Rainbow Campsite, Edmonton

At the Rainbow Camp Site
August 2001

After saying good-bye to Emily, my youngest daughter, who had no clue as to how our lives were about to change, I found myself hooking up my 12 foot rental U-Haul trailer loaded with my life’s possessions.  Funny how, after 22 years of marriage, a life can fit into such a small space, but with the miracles of down sizing and living small great things can still happen.

Getting the trailer hitch to align with the ball on the end of the Ford van in order to make it all eventually connect and become one, so I could finally move East was a daunting task.

I was alone, all alone.

I looked in the mirror and saw only trailer, backed up an inch then got out examined the distance, realigned and moved over and inch...eventually I was able to wind the trailer several inches downward with the hand crank onto the waiting ball hook up, tighten everything up making sure the safety chain was connected and I ready to hit the road.

A new life awaited.

Finally, I got behind the wheel, pausing for several minutes, for the last time before departure, I sat and wept while parked in the Rainbow camp ground.

I never looked in the mirror once.  Not once.

Making Canada Great Again

Making Canada Great Again:  The Courage of Andrew Scheer

Canadian politics has taken a disturbingly dark turn recently with both a federal scandal brewing while at the same time western anger roils over in a deja vu installment, from a conservative point of view, of why do all liberals hate us?  Canada has seemly taken a page out of the American play book of mud-slinging dirty politics and sadly seems quite adept and comfortable with the experience.

The situation is extremely complex, has historical, social and economic roots and feeds on fear and mistrust.

Canada is an odd country in that as best as it can, at a federal level, through equalization payments, it tries to roughly balance the huge differences between the have and have not provinces. For those provinces that receive transfer payments it is a significant assist to their economy, to those that pay the theory is they can best afford it.  Simple and so Canadian!

Add to the mix eastern provinces and cities who block a pipeline essential to western economic prosperity while still collecting transfer payments, this tends to create more anger than good will.  The pot starts to boil.

We also have political and economic systems that are more successful planning for the short term and fairly dismal at long term planning. Image, if you can,  a campaign based on promises based on solving problems that we will face in decades rather than months or years.

Such campaigns based on long term issues would not fire the imagination, voting turn out would be low. Apathy would soar.  Issues would involve boring topics like global warming, ecology, extinctions, alternative, energies, population growth, Mars settlement patterns, blah, blah, blah. How totally irrelevant to our every day lives.  This could only have possible meaning to say people like our children, or possibly their children.  How can we possible plan for future generations when we are so busy satisfying short term greed and destroying the planet in the moment.  I think its all about priorities.  Ours are pretty clear.

Then don't get me started on the whole anti vaxer, republican science and I have my rights movement that tends to divide conservatives from liberal thought who do not grasp science and tends to include people who are entitled, self-centered and selfish.  They may also believe the Earth is flat.

So when the West wants action on a pipe line and liberals and other dreamers are talking about “carbon free” in 2050 no one is listening while the liberal prime minister is seemingly protecting the jobs of a French/Canadian based, anti oil, transfer receiving province, things get even a tad more heated.

What’s needed to calm things down of course is a road rally with yellow vests, complete with xenophobic rhetoric and anti immigration, muslim hating slogans.  Aim the trucks, vests, jargon, rhetoric and “roll over liberals all along the way to Ottawa.

There Andrew Scheer, who clearly lacks the political wisdom and personal courage to separate the real issues from the fear and paranoia is successfully able to lead Canada into a Trump-like frenzy of political confusion in which members of the far right merrily ride along denouncing open borders, threatening the Prime Minister, jolly in their monologue of hate and fear busy “Making Canada Great Again.”

Did I miss anything?  Eh?

Today in class

Utilitarian Cell phone Applications to ESL instruction in a Private School Instructional Setting using low Teacher Student Ratios...or Are You Fucking Kidding Me?!

Today, about to start class and on time, Steve asks if he can leave the class to get some food, this just after the lunch break.  Being the stern disciplinarian I am, I look at him steady, and directly in the eyes, pause for maximum effect, smile and say of course Steve, but don’t take more than 45 minutes class has already started and I know how important this is to you.  This reminder for three students who have attended one class in the last three weeks.





Later in class, after another smoke break in which they both vape and smoke and by that I mean each student vapes and smokes, we watched an ESL video.  About ten minutes before the ending my new student Vince pulls out his cell for an important reason only known to himself, perhaps texting, gaming or streaming.  I tell him to put it away as we aren’t finished the video.  His classic reply, which I have never heard before this moment... “but it’s almost finished.”

“Yeah and you’re almost a student”...but that only appeared in the thought bubble above my head where the students never ever look.

So as a small compromise to student global cell phone usage I had them each look up a different ESL video on Youtube and report their findings to the class.  They happily chattered away in Mandarin.

February 26

After a snow day students returned to class today, that includes three Chinese students each age 21 years of age.  They had no homework done because they had been up late playing video games over the weekend and could do no work.  I asked if they had any interest in doing homework and it seems the answer is no as it interferes with free time and they would only do homework if they were very bored.  They are now working on journals describing what they did on the week end...should be interesting.

A slight wobble

A slight wobble

that first time I drove a bike

I wobbled along Sunnyside Drive

at the T intersection

I didn’t know how to turn left or right

and drove straight into the opposite curb

braking also alluded me.

As a father my hand shook, my resolve wobbled 
I reluctantly spanked you for some 

infraction I can’t even remember 

and since have asked your forgiveness.

Now long retired I back the car into the garbage

cans I can’t execute a proper shoulder check

my heart pounds my hands shake on the steering wheel

My knees wobble as I walk to the door.

Smart Phones as metaphor

Smart Phones as Metaphor

I guess what I learned out of the attack experience,
that is trying to separate a student from cell phone...
as an educator, is that the Smart Phone is not a simile
for life.

It is not like life.  It is a metaphor.
It is in fact life itself in all its multi media forms.

I have witnessed a student sit and listen, text, email
engage in social media activities during an hour of class time.

As I watched this phenomena unfold I bit my lip, said nothing,
as oblivious to her surroundings she remained absolutely off task
for the entire class.
After class, as she slowly re-entered orbit and gained consciousness
she began gathering her effects,

I then quickly asked if her Smart Phone was a distraction.
She picked up her things, left in a huff, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Clearly I had crossed a line.
Understandably, many addicts can not face their addictions.

marty rempel

World pics Dead Sea to Nile

 Cypress on an orthodox street corner

 Along the Nile...

 The Dead Sea

 Bangkong

 Netherlands

 Dubai

 Local shops in Kuwait

 Venice

 Greece

 Athens

 Rhona, Spain

Ontario

lost cause street begging

lost cause

a bleak night on a busy sidewalk
before the warmth of the subway entrance
a man with raspy voice wearing a thin red
flannel shirt
on a cold night
asks for spare change
I swerve left, quicken my pace
avoid giving to a lost cause
why should good money chase lost souls
I’m late for my concert with the

bright lights and
good seats

“Can you spare some change.”
echoes as I retreat downward
the cavernous subway
draws me away to

the bright lights
and good seats

...later buying coffee
in the line in front
a flash of red catches my eye
with a tray of food and warm drinks
for his fellow passengers on a bleak
night on a busy sidewalk
I recognize the rasp in his voice
as he retreats to the darkness
I stare out the window in disbelief
reflected with the

bright lights
and the good seats.

marty

Bath Night

Bath Night

Sitting on a red vinyl chair set in the middle of the
linoleum kitchen floor my father poised
with his electric clippers and scissors ready
to cut my hair on a Saturday night,
haircuts were at the time of my youth
running at a dollar,
money my father would not spend,
naive, I did not know a bowl job and
had never visited a barber shop,
my blond hair tumbled to the floor
to the whine of the electric motor as Dad inhaled
his Daily Mail self-roll stuck to his lower lip
squinting his eyes in concentration,







My brother soaking in the bath tub
whose water, as the youngest, I would inherit,
after my cut
and he next to the cutting block in exact rotation.

Sunday morning with my hand-me-down Brogues
filled with card board to make them fit
my suit jacket too short, at the sleeves, because
I grew like a Jack Rabbit since Spring.
We jump into the blue 1951 Ford
I, sitting in the front between my parents
off to find out what Jesus would say...




marty

urbanization

urbanization

a century farm house built
of solid field stone
home to generations
in neglect resting on an acreage,
divided in half for two families
with no farming history,
the barn neglected, over-run with feral cats
roosting pigeons in the empty silos
the orchards and pastures over grown,
the city creeps near,
a rectangular cement cattle trough
now
a place to burn garbage,
an aresal can explodes in the flames,
three grazing horses bolt before
they settle to warily graze

marty