Hello Reader,
Got love of creatures?
(Got distaste for imperialism?)
Love of Creatures
War of the Worlds Poem
...Pause for Blog Identification
Bonus material
Epilogue
Love of Creatures
There’s a church hymn, a “Doxology.” You may have read it or heard it. I have the words in my annotated copy of The Secret Garden.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him all creatures here below
Praise him above ye Heavenly Host
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost
Amen
Here is a link to some singers; they repeat the lines.
The Secret Garden is set in Yorkshire, the same region where years later a famous veterinarian, who also wrote It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet, cribbed from another hymn for his book title, All Creatures Great and Small. Link to pictures as kids off camera are singing.
I must confess that after reading the doxology, my own poem seems dull.
I composed in the shadow of the London Museum of Natural History, featuring respectful exhibits for Darwin and the balance of nature. The British even put Darwin’s ship on their five pound note: I think that’s because the British are, as a Columbian engineer told me, so empirical. They also had a coin (which I never saw) of Darwin facing an ape: I think that’s because they are “just saying no” to having Yankee imperialism from powerful Christians in the city of Washington and the state of Tennessee.
Yes Virginia, the Yanks imperialize.
Luckily, the United Kingdom is a “have nation,” as the U.S. federal government, in the name of "the people," denies aide funding to any nation where "the people" allow abortion.
The republic of Ireland,
(a catholic nation with an openly homosexual before-he-was-elected prime minister)
last I heard, was about to “just say no” to the U.S. on that one, rather than have their innocent lonely girls going over to the U.K. for their (legal-in-the-UK) medical procedure)
In my favorite “have nation,” Canada, according to the most recent Conservative party prime minister, abortion is legal and remains legal, with no opposing bills to be raised by the Conservatives in parliament, because the Canadian people do not want that can of worms opened. He did not, of course, apologize to our U.S. neighbours for our differing views on everyday life.
As for life far, far away from Earth, you may recall the sinister Martians of H.G. Wells were evolving into creatures with simplified digestive tracts (they only took in fluids) and great round heads.
War of the Worlds Poem
God’s Creatures
Camouflage meets eye
Stout armor meets teeth
Toxin dances with anti-toxin
Day mice dare the sky birds
Nocturnal mice meet the owl
A feather floats on currents of air
Centipede legs are fleet
Millipede legs will ram
Creatures circle and gyre
Island dodos grow larger
Across time dodos grow
Across space Martians grow
Heads grow as limbs shrink
Grow and increase and drink blood
Without God
...Pause for Blog Identification
You are reading
Sean Crawford
Calgary
April
2020
Bonus Material
Distasteful Yankee imperialism:
During Obama’s administration, the U.S. built enough oil pipelines (according to someone I overheard) to reach to the moon. The only pipeline that was opposed? The one that would have reached over the U.S. to almost meet tidewater in Texas, to almost break the U.S. world monopoly on buying Canadian oil. (It stops at a refinery) Meanwhile, both Europe and the U.S. have oodles of pipelines, but Canada, with the longest coastline in the free world, somehow has no room for either of the three—count ‘em, three—pipelines that would have gotten the oil out to Canada’s tidal coasts, escaping American clutches. Two were killed, the last survivor has been on life support for a few years: We will see what happens.
As for the one that stops in Texas, at least this week our province invested heavily to get that pipeline finally built. We'll see.
As for the one that stops in Texas, at least this week our province invested heavily to get that pipeline finally built. We'll see.
In Canada, when someone proposed to “follow the money” to see who was funding anti-pipeline efforts, it was the communists and other leftists who were opposed, and were quoted saying so in the newspaper. Sure, the leftists like transparency for others, but communism is an ideology, and as with any ideology, their reality is stone, transparency is opposed.
Decades ago, the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, was supposed to give Canadians permission to legally have their own culture. But I read once in the paper that U.S.capitalists keep winning every time they oppose Canadian culture in court, such as, for example, a Canadian country and western magazine, so that Yankees can make money selling their own music magazine across the border.
Well, maybe instead of country and western, young Canadian guitarists can sing the blues. A pity, for I had always thought it was charming how Canadian western culture did not mean “wildness” or six-guns being worn. Truly the CBC would never make a violent TV show about Paladin on Have Gun Will Travel “…a knight without armour in a savage land”)
Incidentally, here’s a link to that Paladin song the kids sing in the Stephen King movie Stand By Me. I used to sing it
For my U.S. readers, if you are pleased with having your plausible denial, then OK, but if any of you wish to take a grownup interest in what your government is doing to imperialize in your name, then I think you might painlessly start with the arthouse feature film State of Siege.
Here is a link to Roger Ebert’s movie review, at the very end of which some U.S. companies are mentioned, including (“but not limited to,” adds my Yankee lawyer) the United Fruit Company.
(As it happens, a business executive in my toastmaster club did a seven minute speech on the imperialism of the United Fruit Company)
Or view ( link to Ebert’s review) view the mainstream feature film Missing starring Jack Lemon and Sissy Spacek.
Or view (link to) the comprehensive-to-a-fault C.I.A. documentary On Company Business.
You may wonder:
By my posting this essay, am I hurting the feelings of, offending, my dear longhaired leftist fellow Canadians? No, I’m sorry to say. No, because those imperialist leftists, according to my blog research, won’t read my site.
Epilogue
Speaking of church music, in these COVID days you may wish to have a virtual choir, like this Youtube (three minute) spiritual, which has how to make one at the top of the comments.
This song is on the Odyssey-inspired 1930’s movie with George Clooney, Brother Where Art Thou?
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