Anatomy Exam

In 1960 my surgical colleague and I were seconded by the Department of Surgery, to the Department of Anatomy at the University of British Columbia for a year.My colleague liked it so much he stayed as an Assistant Professor in Anatomy, but I returned to my surgical training. We were designated Teaching Fellows in Anatomy and taught and assisted the 65, first year medical students, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday; all long days in the dissection room. Keeping to the manual; not letting them forge ahead; not macerating the tissue and getting lost; keeping the human road map clear and avoiding misidentifying the signposts and going down the wrong road. We shepherded them throughout the year. They learned that under the skin we are all of the same clay, except the odd anomalous region where we are not. The famous examination that ushered in a sense of dread in all of them, was the spot examination. It was a step off the cliff that produced anticipation anxiety. Sixty-five specimen stations were set up on a quadrangular group of tables in a large room; each 2 stations manned on the outside by an invigilator from the teaching staff; and a bell rang every 90 seconds to signal the students to move to the next numbered station. Aside from the bell, and the rustle of their pen on paper, and scraping of chairs, there was no sound as they moved around the inside of the tables. Penned in like sheep being led to the slaughter. The stations may have contained a bone part to identify, a slide of pancreas with an arrow at an islet of Langerhans,a foramen at the base of the skull, a nerve tagged in a shoulder specimen, and so on! It was not only a test of knowledge, but a test of performance under pressure. I was manning the 2 stations next to the Department Chair. A student examining a slide in front of the chairman was not wearing a white shirt and tie. I heard the chairman say to the student, "Mr Doe, students of a medical class that are careless about their dress are likely to be careless about their practice and often do not pass this course!" As this man moved to my station, his distress was so devastating that I realized, at that moment, that a life in the academic community may be too far removed for my core, and wasn't enough for my reality. Him, the casualty: me, the lesson! A surgical career may be rough work, but at least, pressure and compassion go hand in hand in that milieu!

Dorothy and Martha

Dorothy and Martha were two Labrador Retrievers I spent a year with. They were experimental subjects in my project, determining the effect of hypertensive agents on cellular exchange of potassium and sodium. A conflict I wrestled with was, I have always had a love of dogs, as does my pianist and my children. The dog lab was at the University of British Columbia and the year was 1960. At that time UBC had a large attached farm and I would pick up Martha from the kennels on Tuesday and Dorothy on Thursday. They were well looked after in the kennels because they needed to be healthy throughout the period of experimentation. When I picked them up, they seemed to know which was their day, and after a little quivering they would come with me down the trail, ambivalent, since they enjoyed the time out in the un-kenneled world, and with an interlude before the day's trial. My predecessor had spent a year teaching them to lie still and supine on a table for 4 to 5 hours while they were cannulated in the femoral artery and two veins, infused, injected, arterial pressures measured, and blood sampled over the period, all the while un-anaesthetized and unrestrained. I have often thought of Dorothy and Martha, and still do 52 years later. I think they were precious. I suppose that is sentimental! I don't care. That year was my only encounter with animal experimentation, thank goodness. In some curious fashion they were attached to me despite the pain and discomfort I must have inflicted on them, which they bore in silence. At the end of it all, we always had a little play and they gave me tail wagging. I suppose even painful attention is better than no attention in the permanently kenneled. Though animal experimentation, even then, went through rigorous ethics assessment and is the heart beat of scientific progress, the feelings I have today are mixed with the sense of man's inhumanity to dog, and what they will say to me in the hereafter, when I ask their forgiveness for fooling them.

Dormant Spray

Luckily, we now have 6 sunny days in a row to come on the wet coast here on Lotus Island! There wasn't much sun today since we have had dense fog but it is warm and DRY and that's what counts for spraying. The sun burst through for a few hours. No wind has meant that the sulfur and oil has not blown back in my face as much as usual, but still, you can't spray with the hose sprayer without some drenching. The hose sprayer is strong enough that I can spray from the ground as the 12 trees, although about 100 years old, have been kept to twenty feet by my very good pruner. My glasses get repeatedly covered with oil and water so I feel a little like Mr. Magoo fumbling his way to the tree. I am commanded to wear a mask so the glasses also fog up from the inside and it's hard to clean your glasses with slippery, oily, yellow-orange hands. At least the oil doesn't line my aveoli! I didn't spray last year, to my dismay, when I saw the number of egg cases of tent caterpillars this year and recalled the scabby pears and apples and the powdery mildew in the summer. Sulfur for the fungus and oil for the worms. I'm intent on eradication this year and will spray again March 1st. In a sense it is not unlike the practice of medicine! There is a tide in the affairs of men, and making hay when the sun shines, is seizing the day! I see a lot of black and green algae on the wooden decks and particularly thick on the cement aggregate patio. The price of warm weather and el Nino. I will also spray this with the fungus and algae off compound and then power wash. There is fungus,moss and lichen on the roof shingles too, though they are not so bad, but spraying the shady side of the roof is also on the agenda before it rains again. What a battle with Mother Nature this week but I am girded for it and the only downside is a ring around the bathtub every night! The shingles are cedar but 17 years old so I dare not scrape or tread too roughly. Spray and leave has worked in the past. It's all still better than shoveling snow!

Jawbone of an Ass

The mandible of the ass, and ours as well, for that matter, is developed from the primitive mandibular processes in utero, forming on either side of the primitive face. The left and right primitive mandibular processes are united at a symphysis in front, at the point of the chin, which later fuses. Either the left or right half of the mandible, when detached from its counterpart, becomes a serious weapon. No doubt there were vultures who had denuded the face of a young ass with an as yet unfused symphysis, that provided a half jawbone for Samson to kill a number of fleeing Philistines in "heaps". He had broken the bonds the Philistines had tied him with, and he exacted revenge upon his captors and protection of the Isrealites with a weapon that was, and is, shaped like a sickle. It may have been used as a sharpened tool to cut grain stalks as well in this pre-bronze era! The slaughter was seen in the oral tradition of the Israelites as sanctioned by God; later, recorded as Judges 15: 15-16. In the movie of Billy Bob Thornton, Sling Blade, the protagonist, Karl Childers, a retarded strongman, protects a desperately abused woman and child who have befriended him, from a pathological abuser they cannot escape, by killing him with a sharpened lawnmower blade, a curvilinear instrument to cut grass. Karl had spent many years previously in an asylum for the criminally insane from childhood for an earlier killing of his mother and her lover when he, in ignorance, employed "biblical justice" in this act. He used a sling blade at that time which is like a sickle for cutting grass stalks. He was released as cured from the asylum, but during his years there, came to relearn his bible. Like Samson, he was bound by the bonds of his simplistic understanding, but cast those bonds and his freedom aside, to protect helpless people he had come to love, from their abuser. This slaughter could well be seen by contemporaries, and me, as sanctioned, if not by by God, at least by Judges. See the movie before you judge! Nothing is simple.

Wordsmiths

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

Rubber hits the Road

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

Augmented KD

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

Invitation

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

Break-in

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

Lilacs

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

Magpie Man

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

Moisturizing

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

Coinage Redux

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

Tent Caterpillar Egg Cases

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

Diurnal Rhythm

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

Smell a Rat

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

Eureka, I think

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

Dry Land Farm

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

Communication

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

Force Vitale

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