I Was a Teenaged Mark Russell Fan

As a nerdy teen, I used to love PBS. Well, I still do, but there are more options now, aren’t there? I enjoyed Brideshead Revisited and I, Claudius and many nature specials, and as a geek with a burgeoning interest in politics – and American politics being of far more interest than Canadian politics to most Canadians (not to mention the world) – I used to enjoy the Mark Russell political comedy/musical shows. If you don’t know who Russell was, he was a satirist who used musical parodies and a piano to mock politicians and headlines. He was very talented and astute and a fun performer, but if you watch this (or look up some other of his clips online) you will really get a sense of how genteel he was and how innocent his commentary could be. I do not mean that as a bad thing – I wish we could dial so much of our nastiness and bite back, and return to this kind of discourse. It’s easy to mock, and many have mocked him (I seem to recall SNL took a rather funny shot at him some years back) and that is fair enough. Still, when I read that he had passed, I felt rather nostalgic for this relative naivete and kindness. (Canuck readers: do we/did we have a Canadian equivalent to this gentleman? I think not.)

By the way, I was such a diehard PBS-watcher as a kid and teen that one night, during one of the public broadcaster’s pleading, desperate fundraising drives, I felt compelled to help. I was watching with my brother, who felt equally moved by their plight. Together, we took my dad’s credit card (he was likely sleeping/passed out) and phoned in quite a pledge. Yes, there was hell to pay, but we did get a tote bag.

We Had Something Right During the Pandemic…

…and that is, never leave your home. When I read stories like this, that is all I can think. Never leave your home. Have as little to do with other humans as you possibly can, as interacting with others seems to almost always be a problem these days (and seems to always be filmed). The woman at the centre of this madness has been proven to have been justified in what she was trying to do and to have been innocent of the accusations against her, and while I am not a fan of lawsuits, I hope she sues her cowardly employer and wins bigly. Good piece on this phenomenon in general and the deep bigotry and misogyny behind it.

Awash in Deaths

Quite a few losses for the world of late, and two, in particular, for Canada: Tarek Fatah and Gordon Lightfoot. The interesting thing about Lightfoot, given how celebrated he is by the left in this country, is that if you read the lyrics to Canadian Railroad Trilogy, you can see it is a song celebrating pioneers, celebrating the building up of the country by European immigration. Quite interesting – people don’t pay attention, otherwise he’d be getting posthumous cancellation. Glad he isn’t. Also gone, Harry Belafonte and Dame Edna/Barry Humphries, both exceptional talents. I went through a real Dame Edna phase when I was living in Japan, for some reason. Not sure of the correlation, or if there ever was one. For what it’s worth, my fave Lightfoot song is not among the well-known. Enjoy.

This. Poem.

I so love it – I meant to post it on my birthday but forgot. It’s by Maura Dooley.

What Every Woman Should Carry

My mother gave me the prayer to Saint Theresa.
I added a used tube ticket, Kleenex,
several Polo mints (furry), a tampon, pesetas,
a florin. Not wishing to be presumptuous,
not trusting you either, a pack of 3.
I have a pen. There is space for my guardian
angel, she has to fold her wings. Passport.
A key. Anguish, at what I said/didn’t say
when once you needed/didn’t need me. Anadin.
A credit card. His face the last time,
my impatience, my useless youth.
That empty sack, my heart. A box of matches.

Ukraine

I always say that I need to know where people stand on two issues to know everything I need to about them. Issue one is Israel – do they support its right to exist as the Jewish state? – and issue two is Ukraine – do they understand that the Ukrainians are in the right to keep fighting, to not want to give up an inch of territory? Which brings me to this remarkable, eye-opening article about Ukraine. What it describes is not something you will read or hear much about in the Western media (and I don’t just mean conservative media, although they are the worst offenders), sadly: it shows us a Ukraine that is inventive in the face of Russia’s aggression, it shows us Ukrainians recycling weaponry and rebuilding cities. It shows us a visionary Ukraine – innovative and clever. There are insights throughout the piece on what will happen if Ukraine wins and what might happen if – God forbid – they lose.

Canada is useless – we can’t/won’t meet our NATO responsibilities and we have next to nothing to offer Ukraine. We are in no position to criticize the United States on this matter, but I do wonder why the US is refusing to give Ukraine any F16s, and why they are so slow on sending the Abrams tanks they promised. I sometimes think maybe we’ve reached a point in history where we prefer murky endings to wars, no clear victor, attrition, stalemates. Are we afraid of what a change in geopolitics it would represent if Russia lost? Do we just like to reflect and ponder too much?