Category Archives: 2024 Archive

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION, and THE OLYMPICS

POSTED: September 1, 2024

Regular readers of my posts will know that sometimes I like to dive into topics like recipes, or little experiences with nature or some small epiphanies I have had regarding insignificant things. For those of you who like a diet of these light sweet morsels this post is not that. I have prepared for you the equivalent of a large beer mug full of battery acid.

Yes, today we are back to talking politics.

Like a lot of people, I watched some of the coverage of the Republican National Convention. I was not alive in January 1933 but imagine it was much the same as being in Germany at that time. Backroom deals, deceit, backstabbing and a lot of  “othering”.  Well by most accounts the takeover by Hitler of that party was not nearly as nasty as what has happened to the Republican party since Trump came on the scene. The absence at this convention of most of those seasoned Republican politicians both past and present, including George W. Bush was telling. I have never been a supporter of the ideas of this party, but in the past, their right of centre philosophies stayed within the bounds of the law, conventions of polite behaviour and some sense of morality. The turnover of power from George W. Bush to Barak Obama has been well documented as very respectful and helpful by the incoming President. Contrast that to the activities of January 6th 2021, when the Trump supporters stormed the Capitol.

The RNC convention was difficult to fathom. One lie would pile on top of another and I was wondering if one of them would start to argue that gravity was a conspiracy created to keep Trump from soaring to the heavens. It would have been hilarious to watch if this was not a person who really might win office again.

So yes, for most of us these are the bad guys and the only ones in that party who are not bad are too weak to do anything.

There is a little lag for me in watching these conventions as I am not in the same time zone, but beyond that I just cant take more than about an hour a day of this stuff so I tape them and watch little segments as I can, usually in the evening or if its raining. So the gap in when I finished watching the RNC and the start up of the DNC was not very long. It was also because I had taped a lot of the coverage of the Olympics and would watch segments of it to clear my head of all the politics to watch these incredible athletes do their stuff.

The truth is I actually binged on the Olympics between watching these two political events. Most Olympic events are only subject to accurate timing, not subjective elements. And most are not dealing with complex topics. There may be a lot of complex elements that go into training and execution, but the outcome is measurable. In most cases the competitors are not really even competing with others but with their own ability to complete the task faster, or otherwise better as most of these events (at least the traditional track and field events) are non contact. I love the idea of the Olympics in bringing the world together. As an institution it has many problems, but has stood up fairly well in comparison with other organizations that have attempted to bring the world together to find some common interest to build relationships on.

So after my Olympic binging and a bit of a breather I moved on to the Democratic National Convention.

Now Joe Biden claims that he really had no intention of stepping down until the point when he did. I don’t think so. This lad has been a politician all his life. He as found ways to find consensus when it wasn’t on the table and to get many skeptics to come to his way of thinking long before Donald Trump was on the scene. And I say that with respect.  A big part of the job of any leader is to find some consensus to move forward with plans, and in politics that often involves consensus where many parties are on the record of being in another camp on the topic.

My take is that this shrewd, seasoned old politician knew his time was up but waited until the Republicans had used up all their air time to swing the Democratic Party into full gear. And man have they done that. Watching the Democratic National Convention was such an amazingly orchestrated, flawless production of hype and hope I was practically standing at attention and singing the Star-Spangled Banner myself.

Well not quite. While moved by the personal stories, told by some great orators, many of the usual things that have hurt the American society kept being chanted. The notion of locking up the bad guys, praising not just veterans but the notion that being the biggest, best equipped miliary in the worlds history will create true happiness on the streets of some burned out town in Ohio, is what I expect of that other party, not the Democrats. Any talk of even a hint of Bernie Sanders social justice,  equalization, and tax reform was gone.

And that’s to put a polite spin on it. Only after days of these rousing speeches was there any reference to this parties disastrous handling of Israel’s attempt to eliminate Gaza. Yes, Israel is an ally of the United States and of most democracies. And yes, Hamas initiated this war and took hostages and killed many innocent Israelis. But the behaviour of Israel over the decades with respect to “settling” the west bank, and the economic squeezing they have done to Gaza needs to be remembered.  A wife who has been subject to continuous acts of abuse at the hands of her husband who finally rises up and puts some kitchen scissors in his gut will never be convicted by a jury of her peers. This terrible act by Hamas needed a response, but that response also needed to be a reset of the relationship, not the annihilation of the Palestinian people.

But what is an ally to do? If I am at a party with a good friend who has had too much to drink, I would give him or her a hug, tell them I love them and that for their own safety and the safety of others I am taking away their car keys. Someone needs to be the adult in the room. Netanyahu was on the run from justice when this whole mess began. He has nothing to lose in blowing up the conflict to take the focus off his personal legal problems. So in that analogy of the intoxicated friend what the Biden administration did was not to take away the keys but instead they loaded up the car with more bottles and headed out to do some driving and when the booze would run out they would just buy more along the way. History will not be kind to this support.

When I was younger there were times, I actually thought the roll of a massive U.S. military was to be the world police. Well, if that’s the case Mr. Biden and his bunch have had their knee on the neck of Gaza and need to be stopped.

Kamala Harris has a great smile. I love that smile. I love her laugh. And I love her personal story. On many policy fronts she may bring some freshness to the challenges of running so huge a federation with such diverging challenges. But she can’t just take off the coat she was wearing when she was part of that group cheering on the drunk driver. Sorry Kamala, the other guys are nasty but you come with this baggage.

Fortunately, there are some inspiring and encouraging things I have taped to get this nasty political taste out of my mouth. The Paralympics are beginning.

Django

TULIP

POSTED: August 1, 2024

Last months post The Rose Garden was notionally about roses, but it was really about relationships, and this post is only sort of about a Tulip. You see Tulip is my friends Janice and Jims dog. As a family Janice, Jim, Jade and Jason have had a lot of pets: finches, canaries, love birds, a rabbit, lots of tropical fish and three dogs. While each of these have special places in their hearts and memories, the attachment to their dogs has been significant. I think this is pretty normal for dog owners.

Their first dog, Scamp, was something of a rescue. He was advertised as free to a good home by a family who could no longer care for him and there was quite the stream of people interested but Janice and Jim were the lucky recipients of this middle-aged cockapoo. Scamp lived for many years and was a big part of their lives, largely before they had kids. Scamp went to work with Janice at her fashion design business each day.

Then later, when the kids were young, Paddington, a big male Bearded Collie came along. If Disney designed a dog this would be it. Long brown shaggy fur, and big enough to mean business (about 27 kilos or 60 pounds) but enough of a softie to leave with kids. Paddington, like scamp spent a lot of time with Janice at her art studio, and then with Jim when he retired early. At fourteen he passed.

When Paddington passed it was not clear that Janice and Jim would get another dog. There was a big hole in their hearts and they were not about to artificially try to fill it with another pet. Then one day Janice posed the question – are we never going to get another dog? Jims fast response was that no, he would not say that. This led to the debate about just how old they would consider be prepared to care for a dog. Shortly thereafter they were on the lookout for another pup.

That pup, was Tulip.

Tulip acquired that name because as a Shapendoes, or Dutch Sheepdog, it seemed appropriate for her cultural heritage and her short form TULI was quickly adopted.

Tuli came along when the kids were university age. We tend to think of pets being significant to little kids, and of course they are, but for young adults they are equally important. Tuli has seen Jade and Jason through job changes, partners, different housing, tragedies and triumphs. Along the way a bit of Covid was thrown in of course.

When I first started writing this little piece I had thought I would do a bit of a chronology of how this 13 kilogram (28 pound) dog affected all of their lives but no one wants to read tens of thousands of words – particularly on a computer screen, and especially written by me! Suffice it to say she was very loved and important part of their family and will be very missed.

I will let some pictures tell the story.

Django

 

 

 

THE ROSE GARDEN

POSTED: July 1, 2024

In my last post I mentioned my annual calls to some moms that I don’t speak to much of the year, but use the Mothers Day trigger to call or email them and have a little update chat with. Sometimes with busy schedules it takes a while to connect and this week I had a wonderful conversation with an old friend from Canada. Beyond the usual updates of what has happened since our last conversation she told me this spring and summer she has been working on putting in a rose garden at her very nice back yard.

That back garden is in a very upscale neighbourhood and is of a fairly significant size for a major city, but the part of our conversation that was significant is that it was a rose garden. You see many years before (well almost two decades actually) she had ripped out the award-winning rose garden that was there when they bought the house. It had some very noteworthy varieties which she donated to the local garden club.

I never understood exactly why this dramatic removal had occurred, and thought it related to having more space for the kids to play, allergies, or the thorns around their active kids.

Well as it turns out it was none of those things. The big rip-out occurred because of an event involving a single rose. At the funeral of her husband’s dad, her sister-in-law created a lot of drama by giving out roses to people at the graveside ceremony but made an even bigger thing of the roses only going to blood relatives, so my friends husband and children received roses but not her. It was a bit strange but not life changing to not be included but it was a reflection of how her sister-in-law viewed her – some level of outsider, who would never be part of the family. It hurt at the time but as the months past and then the seasons as well,  she could not walk by the rose garden without those emotions bubbling up. With it in her backyard within sight of a large window overlooking it, this was an ongoing irritant, so she had decided to take it out and for several years her husband knew to not bring roses for Valentines Day or bring home a bouquet with even one rose in it.

But with time, and some events that involved that sister-in-law which illustrated her insecurities and nuances of her mental health, my friend started to be ready to take back her relationship with roses. She never had a relationship with her sister-in-law again but after a lot of years was now ready to have roses in her garden and contacted the local garden club who were more than pleased to give her cuttings from her original plants.

I have seen a lot of different examples of things that become symbols or a type of short form icons for events that have happened in families. Some are good, some, like this rose story, not so much.

A buddy and his family were traveling to Mexico for a vacation and one of his teenage daughters as a responsible young woman wanted to hold onto her own boarding pass. Shortly after going through security, she managed to misplace it and could not track it down for the gate. The protocols for missing boarding passes apparently are extensive, particularly once you have passed security, so the airline staff could not just print off another one and she was going to miss the flight. So her dad, did what dads do, and stayed back with her, bought two new expensive tickets on the only flight going in a short period of time to Mexico and he and his daughter flew to the “other” coast of Mexico on that flight, then rented a car and drove across the country to be with the rest of the family. The cost was huge, the time significant, and the frustration of similar magnitude. It is also not a recommended drive as there are many risks.

The teenage daughter went on to be a very disciplined and skilled professional, but ever since, when a member of that family is issued a boarding pass, their minds are instantly taken back to that experience.

When I was in high school, I loved cars and worked on them whenever I could. I was only mediocre at any of the mechanical stuff but developed some proficiency at body work. One summer I had taken over my parent’s small garage at the back of their house to work on a relatives little Honda S600. Now the S600 was a two-seater roadster that was very small and was Hondas first real outing to make something fun. It was powered by a 600cc motorcycle engine and had chain drive, not a conventional transmission, so was very much an evolution of their success in the motorcycle world. Even at that time, which was the early 1970’s this car from the sixties, while modest in scale and power was a bit of a collector car and I was tasked with doing some body work in preparation for it being repainted. It was not uncommon for friends to drop over and watch what I was doing and generally hang around. One day when I was packing up for the day a buddy, Myles asked if he could drive it into the garage and I said that would be fine but also commented that I didn’t think he had experience driving a standard transmission. The response was a classic “Oh sure, I can drive a stick”. Well, you know where this story is going. He had never driven a standard and smashed the car into the garage, creating about two weeks of work for me to correct. Ever since then for most of us in my backyard that afternoon, the statement “Oh sure, I can ___________” became the short form for wild exaggeration of your own skills.

A friends son one night was rummaging around in their chest freezer for a frozen pizza and was successful in his search, but in so doing forgot to put back the large collection of frozen lobster tails and shrimp he had taken out on his quest, that was waiting for a big family get together. The family still enjoys shellfish but the residue of that experience occasionally surfaces.

One that really resonated with me was a friend whose sister was almost a decade older than him and would love to pull out his report cards at Christmas dinner and read the terrible remarks about her younger brother from his teachers. Obviously, there was some nasty bit of psychology going on there. He is now estranged from her.

Everyone who has heard this story of course reels in shock but most people I know who are familiar with this story also now put report cards in a different category of significance. Yes they are a measure, but at a limited point in time, and the significance of the comments and the marks need to be considered with some level of respect and decorum as the after effect, if not managed properly have greater impact than the marks themselves.

And I think that is the point of my little ramble today – these experiences with friends or family that become short forms for specific activities or memories can be pulled up as mean-spirited triggers or thought of more fondly as bonds in our memories. We are all wired to try to make sense of bits of information put in front of us, and often these short forms capture that, much as a happy face emoji or thumbs up does. As I age I am trying to also reflect on what the memory would have been for each of the participants at the event not just my emotions at the time. I don’t know if that sister-in-law today would just hand out roses to everyone at the graveside for example.

And I do like the idea of my friend taking back the rose garden.

Django

NOT THE MOTHER’S DAY CALL I EXPECTED

POSTED: JUNE 1, 2024

Mother’s Day is a special time. We pull out the emotions we don’t show often enough and share them with the ones we love, or respect. Any regular readers of my posts will know I am not a dad and don’t have a partner or siblings. My Mothers Day experiences historically have been with my own mom and my grandmother. Both sadly passed many years ago. In recent times I have taken to calling those friends of mine I respect as moms just to tell wish them well and tell them I am thinking about them. I will often do it the day before, partially because of the time difference of my location Malta and many of them being in North America. It is also a day before the busy time of Mothers Day, and if the timing doesn’t work they call me back on their time and we can have a good chat. This was the case with my friend Janice who actually called me back the day after Mothers Day when she had more free time.

 

I know Janice pretty well, given she is the partner of my buddy Jim. Her Mothers Days always involve Jade and Jason over for the day, and often Jim makes a nice dinner and they do some things together. They do this every second Sunday so the significance of Mother’s Day is just that it is more focused on Janice than usual. This year, like others Jade always posts on social media an image of her and her mom doing something from when she was a kid. I always like that kind of remembrance as it brings to life the historical depth of the relationship. Also like some previous years Jade and Jason brought a number of flowers they thought their mom would like for the garden, perennials I think, and spent some time with their mom choosing the location and planting them.

 

 

 

But what was really on her mind, were some events that had happened during the week, largely involving Jim. I felt compelled to use the often-referenced quote of our high school principal when Jims name would come up “Oh, what has he done now?”

A few days before Mother’s Day he was planning his day around an outing to see his dental hygienist. He and Janice have a good relationship with Faye. She does a great job, and works in a very large and very good dental practice and they have been with for some time. It is a small world it seems as her grandfather started a major company making short helpful guides on various subjects for high school students. I used these guides myself.  Faye has a daughter and who is about nine and she and her partner are now expecting another baby. This is of particular interest to Jim has a sister who is nine years older than him and my other buddy Jim H. has a couple brothers, the youngest of which is also nine years older.  The dynamic of these siblings is always interesting to watch. There isn’t much competitiveness, as the age spread is so large its almost like having an aunt or uncle more than a sister or brother. Where there is jealousy its because by the time the younger one comes along the parents are now more mature and able to let the little stuff slide and they almost always are in a much better financial position so the family trips aren’t inexpensive camping trips in the car, but expensive trips to exotic locations and the meagre allowance has now become much more sizable.

Like me, Janice and Jim are getting older so need to have their teeth “detailed” as Jim says, about every four months so Jim had seen Faye just after she went public with her pregnancy and had a booking with her on her last day before her scheduled time for stopping work. While he was never really happy about his trips to the dental office this one he was looking forward to because he could get the final update on how things were progressing and the plans and wish her well.

It is with these thoughts that Jim was more than a bit put off when an event happened earlier in the day that put his dental outing at risk. Over breakfast he and Janice had watched a racoon come out from a patio table in their back garden that had not been uncovered from the winter and climb over a fence they share with a neighbour and head off to the neighbour’s yard. They were relieved to see she had left as it was Jims plan to uncover the table that day and start to do the spring yard work before his dental visit. He had just made his coffee and saw her return with a baby racoon in her mouth. Before he could collect his thoughts, she had crawled under the table cover with the little one. He called to Janice to come to see this but before Janice was out the mother racoon was off and over the fence again. This was not good. She was obviously relocating from where they had been born. Hopefully that was the entire family. Nope. The process continued for three more trips.

Janice is a very resourceful person and was on the phone with the municipal wildlife control people. They assured her that this was not their problem and that she should call a private wildlife control company. The answer there was not a very good one. Two different places she called were very clear that they could come and trap the mother and her kits, but that once they were released at a park the mother would bolt, the kits would be left on their own and either starve to death or be eaten by other animals. What the hell kind of mess had they fallen into here, they thought.

But one of the private wildlife people had made a good suggestion to encourage them to relocate to someplace in the yard that would not be so intrusive but still provide shelter and that would lead to the best possible outcome.

So once Jim saw the mom head out to get another one or to get food Jim took some gear and built them a little house in a corner of their yard.  It was an aluminum step ladder covered with a tarp and with a cardboard box below with little walls so the kits wouldn’t wander out. The next part I imagine was a bit scary. With some gloves on Jim gingerly opened the table cover to reveal the nest of babies and carried one of the little guys to the new home and went back for the next one. Once the cover on the existing nest under the patio table was exposed it was obvious there were six of them! One at time Jim did the gentle walk to their new home and placed them in the box. I was at number four when mom came back and hear the squealing from the new location and went under the tarp at the ladder house. There was no turning back now so Jim got the next one and brought it to within a few meters of their new home and set it down and went back for another. Thankfully mom heard its squealing and after making sure Jim had left came out and picked it up with her mouth and took it to the new nest. They repeated this routine until the job was done. On one of Jims trips to the drop point Janice snapped this photo. Their little eyes were not even open at that point!

 

While the drama of this was all pretty interesting Jim was at a terrible risk of not making his dental detailing appointment and called to tell the clinic he was on his way and would not be characteristically early but might even be a few minutes late. Apparently, someone had forgotten to call him to say that the appointment would need to be rescheduled with another hygienist at a future time as Faye had gone into labour and been rushed to the hospital. She and her baby boy were doing fine he was told.

Other than caring for their elderly dog Tuli, Janice and Jim have a life these days that is quite quiet and does not have big events, or even little events to liven it up much so this had been quite the day. The new nest was quite a novelty for the next few days but then there was no action around it at all. They were getting a bit stressed that she might have abandoned the nest altogether and on Mother’s Day morning gingerly pulled back part of the tarp hoping to not see a number of dead baby racoons. Nope. Nothing. Mom had relocated them to somewhere safer.

That night having a nice mothers day dinner they could hear the mom and her kits making noise from their new nest in a nearby park.

It was not the Mother’s Day conversation I thought I would have but it made my day.

Love you mom.

Django

CHASING THE WRONG VILLAIN

Perhaps it is my age that I am conditioned to love a good chase scene. The cop in pursuit of the bad guy of course is the classic. Running down the lanes, and jumping over the fences. The famous car sequences like Steve McQueen in Bullitt, or the Bond films with car and boat chases come to mind.

But what if you are chasing the wrong villain?

Now you may think that this is where I pivot into talking politics and after giving a little acknowledgement to some of the current political monsters in the world (you know who they are) move to talk about Xi Jinping and how he is that sleeper that is going to really make a mess of the world during, or shortly after the American presidential election. No. I am not that smart.

What I am referring to is a nasty villain I learned about on my last trip to the Doctor. In various other posts I have covered some of the things I have learned at such visits. My “Doctor” is actually a clinic with several practitioners, all of whom seem to enjoy messing with me and my aging body.

But this time my usual designated General Practitioner at the clinic, wanted to talk about a villain I had ignored while trying to pursue the big nasties in my hypertension life: Fat, Sodium, Sugar, and Carbohydrates.  While judiciously trying to cut down or avoid these four, Cholesterol was often there lurking in the wings I learned. Damb, I like brie cheese and milk, and eggs and croissants and….well, it’s a long list once you start into it. Those four current components I am already avoiding make me feel like a pinball.  Just bouncing away from one only to bounce into another. And now there is one more pin to hit in trying to complete the course. Its not that I was chasing the wrong health thief, just that while chasing the right ones, another was picking my pocket.

My doctor is a bit of a character and I was leaving the office she called to me down the hall with a little afterthought that I should also think about joining a fraternity. My puzzled look was her queue to snicker: Omega 3

So last week there I was at the grocery store, with my glasses on, scribbling on my pad looking at some of my favourite foods and dutifully not letting them make it to the cart as they all have at least one of these five problem components in abundance, and most have many of them represented. I already eat a mess of vegetables and fruit but really need to up the beans, lentils, oats and oatmeal and some fatty fish like salmon for this cholesterol component. Dark chocolate is a crazy one. Its good to reduce the bad cholesterol, and to increase the good cholesterol but comes packaged up with lots of sugar and fat.

I take this health business personally and when I am not getting good blood pressure numbers indicating my hypertension is winning it gets me down. But you have to take it all in stride and not let one days bad numbers dampen your spirits if the day before you didnt go for a nice walk or were not as diligent in your food choices. Don’t beat yourself up, just resolve to do better the next day. I also know that there are a lot of people in the world who would love to trade their problems for mine.

Stay tuned. I will may survive this.

Django