Saint Paul

Recently, a friend opined that it seemed unlikely that I could be as mechanically challenged as I let on. In my head, the full and unspoken text goes thusly: "On the whole, you don't seem completely stupid, so I am at pains to believe that you could possibly be as clueless and unhandy as you claim." I suppose there's a compliment in there somewhere, but the truth is that I am, in point of fact, pretty darned clueless when it comes to things mechanical.

I related to said friend an account of the time when daughter #2 pulled out a sofa bed that she shouldn't have because it was malfunctioning; we had a deuce of a time trying to get it folded back in. At one point, my wife and daughter looked at the mechanism and both deduced that the flangmigoo had to nestled aside the grabinspock in order for the filagromer to slip back into place. You see, they might as well have been uttering those nonsense words, for as I looked at the very same things that they were looking at, I could not make sense of what they were saying.

However, I joined with them in pushing, pulling, heaving, and cajoling in the directions that they indicated, and the mattress magically [to me] slipped back into place. In those moments, it fully dawned on me that I lacked certain perceptive abilities that others take for granted and that I may as well acknowledge such and save myself some frustration in life. I had not understood this truth about myself prior to this incident; it was somewhat of a seminal moment, really.

When I related this and other similar accounts to said friend, he concluded that I might have a touch of dyslexia. I begin to wonder if he isn't correct. For example, I know my directions but typically find myself saying east rather than west. Just the other day, I was on the phone with tech support for my computer. When techno-man instructed me to click the right mouse button, I madly clicked the left. At times I read aloud to my spouse in bed, and if she chances to look over my shoulder at the page, she sometimes sees that I am inventing my own text. The words that I say make sense and are harmonious with the real text, but they aren't always the exact text as written. I tend to reverse words, for example, or even change the syntax of whole sentences. I'm not sure how my brain accomplishes all of this — how it is able make the adjustments necessary to make coherent sentences that carry the story along nicely — but it usually seems to manage. Sometimes I am aware this process transpiring but not always, I'm sure.

High tech apparel can also give me fits. As readers of this blog will know (for I have gone on at great length by times) we purchased bicycles this summer and have been madly pedalling about like frantic fools ever since. My helmet, however, is beyond my comprehension. The other day, I thought that I should tighten it just a tad. I took it off my head, surveyed the various and sundry straps and doodads perplexedly, and put it back on my noggin without the required adjustment. I could have probably sorted it all out in time, but the quantum effort did not seem to be worth it.

I am now in some sort of angst over my new winter coat — excuse me — system. You see it has a liner, umpteen zippers, sundry hooks, and myriad flaps. I asked the salesperson, not altogether jokingly, if they offered a night course on how to wear the coat ... er, ah ... system. My spouse may have to dress me this winter, which makes me wonder how I could possibly reciprocate. Tantalizing possibilities spring to mind.

If this diagnosis [of dyslexia] is correct, I must suffer from only a mild and/or unusual strain of this affliction, as I did not find it difficult to learn to read. In fact, I seem to read rather well — even if I do construct my own stories by times!

Enter Saint Paul. We have a friend who seems to accept my handicap without judgment or condescension, and he frequently and freely does what he can to assist. He has installed lights for us, replaced boards, and done various odd jobs. He does this without expectation of payment or reward beyond the odd pint or two after a job well done.

Saint Paul reads this blog, so I offer it here as a semi-public form of thanks.

It is also his opinion that I should post more photos. This one's for you, Paul — Patron Saint of the Dyslexic.

Our local wetlands on a very windy day  

 

Bean American

As I have stated previously in this space, and I only exaggerate slightly when I say this, I only live a stone's throw away from the good, old US of A. But what a difference a border makes. We speak with different accents and have different words for the same things. For example: Canadians eat chocolate bars, not candy bars; we drink pop, not soda.

When daughter #2 was young, we hosted two American girls from a city not very far from the border. The wee dears were thunderstruck to realize that we buy milk in bags (if we so choose), and when we treated them to our delicious fries at the bridge, they were aghast at the thought of putting vinegar on fries. All in all, they didn't seem to much care for these wonderful fries, probably thinking that they weren't like McDonald's fries. Pity that.

Just the other day, I decided to try a new chili recipe. It was from an American cookbook that is sold ubiquitously here in the Great White North. Consequently, I set out to find three kinds of beans: pinto, great northern, and red kidney. The red kidney beans were tracked easily enough, but I searched in vain for the other two. It was pretty darn exasperating. It is just as well that I walked into the store without much hair because, had I had any, I would have yanked it all out in frustration.

Anyway, after unloading the groceries that I was able to purchase that day, I decided to Google beans. I was thinking that maybe we might call them by different names here. A very unusual thing occurred. I was right! Not that I could find synonyms on the Net, but at least I was able to find photos. Armed with my newly-informed, Google, knowledge, I was able to track down what seem to be the equivalent Canadian versions by trying to match the photos of pinto and great northern beans with pictures on our local cans.

From what I can tell, American pinto beans are romano beans here in Canucklestan. And great northern beans sure look a lot like what passes for white kidney beans here. Regardless, I bought them, cooked them, and results were pretty darn tasty; so even if I was wrong, the recipe turned out right. Bravo for me!

So you see, I don't fully grasp American English. Oh, we are pretty aware up here; we have a basic understanding of most Americanisms because we glue ourselves to American media. But TV programs and movies don't really tell you beans about the important things like … well … like beans.

This type of thing has happened before. Take DUI (driving under the influence) and Q&D (quick and dirty) for example. These little acronyms were simply not part of this poor, dumb Canucklehead's lexicon and required explication by Americans who must have thought me terribly dumb. We also tend to sign our "John Henry" not our "John Hancock", both terms being highly confusing to my brand new son-in-law whose first language is not English.

Well, I'm sure you get my point by now, and just as I have the occasional difficulty with lingo American, I have also had a frightfully difficult time trying to understand Americans as a people over the past few days. You see, it's really hard for most folk of other countries to even begin to fathom how the vote could have gone the way it did.

Let me just say that I am making some progress. I think that these folk are tremendously misguided, but, having listened and pondered, I think I can at least begin to fathom some of the reasons why so many Americans arrived at the decision that they did. Personally, I think they are guilty of very fuzzy thinking, but I really don't want to get sidetracked into explicating all of that right now as I'm trying (and it's hard) to keep this particular piece non-political. Besides, the election is being explored in great detail in all sorts of places by those much better informed than this poor plod.

One thing I do want to say is that I think Americans are absolutely wonderful people. They are warm, open, friendly, and hospitable. I think that I can honestly say that I've never met an American whom I haven't liked. And now that I know beans as it were, hard as it is, I am working at trying to understand how and why many of them think and vote the way that they do.

Isn't that the important thing: to do our best to understand each other?

 

Culling and Kissing

Although I was a geography teacher by education, training, and experience, I also spent a few years teaching high school English. Those were some of the best teaching years of my life. It wasn't all due to the subject, I'm sure, but part of it certainly was. It was also the stage of my life or career, the school, the students, and the staff that all converged in a kind of synchronicity to make it a memorable and fulfilling time.

I got as far as team-teaching a large, senior, university-bound, writers class (or writers' class if you prefer the possessive). The course was ostensibly designed to supply some of the better and more dedicated student writers with the opportunity to hone their fledgling skills without getting involved with all of the other distractions that become part of the traditional English course. What really happened was that a lot of weak students took the course, mistakenly seeing it as a sort of remedial opportunity or because they thought that it would be a bird course. (Do they still use that term?)

Early in the course, we examined some material from an accomplished, premiere, Canadian author: various drafts and edits of a small portion of his work. This absolutely amazed me: to see how much effort he invested in revising and editing. You see, I had never been trained to do this: either that or I was too preoccupied with kissing frogs in my juvenile years. All of the way through university, for example, I would write a paper and submit it: wouldn't bother to proof or edit in any way. Now, I can't even do that with a blog, but, having said that, I am probably still quicker and less careful than some of you are. I get an idea, and, if I have time, I sit down and pound out a blog — like now for instance.

My wife blogs from time to time. Her style is different; her blogs are longer; and, she ruminates and fusses over them. She writes a bit, puts them away for a while, and writes some more. Not me: not often anyway.

Another note, I think from the same author but perhaps not, was a statement something like this: "One of the hardest things for a writer to do is to kill his own children." By that, of course, he meant that you can expend quite a bit of energy on project, task, or even a chapter, and have to toss it on the heap because of some deficiency that you just can't get past. The pieces that we write become, in a sense, our children, but we sometimes have to part with them regardless, and that can be hard to do.

So it is that I noted last night that my blog count was getting up there, hovering around eighty. It seemed to me, if you'll pardon the metaphoric shift, that it was time to cull the herd. Actually, it wasn't hard to find about twenty blogs that begged to be put out of their misery. A few others barely made the cut.

Part of it is in the nature of the beast. Sometimes, we (or I) post a blog primarily because it feels as though our time is up: like it's just time to post something, indeed anything, if we're really going to keep a blog going. Sometimes, I post a bit a trivia about some little thing that occurs on a given day. Sometimes, my topics simply have a short shelf-life. Whatever the reason, I certainly had some less than stellar blogs that simply didn't deserve to occupy their cyber-space, even if the space is free and even if Google has tons of both it and money to spare.

I don't venture into politics much, but any blog of that ilk became a casualty last night. The blog preceding this one is a prime example of one that has a short shelf-life and must shortly be sacrificed. I kept all of my essential blogs — those that contain a modest modicum of reflection — and most of my photo blogs. The time to part with some of the photos will come, but I can't bring myself to shoot them yet: if you'll pardon the unintentional pun.

Speaking of photos, following is a picture of one of the many frogs that I kissed in high school (see paragraph three above) when I should have been paying attention to my lessons but seldom was. Sadly, my kisses lacked fantastical powers, and the amphibians remained confined to their lowly states of being. I kept hoping that a royal transformation would occur, but frogs remain frogs in my world. Kind of a cute little thing, but I have grown up, attend to my lessons, and don't kiss frogs anymore.

Sad that!

 

A Parting Shot

This blog almost takes on different personas (for want of a better word) at different times. For a while, like an old record player, my needle seemed to get stuck on Lessons from the Saddle, we have since moved onto into a plethora of autumn photos.

After the last photo of the trail in the woods, I thought that I was done, but we went for a little walk in the gloaming before supper. Due to the time of day, and the nature of our quest — to try to spot a deer — we kept to the fields rather than the forest. Of course, the deer were most uncooperative — they have been doing that well lately — but I did find a few subjects worth photographing. One of which I present to you, dear blog addict.

Despite the old saying that "pictures don't lie," they do. They lie very much, and sometimes that's good. The sky that I saw this evening was beautiful but it was lighter and bluer than the version that you see in this photo. One of my pictures did turn out a little more realistically, assuming that my eyes see things realistically, but I like this one better. The foreground is darker, well I guess the whole thing is darker, but it's much more dramatic, and for my money, or at least for my blogging time, it's a better photo.

I hope that you like it too.

 

Soul Food

This path through the woods has provided much of our spiritual daily bread for the past several weeks. It must almost go without saying that it has been refreshing to be here. The autumn weather has danced about in madcap fashion: from frost to warmth, from sun to rain, from clear skies to thudding clouds, from hail to calm, and from wind to tranquility. Through it all, through every whim of weather, we have walked this trail — our friend — and have felt the bond and the balm.

 

Kindergarten Failures

Two summers ago, my nephew was married on this vacation property, Riverwood, owned by my brother-in-law, George. He (my nephew, not my brother-in-law) married a lovely girl who escaped from an Eastern European nation with her family when she was young. That evening, among other topics, the father of the bride, Herb, and I talked about the good and bad in Canada. Strike that; let's rather say that we talked about that which was good in Canada and that which could be better.

Where he comes from, and I believe that this concept holds in a number of European countries, the public has a certain right or freedom to walk across some corners of private land. What I understand that to mean, for example, is that if one wants to go for a walk in the countryside, he or she may have the right to walk through bits and pieces of private property in order to facilitate this, perhaps to connect with a public trail for example. I don't understand the intricacies of this arrangement, since it is obvious that people can't go rambling willy-nilly all over the place and drop in for tea when you and the missus have just donned (or doffed) your jammies. According to Herb, ramblers seem to appreciate and respect the privilege and are generally at pains to behave appropriately.

He mentioned that when he first came to Canada he decided to treat his family to a summer's day outing by taking them to a lake. When he got there, he found the lake almost impossible to access. Perhaps it was impossible; I don't recall the exact upshot of that adventure, but you take my point, I'm sure.

Take this property, Riverwood, for example. A river forms the eastern boundary. On the other side of the river are vast acres of forest. From aerial photos that I have seen, I would venture to say that there exists well over a thousand acres of uninhabited land. When brother-in-law, George, granted some of his local friends, who are hunters, permission to erect a little footbridge from his side of the river to the other, reaction was swift. I don't even know how the absentee owner found out, but shortly after the bridge was built, a chain appeared on the other side to effectively barricade and safeguard yon wilderness from who knows what.

With all of that primeval forest , I can barely fathom how anyone was able to discover that a bridge had been erected, but they did. And why do they really care whether someone put his or her tiny foot on a small slice of such a vast landholding? But they do. If they are simply anti-hunter, I would have much sympathy, but, rather, it appears that they become apoplectic over the prospect of any lowly commoner setting foot upon their domain.

This isn't suburbia, you understand. We are not talking about somebody having a wild party on your front, postage-stamp lawn. This is wilderness, rather vast wilderness. There is no evidence of human habitation anywhere near the part of the property of which we speak. I can't see any sort of dwelling over there for many a mile when I take magnifying glass to the aerial photo.

Why are they, and why are we all so protective? Is it fear of lawsuit? Is it selfish greed?

Do you think there something just a wee bit skewed with our North American values?

George informs me that landowners worry about giving up a right of easement, that if people freely use your property to access something or other for a certain period of time, that they eventually establish some sort of legal right to continue to use it in some kind of perpetuity. I can understand that, but such prompt reaction seems rather excessive to me. Can't people talk to each other for goodness sake? And although I understand it, and admit that I might be similarly protective if it were my land, the whole thing still saddens me to some degree. Why are we more concerned with private rights that the public good? Why are we fearful by nature rather than generous of spirit?

Old fence posts

What brings this all freshly to mind is that we were out walking the property line today: the northern boundary this time. With the aid of a GPS and ancient, rotting fence posts, we were able to accomplish the task although, mighty explorers that we are, we had to forge through and around some difficult patches and thickets at times. Well, you can see some of the boundary in the photo (left). This was a relatively thin spot, so don't please don't think me too hyperbolic by referring to thickets as I did above. Although it's difficult to spot in such a tiny thumbnail image, I have put red dots on three fence posts for your elucidation. Two are wood, and one is a metal post. These three were standing, but many of their comrades were fallen.

If you are wondering why there was a fence through the forest, I believe that it is old, probably at least fifty years and possibly even older. I believe that it was erected when it wasn't all forested here: that, in the dark past, it was there to keep cows, sheep, goats, pigs, horses, mules and what-have-you contained.

All Halt!

Regardless: while walking this boundary line, we came across the newly-erected barrier that you see in the second photo (to your right). The owner of that land is clearly doing his best to discourage nasty, would-be trespassers. Does that mean me because I have walked or snowshoed over there once or twice a year, or is he trying to discourage snowmobilers or ATV riders who can be noisy and heedless of the hour? Or perhaps it's because deer-hunting season is almost upon us and he simply doesn't want nasty hunters doing their foul deeds on his land (this, I understand!)? Perhaps he frets over easement rights?

I guess I can grudgingly accept that he not only has a right to do this but probably has reasons which are valid — valid to him at least. But I don't have to like it, and I am free to wish that we could all be more generous and open-hearted with our bounty.

Don't they teach us to share in kindergarten after all? If sharing is good for the kiddies, why isn't it good for the adults?

 

Ordinarily Extraordinary

I was minding my business, quietly reading Expecting Adam by Martha Beck when I chanced to look out the window. The westering sun was lighting the garage and throwing the shadow of an apple tree upon its side. I grabbed my camera and raced outside.

Naturally, that photo didn't turn out well. But I took a few others and decided that I rather liked this one of a tall stalk of grass being lit up by the sunset.

The simple, ordinary things of the world are really quite extraordinary if you look at them in the right light.