Clothes Horse

 The "clothes horse" is galloping away and landfills are full of them. Most of us load up large bags and boxes of clothing and shoes to give away occasionally, but much of it ends up in a dumpster and then goes to the landfill. Attire can be inexpensive or not, according to what we can afford to pay. Even babies are now laden with fashion trends and demands by moms. Young mothers come together with others, and want their baby to look sharp with the latest togs and equipment lables. The baby could, of course, care less as long as it is comfortable. But by the time the child goes off to pre-school or day care and school, he and she, have been indoctrinated into how one must fit into style or not fit at all. The shoes have to be a certain kind as well as the body wear right down to backpacks including what goes inside. Youngsters are burdened with our adult goofiness from birth onward until some of the bad stuff, is sadly ingrained. Fashion rules. If those who create it, could, in some way, adapt, it would be beneficial to the world and all society except fashionista addicts. First of all, cheap means cheap and sure, you can find what looks a good copy of classy designs, but the fabrics show it after a couple of washings. I know, because I don't always want to put out wasteful money and having no compunction about buying cheap, I do it but often regret it. I like classic design, very good workmanship and excellent fabrics that wear well and stay looking newish.  But, this "like" is expensive, and most of us save  to get one or two essential pieces only, ones that will last a long time. A basic  tailored blazer, a tailored coat, a pair of pants that fit well and maybe a little black dress that will go anywhere, anytime, are usually what costs most, but they become the best investment. One wishes, somehow, manufacturers of clothing would use only good materials along with simple but changeable designs. Also, at good prices. Why not a blazer, skirt, dress and pants that can be converted to dress up or down? First of all, fit is essential, therefore, adjustable sizing helps. A blazer is loose and looks good over almost anything. Jackets could have easily replaceable buttons for example: gold or silver, ceramic or woods,patterned or not. A waist adjustable skirt that could be a mini, average or maxi hemline as well as detachable pockets, belts, and ties.  A plain, easy fit dress, one that has differing hem lines, over-skirts and detachable additions might work. Outlets could make a business of selling interesting garment  accessories rather than garments entirely. A basic coat for whatever climate one lives in, with, again, additions of collars, pockets and panels, for a change could be fun. Instead of scouting stores trying-on piles of clothing, one might feel better earthfootprint ways, shopping for accessories for our sustainable basic fashions. Care for basic materials such a cotton or wool, is often more simple than maintaining synthetics.  I don't iron, but steam which takes the labour out of laundry day. No lugging around an ironing board and whizzing iron. The garment is on a hanger and a few passes with steam do the trick. If we change our thinking on wearables, we'd keep the landfills down and the closets less crowded and our consciences relieved. Change is possible. 

Biting The Bullet

Costs are soaring and we are all trying to find ways to cut back. Got rid of the car that I hardly ever used except to keep the battery charged. Driving was silly when I travelled only locally. The car sale price easily paid for an electrically charged cart  that gets me to the mall and back for nothing other than a pleasant ride along the sidewalk. Taxies and transit are much less expensive than owning a car. What stood in the way of making that move, was mere vanity. Some elders, agonize over selling their cars. They say,  it's a loss of my independence. Nonsense. Young New Yorkers do it by the thousands. A taxi is much cheaper and picks you up at your door and drops you off at a door.  Plus you can rent your parking space out. Aging shouldn't be embarrassed doing what needs doing, but we think we must jump hurdles along the way. I don't jump. One of the imagined sillinesses about old age, is pride.  For some strange reason people are ashamed of aging. They make corny jokes about it and expect you to laugh along with them. No thanks. Life is a serious matter. Groceries are a heavy expense now. That one is easy enough to reduce. Instead of steak or chops, there is ground meat. Same thing, different shape. The cheap lettuce is just as good as the greener fluffy stuff. Get a regular cabbage, forget fashionable kale and friends. The old reliable brown potatoes make just as delicious dishes as the coloured or tiny taters. Same thing, different form. Your body doesn't know about organics - or care.  If you can find a farmer's market that is real and that has inexpensive produce, not these rhinestone cowboy "markets" with hiked up prices, you are doing yourself a favour. Buy from the head, not the heart. Canned salmon is just as good for your bod, as slabs of the fresh. Try baking your own bread instead of getting the costly loaves that are exactly the same thing but with sprinkles. You can sprinkle, too. Give up those little packages of handy dandy food quickies with their long lists of preservatives. Do it yourself. It takes no more time to roast a little metal bound bundle of veg and meat with a squirt of oil and a dash of herbs, than doing the pre-prepared junk food in packaging.  To save money, stop whining and get busy and shop with nutrition in mind and a willingness to make changes for a way to better prices. My airfryer that is nothing more than a tiny convection oven will do miraculous meals for one. And it is a power and time saver. Air fryers also roast foods.  Up with the chicken wings and french fried carrots, cauliflower, yams and potatoes in your air fryer. Yay for spinach and cabbage. Yum for melons and local berries. And congratulations if you are willing to make changes that will save you coinage and allow you some fun DIY.

Best Kid Holiday

Don't think that kids need Hawaii or Disneyland for the best holiday ever. You can either go with your child or send your child to a farm. It's worth it. But make sure it's a real farm, not some cutesy dude ranch. What children will learn living for a week or two on a farm is about "themselves". They may learn to do what they don't want to because it is part of what everyone must do to be an "everyone". They'll learn that milk comes from a cow and eggs come from a chicken and meat comes from an animal, not bottles or  boxes or plastic trays. They'll learn to leave the electronics by and take a look at what really matters in human lives. I make no apologies for harking back to my past on The Farm because we don't learn everything from the present. Life on a real farm isn't about pressing buttons or calling for Mom or Dad to do it for you. You do it yourself or share doing it. Farm life is a DIY setting. We were sent to our grandparent's farm when Mom and Dad went off to do their holiday. On this farm, electicity and running water were absent. Impossible you say? No. The battery radio went on once at night for Grampa's news. The newpaper was the Sunday one, that had to be picked up in "town". We always went, riding on the back of the flat deck truck holding on for dear life. We knew an ice cream cone each was next. We all shared the comics, our reading lesson of the day and loved all week.  My cousins went to the farm and all at once. Sometimes six or seven of us at a time. Our grandparents loved us and knew us to become self-trusting enough to look out for horse's hoofs when we helped dung out the barns, to stay out of the bull pen and not eat anything wild we didn't know. They said, if you go climb trees in the orchard, make sure there isn't a bear in it first. Otherwise, we went  everywhere we had the courage to go on this beautiful section of land outside the village of Haney. There were streams to wade in and fish in, to try and catch with safety pin hooks and rods we made ourselves. The farm cats and dogs were not for playing. Sport, the "watch dog", was cranky but looked out for us. We tried to catch the barn cats but they had too many escape routes. Gramma did all the cooking on her huge black wood stove, milked the cows in the evenings and took us to gather eggs warm from under the hens. We could climb onto the horses backs using their manes as reins for riding.  No one said to stay out of the garden with sweet carrots, peas on vines, green onions and radishes to nibble on. There were endless wild berries to pluck, and trails in the woods with streams to bathe in. At night we had bread and milk laced with honey before card games with Grampa. We all slept together in a big bed, lying across it and telling eachother  stories. No one told us when to go to bed or get up. The loo was a tiny building down the hill with an old Eaton's catalogue on a hook and a pail of dirt with a trowel in it. We were taught that good manners were please and thank you and respecting elders: Gramma with the dishes and Grampa in the barn. The books available were the classics only bought once at an auction. Later we read them as Literature in university. Life on The Farm was freedom and lessons nowhere else to find.

The Ultimate Perspective

When we learn that we have a limited life, such as those to whom a medical issue, a mortal one, is announced, it's not all bad news. It's the worst, while being, also, an opportunity. This idea sounds obnoxious, but in truth, while it's something seldom regarded as "nice" there is an up side.  In the elderly, those who can see the endings of their times, it becomes a rather pleasant space in which their lives can be reviewed. I recall the in-laws, whom we cared for at their endings, sitting in the living room of the house we shared, going through their photo albums hours on end. They sat opposite each other in their comfy old chairs, talking about their past friends and places and events as they turned pages. Most of the day, each being very old and not able to move about, enjoyed at length, bringing back memories of their long, sweet lives. They lived through the first and second world wars, they remembered the Great Depression, their  moving to Canada and making it their home, and rearing their family and becoming responsible citizens in a new place. They led in their time, "easy" lives but they worked hard, and at the same time, were comfortable with their place in society.  They contributed by volunteering and becoming an active, quiet part of their chosen world in a new country.  During this time, they were fortunate to be able to consider their good times and bad, their places in family and community and their love for each other. The latter had gone on beyond a sixtieth year of marriage. Not everyone has a chance to see their entire life, one's own, with that kind of perspective. Often impatient younger family are annoyed to hear their stories over and over but the stories are what builds family. When a life-ending announcement says that you are going to die, not pass, but die, and be gone forever, it can be a great sadness. You will lose all you have ever known and loved. But it does awaken something else. It's then that the many scenes of your life come alive again. Even though it's not, for me, in evidence at the moment, it is going to occur in my relatively short future, and that gives me pause, now, to think about my life. I have the dubious good fortune of being able to contemplate it, in my early morning coffee-on-the-deck sessions. Your memory lane has it's place also. These times bring, surprisingly and randomly, certain scenarios and we have time to analyse them to find some kind of reason or value. It's as though one can "fix" what one didn't like about them and then be able to move on. Of course, one can't really "move on" because it's too late, but what one can do, is allow a second look and perhaps form a second opinion that wasn't possible before. That's the "luxury" of memory recall.  Those younger, sadly, who are shocked to learn their lives are going to end before they thought they would, are not only dropped into a sudden maelstrom of medical treatments and grieving social surroundings, they are given little time to meditate on the full length of their lives and times. They are thrown into a sudden pit of conflicting sensations and it's very difficult to concentrate on anything. But when we are alongside someone in this particular place, and there is relative peace, we can help by listening, just hearing and not adding to it. There is an advantage, strange as it may seem, that this person is able to find time to look down the wrong end of the telescope of life at its precious parts  to see some or all of that life, and learn its value. It's an opportunity to sort through it, relive it, and perhaps to find a little gold in it to savor and smile over.

B Button Future

 We all have a B Button as we call it, or properly, a navel. Most kids ask what it's for and the answer can become rather complicated, but we all have one and they don't do anything but make a tiny statement that says we are human. No one that I have heard of, ever got away without having a navel. Since most of us keep them covered and a only a few move them around  surgically:  fashion models, who are occupied with appearance only. They, or their handlers consider the B Button perhaps needs to be higher up or lower down: a style photographer's idea of what is needed for a good shot.Tut tut, just like visible rib cages, one must never be seen to be "ugly". We cover up all the other bits on our bodies that are deemed not to be shown and that are widely considered  "ugly".  Artists are the only folks who like to show what the rest of us don't. We need artists  for that kind of work. They keep us aware of our whole selves, good and not so.  There are B Buttons that are innies and outies and round-abouties, narrow ones and deep ones and stuffed ones, but basically, they are just there and as usually completely ignored. They serve no purpose. The world today, is more or less plugged in, what with all the small electronics that the entire population seems to have about its person constantly. These little gadgets, hand held or lapped or desk topped, or under or over or up or down or shelved or anywhere one looks, rule much of our lives. They get us up, calm us down, send us places, help us communicate, show, tell, annoy, amuse and help. Or make trouble. The down side is, that if one is "out of range", or batteries are dead, the device breaks or the power goes off, one is up a creek. Sometimes when on a hike, literally. Perhaps some day in the distant future, although futures have a way of being right around the corner, we will need to find a bodily location to insert a device so that all of our cumbersome other devices hand held, pocketed or otherwise,  may somehow be coordinated.  And since, it is also becoming more and more important that devices of all kinds are tinier,  it seems to me, with a little adjustment here and there, the navel might become a useful place on the body to put one. Instead of  it being a seldom seen  do dad just waiting for a use, the navel could be convenient for a"connection". It's out front in plain view, accessible, empty and only a waist away. Take the brain for instance, it sits up there on the top of our heads mostly never considered a burden inspite of its weight, doing what no computer could ever do, while remaining costless to run, taking no special towers or wires or outlets or buttons or dials or keys to push, and yet its work is essential to our daily lives.  And no batteries are needed.  Our bodies pay little attention to our brains that go on and on doing their electrical work faithfully, year in and year out, for undue amounts of time that our wonderful electronics, no matter how marvellous they are, can match for length of use, economy and scope, no matter how hard scientists try to invent ones that do. (Now there's a run-on sentence!) It is my contention that with a little belt, band or obi, and whatever else scientists can come up with, the navel might find employment. At last. In the meantime, it sits there patiently, hidden most of the time, with only the odd yoga gazer contemplating it. It's about the only part of us that is seldom considered seriously, but who knows what fame our small human scar, the navel, may earn in the future?