and I have talked about this often -- in horror. If people would take time to more capably write and to proofread their articles, then she would not be in her own state of constant worry, wondering if tomorrow she is going to have a job. So I do mean, as a warning to us all, if we do not return to an idea (and therefore construction) of more ethical journalism standards, we will not have newspapers to read, and I cannot imagine a greater travesty.

Journalists -- especially paid jounalists -- should either write less or work more competently toward providing well-written pieces. My father worked at The Globe for years, writing hour upon hour, and he would have been fired for half this number of errors. If newspaper editors find that their staff members are too busy to write effectively, then editors at least ought to have proofreaders who can correct all written work. Bad writing lowers standards and subscriptions, and these are the sorry facts of it all.

Save my daughter's job by doing yours better. This is all that I ask.

Car 54, Where Are You?

If I were capable of hitting a baseball, I could stand on the balcony here at home and run that ball through the corner store window in 7/10ths of a second. In other words, the store is a few feet from the house, and I frequent it often and have therefore come to know the lovely husband and wife whose store it is. The soft-spoken, unassuming couple, who look to be in their early forties, came to Toronto from China several years ago in hopes of giving their son an expansive education in a multicultural city where people feel accepted and free. Here is what they have found instead:

In the four years I have lived in this house, the store has been robbed at least three times. The first time I was aware of a robbery, the owners told me that this was at least the sixth time they had been held up in as many years.

I know, of course, that a person can live anywhere in any town or city or suburb and be held up. When I lived in majestic High Park a man was stabbed on the sidewalk meters from the house, and I remember another stabbing at Ottawa's Glebe High School in a neighbourhood so lauded for its high-end real estate as to be regarded as saintly.

That said, I do have to wonder why, when this corner store is less than a kilometre from a downtown police precinct, it takes so long for the police to arrive when there is an incident. I see police cars stopping often enough for what I imagine are incidentals, and a person could walk from store to station in about fifteen minutes.

Last week's robbery took place on a sunny weekday afternoon and involved three hooded men and a knife. The owner, who was working alone, had her arm gouged and was left with what seemed to me a rather large bruise on her upper right cheek. She said that the men had taken all of the cash -- "What could I do? It wasn't worth my life" -- and that the police -- who come in great force and might when they come at all -- took over an hour to arrive. "We were busy," they had apparently said. (Mind you, this doesn't seem any worse that an earlier robbery at the same store when cops removed cartons of cigarettes marking them as "non-returnable evidence." How disgusting and archaic does that seem to you?)

I think back now to that wonderful 1960s television show, Car 54, Where Are You? and Officers Gunther Toody and Francis Muldoon, colourful, compassionate characters who made us believe that cops were not only on the side of the good guys, they were the good guys. What happened to these sorts of men and women? Did they ever, in fact, exist? Does a person have to go to the Bronx, or back to the 1960s, or to sitcoms, to find what they think is real help?

A person can tell a lot standing on her balcony, looking across at the faces and various indifferent stances of the officers, as they mark their turf and make an attempt to interview passers-by. I know that some of these officers are probably as lovely as the couple who own the store, and yet, in the main and in the margins, it seems to me that Toronto's police force is not doing its job in offering its residents reasonable service, especially when they, the police, take sixty minutes to arrive at the scene of an armed robbery and -- perhaps even worse -- when they walk away from a robbery with cartons of cigarettes as evidence.

Khrushchev's due at Idlewild! CAR 54...where are you ?

Delectables

I remember the first time I saw a black man. I thought he was made of chocolate. I was sitting in a stroller (presumably my stroller) that my mother was pushing, and process of elimination tells me that I had to be three years old. I remember the scene in a vignettish way -- the brilliant sun of downtown Fredericton, a tall man (although what would I know? I was only three), his dazzling smile, my yelling out, "Chocolate!" and my mother horrified -- logic (anyone's) and nature (my mother's) would tell me this anyway -- the man laughing, his teeth sparkling in the hot afternoon sun. (I imagine cartoon diamonds pinging off the edges of his incisors.) I expect I was disappointed, knowing that I couldn't eat him (although that opportunity presented itself thirteen years later in the form of my first boyfriend, also chocolate, except for his soles and palms, which were creamy white).

Yesterday, as I was wondering why this memory had popped into my head, I looked down at the glass countertop in Gloria's store and saw a Pepsi, a novel, and a Cadbury Premium Dark chocolate bar -- all mine. In the heat, however, the chocolate had become like soft ice cream. (Now, as I sit in another day of humidity, the thought of eating an entire chocolate man is nauseating. And the thought of eating anyone's feet, chocolate or not, is absolutely sickening.)

Over the years, though, chocolate has played a crucial role in my life (and in my waistline). My most heartbreaking and happiest chocolate came in the form of popsicles, bought by me when I was five and six, when Mom had had a little too much you-know-what, and had left me a dollar on the telephone table. Now in those days popsicles cost a nickel apiece (a sickle a pop?), so if your math skills are as good as mine, you will have deduced that I could buy -- did buy, in fact -- twenty chocolate popsicles at a time. You would think that I might have tired of them, given their singular flavour, the way I almost tired of ketchup sandwiches. But I did not. To this day, I can eat at least two, maybe three chocolate popsicles, in a row, without hesitation. The only chocolate food I can think of that I don't like is chocolate pudding. It's too rich (although to look at me you wouldn't think the words "too rich" had ever entered my vocabulary). But everything else made of chocolate I love -- cookies, cake, ice cream, cherries, yoghurt, bars, squares, lollipops, popsicles, mints, milk, coins and cigarettes -- right down to tall handsome men laughing in the midday sun.


Posted by Jennifer Coffey at 7:53 AM
Friday, August 24, 2007

How Fresh is Fresh?

I stopped off at Loblaws this morning on my way home from dropping Mary at the dumpster, because I wanted to buy a new floor mop and some Arm & Hammer Pet Fresh. Company's coming for the weekend, and this dirt and dust just won't do. As I stood in the household product aisle reading the side of the box, a middle-aged woman (I say middle-aged only to confirm that she falls within the realm of rationale thought) came up to me and said, "Buy baking soda."

"Pardon me?" I asked, my eyes a little wider than usual.

"Buy baking soda. It's cheaper."

"Yes, it is," I said, "but look at this quantity. And the smell is so gentle and helps eliminate pungent odours."

"Baking soda costs 69 cents."

"Yes, I know," I said, "But this big box is only $2.99."

She shrugged. Do what you want," she said. "You must have a lot of money to waste."

Well, it took me a few seconds to collect my thoughts -- she's wrong! she's wrong! is what I was mostly thinking -- until I replied, as politely and as quietly as I could muster (and I confess that she was halfway down the aisle at this point), "And you must have a lot of opinions to waste." Given that I was quoting her almost directly, I excused myself from modal misuse. (Must is used for commands, to put it simply, because I haven't got time -- I have floors to wash -- and have to is used when rules are implicit...as in, "You have to be at work by 9 AM.")

Anyway, for a 10/10 review of the product, you might want to peruse:

http://www.reviewstream.com/reviews/?p=43637

In the meantime, I feel sorry for that woman's children. She might have a clean home, but boy -- her grammar sucks!

<:^)

Stephen Harper Comes Out!

I have to confess that I do tire of all the hooks one is supposed to have in one’s writing nowadays. It’s as if we are all nimble-minded fools who cannot find our way from one chapter or episode or song lyric to the next unless we are led with the kind of giant hook that talent show co-ordinators used to reserve for those terrifically bad acts that only such a hook could help eradicate.

What happened to... all that glitters is not gold? Don’t judge a book by its cover? It’s always darkest just before the dawn? Okay, so that last one isn’t applicable – well, none of them are ideal – but it hits close to my point of being misinformed (if I think hard enough about it).

Which takes me to all of those misleading headlines and interview snippets and book and movie reviews that force a person willy-nilly into an article, pulling them against their will into the vortex of sensationalism, much the way Alice was irretrievably drawn into that hole or Dorothy was taken up into the eye of the tornado and whisked away to Oz.

Usually what happens is that you are offered up a tantalizing snippet of a comment or a headline, only to find, once you Open Sesame (remember that command in that wonderful tale from your childhood?), that there is more to the story than you thought:

Madonna Gives Baby Back (rub).

Prince William Crowned! (Beats Dad at Checkers)

Gwyneth Paltrow Sells Apple (Computer Sales Double)

Stephen Harper Comes Out! (to the G8 Summit—late, as usual)

Meg Ryan Eats Crow (Fires chef)

Bin Laden Found! (a peanut, found a peanut, found a peanut last night...)

Oprah Caught in Gale (Ignores Storm Advisory)

Do you see what I mean? It isn’t fair. When I follow an exciting lead I want it to end in something riveting – Savage Grace, for example, the most tantalizing book of letters I have read in years – or some place where I don’t need exclamation marks or bold font or big fat hooks that wrap around my waist and haul me off to the next page.

Of course, it could be sour grapes…sitting here in the dusty house in mid-July, mareseatoats hauling 1200 bags of garbage a day, everyone else on holidays, our idea of New York in the summer a thing of the past.

Still, it could be worse. I could be working for a major newspaper trying to come up with headlines that sell, instead of sitting on my front porch and doing it for free.

Broke it open, broke it open, broke it open, last night...

<:^)

Brüno: An Adjectival Ecstacy

Daring hilarious irreverent intelligent pointed precise controversial scathing inflammatory fast-paced ingenious political boundary-stretching decisive measured painstaking hard-hitting vigorous shocking unabashed indelicate current innovative confrontational astonishing timely discerning confident slapstick outrageous pointed fascinating mockumentary

Homophobes beware -- or you'll be marching out of the theatre before the film gets rolling, the way the silver-sneakered, mow-haired, calf-length-sweat-panted leg-jiggling cell-phone-talking man beside us did, taking his wide-eyed licorice-eating pigtailed girlfriend with him.

The Toronto Star reported today in their entertainment section that "GLADD [The U.S. Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against defamation] is unhappy," however. They claim that the film "reinforces negative stereotypes" and "decreases the public's comfort with gay people."

Seems to me that Sacha Baron Cohen's movie does just the opposite -- at least for the people for whom it matters. When the silver-sneakered fellow stalked out of the theatre, it wasn't until after he had got in plenty of snickers at what he thought were derisive slurs against the gay community. Only after realizing that he, as homophobe, was being made fun of did he walk out. Isn't this the crucial point of the film?

It also seems to me that GLADD is doing the very thing they are criticizing Cohen for: stereotyping people's responses and making people feel there is something they ought to feel uncomfortable about. I might be missing the point, but the theatre I attended wasn't -- at least not from my perspective in the back row.

"I'm curious about becoming straight but I've got a few questions first. Will I still be able to hug men?" Brüno, in conversation with a straight-making pastor.

R Rating: not for children

Op Ed: Size Does Matter

You know your house is small when...

you can vacuum every square inch using the same (okay, the only) electrical outlet

the house is measured in square inches and not square feet

you're sitting in the living room at the front of the house and you can hear the cat licking his fur in the upstairs back bedroom

you lie in bed at night and your feet touch the balcony door

you can hear your neighbours whispering in their own beds, "I asked you to cut your toenails how many times?"

exercise means half an hour of running up and down the stairs -- 4,682 times

you flip a pancake and it lands in the tub

you have to do your Richard Simmon's workout in the neighbour's back yard

speed cleaning takes eight seconds

you buy beer by the tri-pack

the dog yawns and swallows four cats

your uncle can pee from the top of the stairs into the lake

the plants are fertilized by touching each other

you host holiday dinners in shifts

breakfast is served from the stereo turntable

instead of a humidifier, a cup of water will do

the electric bill is 87 cents per month

decorating includes hanging the picture

every time you gain five pounds the neighbours look really really worried

you have to buy groceries twelve times a week

overnight guests sleep in your car

the goldfish, a new cd, the goldfish, a new cd...

when the telephone rings you answer the iron (I know, I know)

complete home renovations happen overnight (literally)

insulation = two bathmats + 18 " of duct tape

your favourite holiday song is "Oh Christmas Plant"

<:^)

Archived Monday, October 1, 2007

~ Bi Lines ~

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house.

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Robert Hayden (1913-1980)

And So It Goes...

Someone once told me that the one thing we never stop doing (barring horrific medical circumstances, it must be said) is think. And given the last half hour I've spent, I would say that person was pretty much right.

Here's what's been in my head:

I wonder where those union bullies are who were supposed to show up at the Ted Reeve Arena. If they do show up, should I go down and take a few pictures for posterity? Really, though, does anybody care? Why do summer colds last so much longer than winter ones? Is it only that we think they do because we are so anxious to enjoy summer? Why do I use the word so so much? Wouldn't you think at my age I would have purged that habit? Oh! Look at the morning glories! Don would have been so pleased. Planting them in the little patch of soil that was so [so so] close to the sidewalk on King Street [in PEI] and those friendly Japanese tourists stopping to admire them as if I had planted the Royal Botanical Gardens. Why does that frigging alarm go off every time I make toast? I am not changing the setting, even if burnt is carcinogenic. Forget that! Did I put that down for Weight Watcher's points? Barbara Walters was at the memorial service?! Two rows back!? Oh my God. Bob was right when he called her a media ____. Oh Boots -- you want your needle. Well, you don't want your needle, do you? You want the treats that go with it. Do you think Mary will mind if I put the plate on her dirty t-shirt? Ah, she'll never know! I'll have it washed before she sees it. Want to see my photos of the morning glories? Aren't they beautiful? What do you mean -- out of focus? I don't think so at all. I am so relieved that Christena's results were good. Thirty-three is so young to have cancer, but the fact that it hasn't spread is wonderful. I hope Sarah's vein ultrasound isn't problematic. I remember those eye clinics in Ottawa, and how people bought into laser eye surgery before even checking it out. We had more than a handful of patients who ended up with thumbprint vision. Imagine spending your whole life looking through thumbprints! Joy Behar hasn't said two words through the entire Michael Jackson conversation. I bet I know why. I wonder...does she have to worry about her behaviour even more now, given that she has a new show on CNN? As if anyone gives credence to CNN! I wish Anderson Cooper would leave to make news documentaries. He's so handsome. I wonder if he's gay. I think his brother's suicide haunts him. Balcony jumping would be so terrible. His poor mother, losing her son that way. If I open the window just a crack it won't hurt the dog. She needs a little fresh air anyway -- don't you, Pooh Bear? We just won't tell Mary. Damn those people whose web site email addresses aren't reliable! How are we going to find a caterer this way? I had NO idea that T.O. [initials -- not Toronto] was gay. Is everybody gay?!? LOL And he phoned me from an airplane! ... I think. I should have asked. But that would have sounded stupid. What a lovely guy. We have been lucky finding lovely people for our event. This music [Out of Africa] is heartbreaking. I wish I could have written the way she did. But I would have had to have been cerebral. Why did I put that in the past tense? Could have written? I guess because it's too late to change my brain. I'd have to go to the Brain Exchange Store for that, and I don't know where it is. And I haven't the brains to figure it out. LOL Thank you Michael for checking that [web site] out for me. I hope he laughs over Oscar Wilde's -- To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness -- the way I always do. I love Rich and Meg's new blinds. The lines are perfect, the way they match the house. Like a Jacques Tati movie. People don't appreciate him anymore. It's partly the references, but nowadays everything moves faster than the speed of light. Or do I mean sound? Like these chaotic thoughts I'm having. Does everyone have chaotic thoughts, or am I the only one who wonders if another tooth is abscessing and whether the infection has reached my brain and caused it to go squirrelly? Or is that genetics? That [music] sounds like a crescendo held in abeyance, although I have no idea what I mean. I wonder if Mike B. hears the Gordon Lightfoot cd every time I pull the car up in front of his house. Does Gordon Lightfoot still have a carpeted yard? Did I feed the fish? I must have. Otherwise Edith would be barking [figuratively] at me. I hope Marg likes the green shirt. Oh yay! I forgot! We're all going for gelato. I wonder what I can have that will suit my guts. I'll have to put on sunscreen before I go out and trim back those plants. The garden is nice, but it's a bit of a mishmash -- oh, that's weird. I was listening to the song where Robert Redford is flying the plane when T.O. called. Is it ever going to rain? It's a strange summer, isn't it?

How about yours?

So I will share this room with you
And you can have this heart to break
And so it goes, and so it goes.

Billy Joel

Michael Jackson: Obituary

I found myself watching the Michael Jackson memorial in tears. At first, and apart from the sorrow we feel for what we imagine or know as someone else's tragic life or death, I couldn't understand why. I have strong opinions about this man against whom harsh and convincing allegations have been made. I am not likely to change my beliefs on this, either.

As I looked up at the television, I noticed that the large-screen photographs projected behind the invited speakers showed a smiling, tender-eyed little boy who was, throughout his life as that little boy, the closest thing to a human being any of us ever can know or knew.

It isn't that I believe the hype or the press, or even the sentiments offered up from some of the very few mourners I admire -- I don't put much stock in what famous people have to say. I find famous people too often false and driven by deplorable, self-serving egos -- but I do believe the photographs I see before me.

Where they take me is not only to my own brutal childhood, but into the lives of every sweet-faced child who has been hammered by a wooden spoon, scored by their father's belt, left locked or hiding in closets and backyard sheds, or quivering under blankets. (It is no surprise to me that Michael Jackson nicknamed his third child thus.)

Perhaps if Michael Jackson had been an only child, but that was not the case. Or perhaps if his father had been the one to die young...

Instead of living and dying in ways that were true, Michael Jackson's life played out like a Fellini screenplay, comically absurd and grotesquely fascinating, usurping everything that was genius about him. I wonder how much happier and healthier he might have become if, instead of surrounding himself with children and circus toys and what seem to me a bevy of unstable friends, he had had some help from the sort of reliable professionals who practice skilfully and patiently, rather than investing in people who call themselves doctors and who carved him up until his nose caved in and who injected him with dangerous anaesthetics.

We relegate to God and song those things we ought to trust in one another. But when a child is small and split apart by the very person he is meant to trust, what is a child to do?

I love the phrase reasons but no excuses, and yet in ways it feels inapplicable to him. Michael Jackson was a child who never grew past puberty; a boy who made hard-hitting, irrevocable choices; a little magic music man betrayed by the screaming voices of ulteriorly-motivated people -- voices of rhetoric and self-importance. Michael Jackson was a child who never grew up, a boy wonder who didn't stand a chance.

Remembering Michael Jackson

Insanity is the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Oliver W. Holmes Sr.

Who lies for you will lie against [or, perhaps, with] you. Bosnian Proverb

Everything great in the world is done by neurotics; they alone founded our religions and created our masterpieces. Marcel Proust

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained. Mark Twain

A man who is 'of sound mind' is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key. Paul Valéry, Mauvaises pensées et autres, 1942

The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

We tell lies when we are afraid...afraid of what we don't know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger. Tad Williams

I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it. Author Unknown

Who, being loved, is poor? Oscar Wilde

And I believe that Whoopi Goldberg was wrong yesterday when she said, and I paraphrase, that because Michael Jackson was always a child, other children were safe alone in his presence. Such convoluted logic, of which the only corollary can be that children never experiment with one another sexually. This, as almost all of us know, is entirely untrue. I believe it is because Michael Jackson was so arrested that he ought to have been arrested, probably several times over.

Nevertheless, he is dead now, and we will always remember him for the complicated man he was and for the music he brought to this world.

Leslie Spit, Toronto

The long and winding road (that leads to the shore...) (shh...)

I saw three ships come sailing in...and a fourth just out of sight.

"And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced..." Hart Crane

Damn the torpedoes and full steam ahead!

Whooth woodth theethe are I think I know

When all at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden ______.

"But bog, meaning soft, the fall of windless rain..." Seamus Heaney

"Despite everything I believe that people are really good at heart." Anne Frank

Circulation

I do not know you by name or by face. I cannot tell what your age is. But I am grateful that you come by and that some of you, at least, seem to find (what I hope is) a good reason to come back.

I often know what city you hale from by your IP address, and sometimes I am told your place of work. For example, I have regular readers from the telephone company in Prince Edward Island ("Mimis, Nenny, mimis!") another (a friend) from a media company in downtown Toronto, and another who works for an insurance company in Chicago. Once in a while I try to put two and two and two together, but usually when I do that I get five. In the end, apart from a few friends and family, it is more fun that I don't know who you are. The anonymity is an important part of why I write, and it serves to remind me that we are all equal...which in and of itself sounds vain.

In the interim, I am sitting here today in the half-cloud, half-sun, wishing it would rain (mostly because my friend Antonio, who sent me a beautiful letter today and who has become like a son to me, loves the rain) and that I could feel more of the cool breeze that I see evidence of out there in the rustling trees. The enormous cloud above my window is so dark, in fact, I cannot believe that the thunder and lightning we were supposed to have yesterday isn't coming for us today.

While I wait, I thought I would take a few minutes to thank some of you who have recently come by. I cannot name you, as I said, but I can post your city or country, and say that I hope you'll come by again.

Washington State, Hamilton Ontario, Toronto, Athens, Culiacán Sinaloa, New York City, Absecon New Jersey, Arlington, Dublin, Chicago, San Jose, Charleroi Hainaut Belgium, Washington DC, Tom's River New Jersey, Milwaukee, Gresham Oregon, Brisbane, Dublin, Bolivar Missouri, Frederiksberg Denmark, La Paz Bolivia, Ottawa, Chico California, Voorheesville New York, London England, Philippines, Amsterdam, Atlanta, Charlottetown Prince Edward Island, Len Guanajuato Mexico, Cullera Andalucia Spain, Madrid Spain, Wichita Kansas, Denver Colorado, Ile-de-France Paris, Santa Clara California, Bloomington Illinois, Dornbirn Vorarlberg Austria, Curitiba Parana Brazil, Milton Ontario, Whittier California, Atlanta Georgia, Richardson Texas, Zurich, Belfast, San Francisco, Reunion, Oneonta New York, Berlin, Rijeka, Victoria British Columbia, Charlotte North Carolina, Rome, Turkey Creek Louisiana, Woodbridge Virginia, Chennai Tamil Noder India, Malaysia, Calgary, Montreal, Portland Oregon, John Day Oregon, Cairo, Redmond Washington, Madison Wisconsin, Lynn Massachusetts, Riyadh Saudi Arabia, Zurich, Egg Harbor New Jersey, Hong Kong.

When I was a kid -- and you can blame this on my friend Diana, who reminded me today of our comical working youth -- and waitressing at the Seaway Restaurant, I used to try and match up the people/customers -- especially the ones I imagined as lonely -- by way of their astrological signs. I thought that if I could connect everyone it would mean that we are all connectable, all saveable; that no one would be or ever need to be lonely. I think they call this need, my need, benevolent omnipotence, although I might have that backwards. Anyway, I can see here today that I haven't changed as much as I wanted or ought to, but it still makes me happy to see so many places, so many people, united on one page. I am always moved and deeply grateful. Or, as my mother always said, "Blessed be the ties that bind, darling. Blessed be the ties that bind."

Rats Infest Toronto!

I was dropping off mareseatoats at her garbage transfer work station when I saw, among the rows of double-bagged plastic greenery, two rats. Being the investigative person that I am, I leaned in closer to hear what they were saying and I have to tell you, I haven't heard a conversation this interesting in two, maybe three, weeks.

The first rat -- I say first because he was the taller and the chubbier, which somehow seemed to give rank (my own personal prejudice, perhaps) -- had placed his hands/feet on his hips and was jabbering at quite a rate and of a decibel I haven't heard since I was a bartender back in PEI.

"I am disgusted! First the Ratatouille movie and now this!"

"What do you mean -- now this?"

"Oh, come on! Don't tell me you haven't noticed! It has taken me forty minutes to find so much as a chicken bone! There are so many cans and pieces of building material I can't ferret my way into anything digestible! Did you see those two men come in with their workshop aprons on? You can't tell me they were dropping off foodstuffs, oh no no no!"

"Well, we're not supposed to be here you know. It goes against all of the rules that Mother taught us." As he spoke, I noticed that the rainclouds had begun rolling in.

"Mother's dead. And quite frankly, considering that she was run over by one of those construction vehicles you're so afraid of, I find your sympathy for this mess a little hard to swallow...along with these wood chips."

"People waste so much food in this city, isn't it a bit of a relief to find all the plastic and paper and cut-up baby mattresses?" He put his arms up beseechingly and sighed. "You know, it looks like rain."

The big rat shrugged his shoulders angrily, thought for a moment, and laughed. "Have you seen the piles and piles of garbage here,you idiot?! There's plenty of food. I just can't get at it!"

I have to confess that as I watched mareseatoats and her fellow workers sling bag after endless bag from the limitless stream of vehicles that, judging from the deposits they were making clearly hadn't had access to garbage disposal in eight or nine months, the stench was overwhelming enough that I knew there had to be food in some of those bags somewhere.

The first rat turned to the second. "It isn't just about the food, you know. This is going to go on for weeks and weeks."

"How do you know?" A roll of distant thunder cut across the tarmac.

"Do you honestly think that anyone in this city is going to accept anything less than they asked for after Mayor David Miller -- what was it...the first or second day of the strike -- got his 440 million for the streetcars and declared it the happiest day of his life?! It's not so much his choices but, whoa! The arrogance! Who voted for him anyway? It sure wasn't me! I know all about silver-haired men talking their way in and out of tight spots. Let me tell you--"

"I overheard someone down by the lake the other day say that rats had infested the city! That's not true. We've always been here. It's just that now we're a little more visible."

"That was a metaphor, you idiot! A symbolic representation--"

"Cymoblic? With a C?"

"No, that would be more like symphonic. Anyway, I'm going to be making my way down to City Hall to have a chitchat with that David Miller."

The little rat dropped a handful of sawdust. "You know David Miller?!"

"Know him? He's my cousin!"

With that, I hightailed it out of the dump. And none too soon because a jagged bolt of lightning struck down right behind my car. The last thing I saw in the rear-view mirror was a sizzle of grey smoke and four rat feet sticking straight up in the air.