Elderly Eclectic Gentleman

Wordsmiths

2012-01-23T16:33:00.000-08:00

The collections of designated symbols we call words can be read or heard. The 2nd cranial nerve will mediate the written word to the occipital cortex. The spoken word will be mediated by the 8th nerve to the temporal lobe. These different entry points and imprinting areas will inevitably lead to differences despite the excellence of the subsequent processing and integrative activity of the brain. I have insufficient knowledge to support that point of view, but Common Sense and Ockham's Razor are always of some value. The symbols you see, do not necessarily reflect the symbols you hear. Moreover the acuity between seeing and hearing may be variable and lead to dramatic differences. Since these symbols have become the stuff of communication, then oral and written language is the stuff of life. Many have developed listening skills that commit much of what they hear to memory. Others have highly refined visual skills and are visual learners; reading and writing to lead to retention. Both points presuppose equal acuity with eye and ear. When my colleagues and I speak from the written word on Friday next, we will transport the visual symbols to the listeners ear. It will go from our imprinted thoughts from the occipital cortex to the spoken word to the listener's ear to their temporal lobe cortex. The symbols will be filtered and compounded for the listener by their neurons of intellect and good taste, rage and ecstasy! (I'm getting overheated, but what the hell!) Whether oral tradition could ever translate to written tradition: whether Phoenician symbols and tongue could ever translate to Greek symbols and tongue: whether the passion in the masterly writing is the same as in the passion of the spoken word:whether the right brain of the listener engages the left brain of the speaker, and what's the result: all is a mystery to me.

Rubber hits the Road

2012-01-20T15:39:00.000-08:00

My three poet colleagues and I are to give an evening of reading from our literary efforts. It will comprise selected poems and my short, short, prose! I have read another person's content many times publicly, but have never read my own material to an audience! It's easy to read another's material since there is no responsibility for content other than the choice to inflict it on others! Despite the fact that you like your own work; you have convinced yourself that you are writing for yourself; that you feel your craft is adequate and the content authentic; there is still a need for approval. We're human! You can write for money, or love, or to scorn, but if you really write largely for you, it is therapy. You can write from your mind, or your heart, or your soul, but if you write from your soul, it is therapy! If one writes, one can get it all out, purge, and spill the words in front of the public on a page. That gives a comfortable distance to protect yourself. It's another matter to read it to the public! That's when the rubber hits the road! Suddenly the distance between reader and writer is gone. Suddenly, immediacy, facial expression and body language shorten the distance. If you provide angst and violence, sex and love, death and redemption, justice and injustice, the heart and the mind will focus . If you write from the soul, and speak with the mind and the heart, maybe, just maybe, the other soul will resonate. Anyone who says, "I don't give a damn whether they like it or not, I'm writing only for me!" is a bloody liar or a fool.

Augmented KD

2012-01-16T05:51:00.000-08:00

The pianist and I were at a dinner party last evening and amidst other topics, food was both eaten and also a topic of conversation. Favorite foods and recipes, particularly pasta and its creative nature provided a lively and entertaining discussion. The pianist was engaged in the talk, but since my culinary skills are small, though I am a gourmand, I contributed little of consequence. That is until I mentioned that my default meal was augmented KD. If the pianist was away and I was on my own, KD was the choice with added sharp cheese and butter and cream. Gales of laughter! Oh well! I always ate it from the plate, and the augmentation rendered it less orange and more comfort. Later, as I went to sleep last night, I thought of my friend and his addiction to KD. Years ago my young colleague, who was a busy GP, split from his wife and to save money, slept in his office and subsisted on a diet that was almost solely KD. His practice was immense, so time was of the essence for him, and his settlement, an expense that was looming, an additional worry. Six or eight months later he told me he was concerned that he may have leukemia, as he had noticed generalized bruising recently then, his gums had started to bleed and weight loss was noticeable. When he finally checked in from the investigation, he was diagnosed with scurvy! KD is augmented by all sorts of good vitamins and minerals as well, but not Vitamin C because it is heat labile. My advice is, stay married, drink orange juice with your KD if you are addicted, use it sparingly as a default meal, and don't save time and effort by eating it out of the pot!

Invitation

2012-01-15T16:06:00.000-08:00

When you are reading something, or singing something, and out of the blue a sentence or a lyric smacks you in the face; something powerful that you know was a truth you needed to hear comes from beyond if you are mystically oriented. This is never something that you sought, but has sought you. Two things happened today! Jean read, "Eli said,' Go lie down; and if he calls you you shall say, "Speak Lord for thy servant hears." ' " Then later, in the singing of the hymn, Worship the Lord in the Beauty of Holiness; the lyric by JSB Monsell, reads, "Fear not to enter his courts in the slenderness of the poor wealth thou canst reckon as thine;..." Whether a wealth of goodness, or money, or intellect or pedigree; it cuts no spiritual ice today. The church may have, at one time in the past, revered wealth and power and prestige; intellect, pedigree and celebrity. That is no longer the case because the church is becoming threadbare. My church has and should cast aside those symbols of power since the church's credibility amongst the unchurched is two or three generations away from it's Communion. The prognostications that the Western church will die out over the next fifty years will never happen! There may be a continuing erosion, but we will settle at some time to an irreducible minimum. There will always be poor people, rich people, distressed people,smart people, caring people, whose door opens, who begin to listen, and who speak to Whom they hear!

Break-in

2012-01-13T16:02:00.000-08:00

The pianist and I were week-ending in Lotus Island when we were phoned by the police that we had a break-in at our house in Lotus City. The policeman said there was evidence of ransacking in the bedroom wing. The security alarm had rung, the monitor called in, and the police were prompt to attend but apparently, whoever it was, had sacked and ran. We had recently established the security system since we wanted to help our daughter feel more comfortable as she was an older teen and had a life apart from just her parents cottage. It was in the days before cell phones and we couldn't get hold of her to check the house, so I just thanked the policeman. We came home. The policeman had said that the dresser drawers were all open in a bedroom and the materials were strewn all over the floor, the clothes cupboard had clothing and hangers on the floor, and on the bed, and in the hall. The police response was prompt so the break and enter people probably had little time to search and find, and it was curious that they chose the area that they did. When we finally arrived and inspected the bedroom wing, where the police had not disturbed the crime scene in any way, it appeared quite normal. Our daughters room was as usual in it's distribution of clothing, books and materials in an open and readily available state rather than closeted in drawers. The bed was tousled but ready to enter without any effort required to turn anything down. A picture was tilted and the waste basket was full of paper and peels of orange and banana. Our daughter came home shortly after and told us she had run out the front door in a hurry and forgot to turn the alarm off and reset it. She said, "I went out so quickly I didn't hear it go off. I'm sorry!" We phoned the policeman and thanked him for his visit. I asked him if he had any teenagers! He said, "No. I'm not married." I told him, "You're in for a treat some day if you are lucky. In the meantime you can close the case. Love trumps tidy!"

Lilacs

2012-01-10T03:36:00.000-08:00

While one can admire the dedication of the French hybridizers in the development and selection of superior cultivars of lilac, there is a homely side to the old timers of yesteryear and more so their progenitors. (Syringia vulgaris) may be seen in their varietal splendor in The Royal Botanical Garden in Hamilton Ontario as the pianist and I observed when we visited some years ago. They say, "The largest lilac collection in the world." Spouting off! Not a very Canadian thing to say, for a self effacing nation. Despite Lotus Island being Rhododendron country, lilacs have a place everywhere, as they are ubiquitous in nature. Every barn and abandoned house on the more sheltered prairies and the interiors had an old timer, surviving after a fashion without demanding a great deal of care. Maybe not as varied and fancy as the new cultivars, but a survivor to be admired and a touch of class, colour and fragrance in an environment of sometime drabness. I have two lilacs that are grafted specimens and horror of horrors,I have allowed a limited growth of the suckers alongside the cultivars! Though I treasure the cultivar, the progenitor is the creation of Mother Nature rather than the French hybridizer, and it reminds us where both we and the cultivar came from and what we have become, for better or for worse. It's like grandpa up in a spare bedroom in the mansion, getting by on his gruel! The progenitor has small florets on spare heads, but it is history and if contained by removing most of the suckers as I did today, it provides some interest to those of us who are probably quirky and know down deep that "beauty" is still," in the eye of the beholder"! If you don't remove most of the suckers they will overcome your cultivar because the progenitor is as vigorous as is Mother Nature. There is no harm in recognizing and prizing our origins,thick or thin and tough as nails!

Magpie Man

2012-01-09T14:19:00.000-08:00

I cut up some old hoses, no longer intact, to thread old wire through the cut segments, to secure a heavy Wisteria to the eaves. It works beautifully as the Wisteria is heavy when in bloom and leaf, and the hose segments do not traumatize the branches in the wind and also shed the damp rapidly. I confess an aptitude for saving any junk that could be remotely useful and some that probably will never be so! I have always found it easier to discard the pianist's junk rather than my own, but I have learned the hard way to stay my hand in that arena. An unalterable penchant for neatness and order will result in a loss of valuable materials to the dumpster that the more frugal will readily apprehend. I do not retain the shiny but clearly useless stuff to impress a lady pianist, since unlike a lady magpie, she needs more than shiny to consider giving me rapt attention. The magpie's junk is close at hand in the nest area, easily accessible and even rotated, when boredom with his toy, or inattention of his mate, mandates a change! Like the magpie I maintain my junk near my nest and instantly accessible, so that "out of sight, out of mind" does not obtain. Storage and dead storage is dynamite to utility unless the unlikely case that a distinct inventory is at hand. The dog that always buries a bone or excess bread heels will not remember the whereabouts of all his treasures, nose or not. There is nothing worse than going through the dead storage area a few years hence and seeing how much potential you could have made of the "objects de vivre" you stored!

Moisturizing

2012-01-04T22:00:00.000-08:00

The hype of skin moisturizers and their pitches about skin care have prompted me to attack the whole idea since it is in fact ridiculous! The television ads drive me crazy since they undermine the natural and promote plasticity in human beings! I am not a dermatologist, but I do have common sense and know this: that Mother Nature is never wrong, and that Ockham's Razor is alive and well! The fetish of bathing or showering once or twice a day, cleansing one's epidermis of Mother Nature's lipids, wax esters, glycerides, squalene, and sialomucin, all it's natural sebum oils, and then, when one has denuded their epidermis of this protective coating, adding some cream that smells like a flower and is manufactured from the petroleum industry; it is an act of violation! The natural epidermal coating is much more complex than I have elaborated, but one came with it in abundance when we traversed the birth canal with our lipid covering of vernix caseosa! It protected us in utero. We are still protected if we allow it. It's not that one shouldn't bathe at all, it's just that it is badly overdone. I guess it's reasonable to smell like a flower some of the time but put it on the front of the forearm where there aren't many sweat glands and it won't get diluted. The dermatological scientists can't agree on the utility of all these waxy coatings we have been provided with, but human beings should still smell like people and retain their natural waxes minus the dirt. The coating is there for a reason. Not knowing why doesn't count! Mother Nature is always right, and the correct answer according to Ockham is usually the simplest answer!

Coinage Redux

2012-01-03T20:44:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to turn over a new leaf. It's been my habit for years to either pay with a credit card at any stand-in-line cashier, or pay with a bill. The credit card, because it's an interest free loan for a few days, or a paper bill because I hate standing in line while someone, almost always a woman, counts and recounts, out loud, a volume of coinage from her reticule! They are good at it but I would be embarrassed to hold the people up behind me if I doled out my pennies and nickels in that fashion. It just doesn't seem manly and I still want to be one of them! I suppose I am hung up on this matter to my detriment but I cannot help it. I am probably projecting that I would irritate those waiting in line behind me; since I feel that way myself, they must. Can I imagine those men waiting in line thinking, "That fellow is a frugal and exemplary character that is careful with his coinage and to be commended for the careful stewardship he seems to display"? No! They are thinking, "What kind of a guy has a wallet with a big change purse, or alternatively capacious pockets in his trousers that are so misshapen with heavy coinage that everything is wrenched out of shape and his trousers sag". As a result of my hang-up I have, in the past, sequestered all my loose coinage over the years in Ziploc bags in my sock drawer, the basement work shelf, the photograph cupboard and sundry other places. That was an organizational start, as prior to the Ziplocs it was loose change in every nook and cranny in every room in the house. The pianist finally said " Deal with it or else!" so I spent two afternoons tubing my coins; pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters in accurate tally to take to the bank. There were fifteen pounds of coins representing many years of loose and neurotic habit. Those coins have lost much value over the years with currency devaluation and I have no-one to blame except myself for my ill advised attempts to seem manly! I am going to recycle my pennies from now on, but I just need a bolt of courage.

Tent Caterpillar Egg Cases

2011-12-31T06:19:00.000-08:00

The tree pruner came this week and did a nice job of the apple trees and pears and the Dolgo. He does the big trees which are standards and I do the smaller trees as I am now too old to climb high. About 8 to 10 percent of the 1 and 2 year growth on the apple trees have tent caterpillar egg cases this winter. I think we all knew an infestation was going to happen this coming year since the moths, Malacosoma, were extensive this fall on Lotus Island. We have yet to have a sharp frost which I am still hoping for, but rigorous pruning will get rid of the bulk of the egg cases and oil sprays will deal with some of them that are left as well, since they need to breathe. The pears are safe because the leaves have a harder finish. These caterpillars may be somewhat controlled on my apple trees, but the alders,birches,ocean spray,Rosa vulgaris and wild cherries are also loaded with egg cases and I can't prune the whole countryside, so in the end, we are going to have to rely on Mother Nature to interrupt the cycle with the Tachinid wasp. I have never tried BT but am going to do so this spring as I expect an inflorescence of worm, to follow the inflorescence of bloom, despite all these other measures. The trouble with spray is the worm appears in graduated stepwise larval stages over six weeks here, so multiple sprays are needed. Cost! The pruner is a nice guy but leaves his cuttings for me to pick up for shredding or burning. Thank goodness I've got Eddie who does the bending and hauling while I do the shredding and burn what I can't shred, on the beach. Shredding I am sure will destroy the egg cases when I compost the chips. Burning will certainly do it! One thing struck me as I wrote this and that is, Malus and Malacosoma: of course!

Diurnal Rhythm

2011-12-23T08:37:00.000-08:00

If you have to take a nap or siesta after lunch, or struggle to stay awake in the early afternoon; if you wake up in the middle of the night for a period, or struggle to go back to sleep; and these episodes are consistent, you have a quadrinal rhythm, a variety of diurnal. Of course that rhythm is not satisfactory for most employers of today's workaday Western world, so those of us who had it, struggled to change to a diurnal sleep-wake rhythm unsuccessfully. Now that I am retired I can embrace my true quadrinal rhythm. The seasonal change of long dark nights and short days as now, in deep December, can increase the torpor of the organism, not only for Hibernators, but for the Quadrinals as well. Those of us that are dark-adapted will still thrive in the quiet and reflective 3am period when the night is long and satin. To thrive, one uses that rhythm to advantage. We do not mistake periods of torpor for depression, but see it as renewal, resting our metabolic rate, and being, rather than always doing! Sadly, those who have to manufacture energy, sometimes trumping the natural rhythm of the organism, may be stuck by the external demands of work. A paramecium embedded in a milieu, not of one's own choosing! At least, by embracing this concept one will erase blame and give one the hope that retirement will allow the natural man to emerge!

Smell a Rat

2011-12-19T16:42:00.000-08:00

I went to the farm to pick up our turkey today. The farmer is a retired accountant. We talked about accounting and taxes since my grandson, of whom I am proud, is to article as a CA. The farmer friend told me how easy it was for an experienced CA to smell a rat in a tax return. It was an interesting conversation. He said, "Once a whiff of trapped rat is detected there is a hyper-vigilance annotated. A stench is often found with a little more time!" As I was driving home I thought about a friend who works for Revenue Canada as investigator. I think the phrase "I smell a rat" arose literally from the vermin arena! It occurred to me as I thought about it, that intelligent assessments, both with taxes and vermin, would use red flags as tip-off to a trapped rotten rat behind a wall. The audit is a bit like pest control! Some I know have a nose like a bloodhound. They get a whiff of the dead rat in the wall between Studs early on. I am a person with anosmia! "I can't smell a thing", I say. "You never do", they say,"'til it's too late." A little later, it's not a whiff, but a stench!" "I pick it up it now," I say. Well, the auditor gets a whiff, and looks forward to find the stench. Moreover,he looks for the loophole below that leads the rat to behind the wall of deception. The pest control needs to quickly find the hole that the rat used to get into the wall in order to plug it so only one rat is rotting. Since they run in and out, this too is a loophole. The more loopholes there are, the more rats we'll find. Rats aren't stupid. They multiply easily and if they live with anosmiacs they will last a long time with their fellow corpses before the stench subsides! Painful though they may be, fair taxes and plugged loopholes lead to an equitable, just and fragrant society. A toast to the CA's and Pest Controllers, cats and terriers!

Eureka, I think

2011-12-13T20:49:00.000-08:00

Soon we will sing We Three Kings. The lyrics of the hymn are well known, but TS Eliot's poem, Journey of the Magi, is not wooden. The Magus who narrates the poem is alone and his epiphany was "Eureka, I think!" It wasn't easy and it wasn't sure and there was doubt. The epiphany both was, and wasn't, a long time coming. The poem stirs the soul because it reflects a thoroughly human person. Who provided the greater gift? Whose is the greater gift? That's easy! The Babe. The narrator of the poem has the gift of distance and time to arrive at the discovery of the paradox that out of death can come life. Someone said to me , "I don't understand what you mean by that last sentence. It doesn't make sense!" "Well" I said, "Read the poem! I'm not going to tell you what I think it means. It's not my job. You're not a stupid man so you will have your own ideas and they are as good as mine, though you'll never be as poetic as Eliot! And you'll never have to ride a thousand miles on a camel in the winter to find out either!"

Dry Land Farm

2011-12-12T18:07:00.000-08:00

In Saskatchewan in 1950, when I was in grade 12, a mandatory course in the provincial curriculum was called Agricultural Economics! It represented more than just another course. It was a signal that reflected the cultural imperative for the bald prairie following the hardships of the dirty thirties and the efforts of the PFRA (Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration) to ensure that improvements in dry land farming would never again allow those dreadful times to recur . The shelter belts, contour plowing, deep furrow planting, stubble retention, summer fallow, early maturing wheat and prairie grass seeding were implemented in my time in the forties and fifties and were a deep and abiding part of our prairie culture as evidenced by the curriculum in school. In Kindersley I still vividly remember the wet rags around the windows during frequent dust storms, the relentless wind blowing the Russian Thistle across the bald prairie, unhampered by fences, seeding as they tumbled into the piled up top soil in the ditches. Later, in Conquest the planted 12 foot Carragana hedges(Siberian peashrub) served as shelter belts; planted in rows every eighth of a mile to check the wind erosion and preserve the blowing snow drifts for precious water retention for dry fields. The hedging protecting the roads from excess snow when we went to school by cutter. Many years later I couldn't even imagine such a course in high school that would so reflect overarching cultural mores and direct the interest in everyone of school age to its economic importance. I have changed my mind. That zeal we felt then has reappeared in new clothing. Dressed in today's energy toward a green revolution, and the ecological drive manifest by today's youth who are addressing a new problem with the same commitment and zeal that we had. Maybe harnessed with the same school effort that we were privy to! I don't have my essay from Grade 12 now, since I haven't saved my paper from 61 years ago, but I remember I got an A+ from Bill Cybulski for my report on the work of the PFRA. The changes were a matter of survival as a prairie society at that time. We knew nothing at that time about the presence of oil, potash,uranium or diversity of grains. For me, it is wonderful to watch today's economic renaissance in Saskatchewan and the need to achieve balance with the environment we have been given!

Communication

2011-12-10T12:57:00.000-08:00

Ronald Reagan was said to be the Great Communicator! Style and Substance: Short and Sweet and Succinct. It reminds me of the contrast from my early years of medical practice, and the later role I served in the complaints committee of the regulatory body. Many of the complaints about physicians arose as a result of failure to explain, failure to take the time to answer questions, and assumptions that people understood, when in fact they didn't. It all takes time, truth and syntax! It may reflect caring if you communicate wisely, but it is more important that the patient is truly informed for the benefit of the caregiver as well as themselves! We used to laughingly joke," We were taught in third year Medicine to write illegibly so that no one could use our records against us; and taught in fourth year Medicine how to mumble so no one could gainsay what we told them! The joke was of course, "We ended up with no communication skills." Some times that, in reality, was not far off. I have seen many cases of superb treatment provided to people who bitterly complained about the treatment because the communication, both before or after, was awful or non existent. Since I went to Medical School in the 50's and trained in surgery in the early sixties, communication took second place then, to technical skill. The "cared for" were patients, not clients, and certainly not customers. That terminology is evolutionary. We cared deeply in the olden days about doing good work, and we worked so hard, but we wondered why they didn't love us.The idea of the patient participating in their care or contributing was nonexistent in those days, even if you were not a Martinet. It's hard to even fathom that attitude now, but the change of patient, to client, to customer, for better or worse, is the great leveler. Certainly, like all else, nothing is cut and dried, respect is a two way street, and education of everyone is the key!

Force Vitale

2011-12-03T10:08:00.000-08:00

My architect friend, who designed a post war modernist house for the pianist and me in 1970, phoned yesterday to tell me it was featured in a 3 month Legacy Show in Lotus City! It, amongst some other buildings, broke new ground at the time in the seventies, and for me the house was ground breaking, though in retrospect, I was an arriviste then and thought I needed such a vehicle.We sold the house after seventeen years of living as our family grew up and we simplified with an apartment in town and a cottage on Lotus Island.I never forgot the house through the intervening years as it was for me a crowning jewel throughout the time we lived there! When we left and the furnishings were gone I never returned to see it because it would have been painful. The pianist however went back to look at the empty house and as she looked in every room she knew: "A house without a force vitale; is only a beautiful empty shell." Time has healed desire for me now and I am looking forward to the Legacy Show. I hope I have conquered my arriviste tendencies. The heart of any house, beautiful or homely, is what creates the home. The pianist shared my feelings about leaving it, but it became apparent to her as she toured the empty house that it was a corpse, albeit a beautiful corpse, without a heart, awaiting a new transplant. I wish now that I had the pianist's foresight to revisit it once it was empty so that I could also write finis to the sense of loss that I felt at that time.

Phytophagiacs

2011-11-28T19:36:00.000-08:00

When my father read the newspaper in the olden days he frequently, absentmindedly, tore off corners of the newspaper and chewed them as he ate up the news of the day. Cellulose is as indigestible as the news was, both in those days, and perhaps even more so today! Phytophagy can occasionally morph into the compulsion to eat vegetable matter unselectively and pathophysiology ensues if the matter is indigestible like cellulose. It leaves the growing mass of a cellulose ball called a Phytobezoar trapped in the narrow area of the GI tract! My dad never ate enough that it was other than a forme fruste of indigestible Phytophagy! Since he rarely read books, our stock of books was unmarked! One always knew he had read the paper or the magazine from the absent corners. A form of marking, like Kilroy! Like the neighborhood dog idly pissing on the hydrant, marking the bounds of the territory. I, for some reason, continued his habit, idly tearing the odd corner off a book and chewing it as I ingested the material and its content. It was never bad enough for it to be considered a pica, but it offended my friends if I had borrowed their book! Cellulose from paper is one thing, but wooden matches, toothpicks,popsicle sticks and other wood bits are worse. Human beings are not beavers. When I first married the pianist she was horrified to see the ingestion of her books, corner by corner as I sought to share her interesting reading material! I realize now it was a form of marking, done innocently! A habit idly acquired is easily dispensed with in the interest of literary harmony when love intervenes! I no longer have ever gone back to that bad habit, but when my son grew up, became a bibliophile and had his own library, I often read his books but for a while bent open the spines of his tighter books for easier reading. Again I was castigated for my book destructive tendencies. I am careful now to eat candy or popcorn when I read, and I strain to read obliquely through a semi-open book if it is newish and not my own! I want to be good!

Quince Jelly

2011-11-26T08:33:00.000-08:00

Two mature ladies I know who like quince jelly took a large portion of my crop this past month, but I still had a number of fruits that I tried to get rid of, unsuccessfully. Quince jelly is not for everyone! The flavour is rather unique and somewhat perfume like, to my taste! It however has an exotic quality and a heritage aspect so I could not bring myself to discard the basket full of the fuzzy yellow fruit. I made my own quince jelly last week and it was very successful as the pectin content is high, even in the fully ripened and over ripened fruit that I used. Since quality jelly requires not only taste, but colour and jell quality, my product will rate highly for the scarce aficionado who appreciates the unusual and acquired flavour and appearance of the quince. The jelly in the jar has a colour of fine orange furniture oil, unique as well, from the ripe quince. I am also hoping that my value added product will entice the wary who avoided the primary product, but who could become a new enthusiast after trying the jelly. Those of low taste who require the more usual jellies on their toast can content themselves with the predictable, but I do not intend to proselytize to the unadventuresome. I am sure there are more elderly eclectic ladies on Lotus Island that can be enticed with my jelly!

Turf the Old

2011-11-25T16:28:00.000-08:00

The Beech tree,(Fagus sylvatica) does not shed it's leaves 'til later in the spring despite the cold winter temperatures in Europe. The beech hedges, seen widely distributed in Scotland, retain the browning and yellowed saw toothed leaves though out the winter in contrast to almost all other leaves of deciduous trees, which conveniently and expeditiously retire to the turf in the fall and make way for the young in the spring. The Beech leaf is much more stubborn about going, and needs the young growth to expand and force the old leaves from their tenacious foothold. The elderly Beech leaves serve a minor purpose I suppose, in that they increase the winter density of the hedges which moderates the wind, but the appearance is of elderly gentlemen whose role is come and gone, but won't go readily! Eventually the youth will push them out and fulfill their role of windbreak plus providing new life to the company! Because the old are reluctant to leave 'til the spring, the mess to clean up after their departure detracts from the work available for the new growth. If they only knew! They fortunately, usefully serve as late arrivals in the compost, but the earliest at that gathering get the most points and serve the greater good quickly. The Evergreens are another matter. Here on Lotus Island, the Western Red Cedar, (Thuja plicata), nominally an evergreen as most of the Conifers are, loses its leaves in a 3 year cycle, as all the rest of the Evergreens do in 2 to 5 year cycles. At least Thuja, in the fall, drops abundant spent leaves with the November storms over our plot, as it is doing at the moment, and the deposits on the turf are huge. A better corporate system leaves much of the tree with both space for new leaf recruits and 2 and 3 year veterans to work usefully though the winter and spring. They are always green in name but deciduous in fact, since shedding of the very old is part of Mother Nature's renewal. Unlike the Beech tree; more like the Evergreen; continuity for corporate health of the tree and of us is a consideration!

Low Key Mad Cap

2011-11-21T16:49:00.000-08:00

In the 60's when I arrived to practice in Lotus City there were only 85 doctors and everyone knew everyone else with all the passions that arose in such a closed and hothouse society! Famous for their medical parties were two brothers who lived in Lotus City but were from my Alma Mater! In one soiree they required each couple to do twenty toe touchings and deep knee bends at the door before they entered the party! They recorded the comments with a mike at the door under the category of "What Dr W. said to his wife as they bedded," such as, " This is a damned stupid thing to do!" or " I'm too old for this sort of bloody thing", or "I'm short of breath already" and so on, and we listened to all the tapes at the party. When the second brother arrived in Lotus City, as yet unknown, a party was held in his honour to introduce him but he didn't appear! It was a fancy affair and a butler in tails served drinks and aperitifs to the crowd and was excessively friendly, putting his arms around the ladies, complementing them on their hair and gown and seemed exceedingly familiar. Whispering sweet nothings in their ear. Everyone said," The hosts were really putting on the dog with this butler in tails, but his familiarity seems excessive." It was revealed at the end of the party that he was the brother that was to be introduced. These same Alma Maters of mine would tease their colleagues by putting monkey faces on pictures of their friends who had dared to be photographed as a family musical group on the society pages of the local newspaper. There were a no holds barred for that time in the 60's. Medicine may be much more organized now, and business like, and progressive, but the characters, for better or for worse, have disappeared into the grey morass! Now members are of the corporate medical society! Now governed by regulations that includes behavior both incurred in the practice (Professional Misconduct), superseded by all of one's activity (Unprofessional Conduct)! The practice of medicine in the past never precluded the pursuit of fun at the edge! Mind, I'm not condoning badness, or "Conduct Unbecoming", just silliness!!

Fat Elvis

2011-11-18T20:38:00.000-08:00

A useful service a parent can offer a boy in his early teens, is to accept that the father is a foil for certain mirthful commentary by the son and his friends. I learned, through some sort of inadvertency in the grapevine, that I was referred to by the diminutive set as Fat Elvis! I think it had something to do with my 60's hair style, carried over a later time, rather than my singing voice or my pelvic inclinations. I wasn't particularly dismayed by this description as I recall, since I considered the source. It is important for a son to have the opportunity to rail away at his father with his friends and to share in the joy of their raillery with one another! Heaven knows there are far worse labels to apply to a parent than that of an aging Elvis. Elvis Presley and I were the same age. If they were more literate they could have called me something really demeaning like Sancho Panza. At any rate they would skulk around, claiming the smell was just Patch, shoelaces untied, and nothing done up, and claiming victory to themselves over the Foil. Little did they realize the honour felt, being compared to one of the finest voices and rhythm makers in the world, less the girth.I won't say I was glad to be called Fat Elvis as it smacked of schoolboy insolence, but as long as it was behind my back it remained unacknowledged. I have never yet asked him how that name came about. He may have even forgotten about this period. I just celebrated the fact that a little derision, particularly with your friends when bravado is practised, is part of the important and necessary distancing process! I could have got back at him by calling him "dear" in front of his friends, as I occasionally did when we were alone, but I assiduously avoided this in company. Like most conditions in life, if you wait it out in good humour, it gets better.

An act of Care

2011-11-14T19:27:00.000-08:00

My father came into the bedroom of my brothers and me every night before he went to bed and pulled the covers up on us and tucked us in. We would have been mostly asleep but we always had the vague sense that a hand was present and a vigil performed. This act was probably never necessary, as our rooms were warm, though our covers were often kicked off because young boys are restless sleepers; at least we were; fidgeting night and day! Where did that routine of his come from? Probably an automatic act from the need to show us protection through the darkness of the night and its terrors! A form of gathering us in! I don't think, I confess, ever doing that with my children! It's only now that I think about that act as one of care, a visible sign of an invisible impulse of love. We do little things to signify love! Different things unique to us. Different ways of expression! My dad's was his unique act! They only signify what they mean to us and what they meant for them, at times as we reflect on them. Hey! That was an act that I never really recognized the significance of at that time. It was just accepted that that was what he did. The small and seemingly inconsequential visible signs of parental love so often are under the radar until your soft wear revisits a reawakened state! When Robert Munsch published his fabulous children's book "Love You Forever", it made me wish I had tucked in the covers more often for my mother and father before they died!

Masterly Inactivity

2011-11-12T09:48:00.000-08:00

Hippocrates, in an aphorism once wrote, "The wise physician amuses his patient while nature affects the cure." We used to have a phrase for that willingness to stay the hand. Masterly Inactivity! A small, but distinct segment of patients fit the need for this category of care. This active pursuit of inactivity has nothing to do with interest or disinterest of the patient by the physician. It simply means that when there is nothing to do, do nothing stupid; or "Do nothing, stupid!" Patients are frequently unhappy with this approach, even those sufficiently sophisticated who have been counselled that diagnosis and continuing observation is all that is required for their condition! After some time taken at explanation, the response will be, "For heavens sake, you have to do something rather than nothing!" The simple fact is many conditions are self limiting and many other conditions inevitably worsen! Hippocrates aphorism applied for this is, "Cure occasionally, comfort always!" Reputations for success are achieved often by the institution of an active treatment for a self-limiting condition just before its denouement! Credit where none is due thereby, is still useful, at least for the aura of the practitioner! Useless treatments applied to conditions where deterioration is inevitable can always be excused with, "They tried everything and they worked so hard to help!" There is some comfort that there was never neglect for the trying! Setting science aside, the Art of Medicine does not include taking credit for Mother Nature, and burdensome treatments for untreatable conditions. The line between Hope, Comfort, and Reality needs a careful tread! Somehow the ideas of a Greek Corpus, 2500 years ago, are still relevant today.

Black Bamboo

2011-11-10T19:37:00.000-08:00

In 1971 I planted several clumps of Black bamboo (Phyllostachys nigra) along a faked dry river bed of Saturnalite that gave a pleasing appearance, even if contrived. I wanted it to remain clumped and it did since it was surrounded by poor soil and the aggregate of Saturnalite. My understanding at the time was that it was a naturally clumping bamboo and would not spread. Since there had been an embargo on bamboo at around that time and particularly Black bamboo I was pleased to have it, and I might have imagined I was in China as I sat, musing on my dry river bed. We moved from Lotus City to Lotus Island, both in the Pacific Northwest, and I took some rooted portions of the clumps with me. They are still in my garden here today, protected from wind by windbreak plantings, and having weathered a particularly cold winter in 2010 with some top foliage loss. In the garden here they are in three big clumps, but this year they have started to move! They have, for the first time in 40 years, begun to develop spreading rhizomes in spades! The clumps are monstrous after this length of time and have probably responded to exhausted soil by seeking fertile land, sending probing rhizomes and new plants abroad. In addition, probably seeking for a location warmer than their present spot. Lotus Island is in zone 5, Black bamboo's top cold tolerance threshold. Like populations of anything, the plant does what it has to do to survive and thrive. It goes to show that the classification of clumping or spreading, in plant and animal, fails to account for the contingent capacity to change and move with whatever means is necessary to survive! Climate and food trump stick in the mud, in the plant and animal world!

Winter Ducks

2011-11-08T14:58:00.000-08:00

The Lotus Island Harbour is teeming with American Widgeons and Bufflehead Ducks today! Vegetarians and carnivorians! Dabbling ducks and diving ducks. They will be here all winter in our little spot in the harbour to our great delight. The Eagles have not returned yet to begin their connubial activity so the ducks have a short reprieve. The Widgeons crowd serenely together and float along, seemingly unhurried, occasionally dabbling down when close to shore for plant food. They don't need to hurry because the plants wait for them! Their pace is unruffled! Why wouldn't it be? They are the gatherer society. The little Buffleheads skitter along, wings flapping repeatedly, posturing and diving and darting hither and yon! You can always identify them by the wake they leave; they move so fast with both feet and wings going a mile a minute; in or on the water chasing flesh! No wonder they are in a hurry. Their prey waits for no Bufflehead, and they are the hunter society! The seagulls pester them, hoping they will drop the prey but the Buffleheads have an answer to that hunter society. They swallow their prey under water where no seagull will go. They spend much of their time swimming around and through the Widgeon flock: they look like Hares among the Tortoises. Curiously the only ducks we usually see now are these two species. In days of yore there were many winter species that visited but the varieties seem to have dried up. I don't know why. The harbour provides an abundant source of both plant and animal foodstuffs and the species don't compete because of the nature of their diet. Aside from the Eagles their winter sojourn is untroubled! For the pianist and me, familiarity never breeds contempt!

Eg Latin

2011-11-05T20:16:00.000-07:00

For years our family has spoken Eg Latin, a superior subset of Pig Latin that has much greater cypher advantage and is not generally known! It was used only in fun but was completely confounding to the uninitiated. In the standard Pig Latin the post fix, AY, is placed at the end of the word behind the transposed first consonant or consonant cluster. Hence Rhinocerous would be hinocerousRay or perhaps inocerousRhay! Not too difficult to intercept. In Eg Latin, each syllable is treated by EG following the consonant or its cluster, so Rhinocerous is transposed as Rheginegocegeregous! If there is no consonant, but a vowel leading the syllable, the Eg precedes, such as in "over", egoveger! You may think this is hard to become fluent in, but it is not! Small children will take to it like a duck to water! Start with simple stuff like Legategin! Like Pegig! It is much harder to write it than to verbalize! I was taught this foolishness by my father and have transferred it to the succeeding generations successfully. I remember flying with our family somewhere years ago and talking EG Latin quietly to a kid that was misbehaving, when the family behind us joined the conversation much to our delight. I am completely illiterate in any language except English, (I hope), so I scrape the bottom of the barrel as my only claim to linguistic pluralism, derived from the country of EG.

The Advertiser

2011-11-04T02:32:00.000-07:00

In the 1960's, advertising for patients in a medical practice was forbidden by the College of Physicians and Surgeons! They were tough regulators! Making claims of any sort were also subject to sanctions by the College! A new specialist in town was to simply hang a modest shingle and a tiny and dignified announcement of arrival in the paper (three times I think), and then wait until their colleagues saw fit to refer a surgical case. The growth of the surgical practice occurred ostensibly through practicing the three A's, Available,Affable and Able. That does not include Advertising! Remember of course that this was before Medicare and paying patients were jealously guarded by their General Practitioners. When the pianist and I moved to Lotus City with our little family in 1965 to start a surgical practice, I took a job at the Veterans Hospital to keep the wolf from the door while the slow process of developing a consulting practice began. A tough old veteran had been having serious trouble with an old gunshot wound to the lower leg, incurred during the Second World War. He needed a below knee amputation and the Veteran's Hospital Prosthetics Department was keen to try a new prosthetic technique with the immediate application of the artificial limb in the operating room. After the team surgery, I was astounded to read a front page article in the Lotus City Paper the following day relating an interview with my tough old patient who was walking around in the veteran's canteen, fully weight bearing on the limb, extolling my surgical virtues! He was so elated he had phoned the paper! It wasn't very long before I was called to the mat by the College of Physicians and Surgeons for unfairly advertising! Several of my surgical confreres had complained and the Registrar warned me that I was on thin ice. I pled innocence! However---it was a good start!

Identity, Our Tool is Us

2011-10-31T19:53:00.000-07:00

Today I cranked up my Bearcat Shredder and munched and ground my pile of pruned twigs and branches to pulp. I am old and feeble and have Rheumatoid Arthritis but with my tool as an extension of me, I am mighty! I am Marlboro Man at work, employing a machine in a rugged activity that my forefathers, at my age, could have only dreamt about. I eventually ran out of gas at the same time as the Bearcat, so both of us called it a day! We all have tools that can be an extension of our arm or leg or brain or senses that make us explorers, visionaries, artists and rugged adventurers! Whoever said,"It's not important what you do, but who you are" was not telling the whole story. We are creatures of our tools. In the olden days my father would watch my mother cut slices from the bread loaf in which she pressure forced the knife down onto the loaf, rather than deftly sawing with light downward force. Her bread slices ended up about an inch high. He would look at us and say, "Let the tool do the work." Good advice! When the first primate, or the first crow, used the first tool to do a job that they had originally used a arm or beak to do, they began the process of advancing to a new identity that separated one from another. The artistry displayed by the operator of the excavator is astounding, who, with foot and hand can practically pick up his cigarette packet with his bucket, or lift a one ton rock. The machine has become part of the body. With time and skill the tool incorporates into the organism so there is no space in between the two. There is an area on the gyrus for the tool! Whether the golf club, the hockey stick, the brush, the egg whisk, the ivory keys, the strings, the cup or the scalpel; when you have arrived at that golden moment where you are one with your tool, you will no longer see yourself apart from it!

The Story's Butt

2011-10-24T20:27:00.000-07:00

It was often my habit when I was working, to go fishing at daybreak off the waters by Lotus City! I would start at 5 am and finish at 8 am, change on the boat and go to work. I fished alone at that time of day and there was nothing more pleasant than to troll along the Discovery Islands in Strongtide Bay on ebb-tide, with the wire lines humming and the trolling bells on the rods rhythmically ringing with the gentle swell. Because it was early morning, nature usually called sometime shortly after the setup, and in the cabin on the throne I would rest a bit, watching and listening to the bells through the open cabin door, in repose, with an air of contemplation and expectation. The joy I felt on the briny deep in pursuit of the salmon was enhanced by the embrace of Mother Nature, who was mine alone at that time in the morning. The world was still asleep! My lines were fishing deep, the depth maintained by planers, that, when tripped by a strike, prompted the rods to ring the bell urgently. The planers rose to the surface quickly with the fish, causing line slack. The fisherman always needed to act with alacrity to get to the rod and tighten the slack to avoid the fish throwing the hook! In the midst of my meditations the bell rang stridently on the starboard rod and with great speed I hopped off the throne, pants dangling at the ankle and retrieved my rod from the rod holder and began to reel in the slack to start to play the fish! I suddenly heard great cheering and looked up to see high fives from a quartet on the guide boat fishing long-side me, starboard. My boat had little freeboard so I wasn't entirely sure that they were cheering my catch or my crotch! To be perfectly clear, neither were impressive! I wasn't fishing for compliments but so much for ego!

The Familiar

2011-10-23T12:03:00.000-07:00

"Look", I said to the pianist this morning, "There are a flock of American Widgeons that have returned. They weren't here yesterday." They are the first returnees of our winter ducks and you can practically set your calendar by them! What is it about the familiar that is so comfortable? Expectations met! The orb is turning as it ought! November is such a black month but the dark,wind, and cold is familiar. The Widgeons tell us it is good to be here! They say, "This is where we choose; this harbour and you, are familiar. You can rely on us and the Buffleheads and the others that return for the winter to sooth your familiars." The older one becomes, the more familiars one has that are available to the mind and the more they become of value. Breaking new ground, on the other hand, is crucial for the young: creating familiars for themselves, though they may not know it at the time. Years ago I had a white cable-knit sweater that I really loved. I wore it a lot, and particularly on my boat with my captain's hat and a scarf: it became my joie de vivre! It was my statement! As it was in frequent use, it became frayed, baggy, elbow thinned, a bit stained, and after multiple washings the pianist chucked it in the bin to discard. I retrieved it and continued to wear it, adverse comments notwithstanding! It was a familiar and I still felt a certain jauntiness it imparted despite its disagreeable appearance. After all, I was the author of its decrepitude and I owed it. My efforts to prolong the life of my cable-knit came to an end when the pianist had finally had it with washing it, trashing it and having it repeatedly retrieved. One day she washed the algae and mold off the greenhouse floor with my treasure. It was a dirty grey-green! It was like the day my aunt took away my blanket when I was three. Another familiar bit the dust and I needed to break new ground again!

Fibrotic Creep

2011-10-15T12:23:00.000-07:00

The boiling fowl is tough because of fibrotic creep. Someone might say of an elderly eclectic gentleman, "He is a tough old bird!" That person is literally, righter than they think. We are all subject to this phenomenon of creep as we become analogous to our boiling cousin! Muscle fibres, which have little capacity to regenerate, are crept into by fibrous strings of collagen, replacing over a life time both voluntary, involuntary and cardiac muscle fibres. Healthy fat cells providing energy storage, heat and insulation are emptied of their contents by Father Time and move to fibrous tissue and the losses that are gradually entailed. Bone, becomes both thinner and less dense, with loss of mineral and change in the fibrous and cartilaginous structure. The fibrous replacement for young collagen does not have the same capacity to mineralize! Toughened fibrous tissue surrounds the joints and loss of resilience limits the range of motion. Gravity flattens the feet which become longer and wider and the fibres around the joints stretch and are painful! If you take a Petri dish and a batch of primitive mesenchymal cells and subject them to varying oxygen tension and varying motion applications, they have the capacity to become fibroblasts, chondroblasts, or osteoblasts, consistent with the milieu you have created for them! This elegant system, when operating at prime of life, has the capacity to restructure and regenerate on demand, fibrous tissue, cartilage or bone. So those primitive cells are the basis of the framework for our body, that houses the vital cells of life. There is a hourglass at work that spells the demise of the magnificent primitive mesenchyme, but not before its last gasp at the vital organs. It is gradual, but as fibrotic creep invades the space of the vital cells, the timbers of the house are joined by the fibrosis of the essential organs within!

Dirty Fingernails

2011-10-14T18:10:00.000-07:00

Years ago when I started doing surgery in Winnipeg I remember sitting across at lunch from a very prominent internist,a stellar academic from a noted Winnipeg family. He was consulting that day and I was taken aback at his dirty fingernails! As I think back now, I can't really remember much about him, but the first image that always comes to mind is his fingernails. What an unworthy thought! If one toils in the soil to any extent the fingernails will always be dirty; there will be scabs and sores around your hands and calluses in palmar areas. If one is pinching, stopping or fine weeding one will have stains as well. Certainly pruning vegetables will leave stains that challenge the scrub brush. Nails will be cracked and uneven! It has always been a challenge to metamorphize from grub to social butterfly in a single day. Don't tell me to wear gloves. No fine garden or potting work can be done with gloves. They are a refuge for the dilettante! I had a physician that scrubbed with me every fortnight for some time. He and I enjoyed gardening conversations when we scrubbed. He said to me how much he enjoyed working with me every second week. I was flattered that he appeared to compliment my skill which I erroneously thought he enjoyed. "Yes", he said, " The work allows me to get my fingernails really clean every fortnight." Ha! Trumped by the scrub sink. When I was working at surgery it took me half an hour scraping and bristling before a scrub to get my fingernails clean. Now that I'm retired there is no letup because in addition to "cleanliness is next to Godliness", there is the job of serving communion as a lay congregant to 100 odd communicants in full view of my fingernails. There is no respite!

Gunnera Attacked

2011-10-12T12:09:00.000-07:00

It's fall and the Black Tailed deer bucks on Lotus Island, a subspecies of Mule deer, are in rut! Whether they are getting rid of their antler velvet to get into fighting trim, or practicing their moves against the Gunnera stems, is moot. Either way the young are preparing for the coming conflict. Once the testosterone rises in deer or man, some projection may take place. Whatever harm did the Gunnera do to them? And yet, it is a convenient foil! The stems are coarse with rough spinous projections, sufficiently sharp to remove velvet! After that little favour, it's not much of a step to give the stem a good whacking with the newly hardened antlers. The warrior class is simply doing what is necessary to perpetuate the species. Lucky for us they are benign warriors throughout the growing year until fall so the Gunnera enjoys a pristine existence 'til now. The plus for all this is they leave the bark alone on the smaller ornamental trees that would otherwise be victimized. I hate the idea of surrounding all the little trees with wire cages. If you are not going to restrain the warrior class by fencing them out of your property, you must respect their need to train, but hope that they will restrain themselves by doing only what is necessary! That said, one doesn't want the young and fearless males to be equivalent to a walking Gonad controlled by a Betz cell! Wreaking havoc! The species would be indeed be in jeopardy!

The Power of One

2011-10-10T02:57:00.001-07:00

Some time ago a woman in her mid-seventies was trapped by the doors of an elevator in a parkade. The doors shut after she tripped on entering and both legs and one arm were outside the elevator as it ran up four floors and then down again to ground level. She was transferred to the hospital in extremis! The limbs were mutilated. I was working in the OR at the time just finishing a fractured hip. The general surgeon phoned up from Emergency and asked if I would look after her as I had a space and could bump my next case. We examined her in the OR and her limbs were shredded. Nothing was salvageable and an ill informed attempt would be certain death with old kidneys. She had immediate amputation of all three limbs and was transferred to ICU. She never turned a hair and was out of ICU in three days and on the ward. Shortly after that she was transferred to the Rehabilitation Hospital. Her husband and children were incredibly supportive. After her transfer to rehab I lost track of her. About a year or so later I was visiting my mother-in-law in a personal care facility with the pianist and we were having lunch in the dining room. A beautiful woman in an electric wheel chair came over to me with her husband and thanked me for looking after her. She was vibrant and her eyes sparkled. She was all there! Her life had resumed! Where does the power come from? Where is the Well that we can draw the strength from to continue to live a real life that is not just, existing? We didn't talk about faith that day but I saw serenity. The Well that we draw from may be beyond definition for some, or defined by the curious faithful, but whatever it is,it is real!

Self publishing

2011-10-07T13:19:00.000-07:00

My experience in self publishing has been stimulating and exciting, but a financial failure. On the other hand my book has only been available for 6 weeks and it takes that long for some to read it. I would do it again in an instant for the self gratification it brings and the heartening responses from my family and friends! The book I wrote, "An Elderly Eclectic Gentleman", was taken from this blog over the three year period and edited for publication by myself. The self publishing company was very helpful throughout and the cost was not exorbitant. I have some weaknesses, not the least of which is, I love my own writing much more than most books that I read. I am sure the weakness also includes more pride than sense, but I did not wish to go hat in hand to a commercial publisher at my age! I still have the perennial optimism that I will be discovered eventually. My book is 294 short topics on the real and mystical world around us that I have encountered. If I went to a commercial publisher I figured they would delete a third of my work for market reasons and I didn't want my muse assaulted. Therefore I am poised, willingly, on the horns of my own dilemma. So be it! In the meanwhile I continue to write because I can't help not writing from time to time as something weird, quixotic, or quirky, occurs. My thematic is the ordinary is almost always extraordinary in some settings and life is a mystery. God is a mystery to me but there always seems an Immensity in much of life that is both ever present and evanescent. Maybe that's it! This is much of what I touch on, but I only know what I feel. Jesus is more tangible for me and the Holy Spirit more recognizable for me, but God, I can't quite grip since for me he exists objectively only by hearsay. I hope he doesn't mind me saying so. Writing is therapy when sex,violence and cynicism are replaced with wonder! It's just that it may not be commercial.

Boiling Fowl

2011-10-05T16:41:00.000-07:00

When the Rooster looks like he is going to permanently roost, and all the elderly egg laying maidens of yesteryear have begun to flag, the chicken farmer from the days of yore, considered them all to be boiling fowl and there was a good market for them. A dish from the past from these geriatric fowl was chicken fricassee with baking powder biscuits, an old time favorite. The pianist bought a boiling fowl from the store yesterday; 80 cents a pound and few takers since hardly anyone these days has any idea how to cook this product, since they are so seasoned to eat pediatric or adolescent chickens of 10 or 20 weeks. The flesh of the unsung boiling fowl is red,red,red! The bones are hard, hard, hard! The cartilage of youth is non-existent. The joints do not disarticulate with ease! The flesh of the 8 pound fowl we dealt with today is firm, but needs boiling for several hours to be tender! The gravy it makes, if first thoroughly browned, is abundant! The boiling fowl is a different meat from the penned adolescent of the Colonel's! This fowl has run for years and its muscles show it. Bulgy and tough! The throwaway culture of today fails to take account of the rewards that being hard up in the olden days actually introduced! One might consider, even today, that recycling your old chickens rather than relegating them to the dump, could be useful! Certainly frugal! Unlike the bland flavour of young chicken flesh per se, the older flesh of the fricasseed provides it's own unique and delicious flavour, cooked to tenderness in its own juices! The bold taste of red meat should be served with a red wine.

Ruminants

2011-09-28T05:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I said to the pianist," Look, there is a doe and a yearling lying on our footpath chewing their cud!" Their front legs were crossed in complete repose; a posture not adapted to rapid takeoff They stayed there for a good part of the afternoon. It's safe here! I guess in another place and time, they and all the Ruminantia were surrounded by predators. Mother Nature demanded rapid food gathering in sites of danger,always ready to flee, with the capacity later to regurgitate and break down the snatched food in found safety and sanctuary! I ask myself from time to time, why I write about such trivial matters when the world is going through such monumental events, war, revolution, economic fears, shaken faith, individuals on the cusp of disaster? And here I am, ruminating along with my deer. Chewing the cud of information and ideas long gathered in a hurry and not fully digested! Much of that information was gathered during the momentum of a hurried life where one was feeding quickly. I guess, to answer my own question ," I am writing for myself!" I call it "reflection" since the psychiatrists have tainted "rumination". In a sea of troubles we have to reach for a plank to stop drowning. It has to float! I guess my plank in life is to celebrate the ordinary stuff of existence that may have some buoyancy. Age gives one time to ruminate/reflect on the information gathered in a hurry! Now I can repose with my legs crossed and let go!

The Whole Truth

2011-09-26T05:30:00.000-07:00

Quite a few years ago in Lotus city I was on call for Orthopedics at the Jubilee Hospital. They called about a newly arrived patient with a fracture that needed to be seen. It was a case that needed seeing that evening but not a real emergency. There was an upcoming program on TV I was anxious to see and I looked at my watch and knew if I hustled down, then I could be back in time for my program. On the drive to the hospital I heard a siren behind me and pulled over. The policeman came to my window and said "Do you know how fast you were going in a 50k zone"? "No', I said. "Sir", he said, "You were doing 75k. What's the emergency?" I said, "I'm a doctor and I was going to the Jubilee Emergency department. "Can I see your licence"? he asked. After examining it he took out his phone and called his dispatcher. "Find out if Dr. J Warren is expected at Jubilee Emergency", he asked. The dispatcher confirmed that was the case. "Follow me doc", he said, and put his lights and siren on and we wheeled off to the hospital! When I parked he waved and left! When I went in to the "emerg", I felt sheepish! Worse, I took advantage of someone! The staff knew and I knew! I didn't lie to the policeman. I told the truth and I told nothing but the truth, but I didn't tell the whole truth. I could have told him, " I was hurrying to see a patient that needs seeing, but not urgently". I can't tell why I remember little things like this, but it is a form of a lie when we leave out the bits that round out the truth and fail to tell it like it really is!

On call Surgeon

2011-09-04T14:57:00.000-07:00

Possibly the last time my younger colleagues in Orthopedics allowed me to take weekend calls was in the early 90's! That possibly was also the last time the pianist allowed me to cook for myself! I thought of this today when I looked at all the vitiligo on my right thumb. It was a beautiful weekend in the 90's and the colleagues were all away. The pianist was at Lotus Island potting and I was in Lotus city,meeting the osseous needs of the populace! It was quiet that Friday evening at 8 o'clock or so and I thought I would make some popcorn while watching TV. As I began by heating my oil in a saucepan on the electric range, the phone rang from the emergency with a problem. As I discussed the matter with the ERP there was a flash from the kitchen and my oil was on fire and shooting up to the ceiling. I raced in and grabbed the saucepan with the flaming oil and burned my thumb, so laid the saucepan in haste on the linoleum of the kitchen, which proceeded to burn as well as my thumb. The thumb developed a monster blister on the palmar aspect, and the linoleum, a large black melted welt in the center of the kitchen. I did the weekend call that time, but kept a glove on regularly to contain the swelling of the thumb. The hospital staff were impressed at how tough I was and also how stupid. I got through several surgical cases, and my landlord at the apartment was gracious, and said, "It is time we redid that kitchen anyway!" Serendipity struck: I got out of taking weekend calls any further, obtained a kitchen renovation, reaffirmed that I needed feeding, and provided general hospital merriment! How can they say I wasn't useful?

Punching in

2011-09-02T21:07:00.000-07:00

When I was between 3rd and 4th year Medicine, I was living in Olympic City on the North Shore with my parents to save money with my summer job. I was working at the Canadian Fishing Company in the frozen fish warehouse as a piler. I had done this job in Prince Rupert the two previous summers. This was 1955 and the first ferry across Burrard Inlet left the foot of Lonsdale at 6:30 AM and docked at the foot of Gore street at 7:00 AM. I ran one block to the Canfisco Freezer and punched in at 7:04 AM every day, four minutes late for work! The last cheque I got at the end of the summer, was docked two hours for my unavoidable late punch in. For years I always felt a twinge of irritation at the company for being so cheap. I was the only student working there and they had only hired me for the halibut rush as I had worked in Rupert before, so was experienced. During the summer the union had threatened a strike and when we voted I was the only one who voted against a strike. I needed to work. I know the union was irritated! Then, years later, I had a patient who was a manager of the fishing company branch. I told him my story, thinking he would be embarrassed. He said, "I know about that! It wasn't the company! It was the union. They told us if you were allowed four minutes of grace every day, they insisted each member receive the same or be compensated two hours. It was easier for us to dock you the two hours. Besides that, he said, "You took home at least two hours worth of fish in your lunch bucket that summer." Hand in the cookie jar! He turned the tables on me . Don't start what you can't finish! I now extol the virtues of the management at Canfisco!

The hay ride

2011-09-01T23:57:00.000-07:00

When I was 14 we lived for one winter in Conquest, a small town in Saskatchewan. I played hockey with the senior team which went to Milden and Dinsmore and Outlook in a league of sorts. The team was composed of big children and adults, of whom a few were a bit skillful. Those of us without transport; the young; accompanied by a few girls, traveled in a truck with a covered box filled with hay and entered by the grain chute at the back. It was cosy and warm and dark with the packed bodies and the smells. There was sensuality to it all that at 14 we could not identify, but knew it was there. There was no rolling in the hay in those days but there was an ill defined excitement for me from the presence of Lily-Mae, a pretty, lanky, snub nosed, freckled,longhaired fan that had come to cheer. Just dream on! We were away from the restraints of school and parents and at close quarters. I was too rapt up in myself at that time to have the energy to foster a relationship. My experience of hay rides was finished that spring until I was 21 and met the pianist for the first time on a hay ride in Winnipeg. This was a party organized by the student nurses. This time the rack was horse drawn and cold so you bundled up and huddled together to keep warm and hear one another through the din. This leads to a "close for comfort" that casts off the restraint and awkwardness that formality or contrivance brings. The excitement this time was less ill defined for me. She was beautiful and fun and I was ready to put some energy into someone other than myself. I don't know what it is about hay,or dark, or cold, or simple pleasures, but I know that the closer you need to be, the closer you will become. There may be something primordial and concupiscent about the influence of hay! It is the stuff of legends!

Homeostasis

2011-08-30T04:48:00.000-07:00

Now that the hurricane has passed by, I was thinking about life existing in the eye of the cyclone! Homeostasis! Perfect equilibrium! If you think about Abraham Maslow's pyramid of needs met; the eye of the cyclone remains the perfect sanctuary, but it is a job to stay there and not get into the vortex. I'm not sure that the concatenation of activities needed to stay in the eye of the storm is what life is all about! Take your pills, seek friends and love, have a good job, insurance, be good, have confidence, create a beautiful home and children,a good book club, join the service club, grow old gently, die in your sleep! There has to be more than this. Maslow had the idea that all these met needs would ease the development of self actualization! Seems to me that more is needed and it will be outside the eye of the storm that actualization will happen. Homeostasis by definition is stasis: Homo sapiens standing still on the airport belt, carried along in measured pace. Wow! Unfortunately we need stress to temper. If you don't know black you will never recognize white. If you haven't been buffeted by the ill winds of fortune you will never know the quality of your fortitude! Better that you have an illness, lose a job,lose a love,get kicked out of a club and recover from these to know you are made for the vortex rather than the eye of the cyclone. Leonard, in his song, Famous Blue Raincoat, says, "Are you living for nothing now? " Getting old isn't for sissies, so we have to be living for something real!

The Polluter

2011-08-26T01:41:00.000-07:00

The pianist and I have an 1990 Nissan Axxess that is in good running order partly because it is softly used and serviced regularly. I tried to start it the other day after we had been away for a while and the battery had run down since a roof light had been left on. When the tow truck man came and jumped the starter he told me to run it for a half hour to charge up the battery. I drove around Lotus Island for a while with the pianist and then took her to her bank. I was fearful about stopping the car at that stage so sat in the car with it running in idle while she did her business. I was musing on nothing in particular when a small, purpose driven lady in earth clothing came over and said, "You people are all the same. You pollute the earth with your gas fumes and use up a natural resource and do not have any regard for the earth or the people in it." She was quiet and intense and having made her clear statement she left me hanging and crossed back over the road. I wondered, "Am I of the tribe of 'You People' and who are 'You People' anyway?" I was never given the chance to explain that I was not one of "Them". A man then emerged from the bank wearing earth clothes and came to my open window and said, "You know your car is running!" "Yes", I said. "My battery is flat and I am afraid to turn it off as yet since it is still charging and I may not get it started again." "That's OK then", he said. I thought, "Thanks a lot green buddy." It is not that I was being accosted and taken to task that took me aback so much, since this is Lotus Island. It's just that I am one of the "You People", separated, categorized, held up as a lesson and packaged as not like us. It's hard for all of us not to jump to conclusions!

Targeting readers

2011-08-23T15:41:00.000-07:00

The self publishing industry has two important rules for the novice writer who has no track record in the industry and needs the initial buzz to launch their book. TARGET READER MARKET and UNIQUE SELLING POINT! That is NOT a book that tries to be everybody's cup of tea,or is a whole grab bag of ideas! The book, AN ELDERLY ECLECTIC GENTLEMAN is targeted to the over 60's that embrace the world around them as a part of themselves; who are of an eclectic nature and perhaps a bit eccentric; and whose empathetic, open-handed nature has led them to believe that the small things of life are some of the most important! In search of a unique selling point is a thread in the book that repeatedly describes the ordinary as uniquely extraordinary! As usual, I stumbled into the two rules without the intelligence of knowing what I was doing! This is a reader market for which I have considerable respect, since their perspective gained from age and experience will quickly dispense with insincerity!

A Surgeon Songster

2011-08-21T14:31:00.000-07:00

Years ago, one of the old time surgeons in Lotus City, who seemingly only knew one tune, would sing sometimes softly under his breath and sometimes look fixedly at his scrub and sing Sotto voce during his operative procedure. A co-conspirator admitting his scrub to the mysteries of his song. He usually had a commanding presence and could fix you with his eye and say something like, "Fresh fish", and you would ponder that a monumental message had been delivered, since it had a certain sonority to it! Though singing is not that uncommon in routine surgical procedures, it is usually during the closure and when the mood lightens! Most surgeons have a modest repertoire to draw on and will drone on tonelessly, but it is relaxing to the surgical staff to know that the operator is at least content with the progress of the case! The one of whom I speak however, only sang Nearer My God to Thee, which would emerge at intervals during the procedure, not always at the most relaxed or routine part of the procedure. Thankfully the patient in those days was always asleep, so they would not take the hymn as premonitory of some trip that they were not quite ready to make. On the other hand the more optimistic of the patients may well have considered that they were simply being operated on by a saintly man, whose connection with God was immediate and proximate. Since, however, they lay blissfully ignorant of the heavenly melody that was mercilessly massacred by the operator, they could be reassured that their organ in his hands was treated with more skill and care than any organ with which he may have attempted to accompany his hymn!

A Good Man

2011-08-20T12:02:00.000-07:00

I recently read a column in the National Post by Barbara Amiel in which she mentioned Septimus Harding in passing. He is one of my favorite characters in fiction and a subject that figures large in Anthony Trollope's novel, Barchester Towers. He is a prime example of the ordinary as truly extraordinary. In the BBC film production, a paragraph is placed as a eulogy provided in an after a dinner toast by his son in law, Dr Grantly, the archdeacon; but in the book it is Trollope's concluding narrative paragraph. Clearly of great importance to Trollope. Here goes: "The author now leaves him (Harding), in the hands of his readers: not as a hero, not as a man to be admired and talked of, not as a man who should be toasted at public dinners and spoken of with conventional absurdity as a perfect divine, but as a good man without guile, believing humbly in the religion which he has striven to teach, and guided by the precepts which he has striven to learn." One can clearly see why the BBC wanted to place this wonderful narrative as dialogue. The place in this life of the Septimus Hardings of this world is so obscured by the lurid and extravagant that we cannot see them through the haze. When a master like Trollope brings them to life, we are humbled by their majesty!

Shed Seaweed

2011-08-09T20:01:00.000-07:00

My son in law and I were sitting on a log this afternoon and the tide was coming in with strong wind and moderate wave action. For the past two weeks there has been a big shedding of sea lettuce and sundry other seaweed carried in by the tidal action. There is a lot of lateral tide movement on our beach as well, and the accessible part of the beach that welcomes the weed is about a five hundred feet long. After a few days, the weed tossed up on the beach dries on the surface and loses much of it's salinity and its definition. In the olden days I used to collect much of this material for compost and top dressing. The ocean gives up its sea lettuce in August and its eel grass in October, both of them gifted to those who scavenge the shore for that kind of treasure. I have always had a fantasy that if I had a donkey and a two wheel cart I could walk the shore and pitchfork the drying weed into my cart with a lot more ease than trying to haul it up my 12 steps from the beach in a garbage pail. In the distant past my earlier Irish generations used this gift to create soil from barren stoney headlands. It was where they were banished to from the fertile valley lands that were usurped from them. As we looked at the drying weed I thought, "The line of drying weed at the tidemark is evenly ten feet wide over the five hundred foot length. It averages two inches thick!" By my calculation that is 833.3 cubic feet of compost from that little area. What the sea gives up today it will take back tomorrow unless we act! I wish I had a donkey and a large two wheeled cart and another life span.

Come see, come saw

2011-08-07T13:12:00.000-07:00

The best definition of this is, been there, done that! A cursory look at Google does not come up with this definition which is too bad, but so what? By that definition everything is old hat! That individual is non entertainable! Non instructable! It is difficult to teach or please those who know a bit of everything and have seen all there is to see! The thrust of my blog and my book is that the ordinary is truly extraordinary. That is my whole point. Fancy then, that I'm told that it is very interesting and resonates with all my readers so far but it can't be marketed effectively because the subjects are too ordinary! I haven't succeeded in making the point. "For instance", says one," your piece on 'Puberty,Jim has hair'; why would any one care about that?" Well, I have thought about that observation. The appearance of that first tuft of black in THAT place! Why would not anyone care about that? It was a seminal event in everyone's life! Death of childhood! A fearsome step to the unknown! It was more important than the Iraq war to the adolescent. It was almost more important than anything at the time. It is an example par excellence of the ordinary being extraordinary! If it does not resonate with you it is because you have forgotten what mattered. I cannot help you; I can only tell you! Don't be life weary. Don't be come see, come saw!

The Writer

2011-08-02T20:15:00.000-07:00

The writer in some fashion is also a thief given the nature of the job and the occasional stealthy, or often unconscious acquisition of the resource needed to fulfill this job. The keyhole collecting of information, read, seen, heard, thought, where the writer innocently refashioned someone's material, looking at it from a different angle. The sleuth may or may not have had a peripheral role, just observing and recording, unconsciously or consciously. "I think I can use that," they think," I don't have to put it in quotes because it is a foundling!" Even the kernel of an idea or observation expressed elsewhere is fodder! This isn't bad. We are often just building blocks, piling onto the genius of others! Hopefully adding something more! It's a fine line and has nothing to do with plagiarism which is simply the more obvious! Someone said today that there may be no original thoughts! "There is nothing new under the sun". "What has been done will be done again!"( Ecclesiastes, 1, 9) We may just not recall what has been done, where we heard it, where it was recorded, where a small light was lit that we observed. If you think you have a lot of original thoughts there is a chance you haven't read much or observed a lot or have a short attention span! It's not that you need to invent the wheel, you just have to acknowledge to yourself that you didn't. It is a great service to display the "nothing that is new" again to remind everyone about it and know that yours may be an honorable theft, but not unique.

Wheat grass

2011-07-31T19:50:00.000-07:00

At the Lotus island market every weekend, wheatgrass is sold as a healthful food when prepared as a juice, with nutritional and restorative powers. It's virtues seemed to me to be something of a more modern and innovative discovery though it was investigated in the 30's and 40's and the art of juicing and marketing the drink occurred in the 50's. Remarkable claims have been made as to it's benefits. Fancy then, that Rabelais (1494 to 1553), physician, author and theolog, in his book Gargantua and Pantagruel,(1534), described the benefits of "wheat in the blade". There is truly nothing new under the sun. I'm not sure Rabelais is everyone's cup of tea but here goes. He writes, "From wheat in the blade you make a fine green sauce, simple to mix and easy to digest, which rejoices the brain, exhilarates the animal spirits, delights the sight, induces the appetite, pleases the taste, fortifies the heart, tickles the tongue, clarifies the complexion, strengthens the muscles, tempers the blood, eases the diaphagm, refreshes the liver, unblocks the spleen, comforts the kidneys, relaxes the vertebrae, empties the ureters, dilates the spermatic glands, tautens the testicle strings, purges the bladder, swells the genitals, straightens the foreskin,hardens the ballock, and rectifies the member: giving you a good belly, and good belching, farting-both noisy and silent- shitting, pissing, sneezing, crying, coughing, spitting, vomiting, yawning, snotting, breathing, inhaling, exhaling, snoring, sweating, and erections of the john-thomas: also countless other rare advantages." The observations of Rabelais render the modern pitch a bit pallid, wouldn't you agree?

Revision

2011-07-30T07:36:00.000-07:00

I was reading one of my pieces, now published, where I can't grab and change it! Damn! The conclusion I wrote doesn't make sense and is stupid. I got carried away by my own rhetoric and stuck in a pretty, but shallow conclusion! We can't revise the dumb things we did in the past either. All we can do with the published book is improve the next chapter in the next book. Revise and revise and revise but eventually you have to let it go. Then you look at this later and say,"How could I have said that, missed that, and didn't delete all that?" In point of fact, most people will not judge you as harshly as you do yourself. Years ago the CEO of a college I was a member of, had a painting by Jack Shadbolt in his office that had been donated to the college by a fellow doctor. The painter often retrieved paintings from owners; paintings that he was not pleased with, and would repaint the parts he didn't like! The painting I recall was the old wooden Marpole bridge with people looking at the water. He painted the people out and returned the revised work. It would be tough to collect all the books one sold to change the lines that offend. It's tough to alter the past in your life where the lines were troubling. You just have to forgive yourself and crank up every morning, with the new knowledge and the new humility you have been blessed with. Then you can go and make a whole set of new mistakes. Humble pie has enough calories to help one grow bigger!

Re-seeding

2011-07-26T07:36:00.000-07:00

I was weeding yesterday in primarily perennial beds, including open interspaces that we fill with summer annuals. There were the Mid-July beginnings of re-seeded annuals and biennials that Mother Nature provided from the compost we spread in the late spring.I took a certain amount of care to identify and avoid pulling these little offerings out. They get there courtesy of my laziness and Mother Nature's Locum Tenens. (On second thought I am the locum, she is Mistress Of All) I usually can't be bothered clipping spent bloom on the annuals,I suppose due to laziness, so they often go to seed if the deer don't do the job of heading for me! The Lotus Island deer and the bunnies don't seem to like Snapdragons, Poppies,Sweet William or Forget-me-not, so the seed heads are usually left on and then either disappear and hide in the compost, or rest in the flower bed over winter. There is nothing like free and in old flower beds one should weed cautiously to anticipate the new surprises.If you garden for yourself, my view is never give the weeding job to the ill-informed! These small treasures are easily rooted up. I suppose a sensible person would say, "To hell with all this diddling around, just clean up the mess of weeds and replant some robust plants from the nursery and be done with it! For goodness sake, you must have a lot of time to waste!" On what?

Grass is a plant

2011-07-25T06:47:00.000-07:00

It's hard to recall that, when you see the beautifully cut carpet lawn of the North American golf course! The so-called lawn of the bucolic Lotus Island set is often the meadow grasses, cut to a higher measured level to read, "uniformity"! Taming the meadow grasses into a simulated lawn does not allow one to discard the recognition that one's grasses are a plant. As I have previously mentioned, we have 200 varieties of grasses on The Pacific Coast and they vary greatly in growth habit! They are not, on the whole, genetically engineered to flourish at half an inch or less. Neatness doesn't count, but sensitivity does if the free spirits of Mother Nature are allowed to flourish! I'm not suggesting for one minute that the fairway be cut to impede the ball from rolling. I'm not even suggesting the lawn proud urbanite change his ways if the genetics of the turf is such that a half inch set is a healthy thing! It's just that the heterogeneous grasses of Mother Nature will live together in perfect accord if you raise the bar a bit as you cut your so-called lawn. The grasses have been living together for centuries on Lotus Island without a lot of outside help. The composition varies from time to time depending on the changes in the climate. Celebrate that! Monoculture is less adaptable. Mother Nature is wise! Celebrate that too!

Book Promotion

2011-07-24T07:06:00.000-07:00

The book promotion module I have stresses the need to rely on your family and friends to give the initial impetus to one's book. The idea being there needs to be a seed snowball formed that can pick up size as it rolls down the hill. Ultimately, of course, it will have to stand or fall on its own. As Paul McCartney says, or almost says," I'll need a little help from my friends."

In the meantime, I hope I am not singing out of key.

Tent caterpillars

2011-07-22T08:39:00.000-07:00

The massive hatch of tent caterpillar moths has happened this week on Lotus Island. They are everywhere, resting on the house siding and windows in hordes. Invading every cranny and nook where a little warmth can be found. This spring was a moderately bad year for the tents on the apples, and other soft leaf trees so the moth invasion portends a much bigger year next year. Interestingly I had made a search the past winter for egg cases and found few, so concluded that I didn't need to dormant spray. Big mistake! The trouble with Lotus Island is the "green movement" is so driven that even dormant spray is considered by many as dirty pool. This spring I spent a long time cutting off all the tents and drowning the tenters in the harbour but I can't spare the time to drown the whole island population of webworms. Now we have to await the natural control mechanism by parasitic wasps. The tent caterpillars this spring, when observed did not have that telltale white spot, dorsally, just behind their head. I should say the satisfying white spot. The parasitic wasp lays its egg there and on hatching the wasp larvae feeds on the caterpillar. The rise of the worm population provokes a rise in the wasp population. Isn't Mother Nature grand? In the meantime look next year for denuded spring time trees on the island due to the massive egg cases that will come this fall and winter over. Fortunately Mother Nature provides a secondary leaf recovery. If you have apples, plums and cherries, prepare for the worst!

Critics

2011-07-20T05:59:00.000-07:00

If you write a book, the most serious critics are those that love you most and are afraid you may stumble. With the book AN ELDERLY ECLECTIC GENTLEMAN the observations were, "Is it still as preachy as the draft was?" Or, "Are you going to leave all the dirty bits in?" And, "Have you verified all these facts you think you know?" Now, I don't pretend to be the Will Rogers of the bucolic island set, but I and anyone else who sticks his neck out and writes a book may get a pitch on the head and fall in the tub with a splash. It's the risk! Worse than getting conked on the head from the critic, is getting ignored. "You might get sued if some recognize themselves", they said,"For heavens sake don't mention any names!" Much of this is good advice but to scramble the adage; perspective is of the eye of the beholder! I have to be truthful without being foolhardy. If you haven't irritated someone in your life from time to time you have to ask yourself "Why?" I was always sought after as a golfing companion when I worked in Lotus City! I served a useful purpose to my companions as I was a cheerful fellow,never kept score, and was a bad golfer. It reinforced to my companions how good their game was in comparison. This useful role may be the service I provide to other budding authors as well. I can no longer, like the leopard, change my spots! I can only curl up and lick them clean!

My Book Sale

2011-07-18T14:30:00.000-07:00

My book is based on the blog; the work entailed in production is why I have neglected blogging for 2011. The editing process has been extremely time consuming and has really diverted my muse. The book will be launched about August 01 and is called AN ELDERLY ECLECTIC GENTLEMAN. It is available through friesenpress.com and can be viewed as an upcoming publication. This is all very exciting for me. Having reedited it so many times one ends up having a love-hate relationship with it and barf bag jitters but the Friesen Press people have been super to deal with and very supportive. I wouldn't have had the guts to do this without my family and my literature group and then the self publishing company. Hopefully now I can get back to writing the new stuff that needs to have the pump primed.

Fundamentals of Life

2011-05-20T17:23:00.000-07:00

Ingestion, procreation and evacuation are the triad of the fundamentals of life. Everything else is ornamentation in the interest of serving these fundamentals. If you wish to discuss life and you stick to the ornamentation you will miss the main. To fail to embrace the fundamentals fully is to deny the humanness of your vessel. Those of us in the practice of surgery, anatomy and physiology are of necessity engaged in the constant contact with the human vessel and it's fundamentals. Whether the Paramoecium or the Homo sapiens, we are either a one celled tube that ingests,evacuates and conjugates, or a complex multicellular collection of bundled tubing that does the same thing. When you spend your day with a finger in the bowel or the urethra or bladder, the vas deferens or the vagina, the tubing and the side kicks that serve the conduits are travelled daily. If your finger is in the aorta or the portal vein or the carotid or common duct, all these tubes are there to serve to support the fundamentals. The brain is the largest sex organ available and the greatest forager and you will know that if you fail to evacuate for some time, all concentration on other matters flees, and it becomes the most important thing in the world! Great art, music, philosophy: love, compassion, and indwelling spirit: Science of particles, universe and earth, all of these are evolved from this bundle of tubes we call our vessel, but it is easy to forget that without the fundamentals, we are nothing!

Ashes

2011-04-30T08:10:00.000-07:00

The pianist and I took our daughter the other day to see our plot where we will eventually be planted! I lay down in the section that we have chosen and it felt comfortable; a grassy knoll next to the Celtic cross in an acreage of rolling hills with a blue sky and scudding clouds above. My daughter took a nice picture of me in repose. I had asked the pianist earlier if she would consider sharing the same urn with me so our ashes could be mixed since I am such a codependent! She was adamantly opposed to that idea and stamped her foot. "I want to rest in peace." she said," I have lived with you for 54 years and shared the same bed but I want privacy for my ashes.My vow extended to have and to hold as long as we both shall live!" Well that was pretty clear. "What's more," she said, "Your ashes are likely to jump and turn repeatedly and snore a lot and that's not going to be restful in peace for me! I'll finally get to have a good sleep! " I rethought the matter and it is probably not practical anyway as the timing is everything in these matters. I'll have to be a big boy!

Syphilis

2011-04-11T05:39:00.000-07:00

Received wisdom has always said that the New World provided Europe with potatoes, tomatoes. tobacco and syphilis. I wrote a treatise on syphilis as part of a graduate studies programme at UBC refuting the idea that syphilis originated in the New World. At the time I was taking an Archeology minor on the way to an Anatomy degree. Ancient Corinth, a coastal city, was from the evidence of excavations at the time, the major Mediterranean port into the heart of Europe. From excavations of the healing Temples of Asklepius, one of the more interesting findings were what were called the votive offerings. These were pottery replica of the anatomical part of the patient that the priests of Asklepius had healed.They were accompanied by testimonials and hung on the walls of the temple. The votives could be purchased off the shelf at an adjacent Stoa and given to the priests by the grateful, or if you were rich you could commission a custom made part by an artisan. Curiously enough, many of these replica were male genitalia. Problematic for the student in these matters was that the nature of the disease was not displayed in the replicas so the pathology was unclear. The Asklepians it seems, insisted that only disease free specimens were to be hung on the sacred walls. My treatise advanced the idea that the prevalence of genitalia was evidence of syphilis in the Old World since the primary chancre would ordinarily disappear in time and secondary syphilis, that would appear much later, would not be connected. Since archeologists don't know anything about syphilis this treatise was accepted. That was 1962 and I was 28. As wisdom gradually seeped into my being, connected with age, I now and have for some time realized it was impotence that the priests were curing! Adjacent to the healing temple was the Temple of Aphrodite. Aphrodite was the Goddess of Love and the patroness of prostitutes. Teamwork counts! No wonder St. Paul was so exercised at the Corinthians!

Pride

2011-04-06T17:24:00.000-07:00

When I was in grade 12 my mother wrote to her father and her twin sister about me. It wouldn't have been easy for her to write a letter like she did. She told them both that my marks were good and that I would be a good student at University. She asked them for financial help as she and my dad did not have the ability to help. My grandfather and my aunt responded with enough money to augment my summer earnings and the amount my family could provide. After the the first three years I was able to finish paying for my my medical degree classes more or less on my own. My mother was willing to risk her esteem for my sake! There was no other option for her. Later, in the same year that she wrote the letter, when I was still in Grade 12, I met my aunt in Winnipeg at a family gathering. She was a family doctor who practiced medicine and lived with a wealthy husband in Connecticut. I was glad to see her and take the opportunity to thank both her and my grandfather. When you live, as we did in a small town,and your dad is the station master, he may not make much money, but no one else in the town did either so you still are a family that rates. As my friend Ian says, "When we were growing up we didn't have much, but we didn't know there was much!" I felt poor for the first time in my life. We may have struggled, but in the society that was ours, we were never poor. Poverty is often relative!

Eagle Trial

2011-04-05T20:37:00.000-07:00

This morning looking out in the harbour at some distance I watched two monster wings flapping with what appeared to be desperation(my interpretation). At first it looked like a seal. On close inspection it was a mature eagle in the water trying to take off to no avail. The pianist and I watched for about 10 minutes as it intermittently flapped and struggled and got nowhere. I couldn't bear to watch any longer as I thought it was exhausting itself and soon would drown. The pianist thought the same thing and we went out to the car to leave the house. Suddenly she said " Look it took off." I looked back and it was gone. Then it hoved into view in a tight circle just in front of us, close to the water, flying easily with what looked like a big bird in its talons. Not a Bufflehead or a little duck, but probably a Merganser since there are a lot of them out there right now. The bird was almost too heavy for it to lift off since they are impaired because of the half wing swing they have at water surface. If the eagle can't lift off, they can drown as it is hard for them to detach from the prey due to claw locking. Makes you think doesn't it how easy it is to bite off more than you can chew? Can't move on, can't let go, nearly going under, seduced by the big prize. Little and often, little and often.

Bugs

2011-03-01T13:04:00.000-08:00

Today I took my garbage bags out of the garbage cans and double bagged them to take to the garbage depot on Lotus Island! It's a good service and the cost is 4 dollars a large bag! When I emptied my cans, one of them had a collection of 6 black beetles about one and one half centimeters long. Since I go to the depot every week the beetles are obviously newcomers. They are clearly adults. There was a time when I was knowledgeable about entomology. I spent my third year in Science at the University of Manitoba studying invertebrate zoology as a prerequisite to admission to Medical School. I aced the course! The professor was R.K. Rankin-Hay. If you pronounce it with feeling, and drag the phase out, it makes a euphonious couplet! He knew his stuff even if he did have a poetic name. I loved entomology as it was one of those courses where the harder you worked the more surely you absorbed. I was like a blotter that year. Since we still called our bald prairie home "The Bread Basket of the World" , there was a large Agricultural Faculty at Manitoba providing degrees and also diplomas to many farm boys we called Aggie Dips! They had an insect museum in the Aggie building that was to die for and those of us trying to get into medicine haunted the rooms, learning about the Class, Insecta, probably the most important part of the invertebrate world and certainly the most complex. Most of the invertebrates as far as I could tell were only interested in eating and procreating. This was of some interest to imaginative 19 year olds. Most of the invertebrates were simple but the insects, their habits were legion! The Aggies concentrated on the sections of Insecta that were significant in agriculture but those of us who were in Science Faculties could study the panorama of insects whose ubiquitous dwelling places and complex habits were of compelling interest. Still, complex aside, the ornamentation is ultimately geared toward eating and procreating. It gets down to this, doesn't it? I just dumped out my six beetles on the ground since I don't identify with them now.

The Mouse

2011-02-26T09:54:00.000-08:00

Every house including ours has night sounds. It's been particularly cold on Lotus Island this week and the temperature gradients between the inside and the outside make the beams and studs shift and squeak and crack a little, the wind shakes the house an infinitesimal degree, to which it nevertheless objects , and the boughs of the cedars brush it gently. The sleeper who is hypervigilant also hears his ear and head contact on the pillow, his tinnitus, the bruit of the carotid pulse at times and the crow on the roof. These sounds we have become accustomed to and are singular to our house. Another's house has different singularity of sound. At 4 am this morning I awoke with a new and unaccustomed sound. Was it the ice maker dropping chunked ice, an intruder or something else? As I went down stairs into the kitchen where the sound was coming from, it seemed to be a metallic sound originating from the tile floor. There had been a suggestion that an uninvited visitor had arrived the day before and I had set a mouse trap that night on the floor beside a baseboard with bait of peanut butter. In the trap was a mouse and it was alive and struggling. The metallic sound came from the thrashing around on the tile. The mouse probably ventured further into the trap to gnaw at the bait so his head was not crushed and he was caught in the trap by the body. I have always had a primal fear of vermin, a legacy from my mother and the Middle Ages. I could deal, albeit difficult, with a dead mouse but a living, wiggling, squiggling, leg and tail waving mouse that is in agony is a different matter. I went back to bed to await its death and silence. I couldn't sleep however, assailed with thoughts of the waning life force and with the reminder from the continuing sounds emmenating from the kitchen floor. I took my courage and went back and put the mouse outside on the deck. Silence! This morning at 8 oclock he was dead and had struggled for a further 18 inches, dragging the trap from where I laid him on the deck. I'm sorry! He was probably just seeking the warmth! I must kill! Rest in Peace!

It's how you say it!

2011-02-24T20:40:00.000-08:00

My youngest daughter's first job was a Pink Lady at the Royal Jubilee Hospital in Lotus City. She was 15 years old but talked them into hiring her by simple persistence. It was a summer job. This was 1978 and the nurses still wore white uniforms and there were Pink Ladies and Yellow Ladies and Blue Men. Pink Ladies were the ward cleaning staff and she really felt she belonged because our family were Jubilee people and were connected by both the pianist who worked there as a nurse, and me, on the wards every day since kingdom come. I think the cleaning staff had a very good union agreement at the time since the pianist constantly grumbled how much our 15 year old was being paid in contrast to her, a registered nurse! But that is beside the point. My esteemed partner Jack came onto the cardiac ward with a mild heart attack and was being actively investigated on the ward where our Pink lady worked on days. She chatted with Jack every day as she cleaned around him since she knew him as a senior friend and he appeared to be doing alright according to her nightly report to us. Then a following morning I got a distressed phone call from her to tell me that Jack had died! She had been sent by the Head Nurse to the room where Jack had been, to clean it up, and the bed was stripped and the side tables emptied. She inquired where Jack was and the nurse said, ostensibly in a doleful voice, that Dr. Jack was "gone"! Then the nurse looked down at her feet. Body language! I phoned Jack's wife Eleanor to give solace and to invite myself over to commiserate. She said cheerfully that she would love to see me. Then she said so would Jack! Jack was not a "goner" at that time. Words associated with inappropriate body language have the power to mislead. Body language, even in the presence of a completely foreign tongue will communicate. The face, the hands, the eyes, the tone, the posture, the animation, will usually tell the aware what they need to know. We hear with the eyes as well as the ears. That's real anatomy!

Psalms for Questors

2011-02-21T13:39:00.000-08:00

ONE SYLLABLE PSALM

God, I think you gave me the gift of life in the world! Why do you hide from me? Why do you make it so hard to see you? How can I know you are in all things? I want to be real! I want to be worth your gift! I want to be your gift! Help me! Show me how! Help me to care! Help me to pray!

YOU AT THE WATERS

You at the waters! You can skip stones only if the surface of the waters is calm. If the waters are rough your stone will sink. If you wish to skip a flat stone you will have to stoop down to the water so that you are parallel with the surface. If you want to skip the stone well you will have to be at one with the water. You will have to select a stone that is round and smooth and reads with the surface of the water.

LOVE IN THE GRAVE

When someone that you may have taken for granted dies and you are at the grave, you may realize that love lost was always apparent but unexpressed. To open yourself to the living will give you more joy but expose you to more sorrow at the loss, for a moment in time. When you realize that the loved one has found love beyond the grave you will repossess what you thought you had lost.

Infradig

2011-02-12T11:33:00.000-08:00

Two words that Aunt Mabel used to declare the 'otherwise of acceptability', of things, or matters, or people,I now contract into one word which I think fits it better. Lexicographical argument about the term, infradig, is of no interest to me. Moreover no amount of opinion to the contrary, or the way to spell it, was of interest to Aunt Mabel. Whether it was un-china, or furniture not mahogany, or rhubarb, or Catholics, or Socialists, controversy mattered little to her! Living in Smalltown, Saskatchewan as she did, it seemed necessary to her to work at bringing some enlightenment to the bald prairie. Aunt Mabel was a highly intelligent and sensitive woman whose sweetheart was killed in the Great War and she, at that young age, never fully recovered from the stream of "What might have been". That disappointment or despair after a period of inanition may result, and did, in a period of decision making and refueled energy to move on. Taking charge and firming up resolve led in her case to strong feelings and an unwillingness to bend. It was her salvation. The dogmatic among us become the most lonely of creatures because no one is willing to challenge them because of the futility of argument. No one is willing to listen with attention because they have heard it all before. All the interaction is lip service to avoid unpleasantness. No one is a winner because a wall creates a zone of separation with Aunt Mabel or others of similar persuasion . Infradig has nothing to do with stuff or ideas or people. It speaks nothing to the present reality. It is an old idea! Dignity never came because of the things valued by Aunt Mabel. Dignity comes from your acknowledgment of yourself! Once you do that and you really know it ,nothing you ever do will be below dignity!

The Extraordinary Ordinary

2011-02-09T11:00:00.000-08:00

When Esther Summerson ventured out, after months of a completely confining illness from smallpox, a deadly disease before Jenner's time as it was then , she spoke for Dickens and for all of us about the realized world around us. As she looked from the carriage for the first time in months,she said, "I found every breath of air, and every scent and every flower and leaf and blade of grass, and every passing cloud, and everything in nature, more beautiful and wonderful to me than I had ever found it yet. This was my first gain from my illness." To emerge into the light from whatever dark night of the soul that you have been confined to is a revelation that the ordinary is truly extraordinary. To merge your streams of consciousness and unconsciousness with the streams of Mother Nature, seen and unseen, heard and felt and smelled! The profound, once experienced, is enough! To expect it again is greedy. To have it always would render it powerless. The lasting gain is not in the exultation, but in the serenity. Go with the flow!

Pool

2011-02-07T14:59:00.000-08:00

Growing up on the bald prairie, the pool room was in Steve Kish's barber shop, and the swimming pool was a local slough. You could skate on the slough in the winter, swim in it in the summer and raft on it in the spring thaw. It was fun and all your naked friends were there to swim . In the pool room you could watch Cheekus Bellrose take quarters off all the visitors playing snooker or eight ball and drink a coke with your friends and play against Steve Kish for nickels if he didn't have a haircut to do. There was always something going on. When we built a house much later in Lotus City, despite the pianist's misgivings,I wanted to recapture the feeling with a pool table and a swimming pool. You can never go back! It had nothing to do with blue water and green felt! It had nothing to do with affluence or lack thereof. The children learned to play pool reasonably well but a parent is only so much fun! We eventually got rid of the pool table since it was attractive but bored! "Use me or lose me",I heard it say. The swimming pool was a somewhat different matter for about three years. It required a lot of work to keep it clean, with it under the trees, in migratory bird lanes, and enjoyed by all those water loving algae. When we first moved in, in November 1970, I kept the boiler on to heat the pool through the Christmas season. I must have been mad, mistook myself for King Farouk, and have caused all the fog on Ten Mile Point that winter! By 1974 I had heated the pool for the months of May through to July and observed that no one else had swum in it. I jumped in from time to time because I felt guilty that this pristine womb was so lacking in the pleasure of fecundity. "Use me or lose me ",I heard it say. I turned the boiler off. No one noticed it was cold for the rest of the summer because no one swam in it. At the end of September I announced that the pool heater had been off for three months. They were all mad at me. C'est la guerre! It was all my fault in the first place. You may try to go back but you can't take them with you.

Toilet trials

2011-02-06T16:01:00.000-08:00

Occasionally over the number of years of joint usage of the toilet, difficult gender issues have occurred from time to time due to inadvertency on my part, never intent. Like Pavlov's dog, repetitive stimuli have to be applied over the years to establish consistency in behavior that is acceptable and reduces the danger that lurks close below the surface in physical interactions. There has never to my knowledge been electroshock treatment to condition my response, though I cannot testify fully to that since shock treatment does alter memory. Senior moments notwithstanding, even I eventually learned to restore the toilet seat to its place of repose after use. There eventually ceased to be expostulations of rage emanating from the occasionally incautious! Having conquered that neglectful and disrespectful habit of leaving the toilet seat up, a second problem began to surface that again resulted in tensional moments. Positioning the seat at the point of repose resulted from time to time with wet drops on the seat. Since I was careful to lower the seat after life's 'ever rolling stream' it was unclear to me that the source was mine. Since no other male was around it was a mystery,surrounded by a conundrum, overlain by an enigma,underlined as a puzzle! Nevertheless the solution was unclear, but the perpetrator was at least 'a person of interest' and guilty 'til proven innocent. Our lovely old samoyed eventually proved to be the culprit. I discovered one day by accident she preferred to drink water from the toilet since it was always in the same place. With her hairy muzzle she would dribble a little on the seat. I think she was embarrassed about her habit, so drank surreptitiously. She was completely blind from infancy so, over the years she learned her way around without the benefit of other than distant hindsight. She was pretty careful and we loved her! Both dog and man were exonerated. For the pianist and me she was never to be Pavlov's dog.

Cost of Leisure

2011-01-30T10:28:00.000-08:00

I read somewhere of a French gentleman, living on the beachfront in Normandy, who required his children and grandchildren to bring back a sack of seaweed for his garden each time they went to the beach. No pleasure without accompanying industry. It was not declared in the article that he compelled his friends to do likewise! It is possible that he ended up having few friends and distant issue as well. Over the years, I had taken a leaf from this man's book and endeavored where possible, never myself to take or do something to the right of me at point B, without doubling up by bringing something back to the left of me to point A. Work on the way down and work of a new nature on the way back; or leisure on the way down and leisure on the way back; or a combination of both! Trying to never waste a moment myself, either at play or work! Programming! Wasted moments and leisure may have much more in common than we realize! One of the things they have in common is that they are both defined by those who have little of either! Work and play may also have much in common for the fortunate who may not be able to differentiate between them! I wish I had composted the Frenchman's leaf in my earlier days rather than seen it as an opportunity. Now that I am older, walking in a room to forget what the Hell I am Hereafter is not Heaven! I don't want to leave it too long without a conclusion! Whether it is better in the mind's eye to engage in this sort of work cycle for a shorter working life, and then move to complete leisure for the balance, is moot! I can't judge. I suspect that a happy balance through one's life, and clear lines of definition, and a willingness not to impose your ideas on others, is a suitable choice. Living in the present, not the future, is hard. Reality says the future is nowhere! This balance applied now gives autonomy to you and everyone you love!

Osmosis

2011-01-28T09:51:00.000-08:00

When little Joanie says, "No one ever taught me how to cook. I just learned by osmosis by always being around my mother. I learned unconsciously by absorption":I say, tell me more! Osmosis is simply described as the transfer across a semipermeable membrane, of water from a low solute concentration to a solution of high solute concentration to establish equilibrium. Small solute particles such as sodium and potassium ions will also transfer across the semipermeable membrane to equilibrium. All of us have learned much, as Joanie says, of what we know, by metaphorical osmosis. The transfer of information or water, by osmosis, from the less dense to the more dense will gradually produce equilibrial density without much energy expenditure. The presence of the semipermeable membrane and the degree of permeability adds selection to the information transfer. Because this is a passive transfer we often don't know the origin of much of the information we take for granted. Since however, as we need for life, to maintain an osmotic pressure gradient that maintains solutes in a non-equilibrium state as well, between the intracellular milieu and the extracellular milieu, energy is required to refine the passive osmotic process. The energy to maintain the osmotic gradient metaphor is defined as the energy of active learning! It is volitional and identifiable! Dorothy and Martha were two laboratory dogs I inherited from Johnny Watt when I took his place as a Teaching Fellow in Anatomy in 1959. Once a week on Tuesday and Thursday they would lie quietly for me for 6 hours as I cannulated the femoral artery and vein of each and injected various hypertension producing drugs into them, measuring the change in solute concentrations that hypertension could manipulate in the extracellular and intracellular spaces as established by the measurement of the inulin space. This activity prompted me to think in general of how the energy expended in manipulation or learning is analogous to the energy to establish osmotic pressure gradients that are so necessary to augment the process of passive osmosis! Energy produces work! The conversion of energy to work is always imperfect and the wasted energy is given off in the way of heat. Study is, directed work provided by energy, and is also imperfect and is accompanied by an energy loss. Intelligent study will render energy conversion to work, more efficient and lose less heat. Or if you are like me, a lousy wood chopper, you will convert that energy to highly inefficient work, and get bloody hot in the process. Entropy! We can't just depend on passive osmosis and permeability only, in our intellectual or physical world. Active learning harnesses osmosis with the addition of creating a selective osmotic gradient that requires energy, transformed to work plus heat, to maintain life and intelligent life!

Scum, skim, and fuzz

2011-01-26T15:14:00.000-08:00

If you boiled your marmalade mix in sugar today for the requisite 45 minutes, you created scum on the surface margins of your product. Some call it fuzz and others froth. If you want your marmalade to be pristine without little gobs of scum you will skim your scum from the margins of the pot before pouring in the jars. For that I use a flat edged spoon. The scum or froth or fuzz is good to eat. I saved my scum in a little bowl for immediate eating. My mother always allowed us boys to eat all the scum from her preserves on bread and butter. It may be that the particular amongst us would turn up their nose at scum. They might say that it was infradig to eat scum. I am sure however that the same person probably relishes the froth on their cappuccino and the other epicurean concoctions available in the 5 dollar cardboard cupfuls! I skimmed my scum today and have tried it on 2 slices of whole wheat toast. My marmalade is sealing and snapping as I write. Why we have ever allowed these pejorative terms to describe a delicious side, end product of the jam business that has all the attributes of goodness without the prettiness of the retail product I do not know. Beauty trumps flavor in the real world! Enjoy your cappuccino fuzz. Skim the fuzz off with your spoon before drinking or you'll have fuzzy lips and a white mustache!

Exposure and anonymity

2011-01-26T06:49:00.000-08:00

At a certain stage of life there is less and less time available" to have a kick at the cat". If you have something to do, you had better do it while you still have a guarantee of your faculties, or at least, as you believe they are still present! If you have something to say, or if you believe you have something to say, the internet affords a medium that allows anonymity. There is a certain freedom in this as you can dip your toe in the water and test the temperature without jumping into the lake and finding it's too frosty to swim. If you are a cowardly lion or a tin man or a scarecrow you will have to find an expert behind a screen who will give you a green light to publish! If you come with a proposed book that is not a book but a compilation of anecdote,history , reverence, irreverence,garden variety humor and recycled wisdom you may know that most will say there is no coherence to this material! Incoherence is representative of the human condition. If you believe you are coherent it is proof positive that you are not. We really never have a theme if we are truly a holistic human being.If you write of your realities or your fantasies you are still writing your autobiography. All writing is revelatory! To put a name to your exposition is fraught with the danger of "going to jump in the lake". Fear of exposure is only present with the first time you take your clothes off and go naked. After that it becomes easier as you realize there is less to lose that you thought. Years ago when my brother Ken got married, I hosted a stag at our home with his friends. My brother was a school teacher and I did not know his friends. The stag turned out to be sagging quite badly by mid-party and was very boring. I needed an idea! My son Robert who was 13 was at the stag and we had a large swimming pool off our living room. I took a chance,discarded fear, and announced we would have a water ball game and pick up teams. Thereupon in the living room I took off all my clothes in front of these strangers to jump in the pool. To my relief so did my 13 year old and my brother and then everyone did the same. The party no longer sagged. We had a hell of a good time. I took a gamble. The outcome could have been dreadful! I now shudder to think of it. If my life is sagging, I want to take a chance!

Orange Marmalade

2011-01-24T09:49:00.000-08:00

It's mid-January on Lotus Island and I hustled to the supermarket to get the first of the Seville oranges that have just arrived. They are not a hot ticket item anymore so they often languish in the bin at the store and dry out. We hardy few who look forward to our bitter marmalade preservation every year mark the calendar at this new beginning. The Seville oranges here come from boulevard trees in Mesa Arizona, I am given to understand. Mary, Queen of Scots would have had her oranges shipped from Spain. My patient years ago, who was a distant Chivers relative gave me the three day recipe which I have faithfully followed. Since some of the people I care for do not care for marmalade with large peel pieces, I have dispensed with tradition and use the cuisinart to chop the peel more finely. One does what one has to. My oranges today are clean and plump. Sevilles are amongst the more ugly of the orange varieties so don't be dissuaded by their lack of beauty! Don't take offence at the bitterness of the fruit. Ugly and bitter will transform into sublime in the hands of the lover. Gentle patience is all that is necessary! Here is the recipe. I make a double batch.

Day 1, 8 large Seville oranges, 2 lemons. Halve these and remove the fruit. Leave the pith on the skin. Place the fruit in a muslin bag. Chop up the orange and lemon peel with the pith. Place all the material in a large container. Make sure your muslin bag doesn't leak or you'll have seeds in your marmalade. Add ten cups of water and soak everything overnight.

Day 2, Boil contents for 45 minutes. Let cool and rest for balance of the day.

Day 3, Take out the muslin bag and squeeze well. Add 1 and 1 quarter cups of sugar to each cup of your product. Boil for 45 minutes from the time of rapid boiling. Simmer longer if the marmalade does not jell well when dripping off the spoon. Fill jars
and seal when hot, in jars oven heated at 275 degrees.

The quality of the jelling in my opinion comes from the thickness of the pith. The marmalade darkens over the year but quality remains. No pectin needed: no citrate compounds: no treacle! Bon appetite!

Canoe River BC

2011-01-22T10:29:00.000-08:00

In November 1950 a troop train transporting Canadian Army troops for embarkation to Korea was in a collision with a passenger Continental eastbound. 21 people died in that collision, mostly troops of No.1 Royal Canadian Horse Artillery from Shilo, Manitoba and four railway employees. The collision occurred at Canoe River BC in the Rocky Mountains. The army and railway eventually charged a 22 year old telegrapher with manslaughter on the alleged basis of failure to transmit accurate orders. I remember the crisis in our family at that time because my dad had copied orders on that same troop train earlier the day before and it was not clear at that time where the fault lay! Remember at that time orders were telegraph orders. They were transmitted to the engineer on a paper slip attached to a hoop from the station as the train passed through, slowing down at the yellow light which indicated new orders, for which meet, and which siding to take. There was always the potential for disaster! The dispatcher in Winnipeg phoned my dad and said to seal his copy of the order for safe keeping. He was subject to immediate assessment by the railway inspectors. To the relief of all of us my dad's orders were alright! This tragedy was subject to a trial in BC and John G Diefenbaker assumed the defense of Jack Atherton, the young telegrapher,gratis, at the request of Mr.Diefenbaker's dying wife. Mr. Diefenbaker paid 1500 dollars in order to become a member of the BC bar for this occasion, and went through the bar examination where it was said the only question asked was to define a tort. John Diefenbaker succeeded in defense of the client whom he portrayed as a scapegoat for the prosecution. The death of so many was an incredible tragedy but he succeeded in laying the fault on the systems rather than the employee! In our family, at that time and after he became Prime Minister, no one could be considered greater than the man who served the sort of persons like us, the ordinary Canadians. When Mr. Diefenbaker died the people in our towns along the main line lined up for hours to salute the passenger funeral train as it passed by. The common touch is what distinguished him, and the things we valued!

Unnatural Act

2011-01-10T15:31:00.000-08:00

I was removing, with difficulty, a string of outside Christmas lights from the quince tree! Some of the smaller branches were traumatized as the electrical wires clung to them and the freezing cold had rendered the branches rather brittle. As I was working away on the stepladder a small voice said, "You've made me look like a tart!" Then the voice said, "you've spent a long time yapping about Mother Nature, and how organic you are, and you even quoted a poem about me, and now you have made me into a freak!" I must say I was taken aback by this assertion as I hadn't meant any disrespect! I didn't think it was unseemly to string lights on living bones but now I realize it is an unnatural act and has nothing to do with Christmas either! "I guess you are right that I am a hypocrite", I said," but it was out of ignorance rather than intent." "No way", she said ,"You have made such heavy weather of your connection to the vegetable world and apparently worshipped the dialogue between us. It gives us the suspicion now, that you are a person who talks a good game but really has little real understanding or respectfulness of living bones. Rather than your feeble attempt to illuminate me, try to illuminate yourself!" Well, you can readily see that I felt pretty crushed, particularly since she has provided faithfully every year, beautiful quince for jellies and preserves, a home for the Western Flycatchers every year that grace our home, and she never develops powdery mildew. She is sweet! They have obviously discussed the matter in the orchard and I am properly reprimanded. I have assured her that I will not repeat any unnatural acts in the future and will scale down my rhetoric, beating my breast about how connected I am, when they really know better!

The Extra Spoon

2011-01-08T11:14:00.000-08:00

We had the usual collection of matching everyday tableware, spoons, knives, and forks, in our family when the children were growing up in Lotus City. In addition, there was a spoon that was not of quite the same configuration as the other teaspoons. It was less oblong and a little more square! It lived in the same tray with the regular teaspoons. Trivial as it may seem, this extra spoon became 'a cause celebre' in our family that generated at times, heated discussions with respect to ownership. The children vied to do the table setting to acquire the experience of possession, albeit transient, of the extra spoon. That gave some accrued benefit to us but at the cost of further debate. It's hard to know where it all started, but clearly once one person wanted it, it became a source of minor veneration. Rational folks, even in the pediatric age group may have recognized the matter as one without merit. Not so our offspring. Matters of the heart and issues of entitlement can raise the stakes! Reason goes out the window. We want something that others do not, or can not have, even though we lust after the acceptance of the group. Something that sets us apart, but not too much! 30 or so years later, and living on Lotus Island I have discovered for some time that we have a different newer extra spoon in a different set of matched tableware. It is not exactly like the extra spoon of yesteryear but it is clearly an outlier. It is of no interest to my grandchildren , nor was it a few years back when they were younger. It has no intrinsic value! It is only of value as most material things are, if someone else wants it too. It sits in the tray with the other teaspoons and I occasionally speak to it, to remind it how indifferent we all are to it. Not, "Deja vu all over again!"

Prairie Grain Elevator

2010-12-23T12:18:00.000-08:00

My first summer job when I was 15 was cleaning out the grain dust in the bottom of the bins in the Pool elevator for Bill McClughan , the operator! We lived in the railway station across the tracks from the Pool elevator which also had an attached annex. My brother Ken used to sit in the railway office and shoot rats around the annex through the open window with his 22 when our dad wasn't around. One day he aimed too low and the bullet hit the track and ricocheted through another window. That ended his rat hunting career! My job was to shovel out the grain dust , rat droppings and general debris, in the bottom of the bins, to get ready for the fall storage season. The prairie elevators are now an iconic reminder of a special past and a way of life when industrial farming was nonexistent. The elevators announced each town in large letters to the passers through, a statement of importance to us. The elevator had a grated weigh scale where the grain truck was weighed full and then empty. Grain was dumped through the grate and samples taken by the elevator operator for grading during the dumping stream, Then the grain was carried by the elevating buckets to the top of one of the 16, 80 foot high bins and poured into them. During the fall and winter when the grain was loaded into box cars the loading was not from the bottom. As a consequence the detritus, rat droppings, chaff and dust settled to the bottom of each bin over the winter and spring to about three to four feet high as I remember. It was a dusty job cleaning the bins out, getting them clean for the fall harvest. The dust and detritus got in your clothes and hair and nostrils. I was happy with my first paying job but I understand why Bill McClughan didn't want to do it. I was strong and never got sick. We didn't have running water so it was hard to keep clean every day since our water had to be hauled from the town pump and heated on the stove top. My bath water in the galvanized tub looked like porridge at the end of each bath. I have a slightly altered view of the romantic nature of the iconic prairie elevator.

Birdbrain

2010-12-13T10:11:00.000-08:00

This supposedly disparaging comment toward the forgetful or the thoughtless requires some reexamination! For the past two months the robins on our plot in Lotus Island were notable for their complete absence. They were abundant during the early fall. Nothing had changed that would have occasioned their departure. The worms and bugs remained in plentiful numbers. One thing however is noted and that is the holly berries were not quite ripe during that period. The robins of course are omnivorous. They don't exist on protein alone. They must have, if not an internal clock, an internal calendar, or alternatively a readily available Dayrunner. They are no" birdbrains" ! They may even follow a Sonoma diet plan for all I know. At any rate, they appeared in spades about 4 days ago. They started in the orchard by turning up the leaves in the windrows that I haven't been able to drag to the compost yet. Tossing their heads as they threw leaves helter skelter, seeking the cringing bug or worm. Once I saw them I knew what they were really after. The appetizer may have been bugs and worms, but the entree was my holly berries. The assault on the holly tree usually starts about the 5th of December and despite it being a loaded 50 foot tree they clean it up in 4 to 5 days! This year the tree was a bit late in ripening like everything else! How they knew? That kind of timing doesn't suggest a birdbrain is forgetful or thoughtless. They may not be able to spell well, but they are not stupid. Neither am I because I cut all the holly we needed three days ago, preempting their action. They can go to it all they want now! The only drawback to this feeding frenzy is the distributed seedings I have to weed next year from the droppings. Nevertheless, La Chaim!

The Motley Crew

2010-12-11T10:46:00.000-08:00

As I march through the commercial nursery greenhouses from time to time I feel a touch of envy over the pristine, row on row of abundantly flowering or verdant house plants for sale. They smack of the beauty of the young but are often bought, treasured, and turfed when they are no longer so beautiful. If you see perennials as furnishing, to stage your house for beauty, you will see no sense in any alternative use for them. However if you anthropomorphize your house plants, you will, as we have over many years, create a Confederation of a Motley Crew. The pianist has said, from time to time, we should get rid of some of these plants since they are too big, some are ugly and they are taking over the house and greenhouse. I don't disagree with her observations about ugly and large but have so far avoided some of her suggestions with regard to action. A good marriage seeks compromise. I do have a bottom line, and have euthanized and buried the worst to the compost. Such an act is love in action and they will rise again. The survivors are old friends. They can be primped up to be at least acceptable, but it does become more and more of a struggle. They provide memories of the olden days when they were young and beautiful. I am not a callow person. I am not "Sans Loy". They can rely on us to give geriatric care, to water regularly, to avoid rich food, to amputate at times to stave off death. We are more a happy home for the elderly rather than a hospice and we share their joy. The Cymbidium in the photo we have had for years. Some years it blooms, some years it doesn't! I have two others that have not favored us this year. I accept that. They have a mind of their own. I can always wait 'til Mother Nature chooses to reward us with her "presents"!

My Pro Career

2010-12-07T06:00:00.000-08:00

In 1953 I was recruited to go to Wynyard, Saskatchewan as a baseball pitcher for their ball team! Since it was my summer job I needed the money for school in the fall. The team had the desire for a winning team, but they had neither the money, nor a pitcher! A philanthropic business man in Wynyard, who owned a service station, came to their rescue and paid me 250 dollars a month to pump gas and be a go-fer in his business so that I could be at the behest of the ball team. 250 dollars was too generous for the job I did for the business owner, Mindy Halldorson, but it was expeditious to his town's ball team. I,of course, was flattered that they wanted me. My pro career, since I was the only pitcher, included providing this service 3 days a week at local sports days around the area, and usually,since we often won,generally pitched three short games a day. My job on the field was also to carry the equipment, bags and bats, to our next venue since I was the only "paid " player.The team felt that was a reasonable request since I was only 19 and I couldn't go with them to the beer parlor in between games. A real source of discontent for me. Predictably, half way through the season, pitching without respite, and having no brains to pace myself, I developed a severe rotator cuff tendinitis in my pitching arm! It was so bad I had trouble lifting the bag of jelly doughnuts I brought to the garage mechanics for coffee break twice a day, when I was working the go-fer shift! The black day came when the ball team manager took me aside and told me the team was not making enough money to pay me anything further. I of course, couldn't pitch for them because of my arm, but never thought to question why I was fired, since Mindy Halldorson was paying for me, not the ball team. I was of no further use. Used up! I did see the local doctor but he was a quack and gave me some talcum powder to rub on my shoulder! My pro career ended and I went back to the track at the CNR for the remainder of the summer! Oh, brief fling of greatness dashed!

Utterances

2010-12-02T05:38:00.000-08:00

When my dad retired from the railway in Lotus City,and he could no longer garden; but before he was anchored to the apartment by an oxygen hose,he did volunteer driving for the housebound! He was getting on a bit however, and found driving in the city a bit tense. He would drive elderly or disabled people to the doctor or dentist, or for treatment to the hospitals. Wait for them and drive them back. He had not much else to do so he was content to wait for them. My dad was not a reader but he enjoyed engaging others in the waiting room in conversation since he was never shy! He was given to frequent expostulations in his conversation generally. These were never scatological nor sacramentally incorrect but were provided with some passion nevertheless. His routine passionate epithet, prefacing remarks, was "By Dad!". Certainly beyond criticism! One day in my office I was visited by an elderly woman with a hip problem. At the end of our consultation she volunteered that she knew my dad and that he was often her volunteer driver. She said, "He's quite a character!" I agreed. Then she observed that when he drove her to an appointment he was frustrated with other drivers passing him and and bumper hugging. She said he would mutter, or sometimes yell, "You jackass" ,during the trip. I said, "I know that. He drives so slowly that people pass him abruptly and he is nervous. It's his word! We know it well." "Well ", she said, "I like your dad a lot but one day I was very late leaving the apartment and he was waiting for me a long time. I just knew when I got to his car he was going to call me a jackass." "He would never do that!" I said. "You're right",She said, "He just smiled and said he hoped I was feeling well." I can see my dad now in my mind's eye, trying to remain useful,tense with driving, but enjoying the company of fellow strangers, staving off the eventual time of relative immobility,fighting the feeling!

The Pansy

2010-12-01T03:41:00.000-08:00

The pansy, or for that matter the shrinking violet; what misnomers! They are tough little plants! The pansies are anything but pansies and the violets may be modest in size but they are mighty! We had minus 6 centigrade here on Lotus Island last week. The foundation box chrysanthemums turned black but the pansies didn't turn a hair. How could anyone have taken these plants as a metaphor for timidity? The pansy was always the favorite flower of the pianist. As a little girl she saw the flower as a face! I can see that. Anthropomorphizing again! Particularly for me as well, the yellow and brown petal arrangement are about as close to a little face as any flower I can think of. They not only are tough, but they are not in your face. Never mistake modesty for weakness! I am long enough in the tooth to know that with some other plants, what you see is not always what you get! On the island, the pansy winters over beautifully, waiting for that first soft warm breath in February to flourish, when under planted in the foundation boxes with the emerging daffodils. The reflected heat from the house allows them to spring forward. Being greeted by these harbingers of spring, as we leave the house, puts the spring in your step as well as in your heart.

Powerless in Paradise

2010-11-23T17:16:00.000-08:00

The first major storm of November, with wet, heavy, sticking snow and high winds has culled the weak, the rotten and the leaning trees, mostly Alder and Maple, since,at the edge of the forest, they overhang the power lines. Peripheral trees, ditch side trees, they crush the power lines with the awesome might of Mother Nature, having it on as the Grim Reaper to the old and feeble,( trees not me!). We were 41 hours on Lotus Island without power, landline ,face book, or all the other accoutrements we have come to take for granted. Mother Nature is going to do this a further three or four times this winter but the first big one is the major cull, much like the flu' season, and then the diminishing returns will follow. It has to be. Global pruning! Wolf pack at the edge of the herd! Our anxiety primarily extended to the two freezers in which we parked our frozen, value added fruit creations, and the frozen dinners created by the pianist as our lifeline. Valued as per summer work effort, not monetary! Our product survived the 41 hours since we scrupulously avoided peeking! But boy, the house, was it cold and dark inside and out! Black November, source of SAD for many! Cause of Snow Birding for others! At 76 years, rapid dark adaption with the older eye and heat transfer from core to periphery is not what it used to be! We had lots of wood however, rock salt, and both the fireplace and the Vermont Casting were going full blast! As long as you rotated your backside and front side it was bearable, but reading by candlelight is tough, by flashlight, hard on the arm. We don't have miner's lamps. That's another purchase. Hibernating under two duvets and a blanket, nostril to toes, was the real ticket! What was good about all this however, was the incredible silence and the sense of power in self sufficiency that one gets from knowing that we are all in the same boat, and 'making do', and unlike our forebears, it would all end. Also, I'm ashamed to admit, the vicarious pleasure obtained by knowing that your children were worried about you! Still ducking the widow makers in Paradise! Still salting the slippery slopes!

Husband

2010-11-19T13:10:00.000-08:00

Husband is also an archaic noun meaning a soft cushion with arms that enfolds or supports the occupant. I hope it is not misnamed, given the decades of change! Too traditional? Too uxorious? The pianist has a yellow corduroy bed cushion with back and arms that you can sit and lean onto and read in bed to your heart's content without sliding down. It's a good husband, though one of the arms has a tear in it and the padding shows. An old husband! Needs repairs! I have yet to eponymously designate the pianist's husband as Jim, but it does seem appropriate! We seem to anthropomophize many of our inanimate objects anyway! Why not her cushion? It may be a bit worn but its been around a long time and it is comfortable. And what's more, it never talks back to anyone. Actually I like the husband too! "To husband" is a verb from yesteryear meaning 'to care for'. Both the cushion and the elderly eclectic gentleman have that role, the verb and the noun! We both provide a certain comfort and possibly induce sleep more readily than the past! I am not sure which of us husbands is going to succumb to Father Time first. We both need some patching around the edges. We are both amply appreciated for our contributions. Long life and service to us both!

Mold

2010-11-17T15:17:00.000-08:00

Mold season is here on Lotus Island. Mold always seems to get a bad rap, but 'tain't necessarily so! It's also the season for spiders and mold's fungal cousin once removed, the mushroom. Both also subject to bad raps. The only reason fungi grow on anything is because they can. Fix the substrate, fix the fungi ! In the meantime beware of badmouthing the molds. If it weren't for Penicillium notatum we wouldn't have developed the range of subsequent generations of antibiotics, and many more World War two survivors would have succumbed to overwhelming infections without the first generation antibiotic . We wouldn't have Stilton cheese to go with our Port! We wouldn't have Truffles to lighten our wallets. The Chrysanthemum in the photo is on the way out with mold. The grey mold may not be beautiful but it is doing its job of assisting in biodegradation. That is where it's at with Mother Nature! Certainly mold does not have the beauty of the fungal mushrooms my Face Book friends are posting, but lets have some ugly plant pictures too! There is room in the world for everything, including UBS plants! (Ugly But Satisfactory)! If the mold on your tea rose, or your wall, or your basement or uncovered tomato plants is a problem,it's not a problem, you're the problem by providing a substrate they will thrive on. If the mold you love thrives on what you provide for it, you will also thrive. It's a curious paradox that the Genus that can kill you, can also cure you. The Genus that can tear you down, can also build you up. Here's to the spiders and all the fungi!

Rubber Ice

2010-11-14T17:10:00.000-08:00

The first year I was away from home in the 50's two little boys in our hamlet went through the ice on a pond next to the railroad station. One died. My brother Ken, there at the time, raced to the station and called my dad who ran out with a rake and walked into the icy pond and remained for many minutes, to try to probe and find the body in time. He never succeeded. In a small town like ours there were no ambulance persons, or rescue, or police. People did what they could. It was a tragedy! The pond was covered by rubber ice at the time of the drowning. Children, despite warnings, are impatient to play pond hockey. In many small towns, pond hockey is a necessity, not a choice! Rubber ice announces it's presence when you step on it. It groans and moans and squeaks! It also undulates as it speaks to you. Being impatient and failing to heed the warning sounds were drummed into us over and over again but the tendency for the adventuresome is to "try it out". It's a bit like life in general isn't it? There are always those who think they may get away with skating on thin ice and there are those who always wear both a belt and suspenders so they will never get caught with their pants down. Standing on rubber ice is fatal. At the first sound, getting down on your knees or better still on your belly will distribute the weight over a much larger ice area and save your life. People rescuing can put a plank or a ladder out to you to rescue you! There always has to be the first person singular to "try it out". It's inevitable and necessary when it's thoughtful! Let's just say, no matter what, plan B should have both belt and suspenders! When trapped on rubber ice, never jump, kneel, crawl and slither! Provide tough love for your kids!

Home grown vegetables.

2010-11-13T11:18:00.000-08:00

Home growing vegetables is usually a bust, I am sad to say! The cost-benefit ratio is,in the hands of the home gardener, a disaster. I like to say," I spend 10 dollars to grow a dollars worth of vegetables!" I am aware that this point of view will spur fury amongst the committed and I will be accused of egregious incompetence by the seed catalogue producers, presently mailing their colored pictures, and their devotees, but I have to come clean. I have tried my best every year, mostly for forty years. I have read, studied and inwardly digested the books of the great vegetable gardeners and tried their techniques. Arthur Willis, Bill Vander Zalm, W. G. Smith, Dr. D.G Hessayon, Jill Severn, Bernard Moore, and Marjorie Hunt. I have subscribed to Rodale's publication, Organic Gardening and the Ortho publications. All to no avail! I have grown everything from salsify to stevia, from peas to potatoes. The occasional success is not worth the effort for me. There is a solution to get the great taste of the home grown organic vegetables that will cost less in the end. My farmer daughter has organically farmed vegetables for 20 years. It is hard work. She is exceptionally knowledgeable and full time plus. She can make a living but it's a tenuous thing. She does it because she loves it and sees safe food production as an essential in a world that is spinning out of control! Lotus Island has a salubrious climate that allows both winter and summer vegetable growing but it is also kind to many of the pests. Carrot fly, leaf miner, cabbage butterfly, cut worm, a myriad of fungi,rabbits,slugs sow bugs and earwigs.Waterlogging, tomato blight, unexpected frost, and a sorry lot of other enemies combat you. If you love it anyway, then bring your Remay, your fibrecloth, your little collars for the cole crops, and your lumber for the raised beds. Bring your compost, and your slug bait, and Rotenone. Not me! I'm sticking to Rhubarb and Globe Artichokes in the vegetable crowd and growing ornamentals. We'll buy our vegetables from the organic marketers. It's easier on the budget and you won't need Hope Springs Eternal.

Father of the bride

2010-11-12T07:37:00.000-08:00

When my daughter was married in the mid 80's I gave a toast at the reception. The reception was in our home at Lotus City and the house was "chockablock" with family of the bride and groom, and many friends! It was a joyous occasion! I had not prepared a toast since it was only at the last moment I was informed to do so! I quickly searched my memory and came up with the idea to describe the day he asked for her hand. Our house was shaped like a tomahawk and a series of bedrooms down a long hall, the handle of the tomahawk. They were visiting from Olympic City at the time he asked to marry her. I described the scene to the assembly as follows." My present son-in-law came up to me out of the blue some time ago, and said, ' I'd like to speak to you about something.' It didn't take much intuition to know what was coming! ' Sure,' I said. I looked up the long hallway as we talking and could see my daughter peeking out of a bedroom door and then pulling back quickly when spied. It was a telling, classical, scene. He said, ' I would like to get your permission to marry your daughter.' I was actually, at the time, surprised to be asked! I said, ' Do you love her?' 'O yes,' he said,' I really love her, she is such a happy joyful person to be with.' He spoke with such vehemence! I paused, to fully take in this response. I then said to him, ' We would be glad for you and her!' " That was the gist of the matter. So far so good. Then, I added a tail to the tale. I told the reception guests my thought, during the pause after his confession of love. I said, "I thought at the time, holy shit, he really does love her! " My friend Janet said, later in the reception, "Do you know you said shit ?" I didn't know. My Toronto sister-in -law, standing with us, said, "Of course he said shit!" She understood. It can be a word of passion, in a moment of glory.

Credibility

2010-11-09T04:48:00.000-08:00

When I was newly arrived in Lotus City to practice, one of the first cases I treated was an operator of a front end loader working on an industrial site. The bucket of his machine contacted high tension Hydro wires. An electrical charge ran from the bucket to both his hands which were on the levers, and through his body, and out the left foot which was on the pedal. An attending Plastic surgeon looked after the severe electrical burns of the hands and I dealt with the left leg burns. The operator went on over time to develop quite severe cicatrix of both hands and gangrene of the lower leg requiring a below knee amputation. Several years later I went to court as a witness in this case. Who was liable and how much was the main issue, and the defendants were the employer, the then WCB and the Hydro! The judge was a senior man of long experience in personal injury cases and a reputation for well-honed asperity! As I was new to Lotus City, I had never appeared before him. As I was asked to describe the appearance of the leg by the lawyer, the plaintiff's council rose and told the judge that "we" had a series of pictures of the hands and leg. I did not know this, since the Plastic surgeon had been taking photographs regularly for his own medical portfolio and they did not appear on the hospital chart! I must have appeared evasive or confounded by this information because the judge gave me a withering glare! I could see a cartoonist's balloon over his head, thinking "This greenhorn Orthopedic surgeon has taken pictures home to somehow cover his ass because of fear of criticism!" The judge however, really said imperiously, " What! Orthopedic surgeons never take pictures!" He glared again! THe plaintiff lawyer said, "Oh no my lord, the Plastic surgeon took the pictures." "That's alright then, " said the judge, "Plastic surgeons always take pictures." He smiled at me. Exonerated! Credible after all! He was right: we never take pictures!

A Little Helper

2010-11-06T09:00:00.000-07:00

When my son was six years old we received a letter from the Sunday School discharging him from the Little Helpers group at the church. The ignominy of the event didn't seem to faze him, but for the pianist and me it was disturbing! I cannot recall exactly what he had done or not done, but it had to do with the Lenten Box. The Little Helpers were engaged in collecting for the African poor. At least as I remember the box, a triangular cardboard tent, purple, with an African on the side, had a coin slot for the Little Helpers donations. He may have lost his box, spent the money, or we may have failed to maintain his attendance, or encourage a good attitude toward his charity. What ever the cause, the failure was ours, the dismay was ours, but the price paid was his. Being fired from Little Helpers is an enormous blot on your copy book. Whether this interface with the Anglican church in Winnipeg was a signal event in his spiritual journey I do not know. It is certain that an earlier experience in the Anglican Cathedral church in Plymouth was also a watershed moment when he was four years of age. He admired greatly, the garb of the Dean, a very fine fellow, of whom he remarked, "When I grow up, I want to be dressed up like God" . We never know the inklings that proceed to one's chosen priestly vocation! Up from the mustard seed!

Projection

2010-10-31T17:36:00.000-07:00

The photograph,one of my favorites, was taken at St. Ives,Cornwall, a Sunday morning in 1962. The other innocents were the parents, the pianist and me. Little children,taken by the hand and transported, not necessarily where they want to go. The photo depicts for me, the vulnerability, the aloneness, the immensity of distance, the clinging to the companionship of the known, the longing for something inexpressible. Almost 50 years later it still evokes strong feelings for me of a time when we all struggled to retain our center! They are looking out onto the Bristol Channel to the west, as it widens into the Atlantic. The same route taken by many to the new world, and first by the explorer-navigator John Cabot in 1497 for Henry V11. We had taken the weekend off but had driven too far to get back to Plymouth that day so had to stay in St. Ives overnight. Our car was the warmest enclosure we had so we often went driving in the winter, escaping the cold council house we lived in. Money was tight but we found a bed and breakfast in St. Ives to tide us over. I remember the weekend as if it was yesterday and it was a cherished family time. None the less, as I look at the picture now, and think of the feelings I ascribe to the children, they are really my feelings. I have a marvelous ability to project! Those feelings were there then, but I operate by denial, and certainly did in spades at 28 years of age. Home for them was where ever the pianist and I were. Home for us was out there, somewhere, in that direction!

Mother Nature's Fruits

2010-10-26T20:47:00.000-07:00

The indigenous berries produced on the prairies,where cultivated fruit is rare, provided a wonderful bonanza in the fall: a gift from Mother Nature for the taking. I'm not talking of the cultivars that have developed from these plants by the plant developers at the universities and experimental farms, but the original plants that we harvested berries from in the olden days. Low bush blueberries from the Hudson Bay Junction area (Vaccinium agustifolium). Your fingers were blue from the bloom on the berries and your back sore from the stooping. Your ears were alert for sounds of bears in the patch and your legs ready to run. High bush cranberries (Viburnum trilobum) were from the same area, but not related at all botanically or horticulturally ,to the common cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon) . These high bush berries made a tart and piquant jelly. The pin cherry (Prunus pensylvanicus) also was a favorite for the jelly maker. A tart and delicious jelly was created, particularly good for meat and game. My favorite as a child was chokecherry (Prunus virginiana). The flavour of jelly from this berry was unique. A slice of homemade bread,slathered with butter and chokecherry jelly was ambrosia! Food for the gods from Saskatchewan! Because it took a long time to pick enough of these fruits, and since they were so small and thinly spread, the preserves were special and treated with great care. The Saskatoon berry (Amelanchier alnifolia) was wide spread through the prairies. The pioneers named the city after them. The berries made very nice pies and were easy to pick. They were the prairie icon.The cultivars that have arisen as a result of selection have improved the production of all these little trees undoubtedly, but they will never supplant the fruit flavors one remembers from one's youthful taste buds. Mother Nature has provided indigenous fruits on the wet coast as well. Here, we have abundant cultivated fruit on Lotus Island, so we often tend to ignore the indigenous offerings. Too bad because they are spectacular! I don't include the Himalayan Blackberry variants or the Rowanberry because they are not indigenous. The Trailing Pacific Blackberry (Rubus ursinis}, that little squirt that tangles everything you plant, produces a quality berry jelly, very different from its mellow Himalayan cousin.The salal berry (Gaultheria shallon} and the Oregon grape {Mahonia aquifolium) produce berries that our long time neighbor used to add as a wild flavour, to most jelly and jam preserves. The Thimble berry (Rubus parviflorus) and the Salmon berry (Rubus spectabilis) are for the birds, and best left to them. There are many good publications on a lot more wild fruits that may be worth trying! Not in anyway to derogate the abundant cultivars that are the anchor of the fruit industry, it's worth trying a little of what our early ancestors had available to them, freely given, if only for the novelty. A paen to history and Mother Nature!

Loss of Innocence

2010-10-25T05:27:00.000-07:00

My dad took me to watch Whipper Billy Watson, Hardboiled Haggarty, and Chief Thunderbird "wrestle" when I was about ten. My mother wasn't at home then, or she would have never let me go. My dad met up with his friends, so I sat and watched these large men punch and kick one another endlessly in what seemed to me like a life or death struggle.I still remember the feeling walking home in the dark, on that winters night in Kindersley, on the glittering hard packed snowy road with a newly found sense of dread! I thought of this when I watched Wendy Mesley yesterday on CBC interviewing two "experts" who have studied evil and the media's compulsion to cover it. The experts concluded that the extensive coverage and all the abundant crime shows, serve a "useful" purpose to inform the naive that evil is around and protection is needed! Bosh! We all have a shade, including yours truly, that is compelled to watch, however dreadful,the sad,the sick, the evil that is around us. The fear it arouses has a titillating presence. It doesn't take a psychologist to note that we all have a shade. To say the portrayal of evil is "useful" panders to this need. Unfortunately as a human being we can't fully embrace Philippians 4:8. The other day I saw some writing on the wall. I went up and read it. Do you know what it said? It said, "This is the writing on the wall!"

Touching (verboten)

2010-10-24T20:57:00.000-07:00

I was at supper in a restaurant with my granddaughter,her uncle ,and two colleagues, when the up beat waitress, who couldn't remember my order, put her hand on my forearm to get my attention! "I'm sorry ",she laughed "I was so discombobulated, I forgot what you ordered!" After I confirmed my order,the granddaughter and my colleague were aghast! "She touched you!", they both said at the same time. My reaction was bewilderment. So what? All I noticed was nothing more than a friendly and an apologetic gesture. My grandaughter, who is 25, said, "They never do that!" I've thought about it since! Teachers don't proudly touch children who turn in good work any more! Your avuncular old pediatrician never gives a precious squeeze to his little patient. Grandad never bounces little Mary or Johnny on his lap. What is going on here? Not everything is sexualized! The world is in a spin of phobic correctness. Maybe it's my age but there was a time when you could pass the peace with those you knew and that mutual cherishing was accompanied by a comfort hug. Now when we pass the peace we shake hands or bow with hands folded prayerfully with those that worry about germs. Old friends cheek kissed as a matter of course! People who conquered the mountain together gave precious hugs to one another! It still happens, but all too often there is tentative hesitation . We seem to have entered a time when tactile expressiveness is guarded. I suppose for good reason at times, but it is a sad thing. For simple enthusiasm with one another, our human connectedness, we only have our voices and the five senses to utilize. That is ,all the five senses! Without them, we are looking at an alternative definition for six degrees of separation!

Avoiding Vanity

2010-10-23T12:52:00.000-07:00

In the olden days I played defense for our hockey teams. I wasn't all that bad a defenseman. I wasn't the best skater on the team for sure, and I wasn't rough and tough. I was a "stay at home" defenseman, moved the puck forward well and stickhandled skillfully! Whenever I had a really good game,my dad would say, "That Jackie Clark is a terrific forward!" Tantalizing, but the string was pulled just out of reach! Whenever I brought my spelling tests home my mother always wanted to see the word I spelled wrong! I'm not complaining, I'm just observing. The carrot was held just in front of my nose! I tried hard to munch! My best buddy in those days was my brother, Ken. Later when I was the new boy in a prairie medical clinic I often showed the senior guy my good results. I was looking for affirmation. Eventually he said, "Jim, I know you are a good surgeon but I'm too busy to keep patting you on the back all the time." Gulp! The head of the clinic once said to me, "If a patient gives you splendid feedback, suck it up, because you'll be able to withstand the brick bats more easily!" Good advice! Is this reluctance to praise the praiseworthy the fear of instilling vanity into the big striver? It certainly made me work harder to eke out that scintilla of praise that came. King Solomon, who was a very smart guy said "Vanity of vanities,all is vanity".It sounded like danger to the devout! The residual Presbyterianism in my parents may have taken that to heart in the olden days. They praised with a faint damn to our face, but waxed on about us to their friends. Somehow we knew this and that had to be enough! Today's parents are supportive and rightly effusive about the children's success to their face.I'm not sure that the new approach is any more effective frankly, but it is more pleasing. Even slight praise from the constipated provides a small hard thing to be savored!

Fellini Satyricon

2010-10-22T19:59:00.000-07:00

He said,I paraphrase," If you eat me you will partake in my bounty." So the last, or perhaps the penultimate scene, is the compromise of the Lustful, sitting around the large table,or perhaps a large marble entableture (it's so long I can't remember exactly), at what appears a campsite, munching doggedly on the corpse of the deceased! Awaiting largesse! They clearly are not enthralled with the means to the end, but it just goes to show where Fellini would put the bounty hunters, let alone the fate, if you'll pardon the imagery, of the deceased in the "end"! In the meanwhile, the final scene shows the rest, the Enlightened, the non inheritors, down to the beach, about to sail to unencumbered freedom. How much, money seems to rule! How much misery it has caused! How much sacrifice it has driven! How little stability it really provides! How much joy has it erased? How manipulated those who receive! Of course it is not money per se that is evil, it is the love of money that leads to destruction. Money can provide ease, the love of money provides dis-ease. There is a pointed character on CBC that says ."I love money". "Greed is good." I don't know how serious he is. He may be partly provocateur! His counterpoint,a female with a strong animus, serves to modify his point of view, but marginally! Our values have become so skewed by reward that it is difficult to carve a path that combines the growth of the soul with the necessities of the flesh. People give up trying. They become cynical. Anger at the fetters that have become bonds and chains. Ambivalence confounds even the gentle. I think a good idea is to stop, now, watching television, reading the newspaper, and surfing the internet! It's a start!

Agonal bloom

2010-10-19T05:01:00.000-07:00

As the ground water rises and the light shortens, the dahlia patch enters the period of agonal bloom! The old plants have become exhausted,partially due to "seed production interruptus" from yours truly! Each time they produced a perfect bloom to perpetuate their species it got plucked. If it escaped the plucking when prime, it got deadheaded well before seed set! Now, in it's approaching agony, the plant throws itself into a desperate budding frenzy to reproduce, to no avail! Feeble little curlicue stems, petal deficient flowers,stem rot,color fading,nodding blooms, and a proliferation of unsightly "sports". "To everything there is a season............a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted", Ecclesiastes 3. It's inevitable, I guess, that we interrupt the natural history of the plant,or nature,or for that matter maybe of ourselves, in order to produce some sort of other gain. That's progress! No one asked the plant if it wanted to stay rooted in a spot that was drier in the winter and more clement, and if it wished to produce some serendipitous seed from a colleague,as well as perpetuating itself from it's tuber. Instead it may have got pruned to one or two miserable stems by a showman for another inch of bloom breadth and millimeter of stem width. Or it became the bride of a chosen groom's family by a plant marriage broker and shrouded in mystery until seed production! Or it was allowed to flower till "untimely ripped" for a vase, when in full pubertal beauty! We are plucking up that which is planted on October 25th. They will be buried in a straw cloister for the winter and frustrated again next summer! In my hands always the bridesmaid! Sorry, mea culpa!

Godot

2010-10-18T11:21:00.000-07:00

Many years ago the pianist and I went to the Belfry Theater in Lotus City to see Waiting for Godot! I was mystified by the play, thought it completely opaque, and blamed myself for not being "with it"! What is it about that play that has stuck with me over the years? At 76, am I able to see through the opacity that bedeviled me when I was 35? Maybe! Why Beckett wrote it in French, and whether at 76, he understood more than he did when he wrote it in his 40's, I do not know. I do know that the play has been dissected over and over again. For me I stick with "res ipsa loquitor". Otherwise it contaminates! What Samuel Beckett thought, and what his interpreters thought, is interesting,but what it says to you is the crunch point. We went to Olympic City last weekend to spend time with four old friends who were an integral part of our wedding party in 1957. We have all grown old together and walked similar, but dissimilar pathways! Together we have a total of 157 years of marriage. The play no longer seems absurdist. At forty I was impatient and certain that I would amount to something! It seemed terribly important! Amounting to something was clearly defined! In my case it was defined by others. Rabbit ears! Waiting was agony. Waiting is still somewhat agonizing but expected now. Living with uncertainty is easier. Amounting to something is no longer as important. Godot will appear when he does. It is certain, that he will when you least expect it. If he doesn't appear, then the faithless were right, but that also doesn't seem important. Being part of the woodwork and watching that march of humanity is a blessing in itself since the woodwork no longer has to perform if it chooses not to. Both cream and shit float to the surface!