Writer widow: Gender OK

Writer widow: Gender OK: What is wrong with us that we can't take people on face value? What harm can it do?  What one chooses for their life be it harmless, or ...

Gender OK

What is wrong with us that we can't take people on face value? What harm can it do?  What one chooses for their life be it harmless, or has been given as their life, shouldn't matter to anyone else. We are, or should be, of our own design in our society. That's okay. No other influence should over ride that structure. And what does it matter if someone is different than another: male, female, big, small, colour, race, religion, sexual preference, rich, poor, powerful, weak, "normal" , etc?  Bullying starts at home, someone's home or place of origin, the place where patterning the young mind all begins. What happens there spreads. Other than "survival of the fittest" in the animal world rather than fighting others for dominance or whatever negative goal is sought, how much easier it would be to cooperate, keep the peace and allow harmless choice. We are a global family and as such, own ourselves in whatever way we see ourselves and choose to be. We need to understand that, and take everyone at "face value" and value their choices. To read in the news that a young person over a gender issue, heartbroken enough to commit suicide early in life, is a terrible lesson that no other human being can ignore. It is a lesson to heed, but it's too late for the child and family, who chose to feel and end pain in that way. I guess the first rule, is to listen to what that kind of frustration tells. Listen to the person who suffers it. That's the first step. If questions don't work, just understanding helps. Being there to listen is part of it. Acceptance is all of it. I don't think we have to "walk in someone else's moccasins" either. We can walk in our own, with good sense. We simply must just-not-judge.

Growing Inside Salad

Salad greens in a grocery store sack is pretty common these days but if you're like me, a person who doesn't get much kick out of chewing on a leaf, home grown sprouts are a delight. I can plop them under a tomato slice with a dollop of mayo and a basil leaf - okay some leaves I like - on home made grain bread and nothing tastes better. There is something utterly fresh about sprouts and there is great truth in that, because they are still growing as you eat them. What could be fresher? Plants grow and grow and grow. It's their raison d'etre. Parents should take a break from carting their kids and the expensive dream equipment off to some canned game involving a round object, and be sensible, stay home, have fun with your kids and show them something useful. Like survival knowledge. Take growing sprouts, for example. Growing what we eat is a pleasurable therapy we need in this complex world. A pocket full of seeds is sustenance that  in small amounts, will make, in a few days, a crunchy salad go-with or a sandwich additive or just a spicy munch. I grow them in a corner of my kitchen sink. I have to admit that I bought some 4 inch trays with tiny holes for drainage and use two of these small items: one holds the seeds and drains into the bottom one that drains down the drain. No fuss. I give the top layer a shot of water in the mornings, and voila in four days, out the sprouts come. I rinse off the little husks that actually, you can simply leave on because they are edible, too. I use radish and alfalfa seed but there are others available that will add to the mix and allow you to design your own tasty salads. While one batch is growing, I am using the other. My small container makes a medium bowlful of sprouts that I use only enough of to cover the bottom of the grower. Children should learn that gardening is important not only for our general good  health, but to satisfy our mental health needs as well. Watching something grow that we have "planted" ourselves is satisfying a basic, primitive human memory. Everyone, even if there is no "house",  has access to a window sill, a patio or deck. There, your kids can grow many things, not just sprouts: tall beans or herbs, chives or green onions, little tomatoes. You don't need a plot of land to add good health to what you consume. A small bag of sprout seeds will last for years and keep all that time, too. My 16 ounce bag supply that cost under 15 dollars, is over 2 years old and still going strong. Sprouts can be added to anything: into fruit, on top of cooked dishes, tucked into bread, dropped onto and inside pancakes, or just eaten by the pinch. Give it a try and see if your kids and grandkids do not delight in growing their own snacks. You, too! DIY your green garden in a few days.

Unpolitics

Politics means "the art and science of government" to be sure, but what most of the people who are under the rule of the politics of a place, want is merely to enjoy their daily lives in relative comfort and security.  Most of us don't care to a huge degree which political party, either of a social leaning or in the other direction, our governing body happens to be, as long as we gain from its policies. The average citizen doesn't belong to any particular party but may lean toward liking what the history of a certain party has demonstrated.  It's a chance we take when we vote. No political party adheres, or can adhere to exactly what their platform dictates during a campaign. First of all every voter "out there" is principally interested  in their own personal home situation, and second of all, they are too busy with their daily lives to be hammering up signs, yammering speeches and batting balloons at political hoop lah pre-election celebrations, before they hit the polling booths.  They are  scrambling to make a living so that their families and their futures will have some kind of agreeable stability, and they hope that the next election will help them do so. When they make their vote, they want relief from all the political media flotsam and jetsam that  is largely platforming  hot air, and see it come down to realities that matter. I speak of the vast majority of folk who are more concerned with what happens at home than with the colour of the party that gets in. While there are politically passionate sorts with their hats and balloons and signage,  the "silent" majority just want food on the table, comfort in their old age and their kids to have a promising future. Unfortunately, when a party is elected, the battles in parliament begin. It seems according to what we voters hear and see,  that one side of The House does nothing but rail against the other side to a degree that often times the promises made during an election, are bandied about like a tennis game that does nothing but rally back and forth with no end score. Here's a news item: most of us don't care who did what - we just want it done. I am basically apolitical and while I don't swing one way or another particularly, I want to see a political party in power that has the same concerns as I do about caring about people. We citizens ultimately pay for everything that happens in the country and we expect some kind of bang for our buck. While all we have is one vote, the same as every citizen including the passionate political pundits, we want it to go to work for us. Sometimes there is so much in-fighting going on in parliament that the real  reason for it being there is forgotten. It is for the benefit of the people. All of the people.

It Wasn't Me

"he/she made me do it", "it's  not my fault", "my past is the reason", "the gang forced me"  seem to be rampant excuses for just about any crime, flaw and error that are committed.  Finding fault some other place, for doing these things, when it's a choice that a person makes and that person alone makes, even alongside others, is no excuse or reason. Constantly in the news, I read or hear someone blaming someone else or some other person, or some historical event for what they did. One woman, a mother, in a news article recently, spent the entire interview, blaming the laws, a long past event in her family, and her son's own criminal record as an excuse for the serious crime he committed. She even blamed the police with whom he had had grievous previous criminal charges. No. Her son committed a murder. He admitted that he did it, but he said that it wasn't his fault. She said it wasn't his fault. Yes, it was. He had the choice of committing a crime or not. Everyone has a past, but when we grow up, what we do is what we do. Our job as adults is to mature, to change what past troubles and grievances influenced us as children, no matter how hard they were, and to better ourselves, thus bettering our society, whatever positive group that may be. I am so tired of hearing someone moaning and groaning about some kind of past event that "made " them do what crime they did. No. You do it, you pay for it. Simple. Life is simple when you get right down to the elements. You are born, you grow, you change. You choose the direction you go into and make the necessary adjustments along the way to being someone who contributes to the rest of society. If you make the wrong choices, that's your problem and you must deal with the consequences. Laws are made to protect society from those who make choices that harm others. Laws and changes to them begin in court rooms and parliaments. They are made with a great deal of thought and many examples of why they should become law. Law makers are not those who are hired to carry them out. The policing bodies are there to do the job of protecting us according to law, and it's not an easy commitment. All authority figures are there to help others and to help bring the law-breakers to justice. And like any institution, there are those unfortunately and rarely, who stray or err in that responsibility, but not all of them should be scorned for the difficult job keeping order. They are people who do the hardest and most dangerous work there is, but they go home at the end of the day, and eat dinner with their families, just like everyone else. They must adhere to the law, also. We all have choices. Choices are like a door, a one-way door, that shuts behind us. Choice is crucial.

Daddy

Daddy. That's what we always called him. Only adolescent embarrassment caused me to change it to Dad. But in my heart, he's still Daddy. He's the Daddy that I heard while lying in bed in the morning and listening to him in the kitchen, whistling while he made "flapjacks" and home-made syrup out of burnt sugar. In those days, we didn't have mortgages and credit cards and bank borrowing. You either had money or didn't, and if you didn't, you made do with what you had. My Daddy worked and he worked hard. He did the sweating kind of work with lunch hour, period. There were no coffee breaks. Unions and Workers Compensation and Unemployment Insurance were still in their babyhood. If your boss didn't see you labouring at your best or he or she didn't like you, you were gone. No argument. On the other hand, if you were loyal, you were rewarded. There was a turkey at Christmas and an annual picnic with races for the kids. And best of all, the weekly paycheck, so you could pay off the grocer. In those days, your Daddy couldn't afford university education. He wanted to, but he didn't have that kind of money. You worked your way through then. Today, no youth can afford university unless parents can or you take on a gigantic loan you have to pay for in the first squandering days of employment, if you can find any. There was no credit coddling. But Daddy didn't care. He had his nice, hard old kitchen chair beside the basement sawdust furnace and his daily newspaper that actually had full articles with full information and facts, not ads galore and brief glitzy photos in colour and unreal headlines. Daddy loved his hobby. It was tracking down The Mother Lode. He and his buddy went on guy adventures with their old maps and horses, maybe a scout to plod through the wilds in the north in search of mines. When Daddy returned and showered off his trip that smelled of camp smoke and horse flesh, he would sit down on the couch and show us his pill bottle full of tiny gold nuggets. He told us how he panned for them in mountain streams and how they used tin cans to cook their food and about the bears and deer. When they camped, apparently, they slept under the stars and he showed us the constellations and how we could tell where North was, and what greens and berries were safe to eat and told us never to drink water without boiling it and how to stay put, if you got lost. We were fascinated, and even though we never had the courage to do it, dreamed about "real" camping and hunting for gold. Daddy was kind beyond words and let Mom do the disciplining which was threats but no punishment, He was the one who had many friends and with whom he met and told stories, some of them ghost tales. He read endlessly when he wasn't working. He taught me how to read using the headlines of the daily newspaper. He took my hand, his big one I still remember, and with his pick, told me the names of rocks and minerals and how to treat wildlife and plants with respect and how to walk softly in the woods he called by one name: "the bush". He like plain food, never took an interest in gardening or house maintenance unless it was an emergency, but he was the dearest, most loving Daddy. He left us suddenly in five months at age sixty-four before I had a chance to talk to him, adult to adult. But I remember and not just on Father's Day, his morning whistles and mouthorgan playing and the flapjacks and the sound of his voice telling stories.

Earth As Dining Room

Similes, metaphors are fun and often revealing. The neighbourhood, the house are the galaxy. The dining room is earth. Around the dining table, family-important events occur. The table, the chairs make the room. The furniture is strong. It has to be, to uplift and carry. Here, at the table, seated on  chairs,  is where we gather to celebrate, to share, to consume and serve. The table and chairs are  what provides  care and control, learning and security. They support. Without the scientific, legal, religious, political. technical, military, social and educative elements, there would be no progress and safety. Without the solidity of the table and chairs, there would be nothing human:  no reason to make an effort or regard life as having a future. They hold all that matters. On the table, is the cutlery, the pottery, the food, napkins: "we the people". We're noisy, breakable, bendable, useful, expensive, expendable and demanding. We're busy and pretty and ugly and lazy. We can be uplifted, broken and changed but without what goes on the table, there is no reason for the rest. It's the busy productive and destructive part of the whole. In the centre of this very roiling, frantic, clashing, clanking, messy, pretty business, is the centrepiece. The centrepiece is without visible flaw. It's all that is good and beautiful and true. It is a perfect central focus for the entire room. It is the delicate epitome of all that we stand for in the hard, diverse world of colour and sound and soul and unity and disunity. It is richness and beauty and godliness and the idea of immortality. It isn't real, it is contrived and constructed and made of flowers and ribbons and reeds and wires and string and glue, but no one cares as long as it is attractive. It's the  the lotto, the Everest, the Oscar, the four star general,  the UN, the American Dream, the Canadian Mosaic, Disneyland, the TV idol,the European Union, and OPEC and EPA and NASA and all else. It's the ideal: the royalty, the godliness, the filthy rich, the heroic, the glamourous, the creative, the genius, the Heaven, the karma, the Mecca, the Wall.  It's what we all believe we strive for, the epitome of mankind. We know that it's fake, but it's the ideal that counts. It's what we unwittingly strive to attain and realize that for the vast majority of us, is unattainable. But we must have it: the dream to look upon that gives us a distraction that makes our daily lives appear to have meaning, something to reach for  even though we may never hold it. We don't mind. It is the beauty that completes the dining room of earth and gives us something to look up to and to hope for and who knows, perhaps achieve. The galaxy, the house, the dining room earth, are all we are, all we need and all we have.

Man and Nature

Man is nature. If you hung out in outer space, looking at the pretty blue planet we call Earth, you would realize that everything on it, is natural. Including Man. We are one of the warm blooded animals, undeniably. We are natural of the earth. To think anything else is a lie, plain and simple. We evolved however we began, and here we are today blaming ourselves for ruining Nature. It's, in truth, us. We are but one of the earth's natural things, using up other natural things. We are in the animal world, the "smartest ones", we believe. All natural beings strive to survive. They do it in a lot of ways: procreation, food gathering, and shelter seeking: the basics. What we humans have is a very special brain that gives us advantages. Our brains seek to improve. They create ways of betterment and some of those ways are destructive. We aren't the only animals on earth that try to improve our needs. Some of the smallest of us, bacteria, viruses and other microscopic creatures are harmful, too. Large animals that we fear, are as in need of the basics just as we are. But we go far beyond what we need. The inventions of Man have proven to pollute and destroy our planet beyond what we understood originally, and now we seek to correct our mistakes. We overdid it folks. Our fellow creatures on earth, the four legged and winged and crawling and swimming ones, take only what they need and nothing more. They also long ago and today raided and destroyed, in their way, but a balance ruled and rules, tries to right it. But  Man calls for more in his creations to make his lifestyle better and better, more and more lavish and complex, to not only meet his needs, but his wants, his pleasures. And some of the minds of Man, devise destructive means of getting what their greed requires. Man sees his future as static in a planet that ages naturally and in its way, as all things on earth gradually become extinct and erode.  But some of the clever inventions of Man speed up the process of evolvement.  His machines and electronics and weapons and overuses  feed his insatiable need for a seeming unfathomable desire to be better or richer or more powerful. Now is the time when the earth suffers from this need of Man and the rest of the creatures on earth struggle to survive the machinations of his brain and will. What was wild, has now become part of a fading animal environment, including our own, while its nature has changed little. Human beings are shocked at attacks by animals in whose worlds they go. Why?  There is a sad example on You Tube in a video of a glassed in zoo lion attempting to eat the head of a crawling infant its parent placed on the floor. The lion opens its jaws to claw and bite what it sees through the heavy glass. People laugh, forgetting what truth they are seeing. The lion doesn't laugh, it sees the little animal infant as food. It does not know about hubris. It does not understand glass. It understands its nature. An example to think about.

Your Leg, Your Problem

I happened to be in the Emergency Ward of a local hospital. One of my rare attacks of Vertigo had returned after seven years, and an ambulance was the best way of getting  somewhere in the middle of the night to have it treated. My grandmother, long gone, used to be afflicted with it occasionally, too, and called it her "blind staggers".  Arriving at the Emergency Ward feeling very dizzy and queasy, I knew  it could be a long wait because the staff took folks in order of the medical dangers of their complaints. Mine was minor, and I understood, therefore, I must be patient. Not everyone seemed to get it. They were thinking, erroneously, that it was a first come, first serve situation like at the butcher shop. It's not Take A Number. While I was gurneyed in the hallway I overheard many and varied conversations. The chap sitting in a chair, his friend beside him, commented to her, that he thought his leg was broken and because he had to wait for treatment, it was the fault of "all the old people in here taking up hospital time". He made an ignorant statement that should indeed have been ignored, but it was tempting to remind him that he, too, will grow old indubitably, being mortal and all, and that his turn will come tonight when the medical people deem it appropriate. Being old has nothing to do with it. His misconception that the aging population is to blame is simply borne of ignorance and stupidity. Too many times, I have heard that it is the "aging population" that creates expensive problems in the medical system, the employment  system and the tax system among others. First of all, naturally those at both ends of the maturation curve, youngest to oldest, cost the medical system the most. Birthing and childhood problems are as costly as  life endings. Second of all, every single human being, ages. You can't stop that. Blaming elders for causing "systems" to fail is wrong. They paid for, through their many years of taxes and consumerism as well as their personal support, the birth of the systems we enjoy today. Elders, don't forget, paid for in their decades of labour and sacrifice, the base and bones of everything that provides us with the kind of education, infrastructures and social benefits  that we rely on today. Of course they aren't perfect, but they are closer to it than in many countries on the planet and there is progress. Elders pay taxes, buy services and things that provide employment for  younger populations. We support education. We volunteer. To be treated with respect for what we helped build for most of the years of our lives, is not asking too much, and we are certainly not responsible for a young man's alleged broken leg!

Times When

Aren't there times when you feel like heading off into the mountains and finding that little one room cabin on the lake in the woods where there is peace? No politics, wars, crime, greed, Hollywood. Living in an urban area is like living in an incubator. Constant notices come out to tell you that the water system is being purged, the streets are being cleaned, the power lines will be pruning, the electricity folk will add new poles and on and on. It's not that all these things aren't necessary to make our lives, supposedly better, but sometimes I feel over attended and crave a place where I am the one who does the maintenance. My dream is that small cabin, outhouse notwithstanding, and its fireplace, a small heater, one table and chair, one bed with a pine branch mattress and a big cozy quilt, a circle rug I braided  out of old clothing, and a huge willow branch chair facing the window with its view of the lake. Old jeans make good cushions stuffed with dried grasses and pine. Can you see it? There is a verandah, of course, and an outdoor shower with a spigot bucket system, and  inside, a pail of water cum dipper hung on the wall near the wash stand with its multi-purpose basin. The stream running down to the lake is a friend for fresh, cold water and for use as a laundry. I forage for green edibles amongst the trees and take my canoe out to fish. Fish is smoked over the fire outside and  dried on racks above the little stove. Berries sere and fragrant evergreen branches and herbs hang from the beams. It is all idyllic but I  hear cynics reminding me of the day when I cut myself while gutting the fish or chopping food, or becoming lonely and hermit mad. But I will take my chances. Naturally, to get here, I need my diesel truck which is also good for hauling wood to chop and getting supplies to keep on the home built shelves in the cabin. Its radio serves for emergencies. I especially love my fire pit out front, the one that burns wood with real flame and smoke. not the silly gas things on patios. At night, I hear other animals, not me, that enjoy the lake: deer, bear, cougar and others that deserve my respect and who show me their curiosity when I see  tracks across my porch and paw marks on the beach trail and nose prints on my log cabin windows. Excuse me, I have to go out and chop more firewood, there is a storm brewing tonight on the lake. My log cabin and thick shake roof, will withstand the pounding thunder, flashes of lightning and driving rains but I will I enjoy my books and mug of hot chocolate, watching it come over the lake just beyond and below my window.