Israel's tent cities for workers

I wonder how many tourists to Israel will see places like that depicted above? I guess none. These places will be build away. The abject, those thrown out, will be put out in the margins, away from curious eyes.

I like reading Haaretz, an Israeli English language newspaper, because it writes up stuff that Canadian and American newspapers and magazines don't dare to as it will disrupt the public's perception of Israel as a beacon of democracy.You learn more about Israel than meets the Western fiction of Israel.

Closing borders, beefing up security, and building more prisons are increasingly the pastimes of states like Canada, the US, and Israel. Defining who doesn't belong is part of this nation building through exclusion. As if Israel hasn't created enough tent "cities" of refugees in the past through the creation of the state of Israel, through the war of 1967, the removal of Palestinians from Palestine, the bombing of Gaza and other injustices, now I read that Israel is going to erect 20,000 - 25000 tents for African migrants who have entered its borders.

Where will the they be built? Five tent cities will be built at five different detention centers.Three of them will be built near a prison. Like the coils of barbed wire and crowded men in the image above foreshadow: "The centers will be run by the Israel Prison Service." Say, what?

Haaretz reports that

The objective of the plan, according to the ministry, is to ensure that all African migrants who enter Israel will be directly transferred to a detention center where they will stay for long periods of time, in order to prevent their entry to Israeli cities.

The plan was presented to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier on Thursday after his bureau ordered a quick and efficient response to the migrant issue.

I have bolded the lines that ring alarm bells of incarceration, exclusions. Does anyone still believe that Israel is a democracy? Criminalizing migrants and refugees has a long history in Israel and this seems to be ramping up again, but this time addressed to another group of people, also with brown faces and, for many, non-Jewish origins, who are "the issue". Why does that term seem to ring with the term Canada once invented for its own issue: "the Indian problem"? (Indian was the word created for the First Nations people who lived on the land that Canada claimed as its dominion). I wonder if Israel's earlier plans to replace the exploited Palestinian work force with other exploited day / migrant labourers has backfired for Israel? It seems they have another demographic problem at hand that will expose the lie of their democracy.

rattle in Finnish is helistin

Today on my morning walk, I saw a lot of things. I saw the most run-down garage I have seen in awhile. They used to be common when I was a girl, but seems everyone is slapping vinyl up on every standing wood frame building left.

This one doesn't seem worth saving, however. Under the Algoma St. bridge, I saw white supremacist graffiti and swastikas painted on the concrete walls.

Mostly likely, city workers will come out in the morning and paint over it. I saw a black squirrel that had no fur at all on its chest and upper back area, so it looked like it was wearing a vest. With its skin exposed like that, it looked even more like the rodent it is. I saw a pair of ladies thong underwear tossed over the overpass and a used baby diaper, and a whole lot of other unsightly garbage. Down at the water front I had to walk all the way around the paddling pond to pull out of the rocks a huge piece of unsightly plastic that was ruining the symmetry of the photo I wanted to take of the red dogwood.

I saw a pair of blue-winged teal, a male and female. I saw many beautiful reflections down by the waterfront, before the wind suddenly flew in.

I saw two of my friends out jogging and we stopped and chatted. I saw a man I had never met before but we also stopped and chatted about the so-called development of the waterfront. I saw an old white man with big brown liver spots on his face, walking preoccupied. I said, look! See those three goldeneyes? There are two males and one female. Both males are dancing their mating dance and calling out to the female duck, who is swimming non-plussed between them. He looked up and continued on his way.  

Behind the Spirit Garden, I saw some coloured tinsel streamers thrown out on the ground. First, I walked by them, saying to myself, stupid people. But then I decided to tie a few to a dried goldenrod. Before long, I had picked up most of them and tied them on. This was right when the wind picked up, so the streamers were dancing in the wind. It reminded me of the rattle I am making--or maybe the rattle was calling me.

I am almost finished my rattle. The women at ONWA had invited me to join them for their rattle-making workshop. I have to go back this week and pick it up because it was drying.

After I tied the shiny streamers of somebody's garbage onto the dead goldenrod, I headed back home. Before I crossed the train tracks, on the ground, I found two long soft beautiful feathers, one copper, one black. They were attached together with a small piece of metal that had a hole in it. I picked it up off the ground. Perfect! Just what I need for my rattle.

wolf sighting

I know it isn't a clear photo, but that is a wolf I saw running along the edge of the ice this morning. I have not seen a wolf in the wild (or in the city), but this was clearly a wolf. No dog would be out on the ice in the harbour at this time of the year when the ice is breaking up, and wolves are known to use frozen lakes or rivers as travel routes in the night. The speed of this animal was amazing to watch. It has to be a wild animal, I said to myself as I followed it with my eyes.

I had been walking along the Sacred Garden footpath, which is the last loop of my Thursday morning walk before returning back home, and when I  looked out onto Lake Superior, towards the East, I saw this beast galloping across the ice. Its nose was down and after running for a spell, it stopped to look out at the water. It had a bushy tail that was also down, not wagging like a dog's. I watched it running along the edge of the ice until it got closer to the shore by the old Pool 6 area. I hope it got on shore, but where will it go from there? It has a lot of industrial and residential areas to cross until it makes it back into the bush.

What is the medicine of Wolf that I need to pay attention to? Maybe as this was a "lone wolf," and he was running along a precarious border (ice/water) as the night opens to morning light (dark/light), this is a signal to me that I need to find alone time, find teachings there, in a between state of being. 

'haunt' can be a noun and a verb

Spiderwebs surface like a river current from under snow-melt. I saw this sea of spiderwebs rippling under the conifer trees atop the Wilson St. headland, that part of the downtown waterfront which has been renamed after its transformation, the Spirit Garden .

We've had a few incredibly warm -- unseasonably mild  --days, and the sun has quickly melted the mounds of snow. There's the odd dirty pile of snow, but I still can't believe that we have such spring-like days in mid-March. I am all confused about it. I even saw a small red-bellied spider creeping on the outside of my window. What?! Where had this spider been hiding all winter? And so suddenly appearing .

Because the air is so warm (high teens and low twenties in Celsius), yet the lake is still frozen in the harbour and the water beyond it ice cold, when the warm air mass hits the water, an alchemy of mist and fog emerges.

"Oh, my," I said as I peeked out of the window this morning. A soft heavy fog had rolled up to my front steps.The waters of the lake had come to greet me, inviting me to walk into the water. That is, walk into its shape-shifting, walk into the haunt. I didn't have to walk along the water this morning as the line between land and water would blur today.  

I am no longer taking a walk with Tassu along the waterfront. It's too far for her to walk. Her back hip and right leg have gotten worse since the day her legs gave way. I had to flag down an early morning driver and plead for help. He was so nice. He drove off to get help and then we managed to put Tassu on a blanket and carry her into the back of his hatchback and bring her home.

Now, she's dragging her hind leg even worse so she is mostly walking on only three legs. When I went to see her this morning, to see if she was up for a walk, she got so excited when she saw me that her back legs slipped out and she flopped onto the porch. "Calm down, calm down," I begged her, running to hug her big head so that she would stop trying to jump up on me. We went for a very short walk, me with my heart in my throat the whole way, Tassu with her tongue hanging out and a big smile inside her eyes."I can do this!" she told me.

Then, I put her back on the porch, gave her some scraps, and left for a run.

Tassu means Paw

Tassu is slowing down. I no longer take her on long walks along the lakeshore on Sunday morning; I take her for a short slow ramble--or maybe we both ramble together. Her back leg, which has some arthritis at the hip (back haunch?), is getting increasingly stiff and 'snaps' when she takes a step. She usually trails behind me. I turn around every now and then ans say, "C'mon, you can do it!"

One day, we crossed the lights at Cumberland St. and headed up the overpass. The day before had been sunny and mild, melting the snow, causing a slushy, wet mess. But the night had dipped down to -20c and everything froze over like a sheet of ice. Whole sections of ground were like skating rinks. A light snow dusted the ground, making it difficult to see what was stable ground and what was treacherous ice.

As we walked along the sidewalk of the overpass, suddenly Tassu's legs gave way. With a clumsy plunk, there she lay. Her tummy on the ground, her big white paws spread out awkwardly. "Oh, no! Tassu, what are we going to do with you? Get up! Get up!"  I tried pulling her up. I spread my legs wide and wrapped my arms around her middle and heaved, telling her, "C'mon, Tassu! Get up! You can do it!" She was like a dead weight. I tried again and again, but the ice gave me no leverage. Tassu just whimpered and lay like a heavy log on the ice. Her jaw started to quiver. I got worried that she'd broken her leg. What to do?