The Village Feast in Souris was a great success

A contingent from Camp Gagetown NB provides chowder from their field canteen each year. The woman behind the soldier talked to us about one of the charities this event benefits: Farmers Helping Farmers —  building cookhouses in Kenya. 

Greg bought the hat, as it unexpectedly got sunny later in the day. You can't have too many hats. 

The mobile kitchen cooked up the lobsters.

From the tent behind the diners, the sale of local oysters, fresh from Colville Bay, benefits one of the other charities,

Some of the folks in our group enjoying their meal are Kathy, (then a space where my place is), Lynn, Ron (the doctor who sewed up Greg's arm), Maureen, and Kathy.

Joanne is enjoying the meal.

Main course after the chowder: Steak, delicious potatoes and a bit too much gravy, whole grain bread, salad, and a Kenyan side dish whose name escapes me.

All those hats and potato sacks....hmmmm... In the background is the dessert tent, where strawberry shortcakes were on offer.

You line up for your steak at the flag indicating the appropriate stage of doneness. The extremes were" Bloody" and "Burnt."

In the background is the chowder canteen provided by the troops at Camp Gagetown, NB. It was yummy!

Afterwards, the kids swarmed the fire truck and took turns sounding the siren. The hay bales, which marked the paths to take from one food serving to the next , a la IKEA, were provided by Springwater Farm — a great place to visit.

With a $100 donation, several brave souls volunteered to be installed as honourary Islanders.

First, on goes the Ann of Green Gables hat.

Then the potato bag shirt.

Chef Michael Smith explains the ritual involved in becoming an honourary Islander.

Chef Michael introduces the participants to oyster shucking.

Lord help me - it's alive!

Down the hatch:

How to get the elastic band off the claws without getting pinched!

How to peel a potato!

There's where the bridge is on the map.

Chef Michael Smith has the piper lead in all the volunteers, who made the day a success.

Here are some of the crew members. This event involves practically everyone in and around Souris.

My little table centre is now re-potted on the deck.

Bonnie had us all over to her house for drinks and conviviality before the feast.

Grant, Bonnie, Greg and Kathy are heading home afterwards.

There were lovely bouquets like this one everywhere.

All in all the day was seamlessly well-organized down to the last delicious detail.

R is for Ruts

I enjoy Sue Grafton’s alphabetical murder mysteries. In W is for Wasted, she writes that “every good mystery takes place on three planes — what really happened; what appears to have happened; and how the sleuth … figures out which is which.” I couldn‘t agree more.

As I said in a blog a while ago, when we arrived at the cottage, Greg reported on "some ruts" in the untended part of our field. I was too busy sorting linens and food stuffs and generally getting the cottage back to liveable form to pay a lot of attention to his observation.

However, a few days later, I went for a stroll in the field. Our mowers make paths so we can meander down to the water and back; it’s very peaceful, full of birdsong, interesting spiders, and all sorts of wild flowers:

But that day, my goodness, what had happened!  Much of the field was torn up. Deep muddy ruts cut across it in several places. It appeared as if a couple of brontosauruses had engaged in a battle of the epoch. A person could twist their ankle in the up-heaved dirt.

I felt trespassed upon. Not only had someone come on our field without permission, they had damaged it, had so far not ‘fessed up, and had not made things right.

But as Ms. Grafton points out, appearances can be deceiving. What had gone on?

My detective work was made easier in that I could see clearly where a track came from and where it went.  It cut diagonally  across the field next to ours and then continued across our field until it ended in the torn up sections next the property line with another neighbour.

I spent a sleepless night convincing myself that I didn’t need to lose sleep over this, and then I called on the neighbour whose field was also affected. We had a confab, inspected our fields, shared our hurt feelings, and concluded the other neighbours were tearing down trees (on their side of the property line, mind you) and might mash up our fields again. We decided we had to act.

But what exactly to do?  Our paramount hope was that we could restore our fields while at the same time maintain “good neighbourly relations”— a value held dear by Islanders. People trust each other to do the right thing.

For example, our cottage was built over the course of about six months, and I saw it only once during the construction process. The next time was when it was all finished. Everything worked out fine. We chose a great builder. We had our field mowed by a company whose owner we did not meet for literally years. He had the field mowed, trusting us, sight unseen, to pay him, and we trusted him to mow properly. It worked. As in many rural neighbourhoods, people don’t lock their doors around here, a habit that can have disconcerting consequences.  A friend of ours from Upper Canada awoke from a nap and found a stranger in her kitchen; he turned out to be the plumber she had called.

So tact was paramount, but so was firmness. We decided it was better strategically not to include Greg right off the bat. He is big, and with his beard, he can look quite severe especially when things don't go right. We did not want to set off more testosterone than absolutely necessary.

We felt a couple of bewildered five-foot-two grannies would be more likely to get the results we hoped for: reparation of the field with neighbourly feelings intact. It felt like a tall order.

Evening came.

My neighbour reported that she had seen activity in the driveway of our prime suspects. We hopped in her car, drove around the corner and parked in their driveway.  “I parked behind them so they can’t leave,” she said, clearly way ahead of me.

A gaggle of 20-year-olds stood in the driveway looking at a large piece of earth-moving machinery. They did not look pleased to see us:  no smiles, no hellos.

I did not know where to begin, so I said the first thing that came to mind, “Boy, that’s a big piece of machinery.” As a conversation opener, it was a non-starter.

My companion in sleuthing came more directly to the point, “We need to talk to whoever’s in charge here.”

Then we introduced ourselves and explained the reason for our visit:  We were simply puzzled by the ruts in the field, as it seemed to have been torn up by some kind of big machinery. Did they know anything about that?

Three of the yoots  (yes, it was a My Cousin Vinnie kind of moment) faded back leaving the fourth  alone to explain there had been a family emergency last December when the furnace quit and they had to replace it. It was easiest to come over the fields, rather than up their driveway, “We thought, it’s just a farmer’s field.”

I expressed my sympathy for the plight of a family in a freezing cold house, but nevertheless, it seemed to me asking permission would have seemed a wise and proper thing to do. My compatriot agreed.

But no, youth-in-charge had had no way of contacting us for permission. And anyway, his father had asked him to do it.

Ah well, there you go… I did not press that point beyond making it but persevered in the real purpose of our visit.

“So when can you get it fixed?”

“Well, later when we are not so busy.”

“Well, maybe we should get your phone number so we can contact you later.”

Neither he nor I had any paper or pens, so my friend went back to her car to retrieve some. While she rummaged around, I said only half-joking, that it was lucky they had not destroyed the labyrinth because if they had done that, I would probably have come over and personally lynched him. He looked a bit startled at that remark. I was a bit surprised at myself as well.  I think I intended to say “throttled.”  So I navigated the topic around to other happier times when Greg and I had chatted with him and his dad in previous summers.

I added that I did want to be a good neighbour and would not want to stand in the way of their dealing with an emergency. I left other of my thoughts unspoken.

My partner returned, and we all exchanged names and phone numbers. Dad did not have a phone number, alas. “Oh well, then we can call you if need be?” I said.

“Oh, I see my dad every morning.”

“Ah, well, that’s good then.”

“So when might your dad get at this work? End of this week, maybe end of next week?”

He’d have to ask his dad.

While this was going on, one of the other yoots began hitting the shovel part of the machinery with a sledge hammer thereby making it very difficult to talk. (Apparently, they were under a time limit to disassemble it).  I ignored the noise, figuring it was not my problem. Finally youth-in-charge told his friend to “stop that.” He did.

Much easier on the ears. Then mission accomplished, we thanked them, got in the car, drove back to the cottage, and had a cup of tea to calm our nerves.

Now what would happen?

As it turned out, youth-in-charge did speak to his father, who came over a couple of days later. After some preliminary chatting about the awful winter and the slow spring, we discussed fixing the muddy mess. I reiterated I understood things were different in an emergency and added  the fields didn’t have to be garden perfect, just smoothed out so we could walk safely on the paths .

But, what had actually happened?  Well, the ground wasn’t frozen in December, was very wet, and the truck carrying the new furnace got stuck and had to be towed off the field. No wonder it looked like a saurian playground.

 “And this won’t likely have to happen again?”

“No, it won’t.”  

“Well, okay then.”

And a couple of days later, the equipment operator  he hired came over and restored our fields to a walkable state.  The undergrowth will grow back soon enough. So all is well again on the happy little island. 

Smarter than the average squirrel, we are

It’s only 9:00 in the morning, and already we have had an exciting day. We caught the squirrel!  The latest chapter of the story began  last night when we heard rattling outside the  window — about 10:30, just after we had gone to bed to bed.  

I threw  a jacket over my nightgown, grabbed a flashlight, and ran out to the driveway. I could see a squirrel fussing at the air vent. Earlier, Greg had taped the flap down with very sticky packing tape — a temporary solution until our builder’s “boys” (his employees, not his offspring) could  fix it properly.

I shrieked. The squirrel ran into the woodpile. I ran in to the house. Greg and I discussed  tape;  I felt we should tape the vent even more, as one side of the flap had been bent.

As I went to the back door, I jokingly said I’d better open it carefully or the squirrel might come in. Well, those were words well-spoken, as there it was right on the porch.  I startled it so it jumped through the railing. I jumped back into the house. Clearly this was a squirrel afraid of nothing: Mother Courage and her as-yet-unborn Children.

Yes, photos I took of her of her last night proved conclusively that she was not celibate or a bachelor after all:

I reopened the door and we crept out into utter darkness — lit only by the motion light, pointed in the wrong direction. I held both of our flashlights, so the light would be brighter for Greg’s  re-taping. That done, we went back to bed.

At 6:00 in the morning, I heard not only scrabbling but also tiny shrieks. Were these squirrel labour pains??? They originated in a different location: the gap in the siding under the eaves. I had inspected it yesterday. Horrors! Was the squirrel now nesting in the wall under the eaves? Did we now have seven or eight squirrels where before we had only one?

Pulling on a pair of pants over my nightgown, I left the house and checked the siding; indeed, there was a wider gap now.  Then I checked the trap. The cream cheese container with the peanut butter bait had been pulled nearly out of the cage, which of course was empty. But there were little claw marks across the peanut butter.

At this point Greg joined me, and as we were discussing the state of affairs, one of our neighbours came by. She was walking her dog. It was 6:30 a.m.  No, we didn’t usually get up this early. We exchanged squirrel stories. Apparently someone’s daughter had her car disabled when she visited because a squirrel got into the engine and chewed up the air filter. This was not encouraging news.

While we chatted two squirrels ran, no — gamboled — through the branches of the fir trees. They were playing tree tag — maybe to bring on labour. My sense of vicarious fun diminished rapidly.

Really and truly, I knew deep in my heart that Greg and I were smarter than the average squirrel. That would be both of our brains taken together, mind you.

We toyed with the idea of putting some mouse poison from the mouse traps we had strewn around the inside of the cottage but decided that would be bad for other wildlife.  Our neighbour said someone, maybe her husband, used to just shoot them. I wasn’t sure of my ability in that regard and could envision shooting up the cottage in a wild attempt to coordinate aiming and firing. Also we don’t own a gun, so there were complications in that regard, but I must admit I had given it serious thought in the middle of the night.

Greg came up with the brilliant notion of attaching the bait container to the bottom of the cage so it couldn’t be moved. He did this.

Just for the heck of it after breakfast, I went out and lo and behold, there was movement near the vent… in the cage… Busted!

A very angry, frustrated, frightened squirrel was trying everything she could to get out. She had eaten all the peanut butter. 

Long story short, we put the cage in the trunk of the car in a box lined with plastic just in case she was a car-sick type of squirrel — or worse. 

Then we drove off to Little Pond where there are fewer houses and more woods and let her go in a secret surrounding. 

She ran off instantly, went partway up a tree where she paused and looked back at us. “Of all the nerve,” she seemed to say.

On our way, we had noticed the Little Pond bakery was open, and after we had said good bye to our erstwhile tenant, we dropped in and bought hot biscuits fresh out of the oven and some iced cherry squares. Now you know what traps us.

Speaking of which, flushed with success, we reset the trap as soon as we got back and then settled in for another cup of coffee and a hot biscuit each to celebrate.

Epilogue: Just finished this when I heard a noise, went out and there was another squirrel staring up at me from the woodpile … I told him he was not as cute as he looked. Film at 11:00, as they say.

Trespassers Will

We are back at the cottage for another summer. I am always filled with trepidation, as we turn off the highway onto Howe Point Road and I see the cottage for the first time in eight months. Is everything OK? Yes, it all seems intact, at least from from the outside. Big relief, especially considering the 25 feet of snow which smothered the province last winter. But what about the interior? Have mice chewed the place to bits?

Not this year, thank goodness, but we did have a number of other trespassers — from the animal, plant and human worlds.

The plumber, who came a few weeks ago to turn on our water, reported evidence of a squirrel in the crawl space under the cottage. Thank goodness, he seems to be a bachelor, the squirrel not the plumber, that is, as there is no evidence of a nest for babies. I was heartless in wanting him gone dead or alive, until I saw him scampering around the bunkie, the woodpile and most recently the deck.  So cute.  He seems to have eschewed the crawl space now that the weather has improved. One of the vents, which he pushed on to get in, needs repair, something Greg discovered when he lowered himself into the depths.  Greg is tired of doubling over and ducking his head down there, so Nutkin's departure is a good thing.  

Alas, the bad news is that Nutkin has also rejected the live trap we set. We used  peanut butter as irresistible bait. A friend suggested using Squirrel peanut butter rather than the No- Name brand might have been the better choice. 

And people at church attest to the native intelligence of PEI squirrels. Apparently, they have long since figured out you can get at the bait by putting a paw through the bars and not actually going in. 

We have reduced the amount of peanut butter to a dollop rather than a ladle-full and have now placed the trap out by the woodpile. I am not holding my breath. The young woman who sold us our trap at Home Hardware in Souris said they caught two birds, a mink and several other critters before nabbing their squirrel.

We shall of course have to get the vent fixed. Our builder was by early one morning to investigate, and the thumping and crashing convinced us we had caught the squirrel, but no, unless squirrels have also learned to drive trucks and are called Mackenzie.

My second area of concern was the labyrinth which I have renamed the dandelinth, because of the thousands of  dandelions now overtaking it.  There is also a lot of twitch grass invading the path. However, the path is still visible, and Greg has made a few more  runs for the large, flat, red sandstone rocks we use to mark the outline.

Initially I was quite dismayed by the weediness. But then I thought it is a wild labyrinth not a perfect one.  Dandelions are great for bees, but I must admit not seeing too many redeeming features to twitch grass. I may try to discourage it by pouring on a mixture of vinegar, salt and Blue Dawn dish detergent, a non-poisonous remedy  recommended by friends on Facebook. I will keep you posted.

Then there was the possibility of ear-wigs in the well. The plastic casing around the electrical wires had come apart, thereby opening a way for bugs to crawl in. Initially I thought the mowers had hit it, but more likely it was the result of frost heaving the ground and snapping the housing. When I went to pay the plumber’s bill, I asked about it. Turned out it was something plumbers fix, not the well drillers. Go figure!

Lucky I mentioned it, as having earwigs get into your well contaminates the well and is therefore something to be avoided  at all costs. A somewhat taciturn young man turned up at our doorway at breakfast  the next day and once we realized why he was there, he put things to rights and we had a nice chat about the weather. So our delicious water is now safe from insect invasion.

The fourth trespassers were of  the human variety and a bit more complicated to deal with. I’ll save that for another instalment, as I  have promised myself not to be too lengthy. Also I have run out of steam for this afternoon and feel a murder mystery beckoning.

 ‘Til later then…

Eve's Monologue

I wrote this a year ago during Lent after hearing some especially egregious blame-ridden commentaries about Eve's being the mother of all evil. It irks me that the coming-to-consciousness of our species should be seen in such a negative, moralistic way. The temptation story or myth is an attempt by ancient peoples to explain why human beings are the way they are. There is archetypal and psychological truth in it about the nature of self-awareness, a characteristic which defines us as a species — in our eyes anyway.  I don't take the story literally. 

I also don't freight it with a heavy-duty moral message around the concept of original sin and the misogyny that Christian church fathers endorsed, but I do think it captures the essence of what it means to be human.  We are responsible for our own choices, a good many of which are ego-serving and have led to horrible actions over the centuries. And we would prefer not to have to know much about our inner selves and what leads us to do what we do. It's easier to blame others.

We'd like that snake of inner wisdom to stay coiled up deep in our psychic underground.

Source of image:  http://mdbigg.me.uk/blog

(Eve, now outside the garden, is talking to an imaginary friend. She is about 14 years old.)

 “I am not quite sure what happened. One moment I was sitting in the garden having an apple, and the next thing I knew, I was being told I had to leave. What gives!

It just seems so unfair. God is such a buzz kill. What difference does it make to him if we want to eat something. Well, yes, he said not to, but it was just an apple, for goodness sake. I didn’t really believe what the snake said about knowing good and evil. Like what are good and evil? And what difference does it make! … Apparently quite a lot!

God certainly seems to think it’s a big deal, or he wouldn’t be punishing me and Adam. At least that’s how it feels. Adam now has to work in the fields for food, and I have to labour in my body for children.  Whatever …

Mind you, if I do childbirth, it would be nice to have more people around to talk to, other than Adam. Adam’s okay, but I was not impressed the way he left me twisting in the wind about the snake. I didn’t make him eat the apple any more than the snake made me eat it, for that matter. It was my choice to eat it, and it was Adam’s choice as well.  

I shouldn’t blame the snake any more than Adam should blame me. Except it hurt more.  I wasn’t in love with the snake. I was in love with Adam.  I still love him, but now I see him warts and all. He can be so stuck up and superior.

It’s funny I am thinking about all of this because before I ate the apple, I didn’t think about good and evil at all. I just enjoyed being in the garden.

And also, let’s face it, snakes don’t talk. Come on, the voice I heard was my own, pretending I could talk like a snake. I was such a four-year -old back then.

Anyhow, it was warm and there was lots to eat, and we didn’t have to do much of anything. It was nice talking directly to God. It was odd how he couldn’t find us after we ate the apple. You’d think he’d know where we were because he is God after all.

On the other hand, maybe we just thought he couldn’t see us, the way we used to when Adam and I played hide-and-seek and thought that if we hid, God wouldn’t know where we were. Like closing your eyes and thinking because you can’t see anyone, no one can see you.  Except now I realize they can.

 … I must admit I had begun to wonder where we had come from. Adam told me he got to name everything in the garden.  I thought that was so cool (I’ve decided I’m going to name our children). Anyway, that naming stuff seemed a bit odd to me. What were the creatures before Adam called them something?  He even named me! Who was I before Adam named me? How come I didn’t get to name Adam?  You know, I hadn’t thought of that before either.

So there you go, I was beginning to be curious. When my friend the snake asked if I wanted to be like God knowing good from evil, I thought good and evil were another kind of plant or animal, like knowing a pepper squash from a Hubbard. So I said, ‘Sure.’

 I didn’t know about evaluation. Everything seemed good to me. But once Adam named things, they were out there, not part of us.  So I guess it was only a matter of time before we wanted to put a value judgment on them. Is this object  good?  Is that one bad?

Not only that, it now seems that some things you do are good and other things you do are evil. I hadn’t thought of actions in that way before either. We just played up until that point  in the garden.

And supposing God hadn’t created me to be Adam’s helpmate. Would things have turned out differently if he had been created to be my helpmate? How about that!  Gosh,  Adam and I were so naïve we didn’t even know why  we looked different from one another. But then we did — know, I mean.  That was weird.  At first, I really wanted to cover that up. Lucky fig leaves were growing. What would we have done if they’d been out of season? Of course, that implies we understood about time, which up until very recently we didn’t.

I always thought Adam and I were more or less the same person: his thoughts were my thoughts and my feelings were his feelings and vice versa, but it‘s now obvious to me that is not the case.  We do actually have two separate bodies! Not only that, but to be one person, we have to have sex. 

Apparently getting together like that can make more people, as God pointed out. Mind you, I suppose that was just one more thing we would have learned by our own experience.

Starting to think about life has made me different from before.  I see things in a new way: I observe and wonder about things and then  I seem to stand aside from them. I suddenly feel like a more knowledgeable, even wiser, person.  I have realized I am in the world … and in my own life.

But honestly, I still don’t know why God is so upset. Except, if I stop to think about it, I don’t know if he is all that upset. It seems to me we began all on our own to realize that the world wasn’t the way we thought it was. Then we assumed knowing this would annoy God. He didn’t really throw us out of the garden; we threw ourselves out because we knew things we didn’t know before. Why would we see the garden as perfect once we knew about good and evil?

We just wanted to blame God when we were actually angry at ourselves for figuring things out and having to live with them the way they are. Then we thought, oh-oh, God must be angry at us for knowing.  We seem to like to impute a lot of things to God which we really have no way of knowing about him.

I must say it was a lot easier to be ignorant and just live instinctively in the moment like the other animals than to be conscious of time and so many other things.

One thing I do  know,  I didn’t bring evil into the world. Adam and I just suddenly realized it was there...  in an instant... in the moment it takes to swallow hard.”

Skimpy pajamas

“He made the veil of violet, scarlet, crimson, and fine linen; he worked cherubs on it.”

To Eaton’s, they were “cotton shorty pajamas”

In dark red and blue, 
with navy piping around the lapels.

I thought of them as my skimpy pajamas.

I was wearing them that morning

in late spring or early summer

when I woke up to voices in the backyard:

my mother and younger brother,

bent together like two conspirators,

though he was too young to know

what he was a party to.

I ran as fast as I could

downstairs,

through the kitchen,

out the back door,

across the cold, dew-soaked grass

to my little garden

where my mother was hurrying to bury

Soot’s fourth kitten,

the runt of the litter,

sickly from birth,

dead overnight

and now being buried without me there,

before I woke up

as if hiding the tiny body in the earth

would guarantee it had never existed...

If only all sorrows could be so easily put away

and not leave you standing there

watching and shivering.

I wrote this poem while waiting for Greg while he had a spiritual direction session with one of the sisters of St. Joseph. She had found an unoccupied room for me with some books, an armchair, a lamp, and a side table on which there was a bible opened to Chronicles. 
After I finished writing the poem, which had been stewing round in my head for a while, I thought, out of curiosity, to play the game of pointing to a passage and then seeing if it had any relevance for me.

I held my finger over the open book and plopped in the middle of the left page. It landed on the verse quoted above (2 Chronicles Chap 3, verse 14). Cotton shorty pajamas indeed! I was, of course, startled by the unexpected synchronicity.

©February 11, 2015

Reflections on satire and the sacred

Yesterday at the breakfast table, I reacted strongly to something I read. I feel sorry for Greg as he probably would have preferred to enjoy his coffee, his bagel, and his journal, rather than listening to me hold forth. However, this is what happened.

I am appalled by the murders at Charlie Hebdo. I am also very sad that several people, including, so far, a maintenance person, two policemen and a visitor, who had nothing to do with drawing the cartoons, have also been killed.

But what also caught my attention yesterday was a headline in the Huffington Post. It was purportedly a comment by one of the cartoonists murdered in Paris. He had said, “Muhammad isn’t sacred to me.”

I thought, well other people do hold him sacred. And I wondered to what extent we should respect what other people hold sacred and not subject it to a vicious ridicule. Religious or not, we all hold certain things as sacred to us. It is difficult for most of us to have our beliefs (and ourselves) not only challenged but mocked. Where does using hard-hitting satire about social situations and beliefs end and nastiness for the sake of nastiness begin?

Then I thought, most people for whom Muhammad is sacred are not murderously fanatical and hate-filled followers of groups such as ISIS or el Qaeda. As a Christian, I am not fanatical or hate-filled (at least I hope not) nor are most  Muslims or, for that matter, most human beings. I expect most people of whatever belief persuasion (religious, humanist, atheist, agnostic, secularist, skeptic, or whatever) just want to get on with our lives and live together in a civilized way.

So I ask myself, what is the point of publishing cartoons like some of the ones pictured in the article at this blog:

http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2015/01/in-the-wake-of-charlie-hebdo-free-speech-does-not-mean-freedom-from-criticism/

Admittedly, I need to know more about French culture before jumping to conclusions about the use of humour there, but one cartoon in particular in the above article especially bothered me. It references the young schoolgirls kidnapped and raped by members of the Boko Haram — now shown as very pregnant — and according to the cartoon, wanting to be welfare frauds. What is the point of that? Why draw that? I am not asking these questions rhetorically. I really want to know. What purpose does it serve? 

I wondered if it would have been more acceptable  to say I don't hold with certain followers of a religion than to go after the religion's head himself. As a Christian, I wondered how I would feel if someone said, "Jesus isn't sacred to me" and then drew images I found very nasty. I did a quick Internet search to see if there were such images. I didn't find any although I must admit my search was only cursory. 

I suppose too it is not only the disrespect for religious images which can cause anger. It is the disrespect for other people’s feelings about what they hold sacred (and these can be secular things like flags, the culture of hockey, the family, the self-reliant ego). What if I were to see a demeaning and horrible image of one of my own relatives or friends?

What should my reaction be? As upsetting as those images would be, I would have to step back from my anger and refrain from striking back violently in either word or action. Murdering people who say nasty unfeeling things is not the answer to cruel words. So, no, the cartoonists did not deserve to be murdered. But they deserved to be criticized.

The worst of it is that, as a result their self-proclaimed heroic stance in favour of free speech, not only did they get killed, but innocent bystanders were killed as well, not to mention several children left fatherless. Should they have considered that outcome, or is free speech so important as to trump all other considerations. To what extent should people expose others to danger in the defense of their own beliefs?  A question their assassins obviously need to ponder as well.  

Where does the boundary between social satire and hate speech lie? It is a difficult question to pose and to answer. And I am not able to answer these questions, but just to ask them. What behaviours as a civilized society do we require in order to be civilized? Is self-censorship always wrong?

And if we are going to defend the right of free speech for the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo, will we also defend the right of all groups to say whatever they like? I am thinking now of Westboro Baptist church and its adherents, whose homophobia and incitements to violence are vile misrepresentations of what I believe as a Christian. If their church were fire-bombed and their followers killed, should there be a similar out-pouring in favour of their right of free speech?

Why do we so often we feel must treat others callously, in thought, word and then, unfortunately, in deed. What does it accomplish in the way of promoting harmonious, civilized and yes, loving, human relations?

This raises a yet more ominous question: what about people who don’t care about civil behaviour at all?

So no, I am not suggesting that the journalists at Charlie Hebdo brought their fate upon themselves. Their murderers chose to kill when they could have taken other paths to communicate their displeasure and disagreement. But I am decrying the brutal world we live in.