Courtesy of Carolyn Martin,
CJ’s Bed and Breakfast, 608 Cottonwood Court
Laxgalts’ap, BC VOJ 1XO
T (250) 621-3352 or 1-866-621-3351
cjbb@telus.net

3 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp chopped ginger
6 cloves chopped garlic
1 large onion, chopped
1 tsp salt
1 tsp tumeric
2 tbsp Madras curry paste (mild or…whatever curry paste you like!)
1 can tomato sauce (398 ml)
1 whipping cream (250 ml)
1/2 bunch cilantro chopped (a must to capture the flavours!)
2 pounds skinned chicken pieces

On medium-low heat
Sauté first 5 items until golden brown.
Add tumeric and paste and cook for 5 minutes
Add chicken and cook for 15 minutes
Then add tomato sauce and whipping cream, cook for 50 minutes,
Add cilantro, cook for 2-3 minutes

Serve over Indian basmati rice

1 large onion, chopped
1-1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp cumin seed
3 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp cilantro, chopped
1 cup peas (frozen preferably)
3 cups basmati rice and 5 cups of water

In pan (Carolyn uses her rice steamer), cook first 4 items together until light brown. Add peas, cilantro and cook for 5 minutes. Add rice and water. Cover pan and cook until rice is ready! The rice is great, the cilantro is a must again to capture taste buds!

John Emerich Edward Acton, Lord Acton, 1834 – 1902, was a writer, publisher, and political philosopher.
He is mostly known for his statement that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Many other things he originally said ring just as true and eternal.

Quotes

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities….

Every institution tends to fail by an excess of its own basic principle.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.
Lord Acton, Letter to Mary Gladstone, 1881

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.

Learn as much by writing as by reading.

The man who prefers his country before any other duty shows the same spirit as the man who surrenders every right to the state. They both deny that right is superior to authority.
The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times.
And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently, men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that. All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I’m not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money.
If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.
Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it’s when you’ve had everything to do, and you’ve done it.
Machiavelli’s teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith.
Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the table of eternity.
Property is not the sacred right. When a rich man becomes poor it is a misfortune, it is not a moral evil. When a poor man becomes destitute, it is a moral evil, teeming with consequences and injurious to society and morality.
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.
The long term, versus the short term, argument is one used by losers.
The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the party that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.
There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.
To be able to look back upon one’s past life with satisfaction is to live twice.
Fanaticism in religion is the alliance of the passions she condemns with the dogmas she professes.
Praise is the shipwreck of historians.
Liberty, next to religion, has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, two thousand four hundred and sixty years ago, until the ripened harvest was gathered by men of our race.
The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class. It is not the realization of a political ideal: it is the discharge of a moral obligation.
Be more severe to ideas than to actions; do not over look the strength of the bad cause or the weakness of the good.
Looking outward to the blackness of space, sprinkled with the glory of a universe of lights, I saw majesty – but no welcome. Below was a welcoming planet. There, contained in the thin, moving, incredibly fragile shell of the biosphere is everything that is dear to you, all the human drama and comedy. That’s where life is; that’s where all the good stuff is.
Guard against the prestige of great names; see that your judgments are your own; and do not shrink from disagreement; no trusting without testing.
Patriotism is in political life what faith is in religion.
If the past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the past is the safest and the surest emancipation.
To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.
History to be above evasion must stand on documents not on opinion.

Rudyard Kipling

When the ‘arf-made recruity goes out to the East
‘E acts like a babe an’ ‘e drinks like a beast,
An’ ‘e wonders because ‘e is frequent deceased
Ere ‘e’s fit for to serve as a soldier.
Serve, serve, serve as a soldier,
Serve, serve, serve as a soldier,
Serve, serve, serve as a soldier,
So-oldier OF the Queen!

Now all you recruities what’s drafted to-day,
You shut up your rag-box an’ ‘ark to my lay,
An’ I’ll sing you a soldier as far as I may:
A soldier what’s fit for a soldier.
Fit, fit, fit for a soldier . . .

First mind you steer clear o’ the grog-sellers’ huts,
For they sell you Fixed Bay’nets that rots out your guts —
Ay, drink that ‘ud eat the live steel from your butts —
An’ it’s bad for the young British soldier.
Bad, bad, bad for the soldier . . .

When the cholera comes — as it will past a doubt —
Keep out of the wet and don’t go on the shout,
For the sickness gets in as the liquor dies out,
An’ it crumples the young British soldier.
Crum-, crum-, crumples the soldier . . .

But the worst o’ your foes is the sun over’ead:
You must wear your ‘elmet for all that is said:
If ‘e finds you uncovered ‘e’ll knock you down dead,
An’ you’ll die like a fool of a soldier.
Fool, fool, fool of a soldier . . .

If you’re cast for fatigue by a sergeant unkind,
Don’t grouse like a woman nor crack on nor blind;
Be handy and civil, and then you will find
That it’s beer for the young British soldier.
Beer, beer, beer for the soldier . . .

Now, if you must marry, take care she is old —
A troop-sergeant’s widow’s the nicest I’m told,
For beauty won’t help if your rations is cold,
Nor love ain’t enough for a soldier.
‘Nough, ‘nough, ‘nough for a soldier . . .
If the wife should go wrong with a comrade, be loath
To shoot when you catch ’em — you’ll swing, on my oath! —
Make ‘im take ‘er and keep ‘er: that’s Hell for them both,
An’ you’re shut o’ the curse of a soldier.
Curse, curse, curse of a soldier . . .

When first under fire an’ you’re wishful to duck,
Don’t look nor take ‘eed at the man that is struck,
Be thankful you’re livin’, and trust to your luck
And march to your front like a soldier.
Front, front, front like a soldier . . .

When ‘arf of your bullets fly wide in the ditch,
Don’t call your Martini a cross-eyed old bitch;
She’s human as you are — you treat her as sich,
An’ she’ll fight for the young British soldier.
Fight, fight, fight for the soldier . . .

When shakin’ their bustles like ladies so fine,
The guns o’ the enemy wheel into line,
Shoot low at the limbers an’ don’t mind the shine,
For noise never startles the soldier.
Start-, start-, startles the soldier . . .

If your officer’s dead and the sergeants look white,
Remember it’s ruin to run from a fight:
So take open order, lie down, and sit tight,
And wait for supports like a soldier.
Wait, wait, wait like a soldier . . .

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier of the Queen!

            Citizens of New Brunswick are currently considering and debating the recommendations of the PSE (Post Secondary Education) commission. Its authors have recommended reorganizing and melding community colleges and universities into a new structure. One recommendation would combine some college and university programs in polytechnical institutions.

            As is so often the case, the debate seems to be dividing up according to geographic and professional biases. Saint John people seem to tend to clearly see that Saint John must keep its degree program.

            That’s natural. We all tend to be champions for our own communities. Otherwise how can we explain that so many people don’t seem to realize and agree with me that the Miramichi is the centre of the universe?

            From a Miramichi perspective, incidentally, Saint John’s discomfort at the potential loss of a degree-granting institution evokes a strong whiff of irony. Saint John got its campus of the University of New Brunswick as a quid pro quo for the Bishop of the Diocese of Saint John not opposing the Robichaud government’s relocation of St. Thomas University from Miramichi to Fredericton.

            Politics is reality. It will play a role in what finally happens to the PSE report.

            Another reality is that nothing is forever. Government can change direction again.

            One thing does make me a little nervous. The aggregation of programs will create a larger unified bureaucracy. Bureaucracies are hard to kill and often grow when they should die.

            I’d like to know how the new system is going to improve two of the most important challenges in education.

            One is how it will be more nimble. The other is how it will be more accessible.

            Education has to be nimble to provide what students want to know and what they need to know.

            It is popular to complain about how government canceled the old trades programs that were part of apprenticeship programs. Students combined time in school and time on the job to earn trades papers.

            The complainers forget that, at the time, most of the students coming out of the school portion of their training were unable to find the employment hours they needed to complete their programs. It was a serious waste of time, money and life to churn out students who had no chance to find work in their chosen vocations.

            Now we have a shortage of trade skills in a booming Canadian market. At some point that will change again. Education has to be nimble to anticipate and change with the times.

            Accessibility is an essential for education.

            When my first two children were university age, a summer job and a student loan could cover most of the costs of a university education.

            There were still single parents and people on welfare who could not afford post secondary education and that was a tragic waste of potential.

            Now there is one popular opinion that university should be more expensive. “Why,” some people ask, “should the taxpayers subsidize the children of the middle and upper income classes to get an education that is going to make them the most well off people in the country?”

            To my mind, there is an easy answer. Education is just about the best investment society can make toward its own welfare.

            The middle and upper income classes pay a large portion of tax revenues already. Encouraging more people to join them via elevated education levels seems basic common sense.

            Added to the basic equation of better education equals more tax revenue, is the existence of the rest of the world.

            At present Canada is enjoying a high standard of living, national surpluses and a booming economy primarily courtesy of our birthright commodities. We didn’t create the oil and minerals that are making us rich.

            Nor will that wealth continue forever. Remember the wastrel in the Bible who sold his birthright for a mess of pottage?  Eventually, we are going to have to compete with the best minds in the rest of the world to earn our own way. Education is a renewable resource.

            So, how do we stay nimble and accessible?

            One way we can get more nimble is by working harder to identify the natural interests and aptitudes of students and then riding those assets for all they’re worth. No matter where the world goes, people will find their niche if their natural curiosities are fed. Trying to cram square pegs into round holes is as pointless as trying to cram chemical formulas into my head.

            Feeding musical aptitude, on the other hand, can promote mathematical skill.

            Another way to keep nimble is to keep in touch with the leading thinkers in every field. It is not profitable to teach thousands of people to do things that will be done by machines, programs, or the lowest income people in the world in the medium term.

            Early on in the development of the world wide web, it was obvious developers would create programs that would write most of the code and monster server operators would offer server hosting at a fraction of the cost individuals and small companies could.

            A trend is now developing that will see people subscribe to programs and use them online rather than buy them and store them on their own computers. It was inevitable.

            Accessibility includes making training and retraining available as close to where a student must live as possible. The world now requires that everyone must learn new methods regularly. That has to be available to people on the job and to homemakers with children to take care of.

            It also means that the cost of education must be subsidized and success rewarded with incentives. The money for education should be easy to get but their should be incentives to strongly encourage successful completion of the program

            One way would be for government to share repayment of education loans after graduation. Government could contribute a declining share of the payment the graduate makes. For example, if the graduate paid $300 per month each month in the first year after graduation, the government might kick in $100. The second year, it might contribute $75 and so on.

            That would give the student an incentive to pay off the debt as quickly as possible and the ability to have a bit of income for career start-up costs like an apartment, clothes and transportation.

            Let’s hope that, however we deliver education, it encourages and makes accessible a culture of learning.

                                                David Cadogan

A lonely, somewhat dirty, old actor, Peter O’Toole, meets a lost, cynical and crude, young woman and somehow they both benefit from the experience. Great soundtrack — all Corinne Bailey Rae.

http://video.movies.go.com/venus/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489327/

One of those movies with no small roles. Every character is memorable and you can empathize with all of them to some extent. It will make you think about some of the ways we tend to look at life.

http://www.snowcakemovie.co.uk/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448124/

Alice Munro story, Gordon Pinsent, Julie Christie, Olympia Dukakis, and fine direction by Sarah Polley, creates the kind of movie you would hope to get from such talent. Some of it is, or will be, about you and your family.

http://www.caprifilms.com/awayfromher/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0491747/

        Leicester and Nottingham Forest were engaged in a League Cup football match. Nottingham Forest took an early one-goal lead. Then a Nottingham Forest player collapsed with a heart attack. As a result, the game was cancelled. He survived, by the way.

          When the teams met to play again, The Leicester team gave the Nottingham Forest goal tender the ball and then stood aside as he took it down the field and kicked it into the Leicester net.

          That restored the advantage Nottingham Forest had held when the original game was cancelled.

          Leicester eventually won 3-2 and advanced.

Boys in pink

          In Nova Scotia, a grade 9 student was harassed and called homosexual by a group of six boys for wearing a pink shirt on his first day in a new school.

          Two grade 12 boys, David Shepherd and Travis Price, decided not to let that pass.

          They bought 75 pink tank tops and pink materials for head bands at a local discount store. They organized a campaign among their school mates on the internet. The Friday after the incident, they handed out the shirts and material at the entrance to the school.

          They estimate that roughly half of the school’s 830 students wore something pink that day.

          The bullies gave them dirty looks and one threw a couple of chairs in the school cafeteria.

          One of the bullies asked Shepherd if he knew that pink shirts were a symbol of homosexuality.

          Shepherd replied that didn’t matter to him and shouldn’t to anyone.

          We hear a lot these days about athletes who cheat, take performance enhancing drugs, abuse their privileged positions, brag, and trash talk their opponents.

          It was refreshing to see an entire team of professional athletes with a semi-final playoff berth at stake, perform such a sportsmanlike and classy act as the Leicester team did.

          People who work with or interact with young people regularly know that the negative stories we hear don’t reflect the norm. News, after all, is what is new or unusual. Young people who live normal, decent lives aren’t unusual and negative information has at least 10 times the impact of positive news.

          Most of the news about young people is good news about sports, drama productions, cleanup campaigns, clubs, scholarships, and various projects and achievement. We tend not to realize that.

          Suppose someone told you, “You are wise, well-spoken, impeccably dressed, thoughtful, kind, generous, tolerant, sensitive, reliable, honest, and fair but you don’t smell very good.”

          Which comment would you remember to your dying day?

          Against conventional assumption, it was refreshing to see Shepherd and Price, from the much maligned teenage boy demographic, act to inspire such an inclusive stand for decency.

          Let’s all try to model ourselves after the Leicester jocks and the Central Kings High teenagers, David Shepherd and Travis Price.

          Let’s try to practice grace under pressure to be sportsmanlike.

          Let’s stand up and speak up against bullying everywhere.

                                      David Cadogan

            In the daily papers last week was a supplement for “Project Earth – Partners in Time.”                                                     It’s about conservation, recycling, pollution treatment and environmental  projects generally.

            Ironically, the supplement itself is an example of waste. Each and every article is printed in both French and English roughly doubling the size of the publication.

            There are some instances when it is practical to include the same piece of information in both French and English in the same publication. This would not seem to be one of them. One would suspect that readers of the Saint John “Telegraph-Journal”, Fredericton “The Daily Gleaner” and Moncton “Times & Transcript,” all speak and read English.

            Yes, it can be problematic producing separate English and French editions of reports and brochures and then ensuring that the right ones wind up in the right places in the right proportions.

            However, it is far from impossible and is often done.

            On the same subject of the reduction in the use of paper, governments could reduce their waste considerably in two ways. One would be to print reasonable numbers of reports and brochures to begin with. I’d be willing to bet a significant proportion of the printed items governments order are never used.

            Another way to reduce government waste would be to ban the use of a picture of the current cabinet minister on all government printed items. So many printed items that could be used for several years are scrapped and reprinted after every cabinet shuffle and election.

            It isn’t proper to promote individual politicians and governments in publications paid for by the public anyway. Let them pay for their own promotion.

                                                                                     David Cadogan

           Many, many years ago, my father, a morning person, called at seven a.m. on a Saturday to tell me a great idea he had had for a story I could do in the paper.

          I had just got in at five. He insisted that it was a wonderful day and I should be up.

          As you can imagine, it was quite painful to try to listen and understand what he was trying to tell me. What I was able to grasp was that it had to do with something I wouldn’t be doing until Monday at the earliest.

          “#$%^ Dad!” I groaned. “You got me up at the crack of dawn after I was out all night to tell me THAT!?”

          So, the next week I wrote a blistering column about morning people who feel morally justified in torturing poor nighthawks. I pointed out that a morning person would have no compunction about mowing his lawn at seven a.m. but would call the law if I mowed mine at say three a.m. when I am wide awake.

          I thundered that morning people have no right to feel morally superior to nighthawks which they obviously do.

          I pointed out that all the great meals, concerts, romances and mischief take place at night and that members of the opposite sex always look their best viewed through a wine glass by candle light.

          The only things that happen at dawn, I wrote, are executions and military attacks.

          I wrote a wonderful rant.

          Nighthawks responded enthusiastically and one suggested we form an organization and rebel.

          So, I had 1,000 membership cards printed up and published a manifesto in the paper.

          The idea was Miramichi Night Hawks International would be people who like to see the dawn but would rather stay up for it than get up for it.

          We would call the meetings after they were held so attendance would always be perfect. How that worked was that a group of people would be sitting around talking, eating pizza, playing music, drinking wine and smoking who-knows-what and someone would notice that it was getting light out. If a Nighthawk member was present, he or she would announce that that was a meeting.

          Anyone who wanted to join would write an account of the meeting, the member would send it to me and I would issue membership cards.

          I appointed myself High Hawk, a suitably ambiguous title, and issued the cards all to expire December 31, 1999. At the time, most people realized that was the end of a century but almost no one immediately realized it was the end of a millennium. I had the cards expire then with the theory that none of us would survive that party anyway.

          There was always at least one Nighthawk meeting at every CCNA convention. The organization took off like a rocket. Applications came in from everywhere. Ships officers visiting the Miramichi would attend a meeting and join. Actors passing through with Theatre New Brunswick would party with me and join. Some of them mentioned that on TV and Arthur Black interviewed the High Hawk a couple of times on his CBC radio network show, “Basic Black.”

          At first I kept track of all the members but then, some nights, when the meeting was called I was in no shape to take names so I would just sign the cards and hand them out.

          Soon the first thousand were gone and I had to have them reprinted. I got some great stories with the applications. One member wanted her card issued in the name of Delta Dawn. She was the wife of a member of a rich, well-known family in town. She was a nighthawk. One night she was up and thought she may as well do a wash. She was loading the washer and decided to toss in her nightie. When the wash was done, she went out on the back porch to hang it on the line. The door snapped shut behind her and left her naked on the porch. Her husband was not the type to be amused by this so she had to get back in without him knowing. She wound up shinnying up a tree, getting onto the porch roof and in through an upstairs window.

          Applications came in on wine labels, pizza box covers and rock concert programs.

          It was great fun.  

          Our first international member was, I believe, Norwegian, Finn David Dahl, Captain of the Dania, a beautiful, new, ship visiting the Port of Miramichi.

          In those days, Miramichi was the venue for Theatre New Brunswick on the night before their only day off. Many of the performers enthusiastically earned their memberships at post-show parties at the home of the High Hawk. One name that springs to mind is Lally Cadeau.

         Our official painting is Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks”                                                                               

                                                                                                                                                                              Our official song is, of course, Willie Nelson’s “Nightlife.”                                                                      When Y2K came and went and many of us did survive, I didn’t know what to do. We issued a nationwide appeal for a new High Hawk.

          In May, 2006, at the CCNA convention in Quebec City, the organization seemed to be trying to come back to life. A meeting happened. I’m thinking of printing more cards and starting over. This time they wouldn’t expire until December 31, 2999. By that time, what to do next should be someone else’s problem.