Faith in Humanities

More Brain
Less Brawn
More Heart

by JP Michaels
August 2020

Racism must never be regarded as the punchline to a 400+ year old joke! The arrogance of the pseudo "Police State" mentality is the presumption of power, personal interpretation and misguided enforcement of the clearly formatted and sanctioned laws of the land. Such arrogance is not to be tolerated nor embraced by a just and right society.
It has been demonstratively evident through the focus of the social media lens that the retaliatory actions of late by the global societies of policing and some corrupt governments have but a cursory understanding of the application of law and the very nature of the "rule of law" itself.
There is a clear distinction between a "Police Force" and "Officers of the Law".
Ideally all "Officers of the Law" should in fact be armed with law degrees. After all, "police forces" the world over are armed with riot gear designed not to mete out justice, but to deliver physical harm. They are not called SWAT for nothing.
I am not suggesting police practice law in the traditional sense. However, I am suggesting that Officers of the Law deliver justice based on a quick and near instinctive recall of the spirit of the law. Change the narrative, change the results. To this end, it is vital to a just society that those who engage in the practice of "justice management" must be supported in their training and education. It is not acceptable that those who are sanctioned to be lethally armed and responsible for carrying out the law would have less preparation and training to do so than the barber who trims your sideburns or puts highlights in your hair.
It is a sobering image if one truly stops to imagine the moment by moment of inhumanity experienced by millions over 400 years at the brute-force hands of arrogance and presumption of misguided power.
COVID and it's non negotiable isolation was a " STOP THE WORLD I WANNA GET OFF" moment held in suspended animation for months of global proportions. I've said it before and I will say it again, COVID is the perfect dress rehearsal for a global SOCIAL REVOLUTIONary with the mandate in the narrative of equal justice for all.

O COLONEL
MY COLONEL

by JP Michaels
July 2020

O COLONEL MY COLONEL*

O Colonel My Colonel is inspired by a very famous poem 'O Captain My Captain'. The poem was penned by American writer Walt Whitman upon The death of the 16th president of United States Abraham Lincoln, who by the way, is purported to have been gay.

● For 2 and a 1/2 months I was a USA Army Bitch.
• Which is quite something when you consider I don't have a submissive bone in my body, sexual or otherwise.
Preamble
● For the purposes of this lesson, the term "bitch" is to be understood as follows:
• To the detriment of all stakeholders, "BITCH" is a derogatory reference
• to a person who feels emotionally beholden to the entitlement of another.
●"Do I have proof of this?" you ask,
• with a hint of incredulity in the tone of your voice.
● Damn right I have proof!
• Behold a gift from 'O Colonel, My Colonel"
• bona-fide USA ARMY Dog Tags issued,
• in duplicate of course,
• in my family name.
● After all, a bitch without its tags.
    is like a mut without its bark
    both legitimizes existence in
     some way.
● I've been led to believe that it's all part of "marking your territory" or some kind of "Dogmatic Canine Compulsion."
● I suppose it's just one of the perks as the dog-tagged bitch of a Lieutenant Colonel in the US army.
● "How the fuck did we meet?" you ask,
• once again with palpable incredulity in the tone of your voice?
● I could not help but notice this handsome and virile figure of a man
• the moment he walked into the room... I had just rented at a local bathhouse.
• My usual, ROOM 100 to be exact.
● More Specific, without being identifiably-specific,
• because the US intelligence strongly believes in
• discretion being the better part of valor.
• Let's just say, without really saying anything ,
• "Oh Colonel, My Colonel" was part of the security/intelligence entourage
• for the sitting US President while here for The G20 Summit in Toronto Canada
• commencing on June 26, 2010.
● And the rest as they say is history.
Well at least a 2 and a 1/2 month history
• until I had to bid him adieu in public.
Always in public!! repeat after me, always leave in public !!!
● I came to care for a very damaged man
• as a result of being captured and tortured in Iraq....Enough said.
• And I would not change a moment of this life-affirming experience
• of having met this very brave, remarkable and sadly very tragically broken man for the world
• because this experience opened someone else's world up to me.
• 'Oh Colonel, My Colonel' was of old school courting;
• particularly courting from a distance.
• I dare say Iraq gave him plenty of practice.
• So to make the experience of our long-distance relationship more real, more quickly,
• ' O Colonel My Colonel, identified "OUR" song very quickly
• "Writing Love Letters In the Sand"
• It is a song about daring to dream even though
• those dreams are only written in the sand.
• The love letter is short- lived because of the ebb and flow of the ocean.
• As is love-in-life is shortlived because of the ebb and flow of life.
• 'Love letters In the Sand' harbours a delightful sentiment with an infectious tune.
• I guarantee that you will not be able to look at a sandy beach the same ever again!
● Happy 10th Anniversary Darling
• wherever you are
• and do continue writing those love letters in the sand!
• I do so enjoy reading them.

how to EARN RESPECT by PAYING it forward

by JP Michaels
June 2020

Preamble

Call me old school, but I look up to Respect!

Lesson Notes:
For the purposes of this lesson, the word "respect" is Capitalized and the word "mercenary" is to be understood as follows:
● Mercenary Defined
/ˈməːsɪn(ə)ri/
noun
1 a professional soldier hired to serve in a foreign army:
adjective
2 primarily concerned with making money at the expense of ethics:"
■ Synonyms
• money-oriented,
• grasping,
• greedy
• acquisitive,
• avaricious,
• covetous,
and my personal favourite,
• rapacious,
(Powered by Oxford Dictionaries)
• I do so like to say the word "rapacious"... Especially when you roll the "Rrrrrrrr"s !!!!

● The recent COVID- weary-world events which have heralded the cry of #blacklivesmatter have placed Respect squarely at the forefront of the Revolution.

● Respect is by nature mercenary, or at least one would think so, by the words with which we very often choose to describe it, and be engaged by it in a not so very come-by-chance way, the act of giving respect is very often couched in financial terms, namely, that
•Respect is "to be paid" to someone, or
•Respect is "to be earned" by someone.

● Respect's financial imagery plants the seed and, over time, infuses the message that there is some inherent value in being respected by another...

● And like any financial transaction, this Respect is to be "held in trust" as a bankable commodity in the world of human behaviour.

● The act of "being entrusted" with the Respect of another, denotes a degree of trustworthiness between two individuals.

● However, Respect is not achieved through its earning power alone.

● Rather, the altruistic nature of Respect demands that it also be paid forward.

● This 2-step process is the dynamic by which Respect is both Realized and Actualized.

● The cycle of earning and paying Respect, is an integral part in the cycle of the Natural Law Order of "being and becoming" whereupon, the once entrusted becomes the entrustee.

● Respect begets Trustworthiness which in turn begets Respect.

● And in the spirit of this mercenary imagery, it would be fair to say that the high dividend paid by Respect for soldiering the Revolution of Respect on a global level is World Pride... and Peace.

Funny that!

THE JIG IS UP!

by JP Michaels
June 2020

• COVID-19 The perfect dress rehearsal to a REVOLUTION

• COVID - 19 has empirically demonstrated to the global psyche that humankind has the grit to respond and adapt on a massive scale of global proportions at a moment's notice.

My Point: Nothing, and I mean nothing, should take hundreds of years to address.

The jig is up!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, human-kind can no longer claim voluntary ignorance: to know right is to do right. I remember watching a cartoon as a child:

"The Dudley Do-Right Show (1969–1970). The adventures of Canada's dumbest member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police"☆

Enough said.

Oh well his heart was in the right place

• We Humans have been brought to our knees by a virus that is not able to be seen by the naked eye.

• In solidarity, we remain on our knees with arms outstretched and fists held high, against a virus, as big as life itself, that has been staring us in the face for hundreds and hundreds of years.

• What's wrong with this picture?

The Iceman Returneth

by JP Michaels
May 2020

Have you ever had the experience of having a very young childhood memory verified decades later? And because your memory is verified in a very matter-of-fact way, it makes your memory all the more less imagined, all the more tangibly real, because now you have proof your memory once had actual life.

This past weekend , I was quite serendipitously confronted with a childhood memory. The memory was resurrected in the form of a @1959 b/w photograph. Pictured in the photograph is a young @18 years old, tall,Nordic in appearance Iceman whose chiseled physical presence always captivated me as a child particularly as he would carry a heavy ice-picked block of ice away from the back bed of a truck. Immediately upon gazing at the picture, I said I know that man, I know that truck! That man and that truck have been part of a very fond childhood memory. It is a memory which involves stealing, yes... stealing, at least that's the way I relish the thought as a naughty four year old.

I, along with my playmates, would always greet this young man driving his truck while on delivery. We always hung around long enough to steal ice chips strewn onto the wood-slatted floor of the open flatbed. This skulduggery always happened while the chiseled Iceman was completing his delivery to the "cold closet" inside old lady So-and-So's house on Ferguson Street, next to our house. To this day, a shard of cold, delicious ice on my tongue always brings me back to this moment pictured here when a childhood memory came back to life this past weekend, however fleeting, when The Iceman Returneth.

An Historical Excerpt

"The delivery of ice to the Ward and other parts of Guelph dates to the late 1900s when John Halliburton began the Halliburton and Sons Ice Merchant Company. His sons Kelly, Jack and Pat were all involved in the ice company. In the late 40s and early 50s, Jack and Pat delivered ice to many homes and stores in the Ward.

Most people could not afford a fridge so perishable food was stored in an insulated “ice box” (also called the cold closet) that was usually made of wood and lined with tin or zinc. Although the ice was certified by the Medical Board of Health, sometimes the odd minnow or two was found when a block of ice melted. In the winter months, the Halliburton’s cut blocks of ice from the Speed River at the end of Clarence Street and later from a pond at Ignatius College on Highway 6."

By Joe Tersigni (The Tersigni family lived on Morris and Elizabeth Streets in St. Patrick’s Ward)

The Naked Truth

Adult Content Below

By JP Michaels

I have often wondered how a self-professed, unapologetic, clothes-horse like myself can lay claim to such descriptors in the face of one, bold and bare fact: I am Mr Nude Toronto 1998, and I have the sash to prove it!

On an uncharacteristically warm late May Friday evening 1998, 250 naked men crowded into one of Toronto's bastion of gay watering holes known as 'The Toolbox' (Eastern Avenue) to witness the first Mr. Nude Toronto contest. I was chosen from a roster of 14 contestants. I shall leave the details of the criteria for the selection process to your own imaginations (read: dirty minds).

To my way of thinking, my current sartorial efforts and my past naked escapades place me in a very unique position to make some kind of statement so here it is:

I always felt fiercely empowered and self-possessed when I presented myself unclothed in public. Surprisingly, I feel the identical fierce empowerment and self-possession when I present myself with sartorial elegance. I am proud to have presented myself unclothed and I am proud to present myself clothed. I guess you could say I'm versatile.

Le Chapeau de Mon Grandpère

treas·ure /ˈtreZHər/: noun a quantity of precious metals, gems, or other valuable objects.
No doubt you are familiar with the adage,
"one person's trash is another's treasure".
What you are looking at is my paternal grandfather's gardening hat. Of all the beautiful and valuable 'objects d'art' I have acquired over many years of collecting, the most valued and meaningful item is my grandfather's gardening hat (le chapeau de mon grandpère). To this day etched indelibly in my memory, is the fond recollection of a preschooler in the late 1950's helping my grandfather in the mornings in his bountiful garden. As the heat of the noon day sun approached he would send me to the garage to fetch this hat which always hung precariously from the same rusty nail on the left hand side toward the back. When my grandfather passed in June of 1976, I wanted only one thing and I knew exactly where to look.

By JP Michaels
April 2020

A Thank You Stone Moment

Today I felt the world. The few times over the past several weeks that I have stepped outside onto the street, it doesn't take me very long to realize that the street has changed, the world has been changed, I have changed. I'm alone on the street, when I catch myself having a moment of feeling the world.
I don't quite know how to explain this feeling. It certainly is inclusive. There is an enormity packed into this one feeling. It is a feeling of thankfulness. My moments of feeling the world have a sense of warmth.
It's odd actually because it is usually when I have travelled the world that I am visited by these global thoughts of community, of connectedness, of this "we're-all-in-this-together" moment. This moment of "feeling the world" is spawned by a deafening silence and stillness of the heart. This feeling never stays very long. It is best described as a nano-second roar of my soul in the moment when my heart feels what my brain knows. And to think I didn't even have to get dressed.

By JP Michaels
April 2020