North of 49

 So there is a lot going on right now. From the end of Covid restrictions to the "freedom" convoy to the muscle flexing of Russia to the rapid erosion of the value of your dollar. Let's start with the "freedom" movement.  The cry went out early in the pandemic that the numbers were not right! It was Donald telling the press that the numbers of his own staff can't be right and that meme has been stuck in the gut of the internet to this day. Truthfully I even wondered about the numbers but rather than relying on cable TV or the Donald I went to sites on the web, mixed in some off shore news coverage and came away with  this: Deaths were not the really important number it was the number of cases that was the issue. It was preventing the death of tens of thousands who caught this virus but were alive only because they had a ventilator.   In year two the train was coming off the rails. It seemed as though the public was being sold a new and improved virus every c...

I started writing this on Oct 19 2020 and I couldn't help but think we  have so many fires in the world and a shortage of buckets! So  I'm going to look at a few of the issues which I think are important to North Americans specifically and the world in general. It'll be over a half dozen posts and this one has been very educational and that is what I aim to do educate myself.  LOL Today  I'll focus on the history of racial violence in the USA and why? Because I started to look at this subject starting with the Watts riot of 1965 and just kept going back and my lack of knowledge embarrassed me .  As  a white Canadian boy the history of the black population to the south was not in my frame of reference. The only thing I knew about black history was that the civil war freed the slaves and the modern condition of the Afro-American was shown to me through sit coms like The  Jefferson's . I had no reason to explore the inequities of blacks in America becaus...

                                  I listened to audio clips from the last debate                                                                  between President Trump                                     and                                               Vice President Biden                                                                           ...

So I have made the acquaintance of yet another independent intelligent woman. A very interesting woman someone who is convinced that an impoverished nation like Haiti is worth living in while working at improving the conditions of the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. She is someone who sees the hopelessly poor people in rural Haiti as the part of the social spectrum of this tiny country on which to focus. She does see a future for Haiti but there is a lot to do in the present so much that the future is far in the distance damn near beyond the horizon. Her  name is Laura Allan and she is the head of Shelters International Disaster Response a very small ngo operating out of Jacmel Haiti. Besides being the poorest and one of the most corrupt countries in the Western Hemisphere it lays in hurricane alley so the tension on this Island,  no matter the sociopolitical atmosphere,  rises as June comes and with it the hurricane season. Because of poor to no infras...