Halloween party

For many years until recently the pianist and I went to Gabriola Island to celebrate with old friends the weekend of Halloween. I,ve never met Jeffrey Simpson's mythical uncle but the island is full of characters. Our host, we have known for 40 years, and there is a gathering of some twenty other old friends. At least there was, before time has taken it's toll. We party, drink a bit, eat well, and continuously talk. There is not much exercising. We, of course carve pumpkins. The pianist always made Sunday breakfast of bacon and blueberry pancakes,the last berries from our patch. These were friends from another era that keep in touch once a year and we never run out of things to say . The clean up is as much fun as the dirting down. It is in fact the annual closeup for the summer and fall cottagers. We say goodbye each year, hoping it is au revoir! Years ago our host showed us the large cored holes in a granite tumulous near her cottage. There were dozens of them, measuring four feet across and five feet deep. The large intact grindstones extracted from the holes were transported to the Vancouver Island pulp mills to grind pulpwood in the old days. By Halloween the holes are full of water and, in attempting to traverse them I was less nimble than my hostess. I fell in up to my armpits and eventually struggled out. As I was falling I had that split second thought that the holes might be 30 feet deep and I was a goner. It is hard for an old fellow with gumboots and a thick, soaked, parka to extricate himself from such a situation. That night at the party, my cracked rib and the heady atmosphere caused me to faint and, since my fellow celebrants were less than perspicacious at that time, they thought I had no pulse and called the fire department. The firemen had just finished their fireworks display in the harbor and were in need of action. All was well. It was an inconvenient way to be the center of attention, but we were invited back the next year, hopefully for me to provide further excitment.

The Green Tree Frog

As I was coiling up my hoses I heard the little green tree frog with his mighty voice summoning all or any females to his side. They are very cute and Telus uses them in their ads along with lambs and lizards gamboling about. My friend, a greenhouse man, puts them in his green house , I suppose to eat the insects, but I'm not sure the" amourian" is in the appetite mode for anything but a lady frog. Certainly those of other species, including our own, in a state of unrequited love are not very hungry for food. I never had much luck with my friend's tactic. He told me he enjoys the frog music but I found it was quiet when I was in the greenhouse. My transplanted frog in the greenhouse withered on the vine, as it were. I think there was a pining and a wasting away because of unfulfillment. You have to face the music, and leave the frog alone. The rule is probably don't muck about with Mother Nature too much. To employ a frog to do your dirty work, in the guise of being organic, is no excuse. Think of his feelings. He is a brief enough candle as it is, what with working for Telus, and seeking and procreating, and surviving the environmental degradation to which he is so vulnerable. As you know he is the canary in the cage. He won't live beyond his alloted life span, greenhouse or not. There isn't anything fundamentally wrong with a short but happy life." Let it Be!"

The past is not a foreign country

David Lowenthal wrote a book called The Past is a Foreign Country in 1985. It's a wonderful book describing history,memory and reliquary amongst others, and the desire to relive or collect the past. The pianist and I and one of our daughters and two of our granddaughters made apple cider yesterday from some of the Gravenstein windfalls. We made 30 quarts of juice heated to 200 degrees to pasteurize. Our press is a 30 year old, hand crank, but sturdy, and our routine is long established. The design of the press is probably hundreds of years older. The mash is great compost. We have a country kitchen, and we press on the grass just outside the kitchen door. This link from the past is lived by us today in a real sense. The software we call a brain, somewhere, has a face book page that is part of my father's farm and my grandfather's orchard. It is indelible and structural. My granddaughters, as sure as the sun rises tomorrow, will one day press their own apples in their own orchard. Yesterday as well we went after church to an old folks home. Some are blind or have short term memory problems but they respond to the singing of the old chestnuts that we sang in church yesteryear. They have intact long term memory. So do I. The pianist organizes this hymn sing and an old chestnut would be, "Jesus loves me", but now modified for the oldsters. It's a hit. It goes, "Jesus loves me this I know, though my hair is white as snow",... and so on. They also love "In the Garden". I love the song too, primarily since the funerals of both my mother and my dad had this song at their request! This linkage to the past, away from the day to day doings, is evocative for me of the connection with my grandparents and my parents. I do not long for the two holer, or the town pump, or the kerosene lamp, nor do I wish to see one. But I don't believe the past is entirely a foreign country.

Fall Season

Fall is my favorite season. Gravenstein and Cox's Orange to harvest and press for juice and pies. Pears,... Angou,Bartlett,Clapps Favorite and Conference.Transparent apples put away in pies in early August and Northern Spy and Red Delicious for keepers to come later. The summer heathers are still hanging on and the split leaf maples are changing into riotous colors. The Big Leaf Maples, indigenous to the west coast, provide great compost material, and, cover the Gunnera to prevent frost kill. The Dahlias are in slow decline but the Chrysanthemums have taken over and what muted but beautiful colors they are. We don't spray so we have a lot of scabby fruit that composts beautifully as well and reacts with all the shredded branch prunings that provide cellulose to the mix. The Hawthorns are turning leaf yellow with reddening haws and look like a gorgeous shawl. The Dolgo crab has been picked for juice and will be mixed half and half with the wild cherry plum to make what we call Crum jelly. The pile of the summers compost is out of the bin, ready for this fall's stuff.When I was young and strong I used to haul seaweed up for compost but I am too feeble to do this now. Sea lettuce shed in June, and sea eel grass in October. The quince doesn't ripen till November here and often cracks. I haven't been able to solve that. The Rhodo,s have made it through the very hot summer with frequent watering so there is no further need to do anything till the spring. I have more than enough to do to bother heading them. I suppose I should if there were enough hours in the day. Stone fruits don't do well in my hands. The peaches were short lived as were the prune plums,fifteen years and the last five were spotty. The Japanese plums bloom here in March which is too early for the bees except for a few bumble bees. We only get a few plums with them. I guess as our parish priest once said in a sermon," the mind of God for you is to always do the next necessary thing". For me the only way I can do this is to sit briefly every morning and say " What is the next necessary thing?" Then I forget everything else so I am not fragmented. The pianist and I assemble ourselves early in the morning with several cups of coffee to decide on our day, and pray that we are both doing the next necessary thing!

Babe and the secret of life

"Baa-Ram-Ewe, Baa-Ram-Ewe, to your breed and fleece be true, Baa-Ram-Ewe!" This was the password Babe learned to communicate and gain the trust of the sheep, and he never let them down in the end, nor they him. Remember, these are sheep. Babe knew this. They , as sheep, follow a creed and the leader. Babe was an individual. It was hard for him to be a pig and learn to be an individual. He had no parenting that prepared him to pighood, but when the border collie took him on, he began to realize instead, his apotheosis.He had the right stuff! He suffered mightily through the pilgrimage of his life but despite his parlous state, he remained loyal, saw things with optimism, and ultimately he prevailed. The farmer that believed in him was not let down! The farmer saw the greatness in his pig. His individuality of being,his courage, but his willingness to open his heart, led the farmer to the same willingness to risk, that Babe had. To be an individual in this world and to be true to yourself takes courage. Don't be like a sheep, running with the crowd. No matter how consoling it may be to run with the fleece, if you have a muse, you need to follow it. The need to belong may not be your karma. The need for a creed by which to live will limit your horizon. It's safer to belong! In the end, Babe and the farmer prevailed, to the adulation of the many. This is a fairy story and real life does not always come with a win. Thats the risk! Better alone, and have followed your star, than compromised for the comfortable second best. In the end you have only to answer to yourself, and your Maker!

Eating styles

Having lived with the pianist for 52 years, our clearly apparent difference in eating style has remained largely unchanged throughout the years. She eats a bit of the four portions on her plate in rotation. I eat all of one portion and then proceed to the next. Both she and I are fork stabbers but I stab where the food lies and she continually moves the food around on her plate gathering it into the center and stabbing. Neither of us do that ergonomically unsound American way of, after pinning down the meat with the fork so it will not run away , cutting and then, changing fork hands and scooping. We're Canadians eh! When we eat soup or cereal or toast, she spoons away from herself and I spoon toward myself. I often end up with a spot of food on my front and more toast crumbs on the table cloth on my side as a result. I'm not sure whether speed,direction or portliness is the main factor. Probably all three. She cuts her apple fully into quarters and removes the core on each. She likes to dip them in melted chocolate. I cut slices of apple with a sharp knife and work toward the center, eating as I go, knife and thumb.. She says my style reminds her of a medieval barbarian. We both chew and swallow at the same rate but she takes much longer intervals between bites so I finish much faster and have learned to wait comfortably between courses. In my family, once we began to eat we didn't talk, we ate. After the plate was finished, we talked. In the pianist's family they ate and talked. This can be dangerous for choking I fancy, so the Heimlich maneuver should be at the ready. I have now adapted to eating, drinking and talking but with precaution. She puts sugar on her tomato slices and salt on her corn on the cob. I put pepper and salt on them both. She always insists on a serviette which I am always provided but rarely seem to use. I can't say why, but if this blog is boring, then you are under 50. At 75, food and meal time assume an importance of increasing degree. The eating habits that evolved are a reflection of your present persona. This is basic stuff and we are just addressing the nuances of prairie Canadians. Think of the world view!

The Worried Well

The bane of a surgical practice over the years was the frequent referral of the worried well by general practitioners. They were referring the neurotic who needed an opinion to confirm what their doctor had already told them. I understand the need, but it was tiresome in a busy surgical practice to repeat what everyone knew. Occasionally however there was a new discovery which meant the prudent never said ," No! " The decision to operate on someone based on symptoms, or sympathy, or speculation is a recipe for disaster. It is not dangerous to send someone for treatments that carry little or no risk , but there is considerable risk to ill advised surgical treatment. Harm can be done! Surgery is never, however, the last resort. It is best done at an optimum time and it has to be based on the objective (that is the measurable) findings rather than based on the symptoms (the subjective findings), or the patient's desire. That may seem a cold approach to some, but it is a reflection of the science rather than the so called art of medicine. Hippocrates said, in his aphorisms, "Cure occasionally, comfort always! " but, it is cold comfort if you do an operation for reasons other than on a scientific basis. It is incumbent on the surgeon to be selective, which may offend some patients. A surgeon may get away with doing the wrong operation well, and may get away with doing the right operation poorly, but they never get away with doing the wrong operation badly. A little vignette from the distant past I remember is, someone asked the professor why he did that clearly non-indicated operation. He said it was a mistake, "They came to see me once too often !"

Innocents abroad

In 1961 the pianist and I moved to Plymouth, Devon with a one and a three year old, to complete my training. The Consultant for whom I worked, was an elderly (fiftyish! ) bachelor, a transplant Australian who was for me, an avuncular boss and friend. Plymouth was still rebuilding after having been destroyed during the wartime bombing. Consultant jobs were scarce, so non-Englishmen were a boon since we were transient, and therefore not competition for consultancies. We lived in the upstairs flat of a decrepit council house owned by the hospital. Budgets for hospitals were tight in a Britain that was regaining her feet. The first thing I was told was that a Registrar should have a dinner jacket. I went out dutifully and bought a "shark skin" dinner jacket, cumberbun, starch fronted shirt, silk black socks, patent leather shoes and a black bow tie (clip on). My first foray was to the Plymouth Medical Society annual banquet. The Consultant prepared me for the customs. Stand to toast the Queen, do not smoke until the toast is over, speak to both sides at the table with your confreres, preferably one with the meal and the other with dessert and don't drink too much. I dressed for show that night. I was elegant. I left my bride , the pianist. to wrestle with children, diapers in the kitchen sink , the kerosene heaters, and went to my dinner. Things went well initially. I avoided smoking until the Queen. I took tailor made cigarettes,Woodbines, cheap, (two and six for twenty) rather than my "roll your own" . When we toasted the Queen however , when I stood with the company, glass aloft, the tail of my dinner jacket was caught between the back of the chair and the seat. As I stood the chair rose with me, hugging my backside. I wasn't sure what to do so I shook a little and it landed with a clatter up side down,coinciding with the declaration "The Queen". The company was faintly amused and forgiving, after all I was a new Colonial needing a bit of polish. I returned to my council house needing a hug. As I now consider it, it was the pianist that deserved all the hugs. Inside and outside, I did need the polish.

The exhibitor

My dad was a good gardener and loved to exhibit the results of his efforts. The garden club's motto in Lotus City was " Share what you know and show what you grow." He gardened there in his retirement and was an avid member of the Lotus City Garden Club, but had mellowed by then. He and I often gardened together when I was a boy, in the olden days when we lived on the bald prairie. He grew up on a farm and had no training in horticulture, but he had the knack, in spades! His start in exhibiting on the prairie was with sweet peas and vegetables! Growing sweet peas on a single stalk for the longest stem,the most florets and blemish free. The cucumber that is perfectly straight,evenly green without a flaw and big, but not too big. Exhibiting and competition were everything to him. We exhibited gladiolus and dahlias in speciality shows later, in Regina, Calgary and Winnipeg. His whole energy went into getting the biggest and best of specimens for the show and it started in the early spring. In our little town, our gumbo soil was ploughed with cow manure by the farmer whose field we used. The freight shed floor in the railway station was covered with gladiola corms and dahlia bulbs: corms that we had peeled, disbudded, dusted for thrip, and positioned for straight sprout growth. There was hardly any room left for the freight. I remember once driving to Regina all through the night in a truck with a load of glads, all staked, sitting in washtubs, stabilised through chicken wire. Regina was 120 miles away and I was not allowed to drive more than fifteen miles an hour or the glads would shake too much on the gravel road, and the wind would whip them. He drove the car in convoy, with all the paraphenalia needed for display. My mother went with me, and kept nudging me, to keep me awake. I and most of my brothers and my children inherited his knack. It is no surprise to me, however, that I am totally averse to exhibiting. My garden is personal. We take what we will from our parents and leave the rest behind.

community vegetable garden

Lotus City provided parcels of vacant land for people who wished to grow their own vegetables and didn't have access to any appropriate land. These parcels provided individual plots that were 20 by 50 feet. There was piped in water and an atmosphere of comaraderie and competition thoughout the growing year. The plots were highly individualistic and reflected the personalities of those that toil in the soil. The plot the pianist and I had one year was in a community garden that was surrounded by a newly developed subdivision of houses. In an effort to improve my plot I answered an ad for manure. The man who answered said he would provide good pig manure. I asked him if it was mature and well composted. He assured me that it was, so I ordered a full truck load. When he arrived I came to meet him and show him my plot. It was a dump truck and when the product began to slide out, and I mean slide, it was apparent that "dump" truck was the apt description of the vehicle. The pig manure was of recent origin. Shortly after the dump, I could see the windows of my proximate neighbors open and then quickly close. The smell was evil! I raced home and engaged my son with gum boots to dig in the manure before we were cited for olfactory offense. He did a good job. I impressed upon him the urgency of the matter! I confess the cauliflower and broccoli that year were of winning quality. The offence was never repeated.

The AHA Experience

The first time I saw Edinburgh was when I was convalescing from putting my hand in a lawnmower. It is a beautiful and ancient city and has a deep association with medicine. The pianist and I were there for the Festival and for a meeting of the English speaking Orthopedic Association. It was the culmination of several months off for me, recovering from my mangled hand. The hour I put my hand in a running lawnmower, the family was in the living room, watching Nadia Comaneci doing gymnastics on the balance bar in the 1976 Olympics. I had been agitated and rushing around, repairing our boat with caulk,anticipating being late with rounds,my son had not cut the lawn as promised, and I was quitting smoking for the umpteenth time. The grass was moist and the mower became plugged. It was a hard mower to restart. I was in a hurry and it seemed like the outlet just needed a little quick clearing. You may not know, but if you have a major injury , in the first few minutes, there is no pain and things can be reduced or set on the field, but time is of the essence. Similarly with the lawnmower, I felt no pain but I could hear my fingers rattling against the rotating blades. When I went to the hospital, Ralph, the orderly in the OR told me later it took him half an hour to wash my hand and clean off the boat caulk, the dog shit and the grass mash. Things did work out well. My fingers ended up a bit shorter and a trifle twisted, but functional. I couldn't do any surgery till the healing was complete! The point of all this is, the months I had off were an AHA Experience for me, since hitherto, I had not imagined a life in which one did not live in a hurry up and fragmented fashion. My son, the only male issue, who lives with his family near Edinburgh, said to me very much later, how mellow I have become, and how he would have loved to have experienced that then! Too soon old, too late smart!

UBS (Ugly But Satisfactory)

My golf mentor described my usual shot as this! Particularly so if I hit a tree, bounced on the rough and ended up in the middle of the fairway. The pianist described the pies I make as this! She says they taste as good as hers, but she carefully makes her pastry of even thickness and scallops the edges with geometric evenness which I, of course, do not do. I had an old Toyota truck that rusted out because I hauled seaweed in it from the beach, augmenting my compost pile. One day I went to the dump with a bunch of garbage and as I was backing up, the corner of my front bumper caught the front end loader that was parked on the dump road. It bent the end of my bumper forward about 70 degrees. It wasn't that big a deal for me because my truck over the years had become a "beater". It fitted in with a lot of the vehicles on Lotus Island. It gave me a sense of belonging! I ignored the appearance but the pianist was after me to fix my UBS bumper. We , at that time did not have an auto bodyshop on the island that I knew about, so I pulled in to the service station and asked the mechanic if there was a local place to take it. He looked at the bumper and then at me and said abruptly, "Get out"! I felt a bit cowed, as he seemed stern. I got out with alacrity. I didn't want him to be mad at me. He got in the truck and drove it a short distance to a telephone pole, positioned the bent bumper against the pole and gunned the truck. My bumper was bent back almost perfectly! " There you are !" he said with a smirk. The pianist still considered my truck a UBS truck, but with an acceptable bumper!

The Boarding House

What ever happened to the boarding house? In the 50's all the out of town students I knew stayed in boarding houses. The boarding houses where I lived in Winnipeg usually had a variety of single working people and students. No student I knew rented an apartment with a friend or friends. I don't see how a student can combine the work of study and the work of maintaining a household to the same advantage! It has to be furnished, usually with "early attic". The boarding house was often more comfortable. I am not lamenting the demise of the boarding house. There was a sacrifice of privacy for the benefits. Most of them were better than the boarding house of Major and Martha Hoople, but they certainly varied in quality. In Winnipeg in the 50's there were hundreds of boarding houses. The boarding house I finally found as a student was a Godsend. Mrs. Hall raised her two daughters in a ten room boarding house of mixed students and white collar workers. We had two good meals a day, clean surroundings and quiet living. It was hugely conducive to study and other than keeping your little room tidy there was no other task to do. It did however require a regimented life style with respect to meals and the needs of others. So, what's new? Women could make a living running a boarding house. There was no lease to sign and no damage deposit. It was relatively cheap for its day and housekeeping was always at a minimum for the boarder. If you worked at a regular job and took the bus, you could save money. If you were a student and close to the school you had a lot more study time. If it was a big boarding house you had company at meal times. My grandchildren are students and they all rent apartments with friends to share the cost. It works for them. I guess it's true that the past really is a foreign country.

Bowel movement

When your mother finally persuaded,cajoled or bribed you, to produce a poop in the potty, this seminal event meant, for you, a showering of approval, a sense of providing great pleasure for your parent, and a newly found esteem. It is no wonder that in the recesses of our adult mind the appearance of the bowel movement gives a certain guilty pleasure in the assessment of length and breadth and color. Our cranial software retains that old imprint of wonder at that childhood event and the pleasure principle reappears. Growing up on the bald prairie as a youth, I was often denied this pleasure, since the two holer was dark and dank. Inspection was difficult. The scatological merriment that often appears, is, when matters such as these are considered, in the pianist's opinion is confined to males only. And pointedly, some males! I guess this is so. There was a time in medical history when detailed inspection of the lowly poop was serious business and one of the few diagnostic tools available. Appearance,color,consistency,odor, all engendered diagnostic debate. It became the 'ne plus ultra' tool of the good physician. Now augmented by fiber-optics and colonoscopy, poopology is confined to the laboratory. The reasons for continuing personal interest by males is unclear, but, it cannot be attributed to the signal event of infancy which is gender neutral. The lowly but interesting poop may still be a fertile source of psychological inquiry, and a genuine provider of male amusement.

It ain't about Deservin'

When Little Bill was layin' on the floor and said to William Munny, "I don't deserve this!" William said, as I recall, "Deservin' ain't it!" or, "It ain't about deservin'! ". Then William blew Little Bill away! In point of fact, Little Bill deserved everything that he got! Which makes me think about deservin' and entitlement and what happens if we are "good", or have the right genes, or the right stuff, or the right deep pockets. People, and I include myself, though I can be self-righteous, take entitlements for granted. My prayers for example, though rarely formatted, are prayers of request rather than thankfulness. None of us has entitlement or deservin' as a given. I don't know whether there is a master plan the the Almighty has for me or I am simply to exist in the wonderful world he has created, and to love , survive and endure. Whatever comes will test you and your will to do good. There is no entitlement or deservin' here. William, to be charitable, despite his chequered career, did a bad thing for a noble purpose and I like to fantasize that it was redemptive. Perhaps William Munny was not one of the Unforgiven.

The Fraser River Delta

When you leave the Salish Islands and drive through the Fraser river delta in October to Olympic City, the fields, off the highway, in the river delta are spectacularly red. These are cranberry and blueberry fields turning to their fall colors. You see very little if you stick to the highway, your eye on the ferry traffic ahead, but if you take a few minutes and wander a back road or two you are in for an enormous treat. There is nothing better than miles of orange and red and brown for the short magical period Mother Nature and the berry farmer provide. Both berries grow best in the peaty, boggy, delta soil, supplied over the centuries by the flooding of the Fraser and the rotting vegetation! The sight of the fields is thrilling and at the same time sobering, knowing that the Fraser undergoes a major flood every 50 years. I remember feeling the same sense of colorful magnificence, seeing miles of heather and fern massed in the hills of Caithness and Perthshire. The capacity of Mother Nature to provide the vegetation that will thrive in the particular soil types that are difficult allows the uniformity of design from a duoculture, whether planned by man or Mother Nature, that is an interesting departure from the mixed vegetation we usually see. Seems there is a plant for every location. Darwin would be pleased with the adaption ! So would Mendel!

The Golden Apple, Quince

Quince, the fruiting tree, not the flowering shrub, was a Mediterranean origin. It grew best there, but worked it's way northward over the centuries and also grows in the islands in the Salish sea. Here it ripens in November and is golden.
The apple, the Greeks and others of the Levant refer to, is undoubtedly the quince, since apples as we know them would find that climate unacceptable. The pianist's and my greeting and thankyou card, is a reflection of the fact that here, both the apple and quince and for that matter, the medlar , all flourish in this small collection of islands in the Salish Sea.
Here find a reference: Euripedes, Greek,484-406 BC , " I would fly to the coast of apples of which many tales are told,the far Hesperian shore where the mighty Lord of ocean forbids all further voyaging and marks the sacred limits of heaven, which Atlas holds.There the immortal streams flow fresh by the couch of God where he lies with his lovely ones-and earth, the mother of life, yields up blessings of harvest to enrich a bliss that never ends." Can you blame me for liking it here?

Humble Access

It's Sunday and church this morning. It reminds me of the little bedtime prayer our mother taught us years ago and my brothers and I were required to say. It went, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." You know, when you think about that prayer, it requests about everything that you really need for yourself in a general way. It, however, only covers the important stuff you need for yourself as an individual. It's narcissistic, but fits in well with the Ego Development of most children, if they are honest. The only other concession is the quick God Bless to cover the parents and siblings and any other support staff ! I was 14 and my brothers were 10 and 6. We all slept in the same room, but went to bed at different times. Our mother made sure Philip, the 6 year old knelt at the bed in an attitude of humble access, like the good Anglicans we were. He had to say the prayer out loud. Ken, who at 10, went to bed a little later , was permitted to say his prayers on his knees without supervision. I, at 14, said my prayers silently, and instead of kneeling in an attitude of humble access, I confess, I lay in bed and made a feeble concession to access by putting one foot on the floor. God is good. He didn't hold it against me. SO FAR! He knew I was just a kid.


.

The Propylaea, a gateway like no other

When Dr. Elliot taught the archaeology of the Athenian Acropolis at UBC in the late 50's, he told us that some architrave blocks on the Propylaea were hollowed out. Well, so what? If you walk through the Propylaea onto the Acropolis hill, you will go under the stone beams that are supported by large columns. The beams are load bearing. So far, so what? I cannot confirm this hollowing out in my literature search of the architrave blocks, but Dr Elliot became the head of the American School of Archaeology in Athens later in his career. I rely on him. It is hard to tell much , if you are standing under the beams now, as the temple has undergone many changes. The Propylaea had the first ,or as was believed at that time, the first, known load bearing beam where the architect understood that, weight for weight, a hollow beam is stronger than a solid beam. Thats what! If you understand that, with a load in the center of a beam, there is distraction force on the bottom surface of the beam and compression force on the top surface of the beam, then in the centre of the beam there must be no force, and therefore no need for material. Picture the 60 odd slaves, trying to haul up, with rudimentary winches, a solid block, vis-a- vis a hollow block, and you get the idea. Of course our long bones are hollow for the same reasons. If they were solid we would all weigh 600 pounds. The surgical implants for fractures are hollow as well. We build with I- beams these days, which are functionally analagous. The Propylaea may be the lamp that led the way. The architect in the 5th century BC was a genius.

The four elements

I was watering and turning my compost the other day and thinking of Empedocles. He, according to Will Durant, lived 500 to 430 BC. You may know, that he was the first to describe the four elements of which the world is composed, and no other. It's still true, and my compost tells me that is so. The four elements are fire, water, earth, and air. This understanding was foundational to the classical philosophers that followed Empedocles. As I attended my compost, which was mostly straw and green vegetable matter, I provided water and the pile was very hot as it was turned. Deep down it was breaking up and becoming soil , was warm and richly brown and particulate. It was loosely piled by me, as it requires to breath, in order to work. It is true that the four elements are extraordinarily complex in their developed state, but the compost is the great leveller. Even you and I will be returned to dust, and if we are burned in the undertakers compost bin , the heat will be much faster than my compost. So the compost pile, through air and water and heat, becomes earth, as does all else. Empedocles died in the fashion of his philosophy ironically. He became convinced that he was a god and could fly, and hurled himself into the mouth of a volcano. He couldn't fly, and so hurtled through the air and heat and undoubtedly,since he was juicy, returned to dust.