Jack Layton

Toronto Pride 2008

Cooking With Kerosene

This room smells like turpentine. Lainey and I painted the front railing today and I left the brushes in the basement sink because the reek of oil and thinner was making me dizzy. So now, you-know-who is in the basement tidying up my mess, and the odour is travelling through the air-conditioned vents right up into the second-floor bedroom where it, as Don used to say, is knocking my socks off.

I can’t help but think that there’s more than a little punitive pungenticity (it’s not a word, I know), a soupcon of vindictive vitriol, a dash of spiteful scent steaming its way through interior channels and bursting forth into my room, the caustic vapours penetrating my innocent airways and invading my delicate sinus cavities.

Speaking of toxic substances and Don, I am now transported back to a time in our yellow (later robin’s egg blue) Charlottetown kitchen where Don is rigorously engaged in the making of hamburger patties, smashing them into the top of the pull-out linoleum table.

As I watched him (I’m good at that – watching people work), I said, “Oh oh. The patties are sliding,” to which Don replied somewhat impatiently (we were in the throes of cranky-making ragweed season), “Yes, that’s what they do.”

“That’s not what I mean,” I said. “They are sliding in a way they shouldn’t be.”

He looked at me as if I had two hundred heads.

I explained. “I cleaned the oil lamp today.”

He continued to stare at me.

“On the table,” I further explained.

His eyes widened.

“The patties are sliding in kerosene.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he said.

I reiterated. “The patties are sliding in kerosene.” In fact, I could smell it.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“No, it isn’t. I meant to come back and wipe it up from the table but I got busy trying to get it off of my hands, and I forgot.” (All this for an oil lamp we lit maybe three times a year.)

“That’s ridiculous.”

“What’s ridiculous?” I asked (really wanting to say, “Is that all you can say?” but knowing that ragweed season was never the time to push issues.)

“It won’t kill you,” he said, kneading harder, the patties slipping and sliding like fat children on new hockey skates.

“Well, it might not kill you, Samson, but I react to practically everything – especially kerosene.”

He seemed to miss my sarcasm completely.

He pounded harder, his nose huge from pollen.

I sidled closer. “You are not feeding the children kerosene-laced hamburgers.” My tone was firm, final.

He stopped for a second to glare at me, then picked up the hamburger, smushed it into a big ball, and aimed for the garbage container, a veritable Sandy Koufax. He stamped out of the kitchen and marched down the hallway, sneezing as he went.

I didn’t know it then, but he was setting off to my favourite restaurant to pick up five hot hamburger specials, because that was his way. (By this, I mean that it was his way to rarely lose his temper and, when he did, to atone for it immediately and still – at least somewhat – angrily. I am laughing as I type this.)

Funny how we seem to choose partners who bear similar characteristics.

I’m not saying that anyone (namely you-know-who) was annoyed that I left the globby brushes and mucky paint tray in the basement sink, having poured water on top of them in a kind of soaking fashion (except that, of course, oil and water don’t mix).

And I’m not even remotely suggesting that you-know-who’s liberal dousing of turpentine – full-well knowing that smells travel via the vent to my bedroom faster than you can shout “Migraine!” – was intended to aggravate my senses.

But do we really need to consult with Sherlock when the offender, rather than return to our shared bedroom, cuts a beeline to the back room (which is as far away from the noxious vapours as a you-know-who can be)?

Anyway, what I am trying to say absolutely unequivocally is that this room smells like turpentine. Toxic, life-threatening, skull-and-crossbones turpentine – a “fluid obtained by the distillation of resin obtained from trees, mainly pine trees” – to which I am highly allergic.

Furthermore, as I re-read this, I wonder why, rather than sitting here typing my diatribe, I am not simply stomping out of the room, nose big from ragweed, huffing my way down the stairs and setting off for the Tulip, a popular local restaurant where they make scrumptious hot hamburger platters.

Or as my friend Wilfred likes to say, “Piss on yaz all!”

[Latin pungns, pungent-, present participle of pungere, to sting; see peuk- in Indo-European roots.]

For A Boy Who’s Two Today

Happy Birthday, Blue Abel, a charming boy who’s two today.

All our love,

The Grammies & Lainey

xoxox

The Sun Catcher

I peeked into the linen closet two nights ago looking for a product called Lid Care, which I use on my eyes for blepharitis and for ragweed allergies when my eyes become especially red and goopy. (Johnson’s Baby Shampoo works, too, and is probably a lot cheaper, but I have had an aversion to putting shampoo near my eyes ever since one of our patients came down with a cellulitis-type reaction to/from an Australian shampoo that had trickled down from her hairline and seeped into her eyes).

Anyway, I opened the linen closet door in the darkened hallway and inadvertently knocked a basketful of Band-Aids onto the floor. As I bent over to retrieve them I could see, in the bit of moonlight peeping in through the skylight, the sun-catcher lying at the bottom of the small basket. I froze.

Many years ago when I tended to the eye patients (to whom I obliquely refer above), I worked with a woman who took it into her head to purchase for me, on special occasions, cow-related items. I have loved cows all of my life – this was clearly no secret to anyone – and my co-worker (cow-worker?) seemed to find the one place in Ottawa that specialized in bovine paraphernalia.

Among the many sweet items I received from her over the years (including a faucet attachment that moos), was a small, round sun-catcher, about three inches in diameter, embossed (no pun intended) with a sweet Holstein cow. His mouth is open, and he is saying, “Eat more chicken.”

Sarah loved my little cow, and whenever she came to visit she would seek out its new hiding place (the sun-catcher hangs from a small silver chain) and spirit it back to her home in Ottawa where she would hide it for me.

Sometimes finding the cow was easy, other times fairly tricky, as over the years we became more adept at hiding him. We hung him from lamps, doorknobs, birdcages, Venetian blinds, curtain rods, typewriter handles, in cupboards, drawers, shoeboxes, on shelves, inside book covers...and so on.

The last time we played our cow prank was in September, the week before Sarah’s cancer diagnosis. She was here visiting with Lainey, as they so often did, and we had had dinner at the Pickle Barrel. (Sarah ordered a smoked meat platter.) After we got home, I put the cow in the closet, expecting to send Sarah on a Band-Aid finding errand.

Of course, over the months I never once thought of the sun-catcher and was stunned when it fell (in the basket) at my feet the other night. I stood there immobile (Sarah would say “not moo-ving), the Holstein trinket on the floor, afraid to pick it up and look at it. After all, for whom would I be hiding it now? Who besides Sarah would have found this small prank funny (over and over and over again) or the little cow worth stealing?

Just as I thought my heart would break irrevocably, I felt Sarah standing next to me...sending me a message, an admonition about finding light, and humour, in the surrounding darkness. “Aw, come on Mum,” she used to say to me. “That’s funny.” And then she would smile in my face like a wide-eyed cat, showing all of her front teeth, and make me laugh.

It occurred to me then, standing in the hallway in the dark, smiling through fat tears, to wonder: who needs a sun-catcher cow – who ever needed a sun-catcher cow – when they had Sarah – the best and brightest sun-catcher in the world, absorbing and reflecting great beams of love and light and scattering them, happily and hopefully, half-way around the world.

Don’t let the sun get in your eyes/Don’t let the moon break your heart...

Anti-Trust Laws

I think that people, at least sometimes, think that I am an unflinching bitch. But it isn’t that at all, not really. My behaviour has nothing to do with being mean, tendentious or quarrelsome. There are simply (I mean simply as in irrefutably) some things I can’t avoid or change; some reactions that are so longstanding they feel inherent.

When you learn as a young child that every day could be your last; when you (therefore) learn to celebrate each day that you survive…there is a corollary (hyper-vigilant) development that centres around issues of safety.

Or, as the saying goes, once bitten, twice shy.

It isn’t that I don’t want to know you anymore, or that I cannot see all that makes you lovely. It is just (and this is a big just for me) that you are no longer safe for me. You are not someone around whom I can be comfortable because you have taken me back into territory so fraught with danger I am no longer capable of moving forward.

More, I am okay – or I learn to be okay – with this separation; relieved, in fact, to know where the landmines lie. And it isn’t as if I leap to these conclusions, either (which is part of my problem. I would be better off trusting my initial instincts and not getting involved in the first place).

Generally, I can and will and do accept a modicum of dissembling and deceit (for example) if I understand the core of the behaviour and if I believe a person is willing to change.

But one of the other things I have learned is that change is next to impossible, no matter how much we hanker after it.

So it’s a bit of a mixed bag. While I don’t want to, as Don used to say, throw the baby out with the bathwater, I know when I have reached my limit. Alarm bells go off in my head and rusty little springs coil tightly in the pit of my stomach. And when that happens, I have to be done, at least for a while. And when it happens again (and again) (and sometimes even again), I have to be done permanently.

I have no choice. There isn’t time to look over my shoulder and wave. I have to walk away. (Don’s version of “bag them,” I suppose.) I cannot risk thinking about it or second-guessing my choice (which isn’t really necessary anyway, because I have by this point bored the people closest to me to tedium with questions, ruminations, anxiety…until I am sure).

What keeps me walking, too, are not only the people who have been in my life for years and years (some since I was a young girl, which is astounding, given my history), but the fact of those people: that we have managed to muddle our way through, some of us even having had the occasional disagreement (gotcha!), but with whom there has always been trust by way of honesty, courtesy, generosity, integrity, humour and a magnificent kindness.

I am not saying that I have entirely earned these people, either, but I am more than grateful that we are in each other’s lives and that I finally know the difference between what sorts of relationships and behaviours work for me, and what sorts don’t.

And if that sounds calloused, so be it. I feel I have earned this much.

In the end, it’s all about trust.

Big Bang Boom!

My friend Zach sent me the following article from Cracked.com last night, and while the article is indeed lengthy, the espoused (perhaps more like proposed) scientific theories might intrigue those of you who, like me, lie awake at night and wonder. I also fully realized after reading this through that I knew there was a reason living alongside that west coast mountain chain unnerved me.

*

5 Scientific Theories That Will Make Your Head Explode

By: Michael Swaim August 07, 2008 448,687 views

There are generally two types of science: first, there's the type that makes computers work, allows us to ride around in metal boxes propelled by continuous explosion, and makes it so that milk doesn't taste all gross. Then there's the fringe science, the stuff that shoots up your nose like mathematical horseradish and dances a jig on your brain...or brane, as it were (that's the nerdiest joke in the article, we promise). So kick off your work boots, put on your thought slippers, and prepare for a science course so mind-blowing, it's written almost entirely in italics.

#5.

The Theory: Quantum Entanglement

The Crazy Part:The part where you jiggle an electron on one side of the universe and an invisible force traverses millions of light years and smacks another electron into wiggling instantaneously, which is about a million years faster than is technically possible without time travel.

What It Says: That if two electrons are created together, they are forever entangled, much like you and your high school sweetheart according to some shitty poems you wrote in tenth grade. And, also like you and your ex-love, regardless of the distance between the two electrons, a change in quantum spin in one electron will immediately cause the other electron to change spin as well. So like, when she has sex with Bob Feeney, the teams QB after the first date, even though you’re home alone playing Tetris, your heart will ache with a sudden and unmistakable pain. That’s the pain of entanglement, my friend.

So What Does This Do For Me? Teleportation, Holmes. Only really tiny. In theory, you could separate two electrons by as much space as you wanted (say, the breadth of the universe), and they’d still be linked in such a way that actions taken on one would affect the other instantaneously. Meaning information is being transmitted at speeds faster than light. Meaning, if you want to really go nuts, time travel. And though the party pooping scientists have been busy coming up with limitations on the kind of information that could be transmitted (it seems super-fast computers that allow you to play Gears of War against people in parallel dimensions may be a ways off), no one has yet been able to disprove the theory that there is an invisible force in the universe capable of affecting matter millions of light-years away instantly.

Wait, It Gets Worse: If you subscribe to the whole Big Bang thing, then there was a point in the past in which every atom in the universe was condensed into a singularity. Which means everything, even you and that bastard Bob Feeney, are quantumly entangled. Some scientists have even gone so far as to claim that quantum entanglement shows that there is no such thing as space, and that everything in the universe is still touching. Space is just an illusion created by our flawed perceptions, and we’re all one. The hippies were right after all.

Level Of Mind Blowing-ness: A fistful of acid tabs followed by the flume ride at Disneyworld.

#4.

The Theory:Evolution

The Crazy Part: The part where the family tree of every living creature on Earth collides at a single point on a single day in the past, making you related to Hitler as well as every insect you've ever killed..

What It Says:Were all familiar with the basics of evolution: that a munificent monkey-goddess birthed us all from Her banana-scented womb. But there are some lesser-discussed implications of natural selection that are just plain weird. For one, scientists have concluded that around 140,000 years ago in Kenya, there lived a woman called Mitochondrial Eve (cavemen had weird names), so named because today, every living human on Earth has her mitochondrial DNA in their body (cavemen were also prescient). And only 3,000 years ago lived a person known as the Most Recent Common Ancestor, who, through exponential growth of the family tree, is the ancestor of every single person on Earth. And did you know that, based on the same principles (and a lot of rape), Genghis Kahn has over 16 million descendants? Who’s your Daddy now?! So What Does This Do For Me? Well, for one, you can rest assured than anyone you ever have sex with in your entire life is at least your distant, distant cousin. So that’s nice. And if you’re really a nut for genealogy, why not trace your heritage back to the Last Universal Ancestor, the single-celled organism who, about 4 billion years ago, decided to go ahead and give rise to every living creature that will ever exist on the face of the Earth? Talk about a pimp. In essence, the whole of life on the planet can be considered one long, unbroken chemical reaction that is still resolving itself, like the foam flowing out of a science fair volcano.

Wait, It Gets Worse: The genetic chaos continues. The Endosymbiotic Theory says that the mitochondria in our bodies, without which we couldn’t live, let alone write snide humor articles, was at one point a separate organism that invaded our cells and set up camp. They formed a symbiotic relationship so beneficial that we’ve never booted them out. Furthermore, large chunks of the human genome are thought to be ancient retroviruses that managed to transcribe themselves into our DNA and have spent the remainder of their days happily clambering up and down our nucleotides like the McDuck children on a mansion banister. Basically your cells are millions of individual organisms, all huddled together in a you-shaped beehive. Now see how long you can go before wanting to shower.

And lastly, a thought for the right-wingers out there: At some point half of you was an egg in your Mother’s womb. That egg existed in her body from the day she was born. And a long, long time ago, she too was an egg in her Mother’s womb, who had that egg ready for use from the moment she squirmed out of your Great Grandma’s nethers. The point being, technically speaking, there’s no break in the chain of existence, no time when you are not a life form of at least the most rudimentary sort. Your family, at least on your Mother’s side, could theoretically be considered an immortal, constantly-regenerating organism. Of course that would make men, whose sperm has to be created years after the moment of birth, just disposable donors here to fuel the everlasting fire of womanhood. You go girls!

Level Of Mind Blowing-ness: Four Hemingway suicides.

#3.

The Theory: The Copenhagen Interpretation

The Crazy Part: The part where the furniture in your house behaves differently when you're not around.

What It Says: Besides sounding like the subtitle of The Da Vinci Code II, The Copenhagen Interpretation is probably the most widely accepted explanation for the observations made through quantum mechanics. It came about in part to explain the infamous Double Slit Experiment, which is the one your physics professor probably made you do. The Double Slit Experiment shows that an electron, fired at a wall with two slits in it, will sometimes go through one, sometimes through the other, and sometimes it will go through both slits simultaneously (meaning, a single thing will be in two places at once). In short, it goes batshit fucking insane. The twist is, if you try and observe the electron at the moment it passes through the slits you know, to figure out what the hell is wrong with it the electron goes back to behaving like a normal electron, and innocently shoots through one of the slits while giving you, and reality, the finger. The details of why this happens are sort of technical, but this simple diagram should explain it:

So What Does This Do For Me? The Copenhagen Interpretation is the result of a lot of smart people trying to figure out what the fuck was going on with these damn electrons. What they came up with is that all particles exist as waves of probability. From the observers perspective, there’s only a certain chance that a given electron will go through the left slit or right slit. When you don’t watch, it remains a cloud of probability and sort of does a little of everything. When you watch, the act of observing it somehow causes the cloud to pick a side. So the next time you observe a particle, be warned: they know you’re watching, and as soon as you stop, they’re going to start a party.

Wait, It Gets Worse: If you apply the Copenhagen Interpretation to bigger objects, it gets even weirder. The infamous Schrodingers Cat thought experiment, the one your physics professor probably got fired for doing, said that if you put a cat in a box and press a button that has a fifty percent chance of filling the box with poison gas, then until you go and look in the box, the cat exists as a cat-cloud which is simultaneously both alive and dead. And there’s more: if everything exists as a probability wave, then that means that technically, anything possible could happen at any time. There’s nothing stopping a big floppy dick from sprouting out of your forehead right now; its just highly unlikely. You feel lucky, punk?

Level Of Mind-Blowig-ness: Lets just say it might be time to invest in a tarp.

#2.

The Theory: The Many Worlds Theory

The Crazy Part: The part where you realize that somewhere in some parallel universe you just died while reading this sentence.

What It Says: The Many Worlds Theory rejects The Copenhagen Interpretations crazy idea that particles can change their behavior seemingly at will, and replaces it with the much crazier idea that the only reason we think particles are changing their behavior is that we’re only seeing that particles action in one universe, rather than the infinite number of universes that actually exist. So an observed particle with two options say, to pound beers at a Van Halen tribute show or drop E and storm a techno club actually does both, even though we may only observe the techno club, in some other universe, parallel to our own, that particle is rocking out to Eruption instead of rubbing itself ferociously on anything with a body temperature.

So What Does This Do For Me? If you buy into the Many Worlds Theory, the implications are infinite. And lets be clear about what infinite means here. For every action you’ve ever taken, every movement you’ve ever made, even down to the atomic level, there’s a parallel universe out there where you did something else instead. Anything else. Instead of learning guitar, you burst into flames. Instead of opening the fridge, you freebased black tar heroin. Instead of nude rock climbing, you went nude bungee jumping. Instead of reading this article, you worked productively and got a handsome raise. Think about it: in some parallel universe out there, you and your high school sweetheart are making hot, reconciliatory love atop Bob Feeney’s smoldering corpse after you killed a laser-breathing velociraptor with your bare hands. If that thought doesn’t make you feel better about how mundane your actual life is, we don’t know what will.

Wait, It Gets Worse: If you think The Many Worlds Theory is a tad too far fetched an explanation for some electrons behaving weirdly, you’re not alone. In an effort to simplify things, scientists have come up with The Many Minds Theory, which says your brain splits up at the instant you make an observation, and then your many brains observe every possible outcome. Yes, that’s right, an infinite number of parallel brains, existing without universes (let alone skulls) to house them in. Awesome. Much simpler.

Level Of Mind Blowing-ness: A TNT-tipped jackhammer to the eye socket.

#1.

The Theory: The Universe Is Big

The Crazy Part: The part where the Universe isn't just bigger than you can possibly comprehend, but according to recent evidence, billions of times larger than that. What It Says: That the universe is big. So big, that just that fact, just its mere bigness, is enough to blow your tiny ant mind. And it just keeps getting bigger. Lets examine the famous Hubble Ultra Deep Field image, the most massive photo ever taken:

Right now, on your computer screen, are approximately 10,000 galaxies.

Each of those galaxies contains anywhere from ten million to one trillion stars.

The average star is roughly a million times the size of Earth.

And yet, with all that junk, the Universe is more than 90 percent empty space.

All of that, in this tiny photo. A photo that took 400 orbits and 800 exposures to take.

And the kicker? The photo covers one thirteen-millionth of the entire night sky.

So What Does This Do For Me? If you’re like us, it leaves you alternately awash with spiritual wonder and horrified feelings of utter insignificance. Actually imagining just how infinitesimal you are in the scope of the universe is like autoerotic asphyxiation: its not as pleasant as you’d think, and if you do it wrong you can end up a vegetable. And without getting too Douglas Adams on you, can you possibly imagine that much space and that many planets and stars and atoms smashing together without intelligent life forming? Now its just a matter of getting around that pesky general relativity and well be chilling with aliens in no time. Or, like, a million years.

Wait, It Gets Worse: So all that shit we just said about how big the universe is (at least 90 billion light years)? Forget it. That’s small beans. The Cosmological Horizon is here to make your day a whole lot more complicated. Since we can only observe stellar bodies that have had some effect on us (usually bombarding us with light), there is an outer limit to what we can see of the universe. Hence, the observable universe. What about the rest? The parts of the universe beyond our Starcraft-style fog of war? Well, according to some math we have no interest in going into, the size of the actual universe is so large that if the universe we just described (the impossibly, mind-bogglingly large one) were the size of a quarter, the actual universe would be the size of the Earth. Daaaaaaaamn.

Level Of Mind Blowing-ness: The sound of one hand clapping for a tree falling in the woods while no ones around except a guy whose skull is wired with C4.

In case you’ve still got some bits of gray matter clinging to the shards of your fractured skull, here are some links to information about further scientific theories conceived to make neural cortex dribble out your nostrils.

Read more: 5 Scientific Theories That Will Make Your Head Explode | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-scientific-theories-head-explode/#ixzz1VKFLPLI2

Weather Report

The sky is a colour I can’t quite name, somewhere between grey and white and blue. The clouds are folding into themselves, like caricature chubby baby cheeks drawn up, and in, with laughter. The trees are vibrant and full, leaning slightly -- protectively – overtop the row of houses that stretch all the way down to the lake, although the lake is probably a solid walking mile from here. From the top of the large oak tree across the street, falling in a soft swoop onto the branches next store, a piece of what looks like kite string straddles the road.

Downstairs, Mary (cousin to Paul Bunyan) is baking a peach pie. The evening meal is over – you can always tell because the cat bells rattle vigorously, five little fur heads occupying themselves with licking and preening, the last vestiges of fish sticks and carrots and boiled potatoes wiped clean from our dinner plates.

I spent the day reading a page-turning novel, computer turned off – what freedom there is in this action, I had forgotten – and all afternoon, not the least bit interested in talking with anyone at all, unencumbered by the menace of the world, I read on.

As I write this the sky has changed colour, from grey-white-blue to grey-pink, signifying what I do not know, despite the red sky at night promise of a sunny tomorrow. Judging by the thickness of cloud – which is now one great blanket of mass – I don’t trust that anything is coming except maybe the end of the world.

*

I was wrong, Chicken Little. The sky did not fall and the world did not end. It is a glorious day – red sky at night – which is perfect for errand-running.

I have not had a working watch in well over a month and therefore need batteries. I have an envelope to weigh before mailing, too – a friend with cancer and a book that might help her – and Mary and I have to open a new safety deposit box, closer to home than the bank in the far west end.

For the first time in a several days, it is not raining, although I seldom mind the rain and, generally, welcome it. As Owen Wilson describing Samuel Beckett (the latter sharing my Day of the Iconoclast birthday) says, 'He had an abiding sense of melancholy that sustained him through brief periods of joy,' I have been newly redefined as a melancholic optimist (or was it optimistic melancholic?), which seems about right. Some things are inherent, of course, others thrust upon us.

Anyway, this isn’t much of a weather report, I know. If you want that you should turn to Environment Canada (although I am not always sure how reliable the forecasts over there are, either).

If I were to guess, I would say that for the next few days you can expect at least some sun mixed with occasional cloud with a threat or perhaps even a down-pouring of rain (depending on where you live) with intermittent bouts of wind, darkness at night, and some level of brightness during the daytime.

In Session: I

The Interview

I should have known the second she pulled out a du Maurier Special Mild that she was the wrong therapist for me. While I might have been, in those days, a mild cigarette kind of smoker, I needed something much tougher from a therapist – an Export A unfiltered or a Camel Wide, for example. The fact that she lit it only added fuel to the fire.

“Do you mind?” she asked me after her second inhalation, her waist-long hair falling across the corner of her desk, lying carelessly on her notepad.

“Oh, not at all,” I replied. “I quit last week with hypnosis.” (I had – and I haven’t had to since.)

Anyway, for the sake of anonymity (hers, of course, not mine) I shall call her here Dr. Hacker.

Now, I knew all about shopping around for a good therapist. My gp had advised me that this could take weeks, and in fact I had already been to see two counsellors: one, a man who was awaiting trial; the second, a woman who slapped headphones over my ears, turned on a tape machine for an hour and charged me $135.00.

So I figured, third time’s the charm, and anyone with Crystal Gale hair couldn’t be all bad. (Well, I am actually lying about the hair part. Waist-long hair gives me the heebie jeebies, but I figured Dr. Hacker’s hair as a kind of cultural accoutrement and wondered where all this exoticness would lead me.)

Excited about the interview, I barely remember now, or even ten minutes after they were over, most of the interview questions. I was still in the “Pick me! Pick me!” phase and more worried about how I would come off as a prospective patient. I wanted to be off-keel enough to qualify for the job, but not so batty as to suggest that a hospital stay was in order.

Which is probably why it never occurred to me that the interview should have gone the other way around, with me asking her some of the questions...you know, things about her experience, treatment methods, mental competency.

Anyway, after she stubbed out her cigarette and we got down to business, I do recall saying at one point, “Oh! I did take the MBTI test.”

“Pardon me?”

“On my own, as it were. Recommended to me by a writing friend.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Do you know it?”

“Really?”

“Yes – the Jungian test.” I rushed on. “Apparently, I am an INFP.”

“Oh,” she said, sweeping the back of her hand delicately across her cheek. “Is the N for neurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-o-tic?”

I admit jumping back a bit at her reply. After all, her office was no larger than a basement bathroom, and I am more used to hard consonants being held, not soft ones.

“I think it means intuitive,” noting the irony of my words even as I said them aloud.

‘Are you sure?” she asked me in much the way a mother would ask a chocolate-faced child if she had just stolen the last cookie.

Well, I was hooked. After all, who better to offer therapy than a woman who clearly knew nothing of Carl Jung, smoked cigarettes, and had a more fascinating way of speaking than Charles Boyer?

And who better to take it from her than me, a patient (oh, excuse me – a client) ingénue who had only that very week (never discount synchronicity) quit cigarettes, knew nothing of Carl Jung, and boasted a family history of mental illness that could rival the Borgias.

She stared at me over the top of her Calvin Klein bifocal lenses. “How is Tuesday at 4:00?” she asked.

“Perfect!” I replied, my face hotter than a jalapeno pepper.

I grabbed my purse, leapt up from the chaise lounge, and fumbled my way out the door, longing all the way home for a du Maurier Special Mild and humming Jacques Brel show tunes.

To See or Not to See?

The subject of subject matter seems to be mattering to me a lot these days. (It seems I will do anything to try and be clever.) (Hey! I said try, didn’t I?)

In one week alone I have picked up two books, finishing one and wishing I hadn’t, and then, newly wiser, stopping before page two of the second.

There are just some things a person shouldn’t read so soon after a loved one has died – and most especially, a loved one who has died young.

Having said that, I am more than a little astonished by what I have been able to manage in the way of movie and reading material these past three months.

Tree of Life, replete with every magnificent theme of infinitesimality and inevitable death riveted me from start to finish. And I couldn’t take my eyes away from White Lightnin, the loosely-based (on Jesco White, Appalachian dancing man) bio-pic – a story that is as dark and damned as anything I have ever laid eyes on. And only last week, I finished Olive Kitteridge, our book club selection and a story that touches on so many resonant themes I wish I had a stick to shake at them all.

On top of that, I have watched and re-watched dozens of movies on the Turner Classics channel, and called up all sorts of stories whose themes center on death and loss, Rabbit Hole and The Greatest being but two of them.

In fact, I have been to the Inside Out Film Festival since Sarah died, and anyone who has been there has some idea what the basis for many of these films are. (You just have to read some of the titles to know.)

So what is the difference? Why are some stories palatable – powerfully helpful, in fact – and others not?

Mary and I were just downstairs in the kitchen (it’s too windy and rain-threatening to swim, after all) discussing this:

Graphic descriptions of dead bodies are detailed in both of the books I mentioned earlier. But clinical description is disconnected from depth of emotion.

Conversely, the other movies and books that I have looked at have spared me the clinician’s viewpoint, thereby allowing the experience of catharsis through empathy and shared feeling. They do not leave a person standing there alone, as it were, re-witnessing the death of her loved one and, worse, staring into the face of the coldly analytic breakdown of post-mortem experience. That they spare this not only for the mourner, but more essentially for the mourner on behalf of her dead loved one, is key to moving forward.

After someone we love dies, we go to friends, books, movies, counsellors and groups so that they might help us feel our experience; stand in the world that surrounds us and help us walk through the loss.

Clinical descriptions, however, re-traumatize. They don’t allow us to move beyond the clinician’s point of view to experience our feelings. Instead, we are left there frozen in our shoes, unable to move this way or that, fixated on the changing colours – the cruel mauves and grays – of rigor mortis, where there is no movement at all, except the unbearable slow motion pace of decay. We are unable to shift, at this early stage of grieving, through and into the part of the story that might allow us to feel and understand; to learn in hopeful, positive ways.

I don’t know if I will ever be able to move past Sarah’s final days; past the hours and hours I sat, on that final day, beside her lifeless body, staring at the beautiful contours of her lovely face; running my fingers along hers, the delicately painted nails always so pretty.

While I feel some relief for people who do not quite take my meaning, who cannot fully grasp what feels to them the morbidity of my statements, I am not sorry that I live in a world where writers and filmmakers – those who share in the experience – allow those of us who grieve to walk through and feel, and not merely dread.

To die, to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to...

Hamlet Act III Scene I

Robert Kennedy Speaks

I was a kid when Bobby Kennedy, as he was called back then (and is even now, I suppose), was assassinated. He died on my best friend’s birthday. I remember standing in the hot sun near a line of fragrant rose bushes, thinking how only the day before I had seen him on a black-and-white television screen in a downtown store, customers standing on the narrow-plank floor looking on and listening in awe as he shook hands and waved to the crowds, at one point stopping to wipe his hand lovingly across the face of an admiring boy.

I was in the middle of email writing tonight when I glanced over at the TV (this one in colour) and caught this speech – his speech – which is now, of course, forty-three years old. I was as taken with his words tonight as I was the last time I heard them, his gentle voice, that sweet accent, those powerful words no less poignant today than they were all those years ago.

On the Mindless Menace of Violence

This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr’s cause has ever been stilled by an assassin’s bullet.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.

Whenever any American’s life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

“Among free men,” said Abraham Lincoln, “there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs.”

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man’s spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.

I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children’s future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at the least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

Robert F. Kennedy speaking at the City Club of Cleveland on April 5, 1968, the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Listen to the full speech here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQjAR7mOvgc

Shirley MacLaine and Carrie Fisher: Small Talk

I have listened in on dozens and dozens of erudite conversations, many of which I could not engage in because a) I am spatially challenged in ways that can, depending on the topic, block deep understanding and b) I have a poor memory for names, dates, facts, and figures.

So it was with some indignation that I sat and listened to Shirley MacLaine and Oprah mock small talk/ers, MacLaine regaling the audience with how done she is with dreary conversationalists and explaining that, if fluttering her eyelashes and nodding doesn’t give the dullard a big enough hint, MacLaine launches into on-the-spot meditation.

Oprah rolled her eyes and guffawed in sympathetic agreement. The audience laughed heartily. (I, however, laughed later, when host and guest admonished people for not doing unto others as they would have others do unto them...or, as we know it more often nowadays, the what goes around comes around theory. Does anyone but me see the irony?)

Anyway, I often get a kick out of Shirley MacLaine, although, after what Byron (the astrologer, my old boyfriend, the man who spent some time with her in 1991 and who regaled me with his own stories – stories that run counter to MacLaine’s self-proclamation of kindness) (so strong was his impact I turned down a dinner invitation with him and the famous movie star)...I don’t think, despite her phenomenal talent, I would be eager to know her as a friend or neighbour.

I also felt like an idiot as the audience roared with laughter, me left to wonder how many times I have bored people to headachy tears with my chitter-chatter on subjects as vast as the weather, my troubled back, my shoe size, my favourite finger nail polish and the hazards of bubblegum. I am, for all that I talk, a shy face-to-face person, and when you add that in with my spatial disability and lack of memory, I must drive the Shirley MacLaines of the world to heavy drink.

As the show went on, I began dootying myself up for an Evening With Carrie Fisher (speaking of – in this case – wishful drinking)...another irony when you consider that Shirley MacLaine played Carrie Fisher’s real-life mother in Postcards from the Edge. (I see the ambiguous implications in my sentence here, but you all know what I mean. But, in case you don’t...Debbie Reynolds is Carrie Fisher’s real-life mother. Shirley MacLaine played Debbie Reynolds to Meryl Streep’s version of Carrie Fisher in 1990’s Postcards from the Edge, based on Carrie Fisher’s semi-autobiographical novel.)

So heightenedly aware was I of my tendency toward small talk that by the time I got to the theatre I was actually relieved that I would be sitting in an audience where I was required, for two hours, to be absolutely silent. (I wish the same had been true for the man and woman who talked relentlessly about Jennifer Aniston – he had texted the actress at least twice that day, which means he’s a big wig of sorts, although sitting behind me he felt more like an earwig.)

Aside: you might now say that my name-dropping Shirley MacLaine is no different than that man’s Jennifer Aniston references, but he was proud of it, I am not. I mean, if you could have heard Mary say of Byron – “Mystic...or mistake?” you would know that this is one relationship I wish I had never engaged in. But back to the theatre proper:

How interesting to me then, in light of my small talk fears, listening to the riotously funny Ms Fisher discuss her traumatized childhood and some of the ways that this childhood has affected her memory. (I garnered bits of this, too, from the fact that Carrie Fisher’s bi-polarism – bi-polarity? – would also, because of its very nature [I know this because of my lovely mother, too, who endured multiple shock treatments] and because of Fisher’s subsequent ECT, have a debilitating effect on her memory, although the actress was not shy to reiterate – which is only to say I would have got it – been hep to her cues – whether or not my mum had had her own electrifying experiences.)

Wow. That last paragraph needs work.

I am not sure exactly how to say what I want to say, but my point is this:

As much as some people rail against small talk, some of us have no choice – whether because of our histories, memories, abilities, awkwardness, or focus.

My bigger point is that I think I actually get more from small talk than I do from big talk.

Let’s face it. Throughout her entire monologue, Carrie Fisher did not elaborate on heady concepts, lean on multi-syllabic words, or lecture on scientific, philosophic or pointedly existential theories. Instead, she talked about Hollywood, made fun of herself in small simple words, gossiped, told personal stories, flirted with a handsome man who was sitting in the front row, and used a pointer to highlight family connections, all the while sipping on cola and walking about the stage in glitter eye make-up, bare feet and jimmy pants.

In conclusion, what I took from Shirley MacLaine is that I am an idiot.

Conversely, what I gathered from Carrie Fisher is that a) I am not alone b) a person doesn’t have to recite genius facts to be funny and engaging c) there is more humanity expressed and felt when a person makes you feel included, not excluded.

Or, do unto others...

Anyway, I am certainly glad the women turned up in the order they appeared. Otherwise, I might have missed a crucial point, left to wonder forever if it was safe for me to open my mouth to anyone over the age of two and a half. After all, I am a chatterer from a long way back, and I would be heartbroken to think that everyone I speak to is laughing at me behind my back.

Come to think of it, while I’m at it, maybe I should re-name this blog Coffey Talk.

Now, someone hand me my pointer.

Are You Squidding Me?

The last thing I do every night before shutting down the computer is a quick headline search-and-read, looking for anything that might provide some last-minute late-night laughter. Well, last night was no exception and, in this instance, I learned something about one of God’s creatures that astounded me.

While I have my own octopus stories (which centre on a kindly aunt who made and sent me one of yarn when I was small), none of them come close to these.

The initial story [below] comes from Maureen O’Connor, and is followed by two reader comments. The final link I found on the Internet, as I went looking for verification. I was not disappointed.

Horrifying Squid Comes to Life and Jumps Off Plate

A video of a squid coming back to life in a bowl of food recently went viral. Apparently the salt in soy sauce can activate a freshly killed squid's nerves and muscles, thereby making it "dance" and "occupy my nightmares forever."

But while researching the phenomenon, I discovered an even scarier variation: An undead squid that comes back to life three times in the course of a meal. First, the chef cuts the live squid apart and rips out its interior; as he flays the top half of the squid, the bottom half writhes and gasps for life. Later, the squid is perched atop a bed of food on a diner's plate; the diner pours soy sauce, and the squid seizes up to such a degree that it actually leaps out of the bowl and onto the table. (That's when I screamed.) Finally, after the eater has sliced the squid into bite-sized pieces, he does the soy sauce trick again, and the tentacles wriggle like bloated maggots.
I will never eat calamari again.

Maureen O’Connor

And from the comments section…[any grammatical errors, in this case, are not mine]

I heard a far more scarier story involving an miniature octopus from another guy in my office:

apparently him and his wife have a den on the ground floor of their home which is around twenty feet across and they had a salt water tank with an octopus in the tank at one end of the ten and a freshwater tank with freshwater fish at the other end of the den--twenty feet away.

They began noticing the fresh water fish started going missing which was strange because none of the other fresh water fish were big enough to eat the other fish and they didnt have a cat and lived alone

so acting on their suspicion they walked into the darkened den after midnight one night and sure enough discovered the octopus had been slithering out of its tank each night, writhing twenty feet across the floor, climbing into the freshwater tank for a snack and then returning to its own tank before day break.

what made this especially disturbing is if the octopus had taken a different turn he would have ended up in their bedroom (Edit comment)

Edited by Smooth Operator at 08/05/11 2:49 PM [and] promoted by Never Been Kissed

I remember seeing a story about a couple who was filming an Octopus on a scuba dive, did you see that? The Octopus played with them for a while, and then suddenly snatched the camera and fled. They got freaked out and surfaced, but eventually tried to locate the camera, which they did, in the Octopus's garden with a bunch of other human stuff he had presumably stolen, the little klepto, but the most interesting thing was the 45 minutes of footage of the Octo playing with the camera which they saw when they got home. It's scary that something that creepy can be that smart.

[And finally, the link:]

http://marine.alaskapacific.edu/octopus/ADN990724-JLittle.html

Anyway, if you ask me, this is as good a way as any to octopi your time.

For A Disappointed Friend

Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught. ~J.C. Watts
I
If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters. ~Alan Simpson
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Don't try to be different. Just be good. To be good is different enough. ~Arthur Freed
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You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him. ~James D. Miles
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You do not wake up one morning a bad person. It happens by a thousand tiny surrenders of self-respect to self-interest. ~Robert Brault
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You can out-distance that which is running after you, but not what is running inside you. ~Rwandan Proverb
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Every time I've done something that doesn't feel right, it's ended up not being right. ~Mario Cuomo
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My goal in life is to be as good of a person my dog already thinks I am. ~Author Unknown
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To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice. ~Confucius
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My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there. ~Indira Gandhi
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The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour. ~Japanese Proverb
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Persons with weight of character carry, like planets, their atmospheres along with them in their orbits. ~Thomas Hardy
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Sometimes, to do the right thing, we must keep a promise we never made. ~Robert Brault
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I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the bottom simply by looking at the men at the top. ~Frank Moore Colby
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Every wrong seems possible today, and is accepted. I don't accept it. ~Pablo Casals
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The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism. ~Norman Vincent Peale
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It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to stand up for it. ~A.A. Hodge
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Before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
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It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare. ~Mark Twain
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We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
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This Week In Headlines

Melodramatist Ms Carrie Mulligan Set To Marry Mellifluous Music Meister Mumford & Sons' Main Man Marcus Mumford


Black-Bodied Bunny-Man Badgering Boys


Lovely Lioness Nokanda Can No Longer Love, Leaving Life and Lingering On-Lookers Lonely


Oprah Owns Oscar (Or Ought To)


Prodigal Park Peacock Poses Prior Perch Departure


Gold Gallops Giddily Gladdening Gilded Growth Gluttons


Starbucks Seeks Sit-In Cyber-Suckers Ousting


Terrorism Task Force Finds Fickle Philanderer Felonious For Foisting Puffer Fish Poison Neurotoxin Tetrodotoxin Onto Former Flame


Convicted Cold Case KKK’er K-K-Keels

Piers Protects Reputation but Prevarication Persists, Perverting Repercussions: Rigorously Reputes Rupert-Report Responsibility


Manacled Mad-Man Mubarak Moans Metaphorically

Twenty-Something Tracey Tre Tries Tricking Talent Touting Terribly Trite Talk-Down Tactics -- Tedious!


St. Catharine’s C. Difficle Senior Snaps Shots of Stool -- Should She Sue?



Default-Deferring Debt Deal Defeats Deadline


Rumour Mill: Model Heather Mills Maligns Mirror Maintaining Message Machine Misappropriation


Rapaport Wraps Raptly on Apt Rappers and Rapping


Hispaniolans Halted As Haiti Hunkers: Hurricane Haunts Horizon


Previous Reform Party’s Primary Policy-Pusher and Present Prime Minister Provides Portly Pouty-Purser Politician Privilege at Private Pork Party Pre-Empting Reparation for PRIDE

Triptych

This weekend, I called up two films on TMN – Rabbit Hole and The Greatest – the first, a 2010 drama starring Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, and Dianne Wiest, and directed by John Cameron Mitchell with a screenplay adaptation by David Lindsay-Abaire based on his 2005 play. The plot revolves around a couple struggling to heal after the accidental death of their four-year-old son.

The Greatest, written and directed (2010) by Shana Feste, stars Carey Mulligan, Susan Sarandon and Pierce Brosnan, also centers on a couple struggling to come to terms with the loss of their eighteen-year-old son who has died in a car accident.

Do you sense a theme? (And is it my recent reading of Gawker that has caused me to become flip, or was I always this way? The one thing...Frank Ledwell said...that made me a superior writer to _______ _______, famed poet reading that year at the Milton Acorn Festival in Charlottetown, was that I was not flip.) (Take cues, my stalkers.) (See? There I go again.)

The serious point is this: I have lost two young adult children, one of them in life, one in death.

The first, my son, died six years ago in the middle of a Christmas Day telephone conversation. I told him if he waited two minutes, Mary would be in with the dog to say Merry (Mary?) Christmas. He said, in his usual heartbreakingly (for him, I mean) hurried way, oh no, he would call right back. We never heard from him again. Well, that’s not true. I had three subsequent messages from him because of medical emergencies, but he never called back to reply to my replies. We saw him in hospital the day before, the day of, and the day after his brain tumour surgery, but that was all we were permitted. He has children, but they hardly feel related to me because at my age and with my experience a person learns when it is wise to let go. There are so many people to love and to be good to – people who want to know you – and spending hours (days, weeks, years) lamenting what is never going to happen is stupid.

This does not mean that I do not miss him. But there comes a time to surrender and to do this as graciously as possible.

Beyond this, everyone who knows anything about me knows about my daughter, Sarah, who died of cancer in April of this year.

Since the onset of summer, more or less, I have found myself seeking out films that might help me move through the loss and grieving process – mitigating movies that resonate in ways that persuade me to look at hard truths and not run away from them. And this weekend, I found two.

While both films were deeply affective and affecting, a pervasive thought kept coming up through my subconscious, arresting me.

I have lost a son and a daughter, this is true. Neither of them will ever be known to me, in this world, again. I know this. No one and nothing can replace them. No one and nothing can bring them back. Nothing can change the fact that I am their mother and that they are my daughter and son. The loss is, without argument, monumental.

But look, oh look, what I have gained.

Sarah had, and has, two wonderful friends – Crystal and Lesley. I have had the delight and comfort of knowing both these young women since Sarah was just past age twenty. Crystal was a close friend of Sarah’s then-boyfriend, Brad, and Lesley worked at the newspaper where Sarah was ultimately employed. Over the years, the girls came in and out of our home; waved at me when I dropped Sarah off at theirs; shared meals with our family; were kind to Don and me and, later, to Mary; got married to the lovely men they were dating way back then and, in Crystal’s case, had children.

On top of this, I made a wonderful friend 17 months ago (but who’s counting?) thanks to a short story contest. His name is Zach and, frankly, I can hardly imagine my life without him in it. He is also happily married and lives in a small town west of Toronto.

I should interrupt myself right here and add that Crystal, Lesley and Zach are all blessed with a mother and a father, parents they deeply love and are respectful of and devoted to. This is all and only to say that they are not adults looking for new parents...which is also good for me, because no matter what else, I am not looking for new children.

I ought also to add here that I have a handsome, funny, perceptive, talented son of my own who, if I am lucky, is coming this way sooner than later. He is and always will be irreplaceable.

But none of this is my point, exactly.

My point is that although my children cannot be replaced, giant (rabbit?) holes can be filled by way of email, phone calls, cards, barbeques, sleepovers, cottages, offers and acceptances of help, laughter, reminiscing, idea exchanges, introductory ideas, shared excitement, presents, messages of love, anecdotes, hugs and kisses, and hanging on.

I have many friends spanning various decades (most of them having emerged in the 1900s) (ha!), but it is something else to experience deep friendship with people who are the ages of my son and daughter when they were lost to me...loving adults who know too well the fears, hopes and dreams, now all thwarted, that are associated with certain kinds of deaths; death that comes too unexpectedly, too unfairly, too young.

While well-made movies help, nothing can replace what I receive from these three lively, funny, bright, restorative friends, whose open, loving hearts and fierce passion could save not only me, but the world.

I leave you with a song Zach learned to work out last night on his guitar, and hope these three will forgive me for mentioning them by name.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rPeRkVmCtg

For God's Sake

My friend Zach sent me the following write-up the other day, knowing I would find it terribly (and I mean terribly, as in Oz, the Great and Terribly) funny. Zach was correct.

So many things stood out to me:

• the over-arching assumption of God
• the politically correct “it” God has apparently become
• the “If God exists, do you...” taking me back to grade 13 Logic & Philosophy class and inductive and deductive reasoning, at which I am (and clearly many others are) bad
• that specifics, and not merely God’s overall performance, were rated and ranked (what I assume is) hierarchically

Anyway, be this all as it may or may not be, I hope you get the same kick out of this that I did. If not, you could haul out your pens and pencils and start making your list. And you’ll need to do this now, before it’s time to get at your Santa Claus letter.


Poll: 52 percent approve of God’s job performance

By John Blake, CNN

(CNN) – If you think voters are in cranky mood over politics, a new poll suggests that some of the dissatisfaction may run deeper.

God’s job performance has trouble measuring up to many Americans' expectations, according to a poll by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm based in North Carolina.

Only 52 percent of Americans approve of God’s job performance, the survey found, though just 9 percent disapprove.

The polling question that prompted this curious response was, "If God exists, do you approve or disapprove of its performance?"

"When asked to evaluate God on some of the issues it is responsible for, voters give God its best rating on creating the universe, 71-5," the polling report said. "They also approve of its handling of the animal kingdom 56-11, and even its handling of natural disasters 50-13."

Dino Grandoni cited the poll in a blog for the Atlantic Wire:

On the bright side for the Almighty's re-election chances, God is still more popular than House Speaker John Boehner and both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, all of whom polled at 33 percent in the same poll.

(snip)

Believers or not, it seems ridiculous for the public to categorically grade God like this, until you realize that it's pollsters who asked the questions in the first place.

Public Policy Polling used automated telephone interviews to survey 928 American voters from July 15 to 17. The voters were represented by a mix of liberal, moderate and conservative voters. The poll's margin of error was +/-3.2%.

John Blake - CNN Writer