Green Wizardries: Christmas Cake Blues
It is starting to look pretty bad out there in the world and I can see the conflict in Israel growing larger and pulling countries in the Middle East into a regional war. If you think this will not affect you, I wish you may be right.
As there is nothing I can do about it, I am going to tell you a cautionary tale about Christmas cake. I love the stuff myself. I love it when it is spread with apricot jam and enfolded in a layer of marzipan rolled out thin and draped over the cake and then slapped up with a deep covering of Royal icing. The only problem with a slice of Christmas cake got up in that manner is the diabetic shock which may well result.
My Grandmother, may she rest in peace, was a cultured French-Canadian lady from Montreal. She baked an excellent Christmas cake, probably because she had the misfortune to marry my Anglo-Irish Grandfather. He loved Christmas cake and desserts could not be too rich for that man. Some people tell me you have to be of British descent to enjoy Christmas cake. The way my Grandmother baked it was to decorated the tops with patterns of pecans and lay a piece of tin foil over the tops of the cakes to stop the nuts scorching.
This does away with the need to jam, marzipan and Royal icing the otherwise, fairly-innocent cake. I have made Christmas cake both ways and prefer the more restrained version of my Grandmother.
I think a lot of people will have a battered old copy of the Joy of Cooking somewhere about the house and I hope you read this story in time. The Joy’s recipe for Christmas cake, from the older editions, must be read right to the end before commencing any purchases or preparations.
I read a story, that I devoutly hope was made up, about a young lady who, in her first year as a young wife, decided to make Christmas cake and read the recipe in the Joy but she did not read it all the way through. She made a shopping list first and went out and filled a shopping cart with candied peel and dried fruit. She took her loot home and began to mix the cake up in her largest bowl. That didn’t last long. She had to transfer the batter to a stock pot and after a few more such moves, her husband came home to find his bride weeping and mixing the cake in their bathtub.
You see, back in the day, the Joy’s Christmas-cake recipe was made for that tough generation of Memsahibs that went out and fought World War Two no matter if their husbands and families liked it or not. The idea was to produce enough cake to send one to every maiden aunt, second cousin twice removed, all the girls who served with them in the Intelligence Unit, the Vicar and of course for all the servants working and retired that their family had ever employed. The recipe made about thirty cakes.
I just checked my copy of the Joy from 2006 and the horrendous recipe, that I am sure got many a young cook in a lot of trouble, has been replaced by a much wimpier version suited to modern folk who lack the grit, determination and sheer bloody-mindedness of that towering generation, now, sadly almost gone from us. I am sure they are looking down at us and shaking their heads in disbelief.
So, the moral of the story is to read every recipe three times all the way through before making a decision and starting to cook. If you do want to do some Christmas baking, I hope you will buy some organically-produced lemons, oranges and limes and make your own candied peel. You just put the sliced peels in a pot of water and boil them for 15 minutes. Drain and put 2 cups of sugar and one of water into the pot and boil it until the sugar has dissolved. Add the poached peels and simmer for about an hour. Drain, reserving the excellent citrus simple syrup to sweeten drinks, and roll the hot drained peels in sugar. Leave them out on a rack to dry for one or two days and then put them in a cookie tin in the freezer where they will keep very well.
I do not hold with buying candied fruit which is mostly unnatural green and red cherries steeped in pesticides an filthy with dyes. I use my own home-dried fruit such as apples, pears, figs and plums. Honestly, why bother to bake a cake if you are going to buy all the ingredients? You might just as well buy a loaf of ghastly, commercially-prepared, pseudo-Christmas cake and say you baked it. I hope you will try baking your own Christmas cake this year. It is a lovely tradition from a more civilized age.
December
December gives you a barrier
From life’s biggest problems
The days leading to Christmas
You can’t wait any longer
December brings family close
In their cozy homes
On non-cozy nights
Where dropped temperatures roam
The time will arrive
For a fresh blanket of snow
But when will it come?
No one will know
Pour the hot cocoa
Crank up the heat
December is here
Now coldness will greet
Letter to the Editor – Oakley Rankin
Re: Job advertisement from an ‘agenda driven woke company’
I have to report that all the best positions for this particular job application are already taken; they have been filled by ‘unwoke’ persons. Look to Victor Orban, Vladimir Putin, Jair Bolsonaro, Jarosław Kaczyński, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Javier Milei, Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen and many others. All have enacted or said they will enact the three duties listed as well as much more of the same.
The use of the term ‘woke’ dates from the 1930’s and can be found in the some of the songs of Lead Belly. It derives from African American English and has been adopted widely to describe the awakening of people to racism, white identity, and other problems of social justice. It is seen largely as a characteristic of the ‘left’ and, as such, has been redefined by the ‘right’ as a pejorative to indicate the stupidity of the left’s call for social justice and foreclose any reasonable discussion of those ideas and project your own faults on to those you view as enemies.
So I am afraid that this particular company will have to redefine their job description for ‘woke’ employees as the duties listed here for the job are more than adequately fulfilled by ‘unwoke’ persons on the right who currently have a lock on the field.
P.S. I am hoping that the term ‘unwoke’ might be taken up to describe all those who believe that social disabilities and problems have either been solved or are of no importance. Many of them can be identified by their prating about lack of ‘freedom’ in our country and life under our democratic ‘tyranny’ where they demonstrate clearly they have no idea what either term means in practice or theory. Of course when has experience and truth got in the way of one who wants to order a culture their way and not the highway.
Oakley Rankin
The Hoarders of Virtue
While the liberal minded managerial class attempts to hoard the discourse on social justice, they are largely unconcerned in any meaningful way of opposing the repressive structures of the political and economic establishment. Virtue signalling and self-serving performative acts relating to identity, vainly attempting to claim a higher moral and ethical standing, have replaced any real actions that might result in elevating economic and social justice for the working class. It is a person’s low income that is the greatest determinative factor of being marginalized. Issues related to identity intersect with economic class and status.
Instead of a focus on practical assistance to those living on the economic margins, the vanguard of radical centrists in the managerial class focus on populating local organizations in order to direct financial resources to their own pet projects. As leading participants, they insist that their efforts not be held to fair accountability or reasonable transparency. Sometimes these committee members manage to serve themselves to a financial retainer or they create organizational policies that give themselves access to employment that is not tendered publicly for expressions of interest. These policies can intentionally exclude other qualified residents, and are only a small part of how local publicly funded budgets can be manipulated.
When it comes to a lack of transparency and public accountability, DenmanWorks (DW) Chairperson Anthony Gregson is unrivalled. Gregson holds the position of Chair, past his 4 year term limit, and does not publish the minutes of DW, nor advertise for recruitment of DW Board membership, or publish DW meeting times. The last DW meeting minutes published are from 2018, the year Gregson was elected. DW Board members are recruited by himself without public notice, including his latest recruits. All this is in contravention of DW’s own bylaws. He was granted a one year extension to his position by his hand picked Board. It’s Gregson’s private domain to determine the DW Board membership, and who gets public funds from the CVRD. In other words, he’s peddling influence.
Bronwyn Schuster, publicist of the DW sponsored and publicly funded Denman Island Bus Service, admitted to covertly using their position to peddle influence with tax funded advertising, aiming false claims of bigotry at The Islands Grapevine (TIG), then posted these accusations on Denman social media. The online outrage that resulted has targeted TIG and its employees, who live on the margins of low incomes and rental housing. Privately, TIG received broad support, mostly from people who feared speaking out against these performative virtue-signalling bullies. TIG has been committed to the inclusion of a wide diversity of perspectives for more than 30 years, and is the primary source for community information, events, and advertising for local businesses and services, even printing the monthly Flagstone publication at below market costs.
When TIG published the story of Schuster’s attempt to extort editorial policy changes, Team TIG did not accuse Gregson or DW as having done anything wrong. Indeed, Schuster claimed to have acted alone and without the knowledge of their colleagues. At that point, Gregson had TIG publisher Mike Van Santvoord removed from his position on the DW Board, even after acknowledging the truth of the wrongdoing by Schuster, saying only that Van Santvoord had brought “disrepute” to DW. Gregson also fired Van Santvoord from his job managing the visitdenmanisland.ca websi
Under DW’s bylaws, and their adopted bylaws of the B.C. Societies Act, a vote to remove a Board member cannot be taken without making a specific charge of malfeasance, and giving that person an opportunity to speak with the Board prior to a vote to remove the member. Neither of these things happened. Presumably, a vote to remove Van Santvoord was taken, but we can’t confirm this because no DW meeting minutes have been published. Repeated inquiries to DW asking for explanations have gone unanswered; no transparency, and no accountability. TIG doesn’t assume the other DW Board members were aware, or were made aware of the relevant bylaws, and it isn’t our intention to imply wrongdoing by other DW members; Ember Hutchens, Robert Newton, Julie Geremia, Laura Pope, and Caitlin Fogarty.
We often see the managerial class on Denman social media, smearing others with all kinds of unfounded accusations, and directing campaigns of cancel culture, while attempting to undermine TIG by directing public advertising dollars elsewhere, claiming that their position as publicly funded managers entitles them to behave as the sole client in determining where tax supported funds will be spent on behalf of the actual clients, all residents of Denman Island. Who gave them this entitlement? The standards of conduct for non-profits and public agencies forbid this kind of influence peddling. These authoritarians have only empowered themselves, and they attempt to justify it by hoarding all virtue as their exclusive domain, controlling the levers of public influence, and working to silence those who expose their lack of integrity.
TIG has filed complaints with the B.C. Societies Act, and the Ombudsperson. We’ll let Gregson explain his actions to these agencies, because the Denman Island community seems unable or unwilling to hold these people to account. TIG previously reached out to Schuster and Sam Borthwick to settle these matters privately, following our offer to Schuster to publish their concerns in TIG. We then accepted an offer from the CVRD to support a restorative justice mediated process, while Gregson, Schuster, and Borthwick refused to participate, after breaking an agreement to publicly apologize. It’s these people and their allies, lacking an ethical compass, who bring disrepute to Denman’s publicly funded community organizations.
DIGPA AGM Thursday, December 14th and Tool Library Additions!
Denman Island Growers and Producers Alliance
AGM Thursday, December 14th and Tool Library Additions!
December 14th, 2023 7:00 PM Annual General Meeting at the Denman Activity Centre Lounge
Come hear an update from the GPA about another year of activities and learn about what projects you can get involved in. Hear the financial report, president’s report, updates from our subcommittees and help us do the yearly business of choosing our board of directors!
Tea, coffee, and snacks will be served. Zoom participation available by request via email to islandagriculture@gmail.com.
We will be having another AGM in January as we shift our yearly AGM to January
The GPA board has decided that January would be a more suitable time for our AGM going forward as financial business from the Farmers Market is not usually done by our financial year end on October 31st. We are planning to shift our year end to December 31st which will allow for simpler bookkeeping and for our AGM to take place at a less busy time of year. As a society we are required to have an AGM every calendar year so we will be having our 2024 AGM in January (date TBA).
New Tools in the Library!
Thanks to support from Denman Works! the GPA has been able to add exciting new community equipment to our Tool Library. This year we have added an Oat Roller and Gluten-Free Grain Mill (think home grown oat flour) and a Thermal Label Printer for long lasting nursery plant labels (tree wraps and potted plant tags). We will be showing off these new items at the AGM this year so come and get inspired.
Last year we added a Seed/Grain/Bean/Corn Thresher which has been used by growers on Denman this past year to efficiently thresh wheat, oats, corn, beans, peas, and amaranth. Please reach out to the GPA if you are interested in strategizing how this tool can fit into your growing system. We will be happy to discuss this and all our tool library tools at the AGM.
Herbalists: if you haven’t already heard we also have a high quality Herb Press for pressing tincture preparations. Get in touch if you want to know more!
All of our tools can be borrowed by members who have paid their $20 annual membership fee and are administered through a decentralized hosting system (you contact the tool host to organise access). Check out the full list and get host contact info at https://www.denmangpa.ca/toollibrary
Letter to the Editor – Riley Donovan
This morning, I read Helen Grond’s piece in the Driftwood on Hornby Island’s cell tower controversy. I was struck by the similarity between the irregularities in the Rogers application process she described, and our own experience with Rogers on Salt Spring Island.
As Grond notes in her piece, there is significant opposition to the planned 258-foot cell tower in the heart of Hornby. Concerned citizens have held three public information meetings over the last year, and over 300 Hornby islanders have signed a petition against this project – roughly a quarter of the total population.
To date, neither Rogers nor the Islands Trust has held a public meeting on the planned Hornby tower. Innovation, Science, and Economic Development (ISED), the federal department responsible for regulating cell tower installations, requires that land-use consultations be completed within 120 days of “the proponent’s initial formal contact with the local land-use authority”.
Official notice of intent was published on November 1st, 2022, meaning that the consultation period technically expired 120 days later, on March 20th, 2023. No consultation has taken place in the time period laid out in the ISED guidelines, which raises the question of why this project has not been cancelled by the Trust.
All of this is remarkably similar to the Rogers application process for a 131-foot, 5g enabled cell tower in the Channel Ridge region of Salt Spring this past spring, which I reported on at the time in a series of articles for the Islands Marketplace.
Having initially approved the application, Salt Spring’s Local Trust Committee (LTC) rescinded concurrence on March 23rd, alleging that Rogers failed in numerous instances to follow the Islands Trust draft Model Public Consultation Protocol for Local Trust Areas.
The LTC alleged that Rogers failed to hold an in-person public meeting despite a request to do so, never suggested alternative tower sites, and negotiated a land use agreement with the Onni Group (the Vancouver real estate company which owns the cell tower site) 11 months before approaching the LTC.
Particularly egregious was the LTC allegation that Rogers omitted mention of archaeological sites including shell middens, lithic scatters, a hearth feature, and two petroglyph rock art boulders.
The decision of the LTC to rescind concurrence was eventually overruled by ISED, on the basis of the mother of all technicalities: the Trust protocol was still in draft form. This despite the fact that in the very first sentence of its application, Rogers claimed that its consultation process had been completed following said draft protocol.
A disturbing pattern of behaviour is beginning to emerge in the way that Rogers approaches cell tower installations in small west coast communities. Without a proper public consultation process in which concern can be expressed about cell tower projects, residents are left voiceless and disenfranchised.
If cell tower siting is carried out without a transparent, democratic process, communities may have only one recourse left: peaceful civil disobedience.
Riley Donovan is an independent journalist and columnist living on Salt Spring Island. You can follow him on Twitter @valdombre
Moonlight Madness
Just six very short days before the winter solstice Madness shall be unleashed upon the commercial core of Denman Island. Friday, December 15 between the hours of 5:00 and 9:00
p.m. we will bright up the night with luminaria light all the way from the Earth Club Factory ‘round to the Activity Centre where you will find the John the Rug Man selling his magic carpets until 8:00 p.m. (he’ll be there Saturday too). No matter where you choose to begin your descent into Madness you are guaranteed to find fun, frolic and friends. I suggest you come hungry and ready for dinner as food will be available in three locations: Tachi’s Cafe in Abraxas Books, Takeout Near You sited at the old bakery, and the Earth Club Factory. The Bistro will be open late with appetizers, hot “special” beverages, and more. Out by the bonfire you can create your own s’more. Don’t miss the variety of giftware, clothing and toys, some 35% off that night! Donna and Sheldon will also have seasonal baking in ready-made gift boxes. Donna always has an amazing array of different goodies. Takeout Near You offers the finest French Fries this side of the Beauforts plus pizza, poutine, Korean chicken, veggie and meat burgers. Tachi will have drink specials as well as door prizes. Sipping on something warm is one way of taking Madness in stride. Speaking of which, a Madness first! Some carollers will be assembled on the lawn of St. Saviours Church from 5:30-6:00 ish singing and giving out warm apple juice
Our core General Store will stay open extra late to serve you revellers that Friday evening. Do drop by to say Happy Madness to Jennifer and crew.
The wonderful Denman Hardware really gets into the spirit, serving up spirits in the form of Rusty Nails and Screw Drivers, keeping the antifreeze level up for the adult populace.
The Denman Craft Shop ladies, now thirty years old (!) look forward to giving you the opportunity for night shopping with their gorgeous selection of artisan fare created on Denman. Their neighbour, Abraxas Books and Cafe, will be doing the same. Tachi has filled the space with all sorts of playful bits and bobs to augment the very fine selection of books including very fun socks, art supplies, stickers and journals.
The Art Centre will be alive with Community Collage for anyone and everyone who wants to create a page for the 2023 Community Collage book. All of the books from 2006 and onward will be available for perusing — each a Time Capsule of its own. Our theme this year: I AM SO GRATEFUL—LET ME COUNT THE WAYS. Brain scientists have discovered that the contemplation of gratitude paves neural pathways to the frontal cortex. Even if you can’t think of a single thing to be grateful for (c’mon, really?!?) the act of TRYING forges the way. There are a number of new residents on our fair isle, it’s time for you to represent! Come on into the Art Centre during Madness and enjoy making a collage page. Des Bowman will be on the Art Centre porch selling his delightful photos of critters both tame and wild. He may be joined by other vendors, we shall see!
Late breaking news! Magdalene Joly will join Des on the Art Centre porch with her gorgeous jewels!
Let’s hope the evening is dry enough for Sheldon to light the bon fire outside the Guest House. Many a Madness evening has concluded there, singing and making merry. We so hope you will all come downtown and join the festivities.
Shucking Oysters: Keeping it Real
Merriam-Webster recently announced the 2023 word of the year. I immediately thought clusterf*ck, sinister, or narrative. It’s not the frequency of a word in our verbal exchanges or in the vernacular of journalism. It’s how many times people looked for specific words on their website. The publishing company’s editor-at-large, Peter Sokolowski, and his team, crunched the data on word look up spikes and world events that correlated.
Drum roll please. The word of 2023 is “authentic.” There was no particularly huge surge at any given time, but a constant steady interest in the word. Given this year so far, it is perhaps not surprising that authentic rises above the ashes, if you will. We live in a world of looming intrusive artificial intelligence, fake boobs, and governments that no one trusts. Even Elon Musk, of all people, at the World Government Summit in Dubai, urged heads of corporations, politicians, and other sundry folk, to “speak authentically” on social media.
“We see in 2023 a kind of crisis of authenticity,” Sokolowski said. “What we realize is that when we question authenticity, we value it even more.” Oddly, Merriam-Webster states that “authentic is what brands, social media influencers and celebrities aspire to be … “authenticity” has “become a performance,” the publication added. Authenticity with botox?
Many point to the pandemic as the beginning of the end of social cohesion in Canada and around the world. And lest you forget, social cohesion is all about feeling connected in your relationships and within your community. Back in October 2020, IPSOS found that “more Canadians have “weak” (30%) than “solid” (26%) social cohesion. By March of this year, IPSOS reported that Canadians’ “trust in government to do what is right” had dropped from 58% in late 2020 to 43% in 2023. Equally disturbing, the survey found that “In Canada, only 33% of citizens believe that most people can be trusted, against 67% who believe that you can’t be too careful dealing with people.”
“Can we trust whether a student wrote this paper? Can we trust whether a politician made this statement? We don’t always trust what we see anymore,” Sokolowski said. “We sometimes don’t believe our own eyes or our own ears. We are now recognizing that authenticity is a performance itself.”
It’s no secret that the pandemic stressed us out more than any other recent event. Lockdowns, vaccine mandates, school closures, travel restrictions, do not exactly instill warm and fuzzy memories. As Geoff Norquay in Canadian Politics and Policy wrote, “the resulting bonfire of grievances let loose some nasty demons that are likely to be with us for a long time: many politicians and public officials at all levels still experience personal insults and public threats just for doing their jobs.” And it’s not just politicians that experience those nasty demon darts.
Other top word searches for 2023 were “doppelganger” and “dystopian.” Sokolowski calls doppelganger “a word lover’s word.” Defined as a “double,” or a “ghostly counterpart,” it comes from German folklore. Interest in the word peaked with Naomi Klein’s latest book, “Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World, about her experience of being confused with feminist author and conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf. As one reviewer wrote, this became a “springboard into a broader narrative on the crazy times we’re all living in.”
No surprise here with the word “dystopian.” Climate breakdown, societal woes, global disputes, “the future of society bereft of reason.” Not just world events but also books, and the media brought on interest in the word. “It’s unusual to me to see a word that is used in both contexts,” Sokolowski said.
Wikipedia, notes that dystopia “is often treated as an antonym of utopia, a term that was coined by Sir Thomas More and figures as the title of his best known work, published in 1516, which created a blueprint for an ideal society with minimal crime, violence, and poverty.” Oh, Thomas, how naive.
And next year? What word will it be? One can only guess. Survivalist? PFD? Extraterrestial?
In the meantime, I’m going to start my own authentic blog, once I get the male Brazilian butt lift (more angular) and some facial fat injections.
The Horrors In Gaza Are Happening Because The US Empire Wants Them To Happen
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
I came across an interesting quote made last month by a retired Israeli major general named Yitzhak Brick about the ongoing IDF assault on Gaza.
“All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S.,” Brick said. “The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability. … Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”
Brick made these observations not as an anti-imperialist critique of the US war machine, but as part of a diatribe about how ridiculous it is for Israel to be asked by Washington to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza and to try to avoid civilian casualties. He apparently believes Israel should be killing far more Palestinians in Gaza, not fewer.
Brick — whose warnings of an impending Hamas attack were dismissed and ignored by Israeli government and military officials in the lead-up to the events of October 7 — makes an important point nonetheless. The support of the US war machine is absolutely 100 percent essential for Israel’s continued murderous onslaught in Gaza, which just killed some 700 people in a single 24-hour period. This necessarily means that these ongoing acts of human butchery are occurring because the US permits them to.
Brick’s comments fly in the face of narratives fed to the press by the Biden administration saying that the White House is frustrated by Israel’s complete disregard for human life in Gaza but finds itself powerless to influence its ally’s actions in a more humanitarian direction.
In an article published last month titled “White House frustrated by Israel’s onslaught but sees few options,” The Washington Post reports that according to unnamed US officials the Biden administration believes that “Israel’s counterattack against Hamas has been too severe, too costly in civilian casualties, and lacking a coherent endgame, but they are unable to exert significant influence on America’s closest ally in the Middle East to change its course.”
This is of course a load of bullshit. The Biden administration could end all this with one phone call, in the same way it commanded Israel to restore Gaza’s communications in October after the IDF cut the enclave off from the world, and in the same way Israel’s 1982 assault on Lebanon was halted with a phone call from President Reagan.
The ongoing massacre in Gaza is happening because the US empire wants it to happen. They could stop the bloodshed at any time, but they don’t, because they do not want to. This is because the US empire is run by sociopaths who only care about global domination, and nonstop violence from Israel is a key component in the domination of a crucial geostrategic region on this planet.
Don’t let the monsters in Washington DC and Virginia wash their hands of this horrific atrocity. They know exactly what they’re doing. They’re every bit as responsible for Israel’s crimes against humanity as Israel itself. They posture and pay lip service to the protection of civilian lives, but they do so exclusively for their own PR interests. These freaks would happily send every Palestinian alive to the gas chambers if they thought it would advance their strategic interests one iota.
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