Happy Chanukah

I wish a Happy Chanukah to everyone reading this.

Emerald Rose - Santa Claus is Pagan Too

Video of song sung by the Georgia Celtic Fusion band Emerald Rose. The slide show was created by the following people:

http://www.youtube.com/user/cryingfairygirl#p/a/u/0/B8i0ypSqBxE

Ben's Delicatessen

(adapted from Wikipedia)

Bens De Luxe Delicatessen and Restaurant was a
renowned delicatessen in Montreal. The restaurant was best known for its famous smoked meat sandwich and its claim of being the originator of the dish. During its heyday it was a favorite spot for celebrities and a popular late-night dining fixture in the downtown core. It had been in operation for nearly a century, spanning from 1908 to 2006. At 98 years old, it was the oldest deli in the city at the time of its closing.

Latvian immigrants Ben and Fanny Kravitz first
opened the restaurant in 1908 as a small counter shop restaurant on Saint Lawrence Boulevard in Montreal. In 1929, it relocated downtown at de Maisonneuve (formerly Burnside) and Mansfield, and then to its final location on de Maisonneuve and Metcalfe in 1950. The restaurant was open 23 hours a day, closed for only one hour for cleaning. The 1001 Burnside location, then in the theatre district and behind the Sheraton Mount Royal Hotel, was a popular late-night dining haunt for celebrities and movie stars.

In later years Kravitz passed the business on to his son, Irving Kravitz, who would often be seen working at the deli.

During its time many well known or famous people
frequented the restaurant, including Canadian Prime Ministers Pierre Trudeau and Paul Martin, Quebec Premier René Lévesque, entertainers Leonard Cohen, Ed Sullivan, Burl Ives, Bette Midler, Jack Benny and Liberace, and sportsmen Bob Geary and Jean Béliveau (one of the many Montreal Canadiens hockey players that frequented the deli).

The 1990s brought difficult times for Ben's, with the death of Ben's owner followed shortly by labour disputes on top of declining patronage. Irving Kravitz died in 1992 and left the business in the hands of his wife Jean and their son Elliot. This was seen as a turning point, as the business began to decline, with the staff steadily reduced  and the quality of the food and service lesser than in previous years. Operating hours were gradually reduced until the restaurant stayed open 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. (2 a.m. on weekends) by the end. In 1995 the employees formed a union which often was at odds with the owners.

The beginning of the end started on July 20, 2006
when the unionized employees walked off the job and began a long-term strike. The restaurant was forced to close during this period and would never again reopen.

The end finally came on December 15, 2006, when, during the strike, Ben's owners made an
agreement with real estate developer SIDEV Realty Corporation to sell the building and property. It was also on this day Ben's officially announced the permanent closure of the restaurant and gave all its staff notice that their employment had been terminated, bringing an end to the history of Ben's deli.

Demolition of the building commenced September 25, 2008, Final demolition was done between November 1 and 2, 2008, with the remainder of the building torn down by mechanical shovel.

Here is an undated photograph of one of the more-famous patrons walking home from the Delicatessen:

View from my Balcony

This is the view from the balcony of my new apartment. It was made from three Polaroid photos. These photos were then combined into a single panorama using the "Pandora" plug-in for the GIMP. The original photography was done a couple of months ago when there were still leaves on the trees.

Before You Grow Old

Simple Steps to Combat the H1N1 Virus

Sixty Years Since the Peekskill Riots

http://www.forward.com/articles/113279/

Sixty Years Since the Peekskill Riots

Two Decades Before Woodstock, Attacks on Blacks and Jews at a New York Concert

By Jeffrey K. Salkin

Published September 02, 2009

The last time I was in Peekskill, New York I was desperate for a Starbucks. Alas, no Starbucks in Peekskill. But that did not prevent me from driving through its streets, catching glimpses of the Hudson River, and remembering that L. Frank Baum, the author of “The Wizard of Oz,” apparently spent part of his youth in Peekskill (as did Mel Gibson, Paul “Pee-wee Herman” Reubens, and former New York governor George Pataki, who has lived there for essentially his whole life and who served as its mayor) and knew of a local yellow brick road that inspired him to write.

Yet, there is something else about Peekskill. There are probably not many people alive today who remember it; perhaps long-time, aging residents or scholars of American social or musical history. It is a story of terror, a cautionary tale for an America in which vituperation barely tries to pass for civilized discourse.

It happened exactly sixty years ago, at the end of August 1949. The prominent singer and actor Paul Robeson (described in those days as a “Negro”), along with other artists such as Woody Guthrie, Lee Hays and Pete Seeger, was scheduled to give an open-air concert in Peekskill. This was not to be the first time that Robeson was to appear in the Peekskill area. Indeed, it was to be the fourth Robeson concert in as many summers. Mohegan Colony east of Peekskill near Yorktown, a cooperative community that served as an experiment in egalitarian living and child rearing, had hosted the concert in 1946. In 1947, the site was Peekskill Stadium, and in 1948 it was in nearby Crompond.

But 1949’s concert was to be different. Guthrie, Seeger and Hays were all prominent leftists. So, famously, was Robeson. In the years following World War Two, his politics had moved farther to the left, as he used his considerable public voice to protest fascism, as well as the American failure to fully integrate its society in the aftermath of the war in which so many black servicemen had given their lives. Two months before the concert, Robeson had said at the Paris Peace Conference: “It is unthinkable that the Negro people of America or elsewhere…would be drawn into war with the Soviet Union,” because it was the only nation in the world to outlaw race discrimination. As anti-Communist agitation grew in America, so, too, did the rage against Robeson’s perceived Communist loyalties. The slur was common: Robeson owed allegiance to the Soviet Union. Apparently, in a contest for thickness and thoroughness, Robeson’s FBI file would have put John Lennon’s to shame.

The demography of Peekskill and its neighboring northern Westchester Hudson River communities was mixed, even schizophrenic. On the one hand, there were the summer people and weekenders, many of whom were middle-class Jews with left-of-center leanings. On the other hand, there were the year-round residents, more working class and conservative, whose resentment, and even open hostility to the “summer people” had been steadily growing. 

In the event, screaming local mobs blocked the entrance to the concert area and harassed concertgoers. The veterans’ groups paraded along the highway, automobile horns blared, and patriotic bands played. Attackers screamed: “We’re Hitler’s boys — here to finish his job.” A crowd of drunken locals attacked the people who were setting up for the concert. One of their leaders, according to journalist Howard Fast, was a prominent businessman in Peekskill.

The mob increased to five hundred, then to a thousand. A little after eight o’clock in the evening, the attackers burned a twelve-foot cross on the picnic grounds. From burning a cross they progressed to burning books, sheet music and chairs, while the performers and concert-goers, arms linked together, sang such songs as “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “God Bless America” and “Solidarity Forever.” The concertgoers, artists and organizers tried to defend the concert site, but by the time the evening was over, every defender had been injured. 

A wave of hatred and panic spread through northern Westchester. Up and down the Hudson River towns, signs and bumper stickers appeared: “Wake Up America — Peekskill Did!” “Communism Is Treason. Behind Communism Stands — the Jew! Therefore, for my country — against the Jews!” Vacationers and weekend visitors fled — many forever, abandoning the area as a vacation spot because of the outbreak of “fascist influences.” A summer colony in the area organized a round-the-clock vigil against outside attack. Local Jewish residents were terrorized; it was, according to some, like living through a pogrom.

Apparently undeterred, the organizers re-scheduled the Robeson concert for Sunday, September 4. It was to be held at two o’clock in the afternoon at the Hollow Brook Country Club, about a half-mile from the earlier concert site, three miles northeast of Peekskill. Twenty-five thousand people attended. Many of them were trade union members; about forty percent of the crowd was women, and one local resident estimate that about eighty percent were Jews.

The program opened with music by Liszt, Mozart, Bach, Verdi and Chopin. Then, Guthrie, Seeger and Hays appeared, singing American folk songs and topical songs. Then, Robeson came on, singing a medley of songs ranging from Spanish Civil War melodies to civil rights anthems. He performed the last aria from “Boris Godunov,” and finished up with his famous rendition of “Old Man River.”

The concert ended at around four o’clock in the afternoon. As cars and buses started to depart from the concert grounds, police routed the vehicles through the northern Westchester woods and up a steep, winding road. There, crowds of men and boys were waiting. As if on cue, they hurled rocks at the vehicles. More than fifty buses and countless cars had their windows smashed; at least fifteen cars were overturned. Bus drivers abandoned their vehicles and fled on foot, leaving about a thousand of their passengers stranded.

The violence overflowed even to people who had not attended the concert. Some men and boys noticed a bus of blacks travelling along the highway, on their way back to New York from a field trip to visit the Roosevelt home in Hyde Park and attacked it. At least one hundred and fifty people were injured badly enough to warrant medical attention.

Leslie Matthews, a staff correspondent for the now-defunct black newspaper New York Age, offered this eyewitness account:

I hear the wails of women, the impassioned screams of children, the jeers and taunts of wild-eyed youths. I still smell the sickening odor of blood flowing from freshly opened wounds, gasoline fumes from autos and buses valiantly trying to carry their loads of human targets out of the range of bricks, bottles, stones, sticks.

Years later, Pete Seeger would meet a young man folk singer who admitted to the elder statesman of American folk music that his father had been a police officer in Peekskill. The young man told Seeger: “You know, that riot was all arranged by the Ku Klux Klan and the police…They had walkie-talkies all through the woods. They had that place surrounded like a battlefield.”

The hatred became contagious — even entrepreneurial. Bill Hendrix, a Klan activist in Tallahassee, used the Peekskill opportunity to extend his newly created empire, the Original Southern Klans, Inc., which had split off from the Association of Georgia Klans. The Associated Press quoted him as saying that the Peekskill violence was “only the beginning. The crosses will begin to burn north of the Mason-Dixon Line tonight… as soon as the order gets through.” He lost no time. On the night of the Peekskill concert, six burning crosses had already appeared in Tallahassee. Each cross had a sign on it: “We protest Paul Robeson and Communism.”

James Edward Smythe, chairman of the Protestant War Veterans of the United States, Inc., who had been accused of Nazi collaboration in 1944, warned that the “Jewish race has worn out its welcome in this country” and that “some of your highest officials and big business executives” in Westchester would join the Klan in its fight against “Judeo-Communism.”

The riots contributed to a small but significant chapter in American political history. Former vice-president Henry Wallace had run for president on the leftist Progressive Party ticket in 1948, with Robeson and Seeger’s help. Shaken by the riots, and afraid that the Progressive Party had drifted too far to the Left, Wallace left the party, and it soon folded. Moreover, the Peekskill riots would become the musical prelude to the anti-Communist career of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Within a few months of the riots, McCarthy would raise the specter of Communist infiltration into the State Department: a haunting fear whose repercussions and implications would last for decades.

It’s a notable event in American history even if it is mainly remembered in folk music history. Pete Seeger, who turned ninety years old this year, along with the late Lee Hays, immortalized the event in the song “Hold The Line”:

Let me tell you the story of a line that was held,
And many brave men and women whose courage we know well,
How we held the line at Peekskill on that long September day!
We will hold the line forever till the people have their way.

Hold the line!
Hold the line!
As we held the line at Peekskill
We will hold it everywhere.
Hold the line!
Hold the line!
We will hold the line forever
Till there’s freedom ev’rywhere.

Words by Lee Hays; Music by Pete Seeger (1949)

The concerts at Peekskill happened twenty years, almost to the day, before Woodstock. Its aftermath was the anti-Woodstock. But is there any reason for a new generation to care about this sixty year old event in American history? The words of Leslie Matthews echo in our ears: “I still hear, smell and feel Peekskill.” Is there any reason why a new generation should hear, smell and feel what happened in Peekskill?

In several significant ways, the memory of Peekskill gives us pause. It reminds Jews and blacks that we have always had common enemies. It reminds us of the naïve Communist flirtations, and more, of the old Left — flirtations which led some to embrace Stalin and to only begrudgingly, if ever, denounce his homicidal policies. On the back of his 1966 live album “Phil Ochs In Concert,” the late troubadour reproduced the poetry of Mao Tse-Tung – poetry which is admittedly electric in its beauty – and asks: “Can this really be the enemy?” In fact, yes, Mao really could have been the enemy, and he really was. It turns out that even poets can be mass murderers.

Moreover: the heat and volume of the health care debate in America today, a debate in which labels like “Communist” and “socialist” are cast around gratuitously, reminds us that the virus of anti-Communist hysteria has hardly passed out of the American body politic. It reminds us that the “Communist” card and the race card are always available to be played. It reminds us that rage is seductive and that demagoguery is a perennial temptation.

Finally: As a forebear of the politics of vilification, the Peekskill event reminds us that words have consequences. And not only on the wooded back roads of northern Westchester County.

Jeffrey K. Salkin is a rabbi, teacher and writer who lives in Atlanta, Georgia. His most recent book is The Modern Men’s Torah Commentary (Jewish Lights).

Below, Pete Seeger discusses the Peekskill Riots with Majora Carter.

I am Cow

This is a song sung by the Ontario band, "The Arrogant Worms". Wouldn't make a bad national anthem, come to think of it.

Signs of the Times

Capitalism - A Love Story

The trailer for a new Michael Moore film coming out in a couple of weeks.

Benny Hill in New York

Some comic relief for a grim time.

Happy New Year 5770

I wish to wish everyone a Happy Hebrew New Year 5770.

Air

A moral tale about contemporary society

Update on Swine Flu

Hi, all. I don't want to worry you, but with all the hype and attention in the media recently concerning the spread of the H1N1 virus, I decided to ring the Government's new Swine Flu Helpline
yesterday just to check on what the symptoms are.

Basically,if you wake up looking like this:

Don't go to work!!!

Curiouser and Curiouser

I have been having trouble with Yahoo mail on this computer. I thought that the problem was completely the fault of Yahoo. But now, I notice that the problem seems to exist wnen I use Mozilla Firefox, but not when I use Google Chrome. Strange.

Is Yahoo sinking again???

I have been having trouble with my e-mail tonight. My primary e-mail is Yahoo Mail. I have been finding that certain pages were simply refusing to load.

 In order to check whether the problem is with Yahoo or my Firefox browser, I decided to download the "Chrome" browser from Google as a comparison. It turns out that with Chrome, I can't even access my Yahoo Mail.

Is anyone else having trouble with Yahoo Mail tonight???

Update, July 2009

It has been quite a while since I have been writing regular blog entries. The past 2 years or so have been such a horrific period for me that my concentration has been almost completely taken up with other things.

In November 2007, my father, who was then 96 years old, developed an infection in his toe. He had two operations in an attempt to improve the circulation to his foot. A few days after the second operation, complications developed, and he succumbed to kidney failure on April 11, 2008 at the age of 97.

During the period between November 2007 and April 2008, I visited my father in hospital almost every day that he was there. My mother has Alzheimer's, and my brother lives in Toronto, 400 miles away from me. Quebec politics has made sure that most of my relatives have moved away from Montreal, so I was the only person able to visit my father in hospital regularly.

My father passed away on Friday, April 11, 2008. On Monday, April 21, the owner of the apartment building that I was living in decided to start changing the building's heating system from Natural Gas to electric.

When the landlord saw the interior of my apartment, he decided that it was in a bad state of repair, and from then on he was trying to harass me into moving out. It even reached a point where he took me to the Rental Board in order to have me evicted. Details of all this are given in most of the blog entries written over the past year.

In the final hearing on February 19, 2009, a “compromise” resolution was reached whereas I had to leave the apartment when my lease expired on July 1 rather than me being immediately evicted in February.

It wasn't long before it was already the month of April and I was supposed to make preparations for moving. However, I did not seem to have the will power or the energy to do anything of the sort. So I started to procrastinate and make excuses. Soon, we were well into the month of May, and I still was not very eager to look for apartments or even pack things.

By the end of May, I finally started to look for apartments. It was quite a slow process. What would typically happen would be that I would phone a number and be greeted by an answering machine. I would then leave a message, but, usually, nobody ever phoned back in response to the message I left.

Finally, on Wednesday, June 3, I received a phone call in response to one of the messages I had left. I arranged to look at an apartment on Friday, June 5. It was a 3½ room apartment renting for $595.00 a month.

I went to look at the apartment on Friday, and it seemed suitable. However, it was then necessary to fill out an application so that a credit check could be made. Along with the application, it was necessary to leave a $100.00 deposit. I only had $80.00 on me.

I was willing to go home and bring more money, but the person who showed me the apartment, who turned out to be the owner of the building, had to go and pick up his son. He said he would be back at the building the following Tuesday at noon, and I could fill out the application then.

I was back at the apartment on Tuesday, June 9, at noon. The owner of the building handed me the application form to be filled out. He then left the apartment to do some other things in the building while I filled out the form.

After a while, the owner returned and looked over the form. He noticed that I had not filled out the phone number of the landlord of the building where I was still living, but he said that I could phone him back with the phone number and leave a message on his machine. He took the application form and my $100.00 deposit, and I then left.

I then went home and started to look for the old landlord's phone number. Surprisingly enough, it was not on any of the legal documents relating to the Rental Board case. I eventually found a telephone number online which was connected to the address I had for the landlord. I had previously seen some evidence that the landlord might have moved recently, but I hoped that phoning the old number might automatically get one directed to the new number. I suppose that it would have been better to try and get the landlord's phone number from the janitor of the building, but I didn't feel like bothering the janitor about it. So I phoned the owner and left the number that I had on his machine.

It was then Tuesday, June 9. I at that point assumed that I already had the apartment, so I did not look at any more apartments. My main emotion at that point was impatience, because the sooner the credit check was completed, the sooner I could start moving things into the apartment.

But Fate has a way of turning things around. On the morning of Wednesday, June 17, I received a phone call from the owner of the apartment building. My application for the apartment had been rejected. The owner could not reach my old landlord with the phone number I had given him. I had to come and pick up my $100.00 deposit. I was back at square zero, but this time, it was only two weeks before the day on which I was supposed to be moving out of the apartment I was then living in. The situation was becoming a lot trickier.

On Wednesday evening, I looked at another apartment. It was a 3½ , renting for $625.00 a month. The only problem with it was that it would not be available until Sunday, July 5, leaving me, my cat, and all my possessions with nowhere to go between July 1 and July 5.

An air of unreality was beginning to move into my life. Not only did I have nowhere to move to, but even if I found something, there would be no time to move any of my possessions from the old place to the new place.

By this point, it was only a few days before the Summer Solstice of June 21. Perhaps it would be better to wait until after the Solstice before doing anything else.

By Monday, June 22, I had decided that my best bet was to fill out an application for the 3½ room apartment that would become available on July 5. I handed in an application that evening, except that this time, I had contacted the janitor of the old building to make sure that I had the correct phone number for the landlord.

On the morning of Thursday, June 25, the telephone rang. It was from the company that owned the building that I had applied to move into. It seemed that the 3½ room apartment that I had looked at had already been promised to someone already living in the building. All that they had available now were 4 ½ s – three of them! I was told that the rent for each of them would be $725.00 a month. Would I be interested in renting one of them?

My first feeling about this situation was that I would not be able to afford the $725.00 in rent. When I told this to the woman from the company, she said that if I changed my mind, I should phone the janitor and arrange to look at the apartments.

I spent the rest of that day cursing everyone, especially myself. Had I not screwed it up with the first apartment, and taken more trouble to find my old landlord's address, I would probably be in the middle of moving stuff from the old apartment to the new one rather than still be looking for an apartment.

By the late afternoon, I began to feel more and more uneasy. I began to feel as if I would have been better off trying to get one of the 4½ room apartments. By the following day, I had changed my mind, and I contacted the janitor to see one of the apartments. The apartment that I saw was already unoccupied, so I would not have to wait in order to move in. I handed in an application by Friday evening, June 26.

On Tuesday morning, June 30, I received another phone call. The credit check had gone through, and I could sign the lease on the coming Friday, although the rent would be $750.00 rather than $725.00. I said that I had to be out of the old apartment by Wednesday, and that Friday was a bit late for signing the lease. They speeded up the process, and I was supposed to sign the lease that evening. But the Fates had one more trick up their sleeves. It turned out that the building had just switched janitors that day. So I kept dialing the wrong number until after 10 PM, when I was finally informed about the change. So I had to wait until Wednesday morning to sign the lease.

So it was Wednesday morning, July 1, 2009, when I finally signed the lease. After another delay, when I had to have a copy of the apartment key made (since the janitor possessed the only existing copy), I was ready to start moving.

There are a couple of things that I should mention at this point, or else this whole account won't make much sense.

Firstly, the new apartment is only a ten-minute walk from the old one.

Secondly, July 1 is the “official” moving day in the Province of Quebec. This means that it would be impossible to rent a truck for moving at the last minute. Most moving companies and rental trucks are booked for July 1 months in advance.

I went back to the old apartment and phoned some friends who offered to help me move. They had a hand truck which could be used to move small pieces of furniture. After the first trip to the new apartment, we found that there was an enormous shopping cart sitting in the hallway not far from the new apartment. So this shopping cart was also used in the move.

After a few trips had been made this way, the friends had to go to another event for a couple of hours. While I was waiting in the old apartment for them to return, the old landlord showed up. I had phoned him the previous night in order to find out how much time I had to vacate the apartment, and I had left a message on his machine. He said that he would allow me until Friday morning, July 3, to move out, and that if I stayed any longer than that, he would expect me to pay $600.00 for another month's rent. It was at that point Wednesday evening when I was talking to him.

The two friends returned and the move resumed. They told me that we should move enough things in order for me to be able to sleep in the new place on Wednesday night. The futon which I slept on was removed from the bed frame where it had been used and was rolled up for moving to the new apartment.

A few more trips took place that night. On the last of these, Tigger, the cat, was brought over in a pet carrier. The two friends took their leave, and I prepared to go to sleep for the night. I then realized that all the cat food and the food and water bowls were still in the old apartment. It was necessary for me to make one more trip that night. Tigger started to cry like crazy when he he saw me leaving the new apartment, but it could not be helped.

I went back to the old apartment and brought back Tigger's bowls and food. At least, he would have food to eat and water to drink that night. After feeding the cat and myself as well, I finally went to bed. I would have a long day on Thursday.

I woke up fairly early on Thursday morning. By 10 AM, I was on my way to the old apartment to bring more stuff back. I was now doing it by myself. I couldn't expect my friends to spend a second day helping me.

When I arrived back at the new building, I ran into the janitor there. Some tenants who had just moved out had left some furniture there, and he wanted to know if I wanted it. I of course accepted the offer. The next hour or so was spent helping the janitor move the furniture into my apartment. Then it was back to the moving.

After the second trip of the day had been made, I started using the shopping cart again to move things. It was awkward using it by myself to move things into the new building, but it made the ten-minute trip between the two apartments a lot easier.

Most of the next 20 hours or so was spent moving stuff from the old apartment to the new apartment. Stuff was placed in small plastic bags, and these bags were in turn placed into larger bags. These larger bags (garbage bags, actually) were then put into the shopping cart for transport to the new apartment. This went on almost continuously, day and night, until about 10 AM on Friday morning. I must have looked like the ultimate bag lady. I found the whole experience quite surrealistic.

At about 10 AM on Friday, July 3, I made my last trip back to the old apartment. By that point, I was already afraid that I would run into the old landlord when he came to take possession of the old apartment. I filled up the shopping cart one last time and hoped for the best.

By the time I got back to the new apartment building, I was surprised to see a couple of huge moving vans in front of it. Someone had just moved into the building from Quebec City, 150 miles away. I just sat down outside the building with the shopping cart, waiting for an opportunity to move my stuff in. I was no longer in such I hurry. I didn't have the courage to make any more trips to the old apartment. Besides, I was much too tired by then, not having slept for over 24 hours.

Eventually, I was able to bring my stuff up.

It was over. I had moved.

Yahoo, you've done it again!

If any of you use Yahoo e-mail, you may have suddenly noticed a large number of IM windows suddenly appearing on your screen.

 What seems to have happened is that Yahoo has decided to make IM chat available from Yahoo e-mail. You no longer have in install a separate Yahoo Messenger program which may not even work properly anyways. Now you can even chat while you're trying to compose and send out an e-mail.

Actually, the problem with this version of chat is that it takes every single entry in your Yahoo Address Book and puts it into your chat list. Even if an address was entered into your address book simply to prevent e-mail from the sender from being accidentally put into the spam folder, Yahoo has decided that the address should be in your IM list. So, all sorts of people can now see when you are online and bother you at will.

What a wonderful bit of progress!

The following article is from:

http://www.hardmanacupuncture-tcm.com/article-avian-flu-tamiflu.htm

Tamiflu's main ingredient plentiful in Chinatown Dried Star Anise Friut is a digestive, stimulant and diuretic remedy Star anise | The herb pictured left, reputedly in short supply for antiviral drug, is available at Toronto herb stores. Oct. 30, 2005. 12:20 AM ALBERT NERENBERG SPECIAL TO THE STAR The main ingredient for Tamiflu, the widely sought-after treatment for avian flu, is literally right under our noses. While Roche, the Swiss manufacturer of Tamiflu (generic name: oseltamivir), suspended shipments of the anti-viral drug last week, citing a shortage of the Chinese herb it is made from, that herb can be had by ordering spareribs at most Chinese restaurants. Tamiflu, which reduces the symptoms of avian flu but can't cure or prevent it, is made from star anise, a naturally occurring herb that is harvested in four Chinese provinces between March and May. The licorice-flavoured herb is used in many standard Chinese dishes, including spareribs and five-spice duck. It is known to bring out the flavour in stewed meats and is an ingredient in traditional Chinese five spice powder available in most grocery stores. A survey of Chinese herb shops on Dundas St. W. found many were stocking the dried, strong-smelling, star-shaped plant that is also known by its Cantonese name, bat gok. At least one store manager couldn't understand Roche claiming it could not supply enough Tamiflu because of the scarcity of the herb. "Down in my basement, I've got crate after crate of star anise," says William Chiu, manager of Po Chi Tong Chinese Natural Herbs. Chiu sells the dried stars for $7 a pound. In Chinese medicine, star anise has been used to treat respiratory blockage, which is the way some medical experts have said the avian flu kills its victims. Star anise is a natural expectorant, which may point to its role in Tamiflu. (It is also distinct from the Japanese variety of star anise that, in its tea form, was the subject of a recent FDA advisory about possible links to seizures and other complications.) But before you race down to Chinatown to cook up your own batch of the alleged anti-viral wonder drug, consider this: According to Roche, star anise and Tamiflu are very different things. Roche uses the herb as a source of shikimic acid, which is extracted from the seeds of the star anise and converted to epoxide in three chemical steps carried out at low temperature on seven separate sites. At one point after that, the process produces azide, a highly explosive substance. The substance is only handled in tiny quantities, again at different locations, by specialized companies. Finally, one year and many laboratories later (and barring a massive explosion), you get Tamiflu. For practitioners of Chinese medicine, the natural source of Tamiflu is particularly intriguing. "Tamiflu is a Chinese herbal remedy," says Chiu, who operates a large herb emporium with several doctors of traditional Chinese medicine working right in the store. "They're basically taking the herb and pulling out a particular essence. That curative aspect of the plant itself is what led them to Tamiflu." That's interesting, says Chiu, because, from a Chinese medicine perspective, it's evidence that there may be approaches to treating avian flu that don't rely solely on hoarding an under-supplied pharmaceutical product. Traditional Chinese medicine places emphasis on the careful use of natural herbs and the strengthening of the body's immune system. "If you're worried about avian flu, strengthen your immune system," says Chiu. "Take ginseng, astragali and wolfberry, and exercise. That's really the best way overall." Chiu says, once the avian flu scare passes, the world might be hit by a different killer flu that Tamiflu will have no effect on. "You may be better off protecting yourself, in general, naturally." Albert Nerenberg is a Toronto documentary filmmaker.

 

 

All content copyright © 2006 Hardman Acupuncture

3-D View of My Bedroom

I had been taking Polaroid photos of my apartment for legal purposes. I wasn't satisfied with the photo I had taken of my bedroom, so I tried to take another one. I then realized that I could use the two photographs to make a 3-D anaglyph view of my bedroom.

If you wish to see it in 3-D, you need a set of the glasses they give out when you go to see a 3-D movie. Uses the glasses so that the red filter is in front of the LEFT eye, if you want to see the image in 3-D.

My Dewey Decimal Quiz Results

           

           

                Jack Nathanson's Dewey Decimal Section:
                734 Sculpture from ca. 500 to 1399
                Jack Nathanson = 0131410814954 = 013+141+081+495+4 = 734
               
Class:
700 Arts & Recreation

                Contains:
Architecture, drawing, painting, music, sports.               

                What it says about you:
You're creative and fun, and you're good at motivating the people around you.  You're attracted to things that are visually interesting.  Other people might not always understand your taste or style, but it's yours.           

            Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com           

           

3-D Room Scene

Among the ridiculously large number of accounts that I have is one on Friendster, which I hardly ever go to. In any case, there is now the opportunity to have a 3-D scene on one's profile. So this is what I ended up with.

Validation

Something to make you smile

Weird Spam

I guess there must be some people with too much time on their hands - way too much time! This ad (if that's what it is) arrived in my e-mail today, although it got automatically dumped into the Spam folder. What I'm wondering is, why would someone bother sending this type of mail to countries where very few people would even be able to read it???

Yet Another Way to Waste Time

There are countless things that one can do on computers and the Internet. Unfortunately, some can be pretty addictive and not all that useful. One of these is an application called "SuperPoke! Pets".

This application is fairly ubiquitous, being available on Facebook, MySpace, and even Hi5. It gives you an opportunity to have an online virtual pet that you can play with, and your friends can play with as well. By playing with your own and your friends' pets, you can earn "coins", enabling you to purchase all sorts of items for your pets. And if you are too impatient for that, you can even purchase "gold" coins with your credit card or PayPal, enabling you to obtain certain premium items. All of this, of course, seems to consume an inordinate amount of time.

In any case, if any of you are already hooked on this, here are the links to my virtual cat, Clementine, first on MySpace:

http://captain_jack.superpokepets.com/?se=n4NAfnY7nTQ6nzoneBM173UrWx8ayF9kl-pfbKMa88dUB9GxCkYZhiDb3C-gRCp9zGQbbYGYO-Ub6NFuj_uTX2OnHmvW7sBHs3uLr6neNxE

and then on Facebook:

http://superpokepets.com/spp/login?bounce_url=http%3A%2F%2FCaptain-Jack.superpokepets.com


Clementine could sure use the company.

Ghost Ship

I never expected to be making this particular blog entry. I had expected Yahoo! 360 to be long gone by now. But it still seems to be there, although long ago abandoned by it's owner, Yahoo!, and left to sail the High Seas of cyberspace bereft of captain and crew.

In any case, I decided that it was time to update my Yahoo! 360 blog. It is now entitled "Ghost Ship". Take a look at it if you care to.

A Portent of the Future???

Is this Canadian Press article a hint of what things are going to be like in the future?

Baxter product contained live bird flu virus

By Helen Branswell, THE CANADIAN PRESS

Last Updated: 27th February 2009, 3:26pm

The company that released contaminated flu virus material from a plant in Austria confirmed Friday that the experimental product contained live H5N1 avian flu viruses.

And an official of the World Health Organization’s European operation said the body is closely monitoring the investigation into the events that took place at Baxter International’s research facility in Orth-Donau, Austria.

“At this juncture we are confident in saying that public health and occupational risk is minimal at present,” medical officer Roberta Andraghetti said from Copenhagen, Denmark.

“But what remains unanswered are the circumstances surrounding the incident in the Baxter facility in Orth-Donau.”

The contaminated product, a mix of H3N2 seasonal flu viruses and unlabelled H5N1 viruses, was supplied to an Austrian research company. The Austrian firm, Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, then sent portions of it to sub-contractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany.

The contamination incident, which is being investigated by the four European countries, came to light when the subcontractor in the Czech Republic inoculated ferrets with the product and they died. Ferrets shouldn’t die from exposure to human H3N2 flu viruses.

Public health authorities concerned about what has been described as a “serious error” on Baxter’s part have assumed the death of the ferrets meant the H5N1 virus in the product was live. But the company, Baxter International Inc., has been parsimonious about the amount of information it has released about the event.

On Friday, the company’s director of global bioscience communications confirmed what scientists have suspected.

“It was live,” Christopher Bona said in an email.

The contaminated product, which Baxter calls “experimental virus material,” was made at the Orth-Donau research facility. Baxter makes its flu vaccine — including a human H5N1 vaccine for which a licence is expected shortly — at a facility in the Czech Republic.

People familiar with biosecurity rules are dismayed by evidence that human H3N2 and avian H5N1 viruses somehow co-mingled in the Orth-Donau facility. That is a dangerous practice that should not be allowed to happen, a number of experts insisted.

Accidental release of a mixture of live H5N1 and H3N2 viruses could have resulted in dire consequences.

While H5N1 doesn’t easily infect people, H3N2 viruses do. If someone exposed to a mixture of the two had been simultaneously infected with both strains, he or she could have served as an incubator for a hybrid virus able to transmit easily to and among people.

That mixing process, called reassortment, is one of two ways pandemic viruses are created.

There is no suggestion that happened because of this accident, however.

“We have no evidence of any reassortment, that any reassortment may have occurred,” said Andraghetti.

“And we have no evidence of any increased transmissibility of the viruses that were involved in the experiment with the ferrets in the Czech Republic.”

Baxter hasn’t shed much light — at least not publicly — on how the accident happened. Earlier this week Bona called the mistake the result of a combination of “just the process itself, (and) technical and human error in this procedure.”

He said he couldn’t reveal more information because it would give away proprietary information about Baxter’s production process.

Andraghetti said Friday the four investigating governments are co-operating closely with the WHO and the European Centre for Disease Control in Stockholm, Sweden.

“We are in very close contact with Austrian authorities to understand what the circumstances of the incident in their laboratory were,” she said.

“And the reason for us wishing to know what has happened is to prevent similar events in the future and to share lessons that can be learned from this event with others to prevent similar events. ... This is very important.”

Does this make any sense?

In the 1990's, long before I had a computer, I used to do a lot of channeling. Not just words, but sometimes pictures and diagrams as well.
The above image was done on the wall of my bedroom in the late 1990's. Since I won't be living here by the summer, I photographed it in order to have a record of it.. I decided to post it here to see if it makes any sense to anyone reading this.

As Good a Deal as I Could Get?

The hearing took place at the Rental Board this afternoon. The judge tried to get the parties concerned to reach an agreement before the actual hearing would have to take place. I had already sent the landlord a letter saying that I would not renew my lease when it expired on June 30, 2009. This formed the basis of the agreement. I stated that I would not renew my lease when it expired on June 30, 2009, and the landlord stated that he would not try to sue me for the $15,000 to $20,000 damages that he claimed I had done to the apartment by living there for so long. This agreement will now be made into a binding judgment which will allow me to stay in the apartment until June 30, but not any longer than that. So I'm in a better position than I have been for months.

The picture at the top of this blog entry shows the computer used to write these blog entries. It was taken with a Polaroid camera, and the lens was not that good, but it shows you what I have to work with when I write these blogs.

I suppose that I should be thankful that I can use a "Flock" browser, which works reasonably quickly even with a computer with a CPU of only 333 MHz. With this particular computer, Firefox 3 is about as fast as a lumbering elephant.

Burning Bridges Behind Me

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Love is the law, love under will.
There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt."

For those of you who don't recognize it, what is written above is the law of Thelema as promulgated by Aleister Crowley. The way Crowley expressed it is that every person has a True Will or Destiny which he or she is supposed to attain during his or her lifetime. A person who follows his or her True Will is supposed to meet with success in all of his or her endeavours. Failing to follow one's True Will dooms one to ignominious failure.

The events of the last 10 months have led me to the conclusion that it is time for me to move out of the place where I am living. If that is what my True Will is trying to tell me, then, at least in theory, my life should improve after moving out of here.

I have taken the first step, and sent a registered letter to the landlord, saying that I am not going to renew my lease on this apartment when it expires on June 30, 2009, even if I win at the Rental Board.

Let us see if the Law of Thelema actually works.

Not Out of the Woods Yet

The judgment posted in the previous blog entry merely entitled me to a new hearing. This shows you where we are now:

The Decision on the Revocation of the Judgment

The decision mentioned in the last couple of blog entries is finally online. Here it is:

The DADA Manifesto and the DADA Movement

http://n1k0s.multiply.com/journal/item/193/The_DADA_Manifesto_and_the_DADA_Movement
This is a movement which revolutionized art and a lot of other things. Although started during World War I, it is just as relevant almost a century later.

Some Success, but Mercury still has a Good Laugh

I assume that the retrograde Mercury was responsible for a large part of what happened to me tonight. I was busy waiting for the decision from the Rental Board to arrive in the mail. I finally went down and picked up the mail. Yup. There it was. A letter from the Rental Board. With trepidation, I opened the envelope, and extracted the piece of paper inside. It seemed a bit thin for a judgment. I had a bit of trouble reading the French, and then I realized why. What I was reading was not the judgment, but information telling me how a judgment could be appealed. But where was the judgment? I checked the torn envelope I had already thrown into the wastepaper basket, but there was nothing else in it. It appeared to me that they had mailed me the judgment letter without including the judgment itself.

Putting it all down to more garbage to deal with being caused by Mercury being retrograde, I decided that I would make myself a cup of coffee, and then write a blog entry about the situation. It was at that point that I noticed something weird about the stuff on the desk where I dumped the mail. I noticed the back of a staple which was holding several sheets of paper together. There should not have been anything like that in that spot. I checked the sheets of paper, and sure enough, there it was! The judgment! I somehow had managed to remove it from the envelope without even being aware of doing so.

I read the judgment, and found that I had had some success. The judgment of November 27 had been revoked, and a new hearing was ordered to be held. So it looks like I won't get dumped into the streets in the middle of winter no matter what else happens.

So I guess at least it ended well - at least for now.

A decision, but what was it?

A hearing was held at the Rental Board on January 8. The subject was whether or not the judgment of the first hearing about whether or not I should be evicted from my apartment should be revoked, on the grounds that I never received notification about the hearing. At the end of the hearing, everyone was told that a judgment would be sent by mail, and that it could take up to three months.

After the hearing had taken place, I learned that it was possible to go to the website of the Rental Board (Regie du Logement) and find out the decision that way, rather than relying only on the mail. So for the past week, almost every day, I checked the website. Tonight, the website finally said that a decision had been reached, and that the decision had been mailed out to the concerned parties today. However, when I tried to find out what the decision was, the website said that the decision was unavailable and would soon be posted. So I'm none the wiser as to what the decision is. Which makes it impossible for me to plot a course of action, since the activities involved in preparing for a new trial are of course completely different than those involved in moving out either within 30 or maybe only within 10 days.

This is the type of thing which makes one wish for a revolution that will topple everything once and for all.