Do Something Every Day To Help De-Normalize The Abuses Of The Empire

September 5, 2024

One very important task we can undertake as citizens of the western empire is to help de-normalize the tyranny, murderousness and savagery that the imperial propagandists work to normalize. To help other westerners see the freakishness and depravity of the empire with fresh eyes.

If we lived in a healthy, harmonious society, and then all of a sudden the status quo changed to the one we have right now, people would scream their fucking lungs out. They would scream and scream and scream in abject horror and gut-wrenching grief at what they were seeing. It would feel like the end of the world to everyone.

Our task is to try to give our fellow westerners a taste of that experience. To help people viscerally experience the vast contrast between what we have now and what an acceptable status quo would actually look like. To show them the immense suffering, brutality and psychopathy of the empire in all the ways it shows up from day to day, in ways that the normality manufacturers in Washington, New York and Hollywood have been trying to keep them from seeing.

https://x.com/caitoz/status/1829513897348637150

The job of the empire propagandist is to normalize the empire. Our job as healthy human beings who care about the world is to do the exact opposite — to denormalize it. To find new and creative ways to help people see that these things we’ve been conditioned to accept as normal are actually shocking and unacceptable.

Denormalize poverty.

Denormalize injustice and inequality.

Denormalize the ruined buildings and ruined bodies in Gaza.

Denormalize the nuclear brinkmanship with Russia.

Denormalize the destruction of our biosphere in the ravages of ecocidal capitalism.

Denormalize the surging authoritarianism we’re experiencing as the empire works frantically to stomp out dissent.

Denormalize the war machinery rolling out around the world, and the increasingly militarized police forces in our streets.

Denormalize the psychopathy of the politicians and government officials who cheerfully serve the empire in facilitation of these horrors.

Denormalize the way media and government institutions controlled by the powerful work to manipulate the way we think and perceive every day of our fucking lives for the benefit of the powerful.

One of the advantages the empire propagandists have over normal people is that these things are all we’ve ever known. We’ve never experienced a healthy world, so we don’t experience the shock and outrage we’d otherwise experience at what these pricks are stealing from us by keeping that healthy world from us.

But one thing we have that the empire propagandists do not is creativity, and the ability to capture the human imagination. We can use these things to find ways of making the evils of the empire stand out against the background of normalization, and to help people envision a world without those completely unnecessary evils.

There’s always something we can do on this front. Our votes might not matter. Our peaceful protests might get ignored by those in power. Our rights might be getting steadily eroded as the empire managers work to reinforce the bars of our cage. But we can always work to open the eyes of our fellow citizens to the reality of our situation, and to how completely unacceptable it is. And to the urgent need to change it. And to the truth that, if enough eyes can be opened, the power of our numbers will place such change within our grasp.

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Denman Audio Arts Collective

September 5, 2024

For folks who may not know, the Denman Audio Arts Collective (DAACS) is still hosting the highly successful and entertaining open Stage the third Wednesday of every month (excluding Dec and July). For many years the Denman Community Backhall has witnessed performers of all stripes and genres.

In 2023 there were 137 performers, ranging between 12 and 80 years old.

We would also like to thank the many volunteers and concessioneers that have helped over the years, to make ths such a success.

Every month is so unique, with new performers, travellers , and always a few surprises. For the price of $4 it is still a great deal, with friendly neighbour’s and the outstanding concession courtesy of Bee Balm. Please note that show starts at 7:30 (7 pm doors open for sign up). Depending on the night we play 2 or 3 songs,

Kevin Mitchell & Steve Ireland play the Guesthouse

September 5, 2024

On Fri Sept 20, at 6:3pm Kevin Mitchell and Steve Ireland will take the stage at the local Denman Island Guesthouse.

With 7 full length albums recorded and produced by Corwin Fox( Cumberland) and Marc Atkinson( Hornby), the craft of songwriting has slowly matured, with the promise of many albums to come.

These riginal songs that take you on various journeys through small prairie towns , vast expanses of forest and the hearts and minds of the Canadian psyche.

For the last number of months Kevin has teamed up with Denmans’ itinerant musician and all round good guy, Steve Ireland. With his bass playing and harmonies, Steve adds a depth and focus that compliment the songs perfectly.

There is a chance of another special guest(TBA) Look forward to it

Dinner served at 5 30

Admission $20

river boat

September 5, 2024

Denman Island Garden Society’s Show What You Grow Competition – Sept.1st

August 29, 2024

Spontaneous Combustion to play the Back Hall

August 29, 2024

SC 2024 (1) — Wally, Tony & Roger (L to R)

Spontaneous Combustion with Wally Petersen, bass, Tony Morrison, sax/flute and Roger Baird, drums will tear it up at the Back Hall on Friday, August 30, playing some jazz standards, originals and more. The theme is Concert for World Peace.

Doors open at 7 p.m. and the music begins at 7:30. Advance tickets, $15, are available at Abraxas Books and the D.I General Store. At the door: $20.

Green Wizardries: The Peach Harvest

August 29, 2024

Green Wizardries, The Peach Harvest by Maxine Rogers

Denman and Hornby Islands stand alone against the great peach failure of 2024. The entire Okanagan Valley was wiped out of peaches, plums and nectarines when a huge cold snap froze the trees that had not hardened off properly due to a very warm autumn. I know for a fact that some Denman peaches were exported to the Okanagan and caused a minor stir when a person carelessly let it slip that they were canning peaches in Osoyoos. People wanted to know where the peaches had come from and if they could get any.

We have a couple of Frost peaches which we bought from Beulah Creek Nursery on Hornby. These trees have provided us with a good harvest of peaches this year. I had just finished canning the first batch when a very kind friend called up and asked if we would like some more peaches. Our friend wanted to give us the peaches for nothing but eventually accepted a loaf of my home-made raisin bread and that I would make six pints of peach jam for him.

We went to pick the peaches in his greenhouse that he has cleverly pruned to follow the roof of the greenhouse in an arc, to maximize growing space. It smelt like heaven should smell in that greenhouse. The fruit were puzzlingly small this year, but so sweet and full of flavour. We picked box after box until the European paper wasps became upset and started to buzz around angrily. Our host graciously said he would get rid of the wasps and pick the rest of the fruit for us. This in a time of peach famine is not a small favour.

The first thing I did when we got home was to wash a box of the little peaches and slice them in two and pop them cut side up into the dehydrator. I had just emptied a load of dehydrated zucchinis and tomatoes from the dehydrator. From late summer on, the dehydrator is in constant use here. Dehydrated peaches make excellent candy, are shelf stable and can be rehydrated if someone wants to bake a peach pie or cobbler in the winter.

To rehydrate dried fruit, put the fruit in a bowl and cover it with boiling water. I put a small bowl on top to hold the fruit down under the water. After abut 15 minutes, the fruit is ready to work with. To add extra flavour, you can use hot juice and even add a shot of rum or brandy to the fluid.

I will also be canning more peaches in a honey syrup which we like much better than sugar syrup. I make the syrup with four quarts of water and two cups of honey which is heated on the stove. I can fruit the old-fashioned way which I learned from Linda Gilkeson, the garden writer.

Linda explained to me that when she was little, everyone peeled the peaches, dipped them in some lemon water to stop them discolouring and packed them in the jars. Next, hot syrup was poured over the fruit, hot lids were applied and the whole shebang was popped into the boiling water-bath canner. When the water began to boil again, the timer would be set for twenty-five minutes for pints and thirty minutes for quarts.

The modern way is much more difficult as the new advice calls for the peaches to be boiled in syrup before being packed into the jars, covered with more syrup and then put in the water-bath canner. I have yet to figure out how to do this without getting burned and having the first few boiled peaches splat into the bottom of the jar. I have been canning fruit the old-fashioned way for years now with very good results but I urge all of my readers to follow the new procedures even if they make no sense and the product is not as good.

The time for planting trees is in November and I can highly recommend the Frost peach as a good outdoor peach for this area. The Frost seems immune to peach-leaf curl which is caused by the leaves getting wet. Other varieties of peach should be grown under a shelter.

Our generous friend who gave us the free-stone peaches (the stones just pop out of the peach with little effort) mentioned he grew his two indoor peach trees from seed and they grew true to type. I am going to save some of those peach stones and pot them up and leave them in the winter rains on the porch and see what we get. We have space for a couple of small trees in our greenhouse. Having your own peaches is a great way to add resiliency to your household as well as a great deal of pleasure.

The dreaded peach famine underscores the lesson that we don’t need to preserve all the produce we will need in the coming year: we need to preserve enough produce to have a two or three year supply to cover occasions like the peach famine.

Cowboy Corner: Clete Fowler-Roving Reporter

August 29, 2024

Here’s the story…

The people have spoken. Hornby Islanders have voted unanimously to rename Denman Island to Jan Brady Island following a raucous town hall meeting. “We’ve always been Marsha, everybody loves us and wants to be like us”, said longtime Hornby resident Zenovia Wickerchair Thompson. “We’re prettier and more popular, always have been, always will be. It’s about time Denman just accepted it”.

As the final results were read a group of four men who were living all together (although unconfirmed sources say they were all alone) stood draped in possum skins while repeatedly beating their walking stickings against makeshift shields chanting “Marsha Marsha Marsha!!”

These sentiments were echoed by Penelope Nutloaf, who runs a $900 dollar per night B & B out of a diapitated tool shed on her property. “People only use Denman to get to us, nobody likes them and all they ever do over there is whine about stuff like how much they want to be like us and other stuff”. “This is long overdue”, she added, “I’ve lived on Hornby for over forty years and have raised three very lovely girls, all with hair of gold, just like their mother”.

Denman Island Mayor Frowzy Frazzlebottom was unavailable for comment as he was busy with three boys of his own.

Shucking Oysters: The Divided States of America

August 29, 2024

Shucking Oysters: The Divided States of America

By Alex Allen

American politics have always fascinated me. Watching the Democrat National Convention was, dare I say it, more entertaining and exciting than the Oscars. Hillary. Bill. Barack. Michelle. Oprah. Ben. Dave. Julia. One democrat after another came out on the stage and kicked ass. Trump’s to be specific. Between chant’s of “we’re not going back” and the word “joy” repeated over and over, the feeling of hope was palpable. It was joyful. It was full of love.

The kicks began with Hillary Clinton: “Kamala locked up murderers and drug traffickers…Donald Trump fell asleep at his own trial – and when he woke up, he made his own kind of history: the first person to run for president with 34 felony convictions.”

Barack Obama, known for his flowing discourse, described Trump as “a 78-year-old billionaire who hasn’t stopped whining…who sees power as a means to his end, put ‘other’ people in their place – an act that has gotten pretty stale.” He even made a dick joke, then got serious: “We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos. We have seen that movie before, and we all know the sequel is usually worse. America is ready for a better story.”

Michelle Obama didn’t hold back either, calling Trump an entitled grifter who “demeans and cheapens our politics, demonizing others,” which “only makes us small.” “Who’s going to tell him the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs’?” she taunted.

It couldn’t get worse for “Lord Little Hands,” a man who has issues with humiliation and not being adored, in other words, a narcissist. Trump responded during his rally in North Carolina, “Did you see Barack Hussein Obama last night? He was taking shots at your president. And so was Michelle.” On Fox News, in response to hearing Harris “having some success” with women, Hispanic and Black voters, the “Vulgar Talking Yam” objected. “She’s not having success; I’m having success,” he said. “I’m doing great with the Hispanic voters, doing great with Black men, I’m doing great with women.”

Before hand-on-heart, running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz left the convention stage, he looked straight at his family in the audience and declared, “Hope, Gus and Gwen, you are my entire world, and I love you” while his tearful 17-year-old son Gus, overcome with emotion, stood up and shouted, “That’s my dad!” It was a deeply moving moment. But to the Republicans, it was “pathetic,” “embarrassing,” to see his “stupid crying son” and “blubbering bitch boy” honour his father. From I Heart radio host Jay Weber: “If the Walz’s represent today’s American man, this country is screwed.” And single and childless, “puckered and petulant” Ann Coulter, “Talk about weird…”

Talk about disgusting. Some apologized, slightly, once they learned that Walz had openly talked about Gus having a nonverbal learning disability, which affects a person’s spatial-visual skills. Radio host Weber was fired even after issuing a pathetic apology. But it was too late to even remotely redeem themselves. “I can see why a child loving their parents would feel foreign to you,” former Republican strategist, Rick Wilson, told Coulter, adding that she “will die alone, and forensic pathologists will discover her withered corpse is nothing but Marlboro reds and box wine.” Ouch.

During Harris’s 38-minute speech, the “Orange Cheato” fired off more than 50 posts on his Truth Social account. From the top, he immediately criticized how Harris approached the podium, saying “too many ‘Thank yous,’ too rapidly said, what’s going on with her?” A minute later he shared that her running mate “was an ASSISTANT Coach, not a COACH.” Later, “She talked about the Rule of Law but, as Border Czar, she allowed 20 Million people into our Country, many of them Criminals, who are MAIMING and KILLING our people!” The “Tangerine Tinted Trash-Can Fire” ended his staccato tweets with: “There will be no future under Comrade Kamala Harris, because she will take us into a Nuclear World War III! She will never be respected by the Tyrants of the World!”

Yes, Kamala still gratuitously smiles at one and all, but I also witnessed the tough prosecutor, something I have not seen before. “Just imagine Donald Trump with no guard rails and how he would use the immense powers of the presidency of the United States,” she told the DNC. “Not to improve your life, not to strengthen our national security, but to serve the only client he has ever had: himself.” One pundit gushed, “People watching were like, where has that amazing person been for the last couple of years?”

In recent days, the “Angry Creamsicle” has taken to social `media to label Harris a “communist” and a “crooked radical left political” figure, accusing her of leading the country toward what he describes as a “Communist, Crime Ridden Garbage Dump.” But, the biggest news for “Sir Liesalot” had less to do with him and more to do with Robert Kennedy Jr, the controversial independent who ended his campaign and endorsed Trump, right after the convention.

Two days later, business as usual, “Sphincter Mouth” tweeted: “Who is negotiating for us in the Middle East? Bombs are dropping all over the place! Sleepy Joe is sleeping on a Beach in California, viciously Exiled by the Democrats, and Comrade Kamala is doing a campaign bus tour with Tampon Tim, her really bad V.P.” (Last year Walz signed a bill that gives public school students in Minnesota access to free menstrual products, like tampons and pads.)

And JD Vance? As a reporter wondered, how does he make room in his mouth for so many feet?