Laugh so not to cry. / Rir pra não chorar.

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This cartoon was going to be at the end of the post, but here it is up front. A hopeful message from an artist I admire on at least several levels. Have a look at this (English) Wikipedia entry: Laerte Coutinho. Eles não param. Nem nós. / They're not stopping. Neither are we: Strange monkeys. Very funky.   There are two of them there on that hillside. Apprisvoiser comes to mind. It takes two to tango eh? Or maybe not. Somewhere in 'Ecodefense' Dave Foreman says "Some very experienced [people] argue for doing everything alone." He/they may be right. If so, they are far better people than I am. In 2010 I spent half a day handing out 350 buttons alone-by-myself and it just about destroyed me; I don't think I ever recovered. Boo hoo. :-) The mid-term American elections ... ... blow my mind: (James Inhofe likely to lead Senate environment committee ???) Let's see: 2,022,456 registered voters in Oklahoma, Inhofe gets 557,537 - less than a third of them (though 68% of those who vote), and more than double his Democrat rival who gets 233,932. Along with Tell-Tale-Tit: (cultural artefacts & revelations) An approximately annual event: (refudiation of UNFCCC by Poland & friends) 2013: Poland, Wedded to Coal, Spurns Europe on Clean Energy Targets; and, 2014: Poland rejects IPCC target of zero emissions by 2100 Poland: President Bronisław Komorowski, Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz, Minister of Environment Maciej Grabowski; Czech Republic: President Miloš Zeman; Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka; Minister of the Environment Richard Brabec; Bulgaria: President Rosen Plevneliev, Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, Minister of Environment and Water Ivelina Vasileva; and, Latvia: President Andris Bērziņš, Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma, Minister of Environmental Protection and Regional Development Kaspars Gerhards. [It was a natural mistake for a know-nothing North American. Poland in a group of four - must be the Visegrád Group. Doh! Buddit's not.] What's the point?   None really. I don't know enough about any of this (obviously). It looks like short-term priorities will trump ultimate survival, again. I wonder if Polish Catholicism has anything to do with it? Well educated, well fed, successful as individuals, well paid ... bourgeois twits.

Not lookin' too good for COP 21 in Paris eh?

The Toronto Public Library and Canada Trust/TD Greenwash: TD Friends of the Environment Foundation?! Bollocks!  Some whitespace, room for pause, for a close look look at the bookmark advertisement to see how (and why?) this series is simply nothing at all like what it proffers, presents, purports, pretends to be. Read and reflect.   I went to the one in the Beaches in September. I'd met her once before at wazizname ... Mishka Lysack's Oikos conference in 2010; Alanna Mitchell, a book selling exercise, very professional patter, practiced. Twenty people or so turned out including her publisher. Write your MP!

(Understatement (is) at its finest in Toronto the Good.)

The New York Times ran a pictorial on Bill Cosby's art collection and some of these images were shown there. You may see how the first three hang together; but Malick Sidibe's 'Nuit de Noel Happy-Club' (left) may seem not to fit. If you take a closer look at 'Les danseuses et de Gaulle' and study the expressions on the girls' faces perhaps you'll begin to get it. [Or you may view them as fantasies in the mind of a rapist. Then you may wonder if the author of this blog is also a rapist - in some transcendental way. Oh my! Lookout! It may be catching!] I've been revisiting Ich-Du (which if you remember is confused with Sylvia Plath's Daddy in this silly brain of mine) - finding muddles everywhere I turn. And somehow it's all mixed up with guilt and shame; which Buber also had something useful to say about. The distinction I remember is Thou/You instead of Thou/It (another flaw in the filing system) ... and I never noticed the link to dialogue, to the possibility of an authentic 'We' - or I noticed it and then ... forgot. And I don't know if Buber filed Golem in the Ich-Es folder or not. Voulez-vous me tu toyer?

 
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