Category Archives: DISPATCHES & RAMBLINGS

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

MYSTERY SOUP

POSTED: APRIL 1, 2024

Just about year ago today I got a call from Janice. Now regular readers will know that I have a good relationship with Janice but my real history with Janice and Jim is with my buddy Jim I went to elementary school with and then high school, and after that toured around Europe with. So, getting a call from Janice instantly puts me on edge, sure that some terrible thing has happened to have her pick up the phone at a strategic hour to span a few time zones from Toronto to Malta. I was relieved to hear it was nothing like a health scare.

She was gearing up to make a nice meal for Jim and over a period of time heard a couple of people mention a soup that she had never heard of but thought it would be interesting to try as she and Jim really like soups of all kinds. I think it is the northern climate thing, where warm and cozy foods and beverages are comforting on a cool, cold or damp day. Soups, stews, hot chocolate, tea, coffee all do the job after digging cars out of snowbanks, shoveling snow, skating or skiing.

She had been all over the internet and could not find it and thought that with my history working in kitchens that I might have a lead on it or be able to reach out to some of my friends who are chefs, cooks, or otherwise working with food.

Square soup. Yeah, square soup. No, I had never heard of it but would put out some feelers with a bunch of chefs I had worked with over the years. Janice knew that having worked in the kitchens of cruise ships, I have a long list of friends all over the world who still work in kitchens, some as chefs, some as cooks, some bar and restaurant owners and some just working to survive. It took the better part of a day to get a number of responses as they reflected a lot of different time zones – Asia, America, New Zealand, Europe, Africa,  mid Pacific and mid Atlantic. Most of the responses were the same, (other than the personal updates) “nope – never heard of it”.

After spending a lot of time on this I was frustrated to not have something more definitive but sent her the two leads I had come up with.

The first was Square Meal Soup from a girl I had worked with who today was involved in a little restaurant in Reykjavik. It is a stew of meat and vegetables and potatoes or other root vegetables. It sounded like a pretty flavorful meal in a bowl and I have enjoyed some with these ingredients myself.  Nope that was not it.

My second one I knew would probably even be further off the mark: Square Grouper Soup. Now this one is not well known and is a local joke in the Florida Keys. When people would smuggle in bales of marijuana by boat and coast guard officials would come up to the “fishermen” to ask what they were catching they would often respond  Grouper, but then when the official would leave, joke about the bales of marijuana they had thrown overboard as Square Grouper. Square Grouper Soup is a soup made with seaweed. I know that does not sound appealing but there are some very tasty, and nutrient rich seaweeds out there, and when cooked in a soup all look like marijuana.

Nope that was not it she assured me.

SQUARE SOUP

She did however say she had a lead on it and would get back to me later in the day.

So just after midnight on April 1st she sent an email with the following recipe and picture and hoped I would enjoy my first day of April.

 

SQUARE SOUP RECIPE

INGREDIENTS:   You can use almost any vegetable you like, as well as various meats, seasonings etc.  Really there are no limitations.

STYLE: Consommé’s, broths, cream soups, bisques, chowders…again,  its pretty wide open.

VESSEL: This is the key. In contrast to the traditional bowl, designed for a spoon to hug each arc of a conventional soup bowl,                             square soup needs to be served in a square container.

 

Django

 

P.S. Just a few little shout-outs to:

Salute On The Beach,

1000 Atlantic Blvd, Key West, Florida  Salute! On The Beach | Key West, Florida (saluteonthebeach.com)

Square Grouper Bar and Grill

22658 Overseas Hwy, Cudjoe Key, FL               https://squaregrouperbarandgrill.com/

Matarkjallarinn  (The Food Cellar)  Adalstraeti 2, Reykjavik, Iceland.

Home – Food Cellar (matarkjallarinn.is)

 

TRIVIA NIGHT

POSTED: MARCH 1, 2024

Trivia night. For some just those two words are enough to make them run in the opposite direction. I had a bit of those feelings when asked to fill in for a missing team member for such an event recently but based on the interesting people who made up that team, I decided to give it a go. Now for those who are not familiar with this pursuit, it is a night at a local pub, restaurant or bar. Questions, film clips or images are up on a screen or music is played and there are a series of choices to be made on which person, date, etc, is the right answer.

The drinks are often discounted so that somewhat enhances the skills of the participants or at least the enjoyment of the activity. For our little group, the five other team members did most of the heavy lifting that evening but I did have a few moments of contribution. We came third of more than ten teams so clearly those teams were drinking more than we were.

I had fun. I did not think it was going to be as enjoyable, but quickly realized what makes for a good trivia team we had in spades. The ideal team member mix is people of different ages, and backgrounds as it is just as important to know the name of a type of fishing lure as the size of an African country or name of one of the bones in your finger, or who wrote a hit single from 1996.

The significance of that diversification of team was not lost on me. We may not all have the same knowledge but we can all learn from each other. A bit of a lesson for some who would have us all be the same. Perhaps a trivia night should be obligatory before being allowed to function in a community!

And there were other real lessons for me as well. I recently turned seventy and I think I am in pretty good shape for that age. But it also was very clear to me when with a combination of younger and older people all scrambling to come up with the right answers that I don’t process information as quickly as I once did. I also often doubt my responses. Age does that to all of us, and most of us realize it.

Joe Biden, if you are reading this, there is a lesson here – experience counts, and experience and insight together create wisdom which counts even more, but there is some point where the baton should he handed off to some younger folks as there is a point where the mental acuity is eroding faster than the wisdom is being generated.

As I was walking back to my boat, I learned an equally important lesson. A fellow who was at the other side of the room for the trivia event was walking my way and we got to chatting about the evening. I realized when I heard his voice that he was the one who had called out a few funny comments. The one I remarked to him that I enjoyed the most was a bit of dark humour to the question: “What stunt did 3M create for the sole purpose of introducing Scotchgard?”

This fellow walking with me, had a drawl from the southern United States and had called out: “The assassination of JFK, and Jackie did not have any stains on her outfit”.  Now this game is not played by calling your answers out, but the absurdity of this response in combination with some alcohol drew quite a bit of laughter at the trivia night but when I referenced it to him, he was looking quite grave. “Yes, that is the correct answer but no one seemed to believe it” he said in a very serious and somewhat upset tone.

As we walked along and we chatted about a few other parts of the evening it became evident that this was one of those fellows who will believe the conspiracy theory before the logical conclusion. After a few more examples this became very clear. I had previously only heard about these sorts of people, and could not imagine they actually exist.

Donald Trump if you are reading this you need to know that just because there may be more than one right answer to a question, does not mean that all answers are correct. Also, just because something is a plausible answer does not make it the right answer.

As we walked along, he also explained to me that he had been disappointed that Malta, where I live, and he was visiting, is a democratic place and it was upsetting for him that we did not all vote on the responses to the questions to determine which ones were right.

I usually confront weird stuff head on, but decided the smartest thing in this context was just say goodnight to this fellow and to peel off at the next street and take a longer way home.

I had expected a fairly goofy event with a lot of people all of the same age just using it as an excuse to drink. But my experience at Trivia Night, like a lot of things in life, can have unforeseen enriching aspects.

So now, I keep my Wednesday nights free in case I am needed as a substitute for a missing trivia  team member.

Django

 

FROM  CHEATS TO INNOVATION

POSTED: FEB 1, 2024

Regular readers of my pieces know that one of the things I love to talk about in cooking are Cheats. I was recently asked what my favourite cheats are in the kitchen and as I started to put them down I realized that I not only like cheats but also go-to’s.

Cheats I think of as those things that are short cuts that get you almost as good a finished product as doing something the correct way but saving time, energy, cost etc. Using a prepared puff pastry or filo pastry in a recipe instead of making your own saves a lot of time and for most of us who are not great pastry chefs, the result is as good or better than if we had painstakingly rolled out, buttered, folded, buttered again and then repeated until our arthritis, time constraints or limited attention span, forced us to stop. Cheats are a fundamental of most commercial kitchens -finding that quick and cost-effective way to get almost as good a product as the conventional, but mor labour intensive or more costly approach, particularly in environments where the price of the meal components is a factor.

But Go-to’s are those things, that if resources (time, materials, labour) are scarce will be utilized first. Every chef has a go–to knife (often about a nine inch) that they can do all but the most extreme tasks with. If they were going to be on a desert island with just one knife, that would be the one.

Cheats and Go-to’s I have often thought of in terms of cooking, but over the last while in chatting with a lot of people about the piece I did on retirement I have learned that cheats and go- to’s exist in every walk of life. In some cases they are techniques, in some cases tools and in a few cases much more conceptual. Let me explain.

Veterinarians like all other medical people have a variety of resources on hand to do blood work, biopsies, and other lab tests to determine the cause of various ailments. This is good because animals cant give a very detailed review of what pain or problem they have.  But all of that costs a lot of money and often the owner of a pet or livestock is not keen on spending hundreds of dollars to get a detailed report when there is an easier way. That easier way to for the vet to just do a quick visual on the what they produce. (man, was that polite or what!). It tells a lot about what has been consumed, how its being processed and can usually get the Vet quickly to either a narrowed down focus, if not the actual accurate answer. From there more detailed work might be taken on but often a strategy is worked up to try to solve it based on that preliminary thinking.

Over the last while when chatting with people about this retirement business I have shamelessly asked about these topics and been startled at how cheats and go to’s exist in everything. It doesn’t matter if you are an early childhood educator, a neurosurgeon or a roofer.

So what is the common element to all of these cheats or go -to’s? Well its experience. In some cases people are thrown into a situation where they should not have to do surgery by candlelight without their regular equipment, but their experience will just kick- in and they will know the cheats and go-to’s for working in bad lighting and with less than perfect equipment. But more than experience I think it is their reflecting on that experience and what has worked.

The reason education is valuable of course it that it is distilled experience. It is that compilation of all the experience that has been accumulated to that point in history and organized into a program to learn how to do it. So whether its engineering school or scuba diving the techniques and experience that has worked for so many in the past is available to be learned. Things that have taken years or centuries to evolve can be learned in a fairly short period of time if properly set out and explained. And many of those techniques or best practices had precursors that were cheats or go-to’s of course.

And that brings us to a category of person who figure out some of these cheats and go-to’s early in their careers and go further in coming up with a technique or tool that might work better. I have a buddy who mentors young entrepreneurs having been a serial entrepreneur himself in a variety of industries. What he often tells young people who are chomping at the bit to start their own business is to ask themselves if they are learning at the job they are in. If the answer is yes then its clear that they should revel in the fact that someone else is paying them to learn their trade and just enjoy that as long as it lasts! If the answer is no then the follow up question is whether they have a plan or strategy for doing the task or service better than their current employer or the industry does it. If no, then they should stay in the job until they figure it out. If yes, then its time to evaluate whether the time is right for them to go out and build that better mousetrap!

I just wish someone had explained all this to me when I was young. Or perhaps I wasn’t listening.

Django

IS IT A WAR CRIME?

Posted: January 1, 2024

I am an optimist, that’s just how I am wired. But the events of the last few years really test that perspective. I am starting to just expect that there will be another bad event: floods, wildfires, wars, pandemic, interest rates, inflation, mass shootings. The list goes on.

Until the Russian invasion of Ukraine our news was dominated by the pandemic, both the virus and the social and economic fallout that flowed from it. All that got us off that virus fixation was the Russian invasion. And now, approaching two years into Putin’s war we have another terrible war that some like to neatly compartmentalize as a regional war.  Of course, Covid has not gone away, and the fighting in the Ukraine rages on, various parts of the world have been flooded or lost their communities to wildfires, and we have all just learned to juggle one more ball in our anxiety kit.  Yes, its true – I am not in Kiev being bombed directly, nor am under attack in Gaza city, so its true that my problems are a rather distant ripple from where those stones first hit the water but it is hard to not be somewhat paralyzed by the events of our times.

As the journalists turn from the immediate stats on casualties in different regions and what (lack of) progress has been made on trying to get these two invasions to end, and move to deeper insights, one topic bothers me more than others. The question of whether certain activities are war crimes.  Yes, I realize that War Crimes are a defined term by many groups and whether the definition flows from the Geneva Conventions in 1949 or the more nuanced ones at the U.N. coming from the experience in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, there is a measure of what is, and what is not,  precisely a “War Crime”.

But the whole notion of there being some acts of war that considered acceptable in this bloodsport seems quite strange to me. Yes, I understand the idea that one soldier killing another soldier is just fine in comparison with the rape, torture and murder of civilians.  But certainly, this is a spectrum that already starts at the wrong point – killing each other, and then tries to put measurement points on various acts from there.

Is it a war crime?    Well if you have to ask…..

A few nights ago I went to bed after watching some BBC coverage of the two regional wars. In both cases there was a lot of talk of War Crimes.

Yesterday I woke up at about 5:30 with a terrible poem going through my head and I got up before the sunrise to write it down. And yes, to my poet friends its not technically a haiku, but close.

 

                IS IT A WAR CRIME?                  

Is it a war crime–

splitting hairs I think, even

clear glass casts a shadow.

 

 

This little poem needs some refinement and if anyone has suggestions, I would be pleased to receive them and will post them here.  Remember to contact me, it is djangobisous@bell.net

 

In looking back over my posts of the last year, it seems I am somewhat stressed about the world and as we go into another year in my future posts I am going to share some of my more encouraging thoughts as I have lots of that variety as well.

Enjoy the new year.  Twenty- twenty- four  will have some positives for each of us I am sure.

 

Django

LOST & FOUND

POSTED: December 1, 2023

I really like public buildings that are on a human scale. It doesn’t matter if they are schools or municipal buildings or hospitals. The key element for me is that they are of a size that is big enough to get the job done but small enough that they are very much the vessels for the activity, and not that the structures are so large that the structure itself is the primary focus. I posted recently about my experience with a young woman named Ofra (posted November 1st). Most of my experience with her was at a small hospital here in Valletta, Malta and it consisted of waiting in a fairly small area to find out the outcome of her medical problem and to help her back to her temporary accommodations.

I was there for many hours overnight and the whole adventure was unplanned so I had not taken a book or even reading glasses, my phone or any other distractions so the space I was in became quite familiar after a few hours. The window was close by and I could look out but it was nighttime and not much to see. I was reminded of my buddy Jim’s story about his uncle Gordon in a setting like this. Now Jim’s uncle was a character, and I think became even more of a character in Jim’s recollections of him but one story that came to mind here was that Jim’s Nana (grandmother) was in a small village hospital on the Quebec side of the Ottawa river valley, in Canada. The region, while part of Quebec, a largely French speaking province, was inhabited primarily by people with an English speaking heritage, largely from Ireland, and many of them farmed or went into Ottawa for employment.

So his Nana was in the hospital for one thing or another, and Uncle Gordon thought it would be a grand gesture to fly by in his little airplane and waive at her. For most of us, this initial plan would quickly be discarded as the small community hospital was still a busy place with lots of activities of people coming and going. Beyond this, airplanes are noisy things. In those days (the 1960’s) the small size of this little one-seater plane sounded more like a loud lawnmower than any smooth running aircraft and it might occur to most that some people in the hospital would want some calm and quiet.  But Uncle Gordon did not have the same decision making process as the rest of us and saw the flight and waving as a good plan. He was also not deterred by the fact that there were lots of electrical wires running from the poles around the building to the top of the five-storey structure – he would just fly under them. Yeah. Really. What a plan.

Well he did pull it off but in so doing lost his flying license in Canada. He did keep his flying license elsewhere however, and continued to fly around the United States and the Caribbean. YIKES.

As I sat there in the waiting area, the small commissary was close. Too close.  It had a very limited range of products during busy hours and only vending machines in the less busy hours when I was there.  It made for tough decisions for me with my efforts  to manage my hypertension – death by sugar overload? Carb overload? Fat overload? Some of the products in those venting machines liberally satisfied all three and with a lot of sodium in there for good measure as well.

I couldn’t leave to go elsewhere for a coffee or some fruit as I did not know when they would release her and at that hour there would probably not be anything very close by.  It was my first time pretending to a be a dad and I really did not want to screw it up. To keep my mind off my hungry stomach I tried to focus on some other things and one was right there within sight. It was a small cabinet with a rather ancient sign LOST & FOUND.  Now these lost and found cabinets, tables, or bookshelves in small facilities are quite the stimulus for anyone with an imagination. In some cases, the objects on display there look like they truly have been lost and would have some value, at least sentimental value,  to someone. In other cases they look like items that are not worth retracing steps for – a paperback book, beat up baseball cap, or satchel that probably was just abandoned. But other things truly looked like they were just waiting for their owners to come back through the door to reunite with.

This notion of LOST and FOUND really got me thinking at the time. I had nothing but time on my hands sitting in that waiting area, and was desperate to not think about the vending machines.

In general LOST is a negative. You might lose your way, or lose in a game. None of us like losing things, but there are some very noteworthy exceptions. Sometimes the loss of ones virginity is a negative, sometimes a positive. Most often the loss of body weight is a good thing, but sometimes if its due to a medical problem a bad thing. A friends mother was losing her memory from dementia and that was really bad, but one day went swimming as she had lost (forgotten) her fear of water. Damn, this lost business is complex.

I was petty sure that FOUND was a positive however as I began to muse about it at about 4 am. We all love finding stuff. A bit of cash in a jacket we do not often wear or finding the right partner. But what happens when we find the partner in bed with someone else, find a lump where it shouldn’t be, or find we have been scammed out of our life savings. I guess found is not universally a good thing either.

I had a few chats with others who were waiting, walked around a bit, read parts of a paper that had been left, and eventually broke down and ate a bar that had the promising name of  “only protein”. It tasted pretty good. So did the second one. The wrapper I sheepishly read after eating two of these killers:  yes, there was protein but also 12 grams of fat and 9 grams of sugar. And I had consumed two! Well, no use beating myself up over it.

As I was looking at the ingredient list on the little package when the doctor came out to tell me the news on Ofra, and my time at the hospital would soon come to an end.

I have since done a lot of walking, am back on my good diet and have generally redeemed myself for those two killer protein (and everything else) bars.

The notions of Lost and Found however, like my memories of that experience with Ofra have lingered with me.  Most stuff of life has a crazy combination of simple and complex and I seem to spend a lot of my time these days trying to sort out the two.

Django