#27 Je ne suis pas Charlie 2
February 01st, 2015
Hi, darlin’,
Didn’t go for a Therapeutic Perambulation yesterday because of the spit-n’drizzle on-again-off-again and the bone gnawing penetrating chill.
In fact, I don’t go far these days. Increasingly I don’t set foot off my own little piece of backfill so I’m often the last to hear any of the gossip. By the time any juicy gossip makes it to my ears it’s dried out and starting to crumble.
But an acquaintance came to the house and we had coffee. She caught me up on the very latest goings-on in Tahsis. My dear! I had no idea! A young married man was caught in flagrante delecto with someone else’s wife.
That’s okay because his wife was stepping out with a young man whose long-time companion has dumped him. Maybe we need to try to find something else for people to do in the wintertime.
The Tahsis Literacy Society has tried any number of things and with very limited success. People don’t seem interested in TED talks or in workshops which will teach you how to do your own income tax or workshops in how to fill out government forms. The local pub has gone tits up, you can’t even buy a Lotto ticket unless you drive over the goat track to Gold River.
Surely we can come up with something which will replace adulterous coupling.
Or maybe not.
I have suggested we form an amateur theatre group of sorts and put on public demonstrations of the chapters in Fifty Shades of Gray. It might fit in with the whole idea of literacy and provide entertainment for some, and education for others. Unfortunately, people thought I was joking.
Is it “gray” or “grey” and how does one know which, and when?
Meanwhile, far beyond Tahsis, our noble leader has called together those who refer to themselves as journalists and let them peek at what he has in mind for new regulations to protect us all from terrorists.
Of course they had to sign an agreement which said they could only tell us certain things. If they tell us more than those certain things they can languish in the slammer.
Remember when everyone all linked arms in Paris and took to the streets chanting Je suis Charlie? Even Saudi Arabia contributed to the show, as the free world all agreed how sacred free speech was at that time. It was all about protecting freedom of expression. No censorship of the press.
Was it really only a couple of weeks ago?
It really is one helluva note, as we say here on my rock, when we have to depend on Rupert Murdoch to tell us what to believe.
The crackdown on terrorists in the name of protecting free speech has resulted in a crackdown on free speech, has it not?
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Anne Cameron grows pussywillows on the western edge of Vancouver Island. She received the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for an outstanding literary career in British Columbia in 2010. Her 23 books include Daughters of Copper Woman, the bestselling work of fiction ever written about B.C. and published from within B.C. She has banished herself to Tahsis, a small town not far from Friendly Cove where the shenanigans called British Columbia all began.
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