Wheat grass

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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.