Jim Poling Sr.'s Blog, page 25

Politicking in Anger

Many years ago I was coached not to write anything in anger. Anger allowed to chill makes for cooler thoughts and prudent words. 
I have tried to follow that advice over the past week.
What sparked my recent anger was Premier Doug Ford’s unintelligent and short-sighted remarks about mainstream journalists becoming irrelevant in today’s Ontario society. He accused journalists of being “far-left” and intent on deliberately distorting the messages of politicians. He said he bypasses professional news media and delivers his government’s news and views directly to the people through social media – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. 
That’s a common howl among the world’s demagogues – a twisted opinion that unfortunately is spreading during a time of huge change and trauma in journalistic organizations. And it is an opinion supported by little evidence, and certainly no facts, except for those that demagogues invent for themselves. 

I am a part of a family of journalists, have been a journalist all of my life, have many friends that are journalists and have worked with journalists whose health and happiness has been damaged by their dedication to doing their job. So I find Ford’s remarks insulting and hurtful. 
People could care less about how those remarks affect me or any other individual journalist. They should, however, care about how they affect journalism, a fundamental element of democracy. 
The journalist’s job can be explained in two simple words: Observe and report. And observe and report as fairly and honestly as is humanly possible. 
Journalists are not perfect and sometimes slip off track. So do doctors, truck drivers, lawyers, grocery store clerks, or anyone doing a job. But in any job, deliberate intent to distort and do damage is rare. 
And because people are not perfect, there are checks and balances in their jobs. The work of journalists is monitored by editors and by press-media councils that administer codes of practice and investigate complaints from the public. Most journalistic organizations work under some form of code of conduct. 
There are no editors, no codes of practice, no monitoring for facts and fairness in social media. Social media can be a helpful connecting point between family and friends, but generally is an open sewer often used by people with diarrhea of the brain. 
It takes zero research, little critical thinking, and just a few seconds to write a 240-character blurb on Twitter, or a fast post on Facebook. It takes hours of interviews, research and writing to produce a 500-word balanced report on government changes to autism funding.
Many politicians don’t like the traditional, professional media because it does not always produce stories they like. They want to see and hear only stories about them that have favourable spin.
John Stackhouse, former editor of the Toronto Globe and Mail, addressed this back in 2013 before the Ontario Press Council: 
“It is the responsibility of journalists to document facts that perhaps those leaders don’t want to be known. . . but the voting public and society at large needs to know much more than what elected officials want published. Ultimately it is up to the public to decide what to do with the information, but journalists need to be impartial witnesses and publish as much reasonable and defensible information as they can so that citizens, who do not have access to the same resources to question and challenge authority, can make up their own minds.”
Stackhouse made that statement while responding to complaints about Globe and Mail and Toronto Star coverage of the Ford family.
Certainly Premier Ford does not want to read or hear the stories questioning the fairness of having a buddy appointed commissioner of the OPP. Nor would he have liked the reporting of the public criticism that forced his government to back down on changes to autism funding. Getting the government’s news and views to the public through social media didn’t seem to help him in those two instances.
My guess is that those two cases had him angry when he stood before a convention of conservative thinkers last week and said professional journalists are losing the battle to inform people. 
I guess he never had a coach who warned him about writing or speaking in anger. Anger and bias are poor substitutes for critical thinking and facts. 
#   Read From Shaman’s Rock: www.mindentimes.ca/columns

A leaf’s lesson in courage

There is a lesson learned from the tenacious and tiresome winter which, according to the calendar, ended last week.
It comes on an almost-spring breeze that brushes my cheeks as I walk a snow-covered path through a copse of young oaks and beeches that appear to be stone cold dead.
The breeze carries an unhurried clicking sound that is out of place and unnatural in these somnolent woods. I stop to listen and look about to find the source.

Over my shoulder I see a single leaf tossing restlessly in the breeze. It is an oak leaf – brown and brittle - that has clutched its branch desperately through many weeks of blowing snow, freezing rain and bitter temperatures. A single sign of life in an otherwise lifeless forest.
The leaf fluttering on its branch may appear to be a sign of life but it is in fact dead, and has been since last fall. How and why it has clung through the brutal winter is a matter of scientific speculation.
Dead or not, the leaf for me is a lesson in courage. It succumbed in a natural process many months ago but refused to fall, becoming a symbol of resistance to the cruelty of winter.
A few other trees around me also hold dark brown oak and pale tan beech leaves. Some will succumb to early spring winds but others will remain until the new growth of May demands their space.
The botanical term for leaves that do not fall on schedule is marcescence. It’s a word that comes from Latin (whither) but it does not explain why some leaves hang on through the brutish winter months.
The trees I see with dead leaves still attached to their branches are all oaks and beeches (which, incidentally, are related even though their leaves are distinctly different). They are two of just a few deciduous species that refuse to drop all their leaves in autumn. Another common one is hornbeam, which some of us call ironwood.
There are a number of theories why these trees retain some leaves throughout the winter. One is that they hold leaves until spring then drop them to deliver new organic feed that the tree really needs after a long winter hibernation.
Oaks and beeches often grow in poor soil conditions – dry, rocky areas – and even small amounts of nutrients provided by dead leaves in spring are considered helpful to their growth.
Another theory is that dead leaves block blowing snow, forcing it to fall to the base of the tree, thus providing small amounts of much needed water in spring.
Yet another theory is that clinging dead leaves provide some frost protection for buds and new twigs that begin to grow as the weather warms during spring days. And still another study holds that dead leaves help to hide succulent new buds from browsing moose and deer, saving them to grow into new shoots and leaves.
Those theories sound a bit stretched but no one simply made them up. They are based on scientific observations and research studies.
Despite the studies and the bright minds that conduct them, there is no definitive answer why some trees retain leaves they should shed in autumn. We simply do not know why.
And that’s a good thing. It’s good that nature keeps some secrets because without some mysteries life would be very boring.
The German theoretical physicist Max Planck, who won a Nobel Prize in 1918, had some thoughts on nature’s secrets:
“Science  cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature,” he wrote in his 1933 book Where Is Science Going? “And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”
Mysteries aside, the fact is that even the most stubborn leaves fall eventually, joining millions of others in the miracle of decomposition that provides nutrient rich food for trees and other plants. It’s the perfect example of spent lives providing for new life.
The dead leaves that cling through winter only to drop in spring also provide a bit more raking, which we thought had ended in November. However, raking is a lot better than shovelling snow.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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The failed war on drugs

I spot the book on the shelf and am intrigued. It is titled The Border and the author is Don Winslow.
I have not heard of it, nor the author. Still I am intrigued, possibly because the title recalls TV images of displaced people massing on the U.S. southern border, and all the noise about building walls to keep them out.
I am intrigued, but I don’t usually buy books that are 700 pages thick and the last in a series of three, the first two which I have not read. But I do buy The Border, and  I am glad that I did.
It is a work of fiction, entertaining as well as enlightening because it is fiction based on fact. One review describes the research as impeccable.
The Border, plus the other two books in what has become known as the Cartel Trilogy (The Power of the Dog and The Cartel), are about North America’s longest war – the war on drugs.
The war on drugs is almost 50 years old. It was declared in June 1971 by U.S. President Richard (Tricky Dick) Nixon who called the illegal drug trade the enemy of the people. (The current U.S. president has changed the enemy of the people from illicit drugs to the media). 
After half a century, the war on drugs is a pathetic failure. The number of victims increases every year and now can be counted in the hundreds of thousands.

More than 70,000 people died of drug overdoses in the U.S. in 2017. Complete figures for 2018 are not available but will be even higher because drug overdose deaths have increased every year since the late 1990s.
Canadian statistical gathering and reporting is disorganized and bureaucratic, but it is safe to say that 3,000 to 4,000 Canadians die every year of drug overdoses.
Drug overdosing used to be mainly a big city problem. No longer. Statistical evidence shows that opioid poisoning rates are two to three times higher in some small centres than in the big cities.
Reading The Border will give anyone a better understanding of why we are losing the war.
For instance, early in the book the main character, drug war solider Art Keller, is riding a Washington, D.C.-to-New York City train. He stares out the window at the shells of closed factories along the route.
What happened to most of the workers, he wonders, even though he knows the answer. Far too many of them are unemployed and spending their time shooting up smack.
“It’s tempting to think that the root causes of the heroin epidemic are in Mexico,” Keller says to himself. . . . “but the real source is right here and in scores of smaller cities and towns.”
That is a key message about the drug crisis. The problem is rooted not in Mexico nor any other country that produces illicit drugs. The problem is rooted in American and Canadian societies.
Rooted here because we want the drugs. If we did not want the drugs, the illicit market would dry up and blow away. Cartels and drug gangs would disappear. So would the migrant masses crowding the U.S. southern border, all trying to escape the horrors of the drug trafficking wars in Mexico and Central and South America.
Drugs are a response to pain. People take them to escape physical or mental pain. Most illicit drug users want to escape mental pain created by the world around them.
Our approach to illicit drug use has been a military one - hunt down and lock up traffickers and users. Perhaps a better approach is to concentrate on what is causing the pain in our society.
It’s a social health problem. We need to look at the causes and try to eliminate or fix them.
We needn’t look far: shrinking job markets, inequality, poverty, racism, poor educational policies, the rise of far right thinking, the decline or our planet’s natural state and the resulting change in climates.
As the author said in an interview with Time magazine:
“We spend billions of dollars buying the drugs and billions of dollars trying to keep the drugs out. Let’s spend these billions of dollars addressing the roots of the drug problem . . . .”

Suffer the little children?

“The child that is hungry must be fed. The child that is sick must be nursed. the child must be the first to receive relief in times of distress.”
Those are not my words. They are words almost 100 years old. Words from the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child adopted by the League of Nations in 1924.
They are words reinforced by United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989. This year marks the 30thanniversary of that convention.

However, too often words are simply letters printed on paper or digital screens. Words require belief, passion and commitment before they can have positive impact.Millions of words have been written about how we humans treat our children. Declarations of rights have been signed. Laws have been passed. Yet, across large tracts of human society children are abused, allowed to go hungry, sick and uneducated. The animals of the forest treat their children better than humans treat theirs.One in every four children now live in countries torn by war or other disaster, says the 2018 Humanitarian Action for Children Report by the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF). It adds that nearly 50 million children havebeen uprooted from their homes due to violence, poverty ornatural disasters.
Children are used as pawns in wars. They are recruited as soldiers, some fitted with explosive packs and sent out as suicide bombers.
In Afghanistan 89 per cent of civilian war casualities are children. An estimated 5,000 Afghan children were killed or maimed during the first nine months of 2018.
The United Nations has verified that 1,497 children have died or been maimed in the war there. It also has verified the killing of 870 children in Syria during the first nine months of last year.
But it is not just war that is devastating children. In some villages in India, children deemed old enough – 10 or 11 - are expected to start doing sex work. There are believed to be at least one million child prostitutes in India, where some prostitution is legal.
Child trafficking is booming. Humanium, a children’s charity, says that upwards of 20,000 Ethiopian children, some as young as 10, are sold by their parents in a trade that flourishes on poverty.
When they are not being blown apart or forced into the sex trade, children in many countries are being starved and denied education.
UNICEF says that in war-torn Yemen 30,000 children under five years old die every year of malnutrition-related diseases. The effects of malnutrition will be around long after the conflict ends.
Hospitals and schools are used for military purposes in Yemen and the health and education systems basically have collapsed.
Says Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF Director of Emergency Programmes:
“For too long, parties to conflict have been committing atrocities with near-total impunity, and it is only getting worse. . . . Children living in countries at war have come under direct attack, have been used as human shields, killed, maimed or recruited to fight. Rape, forced marriage and abduction have become standard tactics in conflicts from Syria to Yemen, and from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Nigeria, South Sudan and Myanmar.”
It is not just in far off, under-developed countries that children suffer. UNICEF says that Canada, the world’s fifth most prosperous country, is 25th out of 41 affluent nations ranked for well-being of children. We are ranked near the bottom in terms of key measures on child health, safety and poverty.
In 1989 the Canadian House of Commons voted to eradicate child poverty. Today more than one million Canadian children live in poverty.
Perhaps we humans should take lessons from the animals of the forest on how to treat children. As Jim and Jamie Dutcher note in their new book The Wisdom of Wolves:
“In a wolf pack, there are no forgotten children. Every pup is worth teaching, every pup valued and every pup is eventually expected to make a contribution to the well-being of the pack.”
Meanwhile, the world has 2.2 billion children. One billion, roughly every second child, lives in poverty.
That kind of leaves you wondering who the wild animals of the world really are.

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Who will WE always be?

It seems ludicrous that any political moment these days could make you proud to be a Canadian. But there was one last week when pride swelled in my chest.

It came watching Jody Wilson-Raybould, Vancouver Liberal member of Parliament, testify before the House of Commons justice committee about her role in the SNC-Lavalin affair. Wilson-Raybould is the former justice minister and attorney-general demoted to veterans affairs minister, a portfolio she resigned soon after.
She appeared before the committee the same day that Michael Cohen, former Trump fixer, appeared before Congress in Washington to call President Trump a con man, a cheat and a racist.
It was yet another bitter, snowy winter day, so I flopped in front of the television and flipped between the Canadian and U.S. hearings. It was educational to see the sharp differences.
The Congressional hearing presumably was held to sweat Cohen for information that might help determine whether President Trump did or did not collude with Russia and obstruct justice. In fact, it was just another political cockfight staged to win fans, also known as voters.
There were few serious attempts to dig out real facts – certainly none by bullying Republican supporters of the president. It was a political circus of pathetic clowns and barking seals.
Some media reports compared it to the television drama The Sopranos. More frightening, it prompted a flashback to historical reports about the collapse of  Congress during the lead up to the U.S. Civil War.
Over in Ottawa, Wilson-Raybould testified there was consistent and sustained pressure from the prime minister and others to have her shelve prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, the Quebec engineering firm facing corruption charges.  
The prime minister worried that following through with prosecution would hurt the company and lead to job losses, which would be bad for the economy. The prime minister’s office wanted a Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) in which the company would not be prosecuted if it agreed to remediation measures, fines or other undertakings.
The Ottawa hearing was more civil and respectful than the Washington spectacle, however not without moments tainted by political duplicity. There was some pride in seeing that we have not slid as far into the political sewer as the Americans. Not yet.
But the real pride came in watching Wilson-Raybould. She gave us all a clear reminder of the importance of standing up for what you believe, no matter who tells you otherwise. And, no matter what it costs you personally.
She reminded me of my mother, despite the fact that she is the same age as two of our daughters.
Our mothers teach us who we are and what we should stand for. They teach us to conduct ourselves with conviction and dignity. They teach us to consider carefully what we say because words that fly past our lips cannot be taken back.
The SNC-Lavalin affair has developed into a very dirty and nasty fight, and it is not over yet.
Pressure tactics by Justin Trudeau and his people to get Wilson-Raybould to give SNC-Lavalin a pass on criminal charges were not illegal. Wilson-Raybould has said that herself. That does not mean that they were ethically acceptable or the right thing to do.
Trudeau says they were appropriate tactics. Wilson-Raybould says they were not.
This is a fight the honourable lady cannot win. Power and politics, jobs and money,  trump honour and higher principles.
One would have thought that rational and intelligent people could have found a way early on to prevent this affair from morphing into the mess it is. That is too much to expect in the politics of today.
The best solution now is for Wilson-Raybould to walk. Quit the Liberal party, quit Parliament and accept that there is not room for higher-minded people in the politics of today.
She is an intelligent, principled person with strong core values. What she has to offer is wasted on political life but of great value to other parts of Canadian life.
Her most important words to Parliament are contained in the final paragraph of her closing remarks to the justice committee:
“This is who I am and who I will always be.”
Canadians need to think hard about who we are and who we will always want to be.

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The germ that ate their brains

Perhaps because of our northern latitude, or perhaps because we thought we had been vaccinated, we expected Canada to escape the epidemic.
Alas, we haven’t. It is here, perhaps swept in on wind shifts created by climate change. Or, maybe it came with the same cough or sneeze that started this winter’s measles outbreak.
Whatever, sadly its arrival has been confirmed by observers on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill.

P-BED, the clinical abbreviation for Political Brain Eating Disease, has been raging in much of the western world, notably the United States and Britain. Canada, however, appeared to be immune.
The Canadian economy was burbling along with a relatively stable employment rate. Its politics were calm compared with the Mad King disaster in the U.S, or the Brexit lunacy in the U.K.
Canada’s prime minister, the boy in long pants and rolled up shirt sleeves, was saying good things and gaining attention and respect in a world gone increasingly mad. All appeared to be . . . well, sensibly Canadian.
Then P-BED struck in the form of the SNC-Lavalin affair.
First came the humiliating demotion of Jody Wilson-Raybould from justice minister and attorney-general to veteran’s affairs minister. The prime minister said it was not a demotion. He had to move her because someone had resigned from cabinet, making a shuffle necessary.
Let me pause this narrative to say that as someone who did two journalistic tours of duty on Silly Hill, being removed from almost any other cabinet post and being sent to veterans affairs is a massive demotion. Anyone who has worked on the Hill knows that.
Not long after that, Wilson-Raybould resigned from cabinet. The prime minister said he could not understand why.
Then Gerald Butts, the prime minister’s principal secretary and close adviser and friend, resigned. There were allegations that senior officials in the prime minister’s office pressured Wilson-Raybould as attorney-general to shelve criminal charges against SNC-Lavalin, a leading global engineering firm from Quebec.
Butts said in his resignation letter that he did not pressure Wilson-Raybould. He did not give a reason for his resignation but tossed in this non sequitur: Our kids and grandkids will judge us all on one issue above all others – climate change.
That’s probably true, but what climate change has to do with his and Wilson-Raybould’s resignations, SNC-Lavalin and the prime minister’s odd statements on the whole mess is anyone’s guess. My guess is P-BED.
The most obvious manifestation of brain eating disease occurred last week when Michael Wernick, who as Clerk of the Privy Council is the country’s top bureaucrat, testified before the House of Commons justice committee.
Wernick admitted there was pressure put on Wilson-Raybould in the SNC-Lavalin affair but none of it was unlawful or inappropriate. He left the impression that she is to blame for much of the muddled controversy.
Sounding more like a politician than a bureaucrat he also said – completely off topic - that violent language is being used in public discourse and he fears someone will be shot during this fall’s federal election campaign.
Hopefully that bit of hysterics will not prompt some deranged person to go to an election rally with a gun. And, hopefully his comments on SNC-Lavalin will not encourage other bureaucrats to think t hey can get involved in partisan politics
Wernick’s delirium about a shooting was a political shot at Senator David Tkachuk, a Conservative, who earlier told the United We Roll protest caravan in Ottawa “to roll over every Liberal left in the country.”
That was a figure of speech made in the context of this fall’s federal election, Tkachuk said later.
The prime minister then jumped in to say that Wernick is brilliant and people should heed carefully what he says. Perhaps he wants Wernick to run for a seat in the election.
What people really need to heed is how to halt the spread of  the brain eating disease raging in Ottawa. It will continue to spread as the SNC-Lavalin scandal develops and will worsen as the federal election campaign approaches.
All that we poor voters can do is watch election candidates closely and make sure they know how negative partisanship can eat their brains. Question them closely and confirm that they have been vaccinated.

Hooray for Hollywood!

Movies are welcome comfort during a nasty winter like the one we are experiencing. January and February are prime times to catch up on the newest and best movies, which will be celebrated Sunday at the annual Academy Awards.
I’ve got to see many of this year’s nominated movies: The Wife, A Star is Born, Green Book, Vice, Bohemian Rhapsody, Roma.
This year’s film crop has left me with the feeling that movies no longer are simply entertainment. Most of the movies I have seen this winter have had strong messages, or themes, delivered by an impressive line-up of film talent that seems to get stronger every year.
They are movies that don’t leave you just feeling entertained. They are movies that leave you with thoughts and ideas worth thinking about.
For instance, Green Book shows readers how spending time with people unlike ourselves can help us overcome our prejudices. Bohemian Rhapsody delivers the message that we all need to learn who we are, accept it and get on with life. Vice shows how political corruption hurts the world, while Roma displays the hurts of class divisions.
Both A Star Is Born and The Wife are about troubled relationships held together by remarkable feminist strength.
I was thinking about all this when I walked past our television set yesterday and noticed that a rerun of the 1958 musical South Pacific was playing. It has always been a favourite, so I sat down, became engrossed and watched it right through.
Now that’s real cool entertainment without the deep messages or themes, I thought as I listened to some of Rogers and Hammerstein’s greatest songs. Then I reached the part in which the three main characters unexpectedly confront the issue of racism.
Some background for those who don’t know, or remember, the movie: American military forces are gathered on an island in the South Pacific during the Second World War against Japan. Nellie Forbush (Mitzi Gaynor) is a navy nurse who has fallen in love with Emile de Becque (Rossano Brazzi), a French plantation owner. Joe Cable (John Kerr) is a Marine lieutenant who has fallen in love with a young Tonkinese woman.
Cable has decided he can’t marry the girl because she is of a different race. Nellie has decided she can’t marry de Becque because she has learned that he was married to a  Polynesian woman who died and left him with two interacial children.
The three are together in a scene in which Nellie says she can’t marry de Becque because of her feelings about him having married a Polynesian. She can’t help herself because racism born into her, she says.
Cable feels the same but bursts into the song You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught, one stanza of which goes:
“You've got to be taught to be afraidOf people whose eyes are oddly made,And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,You've got to be carefully taught.”


People are not born racists, they learn to be, is a strong message delivered through music.
Cable and de Becque, convinced their lives are over because their loves cannot be fulfilled, go off together on a dangerous reconnaissance mission. Cable is killed but de Becque survives.
The movie ends with de Becque walking up the hill to his plantation and sees Nellie serving lunch to his two children. She has overcome her racist feelings and all ends well.
South Pacific was nominated for 10 awards in 1959 but won only one – for best sound.
It was not just an entertaining movie featuring classic musical numbers such as Some Enchanted Evening and Bali Hai, but a movie that delivers an important message without beating viewers over the head.  It will be interesting to see what movies walk off with the golden statuettes Sunday evening. It is a safe bet that the winners not  only will have been entertaining but will have delivered messages that are important to receive and ponder during these troubled times.
That’s the wonderful thing about the movies. Not only are they a good place to go when the weather is snowy and cold. They tell us something about who we are and how we should conduct our lives.
Good work Hollywood! Keep them coming.

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Understanding plants and animals

Tree branches whisper in a summer breeze, or creak in an icy winter wind, and I wonder if they are talking to each other.
A wolf howls from a far-off hill and I wonder if it is mourning a loss. Perhaps a mate is sick, or a member of the pack has gone missing.
It might seem far-fetched, but there is growing belief that plants and animals have feelings and are capable of expressing them. It is a belief found in a number of recent books.
In his bestselling The Hidden Life of Trees, German forester Peter Wohlleben writes that forests are social networks in which trees communicate with each other. They share food, help members that are struggling and warn of dangers such as invasive insects.
He supports that view with scientific data showing that trees exchange information, nutrients and support through their large and intricate root systems.

In The Wisdom of Wolves, filmmakers Jim and Jamie Dutcher share their observations from living among a partially domesticated wolf pack. Their observations told them that wolves, the world’s most despised and feared animals, are social beings with emotions. They show concern and compassion for other pack members, and even demonstrate grief at the loss of a pack member.
The 400 people attending the annual Forests Ontario conference in Alliston last week heard similar views about plants and animals having feelings. A most interesting view came from Tom Longboat, director of Indigenous studies at Trent University.
Longboat, a Mohawk, said science is beginning to understand that trees and plants are living beings that have spirit and feelings. That’s an understanding that Indigenous people have had for centuries.
“Look at them as creations not just natural resources,” he said in the conference keynote address. “Think of them as relatives. We need them.”
“We live in the most complex time in human history,” he said. It is a time that demands collective efforts to achieve a balance between our lifestyles and the environment.
Combining science and cross-cultural dialogue is one way to achieve that balance. In other words, combine what we learn from science and technology with Indigenous knowledge gathered over centuries.
I take that as a call for more diversity to achieve the balance needed to save our planet. More diversity in forests, animal populations and our own societies.
Diversity is hampered when we try to eradicate species we don’t like or fear, such as  mosquitos and wolves. It is hampered when we reforest with single tree species or when we try to wall off people from other cultures and other countries.
Trees and animals may not have the intellectual abilities of humans but somehow seem to know that diversity is critical to balance in nature. Acres of pines planted in rows do not a forest make because they discourage other plant growth. A mountain range without wolves allows overpopulations of elk and deer to wipe out plants and leafed trees.
The world’s forest area decreased from 31.8 per cent of all global land area to 30.6 per cent between 1990 and 2015. Scientists say that deforestation now is the second leading cause of climate change after burning fossil fuels.
The world needs more trees, plus a better understanding of what they are and why they are important to all forms of life.
Urban areas in particular need more trees, plants, and greenery in general. Studies have shown that not  only do trees and plants absorb urban pollution, they provide relief from the mental fatigue of living in the city.
Roughly 50 per cent of the world’s population lives in urbanized areas yet many of those urban areas have too few trees.
For instance, Myles Sergeant, a Hamilton physician, told the Forests Ontario conference that his city has only 19 per cent tree cover, far below the 30 per cent recommended for cities. He said Hamilton needs one million more trees.
There is evidence of a growing understanding of forests and their importance to all forms of life. There also is some evidence that the rate of world deforestation is slowing slightly, hopefully because of a growing understanding that trees and plants are much more than just a resource.
Positive signs, not just for plants and trees, but for humans.

Why I can’t stomach Trump

When you write, you get messages from readers. Some are complimentary. Some are not.
I have received a couple that accuse me of being anti-American, anti-Donald Trump.
Yes, I am anti-Trump. I can’t stomach the man.
But I’ve never really understood exactly why. Why should a basic Canadian nobody be concerned or have any feelings about who is president of the United States or what is happening in that distant country?
I discovered why last week when I was watching a TV news clip while doing some history research. The news clip was about the New York Times’ new publisher,  A. G. Sulzberger, meeting Trump to discuss Trump’s constant denigration of the news media.

In the meeting Trump boasted about rising out of the Jamaica, Queens neighbourhood of New York City to become president of the U.S.A. As if he is some unfortunate who overcame the disadvantages of poor living conditions and attained the country’s highest office.
That’s when I returned to the history research I had just set aside. It was research on another New York City neighbourhood and a person who was the exact opposite of Donald Trump.
That person was Deborah Moody, a strong, keenly intellectual woman who founded Gravesend, which became part of Brooklyn, the borough neighbouring Trump’s Queens.
Deborah Moody was born in 1586 to a wealthy and religious English family. She came into more wealth and power when she married Henry Moody, an estate owner and member of Parliament who was knighted, then made a baron.
Henry died young and Deborah, now Lady Moody, was left to run Gareson, their substantial estate. She immediately ran afoul of the dreaded English Star Chamber, which dictated the duties of estate owners.
Then she ran afoul of religious fanatics who were burning people at the stake for having different views. Lady Moody was an Anabaptist, a person who believes babies should not be baptised until they reach an age of reason when they can truly understand and commit to Christianity.
Fed up with restrictions on individual freedoms, she sailed to America’s Massachusetts Bay Colony to begin a new life. Puritan religious leaders there were annoyed by her Anabaptist views, labelled her a dangerous woman and excommunicated her. So she and some followers moved to New Netherland, the Dutch colony that later became New York when it was taken over by the British.
The Dutch offered her land that is now part of Brooklyn, told her she could build a town there and have total freedom of civil and religious beliefs. Lady Moody became the only known woman to establish a town in colonial North America.
She and her followers laid out streets, built houses and other buildings, including a church to be used by all faiths, including Quakers who were not appreciated by the Dutch Calvinists.
Lady Moody became the mayor of the new town of Gravesend and wrote its charter, part of which reads:
“There shall be complete social, political and religious freedom. In agriculture and cultural development, we shall open the door to wayfarers of whatever creed . . . .”
Deborah Moody was everything that Donald Trump is not. She was an intelligent visionary, a successful builder and a dynamic leader who attracted committed followers because she believed in them and in protecting their rights.
One of those followers was a guy named John Poling who helped with the others to build the town. He was an ordinary guy, not known for anything, except perhaps for being the progenitor of my Poling family lineage.
His line produced seven generations of evangelical ministers, the last of whom was my distant cousin Lieutenant Clark Vandersall Poling, a U.S. Army chaplain.
Seventy-six years ago this week, Clark Poling and three other military chaplains drowned in the torpedoing of the troop ship SS Dorchester headed to the war in Europe. They died after helping soldiers into life boats and giving their own life jackets to those who did not have them.
Deborah Moody, her followers and their ancestors were unselfish comforters, givers and builders. Donald Trump is a distempered, self-centred taker who says he prefers soldiers who don’t get captured, or presumably killed.
The comparison is why I can’t stomach the man.

Digital age madness

It was a lifetime ago, 1967 to be exact, when I sat listening to a lecturer at Columbia University in New York city.
The lecturer turned to the blackboard and drew a horizontal line. Above the line he drew a typewriter. Below the line he drew a newspaper press. Then he drew two  lines connecting the typewriter and the press.
“That’s the future,” he told us. “No more paper and editing pencils. Your keystrokes go directly to the press then out to readers.”
I rolled my eyes, smirked and walked across the street to Chock full o'Nuts to get a coffee and escape the fantasy world.
Six years later I sat in a newsroom and typed a story into a computer screen. No typewriter, no pencils, no paper. That future fantasy world had arrived.
Now, after more than 50 years of working almost every day on a computer connected to the Internet I yearn to go back to typewriters, pencils and paper. The scams, the technical complications, the social media sewage and the bureaucratic nonsense of the digital age are overwhelming.
Some recent examples:
I open my Gas Buddy app to find the least expensive gasoline nearby. I notice for the first time a tab that says My Vehicle. I tap on it and discover that I own a 2018 Toyota.
Indeed I do. I bought the car a few months ago to replace the two aging vehicles in our household. But I didn’t tell Gas Buddy that.
The only official sources of my new car information are the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, my vehicle insurance company, the dealership and my bank. Gas Buddy presumably got my vehicle information from one of those, which makes me very uncomfortable.
Then last week I had difficulty connecting a device to a WiFi printer. I called the printer company for help. The technician said he needed to take control of my personal computer to find the problem.
When the guy begins controlling my computer remotely he says it is running slowly and needs a tune-up, which he says he can provide.
I found that odd because only a few days earlier I had my computer into the shop where I bought it. I asked them to assess its condition and that, if necessary, I would buy a new one or at least get  the old one updated. Despite the fact that they sell computers and service, the guy there tells me that my machine is fine just the way it is.
So I tell the guy at the printer company I don’t need any computer upgrades and to just move along with the printer fix. He says OK and that he can start the fix for 70 USD.
I cut the connection, call back and talk to a supervisor, telling her to expect a call from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police fraud squad who I am about to call. Then I plunge into the frustrating online banking world to change my passwords in case the technician has grabbed that information from my computer.
Finally, I calm myself down, get focussed and return to the printer connection problem.
It is truly amazing what the calm, focussed mind can achieve. I find the problem on my own and fix it in 30 seconds of keystrokes. Then I sit back and think about how wonderful it would be to have a job that pays 70 USD for 30 seconds work.
Speaking of the RCMP I received a letter from them saying I must renew, for $60, my firearms licence. The letter says I can do so quickly and easily by going to their website.
I go to their website and discover that I need to register for a GCKEY, whatever that might be. I need a GCKEY to access Enhanced IWS, whatever that is. Once I obtain a GCKEY then I should log into IWS through two levels off security.
So I shut off my computer, telephone the RCMP and ask them to send me a paper application. I have my own pencil, thank you.
Yes, the digital world has become overwhelming. I want out, but once in, there is no easy way out.
And, for all its frustrations there is no better place to produce a good rant.
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