Ruminants

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!