The Mouse

Every house including ours has night sounds. It's been particularly cold on Lotus Island this week and the temperature gradients between the inside and the outside make the beams and studs shift and squeak and crack a little, the wind shakes the house an infinitesimal degree, to which it nevertheless objects , and the boughs of the cedars brush it gently. The sleeper who is hypervigilant also hears his ear and head contact on the pillow, his tinnitus, the bruit of the carotid pulse at times and the crow on the roof. These sounds we have become accustomed to and are singular to our house. Another's house has different singularity of sound. At 4 am this morning I awoke with a new and unaccustomed sound. Was it the ice maker dropping chunked ice, an intruder or something else? As I went down stairs into the kitchen where the sound was coming from, it seemed to be a metallic sound originating from the tile floor. There had been a suggestion that an uninvited visitor had arrived the day before and I had set a mouse trap that night on the floor beside a baseboard with bait of peanut butter. In the trap was a mouse and it was alive and struggling. The metallic sound came from the thrashing around on the tile. The mouse probably ventured further into the trap to gnaw at the bait so his head was not crushed and he was caught in the trap by the body. I have always had a primal fear of vermin, a legacy from my mother and the Middle Ages. I could deal, albeit difficult, with a dead mouse but a living, wiggling, squiggling, leg and tail waving mouse that is in agony is a different matter. I went back to bed to await its death and silence. I couldn't sleep however, assailed with thoughts of the waning life force and with the reminder from the continuing sounds emmenating from the kitchen floor. I took my courage and went back and put the mouse outside on the deck. Silence! This morning at 8 oclock he was dead and had struggled for a further 18 inches, dragging the trap from where I laid him on the deck. I'm sorry! He was probably just seeking the warmth! I must kill! Rest in Peace!

It's how you say it!

My youngest daughter's first job was a Pink Lady at the Royal Jubilee Hospital in Lotus City. She was 15 years old but talked them into hiring her by simple persistence. It was a summer job. This was 1978 and the nurses still wore white uniforms and there were Pink Ladies and Yellow Ladies and Blue Men. Pink Ladies were the ward cleaning staff and she really felt she belonged because our family were Jubilee people and were connected by both the pianist who worked there as a nurse, and me, on the wards every day since kingdom come. I think the cleaning staff had a very good union agreement at the time since the pianist constantly grumbled how much our 15 year old was being paid in contrast to her, a registered nurse! But that is beside the point. My esteemed partner Jack came onto the cardiac ward with a mild heart attack and was being actively investigated on the ward where our Pink lady worked on days. She chatted with Jack every day as she cleaned around him since she knew him as a senior friend and he appeared to be doing alright according to her nightly report to us. Then a following morning I got a distressed phone call from her to tell me that Jack had died! She had been sent by the Head Nurse to the room where Jack had been, to clean it up, and the bed was stripped and the side tables emptied. She inquired where Jack was and the nurse said, ostensibly in a doleful voice, that Dr. Jack was "gone"! Then the nurse looked down at her feet. Body language! I phoned Jack's wife Eleanor to give solace and to invite myself over to commiserate. She said cheerfully that she would love to see me. Then she said so would Jack! Jack was not a "goner" at that time. Words associated with inappropriate body language have the power to mislead. Body language, even in the presence of a completely foreign tongue will communicate. The face, the hands, the eyes, the tone, the posture, the animation, will usually tell the aware what they need to know. We hear with the eyes as well as the ears. That's real anatomy!

Psalms for Questors

ONE SYLLABLE PSALM

God, I think you gave me the gift of life in the world! Why do you hide from me? Why do you make it so hard to see you? How can I know you are in all things? I want to be real! I want to be worth your gift! I want to be your gift! Help me! Show me how! Help me to care! Help me to pray!


YOU AT THE WATERS

You at the waters! You can skip stones only if the surface of the waters is calm. If the waters are rough your stone will sink. If you wish to skip a flat stone you will have to stoop down to the water so that you are parallel with the surface. If you want to skip the stone well you will have to be at one with the water. You will have to select a stone that is round and smooth and reads with the surface of the water.


LOVE IN THE GRAVE

When someone that you may have taken for granted dies and you are at the grave, you may realize that love lost was always apparent but unexpressed. To open yourself to the living will give you more joy but expose you to more sorrow at the loss, for a moment in time. When you realize that the loved one has found love beyond the grave you will repossess what you thought you had lost.

Infradig

Two words that Aunt Mabel used to declare the 'otherwise of acceptability', of things, or matters, or people,I now contract into one word which I think fits it better. Lexicographical argument about the term, infradig, is of no interest to me. Moreover no amount of opinion to the contrary, or the way to spell it, was of interest to Aunt Mabel. Whether it was un-china, or furniture not mahogany, or rhubarb, or Catholics, or Socialists, controversy mattered little to her! Living in Smalltown, Saskatchewan as she did, it seemed necessary to her to work at bringing some enlightenment to the bald prairie. Aunt Mabel was a highly intelligent and sensitive woman whose sweetheart was killed in the Great War and she, at that young age, never fully recovered from the stream of "What might have been". That disappointment or despair after a period of inanition may result, and did, in a period of decision making and refueled energy to move on. Taking charge and firming up resolve led in her case to strong feelings and an unwillingness to bend. It was her salvation. The dogmatic among us become the most lonely of creatures because no one is willing to challenge them because of the futility of argument. No one is willing to listen with attention because they have heard it all before. All the interaction is lip service to avoid unpleasantness. No one is a winner because a wall creates a zone of separation with Aunt Mabel or others of similar persuasion . Infradig has nothing to do with stuff or ideas or people. It speaks nothing to the present reality. It is an old idea! Dignity never came because of the things valued by Aunt Mabel. Dignity comes from your acknowledgment of yourself! Once you do that and you really know it ,nothing you ever do will be below dignity!

The Extraordinary Ordinary

When Esther Summerson ventured out, after months of a completely confining illness from smallpox, a deadly disease before Jenner's time as it was then , she spoke for Dickens and for all of us about the realized world around us. As she looked from the carriage for the first time in months,she said, "I found every breath of air, and every scent and every flower and leaf and blade of grass, and every passing cloud, and everything in nature, more beautiful and wonderful to me than I had ever found it yet. This was my first gain from my illness." To emerge into the light from whatever dark night of the soul that you have been confined to is a revelation that the ordinary is truly extraordinary. To merge your streams of consciousness and unconsciousness with the streams of Mother Nature, seen and unseen, heard and felt and smelled! The profound, once experienced, is enough! To expect it again is greedy. To have it always would render it powerless. The lasting gain is not in the exultation, but in the serenity. Go with the flow!

Pool

Growing up on the bald prairie, the pool room was in Steve Kish's barber shop, and the swimming pool was a local slough. You could skate on the slough in the winter, swim in it in the summer and raft on it in the spring thaw. It was fun and all your naked friends were there to swim . In the pool room you could watch Cheekus Bellrose take quarters off all the visitors playing snooker or eight ball and drink a coke with your friends and play against Steve Kish for nickels if he didn't have a haircut to do. There was always something going on. When we built a house much later in Lotus City, despite the pianist's misgivings,I wanted to recapture the feeling with a pool table and a swimming pool. You can never go back! It had nothing to do with blue water and green felt! It had nothing to do with affluence or lack thereof. The children learned to play pool reasonably well but a parent is only so much fun! We eventually got rid of the pool table since it was attractive but bored! "Use me or lose me",I heard it say. The swimming pool was a somewhat different matter for about three years. It required a lot of work to keep it clean, with it under the trees, in migratory bird lanes, and enjoyed by all those water loving algae. When we first moved in, in November 1970, I kept the boiler on to heat the pool through the Christmas season. I must have been mad, mistook myself for King Farouk, and have caused all the fog on Ten Mile Point that winter! By 1974 I had heated the pool for the months of May through to July and observed that no one else had swum in it. I jumped in from time to time because I felt guilty that this pristine womb was so lacking in the pleasure of fecundity. "Use me or lose me ",I heard it say. I turned the boiler off. No one noticed it was cold for the rest of the summer because no one swam in it. At the end of September I announced that the pool heater had been off for three months. They were all mad at me. C'est la guerre! It was all my fault in the first place. You may try to go back but you can't take them with you.

Toilet trials

Occasionally over the number of years of joint usage of the toilet, difficult gender issues have occurred from time to time due to inadvertency on my part, never intent. Like Pavlov's dog, repetitive stimuli have to be applied over the years to establish consistency in behavior that is acceptable and reduces the danger that lurks close below the surface in physical interactions. There has never to my knowledge been electroshock treatment to condition my response, though I cannot testify fully to that since shock treatment does alter memory. Senior moments notwithstanding, even I eventually learned to restore the toilet seat to its place of repose after use. There eventually ceased to be expostulations of rage emanating from the occasionally incautious! Having conquered that neglectful and disrespectful habit of leaving the toilet seat up, a second problem began to surface that again resulted in tensional moments. Positioning the seat at the point of repose resulted from time to time with wet drops on the seat. Since I was careful to lower the seat after life's 'ever rolling stream' it was unclear to me that the source was mine. Since no other male was around it was a mystery,surrounded by a conundrum, overlain by an enigma,underlined as a puzzle! Nevertheless the solution was unclear, but the perpetrator was at least 'a person of interest' and guilty 'til proven innocent. Our lovely old samoyed eventually proved to be the culprit. I discovered one day by accident she preferred to drink water from the toilet since it was always in the same place. With her hairy muzzle she would dribble a little on the seat. I think she was embarrassed about her habit, so drank surreptitiously. She was completely blind from infancy so, over the years she learned her way around without the benefit of other than distant hindsight. She was pretty careful and we loved her! Both dog and man were exonerated. For the pianist and me she was never to be Pavlov's dog.

Cost of Leisure

I read somewhere of a French gentleman, living on the beachfront in Normandy, who required his children and grandchildren to bring back a sack of seaweed for his garden each time they went to the beach. No pleasure without accompanying industry. It was not declared in the article that he compelled his friends to do likewise! It is possible that he ended up having few friends and distant issue as well. Over the years, I had taken a leaf from this man's book and endeavored where possible, never myself to take or do something to the right of me at point B, without doubling up by bringing something back to the left of me to point A. Work on the way down and work of a new nature on the way back; or leisure on the way down and leisure on the way back; or a combination of both! Trying to never waste a moment myself, either at play or work! Programming! Wasted moments and leisure may have much more in common than we realize! One of the things they have in common is that they are both defined by those who have little of either! Work and play may also have much in common for the fortunate who may not be able to differentiate between them! I wish I had composted the Frenchman's leaf in my earlier days rather than seen it as an opportunity. Now that I am older, walking in a room to forget what the Hell I am Hereafter is not Heaven! I don't want to leave it too long without a conclusion! Whether it is better in the mind's eye to engage in this sort of work cycle for a shorter working life, and then move to complete leisure for the balance, is moot! I can't judge. I suspect that a happy balance through one's life, and clear lines of definition, and a willingness not to impose your ideas on others, is a suitable choice. Living in the present, not the future, is hard. Reality says the future is nowhere! This balance applied now gives autonomy to you and everyone you love!

Osmosis

When little Joanie says, "No one ever taught me how to cook. I just learned by osmosis by always being around my mother. I learned unconsciously by absorption":I say, tell me more! Osmosis is simply described as the transfer across a semipermeable membrane, of water from a low solute concentration to a solution of high solute concentration to establish equilibrium. Small solute particles such as sodium and potassium ions will also transfer across the semipermeable membrane to equilibrium. All of us have learned much, as Joanie says, of what we know, by metaphorical osmosis. The transfer of information or water, by osmosis, from the less dense to the more dense will gradually produce equilibrial density without much energy expenditure. The presence of the semipermeable membrane and the degree of permeability adds selection to the information transfer. Because this is a passive transfer we often don't know the origin of much of the information we take for granted. Since however, as we need for life, to maintain an osmotic pressure gradient that maintains solutes in a non-equilibrium state as well, between the intracellular milieu and the extracellular milieu, energy is required to refine the passive osmotic process. The energy to maintain the osmotic gradient metaphor is defined as the energy of active learning! It is volitional and identifiable! Dorothy and Martha were two laboratory dogs I inherited from Johnny Watt when I took his place as a Teaching Fellow in Anatomy in 1959. Once a week on Tuesday and Thursday they would lie quietly for me for 6 hours as I cannulated the femoral artery and vein of each and injected various hypertension producing drugs into them, measuring the change in solute concentrations that hypertension could manipulate in the extracellular and intracellular spaces as established by the measurement of the inulin space. This activity prompted me to think in general of how the energy expended in manipulation or learning is analogous to the energy to establish osmotic pressure gradients that are so necessary to augment the process of passive osmosis! Energy produces work! The conversion of energy to work is always imperfect and the wasted energy is given off in the way of heat. Study is, directed work provided by energy, and is also imperfect and is accompanied by an energy loss. Intelligent study will render energy conversion to work, more efficient and lose less heat. Or if you are like me, a lousy wood chopper, you will convert that energy to highly inefficient work, and get bloody hot in the process. Entropy! We can't just depend on passive osmosis and permeability only, in our intellectual or physical world. Active learning harnesses osmosis with the addition of creating a selective osmotic gradient that requires energy, transformed to work plus heat, to maintain life and intelligent life!

Scum, skim, and fuzz

If you boiled your marmalade mix in sugar today for the requisite 45 minutes, you created scum on the surface margins of your product. Some call it fuzz and others froth. If you want your marmalade to be pristine without little gobs of scum you will skim your scum from the margins of the pot before pouring in the jars. For that I use a flat edged spoon. The scum or froth or fuzz is good to eat. I saved my scum in a little bowl for immediate eating. My mother always allowed us boys to eat all the scum from her preserves on bread and butter. It may be that the particular amongst us would turn up their nose at scum. They might say that it was infradig to eat scum. I am sure however that the same person probably relishes the froth on their cappuccino and the other epicurean concoctions available in the 5 dollar cardboard cupfuls! I skimmed my scum today and have tried it on 2 slices of whole wheat toast. My marmalade is sealing and snapping as I write. Why we have ever allowed these pejorative terms to describe a delicious side, end product of the jam business that has all the attributes of goodness without the prettiness of the retail product I do not know. Beauty trumps flavor in the real world! Enjoy your cappuccino fuzz. Skim the fuzz off with your spoon before drinking or you'll have fuzzy lips and a white mustache!

Exposure and anonymity

At a certain stage of life there is less and less time available" to have a kick at the cat". If you have something to do, you had better do it while you still have a guarantee of your faculties, or at least, as you believe they are still present! If you have something to say, or if you believe you have something to say, the internet affords a medium that allows anonymity. There is a certain freedom in this as you can dip your toe in the water and test the temperature without jumping into the lake and finding it's too frosty to swim. If you are a cowardly lion or a tin man or a scarecrow you will have to find an expert behind a screen who will give you a green light to publish! If you come with a proposed book that is not a book but a compilation of anecdote,history , reverence, irreverence,garden variety humor and recycled wisdom you may know that most will say there is no coherence to this material! Incoherence is representative of the human condition. If you believe you are coherent it is proof positive that you are not. We really never have a theme if we are truly a holistic human being.If you write of your realities or your fantasies you are still writing your autobiography. All writing is revelatory! To put a name to your exposition is fraught with the danger of "going to jump in the lake". Fear of exposure is only present with the first time you take your clothes off and go naked. After that it becomes easier as you realize there is less to lose that you thought. Years ago when my brother Ken got married, I hosted a stag at our home with his friends. My brother was a school teacher and I did not know his friends. The stag turned out to be sagging quite badly by mid-party and was very boring. I needed an idea! My son Robert who was 13 was at the stag and we had a large swimming pool off our living room. I took a chance,discarded fear, and announced we would have a water ball game and pick up teams. Thereupon in the living room I took off all my clothes in front of these strangers to jump in the pool. To my relief so did my 13 year old and my brother and then everyone did the same. The party no longer sagged. We had a hell of a good time. I took a gamble. The outcome could have been dreadful! I now shudder to think of it. If my life is sagging, I want to take a chance!

Orange Marmalade

It's mid-January on Lotus Island and I hustled to the supermarket to get the first of the Seville oranges that have just arrived. They are not a hot ticket item anymore so they often languish in the bin at the store and dry out. We hardy few who look forward to our bitter marmalade preservation every year mark the calendar at this new beginning. The Seville oranges here come from boulevard trees in Mesa Arizona, I am given to understand. Mary, Queen of Scots would have had her oranges shipped from Spain. My patient years ago, who was a distant Chivers relative gave me the three day recipe which I have faithfully followed. Since some of the people I care for do not care for marmalade with large peel pieces, I have dispensed with tradition and use the cuisinart to chop the peel more finely. One does what one has to. My oranges today are clean and plump. Sevilles are amongst the more ugly of the orange varieties so don't be dissuaded by their lack of beauty! Don't take offence at the bitterness of the fruit. Ugly and bitter will transform into sublime in the hands of the lover. Gentle patience is all that is necessary! Here is the recipe. I make a double batch.

Day 1, 8 large Seville oranges, 2 lemons. Halve these and remove the fruit. Leave the pith on the skin. Place the fruit in a muslin bag. Chop up the orange and lemon peel with the pith. Place all the material in a large container. Make sure your muslin bag doesn't leak or you'll have seeds in your marmalade. Add ten cups of water and soak everything overnight.

Day 2, Boil contents for 45 minutes. Let cool and rest for balance of the day.

Day 3, Take out the muslin bag and squeeze well. Add 1 and 1 quarter cups of sugar to each cup of your product. Boil for 45 minutes from the time of rapid boiling. Simmer longer if the marmalade does not jell well when dripping off the spoon. Fill jars
and seal when hot, in jars oven heated at 275 degrees.

The quality of the jelling in my opinion comes from the thickness of the pith. The marmalade darkens over the year but quality remains. No pectin needed: no citrate compounds: no treacle! Bon appetite!

Canoe River BC

In November 1950 a troop train transporting Canadian Army troops for embarkation to Korea was in a collision with a passenger Continental eastbound. 21 people died in that collision, mostly troops of No.1 Royal Canadian Horse Artillery from Shilo, Manitoba and four railway employees. The collision occurred at Canoe River BC in the Rocky Mountains. The army and railway eventually charged a 22 year old telegrapher with manslaughter on the alleged basis of failure to transmit accurate orders. I remember the crisis in our family at that time because my dad had copied orders on that same troop train earlier the day before and it was not clear at that time where the fault lay! Remember at that time orders were telegraph orders. They were transmitted to the engineer on a paper slip attached to a hoop from the station as the train passed through, slowing down at the yellow light which indicated new orders, for which meet, and which siding to take. There was always the potential for disaster! The dispatcher in Winnipeg phoned my dad and said to seal his copy of the order for safe keeping. He was subject to immediate assessment by the railway inspectors. To the relief of all of us my dad's orders were alright! This tragedy was subject to a trial in BC and John G Diefenbaker assumed the defense of Jack Atherton, the young telegrapher,gratis, at the request of Mr.Diefenbaker's dying wife. Mr. Diefenbaker paid 1500 dollars in order to become a member of the BC bar for this occasion, and went through the bar examination where it was said the only question asked was to define a tort. John Diefenbaker succeeded in defense of the client whom he portrayed as a scapegoat for the prosecution. The death of so many was an incredible tragedy but he succeeded in laying the fault on the systems rather than the employee! In our family, at that time and after he became Prime Minister, no one could be considered greater than the man who served the sort of persons like us, the ordinary Canadians. When Mr. Diefenbaker died the people in our towns along the main line lined up for hours to salute the passenger funeral train as it passed by. The common touch is what distinguished him, and the things we valued!

Unnatural Act

I was removing, with difficulty, a string of outside Christmas lights from the quince tree! Some of the smaller branches were traumatized as the electrical wires clung to them and the freezing cold had rendered the branches rather brittle. As I was working away on the stepladder a small voice said, "You've made me look like a tart!" Then the voice said, "you've spent a long time yapping about Mother Nature, and how organic you are, and you even quoted a poem about me, and now you have made me into a freak!" I must say I was taken aback by this assertion as I hadn't meant any disrespect! I didn't think it was unseemly to string lights on living bones but now I realize it is an unnatural act and has nothing to do with Christmas either! "I guess you are right that I am a hypocrite", I said," but it was out of ignorance rather than intent." "No way", she said ,"You have made such heavy weather of your connection to the vegetable world and apparently worshipped the dialogue between us. It gives us the suspicion now, that you are a person who talks a good game but really has little real understanding or respectfulness of living bones. Rather than your feeble attempt to illuminate me, try to illuminate yourself!" Well, you can readily see that I felt pretty crushed, particularly since she has provided faithfully every year, beautiful quince for jellies and preserves, a home for the Western Flycatchers every year that grace our home, and she never develops powdery mildew. She is sweet! They have obviously discussed the matter in the orchard and I am properly reprimanded. I have assured her that I will not repeat any unnatural acts in the future and will scale down my rhetoric, beating my breast about how connected I am, when they really know better!

The Extra Spoon

We had the usual collection of matching everyday tableware, spoons, knives, and forks, in our family when the children were growing up in Lotus City. In addition, there was a spoon that was not of quite the same configuration as the other teaspoons. It was less oblong and a little more square! It lived in the same tray with the regular teaspoons. Trivial as it may seem, this extra spoon became 'a cause celebre' in our family that generated at times, heated discussions with respect to ownership. The children vied to do the table setting to acquire the experience of possession, albeit transient, of the extra spoon. That gave some accrued benefit to us but at the cost of further debate. It's hard to know where it all started, but clearly once one person wanted it, it became a source of minor veneration. Rational folks, even in the pediatric age group may have recognized the matter as one without merit. Not so our offspring. Matters of the heart and issues of entitlement can raise the stakes! Reason goes out the window. We want something that others do not, or can not have, even though we lust after the acceptance of the group. Something that sets us apart, but not too much! 30 or so years later, and living on Lotus Island I have discovered for some time that we have a different newer extra spoon in a different set of matched tableware. It is not exactly like the extra spoon of yesteryear but it is clearly an outlier. It is of no interest to my grandchildren , nor was it a few years back when they were younger. It has no intrinsic value! It is only of value as most material things are, if someone else wants it too. It sits in the tray with the other teaspoons and I occasionally speak to it, to remind it how indifferent we all are to it. Not, "Deja vu all over again!"

Prairie Grain Elevator

My first summer job when I was 15 was cleaning out the grain dust in the bottom of the bins in the Pool elevator for Bill McClughan , the operator! We lived in the railway station across the tracks from the Pool elevator which also had an attached annex. My brother Ken used to sit in the railway office and shoot rats around the annex through the open window with his 22 when our dad wasn't around. One day he aimed too low and the bullet hit the track and ricocheted through another window. That ended his rat hunting career! My job was to shovel out the grain dust , rat droppings and general debris, in the bottom of the bins, to get ready for the fall storage season. The prairie elevators are now an iconic reminder of a special past and a way of life when industrial farming was nonexistent. The elevators announced each town in large letters to the passers through, a statement of importance to us. The elevator had a grated weigh scale where the grain truck was weighed full and then empty. Grain was dumped through the grate and samples taken by the elevator operator for grading during the dumping stream, Then the grain was carried by the elevating buckets to the top of one of the 16, 80 foot high bins and poured into them. During the fall and winter when the grain was loaded into box cars the loading was not from the bottom. As a consequence the detritus, rat droppings, chaff and dust settled to the bottom of each bin over the winter and spring to about three to four feet high as I remember. It was a dusty job cleaning the bins out, getting them clean for the fall harvest. The dust and detritus got in your clothes and hair and nostrils. I was happy with my first paying job but I understand why Bill McClughan didn't want to do it. I was strong and never got sick. We didn't have running water so it was hard to keep clean every day since our water had to be hauled from the town pump and heated on the stove top. My bath water in the galvanized tub looked like porridge at the end of each bath. I have a slightly altered view of the romantic nature of the iconic prairie elevator.

Birdbrain

This supposedly disparaging comment toward the forgetful or the thoughtless requires some reexamination! For the past two months the robins on our plot in Lotus Island were notable for their complete absence. They were abundant during the early fall. Nothing had changed that would have occasioned their departure. The worms and bugs remained in plentiful numbers. One thing however is noted and that is the holly berries were not quite ripe during that period. The robins of course are omnivorous. They don't exist on protein alone. They must have, if not an internal clock, an internal calendar, or alternatively a readily available Dayrunner. They are no" birdbrains" ! They may even follow a Sonoma diet plan for all I know. At any rate, they appeared in spades about 4 days ago. They started in the orchard by turning up the leaves in the windrows that I haven't been able to drag to the compost yet. Tossing their heads as they threw leaves helter skelter, seeking the cringing bug or worm. Once I saw them I knew what they were really after. The appetizer may have been bugs and worms, but the entree was my holly berries. The assault on the holly tree usually starts about the 5th of December and despite it being a loaded 50 foot tree they clean it up in 4 to 5 days! This year the tree was a bit late in ripening like everything else! How they knew? That kind of timing doesn't suggest a birdbrain is forgetful or thoughtless. They may not be able to spell well, but they are not stupid. Neither am I because I cut all the holly we needed three days ago, preempting their action. They can go to it all they want now! The only drawback to this feeding frenzy is the distributed seedings I have to weed next year from the droppings. Nevertheless, La Chaim!

The Motley Crew

As I march through the commercial nursery greenhouses from time to time I feel a touch of envy over the pristine, row on row of abundantly flowering or verdant house plants for sale. They smack of the beauty of the young but are often bought, treasured, and turfed when they are no longer so beautiful. If you see perennials as furnishing, to stage your house for beauty, you will see no sense in any alternative use for them. However if you anthropomorphize your house plants, you will, as we have over many years, create a Confederation of a Motley Crew. The pianist has said, from time to time, we should get rid of some of these plants since they are too big, some are ugly and they are taking over the house and greenhouse. I don't disagree with her observations about ugly and large but have so far avoided some of her suggestions with regard to action. A good marriage seeks compromise. I do have a bottom line, and have euthanized and buried the worst to the compost. Such an act is love in action and they will rise again. The survivors are old friends. They can be primped up to be at least acceptable, but it does become more and more of a struggle. They provide memories of the olden days when they were young and beautiful. I am not a callow person. I am not "Sans Loy". They can rely on us to give geriatric care, to water regularly, to avoid rich food, to amputate at times to stave off death. We are more a happy home for the elderly rather than a hospice and we share their joy. The Cymbidium in the photo we have had for years. Some years it blooms, some years it doesn't! I have two others that have not favored us this year. I accept that. They have a mind of their own. I can always wait 'til Mother Nature chooses to reward us with her "presents"!

My Pro Career

In 1953 I was recruited to go to Wynyard, Saskatchewan as a baseball pitcher for their ball team! Since it was my summer job I needed the money for school in the fall. The team had the desire for a winning team, but they had neither the money, nor a pitcher! A philanthropic business man in Wynyard, who owned a service station, came to their rescue and paid me 250 dollars a month to pump gas and be a go-fer in his business so that I could be at the behest of the ball team. 250 dollars was too generous for the job I did for the business owner, Mindy Halldorson, but it was expeditious to his town's ball team. I,of course, was flattered that they wanted me. My pro career, since I was the only pitcher, included providing this service 3 days a week at local sports days around the area, and usually,since we often won,generally pitched three short games a day. My job on the field was also to carry the equipment, bags and bats, to our next venue since I was the only "paid " player.The team felt that was a reasonable request since I was only 19 and I couldn't go with them to the beer parlor in between games. A real source of discontent for me. Predictably, half way through the season, pitching without respite, and having no brains to pace myself, I developed a severe rotator cuff tendinitis in my pitching arm! It was so bad I had trouble lifting the bag of jelly doughnuts I brought to the garage mechanics for coffee break twice a day, when I was working the go-fer shift! The black day came when the ball team manager took me aside and told me the team was not making enough money to pay me anything further. I of course, couldn't pitch for them because of my arm, but never thought to question why I was fired, since Mindy Halldorson was paying for me, not the ball team. I was of no further use. Used up! I did see the local doctor but he was a quack and gave me some talcum powder to rub on my shoulder! My pro career ended and I went back to the track at the CNR for the remainder of the summer! Oh, brief fling of greatness dashed!

Utterances

When my dad retired from the railway in Lotus City,and he could no longer garden; but before he was anchored to the apartment by an oxygen hose,he did volunteer driving for the housebound! He was getting on a bit however, and found driving in the city a bit tense. He would drive elderly or disabled people to the doctor or dentist, or for treatment to the hospitals. Wait for them and drive them back. He had not much else to do so he was content to wait for them. My dad was not a reader but he enjoyed engaging others in the waiting room in conversation since he was never shy! He was given to frequent expostulations in his conversation generally. These were never scatological nor sacramentally incorrect but were provided with some passion nevertheless. His routine passionate epithet, prefacing remarks, was "By Dad!". Certainly beyond criticism! One day in my office I was visited by an elderly woman with a hip problem. At the end of our consultation she volunteered that she knew my dad and that he was often her volunteer driver. She said, "He's quite a character!" I agreed. Then she observed that when he drove her to an appointment he was frustrated with other drivers passing him and and bumper hugging. She said he would mutter, or sometimes yell, "You jackass" ,during the trip. I said, "I know that. He drives so slowly that people pass him abruptly and he is nervous. It's his word! We know it well." "Well ", she said, "I like your dad a lot but one day I was very late leaving the apartment and he was waiting for me a long time. I just knew when I got to his car he was going to call me a jackass." "He would never do that!" I said. "You're right",She said, "He just smiled and said he hoped I was feeling well." I can see my dad now in my mind's eye, trying to remain useful,tense with driving, but enjoying the company of fellow strangers, staving off the eventual time of relative immobility,fighting the feeling!