It's Been Good to Know You

Pete Seeger

May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014

Rest in Peace Pete, 

you gave all you had 

and we took it 

with loving hands. 

    This is a beautiful and fitting song from Pete:

TO MY OLD BROWN EARTH



To my old brown earth


And to my old blue sky


I'll now give these last few molecules of "I."



And you who sing,


And you who stand nearby,


I do charge you not to cry.



Guard well our human chain,


Watch well you keep it strong,


As long as sun will shine.



And this our home,


Keep pure and sweet and green,


For now I'm yours 


And you are also mine.



Words and Music by Pete Seeger (1958)
(c) 

1964 (renewed) by Stormking Music Inc.

Let Me Tell You About Mary …

First thing I have to get out of the way is the terrible stone of guilt in my chest that I let 20 years pass without sending her a letter or calling her on the phone, but I thought she was dead. Ian had dropped by to see her in the early 90's, and had a good catch-up. A few months later I unexpectedly ran into someone from the Valley and asked, "How is Mary?" and was met by, "Oh, didn't you hear? She died in the fall." I was so glad Ian had seen her in the Spring, but a little hole fell out of my heart.

I was 27 when I met her. We were staying in her neighbour's Bev's guesthouse for a few weeks while we looked for a place to live. I went with Bev to take a parcel up the long driveway to Mary's ancient grey farmhouse. Mary came outside, blinking in the winter sun. She was wary of me, a stranger, almost to the point of rudeness. You could tell she was sizing me up, 5' tall, 80 lbs. It was plain I didn't look like much to her.  

The second time we went to her farm, I took my boys. I think she'd called to say the ewes were beginning to lamb, and Bev had asked to see the new lambs. Our youngest was about 16 months old. He was big sturdy boy for his age, with golden ringlets I had not had the heart to cut, olive skin and eyes like chocolate pies. He was wearing a brown snowsuit, with a hood trimmed in fake fur.

We climbed out of the truck, and I got him out of his car seat. He was in my arms, straddling my hip, facing the opposite direction, but he turned at the sound of Mary's voice and reached up to sweep his hood back. She looked at him in utter astonishment for a few seconds then turned without a word and went into the house. When she emerged she was carrying a photo of a toddler, which could have been Zak. She handed me the picture and took the baby from my arms. "That's my son Stephen," she said, "and this one is the living image of him when he was a baby."

That's how our friendship began. We couldn't have been more different, but somehow we just clicked. She was tall, if not six foot, then certainly very close, brawny and muscular. Her skin was dark, her eyes black, her hair dark curls streaked with grey, usually stuffed under a wool cap. Her face was Slavic or Inuit, and there were gaps in her teeth. Her skin was as lined as old leather and I judged her to be 20 years older than she really was.

She'd been widowed young, raised her children and ran the farm her father homesteaded alone, living in the house he'd built when the Columbia Valley was really frontier country. Walking into her house was like walking  60 years into the past. No electricity upstairs, or heat either. Just the big stove in the kitchen and a wood stove in the parlour. The toilet was equipped with a path and had a fine view, seeing as it had no door.

We found a place to live, a few miles down the road, but we had to pick up our mail at the post office, which usually meant a visit with Mary a couple of times a week, and she repaid the visits, as she drove by on her way to town. Mary loved a bargain so she'd shop in both Golden and Invermere. I once pointed out she'd spent $5.00 in gas driving to Golden to save 25 cents on sweet rolls, and she laughed and said, "But it's the thrill of the chase." 

She raised sheep, grazing them in a great swooping meadow below the hill the house sat on. One day we were standing in the yard watching the sheep graze in the meadow below. Suddenly she darted into the house and came out with a 22 rifle. Raising it in one easy motion she fired. I had not seen what she was shooting at but she said with satisfaction, "Got 'im!" Seeing my confusion she asked, "You didn't see that ki-yute in my lambs?"  She walked down the hill into the far corner of the field and returned with a dead coyote. 

She had an old barn with a sagging roofline, and numerous sheds. She had chickens and rabbits, a cat and a dog, a couple of goats, and a fine kitchen garden which had to be double-fenced to keep the rabbits and chickens at bay. She had a little spring that ran a clear stream of water to her cistern and twice a day she'd fill an old stone trough with clear, cold water and wait quietly for all the sheep to drink, explaining that though the stream ran right through their pasture, a sheep won't drink moving water.

She ran a 40 mile trapline on snowshoes through the cold grey shards of the Rockies that tumbled to the back edges of her property. One winter day, as I made an unusually late mail run I decided to make a call on Mary and as I turned toward her drive she staggered near-frozen across the road ahead of me. I pulled into the drive, opened the big pipe iron gate and helped her into the passenger seat.

She was soaked through and too cold to talk. I helped her into the house, started a fire in the stove  and put the kettle on as she shucked off her water-laden parka. I had to take off her boots and her soaked clothes as she was too stiff with cold.  She was too modest to strip in front of me, so I got some towels and while she dried off as best as she could I got her big flannel nightie and woolen housecoat off their hook in the bedroom and some dry socks. She took off her wet underwear from beneath the covering of the housecoat. I towel dried her hair while she drank hot tea.

Finally she was able to tell me that she'd gone to cross the slough by the railroad tracks across the highway, just opposite the driveway, and she'd stepped onto thin ice, had broken through and gone under. Thankfully it was shallow water. By breaking the ice in front of her with the big staff she carried she'd managed to pull herself back onto solid ground and shed her snowshoes. She'd just staggered across the tracks when I pulled out of the parking area at the general store/post office.

The next year at Christmas she gave us six young Rhode Island Red hens to add to our small flock. This was a wonderful gift, because she raised beautiful laying hens which sold at premium prices. Once Spring came they were free to roam, which they did, always coming back to roost in our little barn at night. But one hot summer day when Mary came to see us, we were sitting on the porch enjoying a glass of lemonade when she asked, "How's them chickens doing?"

I told her they were doing great, they'd grown into great fat hens who laid an egg every day. She said, "I want to see them." This didn't seem much of a problem since we could hear them chuckling to themselves as they picked through the leaf litter in the treed slope just above the house. So Mary, Ian, Zak and I went into the woods single file, Mary leading the way, looking for chickens.

Suddenly Mary whirled and ran back towards me, screaming, "Hornets! Hornets!" In her wake was a swarm of small but fierce ground hornets. She had stepped into a nest of the things and they were boiling out of the ground. I yelled at the boys to run, and I ran.

Later we all sat on the porch with clay dug from our creek bed plastered on our numerous hornet stings, a blob of clay here, and a blob there, and another there and another there until we all got the giggles at how silly we all must have looked screaming and running out of the woods like our tails were on fire. 

It was Mary's antiquated gun I borrowed when we had bear trouble, and when rain threatened to get her newly baled hay wet and she couldn't find anyone to help her get it into the barn I spent an afternoon pitching hay bales that weighed almost as much as I did from her old truck into the second floor of her barn. "I wouldn't have believed you could do that," she said afterwards. "That was really something."

And here's what hurts. I was looking for some information about the area where we lived those many years ago, before circumstances pulled us so far away. And I found this. If only I had known.

Why Couldn't I Sleep Through Hell?

When I folded and went to bed at 2:00 am last night, it wasn't to sleep. It wasn't to do the obvious diversionary tactic married couples enjoy on nights when sleep eludes them either, more's the pity. We lay in bed, both trying to find any comfortable position that would allow sleep to arrive.

At some point during the day I'd slipped a rib from both front and back moorings on sternum and spine. I have one especially loosey-goosey rib that likes to travel. Dam* it hurts to breathe, and lying on it is misery. I prop myself with a rolled up towel front and back, to keep the rib from flattening, and every breath from being like a stab in the chest.  

The cats decided it was an ideal time for a round of Gladiators, and I was a launching pad on the chase route. (Right on the rib that was roaming). I got up shortly after 3:00 and took another pain pill, one from Wednesday's allowance. Meanwhile Tony hadn't slept at all, so we both got up and watched a video for a while. I went back to bed shortly before 4:00 and slept intermittently until 5:30 when Tony came to bed and went to sleep. Then we slept until 10:30 this morning.

We've agreed we should have just continued to sleep through the day and gotten up tomorrow. I can only describe today as tourism in Hell. It's been difficult to move. I've had trouble getting in and out of my chair. My muscles, from fingers to the soles of my feet, have been hot and intensely painful. I have been on the edge of tears most of the day.

Because I know that as soon  as I'm better I'll completely forget how much I hurt today and how useless I've been I decided to write it down while I'm still feeling it.

I go to the doctor and when she asks, "How have you been?" I chirp, "Fine, I've been fine!" This means she cut my pain meds by 3/4 on my last visit. On good days, when none of my joints are subluxated, when my scoliosis and neck vertebrae are behaving themselves, when I don't have a migraine, when I've not gone shopping, or vacuumed or cleaned the bathtub, or changed the bed linens, three pain pills a day is enough to let me sleep. On nights when any of the above has occurred three is entirely inadequate. Four, and sometimes five in necessary.  

I had never taken the eight a day I was prescribed by my previous doctor. But cutting my pain pills to three a day has meant I am often unable to sleep until 2:00-3:00 a.m. and I spend my days in enough pain to keep me from functioning even at my normal snail's pace. So now, I have something to go back to before my next appointment, because I have PTSD when it comes to doctors and all I can focus on is getting out of the exam room as quickly as possible.

  

Did I Sleep Through Paris?

It was that kind of day. It was a Tuesday and yet all day long I thought it was Monday. I have no idea where Monday went. Do other people lose entire days without so much as an eye blink?

I only realized it was in fact, Tuesday, when I said to Tony as I put tonight's dinner in the oven at 7:10 that tomorrow night's dinner would have to be earlier since I had arranged to talk to SM on Tuesday at 7:00. He looked at me and said, "This is Tuesday."

Well, if this is Tuesday this would be Paris, and for the life of me I can't see the Eiffel Tower, a corner cafe or anyone who looks like a Vogue model out the window, so he can't be right. SHI&. How do you lose an entire day?

Whatever I did on Monday whipped my butt, and as I write this it's vaguely pulling itself apart from Sunday. I picked up a half a dozen items at Sobey's, got $ from the ATM, washed the bed linens, vacuumed the floors, scrubbed down the bathroom…. Now I'm remembering why I forgot Monday. I'm too tired to remember it!

This flurry of household activity began when a rare energy wave hit me about 10:00 Sunday night. After sitting wobbly-kneed all day my attack suddenly lifted and I flew in and cleaned the kitchen, washed down the cupboard fronts, scrubbed the counters, washed down the table, chairs and hutch, washed the fridge, range hood, stove and dishwasher, wet-dusted all the bookshelves and table surfaces in the living room, and did a load of laundry.

This morning I barely managed to sweep the floors I was so stiff and sore. I have grumped and creaked around all day. But we were both creaky because Tony helped by taking out several loads of garbage, moving furniture so I could vacuum under it, folding clothes and helping make the bed. We had to move some furniture today because we'd bought a new rocker recliner and it was to be delivered on Monday, which got pushed back a day. Maybe that's what had me confused?

 At 11:00 the phone started ringing and rang the entire day. Each time I expected it to be the chair delivery, each time it was either a resident needing help, a sales call, a friend or someone other than the chair man.

Finally at about 1:00 the man with the chair showed up and I am now putting the first of many miles on it. Still, I mustered up the energy to make a fairly complex dinner (for me). It was delicious and we will eat the second half for tomorrow night's dinner. I include the recipe.  

Sweet potato and Black Bean Enchiladas
 Ingredients:

2 cups cooked and mashed sweet potato
1 cup cooked black beans
1 chicken breast, cut into strips and browned in pan, then diced small
1 avocado diced
1 lime
8 corn tortillas (soft)
small amount of oil
1/2 cup Thai Green Chili Curry Sauce
1 tsp Mrs Dash Herb and garlic seasoning
1/4 cup grated cheddar or Jack cheese

Method:
Mix mashed sweet potato and black beans together, cut open lime, squeeze juice into mix, with a spoon scrape out lime pulp and add to mixture, add Mrs Dash's.

Prepare baking pan by spraying with PAM.

In a hot skillet, cook tortillas one at a time in a few drops of oil just until they are heated through and soft. Transfer tortilla to a plate, spoon a heaping tbs of sweet potato and bean mix down the centre of the tortilla, add diced chicken on top.

Spoon 2 tsp Thai chili sauce on top of fillings, roll tortilla up and place in baking dish. When all are done spoon remaining chili sauce over top, then top with grated cheese.

Place in 350 F oven for 35 minutes. Top each enchilada with diced avocado before serving.

It is after 2:00 am, Wednesday. Pain pills are finally kicking in, I am going to bed.

KIVA Loan January 2014

Our first KIVA loan of 2014 goes to The “HIJAS DEL ILLAMPU” (Daughters of Illampu) communal borrowing association which begins its fifth cycle in Bolivia's Pro Mujer (For Women) Microcredit Project, as a part of the Achacachi center.

The group is made up of eight members, led by Soledad, who is the president. Members of the association have various kinds of businesses. Among them are: selling fish, weaving blankets, sewing blouses, selling cheese, selling prepared food and selling fruit.

This loan will benefit all the small businesswomen, including Soledad. She says that this is the first time she has been a member of Pro Mujer. She joined at the invitation of a counselor from the institution who visited her at home and told her about the program.

Soledad has a business selling salchipapa, a dish commonly consumed as street food throughout Latin America. Salchipapas typically consist of thinly sliced pan-fried beef sausage and french fries, with a savory coleslaw on the side. The dish is served with lettuce and tomato, ketchup and mayonnaise and chili peppers. Sometimes a fried egg or cheese is added on top. 

Soledad says that she began her business several years ago when she saw that shoppers in the market had no place to buy lunch. This work allows her to support herself and her son.  But until now she has had little capital and has had to buy her ingredients in the local market, paying retail prices, leaving her with very little profit. Her part of the loan will allow her to increase her profit margin by giving her the capital to buy potatoes and meat from wholesale markets in the city of La Paz. 

You can help a group of hard-working small business women too, simply visit KIVA.org and lend $25.00. It's a wonderful experience. You get monthly reports on your borrowers, and the satisfaction of having reached out and made another person's life a little easier.

*One woman is missing from the photograph because she went to pick up her son at daycare.

Stickin' to Plan

Our meal plan is evolving. It's important for both of us that we don't cut calories too drastically, because in both of us that leads to persistent muscle weakness. But the shopping cart is filled with different things than before.

Though it's costing me in back pain and sleep I am cooking again, rather than buying prepared meals from the deli at Sobey's. The weather has been so terrible Ian has shopped for me the last two times, bless him. I did go to the WalMart for cat food and litter and some canned foods while Ian had the flu. My neighbour and I shared a cab.

But it feels good emotionally to be back at the stove, and we had some tasty meals this past week. I never deep fry anything and I've always been conscious of limiting fat when I cook. So I'm not worrying so much about calories in the food I make as eliminating the cookies, candy, ice cream and chips we were snacking on all too often, plus the high fat dishes I was buying at the deli.

When I can cut down on calories and get in some more healthy vegetables I do. When I made salmon croquettes this past week I substituted lightly cooked and coarsely mashed cauliflower for the one and a half cups of mashed potatoes the recipe calls for. The potato has 171 calories, while the cauliflower has only 42. You couldn't tell the difference in taste or texture.

I haven't gotten on the scales but my clothes are a little looser. For breakfast each day I've been making a smoothie with 3/4 c. of frozen fruit, either pineapple/peach/mango or cherry/blackberry/blueberry, a heaping tbs of 1% cottage cheese or Greek yogurt, and a scoop of protein powder that supplies 30 grams of protein, plus enough water to blend. This makes enough for breakfast and a mid-afternoon snack.

I found a recipe I'm going to try for Tony's breakfast, since he is intolerant of whey. He loves oatmeal and prefers it cold, so I am thinking of making this overnight oatmeal for him. I think I'd make three or four days worth, without any fruit, unless I put raisins in it, and just stir the fruit into one serving the night before.

We had a dinner one night that I didn't have high hopes for, as I sort of improvised on the recipe, but it was absolutely delish and I'll make it again this week. No point in giving you the original recipe, I'll give you the recipe as I made it.

Fish Curry

Ingredients 
• 1 cup baked potato, diced
• 1 1/2 teaspoons coconut oil, divided
• Pam
• 8 ounces basa fillets, patted dry and coarsely chopped
• 1/2 medium red bell pepper, diced plus 1 tbs diced reserved.
• 1/2 medium onion diced
• 1/2 tsp Mrs Dash's Herb and Garlic seasoning
• 3-4 tbs Thai green curry sauce medium heat

Preparation 
1. Spray cold non-stick skillet with PAM, add 1/2 tsp oil, add diced onions, potato and red pepper and cook over medium heat until onions are transparent and potatoes are beginning to brown. Set aside in bowl.

2. Heat 1/2 teaspoon oil in a medium nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add basa and cook, stirring often, until just cooked through and opaque. Discard any liquid in the pan.

3. Return the potato, onions, and red pepper to the pan with the fish, add the Mrs. Dash's and the curry sauce. Cook until combined and heated through.

4. Plate and top with diced red pepper. Salt to taste.

Now, I'm hungry and am going to go find some lunch!

Stopping the Screaming in My Head

"I want to stop the screaming in my head. I want to stop the endless internal monologues that I have to prove to myself that another person's words, or actions towards me, were wrong or baseless. "

I picked those words up from a blog I read on a daily basis, written by a man with a disability who is often frustrated by the treatment he receives from strangers when he's out and about in his wheelchair.

But those words could have been written by you, or me, or by 99% of humanity. It doesn't take a physical disability to spend half the day (or half a life) fretting over what someone said, or didn't say. What they did or didn't do. How we were treated badly. We all know people who can hardly function because they are still fighting battles that ended years, even decades before.

I've heard people say they won't stop being angry at someone because that lets the person who angered them, or hurt them, off the hook. But does that person feel your anger? No. They go about their daily routine oblivious to your feelings.

Lao Tsu said; Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned. When I'm angry I think, 'How long would I hold onto this if it were Lao Tsu's hot coal?" and the answer is not long! I'd be dropping that baby as fast as I could.

*In the Pali language there is a word, khama, (not karma - that's a different thing altogether). Khama means forgiveness, but it also means 'the earth'.  A mind like the earth is nonreactive and calm.

We can cultivate khama. We do not have to react with anger, strike back, or seek revenge when we are angered or hurt. To do so is to grasp the coal of anger and burn ourselves. To retaliate is simply to blow on the coal and make it even hotter.

The next time you can't bear to experience your sadness or anger, your despair or resentment, try look at the uncomfortable feeling as if it were an object: Instead of blaming your anxiety, anger and discomfort on others or on yourself, examine the feeling itself. Where do you feel it? What colour is it? Is it spiky or round? Does it has a flavour, a shape? How large is it? Can you reduce the size of it by directing compassion at it?  

The way you look on those who hurt you or treat you badly today will affect how happy you are in the future. In any encounter, we have a choice: we can strengthen our resentment or our understanding and ultimately our own happiness. Khama doesn't require that we love or even like another person, but forgiving those who harm you, or even people who simply annoy you, releases you from the weight of resentment and lightens your own spirit. Khama is a gift you can give both yourself and those you meet, on your own, without anyone having to know or understand what you’ve done. 


*Based on a teaching by Buddhist monk Thanissaro Bhikkhu
 

Dear Abby

Our cats have been chewing the covers of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra and as a result seem to be experiencing philosophical crisis. We have put the Nietzsche on a higher shelf, but the damage already seems to be done. 

Here Hobbes contemplates his failure to fulfill Nietzsche's directive, "I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?"

 
Smokey, who is not yet an accomplished reader, experiences existential angst while contemplating, "What is the cat to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were cats, and even now, too, man is more cat than any cat."

We are at our wit's end with these cats who want to discuss philosophy at 2:00 am every night. What can we do? Do you have any advice for us?


Concerned Cat Parents

Dear CCP's,  

Cats have short attention spans, except when they don't. They can be obsessive when a felt mouse or philosophical concept promulgated by Nietzsche or Schopenhauer takes their fancy. I suggest leaving something simple-minded for them to chew on, say Fun With Dick and Jane or anything written by Barbara Cartland.

Please God, not the PIG!

It's that time of year. January. Janus, looking both forward and backward. Enough with the looking backward, it is too long a view. I lost another cousin yesterday, and while she had a strong faith and her life ended in grace, peacefully, with her loving family around her, it's still a loss. We'd had a good deal of fun together, tracking down genealogical connections, and she's going to be missed. But the only way through grief is to feel it, let it have its turn, let it rise (as it does) and fall, in its waves. Bit by bit it sifts through the sieve of time and settles into the sands of what was then.

And so we look forward. My sweet husband has had a colourful week. He caught Ian's respiratory bug over Christmas and has wheezed and coughed himself blue since the 27th. He also fell out of bed, again, and is splotched like a pinto pony with huge purple bruises. He didn't have the muscle strength to get up off the floor by himself, and I don't have the strength to lift him. For a while I thought I might have to call for help but with a good deal of maneuvering and my lifting as much as I could we managed to get him where he could pull himself up onto the edge of the bed. 

A scale that weighs in animal units. Please God, not the PIG!

I looked at him, once a slim fellow, now with a decidedly unhealthy "Santa Claus-like" figure, and at my own once svelte form and decided we have to change the way we eat, with the goals of (for him) the equivalent of a two Smokey weight loss and (for me) a Smokey plus a Hobbes weight loss. 

Both of us are basically healthy, no elevated BP,  no cholesterol problems, no heart problems. It's our blooming weak muscles that cause us no end of trouble. So why are we burdening them with all this extra weight? I know we eat because it makes both of us feel better, and we both love sweets, but this is crazy.

I have to get busy and find meals which are quick to prepare, high in protein and low in saturated fats and calories. I figure a plate, 1/2 greens (salad or cooked) 1/4 vegetable and 1/4 protein should do the trick. If I make a stew or crockpot meal I have to follow those guidelines. Smoothies made with fruit, cottage cheese and whey protein make a great breakfast. I'd best buy a food processor. 

I'm not about to post our weights here and shame ourselves. But feel free to wish us luck. 

Welcome, Christmas, Bring Your Cheer

About 6:00 Christmas Eve someone began
pounding on our door, with excited voices punctuating the bouts of pounding. It was the tenants of a unit down the hall. The owner of the unit was there, and I think they were trying to replace the faucet in the bathroom sink, without realizing you have to turn off the water first. Their bathroom faucet had blown off and there was a huge and powerful geyser of water shooting up from it, hitting the ceiling, soaking everything. It had already flooded their unit and water was now flowing into the hallway in waves. 

After a quick look I rushed back, grabbed all my big ugly towels and threw them into the rapidly spreading flood in the hallway. I tried to tell them how to turn the water off but none of them speaks English very well, plus they were all panicked, soaking wet and shivering with cold. None of them understood. They are very nice but strictly observant Muslims and they didn't want me to come inside their unit and show them where the turn off was. I was beginning to panic at the volume of water gushing into the hallway when a neighbour who speaks Arabic came out and told them how to turn the water off.

Once the water was off I came home and called our management company, and got an answering service. They offered to call the building's contract plumber, whose regular call-out fee is $300, and on Christmas Eve turned out the be $500, plus time spent and supplies. I asked the unit's owner if he had insurance and he said no, and neither did his tenants. The owner of the unit wanted to see if he could find a less expensive plumber, and while he was doing that I ran around the building trying to find another condo board member who might help me decide what to do, but no one was home.

The immediate issue was picking up the water so a neighbour brought out more towels. She and I started sopping up water with the towels and wringing the water into a bucket she'd brought out. The three men in the unit were no help at all. I asked them to help by by wringing out some of the towels into the tub and bring them back to pick up more water, but they had not a clue what I meant. They would take the towels, put them in the tub and bring them back out as wet as they were to start with. Finally, though her husband told her to stay inside, the young wife came out to help wring towels.

A trip to the first floor showed me that the water had reached there, there was a large puddle growing in front of the corresponding unit. I knocked and the owner came to the door, letting all three of his dogs into the hallway. He checked, and thankfully there was no water inside. But we had to chase the dogs down.

I called the answering service again and told them we needed the restoration crew to take care of the water issue, because if the carpets, underlay and baseboards are left wet they quickly develop black mold. We have had this happen in the last three or four months, and it's while it's relatively inexpensive to prevent a mold problem it's very expensive to fix it once it develops.

The owner of the unit then lit into me, saying we should have a building manager here 24/7, since I know nothing and am useless. And he said the condo board should go to everyone's unit and show them where the water shut off is.  He felt it was not necessary to dry the carpet and he insisted if I had it done the condo corporation would have to pay for it, because the hall was common property, and what does he pay condo fees for anyway? I told him that was not how it works. He got the carpet wet, he pays to have it dried.

When the restoration company arrived I absented myself from the scene. By that point I was so tuckered by all the walking and towel wringing and his griping I'd had enough. I saw this morning that the Restoration company had torn off the baseboards and set up a high velocity fan adjacent to his door to dry the carpet. I don't know what they did downstairs, I haven't had the energy to go look. 

I woke up with every bone in a different spot than it should have been, and I have been in pain all day. But after dinner tonight Ian did a great job readjusting my ribs and neck and I'm loaded with pain pills and muscle relaxants. I should probably just take up boozing. 

However, despite being a bunch of semi-cripples we had a wonderful Christmas afternoon. Ian showed up with a bad cough and a fever, and Tony bent over to pick something this morning and fell flat on his face, so we were a matched set of three cripples. (grin) Nonetheless we made a big dent in the delicious dinner Ian and I made, and we gobbled fancy cheeses and chocolates like a bunch of the wild boar we spent part of the time talking about. We had a great visit, and in the middle young Zak called on FaceTime and we all enjoyed a good hour's conversation with him. 

"Welcome, Christmas, bring your cheer. Cheer to all Whos far and near. Christmas Day is in our grasp so long as we have hands to clasp. Christmas Day will always be just as long as we have we. Welcome Christmas while we stand, heart to heart and hand in hand."

And Christmas Begins

 

The fragrance of roast turkey is floating down the hallway and under the door. People have been coming and going all day, loaded with bags and parcels. Visitors arrive from out of town, carrying suitcases. Others rush to cabs, laden with cases and bags. Balconies are trimmed with colourful lights. Everywhere there is bustle.   

There's a fire crackling in the TV fireplace, and we're as ready as we're going to get. Tony said earlier, explaining something that had upset him yesterday, we have too many sad Christmas memories to be merry. But we can be grateful, and we can be content.

Music is a great pleasure and this is some of the best ever written. If you have time grab your headphones and treat yourself to the reason for the season. Christopher Hogwood conducts the Academy of Ancient Music Choir of Westminster Abbey, organist and director Simon Preston. Singers: Judith Nelson, Emma Kirby, Carolyn Watkinson, Paul Elliot, David Thomas in what has been called the definitive performance of Handel's Messiah. Recorded in 1982, I literally wore out my two disc set LP recording of this performance.

Four Days and Cookin'

The question of "What do we eat on Christmas Day this year?" was settled a couple of weeks ago. Participants at the feast are these three; King of the household, Yours Truly; (aka Queen of the household) and the elder Prince, pictured here on his second Christmas with his favourite gift, a push-duck. We lived in San Diego at the time, hence the lack of waist-deep snow and parkas.

The menu choices for Christmas Dinner were:
1) Boomer Queen  - a plate of deli meats and cheeses, a fruit tray, and chocolates.

2) Old-School Queen - a turkey roast and sides from our excellent supermarket deli and chocolates.

[Disclaimer: Blogger does not allow me to use accents so I cannot spell the names of the Spanish dishes correctly. Please bear with me as I slaughter the language espanol.]

3) Mamacita Queen with Princely Assistance - homemade tamales with mole negro sauce, cheese enchiladas, pollo espanol, refried beans,  Spanish rice, guacamole and taco chips and chocolates. (You do not need to be psychic to be sensing a chocolate theme!)

And the choice is Window number three! So Ian did a mighty shop, and a second shop to get what he couldn't find at the first two stores. Masa harina appears to be in short supply this year.  And a third shop to get what the mamacita forgot to tell him to buy the first two times.

We have been cooking in bits and fits for days. The chicken is cooked, boned and in the freezer waiting to join its toothsome sauce laden with red peppers, green olives and onions. The tamale filling awaits swaddling in corn flour and parchment jackets. The mole sauce waits in the freezer to join the tamales, the tortillas are at the ready to be lovingly rolled with cheese and salsa. The frijoles have been mooshed and fried and a bag of Texas-grown Jasmine rice will shake hands with tomatoes, garlic, onion and jalapeno peppers on Christmas morning.

I remember a Christmas long ago when I was six or seven when my dad, mother and I bundled into a 1949 green Plymouth and drove across three states, all day, all night, to share such a feast with my older brother and his family, who'd driven from the other direction to meet us. I remember nothing about presents that Christmas, but I remember the food and the tight embrace of my brother's arms when I crawled out of the back seat of the car. The adults talked long into the night in a crowded motel room while trucks roared by on the highway, their lights sliding across the back wall filtered through the thin curtains. 

Not having our younger Prince here takes some of the shine off the day, but he will surely have a lovely day with his wife and friends, and some birds fly farther than others, Lord knows I flew far from where I began.  

And back to today, when my household King has apparently exceeded the limits of patience of the password server at Google once too often with his inability to recall his password from one day to the next. Just now, when he poked the "forgot password" link, Google came back with, "Try to remember your password!" When he couldn't it told him to "Write down a hint this time" before allowing him to enter a new password.  It seems that at least one Google server has gotten a personality for Christmas, and it's either his mother's (or mine).  God bless us every one.    

Merry Christmas to Us and Filemon!

This handsome young man is Filemon, a dairy farmer in Tanzania, the recipient of our KIVA loan this month. He is always looking for ways to increase the value of his products and reduce his operational costs.

For example his cows produce enough milk for starting a small yogurt and cheese business, and he would like to expand into yogurt and cheese production but he can't consider these options due to the high cost of energy.

The TAHUDE Foundation biodigester initiative helps farmers like Filemon to build and install a biodigester which generates clean-burning, renewable biogas from the manure their cows produce. A biodigester would provide the energy Filemon needs to allow him to add cheese and yogurt production to his dairy business and increase his income. Moreover, he could use the fertilizer generated by the system, allowing him to save on fertilizer costs.

The potential benefits offered by a biodigester impressed Filemon so much that he has decided not only to build one for himself but to build four more for his neighbors under the agreement that they will pay him little by little under the supervision of TAHUDE Foundation Microcredit. TAHUDE Foundation is grateful and appreciates his enthusiasm. His success will impact not only his family and parents, but will also help his community at large.

With the installation of biogas at his home and around his neighbors' circle, Filemon and his neighbors will be able to generate biogas from the manure their cows produce, allowing them to decrease energy costs while providing clean biogas to use for household cooking and processing of their farm products.

Biodigesters can have a significant impact on the environment, and on the health and burden of work which falls mainly on the women and girls. Women must gather firewood, often walking miles to do so, and carry the heavy loads home on their backs. Deforestation, erosion and desertification are all serious consequences of relying on wood in open cookstoves. The second major benefit to women of biogas is that it eliminates the smoke produced by cooking fires which leads to serious lung problems in women and children.

Our small loan in this case will help not just Filemon and his family build a biodigester for their farm and home, but enables him to help four other families as well. And that is our Christmas gift to ourselves.

Seven Days to Christmas

Not My Tree

And you should see my decorations. I plugged in the red and white "grape and vine" LED lights that I zip-tied to the balcony railing oh… 18 months ago.

Because the ADHD kitten is aka "Hobbes the Ripper" there is no tree this year. I bought a plastic peel-off the backing stick-on tree, about three feet tall, with stick-on ornaments. I planned to put it on the glass patio door. This plan changed when, as soon as I stuck the tree to the glass Hobbes reached out and began scratching a hole in the tree and peeled an ornament off. Okay, scooch the cat tree back from the window a couple of feet so the little monster can't reach the glass. 

He then jumped down, stood on the floor, stretched his long self up the glass of the patio door and started scratching at the base of the tree. I sighed, peeled the tree off and repositioned it above his reach. Hooray! Decor complete.

Christmas shopping? None probably except for food. We are so content with what we have, we can't think of anything we want or need. The things I love about Christmas are the music and spending time with my family. Our older son will come and we will cook dinner together. 

So, aside from cooking Christmas dinner and sending my e-cards my Christmas preparations are done and dusted.  No stress at all.

Not Necessarily So

Sometimes it takes a while to figure things out, and then you need to work on a solution.  The Buddha said, "All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else."

In this case I have a combination of factors which lead to prolonged severe migraines. The "answer" is a combination of medications which have several undesirable side effects, the worst of which is apathy. I don't care if I eat, take care of myself or do anything but sit in my chair and stare with unseeing eyes at a computer screen. 

My choices are to live with a daily migraine, nauseated, unable to endure light, noise or movement, or to take medications which reduce the pain by 80% but leave me in my chair unconcerned about life itself.  While I may surface to put laundry in the machine, or look up journal articles for a patient, these are brief moments of arousal from this blanket of darkness.

Zen master Shunryu Suzuki summed up his philosophy with three words: not necessarily so. Suzuki's words suggest to me that my estimation of how much the medication is to blame for my torpor is probably exaggerated. At the bottom of it all I recognize that deep down I'm just angry. I've exchanged one disabling problem for another. I jumped from the frying pan into the fire. I wanted some time without pain, some time when I could do tasks I need or want to do and not have to worry about coping with days of pain and weakness afterwards.

But what it comes down to, in the end, is learning to free myself from anger, at my own body and its limitations. And that is something I can only do moment by moment. 

Goodbye Grandfather, Teacher of us All

Cat Snot and a Stuck Paw

When Hobbes was about three months old

I swear cats are telepathic. I just sat down between chores to write a post about the young Hobbes cat, when Smokey, who is just a smidgen jealous of Hobbes, insisted he wanted in my lap. Tony is sitting in his chair not three feet away, and he is normally Smokey's first choice as cuddler, but he ignored Tony to pat my knee.

I told him; "Go to Daddy."

tony patted his lap and called his floofiness, but smokey was adamant. tony reached over, picked him up and pulled him on his lap. smokey jumped down and came back to me.

when i explained, quite logically, that i wanted to work on my laptop, he said, 'fine,' and vaulted into my lap. typing is slow with 19 lbs of cat sprawled on his back in self-satisfied comfort, lying on my arms. i now pick at the keyboard in my lap with two fingers of one hand. which explains why i have lost capitalization and upper case marks.

he rubbed his nose, looked at me and sneezed, spraying the entire left side of my face with vaporized cat snot. super. am i going to break out in kitten pox?

Ah, I am rescued. Tony went to the kitchen, Smokey rolls out of my lap to follow. My first order of business is a face washing and some eye drops. Cat snot must be a different pH than human skin, because it burns. 

Anyway, I intended to write about Hobbes and got sidetracked by the demands of Smokey. We call Hobbes our ADHD cat. He is all stop or all go. If he's awake he's into something, bouncing off a wall, breaking something, or in trouble. One of his favourite tricks is running full speed across the floor and diving into this plastic wrapped box, propelling it across the floor like a sled. He also hides toys under things and then digs them out again.   

Every time I open the fridge door I have to yell, "NO! Hobbes, do NOT get in the fridge!" This morning I had to pull him out of the fridge, which took some effort because he had a firm grip on a box of mandarins on the bottom shelf. 

Then he threw himself on the floor, fridge door still open, and started feeling around with a paw under the fridge for a felt mouse or a ball or whatever he's poked under there.

I wanted to close the fridge door. "Move Hobbes. C'mon cat!"  Suddenly his eyes grew wide and he yelped, then he started to cry and struggle. His paw was stuck under the fridge. His instinct is to pull. I set the eggs on the counter, cradled his back and pushed his shoulders toward the door, hoping if he's closer he can let go or get unstuck. He can't.

He panicked and started screaming. He threw his little head back and SCREAMED. He thrashed and hissed. I tried to hold him, but he's panicked, and he squirms away. Smokey runs to see what's going on. I asked Tony to put him in our bedroom and close the door. Last thing I need is for Smokey to go after me for hurting his baby.

I reached underneath but can't reach Hobbes' foot. There seem to be small coils underneath and I expect his dew claw is hung in one of them. I have an idea. There's a slender black rod about two feet long he plays with lying a few feet away. I asked Tony to hand it to me.

While Tony cradled Hobbes as close as he could to the fridge, I slide the rod underneath from the front, until I felt his foot. I got the rod under the foot and lifted and the nail came free.

Hobbes pulled back, shaking, and Tony scooped him up for a cuddle.  Okay, enough drama for one day. Oh good grief, he just stole an elastic band and has eaten half of it. Better look that up and see if it's likely to cause medical distress or not…

How to Survive Christmas

1. Realize that there is no "perfect" Christmas.  Perfection is an illusion. You don't have to be happy every minute to enjoy the day.

2. Don't worry about trivialities - spilled juice or a broken dish is a triviality, unless there's a cardiac arrest, broken bones, uncontrollable bleeding or the house is on fire everything else is a triviality.

3. Take the secure thought that the day will work out, even if it doesn't all go according to your carefully laid plans. Don't spend the days/weeks leading up to Christmas dreading what might happen.

4. Buying gifts for every member of a large family can be a financial burden. Drawing names so each child receives one gift is one solution. Adults can combine contributions and give them as a single gift to a charity or cause, or all can contribute to the cost of the meal if the budget is tight.

5. Don't work yourself to a frazzle or exhaust your finances trying to please everyone. If you are expected to host the traditional sit down dinner and it's too much work (or expense) for you, suggest a potluck, buy a prepared turkey roast and sides, or do something different. Since our adult children eat several turkey dinners with friends and neither of us like turkey we have breakfast together, and for the afternoon a cheese and deli meat tray, a fruit salad and several kinds of chocolate which we munch as we visit. 

6. Don't worry that what happened last year will "ruin" Christmas this year.  You can't control how Aunt Mimi, Uncle Frank, or your brother's kids behave. Short of flying dinnerware or firearms just accept that family will be family, and few are perfect. In fact it's a Christmas miracle if no one punches someone elses' lights out in a good many households.

7. The best family gifts are memories. Ask each adult to bring a pleasant memory from a past family gathering, or a loving/funny childhood memory about a grandparent or other family member. Video these to record them for posterity.

8.  Realize that it's not anyone's job to make you happy - at any time. The best antidote for unhappiness is to do something to make someone else happy. If you don't have family or friends to share the holidays with call the Salvation Army a couple of weeks ahead and ask if they could use a volunteer in the kitchen, and go do some good.  Or arrange to volunteer at the Animal Shelter on Christmas day and give a regular volunteer the day off.

9.  Schedule in some quiet time for reflection. One of my most memorable Christmases was one where snow was falling thickly and I walked in 18" deep powder snow under the haloed glow of street lamps to a candle-lit midnight mass in the Anglican Church a block away. Magical.

10. Realize that Christmas is just a day, like any other. Though we have artificially invested it with very high expectations the sun will come up and go down. Whether you are with family or alone, treat yourself kindly.

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others,
even to the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.

 

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; 

many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love; 

for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.
 

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.
 

You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace with your soul.
 

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

          - Max Ehrman (1926)

Remembering JFK: 50 years ago today

The note was delivered from the office. I was pulled from my 12th grade English class to go home and drive my dad to the doctor's office. Dad had been coughing for days, and now he had a high fever. It was a dull grey November day, and he was about as grey as the sky.

I was sitting in the doctor's waiting room, thumbing through an old magazine. In the background music spun from a radio. A news bulletin broke into the music, only half heard, something about a shooting. The music returned, dad came out, there was a brief stop at the pharmacy next door, I dropped him home and headed back to school.

I slid into my seat in my Latin American History class just as the last bill sounded. My classmates seemed much more subdued than usual. None of the usual laughter and talking before our teacher, Charles W. Stevens, began call roll.  Everyone was quiet, somber. 

I turned in my seat to my friend Dusty,  and whispered, "What's going on?"

"Where've you been?" he asked.

"I had to take my dad to the doctor. I've been off campus for two hours."

"Kennedy's been shot," he said. "In Dallas. They've taken him to a hospital. We're waiting to hear how he is." I felt an ice-pick of fear in my heart.

At the front of the room Charles Stevens stepped to the podium. He was a small man about 35 with dancing blue eyes, prematurely bald, a natty dresser. Witty.  I was a history buff and he taught history, so I'd been in one of his classes three of my four years. I was also his Teaching Assistant for two hours a day, marking papers, working on the bulletin boards, teaching freshman history classes. He introduced me to classical music, opera, fine art. He encouraged me to use my mind. I adored him.

But if he called roll that day I do not remember it. If he said anything in the echoing room I do not remember it. We sat in silence with only the thudding of our hearts in our ears and the sounds of 18 high-school seniors and their teacher breathing in and out. Suspended between disbelief and terror. 

Somewhere down the street a siren began to wail. The PA system crackled and the voice of our vice-principle George Berger hunted around for itself before saying, "I regret to inform you that John Fitzgerald Kennedy the President of these United States…" His voice broke and he sobbed the rest.. "…has died as the result of an assassin's bullet in Dallas Texas. Classes are dismissed until further notice."

As he spoke the air was sucked from the room. No one moved. At the front of the room Mr. Stevens was gripping the podium for support, his knuckles blanched. As he heard Mr. Berger's words he went white, his eyes closed, then he flushed a deep red. Behind me several of the girls began to sob.  I felt like I had dropped 50 floors in an elevator, hollow inside, as if my entire being might collapse down that rabbit hole. 

I don't remember leaving class, driving home. I remember that my parents and I were glued to our 18 inch black and white TV for the next several days. The steadying voice of Walter Cronkite walked us through what we could not turn away from, the swearing-in of Lyndon Johnson, looking like a whipped bloodhound with Jackie at his side stunned and bloodied.

Oswald's arrest, and his subsequent shooting by Jack Ruby were a blip in those days. It was JFK who had us transfixed. The multitudes of people waiting in dumb misery to pay their respects, the heart-breaking moment when Jackie, in black veil and dress led Caroline into the Lincoln Room to kneel beside the coffin. The procession down Philadelphia Ave,  the riderless black horse.  John-John's salute as his father's coffin passed. Arlington National Cemetery and the eternal flame.

Two bullets tore the heart from America, and were the pivotal event for a generation. Ask anyone of my generation where they were when John F Kennedy was shot and they will recall it in an instant. Who they were with, how they heard, the taste in their mouth and the pit that dropped out of their stomach.

And it had all begun with such hope;

"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own."

And now I do what I couldn't do then. Weep for a brave and brilliant man's potential cut short. Yes he had many flaws, but his flame, his eternal flame, was his sense of purpose and justice for all Americans.