Mother

The longest wait, in a chair on the landing of the stairwell. I have nothing to keep me occupied. The hospital is quiet, it is the middle of the afternoon.

My little sister is ill again. We are visiting her in a London hospital. We came by train and bus which was the best part of all of this. I liked the movement and the view. My mother and I sat on the top deck of the bus, at the front so we could see everything in the streets.

This time I am not allowed to see Helen; I am too young, or only one visitor is allowed, or she is too ill, I don't really know. I don't ask any questions. The ugly lady in blue with a white hat is really quite nasty to my mother and won't let me see my sister; I don't care. I pretend not to care anyway. I have been the centre of attention and now I have to be out of the way, while my mother visits. She takes the gift she had bought for me to bring and the signed get-well card. The card says, "Get Well Soon, but don't be a Pig" on the outside and "Because when he's cured, he's dead!" on the inside. There is a picture of a fat pink pig on the front. I have no idea what it means, except that my mother thinks it's funny. I am placed out of sight, outside the swing doors. Someone finds a chair.

The chair is big and hard. My feet don't touch the floor. I am good. I don't wander off. No-one comes by. When I move the chair and it scrapes the floor I can hear echoes from both up and down, it seems. The stairs are made of hard white marble veined with grey swirls. The walls are white. There are polished brass handrails on each side of the stairs with curly horns at the ends. The centre rail is continuous. If I lean over and look down it goes round and round and round.

The stairwell has high, bare windows; one for each floor, but the lower part of the window glass is frosted – there's no view, even when I stand on the chair. I rock the chair and it nearly tips. I sit down again.

There is a distant noise of footsteps and some people talking, and then it stops. Everything is so quiet. I am not used to silence. There is no sound even from the city traffic. There had been a big sign on the street as we walked from the bus stop, "Keep Quiet - Hospital." I am never quiet and that is obviously a bad thing around here.

Eventually my mother comes out and I hold her hand as we go down the stairs. It has been a very long time, and perhaps she is upset. I don't ask about my sister. I have my mother to myself again.

Music

I am not going to pretend to know much about music, although it has undeniable power and influence. I have myself been moved to tears of joy or rage - a beautiful song at a funeral  - or muzak in a stuck elevator.

At school at ten years old, I had music lessons via a regular radio program with an accompanying book of lyrics and stories about the songs. That was multi-media for the sixties! Thirty of us sang a large variety of folk songs, so-called “Negro” spirituals, and sea-shanties from around the world. In later years, I was to find out that the lyrics had been cleaned up quite a bit – I suppose that references to the ladies of the night in English seaport towns was a bit shocking to teachers even in those swinging times.

Other musical experiences were at the daily religious service. All English state schools were, by definition, Anglican and had daily prayers and hymns. Later on, I joined the school choir. Hymns, ancient and modern, Christmas carols. I can't say I hated it - until I learned the error of my ways.

This revelation came with my adolescent realization that the music I had experienced thus far was crap. I blamed the government. At this time there were only three radio stations in Britain. The BBC had a monopoly on radio broadcasting, for reasons to do with the National well-being. The Home Service had news, serious talk and drama. The Light Programme, old-people's popular music, some good comedy, some soap operas. The Third Programme featured classical music. Music that was actually popular with the under-thirties didn't get played at all. This was 1967.

Little did I know that the recording industry or copyright reasons enforced a legal limit of a total of only five hours recorded music daily on the BBC, for fear that it would cut into sales of records. The Beatles had become practically has-beens by the time they were heard on the BBC (we may think of their music as a bit pedestrian now, indeed I have heard it in elevators, but then it was characterized as “not what the public wanted”).

As a young child, listening to the music on the radio was alright, quite jolly really. Sometimes uplifting sometimes hummable. However, at thirteen I learned that the BBC was a tool of the capitalist repression of...whatever it was that was being repressed. I decided that it was soft, wet, lying and hateful. I rebelled. I started listening to Pirate Radio! I lived in the south-east corner of England from where one could hear the broadcasts of Radio Luxembourg, and from the “pirate” ships, Radio Caroline and Wonderful Radio London.

The music was new, fun and exciting. The disc-jockeys were American sounding and irreverent. They had interesting sound effects, jingles and, yes, advertising! Good heavens! Nothing so exciting on the BBC! 

I bought several really bad record albums based on a single hearing of a single song. So much for advertising. Funnily enough, hearing new music on the radio actually made people go out and buy records! The recording industry was in turn shocked and appalled and quietly banking the proceeds.

Now I wasn't a complete fool. It was illegal to listen to unlicensed and unauthorized radio stations. I planned this law-breaking step very carefully. I decided to listen but, I would only do it in the bath, where I thought that I and my little battery-powered transistor radio might escape detection by Big Brother. The signals were really barely audible even with an earpiece. I felt like a wartime spy in enemy country. My family were puzzled and annoyed that I spent so much time locked in the bathroom. I expect that they thought I was smoking.

Eventually, the BBC fought back against my campaign of terror. They opened a fourth radio station that was called, rather oddly, Radio One. They hired a few middle-aged disc-jockeys and they had strong, stable signals. No teenaged hipsters like me were fooled. The smarmy, smiling faces of the “housewives' friends” were all over the the “Radio Times”, a publication that I eschewed. Although as the official organ of the BBC which carried the exclusive weekly listing of all forthcoming programming on the 2 TV stations and 4 radio channels, I also frantically consulted it when it was delivered each week.

Further salvos came from the British government which pushed to prosecute the advertisers who supported the pirate stations and they gradually went out of business (thus fulfilling my paranoid view of a nanny state that suppressed all the fun.)

In reality it wasn't the BBC that was a tool of the capitalists. Music had become a commodity with vast profits, to be bought and sold, together with the audience. The model had been set in the United States and the pressure was mounting to cater to, and to fleece, the large and growing "Baby Boomer" population. Over the next few years pressure to sell music by radio broadcast had become enormous. People were being bribed, or demanding bribes, to promote music. By 1973, independent private radio stations were permitted and they followed the old pirate radio formula. Some of the hosts were former pirates. It was all fun, laughs and advertising.

Since then, popular music as fashion has seen wave after wave of rebellion, consolidation, stagnation and rebellion once more. It's interesting to think back and realize how my tastes were manipulated into liking things that were derivative, stolen, silly and actually pretty bad. The radio stations of today are like the fossilized remains of these eras. We now have a large number of formulaic commercial radio stations each of which contains the exact flavour of music that will appeal to a particular age group with the advertising to match. These are mass produced by a California company called Clear Channel. I look forward to the “Classic Rock” station that features advertizing for incontinence products for seniors and retirement homes.

And for today's thirteen-year-olds, the rebellion of Pirate Radio is on the high seas of the Internet. The music continues.

Pets

A pet is often defined as a non-human companion although humans can be pets too. The word implies a subordinate being doted upon by the pet owner. Most of us think of animals when we think of pets.

There is an enormous kaleidoscope of behaviours around this topic. People are usually very devoted to their pets, sometimes beyond death – I was astonished to find my brother-in-law has his late dog's ashes in an urn on a specially built shelf at the turn of his stairwell. This is years after the dog died. It seems so...unbalanced. Every time one goes up and down the stairs of his house, there she is. Perhaps I'd have felt it a bit more normal if there had been a picture of the dog there. However, the portrait, there is no other word for it, is an enormous oil painting-like photo set in a gilt frame over his fireplace.

There are a lot of funerary practices for beloved pets that are considered quite sensible – burying the dear departed at the end of the backyard is one. I think this is reasonable although it can be exhausting what with the fits of weeping and the damage to the lawn. Paying the vet to have the remains cremated is another for the more fastidious and less athletic. Buying a plot in an actual pet cemetery, where vast green lawns are dotted with full-sized statues of sleeping animals, seems a bit excessive. Worse still, one may be buried in such a cemetery, provided one is first cremated. This isn't much different from the Ancient Egyptians who mummified their cats, presumably to meet them again in the afterlife. Millions and millions of mummified cats. Of course, this did happen over the course of more than a thousand years so they had quite a while to accumulate.

At the other end of life is the expression of our love in the form of food. Mealtimes for cats and dogs are sometimes as fraught as those of small children. The pet owner (or the staff as my cat appears to believe) provides that adorable tiny tin of Duck and Wild Rice, or Cod, Sole and Shrimp – opens it, mixes it, just so, with a drop of warm water, and then is stunned by its almost instant rejection. 

“What? You liked this the other day! What have I done? What can I do?” 

Our hunt for ever more exotic and increasingly expensive delicacies to appeal to the feline palate is on-going. I have it on good authority that other pets like hamsters, gerbils and rabbits are not so particular.

Someone has made a shortfilm, in the style of the French existential cinema, black and white with a deep male voiceover and subtitles – it's called “Henri – le Chat.” In this, the tormented soul of an indoor cat ponders his fate – he is doomed to live a life where his Whitefish and Tuna is starting to taste the same as his Turkey and Giblets. It's all very sad. The difficulties in getting good staff are manifest.

There are more difficult cases. I have a friend who spoils her cats. She got a new kitten a couple of years ago, a very pretty tabby with unusually wide black stripes. It grew up into a beautiful young cat. And then it got bigger, and bigger, and bigger. Not in height, but in girth. It is now has the dimensions of an enormous furry beach ball. I presume this is not entirely the cat's fault. We love our pets to death.

What do I want to say about pets? I thought about saying they are useful in reminding us about Life and our humanity and the natural world, but it's really about love.

We need to love and we need to be needed, even if it is only by an ungrateful pet at mealtimes.

News from Loon County - April 2013

Hi D,

We hope you are doing well - with this prolonged winter weather! I must admit that this winter has been quite vexing (as my grandmother used to say!) Still, I must not complain, as there are signs of Spring.

A week ago we drove to Ogdensburg in the U.S. to pick up a parcel (a boat part, inevitably) and we saw a mass of white birds on the St.Lawrence in Cardinal which is the next town along towards Prescott from here. The river flows really fast here, as it is quite narrow, and when we drove to the shoreline we could see there were thousands of snow geese swimming in formation. Amazing sight! We were joined, moments later, by an elderly gentleman with binoculars who was very pleased to discuss the birds and their habits. When he realized we were interested, he got out his big dog - a massive telescope on a tripod, from which we could see the geese up close. The birder was very concerned to explain that you can tell a snow goose by the "smile on their faces" - but I put that down to the prospects of breeding in the Arctic. Not that there's much to see really, they all look the same to me, but the sheer numbers are remarkable. The noise is quite impressive, especially when they take off.

The next day the flock flew past Morrisburg, really high up, beautiful - really long strings shining white in the sun. Going back to Labrador and points further north for the summer, following the river.

Other signs of Spring are the robins, red-wing blackbirds, starlings, grackles, turkey vultures, and of course, the inevitable Canada geese. These last are causing irritation to the more well-off section of Morrisburg, that is, those with waterfront houses. I suppose if you spent thousands cutting trees, digging up the shoreline, landscaping, laying turf, aerating, fertilizing, watering, and buying the suitable agricultural machinery to maintain a lawn, you feel entitled to complain when there are hundreds of our feathered friends crapping on it all day! However, there are a few houses that have no trouble with geese - they have kept a natural shoreline (or what passes for natural in a man-made reservoir, which is what our section of the river is) - rocks and stones with trees and shrubs. No grass except what can grow in the shade of the trees.

We have just completed our first boat project of the year. It is a canvas and clear plastic spray shelter for the boat entrance, commonly called a dodger. Not sure why, although presumably one can dodge behind it if a big wave comes over the boat. We bought a so-called "kit" from a sailmaking supplies company, together with an instructional DVD. Six weeks later we finished it. It is a thing of beauty, at least to my eyes, and has worked out very well, but the process was a lot more complicated than we anticipated. We (Don) did all the metalwork to construct the stainless steel tubular framing then we made a pattern for the cover together. After that, it was mostly me that made the cover. This is probably the most complicated project I have ever made on a sewing machine! However, I learned a lot about tools and techniques. As we both say, having done this one, we are now capable of doing a good job! We couldn't possibly do this for a living, though. I think I'd be paid about $2 an hour at the rate we worked! Next job, after protecting all of the boat gear with made-to-measure covers made from the left over green cloth will be the replacement of my mother's retractable awning canvas. (Famous last words, probably. What can possibly go wrong? I've seen the video...)

Other things we've started gardening, or at least cutting the tree affected by the insidious black knot fungus. This has been a plague in our neighbourhood. It started with James over the back - he inherited the house from his father who had planted two yellow plum trees. These started getting the tell-tale black crusty lumps on the smaller branches, and before the year was out, it had moved to my plum tree. I pruned and sprayed for two years, but had to cut down the tree at the end of last year. The apricot tree in my front yard was less badly affected, but it did have some patches, so we did the radical pruning and sprayed it last week. Now that James has finally cut down his trees, perhaps the apricot can prevent re-infection. The trials of the home front - the Tomb of the Unknown Gardener as Richard Thompson once quipped!

I have just today started some seeds for this year in the house. Flowers, broccoli, basil. The rest of the stuff can be plated directly in a month or so, peas beans, tomatoes, potatoes etc. Then we have to get the main roof of the house replaced (shingles are shot on the south-facing side) which will delay putting back the plants along the side of the house. I had to remove everything so that we could dig up the foundation last Fall, if you remember. We also have another basement window that we didn't put in yet because it got too cold.

As always we have a list of house projects as well as boat projects. For sure, I haven't got time to go to work anymore! Speaking of work, I got a letter from the US regarding the bankruptcy of ASK's parent company SI. You have probably had one as well. I don't think it affects you either. It seems to be a call for any possible creditors to come forward, but since they don't owe me anything I threw it out. I haven't heard anything from anyone currently in the company for months. The last former colleague I heard from was John who is doing his ride for cancer charitable drive again. I sent him $25. He's still at RIM (now called Blackberry) and diong OK it seems. He has moved in with a girlfriend, instead of buying a condo, which seems to be a good compromise!

I have been going along to a writer's group every couple of weeks for the past two months. This was started by my English friend Lesley, and is mostly women of a certain age, where writing become more interesting. There is one man in the group, who is a talented interior designer with a penchant for Victoriana and all things royal. He is very keen on anything to do with the UK; I think his father was from Wales. He has been in a wheelchair since he was shot in a convenience store robbery when he was seventeen, and he is now (I'd say) in his forties. He had a business selling antiques, I think. He has moved to an old Victorian farmhouse house on Lakeshore drive (with attendant goose problems), renovated it, returning it to a state of high-camp late 1800's charm that it probably never had before! He has installed a lift from the drive to his front door and has an elevator from his garage to the first and second floor of the house. That and a fully adapted van and he is as independent as he can be. Also (to make everyone feel like an underachiever) he fosters troubled teenaged boys, mostly from the tough town of Cornwall. Then he sings in the various local choirs, plays the violin, is a charming well-read man...and I think Lesley wanted him to start writing his autobiography. He has a gift for writing as well, especially the kind of children's verse typical of his era (1890's) that Robert-Louis Stevenson's work typifies.

Anyway, the writers group has been writing and reading their work aloud to one another. We vary from struggling writers (i.e. can't write to save our lives) to some working writers (formerly writing for and publishing trade magazines) to very gifted people. It is going to be interesting.

The rowing club is just about to start up again. We have our AGM in a couple of weeks and rowing will start in mid-May, with any luck. I am going to a potluck supper with my crew tonight. Perhaps we can motivate each other to get on the rowing machine again!

Speaking of exercise, I heard that you have started working on using a walker. Congratulations! As S. said, it's another step...

Lots of love,

Sue & Don.

Pictures for M

This is Don and Sue on Pilger. She is docked in New York.

This is Pilger at anchor in the shelter of Cape May harbour

This is us sailing in Florida at the end of our trip.

Sufficiently advanced technology 3

Sufficiently advanced technology*

I borrowed Don's camera to take pictures in the back yard. It not only took great shots but the darn thing puts the pictures' meta-data** all rolled into the jpg format. Camera model, date, time, place...more information than I am aware of myself, half the time. Isn't technology wonderful? No more working out "Well that must have been the Thursday before Easter..." or burning a digital date on the "film".

Only a few decades ago you would have needed a lot of money, time and an assistant to carry all the gear to get shots like that. Not to mention processing the "film". I am impressed with the advances in relatively cheap cameras, the software to use and manipulate images and the ease with which a total beginner like me can make pictures that are really quite pleasing.

I asked someone recently, "What is left for the professional photographer to do?"

The story goes like this: when I was young (about 100 years ago and far away) most families owned cameras and would take "snaps". Generally the father of the family did this. Then there was the process of taking the sealed film container out of the camera (some skill needed here) and to the "chemist's" for processing and printing (for some reason, many pharmacists seemed to do photographic processing, probably to do with inhaling dangerous chemicals.) Then everyone waited several weeks. The pictures were good quality (if they turned out) although expensive. There were also camera shops where you could get more expensive processing and better film, if people were interested. When colour film and processing came along, the price increase was so large that many resisted the change for a surprisingly long time.

There were many professional photographers. From the guys who would stand around at seaside resorts taking quick shots of passing holidaymakers, to the wedding album specialists, all the way to the professional photographic artists. There must have been many, many corner store-type processing labs and darkrooms. Mostly this was because the equipment was expensive and the training to use it properly was not that easy. If you were a serious enthusiast, you could buy the tanks, solutions, washing lines, enlargers and suchlike and do a reasonable job, but it took a long time to get good at it and it was tedious. Not for people like me who are into instant gratification.

When I was a teenager there came the mail-order photo "lab" - you sent your film away, and in 2-3 weeks colour prints came back and, they gave you a free replacement film! This impressed so many people so much that they didn't notice that the processing quality was low, the printing was poor and the results pretty awful. What mattered was that it was cheap; half the price of the colour film alternative. Now, 40 years later those pictures have turned a funny orangey colour, when 70 year-old black and white shots are unchanged. The processing and printing was largely automatic and centralized because the equipment was hugely expensive.

The corner store labs died. Some photographic stores went upscale, most closed down. When automatic processing machines became cheaper, some stores bought them and continued working, however the big box stores now built photo labs in their premises. There was still residual send-away processing from small shops in small towns, but the war of technology had reached the clipper-ship technological pinnacle of film: I take my film to a person who inserts it in a machine and a few minutes later out come the prints.

The professional photographers were now the wedding and portrait guys, news photographers, and the artists. Considerable training was still required to guarantee results - you had to capture the shot right there and know that it would work.

Then came digital cameras. Ten years later film has now died. People have moved to using lightweight, forgiving and cheap cameras. We put the pictures on a computer and up-load then to the " so-called cloud." This happens automatically with some 'smart' phones. We print them only if really needed.

The machines are doing the work now. It takes next to no knowledge or training to understand how to do this, especially in the context where many people have some computer access. And you see the results immediately. If it doesn't work, you do it again.

A gifted amateur can do a very decent job of taking wedding photos or family portraits. A professional will do better, but not so much that one is actually needed. The barrier to entry in this field is much lower. Most of this kind of photographer had better have a second source of income.

News photographers were probably next to go. In spite of the excesses of the so-called paparazzi, when the camera-phone is ubiquitous, the price paid for that unique shot is going to be lower, especially when the shot can be cleaned up using software. Enthusiastic amateurs are everywhere and the professional is out of a job. That is, completely apart from the threat that came from decline of print media where every newspaper used to have one or more photographers on staff.

What remains is the photograph as art. Most photographic artists have always struggled. Technology may lower the bar to the making of images and software manipulation does make it a lot easier to implement a vision, but the vision is still unique. We will get many more gifted photographic artists as a result.

Competition will make it harder for anyone to become a full-time artist and get paid, but the ones that make it will probably be better. And the globalization of media means that the maker of any brilliant image can become famous. Here are some artists I find interesting (no particular order):

• Chris Jordan
• Robert & Shanna ParkeHarrison
• Riitta Paivalainen
• Tim Heatherington
• Sandra Critelli

:



* Arthur C. Clarke, English science fiction writer:  "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
** meta-data - information about a thing that contains information, that is, a photograph.

Letters to M - February 2013

Dear M,

Great news that you're starting on the new treatment! One day at a time, everyone...

Our cat, Freya, is not having a very good winter as I mentioned before but now there is more to worry about: firstly there is a nasty new grey tomcat in the neighbourhood - whenever he sees her, he chases her and bites her! Secondly, I have started putting out peanuts for the birds, and a flock of blue jays now come to our tiny bird feeder. This is attached to the front window of our house and it's so close, that Freya thinks she can catch the birds. She runs forward to seize them...until she hits the glass!

So she can't go out, for fear of being beaten up (unless we're around - we chase the grey cat out of the yard) and she gets very frustrated at the mocking and laughing of the blue jays, who have learned to ignore her attacking from the inside of the window. Plus it's cold, and snowing and stuff...and our patio door has frozen up, so she can't go out that way...and...and...she can't wait until Spring! It's a sad life being a black cat, stuck indoors, no fun at all.

Except, from time to time, we throw a dried kidney bean onto the floor for her. She just loves to play with one of these...they skitter and spin like little tops and seem to come to life. It almost looks like a small beetle on the floor. Eventually it gets lost under a chair or something but it is hilarious to watch her! So the cat is in Spring training for Summer beetle hunting!

Her other fun thing to do is hide in cloth grocery bags. We got a couple of these from Loblaws in black fabric and for some reason she loves to play in them (Don says it's because it matches her fur). I have to drop the bag on the floor, then lift it up by one handle so that she can get in, and then I have to pick it up (cat inside) and carry her to the other end of the house. She pretends to be asleep. I then put her down, she sometimes gets out and we do it all over again, or, she will stay in the bag and grab at anyone who walks by!

I'm not sure who is training whom, or who looks more ridiculous!

Lots of love,

S

---
 
Good news! Such a relief for you all, but eternal vigilance, as always :-)

Sue & Don.

p.s. Freya is asleep. She is exhausted after a long morning of bird-watching. She was staring out from the patio door for at least an hour while I have my binoculars. She did go out for a walk outside, but was back in 5 minutes crying that it was too cold. Still our feathered friends are a constant source of entertainment. We call it “Cat TV” - we have even made extra wide window ledges on the inside of the windows of our house, so that cats can keep watch.

Do you have a place you can watch for birds, M? II find it an interesting pastime that you can do from inside the house, or you can go out to a park or beach, or to the other side of the world and see birds of all types. My family can be quite irritating when we are out walking together with other people. Someone will be saying something serious and one of us will say "Ooh look! A greater spotted marsh twit! You don't see many of those!" 

You don't need any equipment but some people use binoculars and have books to check on the types of birds. Often people record the birds that they spot. Identifying birds isn't all that hard, except that the most common type of bird is small and brown and can be one of about 30 species!

Putting up a bird feeder can attract quite a lot of birds. In the summer there are hummingbirds who may come to a feeder filled with syrup (or you can grow red or orange flowers that they like). Some people say birds are "living dinosaurs" - they may be their closest living relatives. If you look in just the right way at a flock of geese eating grass in a park, you can imagine that it is a herd of dinosaurs grazing...!

Last year we had the Blue Jays nest in the next door cedar hedge. I hope they return this year. They are noisy neighbours as they seemed to spend a lot of their time loudly abusing the passing cat population. About ten times a day the blue jay (I can't tell the male from the female - they look the same) would sit on the fence shouting "Cat! Cat! Cat!" as a cat, hopelessly exposed with no further stealth possible, crept miserably by. 

Our backyard is now being graced with a new couple, Mr. and Ms. Cardinal. They seem to be getting comfy in the backyard snowball bush - I hope they nest there.  The male is magnificent in his bright red feathers, right now all puffed up against the cold - he looks just like the Angry Birds red bird. And he has quite a temper - he is constantly bullying the flock of little juncos who are always merrily bouncing about in the bushes. They don't seem to mind...they just flutter off a little way and carry on with their games. Meanwhile the female cardinal is quite indifferent to all this excitement. She is calmly pecking about looking for seeds. She has pretty brown feathers fringed in red and definitely looks like a little punk princess with a dyed red mohawk, shaved on the sides and pointy on top!

We will have to keep an eye on them this spring and summer - the backyard is an intersection of the territories for three or four cats - and they have a horrible habit of hunting birds. Freya has caught birds in the past, but she often doesn't seem to hurt them. She will bring them home and, when she had her own cat door, she would release them in the house! Then there was a lot of shrieking (from me) and running about with nets to try and catch the bird and get it out of the house! The bird is usually so scared by then that it poops all over the curtains!

The one time that we weren't home and Freya brought in her catch led us to decide to block up the cat door! Unfortunately the cat had recaptured her prey and there were feathers, and bird poop all over the place...and the poor bird was dead! So now, we make sure that the cat is in the house when we are away, and we let her out only under supervision. She doesn't like this much, but that's the New Deal, the bird killer is sentenced to house arrest!