Newsletter #11

Spring Flowers, a Second Line and a potential poison pill to the south of us

Just to change things up a little, I’m adding more visual content to this newsletter. Let me know what you think.

Weather…and Gardening

It’s finally warming up here in the Gulf Islands and the gardens are loving it. Milena and I agree that this is best year for flowering plants in the 18 years we’ve been on Protection.

The rhododendrons in our front garden that are in profuse flower right now. We think it’s a combination of the cool/wet spring weather and the feeding and mulching we did last fall. And just this morning the peony blooms finally opened.

Now that it’s warming up, we’ve got to turn our attention to the vegetable beds in the back garden.

Music - Carl’s Second Line

Saturday’s Second Line, to honour the memory of recently passed friend and neighbour, Carl David Ashley, was a poignant experience. About fifty islanders paraded down the gravel road from Carl’s old house to the home of friends Jen and Den. Fellow island musician Rick Scott marshalled the parade from the back of a golf cart and led us in rousing, if not slightly rag-tag, renditions of “Walkin’ Down the Line,” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” I wailed out on my Ian Johnstone 3-string cigar box guitar. The spirit moved us.

After the Second Line, we stayed on at Jen and Den’s for a potluck and impromptu concert/jam in their beautiful seaside garden. I did a slide 12-string version of Vince Gill’s “Go Rest High on That Mountain,” that seemed to meet the moment. In various ways, we shared our memories of Carl as a stalwart of our island community. It was very spontaneous, tender and joyous - and not at all funereal. The food was great and the wine flowed along with the tears - just the way Carl would have wanted it.

Milena and I entering Jen and Den’s garden at the conclusion of the Second Line:

Onstage at Jen&Den’s, channeling some serious slide 12-string in honour of Carl:

I know I promised a video of a new song with this newsletter, but it needs to percolate for a few more days. I’ll try to have it ready for next week.

Food - Air Fryer Simplicity

We got our first (and only) air fryer a couple years ago and have found it a helpful tool. It’s basically a well-designed miniature convection oven. When we first lived on Thetis, we didn’t have a conventional kitchen stove. We relied on a counter-top convection oven for our baking and it worked well, as long as the scale was small. So having the air fryer reminds us a lot of those early days on Thetis.

While some of the newer air fryers appear to have control panels that would challenge an engineering professor, ours is quite simple - basically: time, temperature and a half-dozen optional presets.

A favourite Sunday dinner for us is boneless, skinless chicken thighs, stuffed with arugula, walnuts and mushrooms, and then wrapped in thin slices of prosciutto. We cook them for 12 minutes at 400 F, and then 12 minutes more at 300 F. Shown here with some stove-top home fries, Slovenian style, and off-camera, the di rigeur salad.

Views - The Poison Pill Inside the Bill

Trump’s budget bill that passed the US House last week (by one vote), is now in the Senate, where many hope it will fail. The economic provisions of the bill have widely discussed, analyzed and dissected.

The consensus among most political observers and economists is that if the bill. in its present form, were to become law, it would spell disaster for the US economy. Of course, such a calamity would have serious spill-over effects in Canada and the myriad other nations that do business with the US.

These potential economic consequences are widely known and understood - from stagflation, to the mass redistribution of wealth, to the collapse of financial markets. Less well-considered is the provision, buried deep in the 1000-page document that, were it to become law, would prohibit US Federal Court judges from using contempt of court proceedings to enforce their rulings.

This would effectively erode the rule of law in the US and pave the way for Trump’s minions to achieve their fascist dream of suspending habeus corpus. This foundational principle of modern democracy - first enshrined in the Magna Carta - guarantees the rights of a person accused, detained, arrested to timely due process before a judge or magistrate. It prohibits the kind of abuse of rights that we’ve seen lately with ICE agents’ snatch-grab-render travesties. Put simply, when habeus corpus is in place, you can’t be “disappeaered” by unaccountable agents of the state.

The Enabling Act of 1933 gave Hitler the power to suspend habeus corpus rights and, of course, he did so, with horrific consequences. Let’s hope that the US Senate sees the light and rejects Trump’s budget bill and with it, this abject peril to democracy.

Keep the faith - love to you all,

David