Agio Ergo on Etsy

Agio Ergo is a company based in Greece that produces prints of icons that are glued on basic wood boards that are then coated with a sealer. They sell through Etsy. There are several of these kinds of companies around where, because of the process of printing up the image, gluing it on a basically styled board, and sealing it, they then refer to the product as a "handmade icon".

Agio Ergo stole my original image of St. Charbel Makhlouf and they are making money from it. 

Here is the original image that I painted of St. Charbel. It is not a Byzantine style icon that has been passed down and "copied" countless times.

Agio Ergo lifted it, squeezed the figure slightly more to the vertical axis, and placed it on a different background with different lettering:

 

The thing though that gets me is that the image they display on their page is "watermarked" so that no one can steal the image and use it to make money from.

But Agio Ergo, that's what you guys did. You guys stole my image. You guys literally went to my blog and lifted my original image, without asking my permission, and you guys used it, and are using it, a stolen image, to make money from, and now you guys have it watermarked so that no one can steal it and use it to make money from.

By the way, I haven't sold my painting of St. Charbel. I don't make prints. I haven't made money from the image, but hey, "glad" to help you guys out, Agio Ergo!

I find it hilarious that you guys refer to the "handmade icon" as "blessed". Oh what's that you say? You guys got a priest to bless it you say, eh? He may have pronounced certain words over it, and used holy water or even oil with incense. But does God bless a print of an image that's been stolen without recompense to the one who painted it?

Ah, a question for the theologians! LOL.

Do unmarked graves rest on D'Arcy Island?

Presently no one really knows. I remember reading in one article somewhere that you can spot a few burial mounds. This article mentions that coffins were among the supplies that would get dropped off every three months. So one would assume there are unmarked graves on the island, and that the exiles were not put out to sea or cremated.

That same Seattle Times article also mentions something completely new to me: "An American missionary who applied to move to D'Arcy Island to care for the dying inhabitants was denied permission."

That fact really rankles. Not only were there journalists and doctors decrying what was going on, but now we know an actual missionary - in persona Christi - wanted to go to live there to care for the inhabitants. How utterly Canadian, with that British Imperialist Colonialism, which still hangs over our 21st century, the revelation of its injustices testing us in our presumptions about polite Canadian culture (and big surprise, both the wagon-circlers and the white woke arsonists fail the test!): to not only exile the Chinese immigrants to their deaths and suffering, but to cloak their own racist decision-making by denying the freely offered care of a missionary, which they realized would show up their cold cruelty.

Most B.C. people - most Canadians in general - do not know about D'Arcy Island and its history. It's one of British Columbia's Gulf Islands. 83 hectares and about 16 kilometers from Victoria, D'Arcy Island is where you would get exiled if you were Chinese and had leprosy. Exiled is not a hyperbolic term in this case. You were sent there to die - and here's some supplies and a "doctor check-up" every three months. You were not sent there to be cared for.

But if you were white and had leprosy? Well, well, well, you would get sent to Tracadie Island in New Brunswick and get cared for by nurses in habits in a hospital with food prepared for you, in a place where the conditions were such that you weren't forced to eke out the rudiments of your own existence just to stay alive on top of having debilitating leprosy. You were cared for if you were white. Not if you were Chinese.

Here's just one hint of the harshness. We're talking about a little pacific island. There's a ton of them. This is rainforest country. But what many people don't realize about "rainforest" country is that summer means drought, essentially. This island, like so many of the other small islands, has no natural springs, no wells, no ground source of fresh water. They had to dig a pit on the island to collect rainwater during the winter months to supply themselves with water during summer. That's not fresh water. Just think about that. How often do you take a shower or a bath during hot weather without a thought? Now imagine you not only stink with natural body odour, but you have leprous wounds that want cleansing? You really think sea water would suit you well enough? Maybe if you were given enough opium?

Here's a good introductory article to D'Arcy Island: Island of Death: BC's Forgotten Racist Leper Colony

"And yet it was so mundane."

Here's an article reflecting on the history of D'Arcy Island in light of the Covid pandemic: Professor draws parallels between B.C.’s leprosy island, COVID-19 racism

"And yet it was so mundane."

 

I've always loved Sasquatch stories. Loved reading and hearing about them since I was a kid. Ogopogo and Nessie were alright. I liked UFO stories but there was always something distant about them. Sasquatch though - that was and is right in my backyard.

The fact that so many of the stories came from regions not far from where I live made them all the more exciting/scary. There are many stories of Sasquatch encounters from the Chilliwack/Harrison area that chill the blood. And there's also this about the Sasquatch stories: I rarely get the sense when hearing them that the person who claimed to have sighted it is making it up. We live in a mysterious world.