To The Dogs

I have had dogs, therefore, what I will say is valid. Our series of dogs lived in the garage or basement. They were not allowed inside the house. My mother saw to it. My dog-for-a-pet days were, when, if the dog got out of the yard, there was no great fuss. You scoured the neighbourhood and brought it back. Licenses were not deemed essential and few people took their animals to the vet unless it was a final trip. You scrubbed the thing down once in awhile if necessary. Dogs were not pampered and they led healthy, long lives. Dogs today are different. Where I live almost everyone has a dog or two in this large complex. While you may, according to the bylaws, have a dog or two, they are not permitted to do their thing on the property, therefore, a parade of them doodles by on the street, morning and night. I suspect they leave their stuff on other boulevards and sidewalks, unfortunately for the mowing folk. Not all dog owners pick up, but all of them comply with the law and carry a plastic bag to show their good intentions. The leashes, supposedly not more than six feet, pan out much further, as we all know, above and beyond the bylaws.  Little poochy often does its natural act while the distant owner's back is conveniently turned and the leash is fully extended. Not all dog owners are guilty, but I think most of them are honest enough to admit that there are times when the rules are stretched. The fact that the hosts of dogs trotting the city streets are legion, means that there is a huge pile of "stuff" dropped by these pets and hopefully picked up by the owners, that becomes landfill or goes somewhere else.  Another subject that is not surprising is the cost associated with modern dogs. If you buy one after checking out the pedigree of the dog and its seller, the price can be enormous. To adopt an unwanted dog is not cheap either. It still runs into what could be a few hundred dollars or more, depending upon what needs to be done to allow adoption. Spaying and neutering costs have to be met and veterinarian attention to the animal. Lots of bucks required. That is the initial outlay. Next are the maintenance costs when the dog comes home. The vet strongly advises regular shots of all kinds, tooth care and special diets often purchased through the vet or its associates as well as clipping and grooming. The end result is a large amount of money going to the dogs, akin to rearing a child. What's it all for? Beats me. Companionship is the most common reason. Dogs are born loyal. You are the alpha dog to them. Companion? Well, I wonder. I think it is unfair to have a dog that can't freely run in its own yard but plies apartment carpeting and tile, solely to provide a human being, companionship. What about the dog? But it's a rescue dog, I hear. Rescue? Is it rescued to live in an apartment, to sit around hours on end, watching a human being all day? Seems a complete bore to me if I were a dog. No wonder they sleep so much. I'd want to run around outside and chase with other dogs, dig in the turf and find nice green spaces to lie on a hot day. To  loll on a piece of pretty cotton padding, watch television, not bark and wait to poop on cue, seems, to me, a dog's life.

Colour of Jade

The accusation, "you are just jaded" is unfair like many of this kind: "old fashioned" and "over the hill" etc. While they do hold a truth, it is an innocent state to be "over the hill". It's a hill that everyone climbs or shall. No one escapes. I recall during my working days, a young person, fresh out of university, made these remarks about those on staff who were barely forty years old. This individual, full of new knowledge, had little wisdom, and it made me think of myself at that age and how I, too, thought I knew it all. My mind was crammed full of fresh, I thought, ideas and methods of getting the job done. I knew what I thought would be short-cuts in the process, to just-do-it without all the hoop-lah of what my elders appeared to insist upon. It all seemed quite simple to me. Years later, I learned about wisdom. Wisdom is achieved in making mistakes and learning from them to come up with a better plan. What looks like a simple and quick solution, while an excellent idea, is just that: an idea. When some ideas are applied in a real situation with all of its complexities, it may not be  simple and easy. Dealing with people is complicated, especially. While one opinion about solutions seems valid, it is a cooperative effort including all ideas, that leaves everyone feeling respected and happy. That takes sacrifice, often, of one's own opinions to achieve a betterment for the whole group's success. Successful elders know this. Youth has it to learn. There's a saying that "the fires of youth, are of straw". They flare up gloriously but only for an instant, and then they are gone. On the other hand, to be characterized as "jaded" likely means an idea substance that has hardened: the ideas and practices of the experienced who are not as flexible. There are truths in that, of course, but to toss out the old and adopt only the new, is also dangerous. Each side, if sides there are, needs to be tried and tested. The elder's job is to demonstrate in some way, what has worked in the past. At the same time, the elder must keep an open mind to newness and the freshness of aspects that could enhance and enrich past attributes. It's the way that the elder learned in his lifetime and now, the young must find their place. The old will be not merely replaced but add to what becomes stronger in the combined process. Everything  we do in some way, arises from what came before. Old seed can become new creation.

History-onics

Genealogy pursuits are the hobby that many people are into these days, but like all hobbies, they often become obsessions. I've heard of, and have  known, hobbyists who turn their entire living rooms and basements into miniature train runs complete with stations and buildings and flora. Then there are the quilters who move the car out of the garage to accommodate huge swaths and multi bits of fabric. Everyone knows an auto enthusiast who stores vehicles in various stages of resurrection in the barns and other people's sheds. And then we have those who can't rest until they delve  into their histories. I hear them exchanging  tales with each other, boasting about how far back they got.  How reliable the latter documentation is, is often based on fiction, the kind you pay a few dollars on-line for complete  with family emblems and coats of arms plus other trumped-up stories. Some admirable folks even travel afar to explore old records and gravestones and interview neighbours who might know about their family beginnings. None of these pursuits are invalid. But they are of no interest to me. Not a whit. They are  simply someone else's passion. My family history, the one that is stored in jumbled files somewhere in my storage area, sets  of old letters or documents that I keep in case my family catches the genealogy bug, reside there like buried treasure. I have no true interest in going much farther back than my great grandparents of whom I have but hazy memories. Some religious groups go to extreme lengths to find out their family names and dates for religious or cult reasons. That's all very well  genealogy enthusiast, but please do not come to me and have me do the work for you. It is not for me to spend hours searching in my records at length to hand papers and photos over to you. I don't want to, nor have the time to, rifle through the morass of material to do what your interests are. You come and do it. I do not care to find out if there is royalty somewhere in my genes or sheep stealers or pirates or great musicians or writers. I live in the here and now, and that's good enough for me. I love to read biographies of the famous and accomplished, but I have no interest in finding out if one of the persons in my past, was one of them. In the family into which I married, there was a so-called precious artifact of distinction. It resided, as far as I know, under the stone step in the garage for some time before my mother-in-law uprooted the thing and had me take it to her relatives down south. I have secretly wondered where it went from there, but only minimally. The great explorer who owned the snuff box is long gone, as are the family members. I supposed if I were someone into genealogy, I would be digging into the history of this man who has the same last name and who was said to use the little box, to see if, indeed, he is  family. The name is famous but what's the reason for me to care? The trouble is, I have to bake bread this afternoon and read my Book Club selection for tomorrow's meeting. And then I must do some shopping and dusting. Sorry snuff box, history will have to wait.

Writer widow: Good-byes

Writer widow: Good-byes: When you are in the sunset stage of your life, there are a lot of good-byes to be said. Friends, relatives and combinations thereof, must le...

Fight Or Flight

Everyone gets to a point sometime, where matters become so difficult that you feel you need to throw up your hands and say "I give up". You take flight. And it seems to work at first. The burden you were carrying has gone, and you feel free of whatever it was that bothered you. But the elation doesn't last long. We have this human thing called conscience and it's the bit that lies hidden away only to pop out and remind us that every action we make has a reaction. Most of the time, what we "dropped" or thought we did, comes back to haunt us. We want to go over the situation, to think about it and to analyse it to see if what we did was the right thing to do. Did it work? Are there regrets? Did it have repercussions? How will it be judged? If the action passes all the tests your conscience puts forth, you will know that what you did works and you feel satisfied. But much of the time, flight rather than fight, is not a good idea. More likely, it's better to stay with the problem and work it out even if results, at first, are not highly successful. At least you've given it a shot. An example of this matter that I ran across recently was when an organization I started, appeared to be waning. Interest flagged and I began to feel concerned that I should pass the running of it to someone else. There was a person more than willing to take over, who had been waiting in the wings. It would have been so simple to just give up and hand over the whole thing to that individual. They would have done a good job but it wouldn't have been my idea of how things should go.  I slept on the matter, which is usually required before making a decision. What I discovered was, that my original idea for the organization had run its course, but that there were other possible avenues to explore. After some self-brainstorming, I came up with a very different, but positive tack and reorganized in a way that I hoped might work. It would bring new life to the picture and possibly add some enthusiasm when certain aspects were embellished. The bottom line was that I didn't take flight but got up a little fight and made changes. And while they have not been put fully into play, there is a new beginning and new interest already. I feel better about the organization and myself, too. Fight not flight!

Help Is On The Way

Help used to be on its way but when you press "help" at the top of your CPU, it might not come. At least not the way you expect it to. When I press "help", what I get now is a page of so-called FAQs that scroll for miles. I can't find my exact problem on the list. I go to Plan B or "contact" and find an e mail address where I may pour out my woes. But I find then that I must first fill in blanks. At the bottom, before sending said blanks now filled in,  I have to select from a set of issues. I am not allowed to state my case in my own words. There are no issues that quite match mine. Aha! There is a phone number to call. I call, and if the office in my end of our country is open at their hour, I find a human voice.  I am not always  smart enough to understand every accent, but because my helpers are "recorded" I know they will do their best to help, language aside. But I often find that I don't have the right department, and therefore, after a phone concert of ear-splitting "music" that no phone on earth should try to amplify, I am transferred to someone else from somewhere else in the world who also gives me their first name and a "how can I help you?" My phone by this time is getting battery low and my patience is doing the same thing. At this point, I grab another phone to put on standby, just in case I get the help I need and it takes another half hour to solve the problem. I am not exaggerating when I say that with a certain service company, it took five different people on two separate days to attempt to fix a small, niggling matter that they couldn't, but that I finally solved myself in desperation. I think it was sheer luck, but it worked. Another form of "help" is when you live in a condo and something badly installed needs correcting. There is a three tiered structure you must ascend to try and get matters completed. Tier One is your elected Council. They can do little other than listen to your problem, include it in their monthly agenda, then pass you onto someone else because it is not within their scope. Tier Two is the management company hired to get things done at a cost, of course, to the condo owners' contingency fund. Management will send you on to the builder that did the job when the construction was underway. That is Tier Three. The former developer and owner before selling, has gone. No matter how badly his structure has turned out in the testing by living in it, he sends you back to Tier One, because he is onto another project. Tier One? It's called The Condo Go Round Ride. None of the horses on it are named Help. You own the problem, you pay for it, mistakes and all. Help is on the way and so will be, the bill to fix-it. Condo mondo!

White Flower

I was carrying a nicely labelled shopping bag out of the stretch of doors exiting the large, busy mall. It was raining but my car was only forty feet away. Inside the smart shop's logo bag, in my hand, its tidy handles for easy-carry, lay in tissue paper, a huge white lily to add to the fake greenery atop my white grand piano. I was pleased. It was the perfect thing to finish off the décor.  As I walked in the rain, I saw a loosely organized string of people, straggling along the wet pavement heading toward the mall entrance. I paused to stare. The collection of people, their skin all of one colour about the same as mine, had their heads covered completely: women with tight floral scarves, the men and boys with their black toques pulled low and collars turned up. Not really odd for this time of year, but that all of the people were walking close together did seem odd.  Small children of varying ages walked quietly, their little hands in their parents'. No one was smiling, not even the children. Their clothing was clutched closely against the dampness of our West Coast January weather. The group was led by a big man who seemed confident in their destination, but protective in a way, also.  I waited before opening my car door, continuing to gaze. A few cars about the sparsely parked lot at the side of the mall, had lights on with persons inside. They appeared to be watching and waiting. It was then, I realized what this scene was. I was looking at The Refugees who were newly arrived in our country, our neighbourhood. The shock of my discovery to see in real life, what had been in the national news so vividly, was jarring. It took me a few seconds to realize what I was seeing and I was stunned.There were no smiling, relieved faces as previously seen, arriving in airports, welcoming crowds cheering in the background. No. These folks were walking in the realities of their lives in a new place, a strange country where not everyone was a "nice Canadian". They did not have cars or jobs or their own homes or culture. That was what they had to leave behind to come here, to hope that they could restore peace to their families and find a way to continue somehow. I wanted to rush over and tell them that I understood and cared. I wanted to say welcome.  But they passed by on their quest whatever it was, and I got into my red sports car and took my white flower home.