“Draw with Me”: Transgender Coming Out

Brendon Scholl takes the difficult journey of “coming out” as a transgender teen youth initially a she but now preferring a pronoun of he. In between one uses the pronoun “they” when the trans person has not yet accepted a preference for a particular sex.

Coming out as gay is not easy but that is a matter of sexual preference but trans is more of a difficult question of identity.

Branon has Jennifer Lopez as an aunt who opens the film unfortunately for a moment making this short appear a bit like a public service announcement. But as Lopez says “This film is timely and important in its story and message and can have a huge impact. It’s a story that is very close to my heart, because it is a family affair. It’s about accepting change and challenges with love, and knowing when we do, everything is possible.”

It almost wasn’t possible as Brendon unsuccessfully tried to end the pain and confusion by attempting to commit suicide. It was art that helped Brendon get out what he couldn’t articulate but simply had to get out of his system.

This film is an official Oscar entry for Documentary Short Subject.

It was far from easy for Brendon first discovering he was trans and then coming out. Thank goodness he had a supportive family to help him through this but the acceptance was difficult for his mother and father and was far from spontaneous.

Brendon’s mother Leslie Ann Lopez hits the nail on the head and perhaps summarizes much about the film when she says, “Talking about your identity as a person- sexual preference has to do with who you go to bed with, and your identity is who you go to bed as.”

Brendon has turned into a trans activist and Director Constantine Venetopoulos makes a poignant comment when he says, “What I truly believe drew me to the story, though, was Brendon’s confidence in knowing who they were at such a young age, and being ready to use their experience as a tool for other youth who were struggling with their identity and coming out. I thought ‘I wish I had someone like Brendon to talk to when I was struggling in the closet as a kid.”

Again the director states he had returned to his high school in Greece for a screening of the film. After the film his older brother asked what a parent should do if their child comes out as gay or trans and his reply was, “It’s not about what you should tell them, it’s just about listening to them.” As Brendon says, “Believe us when we say who we are.”

You can catch the trailer https://vimeo.com/450714908 and the film https://vimeo.com/ondemand/drawwithme/483848439

Virus#26:Chapter 11 lessons learnt from the COVIDs: the failure of social distancing

Chapter 11: “lessons leant from COVIDs: the failure of social distancing”

During the COVID-19 waves there was a politico-medico obsession with social distancing to the extent failure to adhere to it could result in warnings from COVID-19 “police forces”, fines, imprisonment and of course the dressing down given by “outraged” municipal, state, provincial and federal governments. These dressing down tantrums were as tedious as the propaganda supporting social distancing. Mayor John Tory of Toronto was on the public stage and seemed to revel in indignation to the point of absurd comedy. Premier Ford of Ontario looked like the big bad wolf ready to huff and puff and blow the house down i.e. close the economy again.

There is a bit of contradiction in the term “social distancing” in that yes it enabled crippled hospital systems ravaged by the financial cuts imposed upon them by the politicos to barely hold and treat the infected and that fitted the political agenda which almost always was short term. The contradiction is that social distancing protected many from immediate infection but made them easy targets for subsequent waves particularly after economies began reopening. Once reopening occurred any pull back would not be tolerated by populations ravaged by unemployment and its consequent suicides, depression and anxiety. So it was short term pain for even longer term pain. Social distancing ruined millions financially as well as psychologically. It also bankrupted governments.

It introduced a stubborn and pervasive nasty streak in both politics and social life. Demonstrations became violent and food lines were a breeding ground for extremism which we will deal with later. Although we have no data backing this up the thought by many of us physicians in 2030 was that had there been no social distancing herd immunity, as ugly as it would be to develop, would have reduced the decimation caused by social distancing.

Lastly we must ask why was social distancing so widely accepted during the early COVID–19 days? Aside from the long arm of a pathetically small group of COVID police it was fear that kept many in a state of what seemed to be eternal lockdown. And the fear was fuelled by governmental propaganda, people’s ignorance and the never-ending media stories about doom and gloom with real time spinning casino wheels spewing out deaths and infections. Just when the curve had flattened in many countries then horror stories about India and Brazil flooded the telescreen with mass burial grounds being the topping on the fear flavoured sundae. You gotta scratch your head and wonder why COVID-19 was really any worse that many other pandemics where there was no social distancing? I mean the conspiracy theorists had many holes in their arguments but one that made sense to me was bring the fear to a feverish (no pun intended) pitch and set the way for Big Pharma to develop a most profitable vaccine.

New Italian Grape in My Hood: Nero di Troia

Yes from Puglia in Italy comes a new grape in my hood called Nero di Troia which is primarily found in the Apulia region of Italy and is according to some rustic, tannic and very productive. It translates as “black of Troy” but DNA analysis shows no relationship to Greek grapes.

On the nose a good dose of black earth, black cherry and blackberry. On the palate the tannins are widespread in the mouth but not exactly forceful. This is the first wine I can say I have noticed “spread out tannins” in that they coat the entire mouth. Interesting. It is a very easy drinking wine and certainly could be appreciated as a sipping wine. But I would not call it rustic. With notes of black cherry, Ontario sugar babe watermelon and Ontario purple plums and a certain smoothness. Medium length finish but again rather strangely it coats the entire mouth. There is a very slight sweetness to it. 6 months in New American oak but done so well I can’t detect it so perhaps the oak has wrestled with the rustic and tamed it? The Liquor Control Board Vintages catalogue suggests it is a good match for pizza topped with steak or mushrooms. Mushrooms as a topping but steak? Never heard of that topping before but it would match the wine. I’d go with a shrimp and okra gumbo many recipes of which you can find on the internet but remember when sautéing the okra do it long enough to deslime the little buggers.

All in all the year is very young but this is the most interesting red so far!

If I owned a restaurant, I’d seriously think of making this my red house wine.

(Zensa Nero di Troia 2019 (Vegan) IGP Puglia, Orion Wines, Lavis, Italy, $16.95, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 17390, 13%, 750 mL, Robert K. Stephen a little birdie told me so rating 90/100).

Virus #26: Chapter 10 Lessons to be learnt from the COVIDs: Propaganda’s effect

Chapter 10 “Lessons learnt from COVIDs: propaganda’s effect”

In the guise of an advertising campaign Canadians were bombarded with an incessant stream of propaganda. Propaganda is primarily a tool of totalitarian governments to maintain control of its citizens. The volume of it will dim independent thinking. However, at some point, particularly with people not familiar with it, it just becomes noise.

As for COVID-19 it had some effect at least for wave 1 and 2 but after that point it was resented and rejected by those who previously lapped it up. Masks have been proven to have almost no beneficial effect. Social distancing was manslaughter for those “in shelter”. About the only truth was the benefit of washing your hands.

It was really disturbing for me that so many people blindly accepted the propaganda for so long. In the end social distancing and mask wearing were tired old phrases and too bad so many millions smiled like deer in the headlights. Many of these people were highly educated (and well paid until they lost their jobs) and what a shock to see them parrot what was being rammed down their gullet.

So why all the propaganda? Firstly it was a legitimate excuse to reward advertising agencies run by the friends of the politicos. Secondly it was an attempt to silence anyone who had different ideas about social distancing through shame and ostracization. Thirdly it justified all decisions taken by the politico-medicos. It also showed the paternalistic attitude of the politico-medicos. I think it also had people in so much fear they were easier to control.

At the end of the day it served to justify the decisions of the politico-medicos and crush anyone with opposing views.

But what is the expression? You can fool some of the people some of the time but not all the people all of the time?

I had the great opportunity as a long haired knapsacker to spend a year in the Iron Curtain in the 1970’s. Czechoslovakia in 1974 was particularly bad with propaganda being blared over loudspeakers in the street Gustáv Husák communist leader had witnessed the Czech uprising of 1968 and decided to try crude mind control through propaganda being blasted out to the street in loudspeakers. In Canada’s case television and radio were the loudspeakers bolstered by an unthinking and compliant media. Even my favourite classical and jazz stations had their announcers cozy up to the party line. The sad thing was they actually believed the loudspeakers and became the loudspeakers. So much for the integrity of the media!

Virus #26:Chapter 9 lessons learnt from the COVIDs; people were amoebas

Chapter 9 “lessons learnt from the COVIDs; people are amoebas”

At least a toddler has some power of rational thought including the power to stand up to parental dictatorship. That may manifest itself in stubbornness, anger or temper tantrums hence the expression “terrible twos”.

The overwhelming majority of the population sucked up the steady stream of propaganda shoved down their throats by advertisements from the politicos and reinforced by a media that lost my respect very quickly for parroting the party line. Like Radio Moscow in the old Iron Curtain days. And the blind acceptance of the media campaign knew (at least initially) no differentiation on class lines or educational levels. It permeated their brains like they were brainless amoebas. Less thoughtful than a toddler.

Doctors, lawyers, accountants, construction workers and those in the service industry humbly bowed down to the exhortations of “social distancing”, “stay at home”, “stop the spread” and countless hackneyed phrases developed by the politicos and medicos supporting them.

Anyone voicing any opposition was treated as an uncooperative conspiracy theorist. Anyone suggesting a cheap fix to boost immunity like Vitamin C and D was a dupe of the conspiracy theorists despite the fact that there was ample medical research supporting the fact that these vitamins were actually used by China in the first wave and then adopted by some American physicians initially in the Long Island, New York hospital community then globally.

The majority of physicians in the Western World hitched their wagon to the hope of a vaccine or cure developed by Big Pharma with financing by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And a minority of physicians, like myself, realized by the time it took to develop a vaccine the virus would have mutated rendering the vaccine futile. Our minority view was that a strong immune system created by a healthy diet and lifestyle bolstered by some key supplements was the best defence. Yet the masses were so conditioned by Western medicine to believe that Big Pharma products were the answer they failed to see that Big Pharma makes huge profits not by developing a cure but perpetuating their profit by developing and selling drugs that managed, into eternity, symptoms but never cured them. Why this blind faith when Big Pharma had failed to deliver a cancer of Alzheimer’s fix despite some 85 billion USD spent of finding the magic bullet.

When the second COVID-19 wave hit with devastating impact some of the terror stricken and obedient masses became more difficult to control as hungry and displaced persons are often harder to rule especially when desperation began to nudge obedience and money to subsidize the unemployed and displaced ran out hence the development in the United States and other countries of what we can generically call “Fuck the Vulnerable Movement”. You could kind of see this coming with the economic havoc caused by the first COVID-19 wave where BMW’s and Mercedes’s were in the food line pick up.

By the time Virus # 26 descended a deep political polarization had been growing throughout the globe. But more about that later.

I and many others wondered if the slick political-medico machine had faced massive resistance at the outset and social distancing had been rejected and herd immunity developed whether the second wave of COVID-19 would have been so crippling. However amoebas simply sucked all the politico-medico mantras up setting the stage for a slaughter. “Stay Safe” at the end of the day meant “Be Prepared to Die”. The assassinations of many of the politico-medicos was too little to late for the millions that died because they had “Stayed Safe”.

VIRUS#26: Chapter 8 lessons learnt from the COVIDs: people were treated as toddlers

Chapter 8” lessons learnt from the COVIDs; people were treated like toddlers”

Now if you have raised children when they get to the terrible twos and have started their growth into toddlerdom you find constant repetition is necessary to correct their behaviour. Keep drilling the message in. In political terms it amounts to parental dictatorship.

From the Canadian perspective the COVIDs exposed provincial and federal governments as purveyors of crude propaganda. It wasn’t some exhortation to revolution but rather a more mundane “keep safe”, “wear a mask” and the wretched phrase “social distancing”. Over and over ad nauseum until after a few weeks of it most of us were getting tired of if not angry about these advertisements. Or was it propaganda to egg the masses on to a state of jellied minds? It assumed social distancing was effective where I have previously said social distancing was a miserable failure as it only delayed a second wave of COVID-19 and hit hard at the compliant who being “in shelter” developed no immunity. Like lining up victims before a firing squad.

Millions of taxpayer dollars were quite frankly pissed away by governments on “advertising”. The assumption being citizens had the lowest common denominator of intelligence whereas the governments spewing out “the message” proved to be so terribly wrong and that is why the second wave of COVID-19 was so deadly.

And in some respects, at least for the politico-medico elite, the propaganda campaign was a success as people did behave like obedient toddlers. As in a political propaganda campaign those who resisted were treated as ignoramuses and ostracized and were subject to fines and in some cases imprisonment perhaps acceptable in a totalitarian state but in Western democracies mostly unheard of.

The mainstream media purred the message on without question. The fifth estate were no more than appendages of the ruling parties. The good citizens of Western democracies criticize totalitarianism but couldn’t see the “medically based” COVID totalitarianism as anything but benign. And when all the toddlers jump on the bandwagon, they become sheep and it so passed they were being led to slaughter.

Poetry Corner : “what about Pence?”

What about Pence?

There has been much focus of late on Trump
for his years in office you look like you were paralyzed like a gopher on a stump

You’ve had a good VP play and had your day
But particularly today why do you have nothing to say?

Some may opine you are in league with a bully boss
fascinated with self aggrandizement and orange skin gloss

Pence, you appear to lack a spine
are you supporting the incendiary Capitol swarming swine?

Your passiveness on the Corona Task Force was very lame
for thousands of deceased Americans do you have a sense of blame?
or would the easier fix
be to blame Fauci and Brix

You might even be called a bauble head
but that won’t bring back the dead

About you history will have little kind to say
so next time when you are at peace please think of your role in all this and pray

VIRUS#26: Chapter 7 Was reopening premature?

Chapter 7 “was reopening premature?”

From a medical perspective re-opening the economy repeatedly during the COVIDs was an error of huge magnitude. So much emphasis was placed on “flattening the curve” it blinded a reality check that as effective as social distancing was it simply insulated millions temporarily from being infected.

Out of the protective cocoon they simply became easy meat for the COVIDs. And it was too late to crawl back in the cocoon. Social distancing was fated to fail and its only success was enabling hospitals to deal with serious COVID cases and its biggest failure was social distancing itself as setting up the world for a big fall.

Now I am a medico so my job is to protect lives and social distancing as a mantra initially made good sense to me. But after several months of the first wave as for social distancing anyone could see it was a dilatory tactic as opposed to a long-term effective management tool. So I became more of a proponent of economic realities and their psychological effect of the millions that lost their jobs. The stress and anxiety of job losses took a huge mental toll but as we physicians know all too well stress and anxiety is a killer. There was a dramatic increase in domestic abuse, suicide, substance abuse and a general decline in physical health and therefore to immunity.

Of course there was political expediency in getting the economy running again. Governments were running out of money to financially support the unemployed and failing businesses. Social unrest was growing. Hungry and stressed-out people are a very dangerous political force as we shall see later.

So tossing caution to the wind, as it was becoming unaffordable, we opened up the gates to a decimating second wave of COVID-19. Decimating as it was it did help establish herd immunity rendering the third and fourth waves of COVID-19 very weak.

The propaganda machines particularly the government and their medicos endlessly shoving social distancing down everyone’s throat realized the governments of the world could no longer afford social distancing so the new mantra was a “cure”. That cure never arrived but a partially effective vaccine did sickening thousands along the way with its side effects that sometimes took many month to manifest themselves.

“Ashes To Ashes”: Lynching in America

This documentary may help us understand the flare up of racial tensions in the United States.

Winfred Rembert is a master leather-work artist working on creating 50 leather worked pieces wherein he is trying to explain his life. He worked in the cotton fields until he ran away at 14 from his rural hometown in Georgia as he says you get to know something is wrong about picking cotton all day.

He has spent time in jail a victim a racial discrimination including being held in jail for a year without any charges being laid. Rembert says that being involved in the civil rights movement at 14 meant that white people would be coming after you and they did hanging him up in a tree with a noose around his neck until one the whites in the mob said cut him down as “We got better things to do with niggers”. Can you imagine the horror and psychological damage caused! And indeed Rembert has PTSD and has a terrible time sleeping.

His physician and fellow artist Dr. Shirley Jackson and symbolically holds a funeral for the 4,000 victims of lynching in the United States many whose bodies were never recovered. Dr. Jackson felt that these victims needed to hear the words “Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.” To give them peace and dignity was important for Dr. Jackson. A sombre funeral service may leave the viewer outraged or very sad or possibly both. Given the escalation of racial violence in the United States this is a must-see documentary which you can watch by clicking below. This is about American history and lynching is a terribly ugly part of it.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-documentary/life-after-lynching-in-ashes-to-ashes

https://vimeo.com/channels/staffpicks/438017944 4 AUGUST 2020 ASHES TO ASHES, DR. SHIRLEY JACKSON, LYNCHING, RACISM IN AMERICA, ROBERT K. STEPHEN, WINFRED REMBERT EDIT

The sad tale of the Jews of Thessaloniki Greece

The Decimation of the Jews of Thessaloniki

By Robert K. StephemSpecial to The Suburban
Jun 20, 2018
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I was always vaguely aware of the Jewish population in Thessaloniki Greece after several visits to that city. I became more interested when I heard, mistakenly, that there was a Holocaust Museum newly opened in Thessaloniki. The fact is that the Museum is contemplated but construction is not yet underway. It may be 2021 before it is opened.

However, there is a Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki located at 13 Aghiou Mina which is open Monday to Friday from 10-3 and Sunday 10-2. The Museum was founded to honour Sephardic heritage as it evolved in Thessaloniki after the 15th century. They brought printing, medicinal sciences and knowledge of contemporary weaponry with them when expelled from Spain in 1492.

On the ground floor of the Museum are monumental stones and inscriptions that were once found in the great Jewish necropolis that lay to the east of the city walls. Accompanying these stones are a series of photographs showing the Jewish cemetery as it was in 1914.

Central to the first floor of the Museum is a narrative history of the Jewish presence in Thessaloniki from the third century BC until the Second World War.

There is also a Holocaust Memorial on the waterfront at Elefttherias Square and Nikis & Eleftheriou . Venizelos.

It is thought the first Jews arrived as early as 140 B.C. from Alexandria, Egypt. In 1492 Spain exiled some 20,000 Sephardic Jews and the Ottomans who controlled Thessaloniki accepted them. At one point the Jewish population reached close to 70,000. Further influxes of persecuted Jews from Portugal and Italy added to the Jewish population in Thessaloniki.

According to the 1913 census the population of Thessaloniki was 157,889 comprising 61,349 Jews, 39,956 Orthodox Greeks, 45,867 Turks 6,263 Bulgarians and 4,364 “foreigners”.

By 1940 there were some 500,000 tombs in the Jewish cemetery.

The first blow to the Jewish Community struck in 1917 with The Great Fire of Thessaloniki that left more than 50,000 Jews homeless and virtually destroyed the entire Jewish quarter. The fire destroyed the office of the Chief Rabbinate, sixteen synagogues, administrative offices, welfare offices and 11 schools including the Alliance Israelite University. This caused many Thessaloniki Jews to immigrate to Paris. In fact, the former President of France Nicolas Sarkozy is a descendant of the Thessaloniki Jewish immigrants.

The beginning of the end started with the entry of the Germans in 1941. In July of 1942 just about the entire population of 50,000 Jews were assembled in the main square and publicly forced to undergo humiliating acts. In March of 1943 the transport of Thessaloniki Jews to Auschwitz/Birkenau began. Some 50,000 Jews were transported to the camps. The Greek train engineers driving the trains were forced by the Nazis on pain of death to drive the transport trains. One person I met explained how his relative never recovered from driving those trains. Some 50,000 Jews from Thessaloniki were transported with most being exterminated. 96.5% of Thessaloniki Jews died in the death camps in Poland.

Thessaloniki was liberated in 1944. Today there remains a synagogue serving an estimated population of 1,000 Jews.