It Takes a Village

In a special little spot on Planet Earth, a small village has been established. I took this picture of it so you could see what I am talking about. It is quite amazing, and although I have lived in this country all my life, I have never seen such a colony. It is a village of wee towers, (there are many more than this picture shows), and in these towers live a vast number of jolly, dwarf-size bumblebees. One of which is peeking in the doorway of the farthest tower in this picture. And although it doesn’t seem so, the little towers look smooth and elegantly constructed to the naked eye, although in this magnification they seem so crude.





I frequently inspect the area. The inhabitants know when they are being watched. They sing loudly and dart about as if agitated, but they never attack so Hub and I assume they are non-aggressive. Either that, or they are too busy, far too busy, for a fight.

And so, I watch them work and wonder if each of them has, and knows, their own particular abode. I think they do, but they freely visit the homes of others. I saw one bee pop into several little towers before eventually descending into one where he stayed for a time. That final stop must have been his own wee hut, but the protocol of his cluster environment compelled him to stop to say a quick and cheery good morning to his neighbors.

Yesterday there were probably ten or more elegant towers in the village, but after a rain, although the construction is in a protected spot under a narrow eave, it looked as if the colony had endured an earthquake. Little towers tumbled over every which way and many broken. I felt so bad when I saw the destruction and quite puzzled at how such damage occurred.

I stayed awake most of the night feeling dismal about the carnage in the little village. Too early I was up to see if repairs were being done and how the work was going. I was surprised. There was the little village of towers looking as clean and neat as a pin. No towers toppled. None broken. All in excellent repair. I planned to take a picture but decided it could wait until after breakfast.

After breakfast I went out and to my dismay, again many of the towers were toppled or damaged. Still repairs were underway. One had a good quarter inch of new construction that was still wet. And then I had to wonder, ‘Could these little bees do that much repair in so short a time when the work they do is comparable to working with atom-sized stones fashioned from one microscopic drop of spittal and one grain of sand?’ Comparative, it would seem, to our efforts to build a full-size basement with a truck load of concrete and nothing to mix and move it except a two cup measure and a soup ladle.
____

Now I have torn down or burned more than my share of bee’s nests in my time, either for amusement, or for fear of being stung. I have never felt guilt or remorse about doing that. I have never let any thought occupy my mind about how much patience and diligent work it took to construct those nests. But when you see bee’s building homes out of mud, so representative of our own houses, their efforts become a lot more relevant. And also, there is another pattern of life similar to our own, when I see them forming small communities. And a pattern of life similar to my own represented by their tiny huts and narrow streets.

And so, when I see such a village, with goings on so closely patterned after my own environment, I begin to feel truly distressed about the work involved in the building, and the sorrow and heartbreak of the destruction of that long, patient, and diligent effort – by a few tiny little bees.

And so, now in summation, what I need to tell you is that as one ages, we toughen up quite a bit. Tears come less often. Discouragements, though sad, are dismissed with a shrug. But at the same time, deep within there is a new softness forming. And harbored within that softness, is more pathos – pity for the helpless; and more ethos – greater attempts to be a better person. It is the way of an aging heart and aging flesh.

And so, I appease my guilt in this particular matter, by vowing to never rip down another bee’s nest if there is any kind of slight possibility that we can get along. And to vow I will not harm those little mud towers (I screamed at Hub to get out of there with his shovel). And while I’m forming these new resolutions, I might as well include a vow to nevermore scramble ant piles.

Surely, for my own peace of mind, it is better to change the things I can, than simply assume that mistakes of my past cannot be altered.

Another Kind of Brain Drain

Seems like our culture/society has a warped philosophy when it comes to education that each of us can 'be all things to all people'. But we can't.

And so, I have oft contemplated another approach. And that approach was first broached to me by one of my elementary school teachers. What he said is that Russia's school system is so unlike our own. In Russia, he said, rather than forcing a child gifted in Math and bored to tears by Literature to pursue both, such children are allowed to forge ahead in Math, and leave Language Arts behind. Perhaps this was fiction – I have never investigated it to see if it was so.

Still, I do remember thinking, “How enviable the approach to learning that allows students to sidestep all that memorization of irrelevant stuff. Stuff like the time spans of various Wars, the winners and losers, and the names of long dead Presidents and Prime Ministers, and the years of colonization and discovery of so many places and things. Without all that I could really ace the rest of my studies.”

But how can that happen within an education system that tries to force every student to ‘be all things to all people’? Or within a system that for me created such a drain-brain, that I couldn't focus properly on any one discipline?

History was bad enough, but then there was the Science stuff that made for an even greater brain drain. The memorization of Chemical symbols and properties and how positive ions react with negative ions, etc. And the considerable brain drain caused by the puzzling situations I had to resolve through the complexity of the Laws of Physics. And don't even get me started on the most irrelevant of all - the biological mysteries of amoebae and other one-celled thingies and their uncanny ability to skip gender issues by physically contorting their bodies into self-impregnating acts. And I have to pity kids nowadays because added to that is all the memory and recall needed to learn both English and French and manage all the new technology.

We think of 'brain drain' as being the migration of our great minds to another continent or country. Is this not the same?

The coercive and forced migration of individuals’ very personal and somewhat limited brain cells into receptacles for meaningless junk. Obviously the measure of data that impacted on whether I passed or failed each progressive step in school created a serious brain drain. I was handed a volume of stuff to learn and memorize that was beyond the bounds of reason.

In fact, one time in discussing the content of a correspondence course I signed up for, the Instructor told me the assigned reading was impossible to do in the allotted time. So he suggested I keep in touch with him so he could define what was pertinent. Hey, everyone, hold on a minute here. If there is more than a student can hope to read during the allotted time, then this course is broken. It needs to be fixed. It isn't working the way it is supposed to.

But all that aside, it was this encroachment of too much stuff on my hard drive that drove me to hurry up and finish school so I could get the hell outta' there. Too much of my brain was being drained into irrelevance for me to happily pursue with unimpeded passion those things that really interested me. The things I could have aced well enough to walk away with one or two prestigious awards without even blinking.

So if my education had not been a series of commandeered courses, so many irrelevant to my passions, where would I be today if it had been up to me? I'd be known worldwide as the "Foremother of Nifty Handwriting" and the Governor General Award-Recipient for the new Literary Genre of “Wild Fact and Windblown Fiction", plus other honorable mentions.

And I would not just be ‘Roberta’ I would be "The Roberta" and my Blog would be influential and spellbinding.

I might not know you, but you would know me.

The Deletion of Bags and Boxes

There’s a rumor going around this small community that is disturbing. And, although here things happen at a much slower pace than in large urban centers, rumors travel at warp speed. And the latest rumor is that the B&Y Store, and the Magnate Store and the other Store are no longer giving out bags for purchases.

Now of course for ‘shock value’ none of the messengers of said rumors elaborate enough to say, that ‘yes, there will be bags available at a price if customers don’t bring their own’. That part of the story would water down too severely the intensity of such a shocking rumor.

So the original rumor, without the above qualifier, put me in a state of angst, and in that angst I remain. First, it was so shocking and unbelievable that I would cater to a business and then have to leave my purchases behind with no means to carry them to my car. The whole situation puts me in mind of stumbling on a lush blueberry patch in some backwoods retreat without a pickin’ pail. You cup your apron, and pick. You pick into your hat. And then you remove your high-top rubber boots and fill them because rubber boots hold a heck of a lot of berries. Still, the biggest and best berries are left behind.

So I think you can easily see how the rumor is so unsettling. I am both shocked and wounded. Isn't it enough that I am already paying deposits on milk cartons, juice cartons, and bottles, some of which have recycling value, and some of which don’t?

Of course I’m annoyed. We’re talking fixed income, here. Just getting what I need takes strategic budget planning without having to puzzle over which containers are refundable and the added cost of bags. The whole turn-around is a process so convoluted that I begin to question if it is a good thing or simply a circuitous way of attaching hidden taxes on food and other necessities? A strong argument cannot even be made that containers cost money for the retailer. I don’t put my car gas in a container, but I still pay an added fee for that as well.

And refundable containers hardly seems like a good thing when the drive to the recycling depot costs me more for gas than any costs I manage to recover?

So now, with this latest rumor, I begin to seriously fear that boxes and bags are becoming extinct. I truly fear they are going the same way as the unicorn and the woolly mammoth. Or tough men with macho gauchos and chest hair?

I knew it would eventually come to this, but still I was so unprepared. The last time Elder Daughter moved was a few years ago. That day, the day we were packing up all her stuff, ED scouted the downtown-area for boxes-to-be-had-for-the-asking from various stores. That is how moving has always been done. But there were no boxes to be had.

So that is when I began to realize that cardboard boxes were becoming extinct. When ED returned a few hours later with nothing but a couple of packages of large plastic garbage bags.

Truly, it is easier to pick blueberries in rubber boots than safely pack breakables and china in plastic bags. Still we did the best we could but it was one of the more difficult things I have ever done. And so, since then I treat boxes as things of value. Slicing them carefully along taped lines, folding them flat, and stashing them behind a craft table in my basement. Then afraid to use them because whatever came in those boxes, if it needs repair, or is flawed, cannot be returned to the retailer without the original box! And furthermore I don’t want to be the cruel heartless person that dispensed with the last of the cardboard box species.

But now bags? What the hell?

Always my one security is that no matter how much life may change one stable aside from food, shelter, and clothing, would be bag and box containers. Without them, whoever coined the phrase ‘thinking outside of the box’ was ahead of their time…a prophet, so to speak.

What we fail to realize is that a world without boxes and bags impacts on more than just the physical. Without the philosophy of the limits of containers, be it boxes or bags, humankind has no mental context for that notion in our consciousness that there are limits to how we think and act.

And without it, the whole world is going awry. Limits of containment, so plainly illustrated by the use of boxes and bags, are no longer understood. And so with that mental perception missing—without boxes (or bags), generations evolve that can only think outside the box, even the violent and criminal-minded and it is not good. That causes me concern as well.

But my bigger concern, as a hoarder, is how can I live with all my ‘things’ without anything to put my ‘things’ in. I didn’t save all those cloth scraps, canvas, buttons, tape, and lace, to sew bags with and then have nothing to put in them.

Bags and boxes sustain me and facilitate my everyday life. That statement does not mean that I am a villain. I do so understand environment. I recycle everything --- E-V-E-Y-T-H-I-N-G, but this ‘really good thing that I do’ cannot continue if I have neither a bag, or a box, to put my ‘things’ in!

What a Wonderful World!

My greatest wonder in life has nothing to do with the mechanics of anything. That is Hub’s department.

What I find wondrous is nature, and life, hopes and dreams. But having lived in the same house with the same man for more than thirty years, beyond a new bend in Hub’s sense of humor, what new could I possibly find to wonder at in my home environment? The mechanics of material things change, which doesn’t impress me, but little else. Still, even at that, unexpected situations arise that tap into my emotions and leave me quite awe-stuck.

Take this morning, for instance.

Hub is in a funk and I am beginning to worry about it. He’s bored. He eats too much and sleeps too much. Seems restless and unable to focus on anything.

Added to that, the weather remains nasty, which doesn’t help. And so I am beginning to fear if the weather doesn’t turn, Hub may not turn either. Back to his normal happy and carefree self.

Still I do my best to try and cheer him, but all to no avail. So there remains little left for me to do except to remain quietly supportive and at the same time more attentive to Hub’s conversations in hopes of finding an opportunity to assist him, in some unexpected way, back to his normal good humor.

And so, for these reasons, I am immediately alert, when Hub says to me at the breakfast table this morning, “Do you know the words to this song?”

I perk up my ears and wait for him to hum a bit of the melody, but all I hear coming from his side of the table is a deep muffled rumble like a slipper tumbling in a clothes dryer. His lips are ever so slightly parted in a duplication of Mona-Lisa’s famous smile, and I can tell he is deeply concentrating while exhaling a soft sound, so I go to his side of the table and bend over and listen. An uncommon thing for me to do, because normally Hub talks and sings, so very loud.

As I bend near his face, I hear a rumbling hum that seems to be coming from inside one of the table legs rather than from him. I bend closer and peer into his eyes and see a look of such intense concentration. A look that leads me to think Hub may have quietly slipped out-of-body. It is a glazed look that tells me he has moved somewhere else—leaving me feeling quite alone. He is not immediately behind his eyes, as he should be. Normally I feel an intimate adjacency to the person behind the eyes, but when I look at him, it is like looking through 140X Binoculars across a great expanse. He seems so very far away.

But, despite that, if I am to render normality here, I must pay attention. I must listen and try to identify the song. And so I listen very carefully to muffled modulations of oblique sound that have spacing and rhythm that is vaguely familiar.

But the tune? There isn’t any. And that sets me wondering what is going on, because Hub, like most people, always attempts to jar my memory with bits of the melody when he wants to remember an old song.

This morning there is no tune. The sound is more like a liturgical chant. There is no melody. But that is not the full extent of the weirdness of the situation. What is even weirder is the sound I hear is, in no way, representative of Hub’s voice. Not his sad voice, his happy voice, his normal voice, or even his silly voice.

It is not Hub’s familiar voice I am hearing. It is another tone, another pitch, another pronunciation, another shade, another frequency. It is simply not Hub’s voice. But yet, there is something strangely familiar in this never-before-seen-or-heard rendition. The pulses of the sound are scattered but not random.

And now I begin to verge on a kind of panic with the dragging and quickening of bass-toned exhales and inhales, and again, I say, without melody. And furthermore, the sound is incredibly soft, because it is as if Hub is forcing from somewhere deep inside a sound outside of his own voice range.

I don’t know what is happening here but my inner gut tells me it must be way more serious than a high fever, a blood clot, or an aneurysm. And the eyes though still and unblinking, remain fixed on me in an imploring stare. Across the huge expanse I referred to earlier.

And then, by God, it suddenly hits me. I know the song! I know the song!

Not from the nature of it, but the mechanics of it. Hub was amazed I did it. But I was far more amazed at how ‘The Lord of the Mechanics of Everything’ (that would be Hub) packaged the clues to a musical piece into nothing more than the mechanics of the piece.

Now that I understand the virtual impossibility of what he was doing, of course his eyes veiled over with such intense concentration. It’s pretty close to miraculous when someone can deliver a memory of a song with little more than vibrations of E.S.P. accompanied by a rhythmic percussion of nothing more than the sound of a slipper tumbling about in a clothes dryer.

Now Hub can carry a tune. He knows if it is right or wrong. But as he told me later, he had completely forgotten the tune. He had forgotten the words as well. He had forgotten the name of the song, and he had forgotten the artist. But what he hadn’t forgotten was that the song was a happy song. That is the memory that led to the twisted Mona-Lisa-smile. And he hadn’t forgotten the timber of the singer’s voice or the rhythm of the song.

Now Hub is not an impersonator in any way, shape, or form. But the voice I heard, that was not Hub’s, but yet was vaguely familiar, was the deep voice, magical and dream-shaped, of Louis Armstrong.

And the song Hub needed to remember was “What a Wonderful World.”
____

Isn’t that totally delightful? When Hub wants that desperately, and needs that desperately to recall a song to sing this early in the morning, and that particularly happy song is the song he wants to sing, my heart is lifted and I know all is well. The weather has cleared despite the dreary skies outside the window, and I know Hub’s funk has flown.

Hub is out in his shop right now singing at the top of his lungs, in tune, and in his own voice with impeccable phrasing…

“I see fields of green, red roses too…”

Garden Rhymes & Nursery Whines

Roberta, Roberta,
From chilly Alberta,
How does your garden grow?

With brush and thrush,
And quiet hush,
And fresh-pressed footprints
In the snow.













(for a bit of extra amusement, try reading the second verse out loud as fast as you can -- not easy is it?)
___

As I told you last post, my garden is seeded. One picture was taken during the snowfall and one after. By way of explanation, beyond the swing, a comfortable swing, that doesn't squeeze my hips or cause hip dysplasia, is my garden, and beyond the garden is the tree stump Hub planted upside down.

We haven't done it yet, but on hot summer days, we plan to drape ourselves in skimpy faux-fur body scarfs and sit under the stump. We will sip jars of cool lemonade and wave to passer-bys. A pretense it would seem of the lives of Fred and Wilma Flintstone.

So now you know. 'Playing cabin' is not the only game we play.

Garden Daze

Flat and fragmented thoughts, which are what most of my thoughts are these days.

Hub cultivated the garden a few days ago. He started parallel to the road and when he got to my row of perennials, shrubs, and rhubarb, he ended up at a serious angle. Then he began urging me to plant it. But when I saw the rows running at such an angle, it wouldn’t do. I asked him to cultivate it again and run the rows parallel to my row of shrubs and perennials. I don’t care if my garden isn’t square with the road, or the world, I just want it to look like it is square within its own perimeters.

So grudgingly he cultivated again, all the time singing at the top of his lungs some made-up jingle about redoing a job that was already done, and why must he do the same labour twice when his rows ‘aren’t nearly as crooked as Brian Mulroney’ (You have to be Canadian to get the joke, or just Google the name and you’ll soon know).

And then of course deeply entrenched in my psyche is the old adage ‘waste not, want not’, which is not always a good thing. So first a neighbour brings me the excess of sprouted garlic that would not fit in his garden. Then another brings me two plastic bags with a bushel of soaked peas in one, and a peck of soaked beans in the other. And I also have all the seeds I purchased a few weeks ago to put in the ground.

Now I had no intention of planting garden yesterday, but what could I do? Soaked seeds generally have to go in the ground within 24 hours of soaking them. And of course, I couldn’t throw them out. Can’t be wasting them. So now I’m planting. Oh yes, I’m planting.

Enough peas and beans to feed a small village. I don’t pick peas, shell peas, or freeze peas. That is way too labour-intensive for me. Not when I can buy a big bag for about three dollars. I only plant a wee row of peas for the education of the Grandchildren. So they know where peas come from and what peas taste like fresh from the vine.

But this year, to fit in all those peas, I have two long double rows. And of course come fall, the Grandchildren will barely be able to make a dent in them and there I will be. On the back porch, like I was when I was a kid, shelling 5-gallon pails of peas for days on end.

But that’s not all, while I’m doing all this I’m thinking I shouldn’t even be planting anything when the soil is too cold to even step on in bare feet. But anyway, everything is in the ground, except the spuds and Hub will help me with them next week.

Now if it doesn’t all freeze - - - - I guess we’ll be doing okay. My neighbour tells me the seeds are deep enough that if they germinate in the next few days, the frost won’t get to them. As for me, I’m not so sure about that. This afternoon there were snowflakes again floating around outside trying to hide from view in a light foggy mist. But I saw them when they settled on Dough-Gee-Dog’s silky black fur.

And so now I’m wondering if the wood ashes I brought from Hub’s cabin cook-stove and sprinkled in the rows of radishes and turnips will stave off the bugs. I don’t know if it will work but it seems like a greener thing to do then using toxic insecticides that are so often years later pulled from the market because of risk to environment and body and blood and DNA.

The Death & Resurrection of Faith #2

(To appreciate this story, you need to read Part 1, before continuing with this conclusion)

Come Take a Portion of Faith – Pt. 2

Now Bible Camp and in particular, The Tabernacle, is a place of revelations where unseen occupants of heaven descend and commune and touch those within. It is a place of revelations through miracles, faith, healing, tongue-speaking, and soul-changing blessings. Normally, that is, but the shavings on the floor have told me a different story.

The adults at Camp assumed they had a monopoly on these messages, visions, and all other forms of heavenly contact. They assumed children were excluded. But that was just not so. I received a message. The message contained within the ‘Parable of the Shavings’. I wanted desperately to tell them ‘my message’ but unfortunately, I had not the courage or opportunity to do so.

And so, I remained silent as the Minister concluded his sermon with an announcement that he had a special surprise for us. And with that, he nodded toward a dim corner at the side of the platform. Shavings rustled softly as a tiny woman moved to the side of the platform and made her way slowly and unsteadily up three steps with an old cane as crooked and bent as she. The crowd applauded with delight at a figure familiar, and so well-known to all of us.

It was Mrs. Rett, with her bright little eyes that always twinkled and her precious mouth that only smiled. Mrs. Rett was a black woman. Black as midnight. But in Bible-Camp circles, she was a camp-celeb – renowned for her grace and goodness, renowned for her unshakable faith. Faith sufficient to part the sea, or move mountains if she chose to. And if the color of her skin made a difference, the only difference was the keen awareness we all had of her special gift of faith and unwavering goodness.

Now this particular day was Mrs. Rett’s ninetieth birthday. And what you need to realize about that is we are talking about a time when life expectancy was probably no more than sixty-four years. And so now the Minister left the podium and Mrs. Rett steadied herself with feet spread and both hands on her cane in front of her.

“Friends, I am soon going to be moving to another place,” she said in a feeble voice, “and I wanted to say a special good-bye to all of you before I left.”

Here the pianist rippled a few soft notes, and Mrs. Rett began to sing.

“Some day the silver chord will break,
And I no more, as now shall sing…”

The chord, if there was one was already broken. And we truly hoped that she ‘no more, as now would sing.’ Her voice was squawky, raspy, pitchy, cracked, and brittle. In a way that made even I, though just a child, feel the embarrassment and concern we so often have when another human being is in a situation that perhaps it would be best for them not to be in. But then Mrs. Rett raised her head towards the orange-colored canvas overhead, where the golden sunlight was filtering through, and continued her song.

“…but oh the joy, when I shall wake,
Within the palace of the King…”

And suddenly the melody was sweet and pure – her voice steady and unwavering. The sound as silken as the smooth warbling of a nightingale. And all the time we saw, in the midnight blackness of her countenance, her bright eyes and warm smile.

“…and I shall see him face-to-face…”

And that is when the most uncanny thing happened. I know others saw it too. Mrs. Rett’s charcoal-colored face suddenly turned silver –as silver as a radiant crystal with an inner glowing light. And those bright eyes were no longer fixed on us. They were fixed on something else that broadened her smile even more.

And that’s when all that I had lost from within my longing, vacant, empty soul, came rushing back with a force that made my knees weaken. I looked around me, and I could feel it in the room. Hope and faith and unwavering belief flooded the tent with a force that loudly rippled the canvas.

And I knew in that moment that everyone in that room, every single solitary person – sinner, agnostic, atheist, or believer, seized hold of a portion of Mrs. Rett’s faith. And in that moment, every one of us had faith that could part seas or move mountains – if that is what we chose to do. I believe at that moment we had enough collective faith to even turn the shavings on the floor into tightly-spliced floorboards.

And so this is where my story concludes. There is nothing more to tell you except that bit which is simply a matter of fact.

Mrs. Rett died a couple months later. And who knows? There may or may not be a heaven, there may or may not be a hell, there may or may not be a God. But if faith can do all it promises to do, of one thing I am certain – whether the foregoing questions are answered ‘yea’ or ‘nay’.

The thing I am certain of (no matter how barren the fact, science, or truth) is that there is one wee mansion with one lone wee occupant straight up, overhead, right up there – beyond the sky!

The Death & Resurrection of Faith #1

The Parable of the Shavings – Pt. 1

Some stories of my childhood defy my ability to tell a story, and this story about the mysticism of faith, is one of them. The story has meaning impoverished by only words. But still, with no other way to tell it, I hope I can find enough inspiration in a long-ago memory to make the meaning of the story transcend the insufficiency of the words.

The story is about Bible Camp – that ritualistic 4 or 8 or 10-step program dedicated to making kids the best they can be. But unlike other self-help programs, I didn’t have to first recognize I had a problem. I didn’t even have to have a problem. My Mother just assumed if I didn’t go, she would have a problem, so every year, I and my siblings, went to Bible Camp.

So now, let us first examine the camp-grounds. The original camp I went to had two granaries connected together that served as a kitchen and dining area. Another granary with too few windows sufficed as the girls’ sleeping dorm. The boys slept in a big tent and church took place in a much larger tent – orange-colored like a circus tent.

The once-circus-tent, now-camp-tent, was referred to as the Tabernacle, and inside were rows of crude wooden benches and at the front a wooden platform. The floor was sod of some sort, heavily layered with fresh, pale-colored, sweet-smelling wood shavings. And it is the wood-shavings I want to talk about, because that is where the story begins.

But first I must tell you that when nothing was going on in the Tabernacle, adults or children were still free to go there. And because, for the time being, the tent served as a church, we were expected while there to be quietly tranquil and reverent as is expected in any church. And so, one day, in the quiet tranquillity of the Tabernacle, I sat alone on a bench waiting for some friends, and quietly scuffling, with my feet, the shavings on the floor.

I had already been at Camp a few days, and of course with all the sermons, songs, and prayers, I was at a new high in my faith. Soul and mind overflowing with self-righteousness and resolve to be more kind, loving, reverent, faithful, and mindful of my spiritual wellness.

But as I examine the shavings on the floor, an obtuse thought came to mind. I find it rather amazing that although the remnants at my feet are the same fiber, the same color, and material, as a solid wooden floor – this is not anything like a solid wooden floor. It is only fragments of the original. Posing in a shameful way as a wooden floor, but not really a wooden floor.

And then that obtuse thought became even more obtuse. I began to wonder if the shavings were translating a message to me? The Bible relates stories of messages from God being relayed through simple things like the sun, a burning bush, tablets of rock, grass-dew and rain. Wood-shavings seem to fit that category, so is there a message for me in those shavings?

But at that moment a crowd arrived and seated themselves for the afternoon service. And, as generally was the case, the service commenced with singing and a few announcements. The singing was nice, but in a weak way. Relative, it seemed, to the shavings on the floor.

Now came the sermon. The minister gave dramatic inflection to every word. His body was animated. His eyes wept tears – of happiness one moment, concerned sadness for souls the next. Somehow, though, I wasn’t getting it. I was still too preoccupied with the shavings on the floor. And despite the Minister’s heroic efforts to make a solid impact on everyone in that place, I was more intent on understanding the translation within the context of the shavings on the floor.

And then came a dark realization. Perhaps the shavings signify a warning from God about my spiritual wellness and the authenticity of Bible Camp instruction. Maybe the counterfeit relationship between shavings and a wood floor is being paralleled here in the form of false spiritual instruction mimicking, in a similar way, something solid, true, and good.

Maybe this sermon, despite the dramatics of the Minister, is nothing more than a counterfeit and blended mix of shards of human-based and Bible-driven thinking, that can never provide solid transport for my soul from present life to an eternal place of refuge.

But how, pray tell, did I end up involved in such obviously complex and convoluted thinking? Truthfully, I cannot believe for one minute that it originated in my nine-year-old brain without heavenly assistance.

And so, that is how the Parable of Shavings formed in my mind, albeit in a more rudimentary way, and as it clarified, my heart and soul felt truly vexed. Hollow and empty of the usual warming convictions that had always come to me in the Tabernacle. And then as the sermon drew to an end, I felt an uneasy chill as a sudden final backwash left my inner spirit devoid of any previous convictions. And with that, a searing sense of abandonment that I expect only an orphan could understand.

I determined to look away from the floor, but by then not even the happy shouts of “Glory! Hallelujah!” or the magical gold wash of color that bathed all of us within those orange canvas walls could shake the impending agnosticism that now heavily bordered on something even more extreme. The “ath----” thing. I’m reluctant to say it, but I’m sure you know what I mean.

NEXT POST is about a broken 'chord' and faith restored.

Word Huggers, Write & Unite - 2.

Taking Back the Words


Okay, let’s see now. Where were we? Oh yes, the blank page. Ways to fill up the blank page.

Last post I stared at my blank page and my blank page stared back. And then we talked about the practical outline followed by first writ and decided that wouldn’t do.

So then today, I tidy up the kitchen in good order for the invisible-visitor-strategy appointment at nine. But at the appointed time my invisible guest doesn’t even show. Foiled again.

Just then the phone rings. It is Middle Daughter (MD). Now I should tell you that right now MD is temporarily off work. She loves to write and has had several small articles published. So right now, although writing time is still compressed by household tasks and child-rearing, she is most anxious to use this time, not to practice the art, but rather to write worthwhile stuff that might lead to more published works.

First she tells me once again, how disappointed she is with another highly publicized book she has read. It has her distressed and her question to me is if she is going to make valuable use of the writing time she has available, what should she write about.

Now, as a Mother, I must have an answer. As a Mother I can’t say I don’t know, although in my mind I haven’t the slightest inkling. But Mothers, no matter how old their children are, must rise to every occasion some way, some how.

As MD expresses her frustration, I scroll through the TV guide with my remote and decide if that is what the public wants, neither her nor I can fill that need with any conviction. Things like action movies without story or plot. Reality TV, yuk. Starlet carryings on – as if. This is not subject matter for our quills (meaning hers or mine).

And then I don’t know whether it is Mother intuition or primeval instinct that kicks a thought into the frontal lobe of my brain. The thought of what happened in my efforts to snag popular books in the last few years. With best-sellers on my list of wanted books, obliging neighbors were on the hunt for them. Friends, and family members too. But what happened every time? I suppose things would have been different if I had passed out written details of title and author but usually I put in my orders in casual conversation by telling them the name of the book and nothing more.

And sure they found books referencing those titles. Scads of books. But all were nothing more than comments, critiques, interpretations, or background discussions of the original books. Occasionally the original book came later. But seems to me like every bestseller had a side book, or two. “The Secret”, “The DaVinci Code”, and some other popular book about a life well-lived or how to live the good life or something like that. Can’t quite remember the title and absolutely don’t know now who the author was/is. But that is what my bookshelves are full of – not the original, but some prefix, affix, suffix, or infix.

I know you know this, but it bares repeating in this discussion. Our tribe is an opinionated lot. I either like something or I don’t. If I really like something I must find words to describe it that will create such an aching longing in a reader, that they will choke up and weep. And if I despise a thing I must find words to create such contempt in a reader, that my words will lend themselves as therapy to their own dismay. Is that not what writing should do? Give the reader an earnest emotional jerk?

So now I know what to tell MD. Rather than write anything original she can interpret, recommend, renounce, or criticize the themes, characters, plots (if there is one) in other books. I think I will do the same. We will write volumes of imaginative interpretations –some realized, some disconnected.

And shouldn’t it then happen that our manuscripts will fit the trend, and be caught up, as it were, in the tail-spin draft of the original book. And when our stuff hits the bookshelves, all those rummager-booksters looking for the latest release sanctified by “Oprah” or “The New York Times”, who find the original too expensive, or out-of-stock, will buy our sidewinders. (I’ve unknowingly bought many of those damnable side-offerings myself, and I’m certain you have too).

We will not separate out too many literal quotes from the book. It won’t be necessary and besides that will create too much risk of plagiarism or copyright infringement. But of course, somewhere on those covers of those sweet-smelling releases, still warm from the printing, there will be a visible reference to the original book, a befriending as it were.

Within the laws of freedom of expression, I believe this strategy will work. And although sharing this thought with others may reduce profit from my own book-royalties, I have too few readers to think the market will be instantly flooded. At the same time, I’m willing to share this idea for important reasons that I will ultimately explain.

In the meantime, another blank sheet will soon be full. Just give me a moment while I retrieve that best-seller from behind the dresser where I threw it with such disdain last night. Then watch me rant.
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And now my final thought. You think I tell you all these things as just another tongue-in-cheek exaggerated tirade. But there you are wrong. The fact that I shared this revelation with you should make you aware there is something more to what I have just said.

And the ‘more’ there is, in the telling of this, is that I hope to create a solid revolutionary movement – a clan and cult of artful word-lovers. I know from reading your blogs that most of you agree that it is time to take back ‘the literature’ – to return it to its rightful place. Because you know, as I also do, that good literature is closer to extinction than clean water, unsullied landscapes, or chemical-free habitats in our physical world.

Besides, the water, air, etc. are in good hands. Al Gore is looking after that. Meanwhile it is up to us, the wanna-be Shakespeares’, Chaucers’, Austens’ and Brontes’ to write with might so we can take back the words, the phrasing, the emotion, and the pleasantness of a really good read.

Writer’s, fight and unite!
Blank pages are no longer in vogue!

Word-Huggers, Write & Unite - 1.

How do I write? Let me count the ways?

Oh Yeh! Oh sure! Here it is again. Like so many days. That blank page staring at me, ogling me as it were with its featureless, expressionless, poker-faced, sterile-inducing stare. Insisting I must write and it will be so inexcusable if I don’t.

But what? What will I write?

And so with mind as blank as the page confronting me, I review those propositions that induce others to write.

There are the literary rules of the basic approach. That starts with an outline followed by elaboration in each paragraph. Wonderful in theory: but for me, it never works.

I can only write the paper first and create the outline later. Cause, honest to God, when I try to do the outline first, I lose the conviction needed to write the paper and completely forget what I originally (and cleverly) planned to say for the sake of emotional impact.

Of course, I never let my language-arts teachers know that the writing preceded the outline. There was no point because all of my teachers were too entrenched in the ‘proper way of doing it’ to accept that some writers are too endowed with creativity and imagination to write emotionless stuff.

So now, for the sake of clarity, please allow me to call myself “a writer”. And so, my theory is, if writers don’t laugh or weep while doing the writing or a reading review, neither will anyone else. So if there are anomalies to be considered, that is the kind of anomaly I am.

I have not the ability to simply write a paper that adheres to literary mechanics for the sake of nothing more than a passing grade or another blog posting. That would produce something frightfully foul-written. Writing so foul-written that I promise you it would pain both writer and reader’s artful senses as deeply as auditory senses ripped by a three-hour-violin-solo with a resin-less bow.

But sometimes without an internal level of emotion to work with, writers still need to write. On those days, when shallow convictions are all one has to work with, I pretend I am having coffee with a guest as blank and staring and faceless as a fresh sheet of paper. And as we converse, with he or she being so shy, quiet, and introverted, I convert to paper what is said. The finished work sounds like ‘sermonizing’ and I guess it is, having flowed from a rather one-sided conversation.

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But now I have a totally new writing mandate/prompt that I will tell you about in my next post.

Nibbling Mushrooms

I don’t know how old I was when I first read ‘Alice in Wonderland’ but I do know it was only a very few chapters later, when I decided it was a truly silly book. It was too much fiction. Radical fiction. There was just too much nibbling, growing, shrinking, and magical change of venue without adequate movement or explanation.

But then, just the other day, I recalled some rather delightful poetry and word-plays in the book, and the story-teller, word-lover side of me prompted me to re-read the book. It occurred to me that obviously in that first reading, I must have missed something critical, because surely with the staying power of the story over so many years, there must be gems hidden there that sailed well over my head with my first reading.

And so, once again, so many years later, I began re-reading one of the silliest stories I have ever read. And that is when I discovered Marc Edmund Jones’ interpretations of the original book.


The interpretations are wildly imaginative, but imaginative as they are, I find I am in solid agreement with some of the concepts within Marc Jones’ interpretations. And so I want to share with you, extrapolations of what I read.

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A few of us live totally balanced lives. The rest of us have an intelligence and nonsense imbalance in our existence. I know I do, and if you read my blog, you also know I do.

Now Mr. Jones conceptualizes that society assumes that greater intelligence equals super-human entities, and lesser intelligence equals sub-human entities. But with none of us truly aware of who we are and why we are here, or even by what authority we should define 'intelligence', can such an assumption be accurately made? Particularly without the carefully conducted research to prove it is so?

Jones further suggests that we have bought into the assumption of who are the super-humans, because the academics say it is so. That leaves him wondering, in his own peculiar way, and I in my own way, how academics have determined without proper research that they have the best of redeeming qualities for the good-life.

Maybe in the context of life superbly lived and quality attained, simpler minds hold the ultimate redeeming qualities. Perhaps if we nibble on enough mushrooms to grow monstrous in our thinking we might come to a different conclusion. And if we keep on nibbling, perhaps we can expand the growth of our thinking enough to avoid the restrictions of material thinking. And perhaps we can even go beyond that to growth so exaggerated that all we can see is the broader spectrum of cosmic dust, evolution of matter, birth, life, death, and ultimately the affluent anti-matter of decay. Do you think then we might reach quite different conclusions about the ‘quality controls’ of lives well-lived?

It’s rather small thinking, it seems to me, that would have us assume that stuffing one’s head with facts about the earth’s radius, distance from earth to sun, speed of light, and factors of compression and decompression are truly conducive to excellence of life and all the apertures thereof. Particularly if the fact is that the excellence of quality we are discussing is more dependent on the simplicity of the beauty of a bird song, a sunset, or a stretch of sand and ocean.

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More discussion later? Shall we?

Fresh Air and Sunshine

How much is too much fresh air and sunshine (FA&S)? At what level does it exceed the saturation point? Surely all things, including FA&S, for the sake of a reasonably balanced existence, should be done in moderation.

But my life has been one of excess. With all the times, as a child, that I was kicked out of classroom or house for FA&S, I think I’ve had my quota.

I still remember being shooed out of the school during recess or noon hour for FA&S. But even more vividly, I remember the emotional feeling of ultimate and indescribable rejection that this act produced. It reminded me, at a point when I was just starting to feel a calming security in place and time, that my school was not ‘my school’, my classroom was not ‘my classroom’ and my desk was not ‘my desk’. A sensation that left me feeling weakened and undermined.

And, at home, the same story. So many times, when the house felt warm, comfortable, and cozy; in fact most often when floors were fresh-waxed and the house smelled of lemon-oil and baking. And when all I wanted to do was curl up with a good book in a comfy chair, and revel in it all—my Mother would eject me from the house. On with mitts and toque and coat to get outside for some damnable FA&S.

And then later, when I eventually married, now I had to contend with Hub. He, too, was forever at it. Winter, or summer.

“Roberta, you need more FA&S. If I was pale of countenance, that’s what I needed. If I was tired or weak-kneed, that’s what I needed. If I was impatient, that’s what I needed. And even when I was too silly, too carefree, that was still what I needed.

So year in, and year out, I’ve heard it spring, fall, summer, and winter. The damnable push from almost every living contact in my life for more FA&S.

Still, I’ve remained quiet and good-natured (and obliging as well) about it. But this week was too much. My good nature had a melt down.

Earlier this week a neighbor came for coffee. And didn’t he have the audacity to tell me I need more FA&S? I bit my lip but that is when the melt-down began.

And then two days later, another neighbor, began ranting like a lunatic about warm temps and sunshine, and having finished her lengthy prelude, wound it up by saying to me, “Roberta, aren’t go going outside today to get some FA&S?”

That’s when the complete melt-down happened.

“Yes,” I said, “I am going to do that. But I’m also going to put a clothespin on my nose, and a dark tarp on my head, because although I enjoy being outside, the very last thing I need is more FA&S!”

March ids, Ides, Odes, & Hares

March, I do hope you will leave soon. I know you think you’re pretty damn popular sporting the first day of Spring – that priceless accessory that we all so ardently pray and long for. But you, March, might as well know how I really feel about you. I’ve held back way too long. To begin with you are not popular. I disdain the sight of you and so do most of my friends.

You think history has ingratiated you with glory of id, and ides, and odes, but that is a bunch of malarky. You have been too ugly, too often, for any of us to ever again see any appeal in your nature and manner.

Too often we’ve been bewitched by the mirages you flutter on the distant landscape of crocus buds and silky green fronds, only to find it nothing more than a false display. Yet, believing it might be true, when we rush to your sunny and shimmering display, you whip about and wield another incoming surf of winter horrors upon us compacted fifty-fold.

I try to make room, excuses as it were, for those who have your kind of deficiency. But there have been too many Marches like this in my lifetime to continue to be so forgiving. For me you have crossed the line. I’m ripping you right out of the calendar and I don’t want to ever see you again.

If you are so popular as you think, how come there is so little prose or poetry dedicated to your honor? No odes or eulogies glorifying your kindness or charitable nature. No March-Day trees, no 1st of March parades, no March balloon and fireworks celebrations, and no March 21st carols or hymns of joy. But then, I guess the truth is, March gets what March deserves.

You are mad, mad, totally mad. The pre-cursor of one figurative individual – The March Hare. Even he was a nice sophisticated little fellow with a gold watch and distinguished manners until you showed up at Alice and Company’s tea party and drove him and all the other guests to such distraction that they were soon speaking utter nonsense. And amusing themselves by trying to shove a helpless little dormouse into a tea-pot. If it had been me I’d have tarred you in the treacle pot, rolled you in feathers, and sent you on your way.

And on top of that you pretend that if you come in like a lion, you will leave as a lamb. That’s just more of your bloody nonsense. The antithesis of the lion and the lamb has nothing to your entry and departure. It has only to do with your inconsistency, willful confusion, and utter madness for the entire month, from start to finish. You do the lion and lamb thing every day for the 31 days of March with even the first day of Spring treated in that same sacrilegious manner.

This year you rained down sadness and grief that was way beyond reason. When your plans failed – the plans you made to spear individuals from overhead with those sharp silvery daggers that you precariously hung from every suspended-over-head plane, you still remained bent on causing the extreme of heartache and confusion and madness that you take such delight in.

When Shakespeare said, “Beware the Ides of March”, I’m quite certain he would have said more, but you are too ugly to fit into sophisticated prose or poetry or pentameter. ‘Ides’ is pluralized, while one day – the 15th, is singular. So seems something has been lost in the translation. Knowing you as I do, ‘Ides’ refers to more than one day. It refers to any March day, hour, minute, or any other fuzzy or foggy prospect of time between midnight on the last day of February and midnight on March 31st.

Weeks of your craziness have come and gone, but you are not done yet. I still hear in the barren branches outside my window, the evil cackling craziness of your wind song. Funereal with pitchy, screaming, notes that drive me to cover my head with blankets to muffle the sound.

Physically, you are a drag. No, not just a drag, a true hardship. And mentally, you are a lethal dose to counteract the gentlest of positive emotions. You grind optimism into icy patches under drain pipes, and buffet good cheer with gales of chilly rejection.

I cannot say it enough.

“Be off with you, March before I kick your id, and ides, and odes, and callus a-- into the middle of the next century!”

An Exercise in Exercise

I’m so fed up with the constant drone of the message of good health through regular exercise. It’s a theory I remain skeptical about. And with my love of freedom, I have objections to an oppressive exercise regime that forces me to hand over lengthy irretrievable chunks of my lifetime to the most undesirable of activities.

‘Living longer and stronger’ is a questionable theory at best, if one considers the balance of input and output. It seems likely to me that if the accumulated drill time were mathematically tallied and subtracted from a fixed lifetime, the remaining ‘living time’ is more likely to be less than the foreshortened life of a couch-potato.

If quality of life means anything, wouldn’t it be better if more time could be carved out of a yet-undetermined-life-span for more pleasant indulgences? Like a cozy nap, a good book, idle thoughts, twiddling my thumbs, or basking in the sun? Shouldn’t I give preeminence to that, rather than to ripping great raw and ritual chunks of my one and only life-span to the long walk, the long jog, the long drill, and the long grind at the gym with tread-mill and bench-press?

I’ve often contemplated this kind of debate about gain or loss. But now I can finally sit up, clap my hands with glee, and wiggle my toes with delight. My good cheer today is a consequence of a report on Health News that the latest study has proven that compressed exercise can be every bit as beneficial as the extended sessions previously recommended.

So how elated was I to find that this new study suggests that equal benefits can be achieved with only 3 minutes of brisk exercise twice a week? How sweet to know that there is a way to sidestep the time-consuming exercises of the past that gluttonously devoured huge blocks of valuable and irreplaceable present-time existence.

The one drawback is that with the new condensed approach to exercise, there is a warning. The warning is that very few individuals will have sufficient zeal to get blood vessels flowing and heart pumping with the vigor needed to achieve the desired effect.

Still, it’s a warning that doesn’t apply to me. I examined my life style and found I fully meet the strait-laced and unbending requirements of the 3-minute program. I have vigor. I have zeal. In fact my routines go far beyond that requirement.

So now let me tell you how my personal program works.

Starting first thing every day there is the intense frolic of pulling myself out of bed including the repeated rocking to get a leg on the floor and my body off the bed. And then, combined with that, the effort to recover a wayward sock that slithered under the bed. An effort with such extreme stretch and intensity it gridlocks my neck in the search (oh pain!), but eventually the sock is retrieved. But now my bones are locked in a low crawl position and upright stance can only be achieved with as much effort as it would take a walrus to scale a telephone pole.

And so, when I eventually right myself, we move on to calisthenics with even greater intensity. Now, rather than sitting on the bed or bracing myself against wall, bed, or dresser, as I used to do, I dress free-standing in the middle of the room. Obviously dressing from the waist down is most challenging – i.e. underpants, socks, jeans—but I keep my balance, on one leg at a time, with a fast flailing dance imitative in every respect of keeping one’s balance in a slip-dance on keen ice. It can’t get more intense than that.

So you see, I haven’t even had morning coffee yet, but my exercise program is vigorous enough that I can cancel, guilt-free, gym visits or road jogs. The process may have swiped 20 minutes from my free-living time, rather than the optimum 3 minutes, but at the same time, I am well-ahead of the exercise game for this week, this month, this year.

And yes, I am exhausted and as breathless as I should be. All my muscles have been stretched, all blood-paths rushed, heart palpitated, and all cells oxygenated. And now I’m so ready for the couch.

An Open Letter to Anti-Bloggers

Dear Anti-Blogger,

March 17 is my 6-year Bloggiversary and with that I decided it was time to let you know how things stand with me.

I guess my first mistake was when I admitted that I blog. You said, “Get a life. Get out of the house. Make some new friends, find some new contacts, or join a club.”

“Come with me,” you said, but what you didn’t say (but still I knew), was you wanted me to compulsively, and almost daily embed myself in clusters of animated individuals.”

And I imagined you might be right. So for three weeks I engaged in dinners, dancing, and your other social events with their ribald conversations and compulsory social rites that accompany the ornamental membership that insulates your life from mine.

Together we whirled and twirled. Out and about. But despite the excellent food, the delightful bouquet of the wine, the brocade cloth, set against symphonic background music, and tables set with fork number one, and fork number two, and fork number three, all seem linked to a gloomy insincerity. I mean, maybe it’s just me, but I find it just a bit unsettling when forks have to line up and vie for time and an appointment?

I find that somewhat representative of the mockery of real life – where society is so bent on individual rights in a world of cloned disposition, designation, and duplication. Despite these thoughts, I remained silent. I promised myself I would not wound your intentions, though you didn’t hesitate to wound mine.

“It’s an ego-thing,” you said, “that blogging business. Like busking on the corner. ‘Look at me! I’m here! Listen to my song and dance and then drop a comment or two into the bucket.’ ”

Okay, okay. I can’t deny that, because that part of it, I’m not too sure about. Maybe that is the case.

But there is more, and for me to explain to you would be asking you to recognize the improbable. How can I defend my position by saying that here I form alliances with individuals for whom I have immense fondness? If I said that, you would laugh, roll your eyes, and say that I either lie or exaggerate.

How can I expect you to absorb my conviction that there is preciseness to be found in my Blog-World of totally diverse, yet collective intelligence? And brightness to each day gleaned from complexity made simple and simplicity made complex?

That here I see stunning world champions of Beauty and Brawn embellished with nothing more than the glow of ideas. Or sincerity in oblique convictions cast from another side of the seas of life. Though separated by vast geographical distances, we express closeted thoughts and analyze only those bits of interchange conveyed by words. But as limited as our exchange is, it is enough to know who is of sound judgment, sweet heart, and sober thought.

Relationships here are not based on superficial visual-perceptions of worthiness that trick us into forming new relationships that progress at such a reckless pace. Relationships formed in one day, fast-ripening by next week, and showing bits of rot and deterioration in three months.

Bloggers form alliances at a much slower rate. But in the end they are relationships that cause us to be touched, ambitious, and mindful of each other in special ways. I know you can’t understand it, but in the end we are linked as soundly by mirror-matter of the soul as gregarious and indiscriminate individuals in real life are linked by hot-spots of the flesh.

So frolic in your pulsing, steaming, social immersions of breath and body, while I frolic with equal delight with dear friends in the rapid transit of word, and phrase—essay, poetry, and composition—letters, quotes, punctuation.

(Written in honor of Blogger Friends who visit, cheer, and comment-comfort me.)

Another Stimulus Package

The only thing missing amidst all the bickering about an economic stimulus package is creative thinking and common sense. So I will give you the ‘creative thinking’ and leave the ‘common sense’ to someone else.

Now first of all the carry on makes me wonder if Canada and America have never known hard times in the past. But I know better. There were the dirty thirties (which I missed out on) but times were tough when I was a kid as well. And one could hardly call the two large cartons of tinned meat of questionable origin that the government handed out a stimulus package. Still it was much appreciated and as we ate sandwiches we had time to ponder how to salvage the house my Dad built after the fire, from foreclosure.

We attacked the problem by ‘clustering or bunching up’. That, of course, was before privacy became a big deal and cocooning came into vogue. And before lawmaking erupted from government hill like an overactive volcano, melting and crushing the natural God-given empowerment of mankind’s own initiative and instinct to survive.

So long ago, before government legislation forgave us any responsibility for our own difficulties, homeowners falling behind on mortgages, cleared out the small space under their stairwell, where they installed a cot and advertised for a boarder. Others cleaned out basements or attics and rented them out.

This was the initiative of so many for a solution during depressed times. But you see, this was a time when more thought was given to practical needs that the thought of privacy. This was not a time of luxuries. Luxuries were not in season. And privacy was a luxury.

Returning to my father’s situation, he decided he would find a renter. And that is exactly what he did. He cleared out a corner upstairs in the boys’ attic-room and an old fellow who needed a place to live, moved in. Later, when the old guy died or moved out (can’t remember now), and the elder boys went to work, my father partitioned a corner of the living room for the youngest boy’s bedroom and made an upstairs suite that my eldest sister and her family occupied. Our living space was reduced and some of these quarters were quite cramped but the bit of rent was enough of an added ‘stimulus’ to keep afloat.

Others of our country-neighbors created small additions to house elderly parents, not so much to prevent the pains of separation, but because the small pensions their elders received served in like manner to stimulate their household economy.

Even before Hub and I owned a home and lived in rental quarters we often ended up with boarders of our own bunking on the couch. The sub-letting gave us a few more dollars that were sorely needed. And yes, there were annoyances and grievances that occasionally stemmed from this kind of clustering, but if nothing else, it was a great lesson in patience and tolerance.

So now I shake my head in dismay at stimulus packages being handed out so two people can retain a house with enough space and enough rooms to easily accommodate 30 people. In my math books, 30 (no. of people) x $1000 (conservative rent) = a monthly stimulus/mortgage assist of $30,000.

Unfortunately, although this looks so good on paper, we can’t go back there. Most practical reason we can’t is because legislation prevents home-owners from inspecting renter’s space without permission. And legislation prevents them from evicting the slovenly, dysfunctional, or irresponsible. And legislation defines a thousand other considerations to do with fire escapes, privates entrances, window dimensions, etc. that impedes such considerations.

The despair of it all is that there are virtually no responsibilities left up to the discretion of individuals. No affirmation by government that people are born with a drop of sense. And without that affirmation, is it any wonder individuals and business owners find themselves in Economic Sinkholes?

And so the ‘community cooperation’ that once saved us from ourselves, that kept us in the know as to what others were doing, has been burned on the altar of ‘our right to privacy’. The new order is, ‘I don’t care what others are doing that is cruel, vicious, or evil, as long as what they do does not impact on me and my right to privacy'.

And so suspended in our private space, not only are homes repossessed, but without omnipresent landlords, dysfunctional behavior can easily hide and we are not aware until too late that sickos are putting bodies in freezers and children are missing.

And so, for reasons of privacy protection (with a strong foothold that only continues to strengthen), we can never return to clustering. How can we when we know nothing of the character of people that walk down the front walk every day for years on end?
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In conclusion, I am reminded of a thought expressed by someone, somewhere, that the greenest of green is being able to live with what one has rather than what one wants. That’s how people turned red to green (monetarily, and even environmentally) the last time hard times hit.

Happenings and Consequences

I’ve never given a lot of thought to positive or negative mind control, except for some loosely-knit and conflicting notions in a dusty corner of my mind.

In a bland-thinking way, I’ve always thought that ‘if’ faith-healing happens, a part of that happening is the placebo of positive thought. Yet alternatively (though some doctors are avid proponents of positive thinking), I dispel the belief that patients can fight physical illness with positive thinking. Agreed, it is beneficial, but only as an add-on to medical cures.

Unfortunately, what the doctor-proponents of this belief fail to say is how many of the cases cured by positive thought are psychosomatic, and how many are not. But here the discussion becomes an enigma because patients don’t know, and doctors cannot say with any certainty, which illnesses stem from the mind and which stem from the body. It is no different than the argument about which came first – the chicken, or the egg? Did a distressed mind initially lead to the disease, or did the disease precede the distressed mind?

I’ll agree it is beneficial to be positive but I’m not convinced that one can create an imaginary army of warriors that can fight, without medical assistance, arthritic pain, a killer toothache, stomach flu, or even more serious problems. If that were true, it would make us all way too responsible for how we feel for me to accept it. (Especially since every one else has psychosomatic ailments, but not me!). Besides which, with my wild thinking, the imaginative cure would give me a bloody unfair advantage over others who only deal in reality.

This discussion is going somewhere, I’m just not sure where. But that last thought brings something else to mind that I must tell you. And that is how much I hate that old saying, ‘that everything happens for a reason.’ I just can’t swallow it. Or even understand the reasoning in it. I can accept that ‘some things happen for a reason’ but not ‘everything’.

I have seen too many innocent children and kindly adults go through horrors that are way beyond any reason. Maybe I misinterpret the saying, but to me this phrase, in plainer language, says, ‘Everyone gets what they deserve.’ And if that means bad acts get bad consequences, I’m okay with that, but if it means that bad consequences are a result of reasonable actions because down the road the whole matter will be reversed in a beneficial way, I have a serious problem with that. How much pain must one endure while they are waiting, within a limited lifetime, for the next flip flop?

I don’t know if you can make a bit of sense out of what I just said, but nevertheless we continue.

As for me, I don’t do astrology, and I am not superstitious. Although again, I guess I am – in a bland-thinking sort of way. So often bloggers are in a similar state of yen that I can only chalk up the similarity to the positioning of stars and planets.

Climate can not cause the phenomena, because of the variations throughout the globe. Calendar time has to be dismissed as a possible link if there is no direct influence at the time of a widely celebrated holiday. So what’s left to cause this duplication of mood and thinking, except ocean tides and planets? So I guess, in an oblique way, I do delve in astrology.

And I insist I am not superstitious. I do not walk around ladders, I don’t give black cats a thought or broken mirrors, but I do have an uneasy moment every time I check the calendar and find Friday, the 13th staring me in the face. I don’t become quivery or panicky, but you won’t find me on an airplane, or a long road trip that day, when I have 364 other days to choose from.

Now this prologue, I felt was necessary, before I say what I really wanted to say today which is very brief. I wanted to say it to you yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that. I wanted to say it last week, last month, last year and the year before that. I wanted to say it this morning, this afternoon, this evening. It seems like forever I have felt the retching need to say it like a nasty vomiting urge, but I refused to say it. And I guess, truth is, I couldn’t say it because of positive-thinking reasons, astrological reasons, and superstitious reasons.

I just think by saying it, acknowledging it, I will make it chronic and give it everlasting life. I am leery to say it and that leeriness is somehow tied indirectly to all that I have just told you. To say it erases whatever good comes from positive thinking. To say it is to acknowledge that I am superstitious and have some kind of foolish superstitious-thinking connected to the admission.

But I don’t care. I bloody don’t care. Today I will bloody out with it. I can hold it back no longer. I just can’t.

What I’ve so wanted to tell you is…“I am tired.” Not physically unwell, just really tired.

And if this is happening for a reason, as in ‘everything happens for a reason’, then I have a problem with that as well. The obvious reason is I am getting old. The ‘happening’ is ‘tired’. The ‘reason’ is ‘old’.

So now, for the people that accept this phrase and use this phrase and believe in this phrase, is not your devotion to the phrase connected to a comfort that you draw from it? Is that not true? Well, for me there is nothing comforting about it.

Man, why did I do this? Now tomorrow I’ll be way more tired than I am today.

Discovery No. 2

So now we come to Discovery No. 2.

Now I have two lovely easels and paints in every corner of this house – watercolors, acrylics, water soluble crayons, oils, and I am so ashamed to say, I haven’t touched them for eons. I used to paint with acrylics when the kids were babes but since then I’ve painted nothing except walls and ceilings and window-frames.

It’s been so long but nevertheless I want to paint something really nice without wasting my lovely acrylics and oils. So I guess watercolors are the best thing to use for my halting re-entry into artistic endeavors even though acrylics are the medium I am most comfortable with.

Still, after such a long hiatus, I know there is going to be too much paint wasted in the process so I will reserve my acrylics and oils for the works of perfection that will eventually follow. That does make sense, doesn’t it?

Now my watercolor Guide Book tells me the paper needs to be wet and then stuck taut to a surface so that when it dries it will not wrinkle. That’s very cute, isn’t it? Just how does one stick a sloppy wet piece of paper to anything?

It ain’t gonna’ happen. And in the past, when I’ve tried it, the paper still dried as wrinkled as a fried overshoe. In fact, even in art shows, the experts must be having problems because too often beyond the frame and the glass is a wavy piece of warped paper. The process obviously isn’t working that well for others either.

So we will have to find a new approach.
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And in pondering that new approach, I find myself thinking about the container of bum wipes Eldest Daughter left here last time her and wee Grandson came a callin’.

They are wet. Wet enough for water colors to blend and flow and smudge and make wonderful magical nuances of color that are so unexpected. And I have a strong suspicion that when those bum wipes dry, they will dry flat without taping or pressing or anything else for that matter. So in 2 seconds flat, I paint a test piece.

And Voila! How amazing is that? We have another new discovery!



The painting is no Vincent van Gogh, but still it’s a start.

All I need now is some bigger bum wipes – something like 16 x 34 inches. So I can do a big painting—a painting with undeniable presence.
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Oh how long it takes me to discover these things? And the reason it took me so long is because I was trained to do things the ‘proper way’. In my youth I tried way too hard to do things according to the rules. So many times I could have moved on but I stopped because I felt compelled to do everything the way others did it. You know – the way it is supposed to be done.

But no more! And I love, love, love, this unexpected freedom to do things without the slightest concern about how others do them or if I am doing them right.

Discovery No. 1

This has been a week of discoveries. But rather than rant on much too long, I will simply offer you one at a time. So here is my story of Discovery # 1.

This morning, after breakfast, I was putting photos into albums when I found some old negatives and after hopelessly trying to make out the images stored on them, I headed for the trash can.

“Why should I keep these? Someday soon, very soon, I won’t be able to get reprints even if I want to. In fact, that might be the case, already.”

But, as is so often the case, when I get to the trash can, I am forced to halt and reconsider. Maybe not? So I took the negatives back to the kitchen table and spread them out to consider once more if I should stash them or trash them.

Now it just so happens, that as I contemplated the matter, I remembered a little monocle-mini viewer that is more than 50 years old originally intended for viewing slides without a table-top projector. I dug it out. In the box, along with the viewer, were a few old slides mounted in cardboard, so using one as a template, I made a similar frame that I could insert my negatives into.


Then one at a time, with the viewer held up to a sunny window (no batteries or internal light is this piece of plastic), I inserted my negatives into the viewer.

Now I was able to make out the picture details and found several negatives that I should have copies of, but don’t.

Then I got a notion to take my digital camera and apply the lense of it to the eyepiece of the viewer and see if I could take a picture. The picture was clear, but what good is a picture with inverted colors? But I’ll still not trash those pictures. Instead I transferred my digital recreations of the negatives to a Photo Program on the computer and commanded it to ‘invert’ the image.

Voila! The pictures were instantly transformed into images of quality. I printed them off on glossy photo paper and I was amazed. Indeed I was! How amazing is that? Right here in my own space, I can develop negatives into prints without trays, dark rooms, or whatever kind of slop that photographers use. How great is that?




P.S. I thought Hub's cabin was pretty rustic, but obviously it's pretty posh compared to this one.

Still A Valentine's Hit!

The other day we made a trip even more dreaded, than the dreaded trip to town. We did the long haul. A trip to the city!

Now part of my dismay in making long car trips is the discomfort of sitting on the low seats in the car. My knees and legs cramp, my back aches, my hip complains, and then for days thereafter all these body parts sustain sympathy pains that lead to chronic discomfort for a long time.

But that’s not all. When we hit the road for a long haul, Hub drives at a ruthless speed while I grip the arm-rests in the car, and hang on for dear life. Complaining diplomatically or non-diplomatically is of no help. Hub sets in his mind an agenda of arrival and departure that he MUST meet, or beat (which is even so much better).

But I have discovered one thing. The only cure is distraction. If I can manage to distract him with a provocative story that baits his interest, he eases up on the gas feed.

So on the way to the big city, as we blew in and out of the small communities and towns along the way, I could not help but notice the overflow in shop windows of Valentine goods. Chocolates, flowers, lace hearts, bandit bears, satin negligees, etc. And in shop windows, and on sandwich-boards and bill-boards, bold-lettered reminders for Valentine suppers, dances, and suggestions for honoring the day.

Unable to find subject matter for a story that could grip Hub’s attention, I was close to tears with fear at the incredible speed that we were traveling on the open highway. When the car went into a skid on an icy corner, I felt such panic I was now grasping at straws.

At this point I lightly touched Hub’s arm and said, “Listen to me, Hub. I’m going to only say this once, and you best be paying attention.”

So now I’ve got his attention and quick, quick, I must say something that will distract him from the foot-feed. Then with no forethought, out of my mouth came this clumsy verse:

“You can forget my Birthday,
And I won’t give a twit
You can ignore me at Christmas,
I’ll not get in a snit,
Our Anniversaries - forgotten,
I don’t give a rip,
But Valentine’s Day
I NEED to know…
I’m (still) a HIT!”

That wee bit worked like a magic chant. Hub eased up on the gas immediately.

Suddenly we slowed to a reasonable speed and for once in my lifetime I didn’t have to tell a long story of excitement and daring equal to a Clint Eastwood Movie for him to continue down the road at a slower pace.

As for me, my mind went from terror to relieved confidence in his driving as we continued our trip with him driving like a senior should drive – smoothly, cautiously, carefully – contemplating with fascination, no doubt, the provocation of what I had just said. Road noise diminished and all I could hear now was the slow grate of wheels turning in his head.

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And what did Hub give his Valentine? A pair of lovely new hiking boots! Guess I’m still a HIT!