cktimes.ca Archives for Notes from a Garage


Notes from a Garage

With John Gardiner

But are we really all that intelligent???

Tuesday, January 21, 2003

I've joked with my wife over the years that good words for my tombstone would be "Dazed and Confused" because the older I get, the more bewildered I am about who's running the planet and what type of course they've got us on. Lately, I've arrived at the "random chaos" theory. You know how we all talk about the "they" who are persecuting us and generally making our lives miserable as we move through life. Well, I've decided there is no "they". I've decided that the planet is just hurtling through space and is totally out of control – not even the rich folks and politicians have a real clue about what's going on. How else can you explain some of the extremely weird happenings on the planet? I mean, when I was a kid we put most liquids in glass bottles – then, we re-used and recycled pretty well all of the containers. Today, we put nearly all liquids in plastic, most of which ends up in landfills and breaks down after who knows how many thousands of years – and we're running out of space in the landfills. Most intelligent species would start putting their liquid back in glass to cut down on the problem with the landfills. Strange, but true. Then, there are the starving people (I know – not that again!!!).....but there are the starving people, and all the while we scrape gazillions of tons of food off plates and into the garbage at restaurants. Very weird stuff!!!!

I was very encouraged to see large peace demonstrations across Canada over the weekend. Maybe George W. will wake up the social conscience in all of us and some good will come out of all this war mongering after all. It seems like it's been a very long time since people took to the streets to try to stop a war – and maybe it has. In fact, I felt a twinge of guilt for not trying to join one of the demonstrations and get involved in the movement for peace myself. I'm afraid to say it, but I'm one of these peaceniks who firmly believes that there's gotta be another way. I mean, violence begets violence and there just isn't any good that comes of it. After the big September 11 event, I wrote that we should be dropping food and flowers into Afghanistan instead of bullets and bombs. I continue to think we took the wrong course of action. Sure, we ousted the Taliban and put in a "democratic" government in the short term. But we solved nothing in the long term and 20 years down the road, we'll be right back at it (if not sooner). You watch. We've done nothing to solve the real problem – which is that the Western World is seen as a bullying, imperialist economic giant that pushes everyone else around and won't share with others in the game. Believe it, folks! We live in this little bubble of prosperity on the planet – most of the rest of the passengers on Spaceship Earth are in a foul mood about the division of spoils. Take a look around.

I must say that we had an excellent edition of the Glass Onion Folk Club over the weekend with a capacity audience from across Southern Ontario braving bitterly cold temperatures to check out the Rick Fines Trio. It was Rick's fourth visit to Wallaceburg and the crowd just keeps getting bigger each year. I joked with the boys that we might have to move the show to the Silverdome next year. (Is there still a Silverdome?) Still, a huge vote of thanks to all the great people who came out and enjoyed the show. Rick Fines is a Canadian treasure and surely one of the best bluesmen you'll see in these parts. His tribute to Gordon Lightfoot was especially good, as was a quick foray into John Lee Hooker territory. Excellent show! We've got a couple of house concerts coming up in the future. Those are fun. Watch cktimes for more information.

Extremely glad to welcome the Chatham-Kent Public Library aboard cktimes. Starting this week, and rotating every two weeks, you'll be able to read @ the Library under the Lifestyles section of cktimes. Our first column is from C-K's head librarian, Sally Scherer, and talks a little about how the column will work. I'm extremely glad to have the folks at the C-K Library Service as part of the paper. Don't forget to check out other parts of cktimes and let us know what you think. Welcome aboard!

Huge congratulations to the Capitol Theatre's Bob Fox and Audrey Hummelin for their excellent performances in Love Letters at the Satellite Restaurant over the weekend. Man, I was really impressed. Bob is a novice actor but he fell right into his part and really seemed to take the whole thing in stride. Audrey is a wonderfully accomplished professional and it showed in her performance. My wife and I truly enjoyed the show and were thrilled to be able to join the lawnbowling Norths, Bob and Sandy, and retired secondary school principals Ewan Wilson and Bill Robinson for the evening. Way to go to producer Cheryl Crawford, Bob, Audrey and the rest of the crew for a show well done.

Pretty well out of time for another week. Hope you're continuing to enjoy cktimes. I'm doing my best to bring you a first-rate piece of reading each week.

Take care 'til next week....and remember...."Hew to the line; let the chips fall where they may."



John Gardiner is a 25-year-veteran of the community newspaper business, but he is also a prolific writer of moralistic short fiction he refers to as "emotional thoughtscapes" or "adult fables". Samples of his fiction can be found at:

He has also produced a noteworthy piece of humanist philosophy which can be found at: http://www.xs4all.nl/~aboiten/ad502.htm He welcomes comments on his work.