Two of the Women Victims of Feminism

Posted on March 8, 2019 by Davd

When it Comes to Marriage, Here’s How and Why they Suffer
(c) 2019, Davd

Fern and Miriam1 are victims of Feminism, though they may be reluctant to say so. They want to marry and have babies; and if they were living in the social (especially civil-marriage) environment of their grandmothers’ generation, they would very likely be married by now, and Fern would very likely have two or three children.

Marriage is one way, not the only way, that modern women are the victims of Feminist-lobbied social changes which benefited some of the Feminists of two previous generations.

Fern recently reached age 30, a warning-signal for women that if they are going to have children, the first one should be born within a very few years. She would like to marry, but Bjorn, the young man she has kept-company-with for several years, is not willing to make a commitment to early-21st Century civil marriage—and “I can’t blame him”: The rules of early-21st Century civil marriage2 put him at a serious disadvantage if Fern were later to decide she wanted a divorce. (cf. Brown, 2013, Nathanson and Young, 2006.)

Bjorn has seen too many other men, from his father and men of his father’s generation to a few men close to his age who married early, “get beat-up by the divorce courts,” for him to go thinking “this can’t happen to me.” While his grandfathers had marriage-friendly laws to rely on, as well as the women they married—and while those old-fashioned marriage laws encouraged the women of his grandfathers’ generation to be faithful—things have changed, and Bjorn knows it.

His friends, his father, and some of his father’s friends thought they could trust the women they married, and found they couldn’t. Women like to be mysterious, he thought when Fern tried to push the issue of marriage, and I will accept they are mysterious enough that I can’t be 100% sure Fern won’t change and put me through the divorce wringer.

It’s not Bjorn’s doing that marriage changed from his grandfather’s day to his; and it’s definitely not his responsibility to fix the laws of marriage. The changes were lobbied into existence by Feminists, and many Feminists today still regard them as good for women (cf. Nathanson and Young, 2006, Brown, 2013). When the question is whether a man will or won’t commit himself for marriage under the 21st Century rules, though—the new rules have quite logically persuaded millions of men to simply say “No”.

“Man-up?” commented Bjorn in response to what has become a common shaming tactic; “I’m manning up by staying single! I’m valuing my civil rights, many of which “marriage-2” could take down. If I’m going to be a father—which appeals to me in general terms—then I want to be assured that I can father those children from diaper age to age of majority.

“Two things and only two, Fern can do and I can’t: Pregnancy and breastfeeding. I can take on chores like cooking for her and older children, more of the gardening, running the wash machine—you know—to balance those. When the Law assures me that the children are just as much mine as hers, then I might trust the Law enough to marry like my grandfathers did.”

Miriam is a few years younger; she has a promising, executive job running a regional section of a government social-animation project—which job requires her to be “on the move” most days of the week. Though much better in status and future potential than “selling on the road”3, it is likewise incompatible with mothering small children.

As executives often do, Miriam is looking toward the future; and she doesn’t know if marriage is part of her future or not. Even more than Fern was before her thirtieth birthday, Miriam is aware that a good man willing to risk marriage, is hard to find.

Fern and Miriam are both capable, decent-looking women, where i mean “decent looking” in two senses: Both young women are appealing in appearance but not so extremely attractive as to be distracting to strangers if they dress somewhat modestly; and both comport themselves so as to give an appearance of decency in the way one would expect them to deal with others.

Under old-fashioned marriage law, as it might be called in North America, or more generally, under the terms of marriage normal to healthy civilizations, both Fern and Miriam would easily find good husbands to sire and father their children. Bjorn has said that he and Fern would probably be married by now if marriage were trustworthy and man-friendly.

Both are unmarried today, not because of how they treated others recently, but because of how Feminism and Feminist-lobbied laws have treated men for the past 1-2 generations (25-50 years) of time. Men are getting wary of marriage, and rightly so; but it isn’t these women’s fault.

In 1959 and 1969, a woman who entered legal marriage, thereby promised fidelity to her bridegroom precisely because marriage-law at that time supported fidelity. Today, entering “marriage 2” fails to assure the husband of fidelity, precisely because marriage-law at this time does not. Men value fidelity and we have seen what other men have suffered when it fails.

Since the Law does not support marital fidelity any longer; the burden of proof of fidelity falls on young women like Fern and Miriam, and it is an onerous burden to bear when so many millions of wives before them, were unfaithful to their promises, often sexually and all too often by divorcing for no grievous fault.

One of the “civil rights” business corporations are explicitly given, is “the right to be sued” for damages and to enforce contracts they make. Of course, no one, individual or corporate, wants to be sued; but wise corporations—and women, and men—value the “right to be sued” as proof that they can be trusted to keep promises, and proof built into the Law, independent of their own character, that should they fail to keep a promise, they can be held to account.

The right to be held to a lifetime, covenant form of marriage would probably have assured Fern, might yet assure Miriam, of marriage and a husband’s support when their babies are young. Without it, their prospects of marriage are much weaker, and not because of something either of them did wrong.

(The author of “The Misandry Bubble”, a classic blog within three years after it appeared, wrote that these terms of marriage have been almost the same in such a great diversity of civilizations — civilizations so diverse economically, geographically, racially, in religion and technology—that it would seem this form of marriage is a requirement for civilization.)

Glubb [1976: 13-15] observed that morals tend to disintegrate and hedonism flourish as empires disintegrate:

The heroes of declining nations are always the same—the athlete, the singer or the actor. The word ‘celebrity’ today is used to designate a comedian or a football player, not a statesman, a general, or a literary genius. [16])

If the election of “rock star like” Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister, can be viewed as indicating decadence, the failure of his Government, and other recent Canadian governments, to provide wives with a covenant form of marriage and its support for fidelity, passively effects decadence.

Feminist lobbying and its influence on legislation and the judiciary, degraded marriage from covenant to mere, and somewhat weak, contract (Nathanson and Young, 2006, cf. Brown, 2013). Women who took advantage of the change to discard husbands who might have become boring, but who had done them no great wrong, often exploiting those men financially and denying them the company of their children, may have felt they benefited from the change.

Fern and Miriam—and perhaps also Bjorn—are suffering for their pleasure.


Cited:

Brown, Grant A., 2013. Ideology And Dysfunction In Family Law“”: How Courts Disenfranchise Fathers. Calgary and Winnipeg: Canadian Constitution Foundation and Frontier Centre For Public Policy

“The Futurist”, 2010. The Misandry Bubble . January 1.

Glubb, John Bagot, 1978. The Fate of Empires. Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons Ltd. ISBN 0 85158 127 7

Graham, Billy [William Franklin], 1997. Just as I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham. San Francisco: Harper Collins.

Nathanson, Paul, and Katherine K. Young, 2006. Legalizing Misandry“”: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination against Men Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Reviewed here.

Notes:

1. All the names in this account are pseudonyms. The characters began as people known to the writer, and were “edited” based on the statements and experiences of other people known to me.

2. I write from Canada for a Canadian website. I read statements from the USA indicating that civil-marriage there is also misandric. Possibly European civil marriage is not so “Feminist”. I would guess that Latin-American civil-marriage is more “fidelity for life” in character; but speculatively. Asian civil-marriage? Probably a great range from Muslim to Marxist.

3. It might be worth mentioning that Billy Graham, a very successful man by most criteria, recounts in his autobiography (1997: 34-38) that he sold Fuller brushes and associated products the summer before he entered college. So in context, Miriam has a much higher-status job with comparable demands for daily mobility… and Billy Graham’s future potential was not represented by his job that summer.

Posted in Female Privilege, Marriage-and-Family Reform | Leave a comment

“A Guy House”

Posted on February 16, 2019 by Davd

… Gynocentric Mis-statement and Efficient Reality
(c) 2019, Davd

Now and then, here and there, I recall hearing or reading scornful references to “a Guy House” — meaning a house occupied by men and no women, where proper standards of decor and decorum were not being kept. I have seen pictures that purport to illustrate (or exaggerate) the phenomenon; for instance: A motorcycle in the sitting room, beer cans for Christmas tree ornaments, and mixing pancake batter with an electric drill.

The pictures seem to represent parodies of male interests (not that women never drink beer — my sister did) — superimposed on houses designed to be operated by “a housewife” or in more pretentious words “the Lady1 of the house”. The best description of these comical pictures might be something like “Exaggerated masculine lifestyle imposed on houses designed to be sold to women.”, or “Parody-grade Guy Behaviour in Gal-purposed settings.” A real “Guy House” would be designed and built to accommodate guy interests and activities.

Do real “Guy Houses” even exist? Yes.
In the form of monastic households, at least, they do; and associated to US and a few Canadian universities, there are “fraternities”. Those two examples are nearly always big houses, with say, one, two, three or more dozen men living in them. They nearly always are kept in good order… of a sort no sensible observer would call “feminine” and few would credit to an interior decorator.

“Guys” living alone seldom have houses, just cabins or small apartments; because that’s the amount of that kind of space we need.

“Guys” living two or three in one house, seem to be what those who scorn “Guy houses” have in mind; and herewith, an educated guess why. Most houses and apartments are designed more for women than for men. (Which is one of several indicators that if patriarchy was ever normal below the Ruling Class in pre-industrial Europe2, and perhaps in early colonial North America; it was gone as of the separation of men’s work from their homes and then the rise of the suburbs.)

A true “man’s house” would have to be one designed and built for a man or group of men to live in. Monasteries and student fraternities would qualify, and the few I’ve seen have been well kept, though not necessarily according to any scheme of decor that would have a name (or a female following.)

Housing for single men usually is of a size and layout that gets the name “cabin” rather than “house”. The examples I remember best were built, occupied, and owned by bachelor “Finlanders” near Thunder Bay3. They tended to be sturdy, warmly heated in winter, clean, but not decorated. The example i recall most clearly, because i dropped in there often for coffee in the afternoon, was that of my neighbour Timo (not his actual name), just outside the Thunder Bay city limits.

It was a three-room cabin of perhaps 600 square feet, and the walls and floors were varnished pine.. as was most of the furniture. The front room was basically a place to leave one’s coat and boots (Finns don’t wear the same footgear outside and indoors). The kitchen was his social space and took up almost exactly half the cabin’s floor area. It contained the usual wood-fired cookstove, cupboards, and sink; and a trestle table–pine of course–with two pine benches, one on either side. At that table we spent tens of hours talking, coffee and sokerikorppu4 between us.

The cooking space and cupboards were fairly small in extent; but Timo was not a hobby cook, not a winemaker, he didn’t need much room for spices or many kinds of cereal. He favoured the hearty long-keeping Finnish breads, fish and meat, apples and oranges, porridge, potatoes, now and then rice or pea soup. For those, there was room, including a freezer for fish and game and the odd bit of store meat.

Like many bachelor Finlanders, Timo had a workshop that was nearly as large as his cabin, a woodshed in addition, a sauna, and i think a car-garage; and in these he kept the “stuff” that clutters houses designed for couples or for women and their children, when occupied by single men [and when also lacking such outbuildings]. He had a collection of photographs, perhaps 200 of them; but these were kept in a sturdy cardboard box under a kitchen bench or his bed, somewhere like that; and taken out only for actual examination. Nearly every single woman’s apartment or house that i have seen has had many photographs on display; but few single men have had.

I did see flowers on Timo’s table in season, but the only bought ones were occasional mid-winter hyacinths, in a small pot, for the pleasant scent.

There were small rugs on the floors, near the doors, in the kitchen which was his social space, and in his bedroom. These rugs were easy for 70-75 year old Timo to carry outside to the “beating frame” which is part of Finnish culture, beat clean, and carry back after he had swept the floors. It didn’t take him long to “clean house”; so he did it at least thrice a week–it might have been daily.

His closets were small, one in the entry room and one in his bedroom. He had plenty of work clothes, underwear and socks, a few items of “nicer” clothing, but no “outfits” of the sort some women keep by the dozens.

From Timo’s example, and the stereotype, combined; i’d infer that men put into women’s housing tend to occupy it clumsily and “messily”; while men who build their own homes tend to keep them clean but in a quite different, simpler, more functional style than North American women have favoured in the three generations since World War II.

Another indication, methinks, that men’s5 lifestyles make more sense and less expense.

Notes:

1. Lady is properly a title of nobility. A very, very small fraction of all the Alpha women of North American households are actually Ladies. The next time some woman claims the privilege to go ahead of you in queue with “Ladies First”, you may properly demand to see proof of her noble title. (I didn’t say the demand would be welcomed.)

2. Even in the Ruling Classes it was qualified, e.g Elizabeth I and Victoria, Reginae. Native America had both patriarchy and matriarchy, as most people interested in Native cultures know.

3. One bachelor man near Port Alberni built a garage with a small apartment above his pickup truck, and lived there for 15 years until his death.

4. The Lakehead-Finnish equivalent of Maria biscuits–a generic, tasty enough mild sweet to go with coffee.

5… designed and built by men for our own use.

Posted in Human Nature, Male Lifestyle, MGTOW | Leave a comment

Going to the Dogs

Posted on February 6, 2019 by Davd

… We’ll be better off, healthier, wiser
(c) 2019, Davd

Call it hyperbole if you like, but I’ve decided to make my pre-Valentine’s Day blog this year, about that non erotic love most men have for, and receive from most dogs. Turns out the Saint, on the best evidence i could quickly get, was neither erotic, nor shot through the heart with an arrow. His virtues were fidelity to his faith, healing love, and truthfulness when it cost him his life. I can say much the same of several good and excellent dogs, except, happily, none of them yet was martyred, and i mean to protect Fritz from such fate also.1

When i was young and Wikipedia still well in the future, I read about St. Valentine being executed by arrows, but i did not make reference notes (what schoolboy does? … if not assigned to by a teacher?); so to check that story, I looked in the Catholic Encyclopedia and Wikipedia, last month.

February 14 is associated with one or more Saints Valentine, both sources agreed. Wikipedia reports:

All that is reliably known of the saint commemorated on February 14 is his name and that he was martyred and buried at a cemetery on the Via Flaminia close to the Ponte Milvio to the north of Rome on that day.2

The Catholic Encyclopedia mentions two Saints Valentine who were martyred at Rome and associated with February 14:

At least three different Saint Valentines, all of them martyrs, are mentioned in the early martyrologies under date of 14 February. One is described as a priest at Rome, another as bishop of Interamna (modern Terni), and these two seem both to have suffered in the second half of the third century and to have been buried on the Flaminian Way, but at different distances from the city. … Of the third Saint Valentine, who suffered in Africa with a number of companions, nothing further is known..

Legends and “hagiographies” cited by Wikipedia seem to agree that the Saint[s] were executed for persisting in Christian evangelism during persecution by Emperor Claudius. Wikipedia mentions that two of them included reports that the Saint restored the sight of a blind girl by prayer (one stating she was a jailer’s daughter, the other, a judge’s).

Love, in the form of charity, we can find in those pages — but neither arrows nor eros. The Wikipedia article [apophatically?] attributes the romantic eros connection to Chaucer et alia:

Many of the current legends that characterize Saint Valentine were invented in the 14th century in England, notably by Geoffrey Chaucer and his circle, when the feast day of February 14 first became associated with romantic love. … During the Middle Ages, it was believed that birds paired in mid-February. This was then associated with the romance of Valentine.

Plainly, the mid-February mating of birds is more a European3 than a Canadian phenomenon. Equally plainly, commercial interests advertise Valentine’s Day merchandise more in parallel with Chaucer than with the Saint and martyrdom. It may be worth remembering that commercial interests advertise “to make money”.

I value love other than the erotic, and healing, and fidelity… and so for those readers who might be considering marriage, offer the love of a good dog as a model for choosing a good wife (or husband, for that matter.)

“If you want love and loyalty,” i read years ago from some Feminist source or sources, “don’t get a wife, get a dog.” My own experience fits with that Sneer: I have received love and loyalty from several good dogs during my life, and i’m divorced (at her initiative), not married4.

Thus my first piece of Valentine’s Day advice for men who are unmarried and ‘dating’, or whatever the successor to dating is called in this wicked century: Don’t marry a woman who is less loving, less loyal, than a really good dog. If that leaves out the woman or women you have lately been ‘dating’, better you be forewarned.5

My second piece of advice is: Live truth — yes, I said [at least try to] live no lies at all. No social lies, no “white lies”, and whether selling or sex seeking, no self-serving lies.6 If you’re going to marry, marry a woman with whom you can be completely truthful and who will be completely truthful with you.

If doggedly loyal, faithful, truthful women be scarce, so that many men don’t find one to marry; if you be one man who winds up unmarried; well, as the Sneer said backhanded, you have a much better chance of finding a dog who will be faithful, truthful, loyal, and loving. A good marriage should be good for your health and hers; a bad marriage is very likely to be bad for your health. Dogs, we shall see below, are good for most men’s health (and nearly all the other men are allergic.)

Threefold points are somewhat favoured in English language writings, so let me add a third item of advice here, for men considering marriage: Have some outings together with your dog or dogs, and the woman you are considering. You’ll likely learn things about her character that “romancing'” seldom brings out. One of them might well be, how she treats loyal, faithful friends who have neither eros nor money to offer her.

I expect to spend February 14 with a beloved, faithful dog.

Dogs do our health much more good than harm. Anti-dog rules do much more harm than good, except where they set aside minority fractions of housing, public space, and transportation for the minority of people who are allergic to dogs. There likewise ought to be peanut free foods and eateries for the minority of people who are allergic to peanuts, alcohol abstinent groups and venues for the minority of people who are allergic to alcoholic drink, and so forth. But if I enjoy beer and peanuts and they are better for me than sugary soda-pop and Twinkies, then bless beer and peanuts for me and the majority of men who can benefit from their moderate use.

Bless “regular7 dogs” even more. After suffering a near total absence of dog friendly Seniors’ apartments in east-central Alberta, I began keeping notes on stories about the merits of canine company. Those merits are many and powerful; here are a few examples that are easy to describe quickly:

A survivor of the Humboldt Broncos bus crash was recently delighted, and his recovery visibly helped, by a service dog.

Children are able to remain still for medical scans with canine help rather than having to take medication that might reduce the value of the scans.

Supportive therapy dogs help mitigate the stress of being a police constable. Police work is often stressful; and can produce battle fatigue, formally called PTSD.

Dogs in nursing homes, hospitals, universities and even prisons help confined people, reducing negative stress consequences from anxiety to aggression.

A Labrador retriever in a London [UK] school has helped children with bereavement and anxiety issues and without special service training, has become a valuable part of the school.

The BBC website, like many, provided advice on improving one’s general and mental health at year end and the start of the New Year. Among “The simple tips to improve your health” published by Health reporter Alex Therrien, was … Adopt a dog. Therrien quotes Dr. Rhys Thatcher, of Aberystwyth University:

… there are particular benefits to adopting a dog. [When you] walk it for at least 30 minutes twice a day, you will be boosting your activity while also getting the emotional benefits of dog adoption.

“This way you get to spend time outside, you get to exercise, you get a loyal companion and at the same time you get to improve the life of another living thing, all of which have been shown to improve physical and mental health,”

Even if you are not in confinement, not a soldier or constable, don’t have acute PTSD, and are not under high stress or recovering from extreme stress — canine company is good for you. It is good for me. The canine need not be expensively trained, for many, probably for most benefits. Our species evolved together, we are both pack animals, not solitary like cougars and bears, nor herd beasts like cattle and bison.

Instead of being biased against men with regular dogs, the laws and practices of a genuinely healthy society would be biased in our favour.

References:

Thurston, Herbert, 1912. “St. Valentine.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 15. New York: Robert Appleton Company.

Wikipedia, 2019. “Saint Valentine”. Accessed January 30.

Notes:

1. . Fritz, and the other superior dogs before him, have defended me and our home when we had one, from bears, deer, moose, and smaller intruders; but prudently: Warning barks, followed by my appearance or voice so the animal knows there are a canine and a human to confront, have nearly always been enough. I have felt safer sleeping in Rest Areas with a dog in the vehicle: Thieves thinking of raiding a parked car tend to think twice when they realize that a man and a regular [not toy] dog are in it — and look for a “softer target”.

2. Wikipedia elaborates: “According to the official biography of the Diocese of Terni, Bishop Valentine was born and lived in Interamna and while on a temporary stay in Rome he was imprisoned, tortured, and martyred there on February 14, 269. His body was hastily buried at a nearby cemetery and a few nights later his disciples retrieved his body and returned him home.”

3… and imaginably, southern-US phenomenon. I leave to the ornithologists, whether birds who nest in Canada might mate before flying north to lay their eggs, and when.

4. Please notice, I don’t deny that faithful, loyal, co-operative women exist, even by the millions — but I also accept what that Sneer is telling us: Millions of other women are not faithful, loyal, and co-operative. My main point is that women worthy of marriage treat their men as loyally as good dogs treat their close human company.

5… as an old stock phrase said, “Marry in haste, repent at leisure.” (and i should acknowledge, in this wicked century, that many men are dating rather than married, because they are too prudent to marry, as well as too horny to avoid close contact with women.)

6. I mean quite seriously, that we should strive never to lie. A factual mistake is not a lie; a lie is an untruth uttered knowing it is not true. If some readers believe, or even “feel”, that you must tell some lies to function socially: Keep those lies to a minimum to start with, and get out of situations that require lying, to continue with.

One subtle form of self-serving lies, that is common among women and rare among men, is clothing and make-up that enhances, sometimes downright counterfeits, their sexuality. Especially now that the Government of Canada has made the big cannabis tax grab, why not go on to cosmetics and showy impractical clothing?

7. “Regular dogs” is a phrase composed to exclude canines bred to be cute imitation babies, to attack people or animals, or look strange [as some bulldogs, not so much boxers, look to me]. As an apophatic description, a regular dog is one who weighs more than 10-15 kg [22-33 pounds], is friendly more than aggressive, likes to run, and can run faster than a healthy boy. Pekingese are not regular dogs, beagles and Jack Russell terriers are in personality but not size. Border Collies, Huskies, Labradors, retrievers generally, Springer spaniels, (and Newfoundlands among the big breeds) are “obviously” regular dogs.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Comforts of a Simpler Camp

Posted on January 20, 2019 by Davd

… if it costs you, and doesn’t serve you, it harms you….
(c) 2019, Davd

It’s below zero tonight, even in Fahrenheit1. The snow is deep for Canadian Prairie winters (but would be shallow in climates that are equally cold and less dry, this same time of year.) The air sneaking in from outside smells of wood smoke, and Fritz, my canine spirit guide, is curled up on his Ikea camp mattress. Even indoors, it’s cool enough that he might be less comfortable stretched out.

Overall, though, he is comfortable, and so am I, in this simple rented camp — more comfortable than we would be in fancier quarters. We have what we need; and a few things we might not need but find pleasant, like an extra pillow for me, enough extra clothing and footwear that i need not put on something when it is wet from its last trip outdoors, and his breakfast soaked in broth made from meat drippings and fat.

We moved here at the end of November, from a much nicer apartment in another central Alberta town about 75 km from here. I prefer this one, for reasons that might be too androcentric for many women to appreciate.

Our previous camp was a third floor apartment, this one is near enough to ground level that i can open a double glazed “patio door”, pick up the end of Fritz’ tether, and “tie him out” while i stay indoors, do kitchen chores, even study or pray, while he smells all that outdoor information that I cannot smell, hears the outdoor sounds that i can hardly hear [some that I cannot hear at all], maybe chews on a bone or curls up for a rest that helps him cool off from this human temperature apartment.

He couldn’t do that from a third floor apartment. If we had a real home, he could do more; but at least, this simpler camp is better for him than the Nicer one.

We have been homeless for more than three years (since July 2015 to be exact.) For those three years plus, i have paid rent. To call any of the dwelling places i have rented, “home”, would be a lie or at best, a serious mistake. To call most of them “camp”, is more accurate. A good camp is not to be scorned.

I have begun an essay on what a home is, or you might prefer to say, what are the qualities of a real home. Real, fully qualified homes do exist, and it would greatly improve the human condition if most men had one, and most of those men lived at home…

.. if that be possible.

Most Canadian and i strongly suspect, most “American” [US] men are homeless in the strict sense of “home”. What makes it impossible, as best I can tell, for most men to have a home these days, should be the subject of that essay which is not fully written. Before I publish that, i might ought “post” one for Valentine’s Day. (That “Valentine blog” is finished in first draft, and i intend to publish it early next month. Now would be too soon.)

Meanwhile, it is “the dead of winter”, and as a homeless man with enough money to pay rent, i am camped in a rather simple apartment. The cost is one reason; i pay maybe 60% as much as i paid for the nice one.

Meanwhile, for a man living in an apartment whose rules are not of his free choosing, nice can be more of a burden than a blessing.

If the apartment be “furnished”, he may literally be required to sleep in a bed he dislikes, in order to be permitted to sleep in a bed at all. That condition, sleeping in a bed not of one’s choosing, in a bed vs. which one could readily improve but are not allowed to improve, sure as Hell is not home. I remember sleeping one November night alone in a double bed, and the next, on a single width mattress on the floor2. I slept better on the floor, on a good firm mattress of my choosing, than on a wider softer mattress half again as thick with a “box spring” under it and a furniture frame under that.

Using bedding i neither need nor want, like a mattress too soft, like a “box spring”, like needless width, does not serve me. It did remind me that I was not home and with rules like that, that apartment building could never become home.

For me, no conventional rented apartment could be home. A room of my own in a building where i share kitchen, dining area, study and maybe even prayer space, with men I know and have chosen as friends, could be home. I’ve roomed in two such buildings; both were called monasteries.3 They prove by existing, by having existed longer than one man’s adult lifespan4, that home among brothers one did not “grow up with”, is possible and can be durable.

The third floor apartment i left at the end of November, had a television set, and “TV cable”, which I never used5. It had wireless Internet access, which I used to read news websites and download some libre software; here I tether my mobile ‘phone for e-mail and weather forecasts and the rest can wait for my trips to the Public Library.

I rented that third floor apartment for a month and a half, paying more than 1/3 my after-tax income 6, because i respected the town where it is located and wanted to work on a project with some people there. In that month and a half, i did not find more economical housing “in town”, and going to and from the outdoors by elevator [or two flights of stairs] became tedious. The local work went slowly and met frustrations for which i do not blame those people.

One thing I prefer about this simpler camp, is a sngle bed with a basic firm mattress. Another is not paying for amenities I do not use. Being able to tether Fritz is valuable, and more comfortable, for us both.

Fritz gets more outdoor time here. I get about the same amount, on about equally interesting roads, trails and sidewalks. I have friends in this town from 2016 and 2017… I miss not having the friends in the other town within walking distance; but instead, i have some here.

If there were a fire, i could go out the door where I tether Fritz; it’s an easier escape.

I have a really crude desk made up of two filing cabinets, a piece of “OSB” stiffened by two small pieces of scrap hardwood (beech? yellow birch? It does not matter for the purpose). That desk serves me better than a fancy one the nice apartment loaned me.7 I’m not using all the cabinet drawers for papers, so some hold clothing — probably not nice, definitely not fancy, but quite satisfactory for getting through the winter.

The table in the kitchen, i built from junk. One piece of the junk happens to be a smallish door with one relatively good side, that i would not use for a door even in my scruffiest home, but the good side of which makes an easily cleaned work-table top. The one in the furnished apartment looked nicer, but i am making uses of mine that it might not have been strong enough to serve.

The chairs by the table, Fritz and i found in an alley while out walking: Solid oak. They could benefit from refinishing; if i had a home i’d have a place to refinish them.

Fritz’ bed — 22×46 inches of old Ikea camp mattress, on the floor where the air is coolest, because he wears his fur coat all the time — looks more ‘in place’ here than it did in the fancy apartment.

That’s enough, methinks, to convey The Comforts of a Simpler Camp. They are working, functional comforts:
‣ A firm single mattress for a man who has slept alone for 15+ years and expects to continue;
‣ a door for a canine to go outdoors on a fairly long tether, by himself when he belongs outside and his human ought to work indoors.
‣ a crude, some might say ugly desk that meets my needs;
‣ a sturdy, easily cleaned kitchen work table
‣ two strong oak chairs, comfortable too.
‣ … and no amenities that neither of us uses, to work around and pay for.

I do hope to have a home again, next winter, “and my brothers sitting in it” as Thomas Merton wrote in The Seven Storey Mountain. If it is as crude as this winter’s camp is, we will be working on making it not “nicer”, but more comfortable and pleasing to our working and social lives.

My file cabinets will still be with me; perhaps some brother will use one of them for storing his paperwork. The sturdy work-table might be in the kitchen, or somewhere else where its kind of work is done; perhaps we will have plants on it if it has a sunny window. (It couldn’t have had plants on it by the Nice Apartment windows: Fancy carpeting and no sun.)

The sturdy oak chairs might be refinished; they are too good to throw away. My bed is likely to be the same, perhaps it will stand in the corner of two walls so i can use 3-4 pillows to read comfortably in bed.

My ersatz desk is likely to be doing other work, but i could take it apart, move it compactly, and put it back together to use until i have one larger in surface area. The second hand office chair i sit in will stay with me; it’s good enough. Fritz will probably be sleeping on the same mattress; maybe he will have two of them, one on a porch or in a room where he can sleep cooler when he chooses.

In a six-letter F-word, my home will be frugal. It will provide more rather than less comfort and subsistence for our expenditure of time and money… as does this camp, in the meantime. For me, frugality is comfortable. For all, in a Canada where ecological scarcity is widespread, it is a moral imperative.8

Notes:

1. That was factually true the evening i began the draft; it might or might not be true tonight. The long-run average low temperature here in an Alberta town east of Edmonton, is definitely below 0F for today and every previous day in January. It might get up to 0F by the middle of February, but I’m not sure of that.

2. There was a sheet on the mattress, but no bed frame under it. I’ve built a bed from 2x4s and a part sheet of OSB [formerly called waferboard, it’s made from poplar] since that night, and sleep comfortably on the same basic mattress, which I bought new a few years ago.

3. One, i left because they would not let me keep a 11 year old, loyal, excellent dog for his remaining active lifespan. I was not willing to abandon a faithful friend; they were not willing to let me keep him in a “hermitage” and sleep there, nor among the monks, so that i could return his fidelity.

The other monastery was Francophone, and my French is not that good.

4. The Orders to which these monasteries belong are centuries old; it is Canada that is younger than the Orders, and hence, these Canadian monasteries are not yet centuries old. (The same could be written about Buddhist monasteries.)

5. By the time i have done my computer assisted writing and studying, I would rather read a book printed on paper, cook, pray, or go outdoors.

6… a criterion for how much rent one ought to pay; paying less is OK, paying more leaves relatively little for food, clothing, vehicle costs, ….

7… whose file drawer was too narrow for a regular file folder, and whose top had holes in it that didn’t suit my computer cables, but did foul up my use of the mouse.

8. Somewhere there are men, probably one or more within bicycling distance if the roads were free of ice and snow, who cannot afford as much subsistence and comfort as even this frugal camp affords me. I have no moral right to waste what another man needs.

Posted in Davd, Male Lifestyle, MGTOW | Leave a comment

Brown Chicken Stew

Posted on January 8, 2019 by Davd

… Reliably Good, Easily Made “From Scratch”
(c) 2019, Davd

Chicken soup is famous as a comfort food — and a very healthy one. It belongs in every kitchen’s repertoire for that reason. As a man who likes robust rather than delicate flavours, I find that the dark meat of the chicken (found in the legs and back) makes a richer-flavoured soup than the white [poitrine1] meat. Dark meat chicken soup is my kind of comfort food — hearty.

Chicken, more generally, belongs in the repertoire of any man who cooks most of his meals, either alone or in teamwork. This winter in Western Canada, pork loin has been available at less than two dollars per pound, boneless. Beef is expensive by comparison, and fish, even more so. Chicken this winter, costs more than pork “on specials”, but much less than beef or fish: Unless you want to alternate mainly between pork and meatless high protein foods like beans, lentils2, and peas — chicken belongs in your repertoire.

Recently, whole chicken thighs [with bone, without back] were sold for about a dollar and a half per pound. $3.30/kg]. Last summer, whole frozen chicken legs [back attached] were sold for a dollar per pound [$2.20/kg]. At those prices, dark chicken meat is less expensive than “boneless white” at its recent special price [slightly above $5.50/kg]: The dark meat prices now offer you more chicken per dollar, even allowing for the bones3.

About five years ago, i published a technique for chicken cacciatore, which suits those thighs and whole legs better than it would work with poitrine [white meat]. This stew will taste noticeably different than cacciatore, because it does not use tomatoes (and if they are available, i recommend the stew include bean sprouts, which i would not recommend for cacciatore.) With these two techniques available, you can cook dark chicken meat more often without getting bored [and without frying or baking it, which is a third distinct way to enjoy the brown pieces of chicken].

I’ll describe the stew cooking technique using the largest cooking pot in a small kitchen. It can definitely be cooked up in larger amounts if you have larger pots and more than one man eating.

My largest pot just now is heavy-bottomed stainless steel, 8″ in diameter and 4½” tall; it holds between 3 and 4 litres (perhaps 4 US quarts?) brim full. I can put three thigh pieces in the bottom of it, skin side down, with a little room to spare. I turn the power on under the pan, fairly low, put the meat in, put the lid on, and let the heat toughen the skin while browning it slightly and drawing out some fat.

Meanwhile, I chop some onion—half a medium onion, you could perhaps get away with using less—and when there is fat in the bottom of the pot4, add that onion. While it is browning, i chop half a large carrot or all of a small one, into pieces about 1 cm [3/8″] on a side. They go into the pot with a quart or litre of water (and I substitute vegetable stock for as much of that water as i have stock, handy). Turning the heat up fairly high, I next cut up about as much cabbage as I did carrot, quite small; and a few mushrooms if i have some handy5. These go in when they are cut up, by which time the water should be boiling or getting near. Sage, celery, liveche, pepper and oregano are good herbs to use for seasoning; and some brine from a bottle of green olives is also good — but don’t salt without first tasting, if you use much of that.

Turn down the power, and let the chicken and vegetables boil gently 10-15 minutes before adding a quarter as much rice or pasta, as the volume of water. (With mushrooms, I prefer pasta.) Monitor the cooking, turning down the power when it returns to boiling after adding the pasta …

… and when the pasta is done to your liking, turn off the power, and add 1 — 3 handfuls of beansprouts. They do not need to boil; hot nearly boiling water will cook them enough.

Take out two of the chicken thigh pieces6 to use as cooked chicken in other meals7. They have made the stock in the stew, rich-flavoured. What you have in the pot, is a hearty, tasty chicken stew with enough meat, pasta, and bean sprouts to give you ample protein; and enough vegetables that while you’re welcome to eat more vegetables besides, you needn’t.

The stew will make one big meal or two small ones, for one man. It can be refrigerated in the pot where it cooked, if you choose to have two meals, or if the fridge is crowded it can go in a smaller container. It re-heats as good as it was the first time… and if you have bigger pots, you can scale up the technique… as you can also adjust the pasta, onion, carrots, and cabbage to your taste.

Notes:

1. The English word, “breast” is much more often used to refer to human mammary bulges than to chest muscle meat from birds; while poitrine means only the “white” bird meat. (The French word I have read for human mammary bulges is Tetons, which makes the name of a mountain range, south of here in the USA, somewhat comical.)

2. I usually cook lentils with curry powder and onion; and if i have vegetable stock handy, heat that for soaking the dry lentils. Perhaps later this year i’ll post that technique; experienced cooks can probably approximate it from this footnote.

3. The past few winters, my default chicken purchase has been boneless, skinless chicken poitrine, frozen, for about $2 per pound [$4.40 /kg] on special. It’s meaty, very low in fat, and according to Dr. K, my favourite physician around here, more digestible than beef or pork. I’m waiting to see if the poitrine price comes back down to where it was the past few years, at least be convinced it won’t go up further, before I write about cooking it.

4. If there is moisture with the fat, that won’t hurt; ideally, you’ll figure out how to time the heating to brown that skin slightly and get out only fat, in which case the onion will also brown slightly.

5. Usually, I have frozen, dried, and salted wild mushrooms from the autumn. This year I sometimes buy marked down mushrooms, cook them fairly slowly in a frying pan with oil or margarine and a little onion and oregano, and freeze them; so this stew is developed using grocery store Agaricus.

6. They can be taken out when the pasta is added, or perhaps ideally, when the pasta is cooked but before adding the sprouts. That extra boiling time will assure the chicken meat is fully cooked… though 15 minutes ought to be plenty, chickens, and therefore thigh pieces, vary in size.

7. It is quite possible to make a second soup from one of the other pieces: For instance, I boiled a handful of [chicken thigh] bones i had put in the feezer, with vegetable scraps being saved for stock, gently for 5-10 minutes; then [when the scraps and bones had been removed] added to that boiling water
‣ Carrot and cabbage as above; no mushrooms,
‣ ≈ 2 rounded teaspoons of Knorr chicken/broth powder,
‣ and cooked rice.

Since the meat was already cooked, i let the pot boil only long enough to cook the carrot. Added beansprouts as before; it made a good soup, not as rich, but worthy of the name “chicken soup.”

This second soup technique can be precautionary, if the saved piece of meat might have been a day too long in the ‘fridge. My guess is that in summer, most saved meat will be eaten cold, and in winter, it will often be made into a second, perhaps third soup… by men cooking for one.

Posted in Davd, Food, Men's Health | Leave a comment

New Year’s Resolutions 2019:

Posted on December 31, 2018 by Davd

Resolve to make yourself a better man somehow,
with good hope of success,
or don’t bother

(c) 2018, Davd

Why not resolve something really brave? Why resolve anything at all? Both of those are fair questions.

How far off the truth, is the stereotypical image of a man waking up around noon, maybe somewhat later, with a painful hangover, and resolving to eat, or drink, much, much, much less than he did last night?1. (When the stereotypical image is always of a man, that’s one error: Don’t women have bad mornings-after?2) How far off it is, differs from one man to another, of course; if it applies to you, my first advice is to sober up and have a good breakfast before you make any resolution more elaborate than — to sober up and have a good breakfast.

If you wake up New Year’s Day at least half sober, and have a good breakfast — that’s a good start.

This is not the first December I’ve written a blog on this topic, because late every December, many men who tend to keep their lives in order, start thinking about New Year’s Resolutions; and on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day, many other men (who may not to keep their lives in order), scramble to make one or more New Year’s Resolutions either because they’ve somehow been taught they ought to, or because somebody is pressuring them to.

Many other men deliberately don’t make New Year’s Resolutions; and many other men, don’t bother. Both choices are OK. It’s also OK to make New Year’s Resolutions—if making them seems to you, to be a good way to make changes you want to make.

This is important, so i’ll repeat it “in other words”: If you do choose to make one or more New Year’s Resolutions, make them yours. Making them is voluntary, and optional: You don’t need to make New Year’s Resolutions. And if a “resolution” is not expressing your personal philosophy of life, it is really not yours—it is somebody else’s resolution imposed on you.

Before i write about some resolutions worth making, let me offer some encouragement to men who might, quite rightly, decide not to make any New Year’s Resolutions this winter. When in doubt, don’t is good advice for many situations calling for choice… including making New Year’s Resolutions. It’s especially good advice against standard “resolutions” that are usually not kept.

A common, stereotypical experience, if you are overweight, is people pressuring you to resolve to decrease that weight. If you “go along”, that’s not a resolution, it’s a resignation. If the person putting on the weight loss pressure is your Mother, or your wife, or anyone who cooks your food—then rather than resolve to lose weight, you can negotiate about what they cook for you, instead3—and there are better ways to lose weight than “dieting,” as we shall see.

That stereotypical post-holiday resolution, “to lose weight”, is worthwhile:
‣ if you want to weigh less badly enough, to plan how you will lose that weight; and
‣ if you can then make or locate a plan that you believe you can keep and will indeed lower your weight.
Those done, it’s a real resolution. (I “want to lose some weight” in 2019, but I’m not making that a resolution. I don’t have a plan standing by, that i believe i can both comfortably and safely keep, and rely on4.)

Resolving to lose weight is especially likely to be futile, recent research seems to show, and so it’s a resolution i suggest you don’t make. Rather, i suggest you resolve to keep an active lifestyle. That might lead to a lower weight; and if not, it is almost certain to make you a healthier fat man.

That example can set a tone of sorts for this year’s New Year’s Resolutions blog: Make a resolution you want to keep, if you make one at all; and plan how to keep it. If anyone, of any age and any gender, nags you to make a resolution you don’t want to keep, or don’t have a good plan for keeping, I suggest you ask that person[s] to cite the laws and regulations they are demanding you obey. That’s a polite way to say “I might indeed obey the law, if the law requires … otherwise, shut up.”

What sorts of resolutions might be worth keeping? Why, resolutions that make a better man of you. Weighing less might qualify — if you are fat now, and can get your weight down comfortably (or at least, with little or no suffering) and keep it down. Most civilized people, men and women, who tried this century have failed. So if a healthier life is a goal of yours, plan carefully and bias your efforts toward outdoor exercise5.

Doing push-ups, or other upper body strength exercises, seems to have good effects on your brain as well as on your arms and shoulders. (Gardening with hand tools qualifies in season… but in Alberta’s climate, New Year’s is not part of that season. Maybe hand snow shoveling will help; but to be sure, i do push-ups in the morning.) For other health enhancing efforts, take a look at the medical advice you’ve received this decade; because different men have different health profiles.

You might aspire to become a morally better man, as well as a healthier one. Three moral resolutions that ought to be normal, but are anomalies in this wicked world, are [in alphabetic order]: Chastity, Frugality, and Truth.

Chastity, a traditional Christian virtue, includes abstinence from sexual display as well as from sexual actions outside marriage.6 If chastity were the norm governing public appearance and behaviour, I contend, sexual harassment would be very rare; and people would get more useful work done. As you have probably noticed, though, it’s not the norm. The very word chastity connotes needless, prudish self restraint to most secular citizens of “the West.”

Chastity conflicts with the sexual license and sexualized identity values of the past few decades. However, sex, like DDT and sloppy computer code, is cheap in the short term7 and expensive in the long run. There really is a need for, a great benefit to be enjoyed from, chastity.

Consider, for instance, the cost of treating HIV and AIDS. Then, since other sexually transmitted diseases exist, consider the costs they entail, and add those on. Consider and add further, the cost of abortions, the great majority of which kill fetuses conceived by intercourse outside marriage. You could even add on the cost of cosmetics…

There are costs not measured in money, and seldom expressed that way: Conflict is one, or perhaps more than one: Rivalry for attractive sexual partners can contaminate workplaces, including schools.

Distraction from work and learning is another cost, distinct from conflict. This ought to be obvious; but since so many schools and workplaces tolerate sexuality display, it might do to quote Lesbian columnist Norah Vincent quoting Jim, one of the men with whom she bowled,, about his office job:

I can work with an ugly chick. There’s an ugly chick works in my office with me every day and I’m fine. But every now and then there’s this hot, hot woman who comes into the office, and for the whole time she’s there I’m completely f[….]d. Everything’s out the window. I don’t get s[…] done. All I can do is stare at her like this …

he made a dumbfounded expression”. [Vincent, 2006: 35]

(Readers are invited to write in with further examples of the non-monetary costs of “unchastity”… meanwhile, methinks the point be made and the blog be getting long.)

Frugality is the virtue of making the most and best one can, of limited means; or conversely, of achieving our needs and some of our wants as efficiently as we can. We associate frugality especially with the Scots. It tends to be praised by those who know our means are limited, and scorned by those who are rich or want to pretend they are.

Frugality is obviously a good thing, since waste is obviously a bad thing. Still, its connotation has often been negative recently, because the need for frugality has been shamed by “advocates of prosperity”. The prosperity is phony by now, for most of us, or at least exaggerated: Prices and especially subsistence prices have gone up more rapidly this century, than wages.8

Frugality conflicts with the materialistic identity ideals of the past century or longer. (You could make a case for materialism being an ideal at least since money became a common medium of trade.9) To most Canadians and “Americans” living today, materialism has been an identity value all their lives (meaning for the great majority, since the end of “World War II”.)

(Frivolity is a kind of waste: An excellent meal fully enjoyed is not frivolous [though a diet of nothing but gourmet food would become frivolous because the palate would cease to fully appreciate] while a handful of cheap chocolate when an apple would have satisfied as much and was available, is. 4-wheel-drive is frivolous tearing up the logging roads “for the Hell of it” and frugal pulling a trailer down those same roads [where 2-wheel drive would do more damage and perhaps get stuck].)

If frugality appeals to you, consider making it a foundation of your New Year’s Resolution[s]. If having more money left after paying bills and shopping, if having more for your money, appeal to you … frugality ought to appeal to you also.

Truth should need no definition. A distinction ought to be made, though, between mistakes and lies. Neither mistakes nor lies are good — but lies are worse, qualitatively worse. In the Christian “New Testament”, two liars are struck dead without mercy. Nothing I have noticed in Christian tradition condemns mistakes — they are to be repented and forgiven.

Science, as a crescive co-operative search for truth, expects and gradually, systematically, logically and factually searches out and corrects mistakes. Lies — deliberate presentation of falsehood as factually true — are poison to science, and science is one part even of modern [or you might call it post-modern] life where lying is shameful and liars are vigorously shamed. Truth is an essential foundation for science and engineering… which in turn are essential foundation for industry.

So who would be so mean as to subvert truth? Millions of people who are not scientists, nor engineers [architects, etc.] and benefit from falsehood in the short term.

Truth conflicts with Nice Manners, Political Correctness, and often with the Profit Motive. People lie, people distort their perceptions and their memories, to be Nice, to be Politically Correct, and as various sales and marketing scandals remind us from time to time, to “make money”.

Resolving to discipline your thinking to avoid mistakes, and your utterance to avoid lies, is arguably the most virtuous resolution you can make — because the practically valuable work of any society, any group, depends on accurate knowledge.

I do encourage you to resolve to be chaste, frugal, and truthful to the best of your ability — and to gradually work to improve “the best of your ability” upward. If you do, you’ll be a paragon relative to these sloppy self-indulgent times. If you don’t, you might shame yourself relative to your best ideals — but need not feel much shame relative to a wicked World.

Short of those three great virtuous resolutions-in-general, you might resolve modesty10 (as i recommended last New Year’s), to eat only local food, to do only work you enjoy, to improve a skill or your knowledge of a language… there are obviously many other possibilities. Choose a resolution, if you make one, that appeals to you …

… and makes you a better man.

References:

Nathanson, Paul, and Katherine K. Young, 2006. Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination against Men Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Reviewed here

Vincent, Norah, 2006. Self Made Man : One Woman’s Year Disguised as a Man. New York: Viking Penguin. (Now there’s an incongruous beast!)

Wells, H. G. 1920: The Outline of History: The Whole Story of Man. New York: Macmillan. Cited in the Project Gutenberg Ebook edition, 2014.

Notes:

1. There are many such men and an equal or larger fraction of women, who ought to quit drinking alcoholic beverages, as soon as possible, most of them for life. They include people who cannot digest alcohol as most Euro-Canadians can, [not all of whom are native North Americans]; plus those we usually call alcoholics, who can digest alcohol but not discipline their intake.

2. I am sure women do; and after reading men’s websites for seven years plus, i am persuaded that many of those women will blame a man for their suffering — and often, quite unfairly. Misandry is far more common than misogyny as 2018 ends and 2019 begins, and important context for some possible resolutions, such as chastity.

3. I myself might offer to do most of the cooking, in exchange for her doing chores I enjoy a lot less. This only works if you like to cook.

4. Recent research seems to show that dieting is almost always a failure—the weight lost is gained back within a few years if not months.

5. Personally, I would not enjoy the workout machinery approach. My best health promoting influence is a Husky-Labrador dog named Fritz, who wants to get out and exercise for the joy of it — and takes me along. My second and third best influences are a love of gardening, and the food it grows.

6. There may be some ambiguity in usage, as to whether married [wo]men may be called “chaste”; many men and women monastics often take “vows of chastity” that entail complete abstinence from sexuality. In most usages, it seems, married people who are sexually active only with one another are called “chaste”; and some writers use “celibate” to refer to nearly anyone who is not cohabiting with a sexual partner.

7. “Sex itself”: Kissing, fondling, intercourse, (and i won’t try to name the esoteric variations that have filched the rainbow from Noah’s Ark and put it on BC Ferries) costs very little. “Sexy” clothing and cosmetics can become expensive; but most of the spending is either conformity to misguided popular usage, or an attempt to be sexually “hotter” than one naturally is. Chastity would make those expenses as needless as the treatment of the Sexually Transmitted Diseases, whose transmission chastity prevents.

As for sloppy computer code, an old programming maxim reads: “If carpenters built buildings the way programmers write software, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization as we know it.”

8. Consider the prices of belts, broccoli, haircuts, ramen noodles, shrimp, T-shirts, .. you get the idea. Consider “Dollarama” stores, which now sell very few goods for as little as a dollar. In 2006, when I discovered them on moving from a region where they had not yet located to a region where they were established, everything they sold cost a dollar or less. Today, my recent observations tell me, those same goods cost 2-5 times that much.

9. Comparing the Christian Gospels with the Hebrew Scriptures [which Christians call “the Old Testament], the Hebrew Scriptures are visibly more approving of earthly, material wealth. It is my impression that Islam adopted the Hebrew view (no great surprise, since Islam reveres the Hebrew but not the Christian Scriptures), while Buddhism, arising from different roots, values simplicity. Buddhism and Christianity being both ancient (Wells, 1920, Chronology) and the Hebrew Tradition and money being more ancient, “the issue seems to be” when materialism became a widespread identity ideal. One might name the Industrial Revolution as the beginning of materialism as a common ideal outside the Ruling Class; it seems obvious that it has been one ideal of a majority of Europeans and North Americans since World War II.

10. I would recommend modesty much more vehemently, except I realize that most men i know, are relatively modest already; and that resolving modesty is a demanding undertaking for a majority [at least, a very large minority] of women while for most men, it’s resolving to keep a virtue we have.

Posted in Commentary, Davd | Leave a comment

Eat your Vegetables

Posted on December 18, 2018 by Davd

… Economically, even in a Canadian winter
(c) 2018, Davd

CBC News, among many other current sources, is telling Canadians that we are not eating enough vegetables (or in Politically Correct Baby Talk, “veggies”.)

Meanwhile “the low Canadian dollar” is making the prices of many vegetables in the grocery store “produce section”, higher than most anyone would have estimated ten or even five years ago1. When vegetables get to costing more than meat — most men, including me, choose meat most of the time.

Still, I do “eat my vegetables”, paying less for them than for meat: I include the expensive ones only when there is a very special, bargain price; and still, i have a good variety among the less expensive. As I often do, i follow the example of my good Métis grandfather (who kept a food garden and taught me many of those skills), and then expand on that.

Most winter meals, i eat the vegetables that back in his generation, were winter staples; and fairly often I add the likes of sprouts: Stored from Canada’s summer farms and gardens2, canned and frozen from Canada’s summer farms and gardens; and grown in big jars in the kitchen. Let’s use “a dollar a pound” as the round number dividing affordable from expensive vegetables, and call any that cost less than sixty cents a pound3, cheap.

Stored vegetables are better than trucked, i believe, especially if you or somebody you know grew them with a minimum of chemical poison and even chemical fertilizers. In the second blog in this Food series, i named four staple Canadian storage vegetables: Cabbage, carrots, potatoes, and turnips. (Perhaps i should also have named beets and parsnips4.) Trouble is, most suburban houses and nearly all apartments have no cold-but-never-frozen ‘room’ to turn into a real, serious root and cabbage cellar: So let’s look at canned vegetables first, and come back to stored.

Canned tomatoes, in particular, have been regularly available for less than that “dollar a pound”; indeed, they have often been available “cheap”. This month, December 2018, I bought canned diced tomatoes for about 50 cents per pound5; and have usually been able to buy them for less than 60 cents 6. Meanwhile, fresh tomatoes are being sold for $1.29 up to more than $2 per pound7.

Canned diced tomatoes make good, economical homemade salsa, and canned crushed [in a pinch, diced] tomatoes make good homemade chili and pasta sauce. If the seasoned canned tomatoes are on special, they can be heated as a vegetable to eat by itself… or mixed with rice to flavour the rice. I won’t try to predict whether canned tomatoes or fresh bean sprouts will be my #1 vegetable this winter; i will predict that I eat more of each than i do of the trucked “fresh” vegetables that cost over $2 per pound.

Canning your own garden vegetables seems to me to work for only a few. Tomatoes can well8, but are easy to freeze; and are commercially available canned at relatively lower prices than other canned vegetables. My favourite home canned foods are applesauce and berry jam; cherry and (dark) plum jams are also very good if your summer supply is that large.

Freezing vegetables in the summer is well worth doing if you have a surplus or a friend with more surplus than [s]he wants to freeze or can. This past summer, I did not get to can applesauce, which i quite regret; but in September i scavenged the remainder of a bed of spinach, chopped that harvest with a food processor, and steamed the chopped spinach to freeze. I only got 2-3 kilos, perhaps less than 2, of frozen blanched spinach from the effort; but it was “organic” spinach, frozen in 2 cm thick discs that i could readily cut in half to make two portions per disc9.

Green beans, broccoli if you grow a lot, and raw tomatoes are worth freezing: Tomatoes have skins which stop the fluid from evaporating, so when thawed, they have a soggy texture but nearly the same moisture content as when they were frozen.

(Frozen lettuce loses its crispness, of course; and i have no stomach for soggy lettuce, hot or cold. Doubt you have either.)

Now back to the stored vegetables: They are beets, cabbage, carrots, (parsnips if you like them, potatoes if you call them vegetables), and turnips. When you see any of them “on sale” you can buy more than you should of tender vegetables; they will keep for a month in the fridge with good care. In a good cellar they will keep through winter, if you grow storage varieties.

Beets are nearly always boiled; they can be boiled in plain water or flavoured with vinegar, allspice, and a little onion for a pleasantly different taste that can even go on a holiday relish tray.

Cabbages can be eaten raw if mild; steamed with caraway, and boiled in soups; the second blog in this series describes the technique for dividing a winter cabbage into two or three different parts for different cooking uses and-or eating raw. (Cole slaw is distinct from those techniques and worth learning; but requires a sauce, special shredding, and onions.)

Carrots can be eaten raw (If you do, shred them as in carrot-raisin salad, or chew thoroughly so you can digest them fully.) Steamed or eaten in soups and stir-fry dishes, they are easier to digest. They can also be semi-pickled in the brine from dill or sweet pickles — a technique that works with raw and also with steamed carrots.

Turnips, winter storage type, are yellow; and also called rutabagas. Sliced about 1 cm [3/8″] thick, or a little thinner, they are good salted and eaten raw. In stews, they are good boiled (cut them small if, like me, you don’t like their boiled texture very much.) When even cabbages are expensive, if rutabagas cost less, they can give a brassica taste to a soup instead of cabbage. And like carrots, they can be semi-pickled in the brine from dill or sweet pickles for a healthy “appetizer” or snack. I generally buy them on sale, often cut-priced because they have begun to get soft (which in the case of root vegetables, means water loss much more often than any kind of decay. You can often firm them up by setting in a container of water for a few hours, preferably in a fridge.)

Mung bean sprouts are the one genuinely fresh vegetable i can grow during an Alberta winter. (Asian friends can sprout soybeans, and most of them seem to prefer soybean sprouts; but i haven’t mastered that technique yet.) While a “fresh” head of broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, etc. might have been harvested a week or longer before you see it in a store display10; I can harvest mung bean sprouts that are absolutely fresh from the jar where i am growing them, pop those sprouts into a mug of chicken broth or a pot of soup, and eat them in minutes.11 What’s more, their cost qualifies as cheap,

Let’s count up these under-a-dollar-a-pound vegetables: Cabbage (you can eat it 3 ways at least), carrots (3 ways at least), canned tomatoes (3 ways at least), turnips [yellow] (2-3 ways), beets (2-3 ways), and bean sprouts (3 ways at least), for a total of six vegetables and 15-20 different vegetable dishes among which to choose. If you pickled cucumbers, froze green beans or spinach, stored some potatoes, maybe even made sauerkraut, all the better. Even without frozen and pickled, you have a decent variety of vegetables among which to circulate so you don’t get bored.

I eat “dry” beans, lentils, and peas “cooked from scratch” — that is, from dry stored form. They are not usually counted as vegetables, but they do provide vitamins, minerals, and fiber that meat and some grains, especially processed grains, relatively lack. Most days I have one meal of these “pulses” rather than meat; and some people would give me “veggie points” for doing so.

Finally, don’t forget apples and oranges, maybe bananas. They are fruits and not vegetables (Botanically, tomatoes, bell peppers, and cucumbers are fruits also, but they are not sweet enough to be called fruits in the grocery trade.) They are fresh plant food at least as much as long-haul “fresh” vegetables; and unlike plums, grapes, and cherries, which i consider luxury foods out of season, they provide decent nourishment relative to their sugar content.

You can make it through the winter, if nothing worse than the present sad state of the loonie hits us, without paying outrageous prices for vegetables; and i hope you, too, resolve that next summer you will garden.


Notes:

1. “… if you live on social assistance or a pension or you are working for minimum wage, you are unlikely to be able to afford the kind of healthy diet recommended in Canada’s Food Guide.” CBC quotes one Trish Hennessy, “of Upstream, a non-profit group focused on healthy living,”

2. Stored Canadian vegetables are beginning to get prominence in the retail stores. Last week’s flyer from the store that usually has the best prices, featured beets, cabbage, potatoes, and onions, all “product of Western provinces”, The cabbage was priced below 70 cents per pound; the others, below 40 cents when bought in 10 pound units… in mid December.

3= $ 1.32 per kilo…

4. I like beets, but parsnips don’t really seem that much fun to eat—to me. If you enjoy them, don’t let me stop you.

5. 88 cents for 796 ml = $1.11 per litre ≈ kilo of contents.

6. $1. per can works out to 58 or 59 cents per pound of contents.

7. Some of those fresh tomatoes are trucked from greenhouse operations near Medicine Hat, less than half a day’s drive away with no border delays. How long they sit in storage facilities, i don’t know… presumably no longer than the ones that already have had long truck rides from California or Mexico.

8. Acid foods, like tomatoes and many fruits, do not support botulism bacteria. If you are going to can beans, corn, spinach, etc., prudence dictates either boiling them after you open the jar, before eating — or pickling them while canning. Most canned beets my friends “put up”, are pickled; as are sauerkraut and cucumber pickles.

9. The discs were made using shallow containers about the diameter of a cottage cheese container but much shorter. Once frozen, they could be dropped out of those containers and into a plastic food bag, where those i have not yet eaten, sit in the freezer waiting.

10. I do take multi-vitamin pills in the winter; because, of the vegetables i eat, only the bean sprouts are really fresh.

11. Mung bean sprouts are best raw, or else “blanched” — cooked very briefly below the temperature of boiling water. If you are going to use them as a blanched salad, then I suggest steaming them very briefly over vegetable stock, to which they will add a little in flavour and nutrition.

Posted in Davd, Food, Men's Health | Leave a comment

Memories

Posted on December 4, 2018 by Davd

… and their many failings
(c) 2018, Davd

What memories — of yours and of others’ — you believe; tells me more about your attitudes, dislikes, and likes, than it tells me about past facts.

Much of the Kavanaugh controversy involved whether, or how much, to believe old memories. My impression of the fraction of the controversy i read, from news websites mostly, is that one cannot be close to certain what to believe. The whole big fuss qualifies better as Soap Opera than as politics, much less as good judgment or credible review.

The same applies to reports i read and hear from individuals, whether spoken or written. Acquaintances1 and correspondents remember what is consistent with their attitudes and prejudices, much more than what conflicts with them.

Most people who don’t deliberately get scientific about it, are believing what they want to believe … a set of phenomena called “Selective attention”, “selective perception”, and “selective recall.” I learned about them as a university student in the 1960s, and in ways that make me likely to remember those three phenomena better than the media and politicians remember their adolescent sex lives.

I have lived more than 70 years; and in the spirit of “web log”, will write mainly about my own memories.

My earliest definite memories are of a telephone number and an address, both from where i lived through Grade 3 or 42. I used both the address and the telephone number many, many times as a small boy. They were established in memory by repeated use, not by trauma nor even drama. I am quite convinced i remember them accurately.

Another early memory, from Grade 7, is of my locker combination that year3. That was the first year i had a locker at school; its combination was the first such set of numbers i had to memorize. Like the first telephone number i learned, I am quite convinced i remember it accurately.

I don’t remember my second telephone number, nor my second school locker combination, any longer. (I do remember my current telephone number, of course: I am still using it.) My farmer friend Stan MacDonald has made his license plate [letters, not number] easier to remember: EEIEIO4.

The first point to remember is something that all too many people, some of them famous, have forgotten or ignored: Remembering specific events years after they happen is not easy, even if they were traumatic or otherwise special — perhaps especially if they were traumatic. The second is that what we do remember best for decades on end, are early, often repeated things like telephone numbers, addresses, and locker combinations..

I remember that the year i turned six, i was frighteningly lost on a beach near where my parents were looking for a summer cabin to rent. I do not remember the beach — how steep it was, or whether it was rocky, for instance — nor do i remember about recovering from a ruptured appendix that same year, which illness and surgery prevented me from having to return to the beach where I got lost. The traumatic aspects of both experiences — long forgotten; while my Mother mentioned getting lost to me several times, probably dozens, and i have some kind of duty to remember the fact of the appendectomy when filling out some bureaucratic forms.

A ruptured appendix and that day i got lost, were both traumatic, and the details of both, are forgotten. My readily remembering an address and telephone number that were as routine as anything in a child’s life, and forgetting the details of two very dramatic experiences, one that lasted a few hours at most and one that lasted days to weeks, is entirely consistent with what Loftus et al found and Nathanson and Young summarized:

“… violent events actually decrease the accuracy of memory. Memories are weakest when associated with either low levels of arousal (such as boredom or sleepiness) or high levels of arousal (stress or trauma). [Nathanson and Young, 2006:15]

I suppose that now, having read a little about the Kavanaugh controversy and more about memories, and having thought seriously about my childhood memories for a while, i would be skeptical if somebody tried to help me fill in details of the experiences of getting lost and recovery from an appendectomy 70 years ago… or of more recent experiences.

Sometimes judges and juries are not skeptical enough. A prim, proper friend who is presently a “snowbird”, having sworn vehemently to me before going South, that he has never taken cannabis into his body, said that he is aware of people in Saskatchewan who were convicted of child abuse based on false memories. A parallel phenomenon was cited by Nathanson and Young (2006, ch. 1).5

Nathanson and Young wrote:

“It was only in the late 1990s that psychiatrists themselves began to challenge the whole theory of recovered memories.” [13]

“The parents of the patients were accused of having worshipped the Devil, in other words, of being witches according to the definition of that word held in old Salem. … There was only one
major difference between this witch hunt and those of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: the people accused and destroyed by unverifiable allegations were usually men, not women.” [14]

Dramatic and traumatic memories are not therefore better; the evidence seems rather to be, they are therefore factually worse.

Many years ago, a lawyer advised me to keep a diary. I have done so, not perfectly but well enough that many, many facts i observed and experienced are now written down, as remembered hours, a day or two, perhaps only minutes after the events.

I have looked up matters of fact in the diaries of past weeks, months and years, often; especially when preparing for medical appointments.6 I have looked up when the same apple trees blossomed in different years, when the first lettuce, peas, beans, and tomatoes were ready in a particular garden, when fishes came into a particular stream to spawn.

When doing research that might be worth publishing, i “of course” make notes at the time of, or immediately after the events that are becoming data. That is “proper data collection”; it almost goes without saying. The lawyer’s advice was advice to treat my personal life more scientifically, though i doubt [s]he thought of research — rather, of credibility in court. That advice, which i suppose many lawyers tell their friends and clients, confirms what Loftus and her colleagues found and Nathanson and Young discussed.

What memories you believe, tells me more about your attitudes, dislikes, and likes, than it tells me about past facts, unless you discipline yourself to be accurate.

Keep good notes — and don’t believe memories, especially old, dramatic, and-or traumatic memories, based on unaided recall. Well, you might safely believe old addresses, telephone numbers, the names of schools you attended, that sort of thing.

“Believe her” is almost tantamount to saying “Be on her side of the conflict.”

References:

The Economist Daily Chart, 2018. “After a year of #MeToo, American opinion has shifted against victims“. The Economist, Oct 15th. (Survey respondents have become more sceptical about sexual harassment.)

Nathanson, Paul, and Katherine K. Young, 2006. Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination against Men. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Notes:

1. So far, i do not notice that friends or kin are more or less accurate than persons i know less well. Enemies? That question introduces a complication: Arguing over memories, especially if they involve Feminist doctrines, may indeed make enemies; it is less clear if it reconciles any. (Christian readers may notice a parallel with Matthew 10:34-36.)

2… and i do notice, that i cannot remember for sure which of two years i moved from the “old neighbourhood” to the part of town where i lived until i graduated from Grade 12.

3. I am not telling the telephone number nor the locker combination because i might use them someday as passwords. They are very strong memories, that nobody else is likely to remember. The school might have held the locker combination linked to my name while i was in Grade 7; the next year, they doubtless linked that same combination to whoever got that lock, that year. The telephone number, similarly, was re-issued to somebody else after my parents moved [with my sister and me] to a house located in the territory of a different telephone prefix.

4… which of course follows “Old MacDonald had a farm…” in a famous children’s song. Unlike a locker combination, license plates are public, so i can publish his, here.

5. I spent 3-4 hours one evening reading the Innocence Project and related websites, to collect notes and documentation. Those websites record hundreds of wrongful convictions, and witness error is a common but not the only cause. What i found is not enough in amount or organization for me to comfortably publish a summary: All i should declare is that false memories have led to false convictions of crime (and a fortiori, to erroneous civil court judgments, since civil courts [in the British Commonwealth and the USA, at least] use a less demanding standard of proof.)

6. Medical professionals often make a distinction between signs, which they observe (and usually note down within a minute), versus symptoms, which the patient tells to them. Signs are more trustworthy. Symptoms from a diary, if more than a day or two old, are significantly more reliable than those remembered without notes made near the time.

 

Posted in Davd, Female Privilege, Human Nature, Working | Leave a comment

An Open Question for the US Government

Posted on November 3, 2018 by Davd

… Tell us now, so we can Stay Out if that is what you want.
(c) 2018, Davd

I am a Canadian who was educated in your country, at a respected university.

Recently,  i was warned by CBC News, not personally but as a member of the Canadian public, that as someone who has used cannabis in the past,  i may be forbidden to enter the USA again. The article does not say “used much” or “used often”. It seems to say that trying cannabis once,  because some friends nagged me to,  is enough to ban me for life,  despite several of your “states” having made recreational cannabis lawful1. So, unless and until i have been assured “trying it” will not ban me from entering the U.S.,  i will take care to avoid your borders.

During the 1990s, so long ago and so briefly that i do not remember what year,  i smoked part of one ‘reefer’ at the urging of some people in BC. I do not remember for certain if i tried another the next hour or next day. I will say that i was nagged to try the marijuana but not more than twice. When i said that i had tried it and did not think it was enough fun to pay for — that settled the question.2

Now,  it seems,  you the U. S. Government have made your rules governing admission to your territory,  much more strict. In 2003,  the last time i entered the United States,  i was not worried about having tried and then rejected cannabis in the previous decade. Now, CBC News tells me, i should be very worried.3

Much more recently,  i suffered a mild dose of second-hand cannabis smoke. That happened last month,  shortly after cannabis use was legalized here.4 If your border agent were to ask about having “used” recently — does second-hand cannabis smoke,  constitute “use”?  I had little or no more power to not inhale that smoke coming down the hallway, than i had to not inhale second-hand cigarette smoke as a boy riding in my mother’s car.5

To me,  it is absurd to punish trying and rejecting something years earlier — so absurd that i have even less desire to visit the United States than i had before i read that October 30 news story. Does the United States of America really judge everyone who lives outside your borders, on the basis of the worst legal treatment available for something that person did? however long ago?

If CBC News “got that right” in the October 30 article, then to be prudent, i will take extra care not to enter the USA. I will avoid events and people there who i might have considered visiting until now. I would advise all readers of this blog6, to stay out of the United States if they have ever allowed cannabis smoke or any “edible” containing cannabis, to enter their bodies… until they have clear published assurance from the United States Government, that their exposure to cannabis will be tolerated.

My “use” happens to have been tentative and minimal. I would be surprised if a majority of Canadians “of adult age” have used as little or less. If my trial and rejection of cannabis turns out to be something you choose to publish a decision to tolerate — what of other people’s different past and perhaps present “use”? There are a few million Canadians, i estimate, who have “used” recently and might use again. Do you, “Uncle Sam”, choose to accept them as visitors, or not? It would be only fair, to let them know, in clear language.

They should know before they go buying tickets into your good old USA, before they buy timeshares in winter housing, etc. Their employers and colleagues should know before deciding to give them work that entails entering the USA.

Maybe I should repeat that for emphasis, addressed to employers and professional collegia: When you consider sending workers to the US for tasks or meetings, you need to assure yourselves and them, that they will be allowed to go there. When you consider having a meeting in the USA, you need to estimate, and “more rather than fewer” to be on the safe side: How many good potential participants will be excluded by these new, stricter cannabis user exclusion procedures?

(Having been educated in your country, i happen to remember the word “extraterritoriality”. Being a foreigner who has not lived there in decades, i will not venture a definition. It does seem rather like you are undertaking to punish some people for lawful acts which would not have been lawful if done the US.)

Tough luck, for Canadian snowbirds who planned to winter again in California, Arizona, Florida [etc] and have ever used cannabis. The United States Government, in whose territory you have been spending money earned in Canada, has chosen to bar you from coming there to spend more.

Looks to me, U.S. Government, like you have an incentive to develop and publish rules that let innocent former cannabis users, enter your country with a clear blessing to be there. You have an incentive to admit many of them for business and to spend money in the US.  Until i read your published rules and can logically work out that they give me a clear blessing to be there — I’ll stay here. It will be better for the Canadian economy if i spend my money here, same as i have been doing since a brief visit there in 2003.

Notes:

1. According to Wikipedia, 9 states (Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington), plus the District of Columbia, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Business Insider” confirms the number of states.

2. As my friend Hans had said earlier, “I prefer beer”.

3. Quoting the article: “If you say, ‘Yeah, I smoked marijuana when I was 18, but it’s not a problem, right?’ — it is problem. You are barred for life, as if you had been convicted back then.”

4. The apartment manager identified the source of the smoke and cautioned them about their future use.

5. You might quibble and say i could have fled the building. That’s not really practical in an Alberta winter, though.

6. Perhaps excepting US citizens. I don’t know how they will be treated and legalistically, it is none of my business.

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What’s the best Hallowe’en costume?

Posted on October 29, 2018 by Davd

… for a man to wear?
(c) 2018, Davd

Martin Luther, of course!

He nailed his 95 Theses to the church door on All Saints Eve, because

‣ the church door was the town bulletin board in that part of Germany, in 1517;

‣ and All Saints’ Day (November 1) was a major feast day in the church calendar, so more people could be expected to come to church November 1 than on most Sundays;

He put up his theses, then, on the eve of a day when they would be seen by more people than average. It was publication as publication could be done in that time.1 Considering what developed from that “publication”, it was a major historic event — the most important historic event I can name, that took place on October 31.

To help you wear a Luther costume, I’ll provide some biographic information about the Reformer and the Reformation, so if people you meet ask about the costume,  you don’t need to sound ignorant.

In that year 1517, Martin Luther was a monk, a professor [with some kind of doctorate, but i won’t say Ph.D. because European degrees don’t always follow the same name system as North American]. He was not as important as a bishop, but he was more important than the average monk or priest. He was neither an obscure monk, nor a major figure in the Church of his time…

… and that October 31, he challenged some practices of the European (Roman-Catholic) church. One was the sale, for money, of “indulgences“, or tickets out of Purgatory2.

Luther believed, and I’m persuaded he was right to believe, that selling God’s grace for money was morally wrong — that it was right to demand it be reformed. I rather doubt that those indulgences actually got people out of Purgatory; indeed, the Orthodox (and most Protestant) Christians i know don’t believe Purgatory exists.

Luther posted his theses, not to break up the Roman-Catholic church, but to reform it: That’s where the word Reformation comes from. It was the Pope who expelled Luther from the church, and many Germans, especially, left with him to form a church much like the Roman-Catholic in its worship services, but with differences in doctrine. (If you love reading, you can find a few million words, I’d estimate, about the Reformation, Lutheran teaching, changes in Roman-Catholic teaching, … more than you are likely to be able to read before November.)

Back to the costume as a good choice: It’s not spooky, it’s got no hint of evil to it, it’s modest (Luther was a monk as well as a professor and is usually pictured wearing the robe and hood [cowl] of a European monk.) If Hallowe’en is cold where you live, as it will be in most of Canada, that robe and cowl will be pleasantly warm.3

We’ve been warned this year, against wearing costumes that are the ethnic clothing of other races. I have warn a judogi as a costume, some past years; but while I’m not Japanese, I have participated in Judo — it’s not my ethnic clothing but it is my sports clothing, or was when my knees were better.

But Halloween is not about judo, and it is about Luther. Even if you don’t look Germanic, even if you’re not of European race, the Luther costume is one of the few you might choose, that is historically linked to the 31st of October… and it is a good conversation starter because most people who aren’t Lutherans or church historians, don’t know that it is.

(I should have published this blog last year, whose October 31 was the 500th anniversary of Luther’s publication of his Theses. I was too busy thinking about the substance of the Reformation, a year ago, to think about costumes.)

If you can get back in time to last year — go for it. If not, the Luther costume is a good answer to allusions of evil and sorcery, to insistence you be politically correct4 and not dress up as somebody of a different culture or race. It is free of spookiness and sorcery and the macabre; instead it is about the most important historic event of October 31 — one that most people don’t link to the day, but history does.

You could even call it a teaching costume.

References:

Durant, Will, 1957. The Reformation: A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564. NYC: Simon and Schuster.

Wells, H. G. 1920: The Outline of History: The Whole Story of Man. New York: Macmillan. I use the Canadian Project Gutenberg Ebook edition, 2014.

Notes:

1… and no, there wasn’t the “Halloween” foolishness about ghosts, witches, etc. 500 years ago. I don’t recall the story of how that foolishness began; it seems obvious that today, it is encouraged by commercial interests that expect to “make money” from it. If the Government of Canada proposes to tax Internet use, they ought to tax Halloween foolishness (and sexuality-showing-off products) while they are at it.

2. The underlined words should be easy to look up in Wikipedia, the Catholic Encyclopedia, and probably other online sources. An encyclopedic dictionary should also have them.

3. They can accommodate a sweater if it’s below freezing where you are, and still look the part.

4. Saturday at City Hall in Ottawa, a correspondent from there reports, “… the Mayor organized a free trick or treat event for children. They had mainly TV and Movie characters to hand out treats (Superman, Wonder woman, etc.) They chose for the Wizard of Oz — 3 women dressed as the Lion, Tin Man and Scarecrow.” Politically correct, maybe, but not factually.

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