Sign the Petition for Floyd

https://www.change.org/p/mayor-jacob-frey-justice-for-george-floyd

The Province of Manitoba in Canada Covid-19 Update

I am very pleased and proud of Manitoba and its residents.

By the time Covid-19 hit Canada, the rest of the world was already experiencing the tragic effects of this virus, we were ramping up our strategies to contain it.  Unfortunately the provinces of Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta were hit hardest and by the time we had our first case in Manitoba it was March 12th.  Most of the business sector voluntarily closed their doors and went home which greatly helped to contain the virus.  We are now at April 30 and to date we have 273 cases with 6 deaths, our cases are currently growing by 1-2 cases a day, sometimes 0.  Premier Brian Pallister announced yesterday that Manitoba will begin to re-open on Monday, May 4th and the list is vast enough to get people back to their jobs and restart the economy.  He has done an absolutely smashing job along with many other folks to get us up and running in order to save the economy from complete collapse.  Here is our re-opening plan!  And people joke about Winnipeg all the time as being one of the most undesirable cities to live in, but hey, am I glad I do!

https://www.gov.mb.ca/covid19/restoring/phase-one.html


                Restoration

Everyone knew the water would rise,

but nobody knew how much.

The priest at Santa Croce said, God

will not flood the church.

When the Arno broke its banks,

God entered as a river, let His mark high

above the altar.

He left nothing untouched:

stones, plaster, wood.

You are all my children.

The hem of His garment, which was

the river’s bottom sludge,

swept through Florence, filling cars and cradles,

the eyes of marble statues,

even the Doors of Paradise. And the likeness

of His son’s hands, those pierced palms soaked

with water, began to peel like skin.

The Holy Ghost appeared

as clouds of salted crystals

on the faces of saints, until the intonaco

of their painted bodies stood out from the wall as if

they had been resurrected.

This is what I know of restoration:

in a small room near San Marco,

alone on a wooden stool

nearly every day for a year,

I painted squares of blue on gessoed boards—

cobalt blue with madder rose, viridian,

lamp black—pure pigments and the strained yolk

of an egg, then penciled notes about the powders,

the percentages of each. I never asked

to what end I was doing what I did, and now

I’ll never know. Perhaps there was one square

that matched the mantle of a penitent, the stiff

hair of a donkey’s tail, a river calm beneath a bridge.

I don’t even know what I learned,

except the possibilities of blue, and how God enters.

               Mary Cornish

Open and Closed Spaces

Open and Closed Spaces

Tomas Tranströmer

Translated from the Swedish by Robin Fulton

A man feels the world with his work like a glove.
He rests for a while at midday having laid aside the gloves on a shelf.
There they suddenly grow, spread
and black out the whole house from inside.

The blacked-out house is away out among the winds of spring.
“Amnesty,” runs the whisper in the grass: “amnesty.”
A boy sprints with an invisible line slanting up in the sky
where his wild dream of the future lies like a kite bigger than the suburb.

Further north you can see from a summit the blue endless carpet of pine forest
where the cloud shadows
are standing still.
No, are flying.

Hope

Czeslaw Milosz

Hope is with you when you believe

The earth is not a dream but living flesh,

That sight, touch, and hearing do not lie,

That all things you have ever seen here

Are like a garden looked at from a gate.

You cannot enter. But you're sure it's there.

Could we but look more clearly and wisely

We might discover somewhere in the garden

A strange new flower and an unnamed star.

Some people say we should not trust our eyes,

That there is nothing, just a seeming,

These are the ones who have no hope.

They think that the moment we turn away,

The world, behind our backs, ceases to exist,

As if snatched up by the hands of thieves.