What is Sacred in our world?

I get to read a lot of news and the more I read the more I wonder about what our XXI century society considers Sacred with a Capital ''S''.
Is there anything in our world left that is Sacred? I mean by that something we all hold in common and can agree upon that is Sacred.

The word Sacred as defined means: From the Latin, Sacrare, Middle-English, Sacren, French, Sacrer.
Inviolable, untouchable, Holy, worthy of veneration. Humans in all cultures and since time immemorial have held certain things to be sacred, one is life, birth, another is burial grounds, Religious Temples in every Faith are sacred, anyone performing a religious rite in a ceremonial,
a Constitution, a National Flag, Human Rights as defined in the UN Charter and recognised as such by the Nations of the World.  

However because our general culture tends to trivialise what was considered Sacred many now think that little or nothing is Sacred and can be ignored or discarded, at any rate it is open to debate on the internet where people are free to insult each other with impunity and anonymity.

Is Life Sacred? Recently a man was shot to death in a cinema for texting before the show started to his child. Some commenters, several of them, commented that he fully deserved it, he had it coming, they said. Really? A human life is so worthless today that a simple text message, a disagreement can lead to murder?

In Ottawa in the last 3 years there has been an epidemic of hit and run by careless drivers who injured seriously or killed people. After hitting someone the driver simply takes off, thinking no one will have noticed. However escaping justice is difficult since all car repairs are reported to the Police in case of accidents. Only after the drivers have been found or denounced by someone do they come forward, how disrespectful can you be towards another human being. It seems that not assuming any responsibility is the norm.

What about all the children and other people who are slaughtered in various schools or public places in the USA and still despite the horror, some people claim that their right to own an assault weapon trumps everyone else right to live in peace.  An obscene point of view based on twisted logic and depraved sense of entitlement.

Many great figures have been ridiculed and attacked publicly because they did not meet a certain modern popular idea or standard decided upon by a trendy way of thinking.

I think here of Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) who devoted his life to others, built a hospital in Africa and cared for his patients, a visionary in his time.  A Nobel Peace Prize Winner and recognised by the World as a Humanitarian of high moral standing is brought down by an article with unproven facts, simply vague rumours claiming he was an awful person, this is trumpeted on Radio-Canada in an historical segment.

No one is safe from salacious rumours and stories surfacing decades later simply to titillate a bored public thirsty for dirt. No one will ask if it is true or not, the public appears more than willing to believe just about anything.

There are schools of thought, I do not know if you can call them that, but this is how they present themselves, who will say the harshest things simply in a crusade to set the record straight or this is what they believe. Correct the mistakes of the past by denouncing them in the present, very reminiscent of Communist Regimes like China and North Korea. Can we ever correct the past? How? What is past is past. How can anyone not living during a specific time period and born later sometimes decades if not centuries later, claim that he or she can correct or apologize on behalf of the dead. We can correct current behaviour or not repeat past mistakes, though with the prevailing ignorance of events more than 20 years old, one wonders if we are not condemn to repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

The same in the work place, we have policies on a Respectful Workplace but that is totally meaningless. No one understands what it actually means. Employees who are incompetent hide behind it. It appears that bullying by Management is now the norm, it is all passive, aggressive behaviour, lies and deceit. Management unable to provide proper guidance and a lack of interest in the job to be done. Every manager has her eye on the Media, what are they saying and how will this affect my bonus or promotion, doing the job is not even on the table. Customers and employees are abused in the worst way and no one is held responsible.

Have you ever noticed now how when you phone a large corporation who is suppose to provide a service they will address you by your first name. You have no idea who this person is speaking with you, but they treat you with contempt and provide generally poor service. You have little choice in the matter. Where is management, they are no where to be found and will not respond to any enquiry. It seems that lack of respect for people in general is the way of the world. But why have we descended to this level?

Another outrage was committed recently in a London Cemetery where the ashes of Sigmund Freud and his wife were interned in an antique Urn 2300 years old. The vandals smashed the Greek Urn at New Year in what appears to be an aborted theft. Freud died in 1939 and his wife in 1951, they had been left at Peace until now. Again what kind of mentality in our society allows people to disturb the dead and vandalise burial grounds. A total lack of respect, of consideration for others. Unable to understand the gravity of the gesture or the words expressed.

Unfortunately there is more and more lack of respect in our society for people, ideas, or what was considered until now as Sacred by all. We strive so much to push the real accepted rights and the made up imagined rights of the individual over those of the collectivity that our shared values are forgotten. What hope is there for any Civilization amid such confusion.

Tiepolo, Pulling teeth.

False expectations.

In the last few days several newspapers in Canada have carried stories of Hospitals apparently sending home patients, to find that they died a few hours later. Their condition was worse than what the doctors in Emergency service thought or the Nurses in charge of discharging patients followed established procedures sending patients on their way not realizing that the patient was alone and had no one to care for them at home.

The practice of clearing beds is not a new policy, it is one which was implemented in many Canadian Hospitals in the mid 1990's as Provincial health budgets were slashed by politicians in a drive to be seen as business minded, bringing the concept that a health care facility could be run like a factory producing widgets, ''Be efficient and Work Smart'' was and still is the philosophy behind it all.

Our politicians in Canada understood that our current health care system instituted in the 1960's needed reforming to control costs. Many a Province  spend a very large part of their operational budget on health costs. But how to reform a system seen by most Canadians as a Sacred Cow without committing political suicide, this is the crux of a complicated question.

It is Winter in Canada and this winter 2013-2104 has seen the effects of dramatic climate change, the temperature in much of Canada has been severe and this brings a host of problems not encountered often before.  So people are more vulnerable in many ways and if you are not in good health or elderly then you are more at risk, sometimes as the news stories show, at a far greater risk than one would expect. What as also changed in the last 25 years or since 1990 is the way government services are provided, in this case hospital care.  Politicians in an effort to please the public have been slashing budgets and services, what we knew or came to expect in terms of services before 1990 and what is done today is totally different.  With cuts there are a lot less services and people are expected now to look after themselves or make private arrangements. This means, making sure the hospital room is cleaned properly, that meals are served and follow diet, that medication is dispensed and bed sheet are changed for clean ones. In some Provinces a small tip or favour to hospital staff can ensure better service.

Last year  I was invited to a business dinner with various people who had in common that they worked in providing social services to the population in general. Next to me on my left was a big Hospital administrator from Northern Ontario and on my right was the head of the Soup Kitchen in the National Capital region. The Hospital Administrator was explaining that the Government of Ontario to get more mileage out of its budgets in order to provide more efficient health services, I love the buzz word ''efficient'' what ever that means, he had to ensure that people do not spend any more time than absolutely necessary at the hospital and doctors and nurses where asked to work as a team to ensure that the patient be looked after, treated and then released quickly.

What happened next was to ask the individual to continue his or her convalescence at home and let families look after the relative in need. This way with a minimum of beds available much more people could be processed, again a word I love, it has that mechanical ring to it. This in turn would lower cost, it is all about money and little else.

I told him that this was a fine in theory but the public at large was not aware of this plan or if they are it is at a very superficial level, not believing that this might apply to them or their loved ones. At any rate this is the here and now and this is the way it works.

But in Canada many a politician has made his or her career by claiming that financial disaster is at hand due to difficult times, they never explain what they actually mean by that. So the easiest thing to do is to portray yourself to the electorate as a pro-business and cost cutting kind of politician who will solve all problems by downsizing and cutting or slashing budgets, making the government so small in can fit in your bathroom. This is called ''thinking outside the box'' and is suppose to look smart.

The politician being careful of course to NOT ever mention or explain that you are also getting rid of services in the process. The latest is to require all to have a computer and be online in order to access Government Services. You are not online too bad we do not want to hear from you, you do not exist, but we fully expect you to vote for me at the next election.

Again in this cynical political approach the over 65 crowd which represent a very important segment of our society in Canada are pushed to the margin.

In recent weeks more stories have come forward about how hospitals have sent home often in the middle of the night elderly patients without enquiring if this person had anyone to take care of them.

In one case at the Grace Hospital in Winnipeg  on New Year's Eve when it was -40C, an elderly man was put in a taxi, wearing slippers and his pyjamas and sent home. He did tell the staff at the Hospital that he had no one at home and he did not feel well, nonetheless the procedures are the procedures. He was found frozen to death in a snow bank in front of his house the next morning by his care giver. He died of a heart attack and hypothermia did the rest. He had gone to the hospital complaining of symptoms like heart trouble, vomiting, fever etc. The staff obviously did not think much of it or where too short staffed to be able to care for him during the Holiday period.

Being short staffed to provide any kind of government service is also the common trend nowadays, it is called ''greater efficiencies'' by senior bureaucrats, one person is called upon to do 3 to 4 jobs. The other problem is that at night or after 6pm in any hospital, the staff is usually junior or new, fully trained but not as experienced as the Monday to Friday 7am to 6pm medical crowd, mistake can happen and often as we see today in the service sector, the new younger generation is too self-absorbed to notice anything outside of their zone of knowledge. A few days later the CBC reported that Grace Hospital is now involved in a second case resulting in the death of a patient.

This is only Winnipeg cases, similar cases of elderly persons being mistreated, neglected and dying happen in other parts of Canada each week, this is truly shameful and unacceptable.  In all cases, the politicians promise to look into the matter and change the procedures, all the while they are looking for a politically expedient answer.

One wonders, when the big management types in the different Provincial Ministry of Health came up with these procedures, did they think of all possibilities or were they just being ''efficient or cost effective'' in order to please their Minister with quick solutions.

I am willing to bet based on my own Government experience, that expediency took over from common sense. Not to forget the promised of a big bonus for anyone who finds politically easy solutions to difficult problems.

All these changes in the way services are provided never seem to take into account that in Canada, people in general do not live with their family and it is very common to see elderly people on their own without any close relatives to help them out. Often they live in another part of the country and cannot come rapidly in case of need. Care givers are very expensive and not for every budget. What drives all this is the politics of cutting taxes, smaller government and trying to make government function as if it was Walmart.

The lesson in all this for all of us is to be prepared and have a plan in case you fall ill or need assistance, do not count on the Government to help you out. The governments at all levels are far too enamoured of processes and procedures and providing a service is simply not part of the equations. As they say ''As long as the public believe we are providing a service that is all that matters''.

Being a senior, over 60 years of age in Canada is not a pretty picture, unless you are financially well off.  Another disturbing statistics in Canada, the number of suicides is the highest amongst Seniors over 80 years of age, this does not attract much attention, because most are male and end their lives violently. What a sad situation.




   

A unique, final and beautiful day in Saint-Laurent

Today was my Mom's funeral service. It was a beautiful warm sunny day, for October it felt like mid-summer.
Both families came and it was nice to see cousins, aunts and uncles and other friends gather for this remembrance of her life.

moments before the start of the Requiem Mass

My Dad had picked her favourite flowers, two big bouquets of White Roses mix in with 3 yellow roses to symbolize us, her 3 kids. I had previously made the musical arrangements for this sung Requiem Mass in the very same Chapel of the Saint-Laurent Parish Church where my parents were married 58 years ago. The old bells from the towering belfry pealed before and after the service, they had the sound of ages past.

The priest who officiated at the service Father Yvon Cousineau entire family, he told us, are from Ville Saint-Laurent. He conducted a beautiful service which I found to be inspired. Julie Berthiaume was the Soprano who sang accompanied by the organ.

The parish cemetery at the rear of the Church goes back 290 years and several generations are buried there as you can see by reading the monuments amongst the old trees. I recognized the names of several other families who married into ours. It has a feeling of a familiar place, of home, of people we once knew or had heard of.

Will said a few words in Eulogy and I am very happy he did, he was not sure at first if he wanted to do it but he certainly brought back wonderful memories and I also delivered a Eulogy to her as the person we children remembered best.

It was a very dignified and beautiful service and I am very happy that we could do this for my mother. Afterwards several of us went to the cemetery to see the old Gougeon family stone monument which has been standing on that spot since 1790 with the 3 symbols carved into it, a laurel wreath, a star of Bethlehem and two hands in reconciliation. It has been there as a marker for 220 years, difficult to understand in this age of technology. My Mom as was her wish, will be buried there in the Spring where her parents, grand-parents, other siblings and ancestors rest.

Le mercredi des cendres, Ash Wednesday

For me today has always been a day of reflection on the meaning of life and death and the afterlife.
It is the beginning of Lent or Le Carême as we call it in French and in 46 days we will celebrate Easter and the promise of the afterlife.

I always like the opéra Dialogue des Carmélites by Francis Poulenc. The story is set during the French Revolution and tells the story of the Carmelite nuns in Paris who fall victims of the fury of the French Civil War and of the street mob. The final act of the Opera takes place on Place de la Révolution today Place de la Concorde.

These women are facing execution in public, the mob roars, the sinister guillotine looms large over them. At this grave hour they are carried by Faith and Faith alone and the promise of the Afterlife. Poulenc uses the Salve Regina as the backdrop music to make his point and to illustrate the courage of the nuns. At the very end Sister Constance is the last to walk to the guillotine, she falters and Sister Blanche who ran away from the Order when the revolution started comes out of the crowd and joins her, having found Faith and Courage.

In our world this is a forgotten message. Poulenc wrote this opéra 60 years ago but it could have been 300 years ago, the world today is so very different. Difficult to find people motivated by Faith or by Courage today. Such themes take us into a different reality which requires a deeper understanding of who we are and of the world around us, hopefully Ash Wednesday is such a day.

The finale of the Dialogue of the Carmelites, Canadian Robert Carsen created this production that we saw at the Scala Milan a few years ago.

reporting and social media

Modern media outlets face many challenges one being with the Internet news travel fast, much faster than before and the enormous amount of news being seen at any given moment in the world is more than any human being can reasonably absorb. Meaning that any journalist must produce and be on his or her proverbial toes all the time. Some journalists here I follow in Ottawa are on Twitter all the time, they report what they hear and comment, though in 140 characters.

So editors decided to report only on news that will be of most interest to its readers. Per example hurricane Sandy travelled a very large distance and crossed and touched many countries, in the end all you heard was how Sandy had devastated New York City. What it did elsewhere in the Caribbean or in other US States or cities or even how it ended up in Canada was barely mentioned.
An almost universal decision was made to talk only about NYC because most news readers could understand the story quickly. Do editors talk to each other or merely follow what the other guy is doing. It seems that quickly is also the operative word in the news nowadays, this leads to often to factual errors and other mistakes, hard to correct once the story is out.

In the Arab Spring context, editors and journalists have labelled the different parties, in the arab world they are usually called rebels or militants, the word terrorist is not use because the rebels or militants fight an established authority in their own country. They would be terrorists if they attacked foreigners.
However there is no time for context to explain how or why this happened. Take Nigeria where groups have planted bombs and attacked civilians, these incidents are described as a fight between Muslims in the North and Christians in the South, in reality it is about land distribution, property rights and perceived injustices, the religious part of it is another issue not necessarily connected to this economic one. It would be too difficult to start explaining to the public at large the economic discrepancies of a country like Nigeria, so the media stick to the easy religious explanation though it is not factual.

The civil war in Syria is another example, a minority the Alawites have ruled Syria for 45 years and run the country like a mafia fief, ruining the economy in the process and setting the country up as a haven for various violent groups who could use their base in Damascus with impunity. Syria a transit point between Iran and Lebanon. Such detailed explanation of the situation would be too complicated and most news readers barely know where Syria is on a map.

This approach makes serious or grave news trivial matters. Everything is so quick and so simplified that our basic understanding goes out the proverbial window and the average person starts to think in terms of black and white issues. Also it de-humanizes the persons involved in such conflicts, they are so far away from us and we have such little understanding of them that generalities start taking precedence over hard facts. One fanatic becomes millions of fanatics or an entire countries population can all be put in one bag because it is all the same, an example Iran, all Iranians must be fanatics given the government they have, final conclusion is, they are not like us.

We now have the situation with Gaza in the middle-east which to me geographically would be more accurately described as the Near East but the media has made the middle-east a grab bag of all the countries from Morocco to Iran, easier for simple folks to understand. Leading a lot of people to automatically assume that Turks and Iranians are also Arabs because they are Muslims. A bit like saying that all Catholics are Italian. Forgetting that in all those countries in the grab bag that is dubbed the Middle-East you have ancient Christian and Jewish populations, though small still they are there and have been part of the fabric for a long time. Yes there are Palestinian Christians and Iraqi Jews and Christians and Egyptian Jews and Christians. But the media will not talk of this so as not to confuse the basic simplistic message of good against evil. Thus instead of informing the media spreads ignorance and stereotypes.

Here is Canada we have a similar situation, the media has always divided the country between the English and the French. Very simplistic but so much easier to do, spreading stereotypes and falsehoods all around. It continues to this day, despite the fact that we are now a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual nation. There is nothing quite like a good stereotype to get the readers agitated and confused.

So in the latest reporting on the eternal conflict between the Israeli government against the Palestinians, they became Militants or is Hamas the Militants, what does the word militant mean? The Libyans are described as rebels to this day despite the fact that Ghaddafi is gone from power. Why then the word militants instead of simply the Palestinians in Gaza. At any rate this is not explained and neither is it explained that the millions living in that little strip of land called Gaza are just ordinary folks who cannot exit, leave or do anything, they are captive since the borders are closed by Israël. But you could be excused if you thought that all Palestinians where with the militants or worse. Do the Palestinians desire peace and a better life in a secure country, yes, they all do like any human being, but that is rarely discussed by the media.

The media loves to use all kinds of images and words to inject meaning, the other day a reporter for the CBC spoke of the Sacred City being shelled, then in the next phrased used Jerusalem. Sacred to whom, did this reporter mean Jews, Christians and Muslims? No she meant to the Israelis. Another CBC reporter called Jerusalem the Capital of Israel, not correct, Tel Aviv is the capital of modern Israel.
Ancient Biblical texts do not make international law today.

Then the BBC got into the act and presents lopsided reporting, it would appear from the perspective of the BBC News that Israel is far more at risk and suffers far more than anyone in Gaza. Given the terrible living conditions in Gaza compared to modern affluent Israel, one wonders where does this comparison come from. What is missing is the context, what Gaza is really like as a place to live for millions of people, a huge poor ghetto where people are contained in squalor and surrounded by a powerful modern, well equipped Israëli army who is preparing to invade, up to 75,000 soldiers ready to march and already staging an invasion. Given the population density of Gaza it is going to be a civilian blood bath.

The New York Times has a series of photos showing the two sides of that border, in Israel people lead modern affluent lives, this could be Florida. One photo shows a young women in a luxury car, talking on her cell phone next to a huge army tank, another photo shows Israeli citizens in a shelter, all are well dressed, they look worried but otherwise the photo could be a community centre in North America.

On the other side of the border in Gaza, people are poorly dressed, dirty, amongst ruins, desperate scared, some are injured looking bewildered, this is the third world. One comment says that a family has gathered together so if Israel attacks they will at least die together. All is devastation and despair, so far 45 civilians have been killed and 390 injured, medical support is weak due to the economic and military siege of Gaza by Israel. There is something totally unnerving about such photos and the inequality is stark.

What is truly obscene, is the IDF, Israel Defence Force on social media justifying their actions against civilians. Even if you accept that in politics and war there is no morality and no ethical behaviour, in the 21 century, there are laws on how civilians will be treated. Israel claims to be a modern state ruled by laws and says it abides by international treaties, so then why the social media PR campaign to try to justify its actions. I am not convinced and find no credibility in the explanations given by Israel so far on action in Gaza. It is not the first time in the last 35 years that Israel has launched military campaigns in the region against much weaker rivals.

Despite the fact that Israel claims it is only defending itself, an editorial yesterday in the Jerusalem Post by Gershon Baskin entitled ''Israel shortsighted assassination'' says that this campaign is not what it appears and Israel provoked this crisis by killing Al-Jabari, Security Chief of Hamas. An election is coming next year in Israel, PM Netanyahu wants to retain power at all cost and this type of action is a vote getter amongst the fanatical settlers and other groups who would like ''a final solution'' to the Palestinian question. He is politically in trouble and his war mongering against Iran during the USA Election campaign and his open support of Mitt Romney backfired badly so now he has to try something else.

We can still be hopeful that some foreign government will call Israel's bluff and refuse to look the other way. The argument of self-defence does not hold water anymore. It is high time for the Israeli government to find a true path to peace and a living arrangement with its neighbours, bellicose attitudes will not do.