The World, A condominium oceanliner

It must be a growth industry! The cruise ships get larger and longer and higher and the amenities proliferate like fruit flies! Now, ships like The World, whose time has apparently come, are floating condominiums with a permanent cliental that are citizens of the world at large! Living aboard all or part of the time, visiting and observing the sights of the world by water. Wow! The World moored off our little, possibly exotic to some, certainly funky to many, island in the Salish Sea. There are no docking facilities for boats of cruise ship size on Lotus Island, so The World anchored out a mile and a half from the the town in Ganges Harbour. We locals and yokels spent the weekend gawking at her! The ship's tender plyed the water back and forth on an hourly basis with its condo cargo as they visited the town, and the market, all weekend. They have licked their lips, those sellers in the trinket market, but the passenger-owners were here to simply absorb the bucolic atmosphere. Lotus Island is not a destination for the Isla Cozumel crowd, two weeks and home. We may have arrived for bucolic viewing, but no Mardi Gras like ambience exists as a destination for the lively. I guess cruising ship condominium-owners would be older and more sedate than the two week bunch. A battle anew about our role in the tourist industry is about to occur with the Nimbys and the Progressives . The Progressives will prevail. Money, like water, flows to the lowest level. I am not self rightous. I like money and water too, but Eco Tourism is what we have been largely all about. Our strong point! How much to sacrifice to get the right balance? Those of us who live here and have done so for a long time have deep roots. We are not exactly spectators. We are the inspected. I'm not really sure that a condominium on the ocean ,with many ports of call, and a rootless existence is all that appealing. Shubert wrote of Der Wanderer. Says the song "Where are you my beloved land?" I can answer that because I am a 'stick in the mud'!

Whither Fritz Perls?

I often wonder what remnants of the sixties still can be found in the litter of today's world and its ethos. If you throw enough mud against the wall, will some of it stick? Was it all in vain? Did anything that Fritz Perls talked about at Big Sur result in any long term influence and change our present way of looking at relationships, or was it just jargon? Did Easy Rider or Fellini Satyricon or Blowup strike anyone with a sense of changed perception that lasted? Did Alan Watts, poor man, make any sense to the world, grappling with his identity issues and ours? What about Robert Bly and his male concepts in Iron John? Did this speak to any males seeking to redefine themselves? Is it only Leonard Cohen that is left carrying an old torch? I think not. He still speaks to many. Are there still subversives in the underground that see a way out of today's polarized and hugely structured, in the box thinking? Yes! What ever happened to love when success took over? What ever happened to peace when gratuitous violence took over? What ever happened to freedom when regulation returned? Sure, there was lots wrong with all that earlier stuff. Some people would say, "You must be an old hippy." It was often impractical ,but it had some of the right stuff. It included seeing the divine in your neighbor for all his and your own warts, and caring about it. I hope we can look at the mosaic that is the world and pick out bits and pieces of it that we can say," Here is , 'I have a dream!' " and another that says " Ich bin ein Berliner !" 'The church I go to is trying to get out of the box and seek the core values of loving your neighbor as yourself, and the neighbor is the world and the whole community. It's a start . We want to be part of the mosaic. We are beset with naysayers these days. Whether we can work out of our packaged ideas and open up to life hinges on blind exploration of all parts of the elephant!

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!

Dog Show

Irish setters are a beautiful animal. I was 14 and visiting my grandparents in Winnipeg when my mother phoned me,crying, from our home in Saskatchewan to tell me that my Irish Setter had been poisoned and died of strychnine seizures. He was a gift from my Aunt and was one of a number of dogs poisoned in the area. My family made it up to me by purchasing an Irish Setter puppy from Harry Dean in Dalmeny, Saskatchewan, a well known hunter breeder. My new Irish Setter , Rusty, I was convinced was a winner. He had a beautiful, darker red coat. When he was 9 months old I entered him in the Ladies Kennel Club dog show in Saskatoon. We had practised standing and heeling for months. We were bonded. I had fancied I would be one day become a professional dog handler. I had a subscription to the Canadian Kennel Club Magazine and read what I could about dog handling. We lived about 200 miles from Saskatoon on the main CNR line. The "Flyer" came through the town about 4 am every morning. The day before the show I washed my dog thoroughly. The "Flyer" stopped for us, this time, at 4 am the day of the show and Rusty and I both travelled to Saskatoon in the baggage car. He slept on one side all the way in to Saskatoon. Unfortunately he was still slightly damp from my doggy bath and sleeping on one side for that many hours was a disaster in the making. We got off the train at 8 am and walked to the arena. He was curly on the damp side and fuzzy on the other side. His glistening coat was dull and free of natural oils. He was too young to have good feathers. My debut in the doggy world was a disaster. At 15 years of age, the humiliation was intense and I was alone. I believe that seminal moment led to a change of vocation. Despite that, I dreamt of revenge on the Ladies Kennel Club. Don't ask why revenge! They didn't do anything wrong except, in the doggy world competition ,there is no charity good enough to assuage that kind of felt disaster. I consoled myself, on the long road back, that I would become rich, buy the best dog in the world, and win Best in Show at the Ladies Kennel Club of Saskatoon. I never did. I hugged my dog and he licked my face!

clods and furrows

The ground we walk on, the field we traverse, may not be disked or harrowed. You will trip on the clods and sink into the furrows! In the past I may have thought, in an idle moment, that a fine tilth might be going to be laid for me.If it were,I wondered if I might have run a little faster, and got a little further over the field than I did. At least I said that to myself then. The pianist and I began by trying to make sure we used a disk harrow and a spike harrow for our kids, but the harrows both disappeared in the busyness of our life before they were used, and so the kids had their own clods and furrows to manage.I realize now, thank God for that! To have it otherwise is an insult to the connective tissue your issue naturally bring into the world. You can't raise your children in a greenhouse. The growth becomes rank and sappy! I'm not sure that entitlement isn't still present in our affluent world. If it is, there's going to be unseasonable weather outside the greenhouse and some of these sweet plants will eventually either toughen or fail. "It's the way of the world", some say. There is another way. You don't have to toughen. It is a blessing to finally know that you are not entitled. That, in fact, the more entitled you feel you are, the more impervious to the truth you become. Someone says ," I have come to the end of my rope. I can do no more!" I say," Hallelujah, now you have the chance to give up and grow!" Thank God for clods and furrows!

The Crawl Space

The crawl space of the house that belongs to the pianist and me is two and a half feet high,labyrinthine in nature, and large. When traversing the labyrinthe on one's belly the pink insulation that hangs loose from aged split bindings brush the face in the dark; movement causes cement dust to stir up a little storm, and the sounds of fluids running in and out the many pipes,ingress and egress, give one's hand a little thrill as the myriad of pipes softly vibrate. Here is a world apart from a house that knows nothing of the workings of the vital and visceral nature from this dark region. There is no area so underestimated in importance as this subterranean world.The heat,the light, the water, the ventilation, the septic system, the internet, the communication all arise from the Action Central,the crawl space. I like being there because it seems like being right at the source, where every thing else hangs in its balance. And yet, the realtors never sing the praises of the crawl space. The purchasers never celebrate the crawl space with its firm foundation. No poet creates a panegyric to this footprint of the house that serves so well unsung. Some may find it arduous and unpleasant to enter the dark world where the possibility of vermin and wasps and bees and ants may coexist. They won't adversely affect Action Central. They just know a good place when they find one. My son-in-law and I just spent an hour in the crawl space, worming our way through the apertures to all the rooms of this underworld; celebrating by prostrating ourselves at the foundations, the wires and pipes and cables and really receiving the emanations of the house, from the bottom up.

Loganberries

When the pianist and I moved to Lotus City in the 60's the adjacent farmland was dotted with loganberry farms supplying the fruit wine industry locally and the jam factory on Sinclair Hill. Now the jam factory is an unused heritage relic and the Logana Winery is converted to a heritage structure housing an upscale steak eatery. All jam is now imported from industrial manufacturers except for minor cottage industries.. The grape growers and vintners, primarily large franchise holders, have displaced the local loganberry farms. This part of the world was prime country for loganberries and never was prime country for wine grapes. They produce pretty fair wines from specialized stock but they will never compete with quality world wide on a significant scale. We grow a world class quality with some soft fruit varieties and some heritage tree varieties. Why don't we stick to what we can produce of excellence ? We won't though ! Tastes have changed. Still,we can better compete in the long term with what we do best, not second best! I suppose we have to live with industrial farms and industrial food manufacturing! But, what the heck! Yesterday I made loganberry/tayberry jelly,13 jars from our berries. I missed the jel-point and bottled too soon so I had to dismantle the seals and reboil. It's a bit harder to gel than some fruits as the loganberries have little pectin. My grandmother never added pectin, and the pianist's mother didn't either, but she could assess the critical jel-point to the second. "Lightly jelled" was the mantra for optimum achievement. I also made 20 , 2cup bags of logan/tay juice. The pianist makes a logan berry juice merange pie after the manner of a lemon merange pie. Delicious and pungent for a party treat. Logan and tayberries are easy to grow if you have room on your fence. They are more piquant than the Himalayan black berry that is here in abundance. It thrives in the ditches and is heartily extolled for it's mellowness by the devotees who make blackberry pies or blackberry apple pies. The Himalayan has it's role and is free for the taking! It's sort of satisfying to be small scale and know you have a year's worth of eating from your hand and the knowledge of what the contents consist of!

The Humanities

My friend and teacher turns 80 this month. He guides a group of acolytes, including me, in Middle English literature. He is a young 80, and his style of teaching is Socratic. We gather every week for the morning, and our curriculum is chosen with care to provide a broad understanding of the world as it is, not really, just as it was. All good literature of any age is contemporary. Some of us have finally come to experience the right brain as well ! The burden of largely left brain functioning over the years has now been put to rest! He is addressing, for us, the deficiency of the new world of technology that has cut out the humanities. I suppose that it is more out of necessity, due to the competitive edge needed to uber-succeed in one's vocation. Sadly the time and cost and stress of obtaining a higher education has led to this. We say facetiously, "The specialist knows more and more about less and less until he knows almost everything about nothing much! The generalist knows less and less about more and more until he knows almost nothing about everything! " This mentor has opened a new world for some of us, especially me. I spent a lifetime in the rat race and though I was, I profess, useful, I didn't look after the whole man. Now is my chance, though I'm not so blind as to think I can ever achieve wholeness! The teacher , I am sure, has mellowed since his active professorial years, but his Socratic style allows the initiates to develop critical thinking with wonder and discovery, rather than burdened with didactic instruction. Good literature leads to self discovery and good company leads to respect for diversity! May we continue to grow together.

toilet reading material

The criteria for useful material in this arena requires short, interesting and light reading! As we age, the material can be of somewhat more length, though care should be taken that your leg doesn't go to sleep. Usually on a visit to the washroom I snatch whatever I spy en route lying on the chair or table for perusal. I was somewhat taken with my random selection today, following two earlier visits where no literature was found at hand. First, "Collapse" by Jared Diamond, "How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed", and then the magazine, "Aeroplan, Arrival" fall winter, 09. What a contrast ! "Arrival" promises a life of exotic travel, fine dining and bauble-mania, if you spend ,spend, spend, and use your points to advantage. "Collapse" promises disaster after disaster with societies living a life of waste and wanton disregard of the consequences of overuse by individuals. What an edgy world we live in! Clearly, I did not have time to do justice to the reading material in my stay in the washroom but I got the idea. Picking our way through a pockmarked world littered with minefields of our own making, or striding briskly through a world of enchanting fantasia, with not a shred of misgiving. Certainly in a free society such as ours we are free to choose our own poison, within limits. I wonder sometimes whether greed and voluptuary activity, or paranoia and envirophobia are taking hold, or are the ordinary people still in charge. I hope so! The truth of most matters lie somewhere in the middle. It's just less interesting and harder to sell. The bathroom remains a good place to think things through.

Atom and Leave

Some might say," From atom you became and to atom you shall return!" Certainly, some have said , from compost to atom in an expanding universe until you disappear down , or up, the black hole. These are systems of belief. It's a mechanistic view of the world, fit for today's need for certainty.It smacks of a Tinker Toy world. Some say, "Though from dust you came and to dust you shall return, there is more!" Elysian fields, Happy hunting grounds, a mansion over the hillside with streets of purest gold? It smacks of a Fuzzy Wuzzy world! What is it about people who really know? Not even St. Paul,with all his bombast, had the temerity to really know. He said so! He saw through a glass darkly. For the Elderly Eclectic Gentleman the glass is darkly. It is enough for me to believe that I will eventually find out, and it's intriguing! In the meantime live your life with uncertainty. It's a lot more interesting and authentic than fanciful theories! What I can't control, I had best let go! I do suppose that I can prepare a Whereafter Kit! Certainly Tutankhamun took heavy baggage on his trip in case! Things he prized! Useful accessories! My Whereafter Kit might include a small vial of tears that the pianist and I have shed over the years, a can of laughter and endearments that we listened to with one another, and a photo of our dear ones. I'm going to travel light! I won't need shoes, but I don't think I'm going to be an atom and leave! If you wait and listen closely, you will know that there is something going on! It's soft and nuanced, but when you think back, it's always been there. That too, is a system of belief! It's harmless! I might get to see my dear ones! I can hardly wait!

Apocalypse

The spate of popular apocalyptic writing ,movies and articles these days, would amuse that sage of yesteryear, Alfred E. Neuman. I do not claim to be free of worries, but hopefully most of them are rational. Certainly the seriousness with which the students of pessimism order their life and advise everyone else to do the same is perpetuated by this overburden of fear. It is the "spirit of the age". Of the apocalyptic movies my preference is Waterworld and the Mad Max series all of which clearly defined themselves as outrageous entertainment, rather than prophetic. What a serious bunch! How a secular world could steal from Revelations, the most cognitively strained part of the Bible, without admitting it, yet reject almost all of the sensible bits of the rest, is a reflection of the unreasonable fear that surrounds us. No one I know would advocate literalism in interpreting scripture, but it does give some good general advice. As Alfred E. Neuman says "What, me worry? " In the darkest days of the world the most hardy of the survivalists, at least for a time in the case of some, retained a sense of humor along with a tenuous hope and some energy. They had no guarantees! Think of Viktor Frankl ! Think of Corrie ten Boom !Think of Nelson Mandela ! Think of Roberto Begnini ! Then think of Alfred E. Neuman and relax. The world will unfold as it will, Governments notwithstanding! When I think of someone saying "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you", I think of "The Ministry of Silly Walking".

Mold

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!

The Thicket

The Thicket, even better, the Briar Patch,is sanctuary for small feathered and furry friends, the denser the thicket, the better! If in the well ordered and cultivated garden there are periodic small thickets, especially near your windows, you will enjoy an abundance of creatures and provide a measure of safety for them! Your abundance will increase since these thickets will be home and partial larder, for the broody! It's unfortunate that the urban dweller may have more difficulty establishing the thicket since they are necessarily untidy, and the briar patch even more so, and often an affront to the scrupulous neighbors. Here,in the rural garden on Lotus Island, Mother Nature's display of thicket, can go hand in hand with that controlled effort of the Elderly Eclectic Gentleman. Mother Nature gardens in her own inestimable way and I in my trial and error fashion. The bird feeder and the bird house, while of some value, do not supplant the thicket or briar patch in meeting the needs of the creatures. In fact they may foster a culture of dependancy that is counter productive to the well being of the vulnerable. Well meaning activity on the part of animal lovers toward the wild, may expose them to more predation and disease and interfere with the survival skills in an uncertain world. This applies to us and our children as well as the fellow creatures. We hominems also need a thicket sanctuary where we can return, after we venture out. We all live in an uncertain world and need survival skills if we are innately capable, rather than handouts. Blessed assurance however, is that our thicket may still be there. Kindness is:come as close to Mother Nature as you dare!

Learning from Bad Examples

Pity the poor student, that in life, had only superb teaching and exemplary teachers. I learned much from my own failures and from those whose failures surrounded me. Periodic teaching from bad examples provides one with the zeal and stimulus to do better and emulate the best teachers you have encountered. The realization that you can do much better than that which has been offered will lead to renewed efforts on the part of the student. The stream of consciousness will be stimulated not only by good ideas, but in the right hands, often by ideas that are barren. There is not much in life that is absolute. Received wisdom has ebbed and flooded over time and often given way to a new and further temporary wisdom. We are hammered these days with polarized disputes on almost every subject imaginable. You have been given five senses that allows you to come to your own conclusions. A sixth sense is buried deep within everyone which can be awakened. The seventh sense is crucial to the scientist. That is, common sense! Observe the world around you on your own terms. Smell the roses and all else! Touch and feel the rough and the smooth. Listen to the sounds of the natural world. Taste the abundance you have been freely given . Wait and listen for the spirit to awaken you to fresh beginnings. Ask yourself "Does this make ordinary sense?" Know that all experiences are a teaching tool, good and bad. Accept it with grace. That's what moulds the collagen in character!

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.

Self Deception

How often do we eventually come to believe what we have told ourselves so often, in the face of the bald facts? Mea culpa! This is not really news. Shakespeare covered it pretty clearly in Prospero's observation about his brother, to Miranda! "--like one, who having, into truth, by telling it, made such a sinner of his memory, to credit his own lie, he did believe---". You could paraphrase this by saying " Who's kidding who?" I often am impressed with the capacity of the mind that eventually comes to believe it's own P. R. The standard we hold for others, we must hold ourselves to, and that may take some digging deep. I watched Part Five of the series, the Civil War, on PBS the other day. It included the Gettysburg Address of President Lincoln. He stated "--the world will little note nor long remember what we say here--". How wrong he was! One of the worlds great speeches in a paragraph. There was no confabulation, no overweening pride, no self serving adulation, and no certainty. There was vision and humility and generosity without a carapace of false optimism. The issue was too important for Lincoln to come to believe in any lies about himself. He knew he was simply a player in an uncertain world.He knew what he was, and more importantly, he knew what he wasn't! Would that candor towards one another, and towards oneself, delivered with kindness, succeed, where belief in our own mythology has failed.

Leonard Cohen

For my 75th birthday my daughter gave me a 2 part disc of the essential songs of Leonard Cohen. He chose from his repertoire and though I am not sure why, he didn't include some of the favorites. I suppose he's entitled, since he is my age and therefore taking the long view, thinking elegiac thoughts and trying to clean up his legacy. He is my favorite poet. He sings from the heart; he is not obscure;he pronounces his words so you understand easily; and his music is exciting and novel. His books are a diary of his life and the changes that have been wrought as he has evolved into a Canadian Icon. Though some of his poetry is dirty and some opaque, there is a constant sense of honesty and humanity, a constant sense of humility, uxoriousness and at times despair with the world and himself. Welcome to the world of candour, I say. That's why he speaks to so many! Who would have 'thunk' that success would be reinvented for him in this day and age with it's love of virtual reality. Few, and then, least of all him! His modesty becomes him at the present time. The pianist makes fun of his voice and says his songs are for men. A man's songster! That may be the case, but Jennifer Warnes and kd Lang are acolytes as well. That may be the case but the attendance at his concerts belie that opinion. Whatever he has, he has it in spades!
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Dr LB's Daughter

I'm delegated to cook today because the pianist is glazing her pots, and the measuring of chemicals for the glaze is apparently tricky. Requires deep concentration. I'm not adept at cooking but she has laid out, in sequence, all the materia foodica required to amalgamate into some sort of pottage, along with handwritten instructions in plain English. Lunch and dinner! Feigning ignorance is a ploy that can gain one certain advantages only for a limited length of time, but eventually it becomes ineffective. This reminds me of Dr LB who must have played his cards right, or else his wife gave up from exhaustion. He was an old time surgeon from 2nd world war days and was in his heyday when I started work in Lotus City in the 60's. His daughter was an OR nurse. One day, when we were chatting, she told me her mother had taken a holiday and left her dad 10 meals for dinner, frozen and labeled of course. Not bad so far, but she also set the table for ten places so he could rotate around his dirty dishes. Egad! I'm not that bad! Dr LB's daughter rejected that leaf from her mother. The apple had dropped much further away from the tree. She brooked no missteps from the surgeons and freely pointed out our sorry sides! I had been in Maui for a holiday with the pianist and bought a blue and white, checked, seersucker jacket and lemon yellow trousers with a yellow tie and white shoes. I can't remember the socks.My ensemble had a certain sartorial splendor in Maui. The first day back I walked to the OR change room in my resplendent attire with white shoes.! Dr. LB's daughter bumped into me in the hall and slowly looked me up and down with a glint. She said, "You look like a well dressed Bulgarian. What national flag is that jacket? " What cheek! Certainly not just for me! For the Bulgarians the world over! It was tough for the newly arrived to fit in behind the Tweed Curtain. I should have stuck , in those days, to tweeds with leather elbow patches,the uniform in Lotus City! Local savoir-faire! Dr LB's daughter kept you on your toes!

Scapegoats

In the 556 known healing temples of Asklepius in ancient Greece and in the temples in Israel in the period of the Ancient of Days, goats and other animals including chickens for small sins or doves were sacrificed to assuage the gods or God. These were "scapegoats". In Ashkelon it was the first born sacrificed, and in the Aztec culture, the best looking girl in town. They substituted for the sins of others and paid the price. The concept of Jesus as the" scapegoat" of the world originated much later with this construct of atonement , but he, as far as I can see, never allowed people to get off the hook for their own actions in his lifetime. They needed to move off the spot for salvation. We still have scapegoats of a different kind. We might even allow them to sacrifice themselves to atone for us. The attribution of it is, to your parents, your situation, your mate, your hard life, your teacher, the other race, your spiritual advisor, or whatever. They are as much positioned as a scapegoat as the sacrificed in the old days. Piet Hein said, "What ever doesn't kill you makes you stronger"! We have to take responsibility for our actions, willing ourselves to do the right thing, come what may, and loving our God given selves then, for what we are, rather than what we think we might have been. We can't forever blame anyone else or anything else! That's not the way out of the morass! As Pogo says, "We have seen the enemy, and it is us"!

Jesus and Joe Btfsplk

Bad news sells! We all love dirt! "The Inferno" has always been more interesting than "Paradiso". Schadenfreude is spelled by the Germans but practiced worldwide! I don't excuse myself from any of this! Canadians may be particularly bad at well wishing anyone who soars! Just read the comments on any article in the Globe and Mail! I hate the comments, but I read them, so I can't hate them much! Of all the deadly sins the most self destructive is envy. It's more destructive on the envier than the envied. Actually the envied rather like being envied! What is it about the Joe Btfsplks and the Eeyores and the Chicken Littles these days! Eeyore always found something wrong with Pooh's optimistic ideas, both Joe and Chicken Little were beset by the constant rain cloud or the sky cracking. Is bad news,other people's sins and an immanent sense of disaster providing some form of extreme vitality to an otherwise pedestrian and mundane life style? Something came from the sky for Jesus too . It was a dove and gave a thumbs up sign to life! The Jews of Jesus time were looking for a warrior to beat up on the Romans and their proxies, but they got a peace maker and an optimist who didn't flinch from all the negativity he got then, and still doesn't flinch now! It's difficult for me to behave as well as I want in this world since I am such a human being! I still rain on other people's parade. I still am called Eeyore by my committee colleagues. I still fear that the sky is going to fall down! I'm old enough that I should know better, or not admit it!