The Good Lord Makes The Shoulders For The Burden

 

That's what my mother always tells me when life seems to be piling on the weight. I suspect that's wishful thinking.

I've got a dear friend of many years whose father is now in the hospital with a bad dose of leukemia. Treatment options are limited and harsh and his age and health are complicating factors. There is hope, but the odds are not what one would call good.

Many of my friends are aetheists or agnostics. For those of you that might have faith or that hedge your bets, say and extra prayer for Don. He could use all the help he can get in this fight. I know I will be.
 
 

Pre-Owned Cats: $0 Down, 0% Financing!

 

Brilliant advertisment by a Humane Society in Michigan
 
 

Dreams: A View Into Another World (Part 2)

The Dream Location: Outdoors



Commons

Let us start the description with the large commons, an open field of green grass. LC1 is the designation.

Along the back of it (right of the image) are a line of 15-20' tall trees, leafless, either dead or the season is fall (I suspect it is late in the year, the weather is mild, but not hot as it turns out, maybe a bit damp). Beyond the tangle of leafless branches is another field designated LC3.

I have no idea what would border the commons to the bottom - never saw that view.

To the left, the commons are bordered by a row of dark-coloured block buildings, apartments presumably, set close together. Uninviting, I would say. I would guess the buildings at 1970-1980s from architectural style.

To the top of the image, we have a section of grass on which the vehicles park (the two greenish areas), split only by a single large tree (T1) - well over 30' high, probably an oak or the like, with a trunk at least 24" across, maybe more. Under the big tree, facing leftwards, is a big, old, dark hardwood desk, complete with massive wooden drawers and missing a chair. This appears to factor in during the narrative.

Beyond that section of grass, running in a distorted L across right to left and then down towards the bottom, is sidewalk. Above the sidewalk at the top, is a row of houses of various sorts, a chain link fence, a two-lane suburban road, then a park or other green space which gradually rises to a low ridgeline about where the LC2 label sits.

Houses on the Top of Map

The houses are an interesting mix. I'm guessing at how many there were and I even suspect I'm short a few.

A1 and A2 - Detached homes with what looks like painted board siding with small covered entry porches, reminiscent of something from the early part of the 20th century, two-storey sloped roof, not cottage roof.

B1 - Detached home, blue board or vinyl siding, reminiscent of maybe 1950s or 1960s style architecture, a bit more squarish than the first two. Front door not covered by a porch. Possibly 3 storey with perhaps a flat roof.

C1 - Skelton... floors, parts of walls, weathered wood and exposed pipes. Don't know if it was the victim of fire, abandonment and demolition, or what. Seems oddly out of place in the neighborhood.

D1 and D2 - Multistorey (possibly 5 storey) block of flats. Red brick with concrete under and over windows and that concrete painted a bright pastel green. A bit hard on the eyes, but much more inviting than the blocks of flats on the left side.

I'm sure there was another abandoned building but it may have been out beyond D2 to the right.

General Observations

The neighborhood seemed to be reminiscent of something in the 1970s or 1980s - I don't think I recall a vehicle parked on the common in detail, but there were 6 to 8 of them and at least one was a pickup I'd vintage as the 1970s (mid to late).

The road at the top saw occasional traffic, but it wasn't remarkable, aparently.

So I'm going to temporally peg this at the late 1970s or early 1980s. The whole place had an aura of calm about it. It felt like the area was economically not that rich - working class. No expensive cars. Most cars not new. The kind of place where people would work on their own cars to keep them running because they can't afford a mechanic or a new car.

The Neighbours

I recall meeting in passing a few of the neighbours from the accomodations on the top of the map. I seem to recall one was a single nurse of youngish age, not striking but pretty enough - I think she might have lived in B1. I seem to recall a very nice elderly couple, both white haired and wizened, who may have lived in one of the Ds, but I suspect may also have lived in A1.

The Dream Location: Indoors





Bedroom

The indoor map appears to be that of a house. At one point in the dream, I wake up in the bed in the bedroom, either a low bed with no box spring or else a futton. The floor in the bedroom and down the hall towards the bottom is heavy varnished hardwood, board or tongue-and-groove flooring, very last century (too expensive now!). The flooring show enough imperfections to indicate it has been some time since the house was built.

The bedroom has a small hardwood side table. Daylight shines in from the window at the top and through a screen door from a porch or deck or front step at the top left. The hallway towards the right is dark and I never find out where it leads. The style of the windows is older single or dual pane style with aluminum or steel frames, not the modern triple pane with vinyl.

I walk downwards on the map, through the door at the bottom of the bedroom. This leads into a wide hallway or perhaps dining space that is floored in hardwood.

The walls in the house are all a bright lime yellow colour, lively. No light but natural light appears to be functioning; I cannot say if there are electrical problems or if I just don't turn them on. I don't see any fixtures, so I assume they are either not of note or are missing. I get the impression I may be doing some work on the house.

Dining Hall

Daylight shines in through a side window. Around 1 on the map, I have tools scattered around - an odd mix of hand and power tools, with the power tools all looking like 1970s or earlier. 1 itself is a built-in bench. 2 is a built in storage cabinet. These are both the same bright lime yellow as the walls. Apparently there was a sale on that paint...

The dining hall lacks any furniture, a further suggestion I'm new to the house and working upon it. Either that or I'm very spartan.

Kitchen and Work Area

The region in green is raised one step and is tiled in a white tile with green inclusions.

The topmost section on the left side of this area labelled kitchen is just that. The pink sections are cabinets which are roof mounted over the countertop. There is a sink in front of the window and dayllight streams through the window.

The bottommost section on the left, labelled work area, is similar in appearance, but having a countertop where the other side has a sink. Lights shines through this window as well, as it does from the window across on the rightmost wall.

The cabinets in this area look hand built, not mass-produced, further suggesting the era of this house is older, perhaps in the first half of the 20th century before everything went to mass-produced looks. Sturdy and enduring are words that come to mind. Lived-in is another.

On the small southern wall, at 5, there appears to be a door painted lime yellow which one thinks might lead to a basement, although this is never proven.

The Rest ?

There is a dark corridor down toward the bottom, floored in hardwood, with a number of obliquely glimpsed closed doors. The only light comes through a screen door at the end which one tends to think opens outside.

My guess is the house might be at A2 located on the outdoor map. Maybe.

Dream Narrative

When we join the story, I appear to be working on a vehicle in the commons. Not sure what I was doing. I think it was the truck and the hood was up.

I have flashes of meeting a few of the neighbours - the old couple and the nurse. The day is nice, sunny but a bit cool, and with a breeze. I suspect it is fall. Clothing styles suggest latter half of the 20th century and working class. This again helps pin the dream at the late 1970s or early 1980s.

Somewhere along the line, someone is helping me look for my new house. For some mysterious reason, I've forgotten where the keys are. It seems, at the time, I may not be sure which house I bought. Why I think this is never clear. This is where that big old wooden desk under the tree comes in. It appears to be a storage place where people in the commons keep stuff. I don't appear to have a key, but someone does and we find the paperwork (I think the deed/real-estate papers) and my keys. I am relieved when this occurs.

I don't recall standing in front of the house or walking into it, which is why it is a guess to put it at A2 on the map. I'm basing that on interior appointments (and their age) and from the different degrees of light admitted in from outside.

The next snippet has me awaking in the bedroom, looking about, getting up, going into the dining hall room, looking over the collection of tools on the bench (obviously some work in progress), looking up into the kitchen and work area, down the hall into the dark corridor to the screen door (side door?).

And then the narrative ends... a feeling comes over me like I've just realized this isn't right, that I'm seeing into someone else's life or into a life that isn't mine, and some part of my brain has just realized that this is not my actual life and is alarmed.

You'd almost say that the vivid reality of the whole thing lulled my brain for a time, and then it woke up and shouted 'Alarum! Something Rotten In Denmark!' and thus, with a start, I awake, at 4 am.

And So What?

I doubt I've captured the level of detail in any way sufficient to do it justice. The drawers moved like hand-made wooden drawers move. The light was very natural. The whole place felt like someplace in the latitudes of Pennsylvannia or southern New York State in September of some time in the late 1970s, in a sleepy and not financially well-off neighbourhood.

I don't read much into dreams. The mind needs to churn to power the imagination, to work out things while you sleep, to sluice away stresses, and so on. I don't think of dreams as messages - they rarely seem that way to me. Mostly they seem like movies or videos and sometimes like a first-person visit to someone's life and their world. Those last are the most vivid and kick me away. I recall one in high school that was about me fighting in the US Civil War and I came to a bad end from a cannon fusillade in that one and that woke me up breathless.

I don't know what grand conclusions to draw. Likely, none are appropriate or have not been spoken by others more erudite than I. I do know dreams are a source of wonderment.

And I can't help wondering if, every so often, I'm seeing echoes of another life, from someone, somewhere, somewhen....


 
 

Dreams: A Window Into Another Life (Part 1)

 

Everyone dreams. I dream in a variety of ways - daydreams in the middle of meetings, dreams during small naps, the deeper dreams of a good night's sleep.

I almost never dream in abstractions and my flights of fantasy are usually firmly moored around characters (third person actors in the dream) doing fantastic things in fantastic settings.

Most of the time, the dreams fall into one of two forms: First-person, self-centric dreams or Third-person, other-centric.

Third Person, Other Centric

Third-person, other-centric dreams, as I have them, are the majority of my dreams. Semi-aware daydreams are over 97% of this sort and dreams from naps and deeper sleep are probably still 80%+ of this form.

These dreams are like watching a movie and usually come with imagery and dialogue, but no particular look inside the head of the protagonists. Being a sci-fi, history, and military geek, my dreams usually integrate those aspects in one form or another. They seem to be organized with each dream episode as a vignette or scene with its own characters, dialogue, and actions.

It is from these sorts of dreams that I derive much of my push to write - wanting to capture these fascinating dream-driven sequences. They seem to form interesting and vivid parts of whatever imaginary life-path the characters in them are experiencing. If I can flesh out around the edges and using the dream content as inspiration for a larger arc, it seems I can create complete storylines and compelling characters. Or so it seems to me in my attempts so far.

First Person, Self Centric

The other sort of dream, the first-person, self-centric dreams, are more rare for me. Semi-aware daydreams don't usually take that form for me. These dreams usually require a deep sleep. They are by far the most vivid and emotionally impactful dreams. They have about them an immediacy and reality that is astounding. Despite being male, a goodly portion of them dont revolve around beautiful, naked females. Involve, sometimes. Revolve around, rarely.

These are of a experiences of a different breed. They are like windows into another's life as they live it or into a life as I may have been able to live it in alternative circumstances of where and when.

These are first person dreams and the character perspective is self-centric, looking out from someone's eyes (unlike the third-person, other-centric which is like watching a scene on TV or in a movie).

It is ofen unclear who the character in these dreams is. Sometimes you get thoughts, but even they don't necessarily clarify if the character is you (the dreamer) or someone else. Most of the time, you just get the experience of the senses. It feels altogether like living a snippet of a life in someone else's head.

Aside: I wonder if this is what spawns the 'past life' theories some people seem to ascribe to?

You see, hear, feel, taste, etc. what the dream-protagonist experiences. You feel an emotional response. You see some things with an amazing clarity, as sharp as real-life. Other things, you don't seem to notice or pay attention to, gaps that don't tend to occur to you in the dream state, but strike you as odd once you review them upon waking. You wonder 'how did I see this room so clearly, but never look at the 4th wall?' and so on.

Having spoken a bit about the generalities of dreams as I experience them, I'll share my most recent first-person, self-centric dream with you in part 2. It was noteworthy enough to describe in some detail - I was even able to recreate an indoor and an outdoor map of the surroundings to accompany the description.

More to follow....


 
 

Hong Kong WWII Veteran's Memorial Unveiled

 

Given the war ended 64 years ago, it took them a rather shameful amount of time to get this done. Nonetheless, a monument honouring 2000 who went to reinforce Hong Kong and who fought fiercly against the Japanese, resulting in nearly 300 dead and nearly 500 wounded. Then there was the long ordeal in Japanese prisons, where 300 more died.

Hong Kong Memorial

Hats off to those boys - they were thrown into the breach, ill-equiped and barely acclimated, and they fought hard despite that, showing their own great sense of duty and honour. They were and are a credit to Canada.

 
 

Hot Day In Ottawa In The Kitchen

 

This promises to be an interesting day; The weather forecast is for 31 C and I'm making jam. For the uninitiated, that means boiling water to blanch peaches (the cinammon-peach jam lot), boiling water to sterilize the jars and sealers, boiling water to cook the jam, and boiling the jam itself briefly (but sugared fruit boils at a far higher temperature than water). The net effect of this is more humidity than you can shake a stick at and more heat in the already hot apartment.

On the other hand, the cinammon-peach batch looks like it went okay. The peach blanching wasn't a perfect success - I need a bigger bowl for icewater and I need to get the ice in further in advance. I also discovered some peaches rot from the inside and you discover that when you get down about 1/4" into the peach and find you don't like the look of it (and of course any such material didn't go into the jam).

I may try another batch of peach jam if I find more decent peaches - I want to try the ginger-peach recipe I read about. I also kind of wonder if currants, raisins or cranberries could not be usefully added to peach jam. I know you can use honey for sweetening instead of sugar, but honey's not cheap stuff. I'd have to be convinced it was clearly superior.

I still have a batch of raspberry to go. No twists on that one, I hope. Wanted to make the peach and raspberry because my batches of blasterine (blueberry-raspberry-nectarine with a hint of strawberry) and strawberry are not edible by me old Mum due to her drop-dead-fast strawberry allergy. I figured I'd like to make something she could have and I like peaches and raspberries.

Next on the line is making some homemade pizza (maybe tonight) and trying out my newly acquired marble pestle on the fresh oregano I bought for the pizza. If I don't do that tonight, I'll do it Sunday. I've also got a canning operation to produce some salsa, but I may need to buy some more fresh ingredients. I wonder if canning my own salsa is any cheaper? The jam probably isn't, but I know what went into it and I can get more experimental interesting recipes (peach jam recipe to try #3 involves hot peppers and lemon zest).

And somewhere along the line, I should make another cake. I've got some eggs I should use up. Or maybe a loaf of some kind - banana loaf or pound cake. I have to share this stuff out because I'm only one guy and no way I can eat it all myself, but that makes sharing food a social thing...

 
 

Hubble Ultra Deep Field Gives Perspective

 

We have Hubble to thank for a view into our universe that sheds a lot of light on the significance of Humanity, let alone the significance we have as individuals.

Video showing Hubble Ultra Deep Field and a 3D construction of same.

Even if you aren't an astronomy geek, watch this. The narrator's presentation is simple and he has a good voice for narration. The facts presented are staggering. 100,000,000,000 galaxies in the universe. 100,000,000 stars in each. If I do my zeros right, that's 1E19 stars out there. 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 suns.

Carl Sagan was right. The probability of intelligent life out there other than us must be 1 (aka 100%). I cannot conceive of us being that special. Special, yes. That special, no.

Of course, that does not mean we'll ever meet these other intelligent species.

Some of those galaxies are receding from us faster than the speed of light now. That's also a hard concept to grasp. As is 47, 000, 000, 000 light years away (the distance of the furthest galaxy). That's 47 billion years at the speed of light, 3 x 10E8 m/s.

We collectively, as humans, are small sands on the beach that would be our own world. We think ourselves small as 1 in 6,000,000,000. We certainly are, by that standard. And yet, our sun is one of ten quintillion other stars. As rare as we are individually in the sea of Humanity, our sun is a smaller part of the total count of suns in the universe by a factor of 1.66 billion times.

The numbers involved here are celestial and literally incomprehensible in any direct way by the human mind. Our concept of scale just can't really process this. The universe is breathtakingly vast. Our little sun is a grain of sand's grain of sand on one very big beach. And we are then as inconsequential as a grain of sand upon that beach.

Think about that for a second. If this doesn't give you a sense of true awe at the magnificence of the entirety of our universe, then you have no poetry in your soul.

I'm reminded of something once said by a famous and humourous man:

"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." -- The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Douglas Adams, Chapter 8

 
 

Douglas Adams had no idea how right he was. And this we know because we invest in projects that don't reap an immediate Earthly benefit such as our space program. We understand our place in the universe and the vastness of Creation because of the window into that which the Hubble Space Telescope grants. Think about that next time someone debates with you the value of the space program.

Chuck Norris takes on Obama's Health Care Bill - Roundhouse Kick!

 
Yes, I did say Chuck Norris. THE Chuck
Norris.


Chuck vs. Obamacare, Round 1


From a tagline at the bottom of the article page:


Chuck Norris is a columnist and impossible to kill.
 

Steal my wallet - what the hell's a matter with ya?

Good samaritan has his wallet stolen. Thief gets hog tied and left in street. Wallet returned to owner. Thief given some verbal dressing-down as well. Justice served.

China: Harvesting Political Prisoners for Organs

I listened to Rabbi Reuven Bulka interviewing The Honourable Scott Reid (Lanark-Carleton MP) who is the chair of Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, a representative of the Fallun Gong (Lucy was her first name, I never caught her last), and The Honourable David Kilgour, former Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific, on the matter of the treatment of the Fallun Gong by China. Particularly, the program focused on the harvesting of organs from political prisoners (including many Fallun Gong) in China.

CBC had previously done a piece on this, but this was some time ago. It seems the practice has been going on and may have cost literally thousands of Fallun Gong their lives for organs for Chinese and foreigners looking for organ donors.

In one case that was documented, a man from the Arab world was given eight consecutive kidneys over 4 months due to antibody-based rejections. The Chinese *advertise* and *gaurantee* you'll get a workable organ or they'll keep getting you new ones. As anyone who has worked in civilized, voluntary organ donation will tell you, there is no way you could ever gaurantee someone an organ donor would be available or that you would get eight kidneys in four months. The only way this works is if the people are being selected and killed for their organs.

This is apparently in little dispute - Mr. Kilgour and Mr. Reid both acknowledged that the proof is now well-documented. Over 55 different documented forms of proof exist including official Chinese communications and recorded conversations with officials of the Chinese government (who later tried to say they said something different, but the Canadians had taped the calls) who said that they had Fallun Gong at their prisons and the people interested in organs could 'come and get them'.

On the one hand, we have a major state, China, one of the alleged bastions of civilization (over 3000 years of it), and an autocratic regime trying to obtain some form of international acceptability. (Beijing Olympics anyone?)

On the other hand, we have human beings being ruthlessly harvested for organs. Their only crime is belonging to Fallun Gong. This isn't Al-Queda. This is a peaceful religious movement. But an autocratic state that his lost its faith in its own founding principles (Mao's Revolution) and is soul-searching for new footings in the modern world is apparently terrified of people who organize themselves for purposes not directly aligned to their own temporal gain. This whole concept causes them alarm and thus their declaration of Fallun Gong as a threat. A bunch of peaceful religious people, a threat to the largest and oldest culture in the history of the world. Just try to imagine it... pretty hard to conceive. And yet, that is the pretext for imprisoning them and then later slaughtering them for their organs. And then working to cover this up so that the civilized world does not notice.

Well guess what? There is a report about to hit the Human Rights Committee. It lays a lot of this out. This then gets put before Parliament and voted on. This stuff is documented and pretty much ironclad. Parliament will then decide if they wish to make any sort of statement or take action (they have taken unanimous action before to help individual Fallun Gong members with Canadian ties).

Obviously, our financial mixed interests will influence the final form any action takes. China is a big trading partner. But a China increasingly interested in a place at the table in the modern, civilized countries will have to face up to its dark secrets and do some housecleaning and adjustment. Even shining the light on it makes them uncomfortable. Government sanction, even if it was mostly symbolic, would be another potent jolt to them.

I hope Canada takes a leading role and follows up on the great work of the parliamentary committee members. Anyone with an ounce of humanity should be horrified at using innocent religious practicioners as organ farms at the cost of their lives as this is unequivocally an attrocity. It has been suggested that this even meets the UN's definition of Genocide.

China has to change its ways. They may not like outside attention and interference, but as long as you are going to act like barbarians from 2500 years ago, you can expect to get treated as such. Canada should not stand for the continuance of this Chinese practice, nor should Canadians.

I say the small thing that each and every one of us can do is look at the things we buy. Look at the things we buy that say 'made in China' and see if another alternative is available. There may be other vendours from Europe, Canada, or even other second- and third-world countries that at least don't have the singularly horrifying, Government sanctioned operations to chop up innocent people into parts to fill organ replacement demands. If you can buy something that isn't Chinese, buy it. If you ever talk to your MP, encourage him to push the government to take some strong action on this. Tell your friends.

The one thing that evil cannot stand is the bright light of truth being shone upon it. I am hopeful Canada will be one of the ones holding the light to China's dark secrets.

The cost of doing it yourself (in the kitchen)

Well, I went shopping for 'a few things' and $201 later, I'm home.

Of course, then I decided the bottom drawer in the fridge was a bit of a mess and I'd need to wash it before dropping vegetables in it. Then I realized the shelf above it was a bit in need of one too. Then, after removing that unit, discovered the bottom of the fridge interior (under the drawer) was *really* in need of a cleaning. So, while things melted around the kitchen, I cleaned.

Having shopped at the 24 hour Sobbey's (and might I add, they are not much of a place for jam makers or canners - they don't stock no-sugar-add Pectin), I didn't get home until 0015 HRS and the unloading, storage and cleanup have taken me until now (0130 HRS). It's annoying, but it feels good to have it done.

I have plans to make a batch of peach jam and a batch of raspberry jam this week (batch = 5-8 250 ml jars) once I get the right Pectin and a silicon-tipped spatula with a stainless handle (it turns out silicon-tipped plastic handled spatulas can't handle the high boiling temperatures of jam with all that sugar - at least the handle can't).

But I digress, which is not unusual.

I was planning to address the cost of doing it yourself, particularly as it pertains to pizza.

Now, I remember a day in university where Peter, Paul and I would buy a big rectangular pizza shell (Paul made a few in his bread maker too) and I recall them being pretty cheap. We'd buy a big bag of shredded cheese, a pepperoni to slice up, some tomato paste, and usually on some part of it, Peter and I would sneak green peppers (Paul had a policy of not eating anything green). As I recall. this construction might have cost $15-16 or so and should probably have fed 4-6, but we were pizza demolition men in college, so it fed 3 hungry techie geeks. So, $5 a head, $2.50 a head if you had eaten normal amounts. These are 1995 dollars, so we must account for 14 years of inflation too. According to the Bank of Canada, this would be $19 in 2009, so $6.33 a head, for pizza pigs.

Now, contrast that with my trip to Sobbey's.

2 pizza shells with sauce - 5.49
2 Greem Pepper - $1.28
Pepperoni - $4.49
Bag of Cheese - 7.19
+ Tax Total = 20.85

Assume for a moment this makes two pizzas, which would be enough for 3 pizza pigs or 6 normal humans. That's $20.85/3 = $6.95 per. Compared to the adjusted-for-inflation 1995 dollars, we can see about a 10% increase in costs. Part of that is GST hitting all sorts of things now and part of it is that dairy and wheat costs have grown out of proportion to inflation (I believe... seems that way if you look at the cost of cheeses, pasta, bread and milk).

Overall, home-made pizza (cheese, pepperoni and peppers) costs about what it used to, give or take. That's my first conclusion.

On the other hand, a McCain pizza with meat, vegetables, and cheese was on sale for $4.00, premade. No preparation. Two of them would match our do-it-yourself plain old pizza for $8.00 + tax. vs. $20.85.

You tell me.... is it cheaper to roll your own and prep your own meals? Add in some sort of time cost for your own prep time and that two pizza set would likely cost you $30-40. And the two pre-made ones (and you can get two with different, but good and tasty, contents) are $8.00 + tax.

Here is where we see how the movement towards home food preparation is dragged out into the back alley and beaten senseless. Yes, when you roll your own at home, you can add more herbs, crumble some italian sausage onto it, use organic vegetables and a multi-grain pizza shell (the McCain was multi-grain too). You do get more selectivity of ingredients (at further added cost). But even the baseline pizza is at a minimum 2.5 times more expensive if made at home than the pre-packaged one.

Now, if you made your own pizza shell, it might drop to 2.2 or 2.0 times more expensive. But the economy of scale and process McCain works on is telling, even ignoring any of your own time/labour costs! If you factor them in, the comparison is even worse.

Ultimately, most families can't afford to be all that choosy about what they eat. Many are living hand to mouth. When the difference between slow food, home prepared and pre-prepared mass-production food is on the order of 2 times or more... they would be insane not to opt for that. And this is my second conclusion from looking into this.

I'm not sure the comparison extends the same to all meals, but these are my observations from the pizza front.

Finnish Police help out in Vancouver

Finns nab assailant who punched bus driver

Some Finnish police, in town for the world police games, had a chance to show they can be handy at police work too as they chased down a jerk who decided to punch a bus driver.

Rest in Peace, Harry Patch and Henry Allingham

The last British Veteran (possibly the last veteran) of the Great War (WW 1) is now gone beyond. Before that, one of the remaining few to pass beyond was Henry Allingham, the last founding member of the RAF and another veteran of WW 1.

http://www.cbc.ca/photogallery/world/2443/

My Grandfather fought in the war and lived with the after effects for the rest of his life. It was a conflict that even we modern fork, inured to TV genocides and ethnic cleansings, and raised on televised real-world wars like the Persian Gulf War and the War in Afghanistan, would not have been able to endure like spectators. That war had men drowning in the mud, dying from disease, sleeping in trenches up to their midriffs in water with corpses and rats, dying from triangular bayonets, artillery shrapnel, mustard gas, the new horror of the anks, and the dreaded machine gun. The scale of casualties was vast and hard to believe compared to our losses in current wars.

So far, Canada has lost 127 men in Afghanistan. In less time than we've been in Afghanistan, we lost 67,000 killed in WW1. Think about it - that's over 527 times as many casualties! We think we've lost enough people in Afghanistan to justify us coming home... we've lost more Canadians than that in single days of fighting in WW 1.

http://europeanhistory.about.com/cs/worldwar1/a/blww1casualties.htm

WW 1 seems in may ways to have been a pointless war. It changed some political boundaries and killed a lot of people but it lacked the clear moral imperative of defeating Fascism or blocking Communist expansion of later conflicts. The only moral imperative was to not be dictated to by another nation and the whole war reminds me of a family feud at the highest level.

And yet, it claimed so many lives.

Take this brief opportunity to visit that link and contemplate the number of people all of the countries lost. The loss of human potential from the War... from individual battles like the abortive attack on Galipoli, commemorated in "Waltzing Matilda" (song). The horror of mustard gas, which is a gas which, when elements bind with the moisture (water) in your lungs forms hydrochloric acid in the lungs and throat. The horror of attacking through mud that can swallow you with a mis-step.

Think of all of that and consider yourself lucky to be living in the hear and now. We've had it good, by comparison. Whenever we get gloomy about our future and all the ills of the world today, just think about those numbers and the horrible meat-grinders of days gone by.

No, we've got it good. And we've got evey chance to make it better. Part of that is remembering how bad it was and how bad it could get again if we let it. And then striving not to let things go that way ever again.

Hope In Everyday Life

Sometimes, just getting by day to day can be an act of hope. My father has had a bad heart for years and that isn't generally something that improves as you age.

Dad has a problem with chronic ulceration on his lower leg as a consequence of poor circulation from a long-ago sports injury and from the venous removal for a prior heart bypass and as a consequence of a heart powering at maybe 40%. Due to the aforesaid sports injury, he also had a collapsed lung and one of his lungs has never been very good since, so he has maybe 60% of normal lung capacity.

Add all that together, along with the nerve regrowth pain from having a continuous, seeping, frequently infected, open wound of very large size on his leg and you have a life that comes with brutal pain in the leg, chest pain, chest heaviness, headaches, flushing and chilling, light headedness and unsteadiness from variable blood pressure, and challenges from getting fluid build up in the bottom of the lungs (shortness of breath, difficulty sleeping lying down).

Anyone having to deal with all of that on a daily basis could not be blamed for losing hope, temporarily or permanently. And there are very bad days. There's nothing quite like having a relative ask you to go get a gun and shoot him to offer him surcease from the pain (except of course being the sufferer of such pain).

And yet, he keeps going. Part of that might be a natural human survival instinct. Part of this might be that he knows Mom, gradually decaying from the reconstructive surgery from her run-in with a dump truck and from advanced osteoporosis brought on in part by prior run-ins with cancer earlier in life, needs him to help her maintain an independent life. Part of it might be that he clings to the faint hope that I'll straighten out my life and get settled down and be happy and give him and Mom some grandkids.

Whatever is behind it, he keeps going. Some days his spirits are really down (whose would not be?). But he keeps going.

Somedays, just getting through ends up (intentionally or otherwise) being a testament to hope and courage. I think a lot of days are like that for both of my parents, two of the most courageous and enduring people I know. The fact that they manage to worry about me and our many family friends while in the midst of their own challenges, instead of becoming totally introspective about those challenges, is amazing.

I've been very lucky to have two wonderful role models. Their courage in the face of adversity gives me an enduring sense of hope. I have always loved my parents and thought myself fortunate to have had the two fo them as my parents (even in my worst moments). As I age, I see even more clearly how blessed I was by random circumstance of where and when I was born and to whom.

I guess this post is just my way of acknowledging their quality as parents. They inspire me to keep on fighting the good fight and to endure. They show me that, when I think I'm having a bad day, it really isn't anywhere near as bad as others are having. They help grant me a perspective on my own challenges which seem meagre in comparison. All in all, they give me the gift of hope.

Thanks for that, Mom and Dad.

Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. -- Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), the Shawshank Redemption