Musings from my everyday life...

I don't know why I am not afraid to die but I am not. I have been through enough experiences now that the concept is not so hard to relate to. I am not as certain as I once was that there is something waiting on the other side of the curtain because my thoughts on the spiritual are far more nuanced than they once were.

Religion must me mingled with the things of the world and we cannot abandon our logic because there is likely a unified explanation for the universe and our place in it. Our minds are not quite equipped to envelope all the lofty concepts involved but we can sometimes see glimpses and feel the grandeur.

We have all walked in a quiet field or by a lake and pondered about what life is all about. We sense intuitively that we are only little cogs in a very large mechanism which works with massive precision even if at the micro level its workings seem random and erratic.

Faith is about letting go and having confidence that there is a plan for us even if it there no obviou…

I watch people at the airport and wonder about their lives. We all have a story and there are 8 billion of us in the world. Each heart has aspirations and dreams and we do our best to navigate through lives intermingled with both challenges and joys.

The expressions of travellers vary from relaxed to tense as they go through security checkpoints meant to screen out potential threats. Air travel has never been more complicated than it is today and we have made a trip to the airport a daunting and harrowing experience. After all, there are more of us travelling than ever.

For the first time in all my years of work trips I have absentmindedly left my laptop at the security check point. Some 20 minutes later my name was called at the Air Canada gate and I was asked by a flight agent a bit sarcastically if I was sure i hadn't forgotten something. Still in my early morning stupor I confidently assured him that I hadn't only to see him produce my computer seconds later as he defiantl…

Just as relevant today as it was back then...

Poverty is everywhere.

Even in a social democracy like Canada there are overt signs which make me despair for the kind of societies we have built. The BMWs stopped at almost every red light in the city center see the obligatory disheveled occupant asking for change. Waste baskets at the food courts are constantly surveilled for something that may have been rejected that is still good.

There is something deeply wrong.

Bernie Sanders makes a simple plea to return to fairness and decency while being asked by idiots at televised town halls why he believes in communism. I despair at the abject stupidity which has spawned such ignorance. The Midwest is full of ghost towns that once contained thriving industries which supported healthy and vibrant communities. Trump went there with his repulsive face and his lies and told these people everything was going to be okay while at the same time approving huge tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. No, things will not necessarily be okay.

America i…

Near the end of my last relationship I was confronted with an email that contained the phrase "if you were a REAL man..."

It left me literally gobsmacked and considering the fact that she knew my entire history and hit home at one of my weakest points at the time; while I was still struggling with who I was.

It's water under the bridge now but it forced me to reflect hard on how I was going to deal with what had haunted me my entire life: the denial that I was transsexual. Up to that point I had tried so hard to lead a conventional life albeit one which, with her, now contained pre-approved pockets of dressing which served as my only safety valves. I thought I could have it both ways but I was wrong.

That wakeup call made me realize that I needed to change my being apologetic in any way for being who I was. She was right; I wasn't a real man but no one had ever tried harder to be. However, the fact that I ultimately couldn't was somehow going to be okay.

I give Dianne my lipstick. It was not quite the right color for me anyway and she was so happy to receive it. We have hit it off over several months as she works at one of coffee places I sometimes go to. We would banter as she made my coffee and sometimes she would sit down with me for a few minutes. I seem to serve as a surrogate mother offering little bits of advice here and there or just listening. Dianne tells me I'm cool and the feeling is mutual as she is mature for her tender age of 24. She speaks to me very frankly in a woman to woman fashion that I find very humbling.

Adopted at birth and transplanted from New York City to Montreal by her parents, she has done her best to assimilate into the Quebec culture and is even working hard on her French.

I love this generation for their openness and easy going nature. Yes, some of them can seem entitled but this young woman is dealing with dysfunctional divorced parents where the mother was the caretaker and the father the patien…

Bill Maher calls a spade and spade here and gets it absolutely right on his New Rules segment.

Considering how much meat Muller had to work with, he ended up delivering a mostly tepid report on the most corrupt administration the United States has ever seen. Could he have done more considering the severity of the crimes? I think so and so does Bill.

Think about Watergate and this one should have been easy although back then the GOP had more backbone and more patriotism which prompted the Nixon resignation..

A permanent feeling of happiness is not possible in this life because it is only one of our natural states. To be perennially happy would be unnatural since this is not what being human is. What is possible however is a certain level of contentment which factors in the rises and falls inherent in our existence; understanding that even in the course of the same day we will run a gamut of emotional states must be part of that equation.

With time the rhythms and patterns of our lives become recognizable and we know we will be able to surmount a setback of a magnitude we have faced before. Familiarity of experience has toughened our psyches and softens the blow with a sense of perspective we don't possess when we are twenty.

This is pivotally important because rounding off the peaks and valleys will help our navigation since we know that getting too high will only make that inevitable fall that much more painful and dramatic. So while this may seem like a dour approach, it's not …

When you don't accept yourself you think you suffer from compulsion. The mismatch between your birth sex and gender identity and your attempts to bridge the gap are exceedingly confusing when you're growing up.

I was working hard to ignore the problem and my occasional giving in to temptation was met with guilt and shame rather than embracing; this was particularly true after puberty. We were too young to understand what was happening and, to make things worse, we had no information to go on. I don't think I could have tried harder and every succumbing to temptation was ultimately attributed to another failure of my character.

It is not until we understand our transgender nature that we learn to attribute our behaviour to our normal state rather than a weakness to be corrected. We were fooled by the ability of others to lead lives where sex and gender aligned. If they could be that way why couldn't we?

Today I understand deep within my bones that I am transsexual and i…

Chomsky is correct. This is the most radical version of the GOP to ever exist which means that both parties' move to the right over a number of decades spells deep trouble for all version of minorities. Recent moves with regards to transgender people are in line with this deep radicalization.

The Republican party had a challenge: how to serve its wealthy benefactors while at the same time acquire votes from people who would choose them against their own economic interests. To do that they needed a coalition of evangelicals, gun nuts, racists and other wedge issue groups who could be hoodwinked into voting GOP.

The strategy worked but created a monster of a party that was now faced with pandering to extremist demands and made its face wholly unrecognizable. Previous leaders like Reagan and George HW Bush had recognized that issues like abortion were not for the consideration of the state but now their new base wanted these as part of the platform.

The southern strategy worked all t…

The people in this administration are animals. No wait, animals are better behaved towards each other.

This is yet another level of backward...

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/25/health/hhs-transgender-protections-bn/index.html

One of the most inventive and original bands from the 80's with their battle hymn...

Clustering is when everyone fights for the same piece of real estate. It is what is helping to drive up pricing in hot markets in major cities of the top industrial nations which in turn feeds income inequality. Part of the solution is that we can no longer afford take a NIMBY attitude of exclusivity of neighborhood because the world population is exploding. Therefore if that means more residential towers then that is what it will take.

Notice that young couples today have a greater income, in relative terms, than we did at the same age with the notable exception that a much greater share of their take home pay now goes towards mortgages. Major cities in the world are seeing an inflation of pricing due to to speculators to benefit people who sometimes do not even live there but want a foothold for future use. In some areas they have ostensibly created ghost buildings.

Part of our global effort to fight increasing income disparity must be focused in this area to keep communities viable…

It doesn't matter whether you transition or not just be unique. Be the person you were meant to be and do not let anyone tell you differently.

Make up your own rules and be confident. You will see how little the world cares when you present as a self assured and truly nice person. Think long and hard but once you have decided something just do it provided you have taken care of obligations that you care about and you committed to.

I spent far too much of my life energy worrying about the world but that is now over. It feels good to be myself and to be proud of what that means. Don't let others bring you down through their judgement because that is just insecurity on their part. Regale in your originality of spirit.

Live because life is short and we never know when our time is up.

I still catch the odd Gen-Xer or Baby Boomer transwoman doing this and Rhya is one of them.

Sufficiently versed in Blanchard to be dangerous but not nearly well enough to sort through the theory properly and find the gaping holes, she takes the bait and acknowledges that AGP is a real thing.

Millenial and younger transwomen don't have this problem because they just disregard a quack like Blanchard altogether.

I hope I don't need to explain this to anyone again but put in its simplest form here it is: cross gender arousal is a symptom of your being trans whereas AGP is a made up theory that states the reason you think you are trans is basically due to a fetish. This is a very important distinction.

Now watch well-meaning Rhya completely confuse herself and anyone else who watches her video....

The young transwoman greeting at the door of the Sephora is beautiful, at least 6 feet tall and lithe as a reed. She is also not a day over 25 years old. I give her a big smile and tell her I hadn't seen her for a while; we then chatted briefly.

After I had bought my foundation and had gabbed a little with the young woman at the cash, I went back to the front and spoke to her again on my way out.

"You look amazing, what have you done to yourself since I last saw you?" I said

"Oh well I was going through a major depression but things are much better now. I have been through a lot in my life"

Just then I wanted to hug her and tell her I understood at least one important aspect of her life but I will save that for another time for she looked happy and the store was very busy. I walked away very glad for her because she was radiating contentment and she has a whole life ahead of her.

Next time perhaps.

At some point in our lives, most of us who are transgender hit the wall and for me that was in my early forties. I had reached a point where I could go no further and needed to get help because I was sinking. The years of suppression were finally taking their toll and I could not take another step. I came out to my then wife after which the entire life I had built to date began to unravel.

In retrospect that wasn’t a bad thing but at the time it wasn’t an easy thing to face. Who I thought I was supposed to be had been a lie and I was realizing to what extent I had buried my feelings to try and lead a “normal” life like everyone else.

More than 10 years later I have completely given up on the concept of living like others and am now in the process of building a new existence for myself which respects the person I have always been inside; this with the added complexity of undertaking it later in life. I am more open to change than at any point in my existence and the roadblocks I made f…

Here is some brilliant political analysis on what ails America from Noam Chomsky; one of the nation's preeminent and most important intellectuals.

All of it is spot on which, needless to say, makes the video a must watch...

Powerful ad from Bernie...

Tani is the lovely young barista that works at Starbucks who keeps telling me she admires my sense of style.

Well this afternoon she surprised me with the label on my single long espresso...

Scottie Madden had that same marking incident at 4 years of age which I did; someone yelled at her for wearing the wrong shoes. A lot has happened to her since then...

"Scottie Madden made one hell of a guy.

Tough, outdoorsy, a dedicated son, big brother and husband. He led a reality TV crew that took a former Navy SEAL, a Green Beret, and an RAF instructor into some of the harshest environments on earth.

But there was a problem. Scottie Madden may have been born a boy, but he felt he was supposed to be a woman.

At 47 years of age, he was done living with that secret.

At 5 a.m. one morning, Scottie woke his wife Marcy and told her everything.

“I don’t know who I am,” he said. The words just tumbled out.

Scottie knew that she was supposed to be a girl at a young age. But she also learned young that her true identity wouldn't be accepted.

“I was 4-years-old and the babysitter was babysitting me and the little girl next door, and it was raining,” Scottie recalled.

“She had the…