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Hold on to what is good even if it is a handful of earth.
Hold on to what you believe even if it is a tree which stands by itself.
Hold on to what you must do even if it is a long way from here.
Hold on to life even when it is easier letting go.
Hold on to my hand even when I have gone away from you.
- Pueblo Blessing

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Saturday, Apr. 03, 2004 - 11:49 p.m.

Cost of the War in Iraq
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WARNING!!!! if you know me personally, you may read my diary, but if you do, you take the chance of hearing things you don't want to know, misunderstanding what I've written and being hurt by it. If you are unsure if it is ok to read, save yourself and me the grief and heartache, and ask first!!! Please note that this is a DIARY, ie my subjective feelings, hearsay, suppositions, and outpourings of ranting of the moment. It does not represent objective news, the whole of what I think of a topic or someone, or even a thought-out representation of any of the above. Keep that in mind. Thanks. * Here is a Diary Etiquette Read Me.

Thinking of Rivers Gone on a Chilly Night

Well, this just sucks. For the second full day now Videotron has been fuckin around with the ol emails. I have gotten about ten in the past 48 hours, and two of those were instant repeats of the same spam. So I got like two real emails and six different spams. Normally I have like 60-80 emails to go through just in the morning when I get up. It is a pain in the ass. So, if anyone's done a survey and hasn't heard from me you know why.

I guess there's not alot to do. I called and there was a machine saying that "emails are slow, we're working on it" yeah uhuh.

Sheesh.

Today it is cold and grey again after two full days of rain rain rain. Brrr. I got laughed at for wearing my furry Fargo winter hat and my mittens today at the barber's. Don't people realize than when I get 3/4 of an inch of hair cut off around my neck and ears I feel the draft? BRRRRR!!

Last night I sat at a coffeeshop, slurped back a caf� au lait in a bowl (good for cold ears) and went through all the library books I took out, to find reference material for my Far North story. I was boggled in a very bad way by the fullpage photo of the little trickle that the huge falls on the Churchill River have been reduced to. Sort of like Niagara Falls turning into a stream of water the width of something in a waterpark slide. You can see the huge swath of stone carved out by thousands of years of rushing water, but the riverbed is bare and empty now but for the rivulet in the center. One can imagine the majesty of the falls before they put in a power dam upriver. So very sad. Here is a page with some pics in the middle, scroll down. Not as good as the one in the book I have. Yay for having more power to run all of our shit. We are so enamoured of our shit. Heated fake rocks so we can have tropical lizards in our houses, and tropical fish too. Hundreds of tv stations. And Diaryland. What EVER did I do before I had a computer? I remember heating water on the stove to take a bath, and I don't remember being any dirtier than I am now, when I could take (but don't) half hour showers. Sigh.

Yay for humans and progress.

Tonight I went to hear one of the girls who works at the caf� where I eat sing (at the caf� after its regular closing time)... fun, mostly French songs, contemporary, sort of rock sort of folk. But there was one that she dedicated to Canada twiddling about with respect to the Kyoto Protocol. About looking at trees and feeling guilty. Yup. About how are we going to answer to kids who are all physically fucked up from being born in a polluted world... how we will want to point to those older than us, and say "it was them, not us" but we will be the older generation soon and no one to point to but ourselves.

I gotta not get too involved in such thinking. I was totally mired down by stuff like that when I was younger... to the point of crying for hours and hating myself and the world (well humans, not the world) so that it was paralysing instead of inspiring me to activism. I'd hate myself for not being on a Greenpeace boat or something. I mean really... just thinking about drawing for so many books that get printed... all the pulp and paper, the trees chopped down, the water polluted, the inks, the transportation... blah blah blah. I dunno. I guess I shouldn't do books.

Anyways, of course I'll continue. I came home before it was over cuz I want to start on the final sketches for the Far North book tonight. My body seems to be done fighting the bugs it was fighting, so I am able to be up more than two hours without feeling like death warmed over. So I guess I should stop writing this and get to work.

But anyone who has written a note or a comment or done a survey since Friday morning, hang in there. Someday Videotron might send me the emails telling me of them! tah!

12:11 am You know I always love the part where I look for links to put into entries. Cuz as I search for images and sites to link to I stumble across all sorts of related (and nonrelated) shit. Well, here is a photoessay from JustEnergy about damage done in Northern Manitoba by the Manitoba Hydro projects on the Churchill River, which make the water levels fluctuate from drought to flood, depending on how much water they need in the damn. What a mess. Interestingly the natives say that when they put in the dam, they put in a whole community, including houses, healthcare, power, water and sewers for the white workers in less than three months. And the natives have been waiting 25 years for the benefits and compensation promised. I think the Iraqis would be able to have a good chat with them over a drink. We know that the Americans, Canadians, Germans etc have managed to put up barracks for the white soldiers, with healthcare, food, electricity, gyms etc etc in just a few months. But they are more interested in shooting Iraqis who might loot the barracks than they are in actually fixing the Iraqi infrastructure that they ruined with the bombing. Here is an account of living conditions in Iraq, published April 1, 2004. Yup. Yay for us. Yay for us. I'm proud to be a middle class white person I am. Fuck.

Here is another site with many quotes and very clear statements of impacts of hydro projects on the Churchill River Basin. 40% of the electricity is sold to the States. 85% of the Churchill River's flow has been diverted south to the Nelson River. Thousands of square miles of boreal forest, part of the earth's "lungs" have been flooded. Well, you can read it if you like.

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previous meanderings - future past

Goodbye Michael. May your next life be kinder to you. - Thursday, Jun. 25, 2009
Taking Care of Your Cows - Thursday, Jun. 25, 2009
Saint Joseph robs the cradle and eats spaghetti - Sunday, Jun. 14, 2009
sticky notes and broken irises - Friday, Jun. 12, 2009
The FOODCOMMANDER - Monday, Jun. 08, 2009

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