Random musings.

When I open the single-spaced template in Word, it presents with Calibri eleven-point type. In spite of Calibri’s vaunted ability to save ink, it is a type-face that I do not like. I am not sure why. Maybe because it has less weight than Arial. (It has less weight than Arial.) Maybe just because I have used Arial so often that it is an old and familiar friend. It is easier to read and proof in a familiar font, I find. The other choice is, of course, Times New Roman (Times New Roman), a more ornate but equally familiar type-face. Also easier on ink. In these days of climate change, I guess I should be saving ink.

It seems as if I am saving a lot of stuff. We use as little plastic as we can. That is not easy. I wanted a replacement head for my electric tooth brush on my last shopping trip. The brand I use had three replacement heads stuffed into a clam shell. When I opened the clam shell, each brush had its own plastic wrapper. That is ridiculous! The toilet paper I purchased was also double wrapped, causing me to make a note not to buy that brand again. I lug into the grocery store cloth bags and the flimsy plastic bags that are dispensed in rolls in the vegetable section. But even there you find annoyances such as carrots on styrofoam wrapped in plastic wrap. And a frustrating range of products is only available in plastic containers.

We also recycle. Given that ants love where we live, I carefully wash everything that goes into the recycle in the hope (vain, alas) of discouraging the wretched things. Last year my favourite brand of ant trap was dispensed in plastic instead of metal. This year I am switching brands – if I can find one in metal, that is. We recycle the bags in which the recycle collection is transported to the dump. (No garbage collection out here in the bush.) Our local village has a shop where you can take things to be recycled and, at one dump location, there is a very comprehensive reuse facility where you can drop everything from clothing to books to electronics. And yesterday I saw a neighbour collecting drink cans along the verge of the road. People who do that deserve a lot of praise and thanks.

I note that none of the above has anything to do with the type-faces I set out to write about. Seems I am a bear of little brain tonight. I love the fact that there are so many available in Word. (We will have to see what happens when I transfer this to Blogger.) There are even more available in CorelDRAW, the program I use to make posters and cards and all that sort of thing. Mostly though, the fancy type-faces seem to me to need to be used very sparingly. As headlines, if they are legible or for emphasis. I create custom graphics for people, and recall once being asked to put a whole three paragraph explication into cursive script. I did that, but with reservations and only after trying to talk the client out of it. I wager it was not thoroughly read.

Before I get carried away, I am about to see if this will transfer into Blogger. So far, so good. Blogger itself gives seven choices of body font and a lot more for headings and such. You will never find me far from Arial, however. And no ink was wasted in the formation of this post.

Voiced

The snow is falling outside my office window with conviction. Forecast is a two-day snow blitz that is supposed to leave us with up to 30 cm of nice, new white stuff. (That is just short of 12 inches, American friends). Having received, with some scepticism, this news, I decided to make a run to my shopping town and stock up on groceries, fill a prescription that is due to run out at the end of the week, and generally Get Prepared. After all, Environment Canada is going to be right sooner or later.

I also badly need my untidy mop of hair dealt with.

All this is leading up to the reason for this post.

I phoned the pharmacy and said, as I recall, ‘I would like to get a prescription refill.’  The pharmacist responded by saying that she would pull my file and called me by name as she did so. ‘How did you know who it was?’ said I, in some surprise. ‘I know your voice,’ she responded. Later I phoned the hairdresser to make an appointment. ‘Fine, Mary, I have you booked,’ said the woman on the phone. ‘How did you know who it was?’ I said, rather weakly, I am afraid. ‘You have a very distinctive voice,’ said she.

Yipe.

I guess I had better never try to make an anonymous phone call, hmm?

And, no, I am not going to record anything and put it in here. I may want to call you after all, and surprise you.

Strong

I sent a card off to a woman I know the other day in which I told her that I thought she was ‘a strong person’ and that this trait made me think that her mother had done a good job of raising her.

Off and on since I sent it, I have been thinking about what I said and wondering what, exactly I meant by that. What is a ‘strong’ person anyway? Is it a good thing to be, once you define it? Talk about second guessing yourself. What did she think when she got the note? Was it a good thing to say?

So, a strong person. In my mind, a strong person is one who takes on challenges, whether personal or career related, and makes a good try at them. Maybe succeeds, in whole or in part. Maybe blows it. But, if the latter, gets up and goes at it again. And, whichever has happened, takes on the next one. A strong person is someone who can laugh at themselves*, who can be a rational human being in the face of adversity or prejudice or plain bad luck.

A strong woman can be an adventurer, someone who travels to different places for a job or an exploration. Or she can be the centre of her family, advising, encouraging, managing, supporting. Or she can be a person who learns, researches, finds out and spreads the information. Sometimes she can be more than one of these things at a time… a person who can and does the support and the job and the cause. And makes it all look easy when we know it is anything but.

It's all about picking it up at the balance point, right?

Well, you might say, what about the woman whose mother, or family, was absent or fractured and who has turned out to be a sensitive, talented and loving person anyway. In how much is a strong woman self made? The balance between nature and nurture is a topic that can fascinate. Can a child born with intelligence and talent be wrecked and wretched? Can a baby born with no advantages, or into adversity, be made strong by loving care and attention?

Is happiness relevant, even if the pursuit of it is encouraged?

At this point, I have no idea if I am a strong person myself or not. Or if I should want to be. I am, as we all are, a product of my time and with a genetic make-up inherited from my parents and forebearers**. Neither of these things is something I chose, or could choose, or control. And further, what any of us do with our talents and our teachings is limited by circumstance. Being born in Canada in this century gives a child a lot of different options than being born in, say, Syria. Or even having been born in Canada in 1920, pre antibiotics, pre Charter of Rights, pre plastic wrap.

As I re-read this for the umpteenth time, I noted with amusement that I switched part way from ‘strong person’ to ‘strong woman’. And then switched back. Right. Well, I have never really understood men anyway. In spite of, as all women must, having studied them warily all through a long life. I recall once asking my husband to explain the fascination of noisy, fast, rides – a "Seadoo" in specific, that was shooting back and forth through the wake of a power boat, young man on board. My husband said that the love of noise and speed was a man thing, he thought. And left it at that. There well may be women who love that kind of thing too.

(My long-held belief that there should not be man things and woman things is a topic for another time and place.)

All we can do, I guess, is to do as well as we can on any given day or moment or year. That takes strength. That takes all the strength we can bring to bear.


*Please note that I am, crying to myself, using the politically correct pronoun.
** Spellcheck is rejecting this but it really is a word.

Flotsam and Jetsam

I just looked up that heading in my Oxford Concise Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. It is cited as follows: flotsam. The wreckage of a ship or its cargo found floating in or washed up by the sea (as distinguished from - JETSAM goods or material thrown overboard and washed ashore). Flotsam and jetsam is used generally for useless or discarded objects. The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable is a very useful little book, or it used to be before Google.

Here is what Google gave me for the same phrase.” Flotsam and jetsam. In maritime lingo, flotsam is wreckage or cargo that remains afloat after a ship has sunk, and jetsam is cargo or equipment thrown overboard from a ship in distress. The precise meanings are lost in the common phrase flotsam and jetsam, which describes useless or discarded objects.”  There is also a Wikipedia definition on the same search result that says, in part, “In maritime law, flotsam, jetsam, lagan, and derelict are specific kinds of shipwreck. The words have specific nautical meanings, with legal consequences in the law of admiralty and marine salvage.” If I had not looked it up, I would have misspelled ‘jetsam’.

All this is simply in aid of illustrating that my mind is full of useless facts and bits and pieces. Flotsam and jetsam, in fact. When I was a child and teen, I had close to an eidetic memory, and in consequence I remember, if the recollection is jogged by something, verses to hymns and pop songs from those years. Once started off, words with the melody play over and over in my head. I believe this is often called an ‘earworm’ or ‘Mondegreen’. (See comment below for info on these terms. ) At present there is a verse of a hymn cycling over and over between my too large ears. I hear:

Stand up, stand up for Jesus ye bearers of the cross,

Bring forth his royal banner, we will not suffer loss.

From victory onto victory, his banner it will wave,

Till every foe is vanquished and Christ is lord indeed.

So, now to see how close this is to the actual verse. I do love Google. Here is the verse as written. 

Stand up, stand up for Jesus,

Ye soldiers of the cross;

Lift high his royal banner,

It must not suffer loss.

From victory unto victory

His army shall he lead,

Till every foe is vanquished,

And Christ is Lord indeed.

Since it is unlikely that I have heard this sung since about 1959, I don’t think that is too bad for recall. 

(I will only add that militant Christianity annoys me greatly, contradicting, as it does, the doctrine of gentle Jesus, meek and mild, that I believe is much to be preferred. And, yes, I do recall the story of the money changers in the temple.)

As is not uncommon, I have now strayed far from my original aim in this post. Given all the stuff floating around in my head, it should not be surprising that there is no currant current. Or current currant. What I wanted to comment about was triggered by a post that a blogger I follow with delight put up this morning. He makes a good point, that there is increasing disuse of the simple future in speaking.

Last winter I was coaching a young man, a newly arrived refugee from Syria, in English. I quickly found that introducing him to grammatical English was not as helpful as it would seem it should be. He needed to be able to understand what he heard, as well as to make himself understood, and what he was hearing could be extremely mangled. I could teach simple future tense – I will ride my bicycle to work tomorrow – but what he was likely to hear would be -I’m going to bike to work tomorrow. He said to me plaintively that he could understand what people said directly to him but not what they were saying to one another. It seems that people were taking some care to speak simply to him but were not using the same rules in general among themselves.

Language mutates. Accents shift. Vowels float and twist. New words and expressions are generated by new experience. As in, I googled it. As in our spelling of ‘sweet’ next to Chaucer’s spelling as ‘suete’. To stop this is to emulate the king who tried to command the tide.

Here is another bit of floating nonsense that thinking about this topic just brought to shore.

The grizzly bear whose mighty hug

Was feared by all, is now a rug.

The sword of Charlemagne the just

Is ferric oxide, known as rust.

Great Caesar’s bust is on the shelf

And I don’t feel so well myself.

I must now go and tackle the laundry, to see what use and wearing has inflicted on the garments in the hamper. I hope that writing this has excorcised that damn hymn. But something else will take its place.

Nostalgia Day

When I was a young woman, I wrote letters. My parents lived a day’s drive away and we kept in touch through letters and, usually, a weekly and expensive long-distance phone call. I worked part time but even with small children underfoot I made time to write. I needed the contact and knew that my parents needed the descriptions that kept them abreast of the development of the grandchildren that they deeply loved but all too seldom saw in person.

I wrote. With a pen, usually on notepaper although sometimes on whatever (usually three ring lined binder paper) that came to hand. I took care in the writing, both to keep it neat enough to read (mostly) and to keep the narrative interesting. And positive. In fact, the letters were not unlike the family blogs that many young mothers write now, but without, of course, the photographs. Photos were expensive, especially coloured ones, and were usually taken on ‘occasions’, labelled and sent infrequently.

My mother kept a lot of these letters. Here is a sample, a fairly short and innocuous one. (As I sorted through some of them to choose one to scan, I found far too many with content that should never hit a screen. Of which more later.)

I was sitting at the kitchen table writing this, with the breakfast dishes either pushed aside or stacked in the sink. As of this date the ED, Katie, is 8 going for 9, and the YD, Wendy, is 7 ½. Katie’s hair was copper coloured but her sister was a brunette. Wendy was missing a front tooth.

 

The year prior to this letter we had purchased an 100-acre piece of land, a combination of scrub (logged) bush and overgrown farm fields and built a cabin on it. We spent every weekend there, had snowmobiles and many trails and had equipped the daughters with very good quality winter snow gear. The music lessons were on the piano, a group lesson that was all I felt we could afford (see pricy snow gear above.)

Bugle was our beagle. And the high school teachers were on strike.  

This letter is rather shorter than my usual report to the parents – I guess because I was using note paper. And it is simply a report. In every letter there was a report, but I often wandered off into introspection or comments on the political scene or just plain rambling. Very much like a blog but with a very limited audience.

Just for fun, here is one more page, this one from 1979, the year Canada switched from imperial to metric measurement.

I wrote with a lined sheet underneath the plain one and that is why the writing does not straggle all over the place. Much. And the news is about the ED, who is now on a gymnastics team, having bunged herself up at practice, causing her mother to drive at illegal speeds to the gym, even more illegal speeds to the ER at our local hospital and …wait, with the poor kid writhing in pain, for an interminable time to see a bored intern. This activity was followed by a visit to our family doctor, Dr. Batley, who took the whole thing seriously. It is an indelible memory.

It was amusing to sort through some of these letters … all sorts of things I did not remember, among them one of JG’s relatives being arrested and one of my relatives having a total blow-up with the spouse. Sigh. I know that ‘the’ should have been ‘their’ spouse, but I cannot make myself do it.

These letters all live in file folders in the bottom of my filing cabinet and will, I am sure, annoy my daughters no end when they have to deal with them after I am dead and gone. There is also a fat file with their report cards, articles about them, and all that sort of stuff. Cannot bear not to have it. I take it out and look at it from time to time.

As I am sure my mother did with these.

Somehow this turned into an essay about wood.

January 21st, 2020

So, that was Christmas and I made it through, traditions intact, these including aspic (forgot one ingredient), socks under the tree (one grumbly recipient who got plain ones and wanted silly ones) and aforesaid tree spitting needles as it was dragged across the living room floor and out the door. JG only forgot two gifts that he bought a while back and I did not, as far as I know, forget any. That I have found, that is.  Not bad. Not at all bad. And today I actually went to town and exchanged a Christmas present.

From the website

I think this is the first time I have ever taken back a present. The gift was a sweater chosen by the YD for her father to give me and it was on her advice that I exchanged it. When I tried it on, it was obvious that the style was not for me. I live in hip length cardigans and pullovers and this garment was an asymmetrical open front that hung all wrong at about knee length in front and pulled up at the back. Oh, dear. Anyway, I changed it for a dressing gown, probably the most opulent garment I have ever had … pale pink silky fabric on the outside and white plush on the inside. (The one advertised turned out to be grey – use your imagination). The ratty one that I have been wearing is going into the wash and then into the discard pile. It is not even fit for the rag bag and certainly not to the recycle. Unless someone wants to use it as padding in a quilt.

As for quilts, as the cold weather crept up on us, my husband, for the first time in my memory, complained of not being warm enough at night. I tried various configurations of duvet and blanket on the bed, but nothing seemed to be working. As a last resort we purchased an electric blanket on line. Twenty-four hours later it was delivered to the door. This on-line shopping is not bad, eh, considering that we live at the dead end of three kilometres of bad road. And now we have on the bed a sheet, a quilt, the electric blanket and another light quilt on top. Who needs one of those new, trendy weighted blankets! And JG is warm. Neither of us is tossing or even turning, but we are nice and warm.

Our bedroom is usually cold. We heat, unregenerate Neanderthals that we are, with wood. In really cold weather we run a wood fired, forced air furnace and can heat the whole house (in fact, we can overheat the whole house, depending on what kind of wood we feed into the maw of the furnace). When it is not as cold, or when the electricity might be iffy, we do not gamble on the forced air and turn to wood stoves, of which we have one on each floor. JG’s computer, TV and other toys are downstairs in the same room as the bigger of the two woodstoves. If he stokes it up too much, his room can get very hot. If he doesn’t, the rest of the house doesn’t. Especially our bedroom, at the far end. Four layers of insulation are not too many.

This heating with wood thing consumes a lot of JG’s time and energy. Over time he has taught himself to be able to judge what trees should be encouraged and what trees should be harvested. Since the major ice storm we had in 1998, there are plenty in the later category, and we have 300 acres of land, mostly wooded, from which to chose. The ideal tree, of course, lies close to a trail, will not hit anything good as it is felled, and does not have rot in the wrong spots. It is also nice if it splits well, stacks well and dries well.

After thinking about this last statement for a while, I decided to add a short photo essay on the subject of harvesting wood. Labour-intensive. These photos are all of stove and furnace wood harvesting. We also do improvement cuts in the bush, and that is a story for another day.

 After a windstorm, this tree will become firewood.

Here is another candidate. This was one big maple. Splitting it was hard work, but worth it, because it split nicely.

Below is the harvester, chainsaw roaring, clearing small stuff.

He is well equipped. This is an articulated claw used, as you see, to pick up whole logs.

The red item on the back of the tractor is a winch, used to haul logs out of the bush.

Logs cut up and split, ready to stack in an open area to dry.

Drying.

When the split wood is thoroughly dry, it is moved in stages from the long pile to the ready pile by the "wood door" near the furnace inside. Here is the chain gang moving and stacking.

Just for scale, and because she was so cute. And so sure-footed.

The Christmas Letter 2019 Version

The Christmas Letter, 2019

As usual, I am getting around to the Christmas letter too late, and hindsight is sure to be 2020 on this one

We did not have a great 2019. For one thing, Jim turned 80 and is completely convinced that malignant fate has it in for him. It is taking so much longer to do things than it used to and the floor is so inconveniently far away. He does have the usual multi cord pile of wood at the ready, with a little help from his daughter, but is muttering that we may need to think about a different heat source in future years as it is a [censored] amount of work to amass what is needed.

Note that the help listed is from ‘daughter’ not ‘daughters’. In November of 2018 Wendy left Canada in a swirl of high tension and took up her post as High Commissioner in Pakistan. So fraught was the entry at that time that she had to leave her animal family behind her. She left them here of course. It was not possible to ship them until January of 2019 and at that point a friend (Wendy has wonderful friends) escorted them to Islamabad. There they joined Her Excellency in the official residence

where there is a full time cook, several other staff, flowers in February and six guest bedrooms for Callie to shed fur in. A most impressive place and Wendy is making the most of it. If you Google, put in her name plus Pakistan to see some of what her job entails.

Islamabad (I had to learn all this) is in the north of Pakistan and is a newish city in which the halls of government and most of the embassies sit inside compounds in gated communities. The Canadian High Commission has its own walls and guards inside this area and so there is safe walking and biking. Wendy’s other escape is up into the hills north of the city where a lot of the diplomatic community hike on weekends and she is enjoying this enormously. Her dog’s arthritis prevents her from doing this strenuous stuff, so the dog stays home and goes for gentle walks among the flowers while her mistress gets lost in the rocks.

While we are on the subject of arthritis and gentle walks and all that, my occupation for most of 2019 has been having and recovering from knee surgery. A knee replacement in March was not fun and I have been clawing my way back ever since. Right knee, so I was stuck out here for six weeks unable to drive, doing not much except physio and ended up with a fervent desire never to be cut open again. Medication and aqua-therapy have been my salves and things are improving.

Meanwhile my sweet baby granddaughter turned sixteen and is the proud owner of a fine little red car, courtesy of her doting grandfather. She is doing fine in her Ecole Secondaire, has become a track athlete, working mostly at the sprint distances, is being paid to coach gymnastics and is now taller than her mother. She is also taller than I am and when I told her to quit growing, she told me to quit shrinking. (I did refer to arthritis, I think. My whole spine has become a spiral, sort of.)

Steve finished his stint as Dean in June and is now happily back in the lab as an emeritus prof, having ditched his suits and ties and all that, not to mention the travelling and wining and dining of prospective donors. He did have to haul out a suit for Seb’s wedding …

Tthis is a photo from the day, the groom standing centre with the long hair … and I think Katie prevented him from bundling the whole lot into a donation bin. Katie, as you can see, is not looking her (yikes) fifty-three years and is full steam in her lab, editing a professional journal and making a reputation for herself. They also renovated their kitchen this year, spending a month washing dishes they had to carry down two flights of stairs to the laundry room while the reno crept on. I would not have lasted, but this woman is an iron butterfly.

I can’t remember if I told you about my stint as an ESL teacher. A committee in Perth sponsored five Syrian families and I ended up last fall and winter  taking one of the younger men from two-word sentences to Grade 12 equivalent readiness. He is now planning to requalify as a computer repair person and I am quite proud of him. It kept me hopping. They are all lovely families and they keep having Canadian babies with great gusto.

It is starting to seem like a long drive to Ottawa. But we have friends and fun in Perth, a half hour drive for as long as that distance stays doable. Last Friday we went to a Christmas party put on by a PROBUS club to which Jim belongs. The entertainment was provided by an Elvis impersonator in white satin and blue sequins who came and held my hand while singing a ditty, causing my evil friend to laugh until she cried, I guess at the expression on my face. This group of Jim’s has a lot of dinners and excursions. The next planned is a Robbie Burns Dinner in January, for which I have acquired a Canadian tartan kilt. Perth was settled and is still overloaded with people of Scottish background and I feel the need to make a statement, in among the ladies in arisaids and their family tartan skirts. It is a long time since my last pleated plaid skirt.

The Perth area is also unredeemedly Conservative, a bit of a downer at election time. We had a fine Green Party candidate this last round and he went nowhere, in spite of the best efforts of some of my friends. And yeah, I voted Green. For what good it did. It was a messy election and I confess to not being too enthralled with any of our Parliamentarians’ credentials. Didn’t we used to have better quality people? Some of the time, anyway. Yes, I remember Dief.

I have just spent a horrible day Christmas shopping in Ottawa with nearest and at the moment not dearest. Why is shopping with a man such an exercise in mis-communication, hmm? You would think that after 57 (cripes) years, we would have it worked out. But, no. Oh well. Speaking of Christmas, we have been tasked with The Feast this year. For several years Katie has done it, but somehow the turkey is scheduled to come home to roast in Lanark on the 25^th. This is not so bad, however, as both daughters will, without doubt, end up in the kitchen doing the worst of the work. The joys of competent offspring.

Best and warmest wishes for a fine Yule and even finer New Year.

An Uninspired Post

I made a meatloaf for supper tonight. I once probably had a recipe for this dish … I would bet it was from my mother-in-law. She was a Cook. She could bake anything and have it turn out looking professional. She clipped lots of recipes out of the paper and magazines and tried them out. She could put on a company dinner for a dozen or more people without turning a hair. Our younger daughter takes after her. Skipped a generation, as they say. Aforesaid YD is probably wiping brow as she reads this and rejoicing that she is living on the other side of the world. She did not and does not like meatloaf.

Anyway, what I do is throw ground meat, egg, breadcrumbs and whatever is handy into a bowl, mix it and throw it in the oven for an hour or so. Very forgiving dish. Never twice quite the same. As I glopped the mixture around, I found myself thinking about how many times I had made this dish. Say at least once a month in cold weather – ten times a year. Times the 56 (fifty-six!) years I have been married and responsible for putting supper on the table. That is one hell of a lot of meatloaf. That is one hell of a lot of years of putting supper on the table, for that matter.

It would be easier on me and on my long-suffering husband if I liked to cook. He likes to eat, my husband, and supper is one of the high points of his day. It has to be a set meal with meat and vegetables and salad or greens and a starch, although I have beaten him back to the point where Friday is hamburger day on a regular basis. He also cooks, or, rather, barbeques and so he will often be responsible for the meat portion of the meal. But the planning is my job. I find it a boring one and I do not clip recipes out and try out something new unless pushed to it. Even though I have been given an electric pot and a sous-vide cooker on various occasions. Oh, and a wok. Twice. I am not inspired.

To live is to have to do at least some housework, hmm? Even if you are living on the street with your possessions in a grocery cart, you still have to pick up your bedding and put it in the cart every morning. Most of us do much, much more. There are dust bunnies to be hauled out from under the furniture, fingerprints to remove from vertical surfaces, horizontal surfaces to polish, and all this after you tidy up and put away the huge number of things that get put on them. We all own too much stuff. And we wear too much stuff. I have just finished putting away the summer weight clothes and getting out the winter weight ones and within a few weeks will have to repeat this for winter coats and boots. And all this is just inside. JG spent the afternoon removing leaves from his lawn after first servicing the leaf-removing machine. And this morning he was cleaning furnace pipes.

If I sound cranky about all this, it is not without foundation. I feel cranky. I want to be Lady Mary from Downton Abbey and not, not, complain that I have nothing to do. I would like a maid to keep my clothes in order, a cook and a housekeeper, and maybe even a footman to iron my newspaper. What a strange and wonderful world that was, both for the people above stairs and the minions below. JG and I are re-watching the TV series with a view to remembering who and what it is all about before going to see the film. We enjoyed it the first time and are enjoying it again as we find we have forgotten a lot of the plot and some of the characters.

Easier to deal with than the plot and characters of the election, at that. I still have no idea how I am going to vote. I have never missed voting in an election since I was eligible to do so and am not going to break that streak, but wow, what a lack of viable choice. Well, at least I am not an American. JG is at present watching one of the Democratic debates. He is a braver person than I.
So are you, if you have managed to get this far. There are not even any photos to break up the text. Next time I will post about my flowering cacti, with illustrations, and so you have that to look forward to seeing.

And tomorrow it is back to left-over turkey.

Assessing Mr. Dress-up

It has been more than a little surprising for me to watch the continuing fuss being made over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s appearances in black (and brown) face make-up. Although the community I grew up in and the schools I attended were all “integrated”, I have always been aware that prejudice against Canadians with dark skins exists and is difficult for them. To put it mildly. I have seen and felt that prejudice in action. However, I have also always believed that in Canada there is redress for those whose lives are impacted by such prejudice. There are laws forbidding it.  There is good will and friendship. If I had thought about it, I would have said that appearing as a ‘genie’ at a costume party would not be particularly offensive to anyone. And I would have cited the Liberal party as providing leadership in fighting prejudice.

So, what is with Justin and the multiple appearances in offensive costume?   Why, it appears to me as being the principle question, was this not addressed when he first appeared on the scene as a leadership candidate? I suspect there are two aspects to the omission, if omission it was. One is that the people vetting Trudeau were, like me, smug members of the Anglo-Saxon majority and dismissive of ‘youthful’ peccadillos. Again, as I have been, lacking in awareness of what a big deal anything that looks like political incorrectness has become. And, most important, Trudeau junior just had too many attractive qualities that would allow the Liberal party to do well at election time. The same qualities, in some cases, that lured him into putting the make-up on.

The man has charisma, good looks, polished delivery of platitudes that he obviously seems to believe and a distinguished background as the son of a very clever politician. We watched him grow up. We were moved by his eulogy of his father. He fit into the political world quickly and well. His good looks and athleticism were a fine show of what a Canadian could be, we thought. He is a winner, we all thought. Does it matter that he does not have a resume of increasingly responsible positions in management and government to offer as evidence of his ability to lead? Men with those qualities had not proved out, recently, to be election winners. And in order to govern, hey, first you have to win.

My father’s family was large L Liberal. I grew up both liberal and Liberal. I was proud to be a member of the party that could offer Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau as leaders, backed by talented if unruly cabinets.  But along the way, the large L fell out of my value system. I thought Chretien did a good job, mostly, but his resume was pretty thin. At least, as a career politician, he had held and done well in responsible cabinet posts. So had Paul Martin Jr done well in Finance, but it turned out that he did not have the ability to lead. And it has just gone downhill ever since. We seem to be unable to produce people who have the qualities to do the job and also want the job.

I have heard from more than one source that none of the leaders of the parties in contention in this federal election are appealing candidates. The Conservative Party leader is a colourless man whose speaking style does not inspire. Nor does his party’s platform. The NDP is weak and the Green Party insular; both of them lack any experience in their senior ranks of actual governing and their talking points reflect this. The other choice is Mr. Charm. Mr. Sunny Ways. Mr. Dress-up. He is certainly not colourless. He talks a fine line. In the last election he pulled his party with him to a credible win. It will be interesting to see if he can get past this set of blunders and present himself and his party as a credible choice.

Me, I don’t want to vote for any of them. I will have to look only at the local candidates. And maybe hold my nose.

Don't trip on the eggshells.

It is back to school week, and Facebook is covered with shots of first day outfits and scholars. Posts are appearing from the mothers of kids who have launched, from kindergarten to college/university. At both these ends of the range, the youngest scholar leaves behind an empty space … either a half day with no children at home or a home with no children in residence. An empty nest. But not forgotten. You think and worry and hope – eggshells in the nest.

I have experienced both these vacancies. I still remember launching the YD both into junior kindergarten (she was determined to walk to the school BY HERSELF, Mommy) and driving away from her first-year university residence after she had almost literally shoved me into the car and sent me on my way. The similar launches of older siblings are not quite the same as those moments. The empty house echoes, what to do next becomes a decision rather than a response and you find yourself shopping, cooking and doing the other household chores differently, to name a few changes. And you wait. You wait for the door to slam, the phone to ring, the mailman’s thump (yes, remember snail mail), the in-box to ding. Sometimes the response is not good when it comes, but usually all the worrying you have done was to no purpose and the launch successful. And then you watch them soar, caught between pride and loneliness.

Both of the classic launches are a long way behind me and since then there have been more departures of adult children to jobs in different countries, on different continents, to a different (married, perhaps) life. In all cases, for me, I have been left with some echoes, lots of left -over packing material and, frequently, the contents of a frig, house plants too big to move, or winter gear (not needed in Africa). Once I was left with a house to sell. From time to time I have had a grandchild or dog and cat to mother while their real mothers did something else. And, always, they come back. Not to stay, except for a short time, but for long enough to tell stories of their adventures.

I am an old lady – watching the fledglings flap away happened long ago. But watching the next generation fly is very much with me. And the grandchild is a constant source of wonder and pride. Her wings are growing. Soon she will launch herself. I hope to be there to see it, as my parents and in-laws were there to watch our daughters and savour every moment, good and bad.

Yes, they may land with a thump on their beak the odd time, be forced down into thorny branches, be battered by storm and rain, take the wrong direction for a while. There is no such thing as a perfect life or even perfect safety. Mostly they will manage. Often they will overcome.

 So, mother of a freshman newly installed in a dorm with in-bed computer access, mother of a grade seven dressed in high style for her first day in middle-school, mother of a Grade 3 who got a fine teacher, mother of whomever, relax. You may have egg shells at present, but soon you will hear the whoosh of wings and the stories will start. And you will be proud of their grace and strength both when you welcome them and when they swoop off again.

I have certainly squeezed every nuance possible out of this metaphor. I can almost hear my mother telling me so. Eggshells are fine things on their own.

Meme lifted wholesale from Nance. Thank you!

Today, Mary G Is:

Wearing: a pair of trousers that she bought in Zimbabwe in 1992. "Where did you get those pants*?" queried the Grandkid yesterday (when I also had them on). When I told her, she said "I thought so." The look on her face was hilarious.

Reading: Rereading, in fact. Rosemary Kirstein's Steerswoman series. If she does not get books five and six done soon, I will die without finding out the denouement. Cripes. First argument I have ever seen that makes living into extreme old age palatable.

Working On: Six months worth of backed up sorting, ironing and mending. I blame the knee surgery, but in truth it might have been piled up like that anyway.

Hearing:  Still procrastinating on making an appointment with a hearing aid provider.

Making For Dinner: Leftovers. We had Sunday dinner with the family on Saturday.  Pretty classy leftovers including jumbo shrimp and a fascinating Japanese cheesecake.

Thinking About: The YD who is working her tail off at her job. Not about to ease up anytime soon, either, as I understand it. However, she could take five minutes and send me an update email.

Planning: Spring cleaning. May get this done by Christmas.

* The pants are beige background with burnt umber patches and green animal outlines superimposed. And baggy. Very baggy.