91. Revival of Unionism. George Elliott Clarke. Toronto, Ontario, Canada. 08/23/22 Part 1 of 2.

Happy Labour Day!  In Part 1 of our Labour Day Special, George Elliott Clarke  and Dave transcend time and space and discuss how Mother Nature has forcefully reminded us we are part of creation.   George and Dave explore the challenges of consumer capitalism and how the pandemy has lead to greater inequality. People are responding through a revival of Unionism.  George shares how people are generally smarter than their governments and most people want what's best for everybody.  Part 1 ends with a passionate performance of George's poem, King Bee Blues.  Next week in Part 2 George plays Poem Title in the form of a Pandemy Question, inspired by Nardwuar the Human Serviette in Vancouver, British Columbia.

George Elliott Clarke Online

Thanks for joining us as we unite humanity through stories of hope, connection, and community in the face of the global pandemy. We are all in this together, and we’re glad you’re here together with us. Thanks for taking a moment to like and subscribe and follow the Pandemy Show on social media (Twitter, Insta, FB, Reddit, and  TikTok).

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Transcript

0:25

Good day and welcome to the pandemic show stories of the pandemic for people living in the pandemic. No one is alone on the pen. Demi show Thanks for joining us. As we unite humanity through stories of hope, connection, and community in the face of the global pandemic, we are all in this together, and we're glad you're here together with us. Thanks for taking a moment to like subscribe and follow the pandemic show on social media.

Track 1: 0:54

Happy labor day, our two part labor day special. Was recorded on the upper candidate treaty territory, the traditional home of the. Ana Posho and neutral people. Happy labor day, everybody.

Dave: 1:09

Who are you?

George: 1:10

George Elliot, Clark. Dave, I'm glad to be, uh, on the program.

Dave: 1:14

George Elliot Clark poet, academic. All around. Interesting person. And I just want the people of the pandemic to know that George Elliot Clark rocked hillside the hillside festival 2022 at Guelph lake in Guelph. I was very fortunate to be at the sun stage and George Elliot, Clark thank you so much for your amazing presentation at the hillside music festival and for agreeing to join us here today on the pandemic

George: 1:43

show. I'm so glad. I'm glad you were there. It was a great, day great venue, great audience. I think way, a lot of people feel a lot better about the circumstances in which we find ourselves collectively. It was

Dave: 1:55

for me the first time I had been around thousands of other people, thousands of other families, enjoying music, enjoying dance, enjoying poetry. And I gotta tell you, your poetry has incited excitement And I know that's one of the things you like to do is incite people with your ideas and your poetry. And it's taken off in my mind in my heart, like a wildfire. So thank you. Thank you so much for that.

George: 2:21

So, so glad

Dave: 2:22

to hear it, Dave, poetry has been something that has gotten me through the pandemic seasons one, two, and three. And I'm just so excited to be with, with a former poet Laureate of Toronto and a former poet Laureate of Canada and someone with an imagination who recognizes the importance of ministry of dreams. what an honor to have you here today, ANCA and Afro ma and somebody who can help us on our collective journey to unite humanity. Can you just share with us in your experience, how did the pandemic affect humanity?

George: 2:57

of course, as with most things, uh, positively and negatively. Positively in the sense that we are all reminded that we are all animals. We are human beings, but we are animals. So therefore we are subject to disease and bacterial infections and viruses and so on. And no one is immune. No one is immune, by race or religion language, all the things that we use in our class, all the things that we use to divide ourselves up. mother nature reminds us that no, you are a host for many potential deadly viruses. that's what you are. You're part of the food chain for viruses and bacteria and germs in general. So, um, you better recognize it and start working together if you wanna survive collectively. So that was the positive thing in terms of forcing a degree of unity upon us, collectively at least at least in terms of nation states and so on the populations. uh, joining together to a certain extent to help each other. And even in terms of shipping of vaccines, not enough, but some shipping of, of vaccines from, uh, the overly developed, uh, nations to lesser developed nations or simply poor nations in order to provide some degree of equity, not enough, but some degree of equity of access to, uh, life saving medicine. that's the positive side, the negative side is, we still wanted, and I say, we, I mean, establishments all over the world, still wanted to maintain business as usual, and they did their damnedest, uh, to do so. And that meant playing down the dangers of, of COVID. It meant not providing workers with adequate, protective equipment and, and clothing. Uh, it meant, uh, forcing frontline workers to endure extremely dangerous conditions in hospitals and nursing homes. Even teachers in classrooms, uh, it meant a reluctance, a reluctance, and sometimes a refusal to provide desperately needed public services in order to keep people safe. There's a lot of rhetoric around while we're trying to keep people safe, but at the same time, there is still a demand that certain sectors of workers, especially lower income workers expose themselves to all of the dangers of, of viral infection. Uh, and for the sake of being able to bring home, uh, enough of a paycheck that they could pay their rent, buy their groceries care for their children. And. So the, pandemic, uh, has been, extremely helpful in highlighting the glaring inequities, in our societies, in terms of class, in terms of race, uh, in terms of gender, uh, in terms of the nurturing care that women have often been slotted into providing, uh, through gendered, divisions of, of labor. And so on meant that they also were particularly exposed to the problems of trying to maintain a household, trying to do a job while being exposed to potentially fatal virus. so all of these inequities have been, have been highlighted and have actually proven the necessity for having some form of, of guaranteed basic income for everyone. the proof is, is there, we now know because we we've had to access. Uh, those levers in order to keep the economy going to a certain extent and just basically to keep citizens alive and in some degree of relative comfort in quotation marks, uh, so that we didn't have people, literally dropping dead in the streets, and passing on, uh, the infection, by doing by, oh, doing, so long answers to your great question, but yeah, good and bad. We now understand the necessity for collective action. and, and we also need to understand the necessity to combat establishment forces, government in corporations in particular who still wanna try to pretend that individual, capitalist consumerism is still the best way to organize a society and an economy.

Dave: 7:09

The pandemic has really challenged that, and it demonstrated the weaknesses that we had in our society beforehand, where there was a growing number of have nots and the income inequality and all of those things. It really seemed to expose the weaknesses in our society. I heard on the, the money minute on 98.5 CKW R in the first year of the pandemic Canada's oldest community radio station, that in the first year of the pandemic, there was nearly 500 more billionaires created while at the same time, almost a billion, more people fell below the poverty line. I was excited in the early days of the pandemic to see how the federal government responded in Canada, making sure that everybody was gonna keep the lights on. Nobody was gonna get evicted. And there was a Serb, it was across Canada and it was to help people who lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic. And. that to me was a great response from the federal government, but now in season one of the pandemic, but now in season three, the pandemic, the anti-tax crowd, the real Rabi hardcore neoliberal conservatives they've mobilized against some of the more, beneficial policies of the pandemic. looking at the deficit spending that occurred, but this was a unparalleled public health emergency that required. a massive response. And we were very fortunate here in Canada, and to see so many people's families survive the first season or two of the pandemic, as a result of all the federal government spending around the Serb. To me, that was something that I hope would move forward as we moved into the middle pandemic. But it seems as we go through some election cycles, there's not the political will or the movement in society to, continue and strengthen some of these measures that we saw early pandemic and it's, interesting because a universal, basic income would benefit everybody. whether you're conservative a liberal, a socialist. There's a benefit. All backgrounds should be able to see the benefit. I think of Hugh Siegel, prominent conservative Senator, who is a big advocate for universal basic income. Now, while you were the poet Laureate of Canada, you, got some interesting headlines around your concept of a ministry of dreams. How do you think a ministry of dreams could have benefited the people of Canada and the world during this pandemic?

George: 9:39

Well, I think that that when we are faced with dire challenges, emergencies, the first response should be in enlarged capacity for creative thinking, imagination, large. And I think that artists and writers, uh, inventors, scientists, all of us have a role to play, uh, in terms of setting aside ideological predispositions, And positions and to think about what might be the best response to a particular challenge and to think, you know, to use the cliche term outside the box, so to speak. And the reason why that is so important is because we need to examine exactly what is government, I think is one of the, also one of the very important. follows so to speak of the POME as we continue to go through it is to, is that it asks us all to question, what is the nature? What is the value of government? If you're coming from a kind of iron Rand, as you say, neoliberal, uh, perspective and, and, and a perspective that actually is anarchistic, you know, say we don't need government. You're on your own. If you get sick, you get sick, you die, you die. and that's the individual that matters. And we should not have our freedoms interfered with in quotation marks, our freedoms interfered with in any way, shape or form. that's an ex for me, from my perspective, that's a very extreme position, but it also raises the question of what exactly is government. What is it for a lot of the anti-vaxxers, as far as I understand them and others who've opposed, public health measure. and then others who don't believe that government should ever tax anybody, who feel that, that, uh, there was an overreach in terms of, of governmental authority in response to this public health emergency. what they're also saying in, sometimes directly is we don't need a government. All we need is basically a police force or an army to ensure that those who have property and wealth, that of course they earned through hard work, etcetera, etcetera, have no reason to ever fear that their property and wealth will ever will ever be interfered with, by anyone. and that that's, uh, the sole function of government is just to, uh, maintain, class divisions, police class divisions with actual police and armed forces when necessary. and I need to challenge that idea by asking our audience to consider exactly consider this question. What is the. What is government for, if we think that government is actually of the people by the people, for the people to use the Lincolnian phrase, that means that we, the people can always ask the government Dera that the government do whatever is necessary to care for the vast majority of its citizens. I also like to remind people about where the money comes from for government. Where does it come from? It comes from us, comes from the taxpayer. It's our money. In other words, I have very little patience for people who complain about public spending because public spending is the people spending money on themselves through government. That's all it is. Public spending is the people spending money on themselves.

Dave: 12:39

It's the efficient use of resources. I can't get everything I need by myself, but if I pool up with my township and my region and my province and my country, then I can make sure that my neighbor's kids have high quality public education. I can make sure that my neighborhood is going to be safe. I see a real value in that. George Elliot Clark. Yeah.

George: 13:05

Well, Dave, uh, you're absolutely right. I could break it down extremely simply. If you don't believe in public spending, you don't believe in government there's, there's no point. There's no point in having a government. If you don't believe that that government should be able to, raise taxes and then spend those resources where needed in the society to improve the lives of, of the vast majority of citizens, then you're saying, you know, believe in government. I was suggest to those folks that they all get together, pool their resources by themselves. I don't know, Australian, maybe if Australia would permit permit itself to be bought, uh, or some south specific island, maybe with enough resources and they could all go there and they, I would let them take their money with them. Take your billions with you. But the one thing you're not allowed to take with you are workers. You're not allowed to take workers with you. You can take all the money. We'll, we'll even turn it into gold for you. Don't worry. Look at it. You wanna look at your house full of gold, but if you want to eat, if you want to have clothes, you have to do all the labor yourself. You gotta do all of it yourself. You're not allowed to have servants. You, not everything. You do everything yourself, but don't worry. You, you get to keep your money. And I think that if, if we have that kind of attitude, it can remind folks. That it's not as sin to be rich. It's not as sin to be wealthy. It is a sin and a crime to not contribute, uh, uh, fairly back to the societies in which you have been able to earn your income or raise your capital, uh, and so on. And that, that is simply a human necessity. Now let me put, it's a human right of all human beings to demand that, those who have obtained the most of the bounty that the earth has to offer contribute back, seriously, to trying to even out the, the economic imbalances that exist all around. I was

Dave: 15:03

disappointed that the government didn't do more to tax the industries that were really benefiting from the pandemic, the technology companies. we live in such an anti-tax climate with some of these Rabi minority groups maybe that made it untenable for the federal government to do that. But so much wealth was created in areas as a, as a result of the pandemic. It's too bad that couldn't have been redistributed. It's also too bad that we didn't see some of the low end wage increases to the essential workers in grocery stores. And the people that really make the economy move and keep our lives going. Those people had token token, wage increases for the first couple months, and then all that extra support left. And this is at a time when these grocery stores are making record. Profits. And it just blows my mind that we are having the government's having the deficit spend yet. There's all these private sector organizations reaping record profits, and it's just draining the system. Instead of being redirected. I'm hoping that as we move into the middle of the pandemic and we go through some more election cycles that we're gonna have, I don't know if the leaders are already there, but if we're gonna move towards moving that direction, I hope

George: 16:18

we do well. One healthy thing, no pun intended on the health part, but really one healthy thing is the fact that there has been a revival of unionism, the idea that workers need to band together to defend their interests. and of course the capitalist class has been kind of nervous about this. And of course the cry has already gone up about it might lead to increased inflation, and so on. If workers demand, pay increase the salary increases in order to. To meet the prices that have been inflated, by, uh, supply chain problems, which are partly result of, of a reliance upon poorly paid workers in the past. and, uh, and so when those workers had an opportunity to leave, that poorly paid and hazardous employment, to try to either go back to school or to try to get training, do something else, or simply to change their lives completely and move out of one particular sector or the economy into something completely different. All of a sudden labor shortages are happening. All of a sudden it's more difficult to provide services because the workers voted with their feet to say, we are tired of being treated. As peons as surfs, by this neoliberal economy. And now that we do have a little bit of government support, we are getting out of these jobs that are so poorly paid and so overly hazardous, in order to, uh, have better lives in order to provide more for our families and so on. so the union movements, revival as a result of the recognition as to how poorly treated, low income workers have been prior to the pandemic, has been a factor that is hugely important, for raising consciousness of everyone, about the needs to regulate and tax, we're necessary in order to shift incomes around. to, places where, income adjustments, higher pay, higher salaries are absolutely necessary in order to ensure the supply chains can continue the function properly in order to ensure that, or to actually reduce the possibility for runaway inflation, cetera. Uh, I think that the OME has, has again exposed the overreliance of, the most developed nations, the overly developed nations on, monetarist policies on neoliberal policies around trade and so on, and also rejection of, immigrants that they come from the wrong part of the world, and exposure of immigrants of immigrants who are accepted to extremely dangerous, working conditions and impoverishment. in terms of, uh, the pay, they may be able to, claim, for services render. in the end, the S word comes back, socialism social democracy so that everyone knows I'm not talking about tyranny, or somebody trying to come and take your car away while you take your house away. Nope, I'm not. I'm talking about redistribution of essential resources for, so the society, all of our societies can function adequately with care for the, for the least

Dave: 19:28

fortunate. I really appreciate your astute observation about the revival of labor power and the importance of labor organizing. I've seen foreign workers being the heroes of the pandemic here in Southern Ontario. I've seen the migrant workers being the heroes, making sure that the, that the food wealth isn't rotting in fields, I've seen the foreign workers, helping people with their senior parents, And it looks like it is gonna be the workers driving the change like it has been historically.

George: 19:58

Absolutely. I mean, in, in some ways we are back in a kind of 1930s moment, which is actually very dangerous because of course, 1930s ended up resulting in. The calamity of the second world war, uh, and keeping in mind, we have a war ongoing right now and only, and, and not the only one I'm thinking of course, of, of the Russians, invasion of Ukraine, but it's not the only war going on. And there are lots of wars that we in fact, In the west are sponsoring for whatever reasons that we think it's important for, for our, security in quotation marks, or simply because of the fact, we want to make sure that we can continue to dominate other nations and other continents as much as possible. the reason why I say it's a 1930s moment is that, we have grievous economic conditions, and, uh, God forbid that there'd be another great depression or something of that sort. And I'm not, going to even prognosticate that possibility, cuz they'll just be so horrendous. but we are seeing of course problems with food supply famine, due to, uh, the assault on Ukraine, but, and also due to, climate change. And the fact that the orally developed orally industrialized nations have. Take radical action to cut emissions because they still want to believe that they, that it's all about competition and that, and that let the other guy let the other country, do what it has to do in order to, lower our, greenhouse gas emissions. But we're not gonna do anything that might hurt our competitiveness in quotation works. So all we're doing is that we, we are competing ourselves into a desert world, a desert environment, uh, where there isn't gonna be food security for anybody there's already, even in terms of trade economy. As, as we now know, you can't move the German economy on Burges because the water levels in the line have dropped. So, so, desperately they can't move their manufactured goods from one part of that country to. right. Easily. It it's over, hopefully, uh, there'll, there'll be enough. Rain will come that they'll be able to refl themselves, but this is the reality. So I come back to this analysis that we're in a 1930s moment, where, in that period in our history, there was there, there was spa in the dust bowls in, in of north America, of course, economic, huge economic problems. And, and at the same time, a tendency for nations to group together in alliances, military alliances that were meant intended to create havoc for other alliances, for the sake of trying to maintain, a particular top dog status, or to try to gain a top dog status. And we're seeing in my mind, I think we are seeing, similar moves right now and, uh, thinking in particular about, um, the aggression. I'm noticing in our rhetoric towards China, the people's Republic. Yes. It's a communis dictatorship. Yes. It's a tyranny, et cetera, et cetera. I don't want to live under, under any kind of dictatorship. On the other hand, I don't believe it serves. It serves humanity to demonize the wonderful people who are the Chinese. And, and I see Western news outlets and politicians all jumping on a bandwagon to demonize China. Why, why is it so important that we go to war, which is, I think is what is what some groups are planning that we have to go to war with China. Why? and, and, uh, is it be, has, does it have something to do with the fact that China is the first nation governed by people of color to be on a par with rich white Western nations for the first time in 500 years, since Columbus accidentally stumbled upon, The Bahamas and the Dominican. In 1492 for the first time in 500 years, a government led by people of color is able to pose a serious economic competitiveness, to those, uh, nations who are the heir of Western imperialism and white supremacy.

Dave: 24:01

Interesting observation, George Elliot Clark in China is an ancient civilization with so many of the major accomplishments and discoveries coming from there. I don't think it's in any of our interests to have a global military conflict. And I wonder if there's areas where we're gonna find cooperation with them as we move forward. And, and I hope that's the case. But it is quite alarming when you hear about what's happening to the, to the Uighurs, but, you know, there's awful things happening to people on the Southern United States border, where it's almost reminds me of a residential school where families are being split up and children are being, treated in a, in a very inappropriate manner.

George: 24:44

I think Dave, you used the word propaganda early in our interview. I'm glad you used it. but I will. I will second your use of that term by saying that unfortunately, and of course, no Chomsky has talked about this in manufacturing consent. I think that too many of our journalists of whatever Stripe actually lack historical consciousness. And to that extent, a degree of actual political consciousness beyond the headline moves of one party or another one politician or another, and lack a historical understanding of the forces. That move nations and communities in one direction or another. And so I come back to something. So in other words, we end up getting propaganda to believe, one particular set of effect over another, as opposed to being asked to engage thoughtfully with all of the objective conditions or whatever it is that we are going through in order to come up with, proper solutions, proper solutions, which requires analytical, thoughtful, realistic, understandings of the environment in which we find ourselves. and I come back one more. One more time. I come back to the dangerous S word socialism, and again, I will say social democracy. So I don't alarm anyone, with visions of, old style, iron fist, terrorists, uh, so-called socialist regimes. That's not what I have in mind. What I have in mind is good. Old fashioned Kasian economics. Good old fashioned Kings and economics, where in fact governments govern for the good of the whole w H O L E for the good of the home and not for a particular moneyed class that also controls most of the means of publicity. most of the means of putting forward ideas and, and, and ideological positions that doesn't come from most people, most of us cannot afford to buy ads or, or to run billboard campaigns or, or to, or to break the internet with a whole series of prop istic, YouTube videos. And, and so on. Most of us cannot do that. but I am heartened as I, as I say that I'm heartened by one other important thing, which has come across loud and clear, through the pandemic. And it is simply this, the people are always smarter than their governments. The people written large are always smarter than their go. The other thing that comes through loud and clear for me is that the people by and large want what's best for everybody, the people by and large want what's best for everybody. The people by and large do not want war. I notice that almost always it's governments, their star wars. It's not the people. People are forced to go and fight them. They're drafted to go and fight them, or they volunteer because they've been propagandized into thinking they have to go and engage in this battle, this combat, which almost never solves anything. almost never solves anything. I mean, you know, yeah. Someone can be defeated. Someone can be conquered and so on, but then what can happen? What may then rise in that, uh, in the face of that defeat may be worse. then, what was there in the first place? And there are lots of historical examples of that. and I'm happy that, uh, uh, Western European nations that were, and Eastern European nations for that matter, that were engaged in the practice of world war II were able through the Marshall plan, socialism government spending, uh, to be able to create a European community and, and to lessen the threat of war. and I think that that in itself is a, is a message to us right now, again, from the 1930s, 1940s, that. Going forward. no matter what, and the OME is certainly underlining this, we need collective security in terms of defense of our, of our nations and societies, collective security, where we're all engaged in providing security to each other. And we also need, government spending, which is the people spending money on themselves. And I rather have the people spending money on themselves than letting billionaires hoard it. so they can do, uh, space travel, uh, tourism and,

Dave: 28:51

and money. Money is like blood. It's supposed to flow through the system and a hoard. It, it, it turns septic and, and makes a, a living system sick. So I, I, I agree with you and we are so fortunate here today on the pandemic show to be talking with George Elliot Clark. Poet inspiration student of history. George we've talked about some of the more challenging issues around the pandemic, but one of the positive things that we've guests have said through our last 90 interviews is how nature has benefited turtles have returned to breeding grounds, things that might have been hit crossing the road did not get hit crossing. The road. Water in Venice has cleared, there's big fish in the lakes that were over sports fish previously. have you noticed any benefits of your relationship with nature as a result of the pandemic? Yeah,

George: 29:47

that's a great, great question. I go back to the first wave of shutdowns and, and shuts and lockdowns and, and so on when. In March, uh, 20, 20, most economic activity, basically ground to a halt. and I remember I live in Toronto. I remember how quiet the streets of Toronto were, how some people took advantage of that by actually speeding a lot more cause we were just fewer cars on the road. Right. how strange it was to, to see an airplane or how strange it was to hear a helicopter overhead, because all of that had been literally grounded and continuing to answer your question. And this goes back to what we were saying at the very beginning of our, of our discussion today, we have been reminded, forcefully that we are part of nature. We often like to think, and this has been the inheritance of the enlightenment. that we are somehow apart from nature because we have reason. And despite the fact that we have reason we are so unreasonable and govern and governed by passions, wrath, and lust and greed, and so on the seven deadly sins. so much for our reason, the fact that we are actually creatures out emotion, as much as we are of of reason has led us to make very bad, political and social economic decisions at large because of the fact that we allow our thinking and our emotions to overrule the blunt facts of life, which are that we all, we are organisms that need to survive through, through of course, food and drink and a clean environment, uh, in order to be able to have our families, have our children, uh, have our cultures have good lives that all begins with protection of the organism that we are. that's why is so forcefully clear in front of us. If we, as an organism, do not take care of our environment collectively, we are all going to end up Gring in desert sand, trying to find a morsel of moisture somewhere, let alone some green thing that we can chomp on. Hopefully without, without getting thorns in our jaws. This is the reality that's in front of us. And mother nature has been sending that message to us loud and clear for decades. And the message is getting louder and louder. Oh, you don't wanna listen to me. Well, have a firestorm for your summer. when we burn up all burn up all of your, all of your, your forest and greenery. You don't wanna listen to me. Well, now you're going to have floods partly as a result of the melting polar ice, and so on. And, and of course you can't ship your good. in Italy, uh, the Poe river is dried up. The RH is drying in, in, in Germany. your England, just became a, a version of, of, I don't know, the south Pacific island, where's captain Bly when you need him, uh, kind of thing, uh, in terms of, of the Tropic heat that was visited upon, upon that supposedly Northern nation, this past summer. So we have been given massive signals from other nature that yes, we are in the apocalypse. you don't have to be in an evangelical Christian or anything of that sort or follower of Nore Dame. For that matter. You don't have to follow Nore Dame. You don't have to be an evangelical Christian, wrapped up in the book of revolution, but guess what? This is an apocalyptic wakeup call, CLIMA, actally, or climatically, rather, I should say in terms of the proper pronunciation of that word. and also, politically in terms of nations, still trying to, to work on a beggar th neighbor policy, and also on a policy of beefing themselves up militarily, which almost always means wars in the offering. and at the same time, suffering, uh, of the plagues plural, because we've, we've, we've got COVID non ending up. People call it COVID 19. I now call it COVID nineteen twenty, twenty one, twenty two in count. Because it's, it's going to be with

Dave: 33:55

us for, we're in the seventh or eighth wave here in Ontario and Great points around the volatility of weather. The last three years, season one, two, and three of the pandemic, I've learned new words related to weather. I've learned of heat bubbles. I've learned of atmospheric rivers, here in Ontario, in may, we were the victims of ACO, which was hurricane force winds from Illinois, all the way to Quebec. At least nine people, died from that. the weather is giving us a wake up call and, nature has just been so beautiful during this pandemic. I feel like I've spent more time connecting with my backyard, my side yard, my front yard. And I'd just like to take a moment to, to visit one of your poems king, B blue, as we lead into our next segment. Poem title in the form of a pandemic question. And as I've been reading your poem since seeing your presentation at the hillside music festival in Guelph lake in July, I've been excited by your imagery around nature. Thank you for that, George Elliot Clark. And thank you so much for letting me read your poem. King bee blue here today on the pandemic show. I'm an old king bee honey buzzing from flower to flower. I'm an old king bee sweets humming from flower to flower woman. Got good. Paul, I get some every hour there's Lily in the valley and sweet honeysuckle rose too. There's Lily in the valley and sweet honeysuckle rose too. And there's pretty black guy, Susan. Perfect. As the night is blue, you ain't have to trust a single black word. I say you don't have to trust a single black word I say, but don't be surprised if I sting your flower today. Woo. George Elliott, Clark poet, insider of excitement, incitement of thinking. Uh, thank you so much for joining us here today on the pandemic show stories of the pandemic for the people of the pandemic. No one's alone on the pandemic show. Now we are about to play for the first time ever poem title in the form of a pandemic question inspired by the one and only Nard wire. The human se yet from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. And after seeing you at, uh, rock in the hillside sun stage to a packed house standing room only, I, I needed more. I needed more music. I needed more poetry. So I went with a friend to Peterborough, to see 54 40. And I was very fortunate to join the 54 40 choir.

Track 1: 36:39

Happy labor day, our two part labor day special. Was recorded on the upper candidate treaty territory, the traditional home of the. Ana Posho and neutral people. Happy labor day, everybody.

36:54

Thanks for listening to the pandemic show. We're all in this together, and we're glad you're here together with us physically distance with us@pandemicshow.com. Be a part of our community by subscribing to and sharing the pandemic show. Thanks for taking a minute to email an episode, share a link or promote us on social media. Pandemic show is on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit stories from the pandemic for the people of the pants. Do you have an interesting pandemic story and want to share email us@pandemicshowedatgmail.com. Thanks to all our guests. Thanks to giant value for seeing us in and letting us know everything is going to be all right. No one is alone at the pandemic show.