The Miramichi Airport Commission has received federal and provincial government money (actually taxpayers’ money, our own money) to pursue economic development. Some of that money will be used to hire a development officer. At, or near, the top of the commission’s wish list is a flying school.

Perhaps we should be careful what we wish for lest we get it.

Citizens in St. Hubert, Quebec, are being driven to distraction by the constant take offs and landings at the airport there.

With an airplane flying over local houses at the rate of one every minute, one citizen said it is impossible to have a social event outside and be able to speak to guests.

As Miramichi continues to promote itself as a great place to retire, I very much doubt we want the constant roar of flight trainers practising take offs and landings, one after the other, from the crack of dawn well into the night.

A few water bombers, courier planes and private passenger flights are one thing and easily tolerable. An unending sequence of short local flights is quite another.

It would be a bit different if the airport was not right in the city. It is and very close to many residences.

If a flight school wanted to come here, we would have to try to accommodate their right to do business as well as our right to peaceful enjoyment of our community. If we would have to grease the arrival of the enterprise with copious amounts of taxpayer money, I think we would be well advised to find a better use for our resources.

Sometimes we forget to ensure that we protect what makes our community and locale so wonderful.

Yes, we need investment and employment. Let’s just be careful not to destroy what it is we are trying to save.

DAC

I heard this once on CBC radio and have been looking for it. Catherine Reid, at the Miramichi West library graciously found it for me. I like that someone writing about 150 years ago wrote with wit and rhythm that seems perfectly appropriate today.

Sweet Maiden of Quoddy

James De Mille – 1833-1880

Sweet maiden of Passamaquoddy,
Shall we seek for communion of souls
Where the deep Mississippi meanders
Or the distant Saskatchewan rolls?
Ah no, in New Brunswick we’ll find it -
A sweetly sequestered nook
Where the swift gliding Skoodawabskooksis
Unites with the Skoodawabskook

Maduxnekeag’s waters are bluer;
Nipisquit’s pools are more black,
More green is the bright Oromocto,
And browner the Petitcodiac.
But colours more radiant in autumn
I see when I’m casting my hook
In the waves of the Skoodawabskooksis
Or perhaps in the Skoodawabskook.

Let others sing loudly of Saco,
Of Passadumkeag or Mistouche
Of Kennebecasis or Quaco,
Of Miramichi or Buctouche;
Or boast of the Tobique or Mispec,
The Musquash or dark Memramcook.
There’s none like the Skoodawabskooksis
Excepting the Skoodawabskook.

Think not that the Magaguadavic
Or Bocabec please the eye.
Though the Chiputneticook is lovely,
That to either of these we will fly.
No. When in Love’s union we’re plighted
We’ll build our log house by a brook
Which flows to the Skoodawabskooksis
Where it runs with the Skoodawabskook.

Then never of Waweig or Chamcook
I’ll think. Having you in my arms
We’ll reck not of Dideguash beauties;
We’ll care not for Pocologan’s charms.
But as emblems of union forever
Upon two fair rivers we’ll look,
While you’ll be the Skoodawabskooksis
I’ll be the Skoodawabskook.

serves four

Ingredients

1 lb. (454 gr.) fresh baby spinach

¼ lb. or 125 gr. cream cheese

24 to 32 (whatever is practical) Atlantic oysters

1 cup grated cheddar cheese

Liberal dose of chives or other herb garnish

Directions

Shuck the oysters, reserving oyster liquor

Reduce oyster liquor to one third

Cook the spinach – microwaving in 8” Pyrex-type baking dish is fine

Stir in cream cheese

Pepper to taste (salt not necessary if using Atlantic oysters and liquor)

Add oyster liquor

Spread oysters over spinach-cheese mixture

Cover with grated cheese

Sprinkle chives over cheese

Broil only until cheese melts and bubbles or browns

A more elegant approach is to divide the mixture, oysters and cheese into four oven-safe onion soup bowls or ramekins.

For perhaps the first time ever, local teachers and students are taking the lead in the development of a powerful new tool for Miramichi tourism and business generally.
Miramichi celebrated being named the world’s first Smart Showcase Community on June 1. District 16 teachers and students led the way.
Just what does that mean and why might you be excited about it?
First of all, Smart Technologies Corporation ( http://www.smarttech.com/ca )
sells large, interactive, touch-screen white boards. They look like a cross between the old school chalkboards, a movie projector screen and a touch screen computer monitor. They are big and white and you can touch and move things around on them. You can also touch something to activate access to a web site or a video, which will come up on the same board.
Software, data storage servers and a growing data bank of content from all over the world link and support the boards.
Miramich School District 16 first got involved with the company 10 years ago.
Later, Terry Power, NB Tourism & Parks product development officer for Miramichi learned what the school district was doing. At O’Donaghue’s, with district IT pioneers Rick Hayward and Joey Savoy, Terry and his tourism colleague, Wade Hallihan, wondered how they might let the community know about the resource being developed in the school district. Terry broached the idea of expanding the system’s potential into tourism.
Marjorie Sinclair leads the tech support team made up of Rick Hayward, Joey Savoy and Bob Gillis. From personal experience, I can vouch for Rick and Bob as two of the finest teachers I have ever met. Rick says that IT team members Craig Duplessie, Graham Bateman, Kelly Jacques, and Glen Johnston “make Bob, Joey, and I look much better than we really are!”.
Smart board application began in the District 16 school system as the answer to then district superintendent, Kathy Baldwin’s challenge to staff to find ways for new technogy to benefit students. Her successor, Laurie Keoughan, continues to encourage the effort.
Curriculum content, links to reference sites and teleconferencing with teachers and students near and far made it what one teacher called a powerful collaborative teaching tool.
Asked what she liked best about the Smart board technology, one teacher said she liked that the teacher is at the board so interaction is more focussed than if students’ attention was divided between her and a computer or paper. Students like going up to the board, writing on it with digital markers, moving items around by touch and tapping icons to link to other sites and videos.
Asked how Smart Technologies would maintain its relevance as other teleconferencing and touch screen services come along, Deena Zenyk, Smart’s Senior Education Specialist, K-12 programs, said the dedication to educational techniques and resources is a key. In one GG Times video, She describes an “augmented reality camera” that will be able to look at a sheet of paper with a three-dimensional drawing and translate that to a screen image that can be looked at from all sides.

http://dt16community.nbed.nb.ca/media/faceted/results/Zenyk

As more and more teachers and students became talented users of the system, the Miramichi River Tourist Association was invited to incorporate the system. Now there are 11 regional Smart boards. Staff in the various tourism attractions can communicate with each other and tourists to help them plan their visits.
Staff in the Rte. 11 Visitor Information Centre, for example, could connect a visitor to the Atlantic Salmon Museum in Doaktown. A staff member there could answer questions, display videos and even print out a map for the visitor. In effect, it makes all of the expertise and resource material of the MRTA and its members available in every location and on the world wide web.
That, in turn leads to the first involvement by private business. MRTA members can make information, including videos about their attractions part of the system.
What led to the designation of Miramichi as the world’s first Smart showcase community was the next step. Enterprise Miramichi, the regional business development commission is now becoming part of the system.
All types of business throughout the region will be able to show their goods and services to the world and to each other with the system.
The ceremony included the usual greetings and expressions of gratification from Stephan Doyle and Patrick Nagel for Smart Technologies Corp., Premier Shawn Graham, Hon. John Foran, MP Tilly Gordon on video, Joey Savoy for the district technology team, Jim Gertridge for the MRTA, Brian Donovan for Enterprise Miramichi,
What was especially exciting and impressive about the celebration was the performance of the youth.
Megan Woods, James M. Hill class of 2010 and headed to Mount Allison University in sciences was the master of ceremonies. She did a more professional, charming, and sophisticated job than the majority of events conducted solely by adults.
Patrick Losier and Kim Mertens, demonstrating local Smart Community innovations performed more like TV or movie professors than new university graduates.
AJ Adams, Zach Newman, Erin Savard and Bailey Black are grade five students at Gretna Green. They were featured guests because of their use of the Smart board system to gather and present news in a video section called GG Times. They are 11 years old and have already lived in two millennia and two centuries. They may well live in three centuries.
Imagine what they will see! Imagine what they will do!
You can visit the District 16 site at: http://dt16community.nbed.nb.ca/media/
Be careful. It is a site that tends to draw you in and lead you on. It is not easy to leave. Here are just a couple of bits that attracted me.

http://dt16community.nbed.nb.ca/media/content/video/3188

http://dt16community.nbed.nb.ca/media/content/video/3256

You can go to: http://www.discovermiramichi.com/ to see how the MRTA is beginning to meld its web presence with Smart.
From that site, you can easily and quickly link to member sites.
The use of the tool for its various educational, community communication, tourism and business marketing functions is still in its infancy. It seriously needs trained editing and graphic design management. It reminds me of the community newspaper business when composition and printing technology suddenly opened unimagined opportunities and challenges. The creation, presentation and organization of content for the Smart community will become far more sophisticated, much more quickly. For one thing, NBCC Miramichi already has an established graphic design program.
For another, the public sector project will have to make sure the talents, capabilities and interests of private operators, like Mighty Miramichi, are properly considered and included.
On we go! DAC

Canadian Brigadier-General Daniel Ménard, commander of Joint Task Force Afghanistan has been relieved of his command and faces possible court martial. He is alleged to have had a sexual relationship with a female member of military personnel.

The situation evokes a discussion of a Cadogan’s Law: There are only two things going on in the world. One is sex. The other is foreplay.

There are many reasons why a sexual relationship complicates battlefield operations.

One is that, from the junior ranks on up, members have to back each other up. Romantic connections interfere with that. Even the added desire to live can, I suppose, hinder a person’s desire to soldier.

Another is that the military is among the purest examples of unbalanced authority. A general can have a lot of influence on a junior member’s career and life. Reagan Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, said, “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” The potential for the abuse of power is extreme.

At the same time, the drive that makes a man a general also tends to make him a stallion. Cadogan’s law leads to the conclusion that the reason men strive to be presidents, generals, or the world’s alpha male golfer, is to attract women.

Yet another legitimate military concern is that love and lust are famously distracting. Ships run aground when wheelhouse personel are more into each other than into steering the boat.

One that I think usually gets little consideration is that spouses at home want their mates to remain faithful. If they know fraternization is tolerated, they are more likely to discourage their mates from participation. Some of them would also be less likely to handle celibate separation. Ménard is married.

Still, banning sex and romance is a fruitless exercise. Cadogan’s law is never more in play than in times of intense team bonding and mortal danger. Our genes don’t give a damn about us. They do go nuts when they think we might be about to die or there has been a death nearby. Infantry on a battlefield, gold medal women’s hockey teams, and cast members of “Godspell,” form a bond that is a type of love. Adults become sexually aroused when a friend or someone in the family dies. It isn’t talked about much because it seems shameful. It is, however, natural that death would stimulate a sudden surge in the lust for life.

The military works very hard to foster the team bond. Tough training, living conditions, nasty boot camp sergeants, common humiliations and initiations are all part of welding teams together.

Those shameless genes of ours also lust for variety. One of Tom Robbins’s characters in “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues,” says, “The only true aphrodisiac in the world is strange stuff.” This is borne out by the fact that scientists have discovered that women who are raped are more likely to conceive than women engaged in consensual sex. The genes are always lusting for new chromosomes.

Mass rape has been a product of war throughout recorded history and, undoubtedly, before. Most of us have heard hints of the huge number of rapes committed by Russians closing in on Berlin in the final months of WW II.

It is interesting that more sexually liberal societies like ours would still have sexual repression as a military policy. Social scientists claim that one of the big causes of wars is a large percentage of unemployed young men who are not having regular sex. Societies in which rich men have several wives and poor men have none and are subject to stoning for adultery make easier the creation of people who are willing to become suicide bombers.

There is an ancient aphorism that the first casualty in war is truth. It may be almost as true that the second casualty is sexual fidelity.

It would seem that our genes love war. That is probably one reason wars are fought by the young.

There is absolutely nothing in history to indicate that any army has been significantly successful in separating romance and sex from war. In Canada, we celebrate our surviving war brides. For every war zone wedding, there must have been hundreds, thousands, of war zone relationships. Sad to say, when consensual sex is severely restricted or banned, non-consensual sex is too often a consequence.

The genes played musical beds at home too.

It does not seem likely that society can control sex and romance anwhere although we sometimes have to try. We don’t want adult teachers having sex with pubescent teens.

We can and do reduce sexual infidelity by avoiding war but even that produces limited success if we have peacekeeping forces serving abroad.

I think it is time we revisited the concept and policy of war zone celibacy, with a great deal of input from those most directly concerned. I don’t know what we might be able to come up with but no sex in the war zone?

Good luck with that!                          DAC

The Roman Catholic Church is proving the truth of Lord Acton’s claim that power corrupts and absolutel power corrupts absolutely.

Obviously hundreds, perhaps thousands, of members of the church hierarchy were aware of claims by alleged victims of abuse. Many abused their power by what they did or did not do about those claims within the church.

More abused their power and broke the law by what they did not do with regard to criminal law. Each and every one of them had a duty to report such claims and complaints to the police. Many of them did not.

Regardless of the truth of each allegation, priests, bishops and cardinals do not get to decide if charges should be laid or to try cases outside the courts.

What a priest says in confession may be confidential but a charge of abuse by an alleged victim is not.

Referring to the pattern of abuse and coverup and criminal behaviour over decades, countries and continents as “petty gossip” is the height of arrogance. The church continues to put the interests and power of the institution ahead of morality and the rights of people.

The church betrays its own claims to morality and justice.

Unfortunately, as Lord Acton claimed, this was inevitable. Power and the pursuit of power corrupts.

A woman I know defended the institution by pointing out the great majority of decent, self-sacrificing, generous priests and nuns serving the church and the people. In fact, those people have been betrayed as much as any other victim.

They also provide a buffer for hierarchy members who abuse power. They provide the good face that makes it hard to believe they have less beneficient colleagues.

Of course, the genuine, humble servants do not advance in the hierarchy. As always, the only people fit to hold power are not the ones programmed to win it.

Power itself seduces, produces and encourages the people who will abuse it.

When you think of it, the behaviour of other non-democratic, non-open strutures is the same.

Anyone who has lived around a military environment is fully aware of that. Military hierarchy, like the Catholic church, has a history of transferring miscreants rather than referring them to civilian justice. The church and the military could be using the same playbook when it comes to denial, coverup, rationalization and abuse.

If anything, in recent years, the military has been considerably more accountable than the church.

The financial masters of the universe do the same. We hear that the financial institutions have to pay the huge wages and bonuses into the tens of millions of dollars so that they do not lose their best talent.

To put this in perspective, they are referring to the talent that figured out how to set up dummy companies to move bad equities back and forth between quarterly reporting periods. They are referring to the people who devised the huge pools of rotten debt. They are referring to the people who, having created these pools, then sold them on the market. They are referring to the people who, knowing that these packages were garbage, sold them short (bet against them) on the market.

Much of what they did, we are told, is not even illegal but it is certainly misleading and dishonest.

These masters of the universe, as Tom Wolfe identified them, may not be part of one hierarchal organization chart. However, they do seem to have similar immunity to accountability. They arrogantly and greedily put the international financial ship on the rocks. They then scrambled into the lifeboats with their steamer trunks full of millions in bonuses. In their wake they left millions of seniors with their retirement investments decimated. They left millions more to the unemployment lines.

The regulators and inspectors and rating agencies that were responsible to ensure honest trading failed miserably.

This week, Tiger Woods rejoined the Professional Golf Association’s tournament tour with the Master’s. How much of his welcome back, by the fans, the networks and the golf industy is due forgiveness and how much is due power and money?

Tournament attendance, TV ratings, and industry profits all plumeted on the news of his absence after wallowing in an international orgy of kinky, vulgar sex while marketing himself as the All-American role model.

His rehabillitation, you can be sure, had quite a lot to do with scripting his apologies and teaching him how to answer questions to produce the quickest return to profit for him and the industry.

To be fair, another quote deserves equal consideration. I don’t know who said it but it too has the ring of truth.

“Virtue gets a lot of credit that actually belongs to lack of opportunity”.

Who among us believes we could handle significant power without being corrupted?

Still, it is interesting to see how quickly, thoroughly and easily profit trumps consequences in a case of such spectacular infidelity, hypocrisy, and behaviour.

Lord Acton seems to have been accurate when he said, “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

There was more to Acton’s observation. The next line was “Great men are almost always bad men”.

Power, like fire, is a good servant but a terrible master. We must constantly press our governments to improve its regulation, monitoring and concentration.                                                               DAC

Some of the things I see or hear in the news make me wonder about some people’s thought processes.

For example, recently a Florida newscaster breathlessly announced that Florida had 28% of the national bicycle fatalities last year although it has only 6% of the national population.

Well, duh!

Florida does not have snow, is almost all flat, and most goods and services are available within a mile or two. It is common to see people in their eighties riding bicycles. It is natural that there are many more riders, riding all year long, and able to do most of their errands by bike.

There are political factors too. There are no helmet laws even for motorcyclists in Florida.

US health care

I also saw past Republican governor of Massachusetts and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, Mitt Romney, on the David Letterman show.

He claimed that US health care is the best in the world. Letterman asked why it is that international bodies, including the United Nations, rate US health care down around 30^th in the world.

Romney dismissed that as baloney and asked, “Where do all the kings, queens, presidents and prime ministers of the world go when they need the best medical attention? The U.S. of course!”

Well, duh!

So U.S. health care is the best for kings, queens, presidents and prime ministers? That may be true but most kings, queens, presidents and prime ministers are not US citizens.

Would it not be more to the point to rate national health care on how it works for US citizens? Fifty million or so Americans have no health care insurance and, therefore, very limited access to health care. Millions more are not insured for pre-existing conditions or their insurance does not provide for certain procedures.

Apparently Romney does not notice that those facts might be factors in rating national health care compared to other nations.                                                   DAC

My late father was, and is, my hero. One of the characteristics that endeared him to me was his marvellous grasp of the obvious. One example was his oft-repeated statement that “It is better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick”.

David Foot, is the author of “Boom, Bust And Echo,” a book about the effect of the baby boomers on the economy in each age group they occupy. He is an entertaining speaker. A line he repeats over and over is, “And five years later, surprise! Everyone is five years older!”

I thought of dad and Foot this week when I read an article that said that the percentage of senior citizens who smoke marijuana has doubled and tripled in recent years.

Gee, I guess a lot of old people have finally decided to take up smoking, huh?

No?

Or could it be, surprise! Fifty years later, the 60’s generation is 50 years older!

Some states in the US are considering legislation to legalize marijuana. Do you suppose that is because modern legislators think so very differently from past generations? Or, could it be that their parents, now seniors, thought the same way but knew they would not have the support for legalization or the re-election of anyone proposing it?

Real progress on the issue will have to come from the US. The only reason marijuana is not legal in Canada at present is that the US drug czar threw a fit when Parliament failed to act to create a new ban when Canada’s Supreme Court tossed out the old one.

The czar spewed nonsense about mushrooming violent crime in Holland where it was legal and threatened virtually to seal the Canada-US border.

Think about that for a moment. Theoretically the border is already sealed to drug traffic and, from the US to Canada to gun traffic. How’s that working out?

So, in fact, he was simply threatening to ban legal traffic and trade. Canada, of course, knuckled under.

On we go!                                                      DAC

One of the most together women I know, Diana McAskill, regularly posts ideas with a Buddhist theme on Facebook.

A lifetime of observation from the vantage point of a community newspaper led me to conclude that the happiest people I met were the ones who were involved in doing something for others and who were getting some exercise.

Expert observation seems to bear this out. Here is more evidence from Dee’s Facebook posting.

Dr. Martin Seligman, the former president of the American Psychological Association,is a leading advocate of what is known as “Positive Psychology.” he has been called one of the most revolutionary theorists in the field of psychology since Freud.

Dr, Seligman shared some valuable insights from his latest research to President Daisaku Ikeda of Soka Gakkai International, a worldwide network of Nichiren Buddhists.
The object of his latest research was to discover, based on empirical data collected from around the world, what gives people the greatest fulfillment in life.
Dr. Seligman was able to identify three main sources of fulfillment.
The first is living a pleasant life; hedonic happiness.
The second is using one’s highest strengths and virtues in one’s various spheres of activity and relationships with others.
The third is deploying one’s highest strengths in the service of something larger than one’s self.
Looking at the data, Dr. Seligman found that in every part of the world the second and third sources of fulfillment provide a deeper and more spiritual feeling of fulfillment than the first.
In other words, happiness is not determined by material or economic wealth or status.
The key to leading a fulfilled life, free of regrets is to dedicate ourselves to a cause, a goal that is larger than us. A life creating value.
(Taken from Soka magazine, essays by Daisaku Ikeda)

To these three keys, I would add a balanced diet and regular exercise.

DAC

Recently a killer whale with a Canadian passport killed a trainer at Sea World in Florida. It seems likely the whale mistook the trainer’s ponytail for a toy. There were also signs the whale was also in turmoil so who knows?

In Florida, one sees signs near any pond, bayou or swamp that read, “Do not feed or molest the alligators”. Apparently some folk don’t understand that they might be finished wanting to feed the alligators before the alligators are finished wanting to eat. Alligators can reach speeds of almost 50 km/hr for short bursts. You cannot.

The brilliant comedian, Chris Rock, commented on the Siberian tiger that mauled Roy Horn of the Las Vegas act, Siegfried and Roy. Rock said most news reports said the tiger went berserk.

“Tiger didn’t go berserk,” Rock said. “Tiger went tiger!”

I have a 21-year-old cat. Cats do not do unconditional love but I know she likes what I do for her and enjoys my company. She likes to be petted and have her ears scratched.

Still, every now and then, she goes tiger. She will grab my wrist with her front paws and claws, sink her teeth into the meaty part of my palm and rake the inside of my forearms with her hind legs and claws. It is over in an instant when she realizes what she is doing. She never apologizes or shows any signs of guilt. It doesn’t occur to her that tiger should not go tiger.

I think it is extremely dangerous for humans to interact with Killer Whales, pythons, dogs bred to guard or attack, tigers, bears or any other creatures equipped and genetically programmed to kill and eat meat.

It is even a good idea to beware of horses, moose, bulls, and any other large herbivore that is inclined to protect itself, its young or its harem.

Every year, everywhere in the world, trained and docile elephants suddenly throw tantrums and kill people.

Even dolphins, who often try to help humans in trouble in the water, sometimes like to play keep away. Instead of taking your hat and keeping it away from you, they keep you away from shore. It’s just a game, you understand, but the way you signal it is over is to drown.

I believe it was Rudyard Kipling who said, “This a very dangerous animal. If attacked, it will defend itself.”

Yeah, sure, sometimes animals totally misinterpret humans and defend themselves when they aren’t being attacked. It’s their bad but that doesn’t ease your pain.

As North America becomes more and more urbanized, more citizens only know animals through Disney and Pixar. We tend to humanize not only our dogs and cats but animated bears, lions and raptors.

I admire and respect animals but I don’t confuse them with humans or expect human characteristics to rule their behaviour.

On the other hand, like humans, wild animals have become domesticated. We should not expect that, because they have animal characteristics, they retain animal skills.

One of the common reactions to the Killer Whale killing the trainer was to suggest that it and other whales be set free in the wild. It is strange to think that some people think animals born or raised in captivity can just go out to the ocean or the jungle and carry on as if they had always been there.

What would they think of the idea of taking them to a forest wilderness and releasing them back into the wild? Would they expect that city folk would just settle in and carry on? We don’t even expect people who have been in prison for extended stays to fit seamlessly back into society when released.

Is it, then, reasonable to expect a whale or a tiger would simply fit into a wild it never knew?

It is taking generations to reteach the almost extinct Whooping Cranes to migrate.

There are dozens of issues with wild animals in captivity. One is that some species are so endangered they may not survive without the protection of captivity.

Animals are part of the natural world but the answers to their survival and evolution are no less complex than our own.

Of course, we aren’t being too intelligent about that either, are we?

DAC