William Hay, Writer

Rodeo-Quanacastre-Costa Rica - Jan 2012

2012-02-01T23:18:00.000-08:00

I loved the rodeo in Costa Rica. There were about a dozen bulls to be ridden. This is just one of those but it was fairly representative of the whole. Grand dad was a rancher. Dad took us kids to the Calgary stampede. Rodeo sure beats tv. This was the real thing and I was there with hundreds in the stands glad that I was old enough not even to think I might like to try something like this myself.

Stave Falls Scottish Dancers and Erin

2012-02-01T21:23:00.000-08:00

At the Robbie Burns Dinner hosted by the Moray Nairn and Banff Society at the Scottish Cultural Centre in Vancouver, Erin, a tired young gold medalist who had competed that day and the Stave Lake Scottish Dancers performed to grand applause.

What to do if battered in a domestic relationship?

2012-02-01T16:44:00.001-08:00

1) Leave - in all violent situations retreat is the smart move. Even the marines if attacked will attempt immediately to retreat and regroup.
2) Battered women shelters are places of safety and readily available. Use them if family members and friends homes aren't available. If you are a man who has been battered leave too. There are no battered men's shelters that I know of, despite their need, so go to a friends or family or get a hotel for a night.
3) Speak to the police. Speaking to the police does not require lodging a complaint immediately. The police are a great source of information. Ask them about your rights and what they recommend. Sadly the police work on a 'first come first serve' basis, something criminals commonly know, if a complaint is being lodged. Not speaking to the police might cause you to be considered the 'victimizer' if the other person came forward first as the 'victim'. That said, policewomen with the Vancouver Police Department and the RCMP have with some of the cases I know personally demonstrated great insight and sensitivity. At different times a local policewoman has further done clinics and programs training women in prevention of violence. These programs have been outstanding and extremely helpful. Men are often treated poorly by younger police or older police. It's been a real hit or miss with men who were attacked being ridiculed on one occasion while encountering extremely understanding and helpful police officers on other occasions. So mostly the police are these days really enlightened to the complexity and dynamics of domestic violence and whatever criticism that they may have somewhat deserved in the past is mostly historic today. If need be lay charges and get a 'restraining order'. However before making this decision realize that this may simply 'deal' with the 'immediate problem without addressing the bigger or broader issues. Ensure safety but beware of knee jerk reactions made in the heat of the moment.
4) Talk to a lawyer who specializes in domestic violence. Go early rather than late. Lawyers are especially helpful knowing individuals rights and can address the immediate problem and the broader and farther reaching aspects of any decision. That's what they are specifically trained in. In the past they were 'divorce advocates' and quite reasonably criticized as a principal cause of the failure of marriages and the rise of the 'legal lottery' of divorce with divorces lawyers vying with criminal lawyers for spotlights and high wages. This is not the case in Canada now that there is a balance of power in gender in the courts, more female judges and far fewer of those old dinosaurs cro magnums who as men 'wanted to help the wee woman' or felt 'a woman should know her place' or that first group of angry radical feminists who thought all men should be castrated or 'pink women' deserved their fate. The great books about these divorce courts will read like Jerry Springer shows in years to come with the gross insaniety and cultural bias and extraordinary costs to families and communities of those wild years of penalizing married people while rewarding singles and players by default. That era is ending and mediation and better trained judges all have resulted in lawyers being a good place to turn when there is domestic violence. A number of male lawyers specifically specialize locally in dealing with men married to violent angry dangerous women just as there have been very good female lawyers locally who have specialized in helping women married to psychopathic wife beaters.
5) See your family doctor. The person who sees most everyone and has a pivotal role in the community is the family physician. His training is specific to addressing domestic violence and often especially if older and more experience he or she will be a source of sage wisdom.
6) See a psychiatrist. Often people who are experiencing domestic violence whether male or female are suffering depression, anxiety and even post traumatic stress disorder. Psychiatrists are highly trained and experienced in domestic violence. If children are involved ask to see a Pediatric Psychiatrist as these specifically are trained in family and children in crisis. Unfortunately some psychiatrists today are only trained in psychopharmacology and one should avoid seeing such a limitted psychiatrist. That said the majority of psychiatrists are still trained in biopsychosocial approaches and some are even trained specifically in family and marriage therapy.
7) Clinical psychologists - psychologists who have phd's and 2 years of specific training with humans do excellent work in cases of domestic violence if they don't carry a predjudice against men or women. Unfortunately a lot of psychologists have had extreme gender bias to the point of being grossly sexist without any awareness because they do not have to be trained in 'transference' and 'counter transference' issues to be a simple psychologists or psychological counsellor. Psychiatrists and clinical psychologists and those trained in marriage, system and family therapy are specifically trained to drop their natural bias against men or women based on their child of origin.
8) Beware of counsellors. Individually they are 'comforting' but domestic violence is one of the most complex of human problems and commonly counsellors with only 6 months or a year or two of clinical training commonly say things like 'you should divorce' and routinely 'believe' the 'story' the man or woman tells and acts on the 'screen play' rather than waiting to learn the 'real story'. Counsellors like to rescue and give advise like girlfriends and boyfriends and like to 'feel good' themselves as the person who 'knows what to do'. They rarely have been trained to sit in the shit and muddle of human relationships experiencing the pain and realizing that more often than not what is presented as an 'acute' 'emergency' has been going on a life time or more. I rarely see counsellors finding out who all the actual players in the domestic drama are unless their 'counselling' was predated with training as a social worker or occupational therapist or pastoral counsellor.
9) Don't buy a gun. Don't go on the computer looking for a list of effective poisons. Don't hire a hit man. Revenge is best served cold. In the heat of the moment whatever you do is likely to get you in jail or worse. A "love" is not worth dying over. Hollywood has kindly showed us that great passions and great loves can occur more than once. Romeo and Juliet was a play about teen agers. For an adolescent everything is the end of the world.
10) Avoid homicide or suicide. They are the wrong answer.
11) If you meet a guy or girl and they seem lovely and everything goes well and then you get whacked, you probably are a 'victim'. Healthy people recognise that the 'car' they bought is a 'lemon' and trade it in quick. Unhealthy people try to fix it up. Don't try to fix it up alone. Wiring problems aren't easy to solve. They are deceptively easy but they're notoriously complex. Get expert help.
12) Relationships are best treated by people who are in committed relationships and trained in relationship therapy and are seeing the couple together.
13) If domestic violence arises after a year or two of relationship the domestic violence is intrinsic to the individual and the relationship. Both or all three need to be fixed.
14) Anger management courses for men and women are extremely benefical and effective.
15) If a person keeps picking bad apples they are no longer a 'victim' they are a 'volunteer'. Alright predators look for such victims but one is bad luck 2 in this field is definitely a pattern. This is reason for in depth and often longer term individual therapy.
16) If the violence occurs around drugs and alcohol get treatment specific for drugs and alcohol. All addiction specialists know that stop the drugs and alcohol especially as part of a treatment program and the tendency to violence evaporates after a year or two of being clean and sober.
17) Beware of the friend or therapist with 'glib' advice. If someone is 'threatening' the 'threat' may well be real. Don't just 'leave' thinking that you'll be 'safe'. I've called 911 on three occasions when the police did have 'cars' because a riot or some other emergency was taking place when I was dealing with violence or a break in. One person I know was promised "a new identity' like on television if they did something against a big league criminal in a domestic violence scenario. The trouble was the funding fell through. I've know people who switched countries and were hunted down. People who have never been threatened themselves often have all the 'textbook' answers. It's good to ask people if they themselves have ever experienced domestic violence, violence, or being involved with courts, counsellors and psychiatrists. People who have ball caps and t shirts in the field are far better than new grads in these areas. Young people want to look good especially bearocrats and they may be wanting to impress their boss whereas for you it may be life and death. There are no free lunches so ask them what's in it for them and specifically ask if they've had any real experience or are you their 'guinea pig". I know people have to learn but preferrably you don't want to be their 'test' case.
18) As a marriage therapist I have specifically recommended people separate for a specific amount of time for a specific reason with specific tasks to perform. In one case the woman used this time to get her ducks in a row to take the house and kids when her part in the violence was equal and her lover was not her husband. I've seen the same thing done by men. Given that 'possession is 90%" of the law' departure for any more than weeks at most is not something I like to recommend if the house is a major portion of the combined assets. I think counsellors, psychologists and psychiatrists should advise patients to seek advise from lawyers in these instances so that people know what the law is any day of a given week. Predators female or male always seem to be up on the law just like criminals. The innoscent don't think they need to be only to commonly find themselves victimized in the courts after being victimized in the bed room
19) Beware of talking to the female friends who agree and say what a asswipe the boyfriend or husband is. They commonly are feeling smug and superior to you and getting their rocks off living off your being a loser. These people usually watch soap operas and can't believe their good fortune having a friend whose such a fool to talk to them and might end up on Jerry Springer. Similarly men should avoid talking to friend who say their wife is a ho. Commonly that "friend" is the first one to try and get her in bed after you break up. Family are good but naturally they should take your side. They are not unbiased. In primitive cultures not uncommonly marital problems and relationship problems weren't the domain of parents but rather that of aunts uncles and and older brothers and older sisters. These people have a different slant on the relationship and often provide good insight a parent can't.
20) 1/4 of couples polled had violence. The most common violence I've seen in my practice has been the "Bickerson's", two people who tend to get physical and outsiders only here about it when it goes over the top. I do see a lot of violence in those people with drugs and alcohol and it evaporates with treatment. I 've certainly seen violent individuals with schizophrenia or bipolar though this is relatively rare. But in the home a chronically depressed, perpetually grieving, drama queen or personality disorder often violence is just under the service.
21) As I get older I don't like having unstable emotional or dramatic people in my home. It's a bit like my parents not liking arguments at the table when they were eating. My home is a 'safe place ' and people should ensure their place is safe and avoid having potentially violent people inside. I see potentially violent people in public. One of my female friends is a woman who hasn't benefitted much from divorce and anger management but she's highly entertaining in the coffeeshop where her stories are often hilarious. A friend who went to jail for violence is a good guy sober, to go fishing with. I don't think I'd want to sleep in the same building with either. I wouldn't sleep well in the room with somebody else's pit bull either.

Spousal Abuse-Domestic Violence - Against Men

2012-02-01T10:03:00.001-08:00

One of the principle problems of any discussion of domestic violence or spousal abuse is the persisting belief that 'women' as a 'gender' are 'collectively' victims. One may as well enter into a discussion about Middle East Peace with a Zionist Jew or Radical Palestinian. This collective 'denial' of violence as 'species' violence perpetuates gender violence as much as any number of other factors.
Radical feminism began with social communism. In communism there is a paranoid vision of the world derived from Marx. He saw the world in terms of 'victims', the 'proletariat' and 'victimizers' the beourgeosie and his solution was a one class society. However Lenin felt that this 'one class' society required 'dictatorship' of the proletariat hence the latter day Russian communist regime with the dachaus and special stores for the 'leadership'. China is no different and all communist countries despite their successful revolutionary beginnings have turned into the feudal equivalents theywere against. There is a middle in society and Scottish socialism showed clearly that there was a place for diversity and a middle class and that 'war', the only solution of communism, was unnecessary.
In gender politics the new beourgeosie were the Women's Studies Professors and the the writers of radical feminism all the way down to the lipstick feminists who sound very much like people without a banner. Hence the movement in universities to expand from the revolutionary 'paranoid' position of 'us against them' to (finally) some work on the value of 'egalitarianism". The irony is this latest group calls themselves 'egalitarian feminists" which sounds like capitalist communists to those who pay attention to language. But we do have our 'red tories' today and and our blue liberals as everyone fights for centre stage and the teen agers claim they don't wear a uniform.
While 'crime studies' show that men are more likely than women to use violence, other studies usually family and domestic violence studies show that men are more likely to inflict injury but that when all acts of physical aggression or violence are considered women are either as aggressive as men or more violent than men.
These violence studies further do not take into account that while men may be sexually aggressive women are freer to and are more likely to act out their aggression against men by having sex with their partners friends, family members or bosses. Further agression between females is often expressed sexually through sex with a a girl's boyfriend.
Further female parents acting alone were the most common perpetrators of child abuse.
Added to this,1/3 of sexual abuse victims are likely to sexually abuse themselves. Then too a significant portion of physically abused will go on to physically abuse.
In addition to this there is a major variable of the person who has had one aggressive relationship compared to the person who has recurrent aggressive relationships. In the latter there are predators and volunteers more than predators and victims.
When I have been willing to enter into a discussion of solutions to the problem of spousal abuse or domestic violence from this position of 'fact' and 'scientific information' I have been threatened , ostracized and attacked directly and indirectly. I have never hit a woman but I have repeatedly physically violated by women publicly and privately. I have further treated countless men probably an equal number to the women I have treated who have been violently attacked by women.
The researchers I have known who were men have been castigated for bringing forward this information yet until we move out of this backwater we will not be able to get on with addressing the inherrent species violence and the bullying of those in power whether female or male. Further the tendency of any revolution is to exchange one bully and their spouse for another bully and their spouse. Matriarchy has long be associated by anthrolopologists with war, slavery and torture. That suggests that violence is not gender specific but rather 'species' specific.
Lesbians have the highest incidence of violence over homosexuals and both have greater violence than heterosexuals.
Note that alcohol and drugs are directly associated with violence as are poverty and most importantly men fight men and women fight women so focusing on 'blame' rather than 'solutions' is going nowhere.
2007 1/4 of relationships reported violence.

Julian Assange and the Honeypot

2012-02-01T08:29:00.000-08:00

A honeypot is an obvious entrapment of a male by a female villain using sexual wiles. Right now Julian Assange has been charged with 'rape' in Sweden. Apparently a condom broke and he didn't shower after sex before leaving after her apartment that night. Also he may have forgotten to flush the toilet after he peed. No one is pregnant. No one has disease. The two women who sought sex with Assange apparently were trophy hunting. Assange is being compared to Mick Jagger but Mick never offended the CIA. Keith Richards did and so did John Lennon. In John Lennon's day it was the pot smoking and association with 'anarchists'.

Some of the audio tape that was removed from the Kennedy shooting was released today.We are still being told that the Kennedy killing was a one man job and that on Ossama bin Laden was involved one involved in 9-11. Does anyone think Assange would have a woman carrying around a broken condom for a week as 'proof' against Assange if Assange was nobody. Would this woman have slept with Assange were he nobody? And would this woman have conspired with another woman before coming forward and complaining.

All 'raped' women should petition on behalf of Assange if these women's cases are considered anything but a marvellous opportunity for the US to get Assange. It's one thing to grab him in England, quite another to grab him in Sweden. We must remember, we in the west are the good guys, so we don't jail our political foes openly as South Africa did. Here political prisoners are convicted of rape or drug trafficking if they're not simply called a 'terrorist'.

Nothing makes me want to be a good boy and brown nose and never question authority like the way I see Assange treated. I'm terrified of saying anything controversial for fear someone some time will be able to produce a broken condom or has kept a joint I shared with Clinton and Troudeau showing my DNA was on that joint making me complicit with their public drug abuse. Someday soon there will be a politically correct law saying that a controversial figure 'hogged' the joint and didn't use the tweezers to pass it with. On the bright side maybe one day a man will be able to complain that a woman didn't buy him dinner before she had her way with him.

I've been following the Julian Assange story because he's radically in favour of 'transparency', what the head of the Supreme Court of Canada Beverly McLaughlan stands for. Luckily for us no one was running about complaining of broken female condoms when she was teaching at UBC.

I don't know why Julian Assange doesn't sue the condom manufacturer. Was it Trojan or Sheik.

The Victorian area was considered perverse but future citizens on this globe will look back on the social dark ages of the last 50 years and consider this the greatest era of perversity since Caligula. At least Caligula and Cleopatra and their kin were seeking pleasure from pleasure. Todays government CIA Washington and such are psychopathically perverse so twisted that they encouraged dim witted women to discuss the sexual prowess of the enemies of the state while women and men are titillated with their tales of tails. Thank God for Naomi Wolf who wrote a masterful piece against such tripe. This is what women got the vote for? Wake up ladies. It's not all about the bedroom.

Pay attention to the big picture. What woman is presently doing anything as dangerous or courageous and as radical as Assange. Burning bras doesn't cut it by comparison. I'm wholly impressed by all the major women who are surrounding Assange but I am powerfully aware that Queen Elizabeth has not spoken up.

In a Canada of my dreams Queen Elizabeth would tell Obama and his minions to back off and keep Assange, this great Australian, protected from the fascist Swedes.

If Jesus appeared today he'd be accused of raping Betty Friedan, jailed in Quantanamo and no doubt accused of smoking BC Bud with none other than Elvis Presley. He would have had his 'house in heaven' mortgaged by Goldman Sachs too.

These are strange times. Strange and sexy times. Must be the season of the Witch!

Vancouver Police and Police Dogs

2012-01-31T08:22:00.001-08:00

I was disheartened to hear CBC news going on and on about some poor fellow who was bit by a police dog. To hear the story I was left with the impression that Saint Theresaa and Queen Elizabeth had been attacked by a police dog while having tea in a church somewhere. Typical of CBC left wing politically correct yellow bleeding heart liberal journalism they had the story all wrong.
It turns out a young man, not a child, or a little boy or girl, but a man had been bashing a street bus with his skateboard threatening the driver and others about.. He'd been doing this not once but umpteen times. He was told repeatedly to stop his angry bullying aggressive destructive behaviour. He did not listen to authority or reason. He was a law unto himself. Clearly he had never till this time been socialized. He is likely the kind of person who pees on toilets seats and shits in the kitchen. His behaviour was by all intents and purposes feral and barbaric. The police arrived and told him to stop and he fled. The police dog followed him. Note a police man running or a police car is least likely to catch a man on a skateboard. However this punk, this thug, this bully, this mean little shit, didn't anticipate the police dog. He didn't think. He might well have been high on drugs and impaired. Likely this was the time he was caught and there were many other times that he was not caught. His arrogance speaks to that scenario.
The police dog caught him. Police dogs are trained to stop a person and bring them down. If the person attacks the police dog the police dog defends himself and holds on. Police dogs don't have guns or tazers. They have teeth. One dog against one human and the human has the distinct advantage. Dogs need a pack to be effective. Police dogs alone against a man with a skateboard are in lifethreatening situations. One whack with a skateboard can kill a dog. Indeed a skateboard is a deadly weapon against a police man. It's a bit like that weapon the Klingons used in Star treck. It's a lethal weapon. If a policeman or a police dog is faced with a belligerent aggressive angry hostile man with a skateboard then the dog or the police man is at high risk.
Now this police dog bit this criminal who had committed a crime, put others at risk, whoever was in the bus, those around him, some man going wild and apeshit with a skateboard defying the police and trying to hurt a police dog, a domesticated loyal animal in the midst of a busy street with all manner of innocent people about who didn't want to be drawn into this bullies personal drama who just wanted to get on with their business. They had to witness this horrible situation of a man with a skakeboard trying to kill a dog and the dog just doing it's duty. The man wanted to kill the dog. He would claim he was solely interested in his self defence. But the fact remains he wanted to kill a police dog after he'd tried unsuccessfully to kill bus.
He was taken to hospital by the police. His hospital care was paid for by us, the citizens who he had harmed. CBC seems to be a law unto itself. It doesn't realize that we as tax payers pay for it's journalists and it's coverage of the news. We pay for city buses. And we pay the high cost of having police dogs and the high costs of having police. The Vancouver Police Dog contingent is world reknowned. We have the best trainers and the most humane practices. Our police dogs are the best in the world. This man tried to destroy a bus and would have killed a police dog. I would have been delighted if the CBC reported the story as a success for a dog that survived and a success for the police who stopped public damage and the man trying to harm the dog so he could get away scot free.. The CBC doesn't seem to remember that hooligans like this man destroyed the city after a silly Vancouver Canucks game. We're still waiting collectively for justice to be done in that case.
Now the best part. This man is suing the city of Vancouver, which is us, and the CBC people who live in Vancouver too, claiming that the police should have sent a gerbil after him. Maybe a gold fish should have been sent by the police. Maybe a chihuahua. Anything but a german shepherd so this man could have killed a little dog and made his escape to destroy people's livelihood and threaten bus drivers, bus passengers, and police men trying to protect us from this kind of dangerous sociopathic behaviour. I personally would suggest that the Vancouver Police get pitbulls, great danes and rottweilers rather than the toy poodles criminals would have the police have.
We still haven't seen the Canuck rioters go to jail and jail in Canada is better than what the elderly who worked all their lives often get too, even without the new jails promised.
I think CBC should be ashamed of itself. I think it's tragic when a person gets hurt but the age old message to criminals and taking a skateboard and attacking a bus and bus driver and passengers and tax bought city property is criminal, well, 'if you can't do the time, don't do the crime'.
Hopefully this fellow will learn something from his running amok. Maybe not to do it again. Maybe others who think they should be able to destroy whenever they please will also learn that the police will stop them. This isn't an airport incident with a man having difficulty with language and understanding and threatening three armed policemen with a paper clip holder. This is a man with a skateboard weapon swinging it about with extreme violence and prejudcie and then defying police and wanting to escape to do more destruction another day. This is the story of Lassie coming to the rescue of the police, the bus driver, the City of Vancouver and all the people who live and work here without destructiveness.
Now in a sane world this man would go to court and the judge would find that this suit was more 'mischief' and he would be required to do more time or pay more cost for continuing to defy society and believe that he has the right to destroy people's livelihood and threaten us with his skateboard. Then use the courts for his own criminal gain. My fear is that the judge, judges not riding in buses or walking about the streets of Vancouver where normal people live in fear of dangerous men high on drugs weilding skateboard weapons or whatever else they can get their hands on. Judges like the CBC are too often uncaring about the rest of us who walk the streets of Vancouver or don't because we are afraid of the hooligans. We depend on the police but increasingly feel they are muzzled like this sociopathic criminal would have the dog muzzled so he could have bludgeoned the poor dog to death with his skateboard and made his escape to go on to bludgeon a police man next time.
I am hopeful for the courts. The lawyer who took this case must be hard up for work and embarrassed. I can only hope a judge who has walked downtown recently takes the case. I am thankful for the Vancouver Police and the Vancouver Police Dog contingent. I would prefer that criminals hurt in the pursuit of crimes have to pay for their healthcare. I don't think I should have to pay for health care and know that guys who attack the police and get hurt get their health care paid for. They could at least get a bill for the damages they do. I've been hoping to hear that the Canucks rioters will have their incomes garnisheed for the next 5 years at least to pay for some of the damages businesses and tax payers and volunteers have had to pay.
CBC stopped being silly and stupid. The vast majority of us are not criminals and we are the ones that are paying your salary. Stop smoking BC Bud and report the news straight. CBC stop supporting the violence and hooligans because your cheerleader is going to policemen and citizens killed. A note should go out if the police are called up upon to help the CBC they should bring only goldfish, gerbils and toy poodles as back up. Better too, muzzle the goldfish.

Robbie Burns Dinner .m4v

2012-01-29T00:02:00.000-08:00

Robbie Burns Dinner - Moray Nairn & Banff Society - Scottish Cultural Centre

2012-01-28T23:05:00.001-08:00

Another great year of Scottish Dance, Song and Haggis. The little gold medalist dancer Erin was tremendous. The Stave Falls Scottish Dancers were incredible. Bagpipes and the piper were the best. Laidlaw's Ode to the Haggis a true treat. Mad Celts music rousing. Lorne came in from Chilliwack. Judith flew in from Australia. Laura and I love the Moray Nairn and Banff Society. Each year their Robbie Burns Dinner at the Scottish Cultural Centre seems better than the year before. I love Haggis!

How to get A's at University #2

2012-01-27T19:42:00.001-08:00

Assuming now that you are attending classes, doing assignments and studying sufficient time , 1 hour per class for a B, 2 hours per class for an A and three hours per class for an A plus, then there are ways to improve your efficiency at study.
1) Know your reading time. Most of University is listening, reading, talking and writing. Given case assignments such as read up on how to genitally garrot your pesky neighbour you would necessarily want to have some idea of how much time such an assignment would take. The chapter on genital garroting of pesky neighbours is 100 pages long. How much time are you going to devote just to reading this material? To know that, you have to measure your reading time. My reading time for scientific material, studying, not just perusing, is roughly 10 pages per hour ie chemistry and physics, mathematics etc. . My reading time for Art material such as a novel is 40 or maybe 50 pages an hour. History and anthropology I read somewhere in the 20 to 30 page per hour range. Knowing this I can estimate the amount of time I will require for an assignment. In Pathology we had a professor who needed genital garroting in the womb. He assigned routinely hundreds of pages of reading which if we were to do would take up all the spare time any medical student with a dozen classes could have. He had a megalomania complex. Students failed that year's pathology becuase they tried desperately to meet his wholly unrealistic sadistic and ignorant demands. Smart students however recognising that sleep was required in their lives quickly got a the equivalent of 'coles' notes for pathology reading that instead. Normally though it's just recognising that if 4 books are assigned for a semester in a subject then as each book is a couple of hundred pages plus each course might involve a thousand pages of reading. One can then plan how much time one has to do in terms of simply reading the assigned material.
2) It is better to hand in incomplete work than not hand in anything at all. Manny students, especially those suffering obsessive compulsive disorder, think that something has to be 'perfect' so don't complete things. The key is to plan out how much time is required and set a reasonable deadline. The deadline for completion of assignments is not the day they are due but a week before the day they are due because an alien might well appear two days before the assigment is requiring completion. Aliens commonly abduct students for suctioning of sexual fluids and anal probing. Since no one knows when this is going to occur smart people ensure that their deadline for completion gives them a couple of days lee way for potential alien abduction. That way they don't have to show up with a medical note saying they had a suicidal psychotic break and can they have a few more days to complete their assignment.
3) Undergraduate school is kindergarden. High school was nursery school. You're not at university to invent a new wheel or find the meaning of life. That's left for the phd programs. Their thesis's proving the existence of God and providing sustainable perpetual clean energy from fish farts are filed in all the libraries of all the universities all the world over. The principle expectation of the undergraduate program is that it allows the university to market and sell higher education. That's why people remember university undergraduate years as the best time ever and people do drugs, play bridge and make ski movies and still pass. If you have a father who owns a corporation this is a good thing to do. But if you are at university with the hope of going on to higher education and real learning and want to be first selection to real universities and real jobs it's good to get A's at university. Smoking dope and getting A is maybe possible in psychology but not in microbiology. So stay straight and focus on study. The strategy for success is the do as you are told. Most undergraduates can't shit when and where they are told so they're not ready to be trusted with nuclear warheads or business proposals involving real clients. So listen in class and learn exactly what the professor is saying. If the professor really was top themselves they'd probably not be teaching undergraduates but would in fact be designing the space shuttle and teaching the president in advanced classes called 'briefings'.
4) Demonstrate that you can listen and do exactly what the professor asks. Teachers usually have low self esteem and need their ego stroked. If they ask you to describe the culture of Italy they don't want you to tell them about the 'history' of Italy alone. Use a dictionary. Most undergraduates are illiterate and high school as a nursery school which was developed to allow their parents to go to work, not worrying about the rug rats, doesn't prepare most people for university. University entrance exams were developed when it was collectively recognised that high schools were giving politically correct diplomas to utterly ignorant students who were likely to collect welfare and run meth labs and be consumers of beer and cigarettes.
5) Read up on the professor. Find out everything you can about the professor. If they wrote on Marx as the best latin lover be prepared to celebrate the lack of need for viagra in Castros cabinet. However if they wrote an undergraduate paper on the power and purity of Ronald Reagan don't dare say anything good about Che. The arts are always political whereas the sciences are often political. If you agree with your professor given that they are teaching and don't really have a real adult job, like planning the mass murder and such things, knowing the 'position' your professor has taken in their training or their writing will go along way to getting an A. In psychiatry I watched a Freudian psychiatrist become livid when my classmate tried to argue Jungian ideas about child development. He couldn't have been stupider if he'd argued on behalf of Victor Frankl. The prof did not celebrate the pig headed student.
6) Priorize the material you need to study. Put more time into the subjects you don't like. Most students put time into the subjects they like with the result they have A's B's and C's. To get all A's you have to distribute your study time to your weaknesses.
7) Write down everything the professor says in class whether it seems important or not. You don't know what is important. Having a great set of notes is very important. I copy type and all my classmates grabbed copies of my notes. Today I'd sell such gold for hundreds of dollars. Back then I was just another good guy.. It was the era of peace and love and we didn't know about global politics , psychopaths and sociopaths and such. After you have a great set of notes, read them over within 24 hours of taking them underlining or highlighting what you think after the class is important, ie might be on the exam. Later in postgraduate you will probably write in a book. rather than have two sets of notes. In memory studies reading over material within 24 hours and then reading over the synopsis within 1 weeks results in the material being laid down in short and longer term memory. Studying then in the week or two before an exam will result in that material being available to memory at the time of exam. Read up on the latest research regarding study and memory and not the elaborate memory techniques but the 'concepts' so that you can apply this to your own stjudy.
8) Reading, highlight and underline. Books for university where possible are to be used as texts of study. When I studied the Bible at the University it was hard to make notes on the page and underline but I learned to do it and decades later that study Bible with my notes is still one of my all time favourite Bibles.
9) The reason for highlighting and underlining is that you will not be reading anything over except your highlighting and underlining so that a page on a text should be reduced to at least less than a quarter of the material preferably an eighth thereby highlighting the most important memory parts of the text. The abberviated text then can be used as notes. If you have a lot of highlighting it indicates you don't really understand what's important here.
10) There are now excellent 'how to study' courses at the university. 20 years ago when I began treating geniuses who were getting poor grades these weren't availalb.e I've reviewed the local college preparation courses, Langara College had a superb one, and these 1 semester non credit courses were worth their weight in gold if you graduated from a lower end higher school with less than stellar grades. If you did a lot of drugs and alcohol in school then theses courses should be considered mandatory.
11) Don't plagiarise. Don't cheat. I don't care what the Fascists tell you. You'll spend the rest of your life saying you're okay when you know you're not. You'll have to buy a lot more toys and have a lot more facelifts to make up for being a sucker in undergraduate. However never turn in material without having it editted. If your father or mother knows the editor of New Yorker ask them a favour if you're in English 101 and expected to hand in an essay on Kaffka versus Camus and whether Hemmingway was a closet homosexual. Get a tutor if you're having trouble in a class. Get one early. Use editors, professional or otherwise. This is not cheating. It's what all smart writers do.
12) If you have a multiple choice exam go with the first thought. If you have time to review your answers don't struggle over which is right or wrong but reread the question to ensure you didn't miss the negative or positive twist on the question. It's found that most studnets make wrong as many questions as they make right in review. If the question is short answer or essay then your preparation must include writing long answers off the top of your head and making lists of priorities to remember. It's not sufficient to read to prepare for essay and short answer material. You actually must apply pen to paper.
13) Form a study group of 3 to 6 students ,ideally in the same subject but if not mixed subjects work. Meet weekly for a coffee hour and during that time ask each other questions about the material. If you are in different courses switch text books and ask each other questions randomly from the material prepared or from each other's notes. Alot of students 'put' information into their brains but don't teach their brains to release that information . Discussing and answering questions about the material prepares one for the 'extraction' phase which is the essence of the examination.
14) Give up friends and families not involved in school if you need to focus. Friends and families who care will be glad to put the relationship on hold from semester to semester. If they don't they're selvish and probably will pull you down. Cut losers from your life or simply be selfish and reestablish the friendships and family relationsips at the end of the semester or end of the degree. You simply have to priorize your work to get A's. Tough. If you don't or can't do that then don't bitch about the guys who develop space programs getting paid more than you in your car wash job. You made your choice in that critical window of time. And there are critical windows. You can't be a professional ballerina if you put off your dance training till 50 years of age. I know the politically correct say you can but we're not going to pay the same to see a fat balding middle age swan.

How to get A's at University

2012-01-26T12:17:00.001-08:00

How to get A’s at University

- William Hay, MD, LMCC, CFP, ASH, FLEX FRCPC, ADM, CSAM, MROCC

The average IQ is 100. University is established at the level where a person with an Average IQ will pass if they attend class and complete the assignments. People who have completed high school usually have established that they have a 100 IQ.

The University is a business and it’s selling education as a product. It is no longer ‘exclusive’. Everyone can get a university education if they are willing to do the work. Most people who ‘fail’ university in my experience have been those who did not attend class, do their homework, or show up for exams. Others have gone to very poor high schools and been passed when they should have had remedial training.

THere are Arts courses and Science courses. Science courses are by design more difficult and more demanding. It’s much harder to get by in Science by ‘who you know’ versus ‘what you know’. I can fake ‘literary criticism’ but I can’t ‘fake’ making nitro glycerin in the lab. At the higher levels of Arts and Science studies the two become equally difficult but generally speaking a Bachelor of Arts degree is far easier to obtain than a Bachelor of Science degree.

Assuming that there are 3 hours of class per arts credit per semester, and five credits per semester for roughly 3 years or 6 semesters, to get a basic Bachelor of Arts, one has roughly 5x3 or 15 hours a week of university ‘work’ to do to get a degree. This explains why so many people do their Bachelor degree at night school. Attending the classes and doing the exams and assignments to complete a Bachelor degree in 3 years with summers and holidays off for work and vacation, one has roughly a 15 to 20 hour work week.

It is not surprising that most people who have government jobs have got them by having a Bachelor of Arts degree. It’s also no surprise that people in the ‘private’ world look at most low level government jobs as ‘cozy’, ‘overpaid’, and mostly ‘secure’ but for ‘stupid’ people without alot of motivation. It’s better to have people employed in government and union positions than to have the same people out in the community unemployed causing trouble.

To get a ‘B” average at university, all one has to do in Arts is to study one hour for every hour of class room time. Note “1 hour’” of study is ‘1hour” of study, ie sitting upright at a table or study cubicle with a computer or book focussed on the subject material with pen and note pad or tablet at hand. This means that person is doing 30 hours of study a week for a 3 year arts degree plus doing exams and assignments.

People who do this are more likely to advance in Government positions based on meritocracy rather than ‘years in”.

If one wants to get an A average in Arts all one has to do is study 2 hours for every hour of classroom time resulting in the average 45 hour work that people who work in the private sector of society do as matter of fact for any income over $50,000 gross a year. They are working 60 hour work weeks as students. Not terribly onerous but the basic minimum work week of the leaders of private sector business. In government these are likely to be supervisors and upwardly mobile.

People who gets A’s in Bachelor of Arts degrees usually go on to do another year Honours and commonly advance to Masters Degrees.

To get an A plus one simply has to study 3 hours for ever hour of class room time making an average work week of 75 hours. Considering the average work week of all ‘professionals’ has been said to be 80 hours this is not an onerous beginning. Work is required to be an engineer, doctor, accountant or lawyer. It’s not required to be a low level government worker but it certainly is required to be the assistant of the premier or prime minister. Watch “The Devil Wears Prada”. The star was a lawyer working in business. Every industry has leaders like this. Only in government or unions can you expect to get paid for dollars for work. That’s the ‘blue collar’ idea. I get paid by the hour. In the ‘white collar’ one is rewarded by the willingness to do work for free and as a result of this initial committments fame and fortune follow.

In the Sciences there is another factor that makes them more difficult and onerous. Sciences have a lab each week in addition to three hours of class room. This makes science courses in general ‘more work’. Instead of 3 hours of class a week, there are 4 hours of class a week. Hence to get a C one has to do 20 hours of work attending 5 courses for 3 years minimum plus completing assignments and showing up for exams.

In addition to just ‘talk’ like politicians and ‘salesmen’ and ‘administrators’, the sciences require that you actually can ‘make something’. You must be able to ‘do’ things. You can’t be all thumbs and the making of a nuclear warhead in the class room isn’t a matter ‘of opinion’. Either the product blows up the world or it doesn’t. There’s no ‘political correctness’ in the Science lab. In Arts one can be wildly insane and delusional and get an A whereas in Science there’s a basic need to be reality based. Gravity ‘limits’ political thinking.

To get an A+ average in the sciences then one has to assume 4 hours per class study and attenance x 4 x 5 = 80 hours/ week. I think I did the math wrong and it’s even more.

The idea here is that as Einstein said, Genius is 99% perspiration and 1 %inspiration.

The number one reason for students not doing well in school is lack of study time. Use of a timer and a set study place with mapping of the hours of study is the best self assessment process. Most people over estimate their study time and want to get something for nothing.

This may sound ‘harsh’. It’s clearly not ‘politically correct’. Political correctness is for losers and whiners.

If you get an ‘A” and ‘don’t need to study’ then you’re doing a ‘too easy program’ or ‘too easy university’. I got straight A’s at university but at Medical School was 1 of 15 straight A’s of the 100 students in the class. It’s easy to be a big fish in a small pond. The olympics and the top universities and professional sports are places where the competition is ‘humbling’. The same is true for the ‘rich and powerful’. I’ve never met the ‘idle rich’. If you’re lucky enough to be rich you’ll going to have to work to stay rich because everyone else wants to take your wealth or power.

If you have say 130 IQ or greater then you will get Straight A’s with simply attending class. If you don’t get straight A’s you’re usually not as smart as you think. Arrogance is the other principal reason for people doing poorly at university. It’s not rocket science but ‘laziness’ and ‘arrogance’ do exist and are common and are common ‘reason’s’ for failure. If you are a genius after you get straight A’s in an arts program you might want to get transferred to Stanford or Harvard or do a dual honors degree at University of Manitoba or Saskatchewan. Idleness is the ‘devil’s playground’. Alot of previously likely to succeed people were under achieving and ended up doing drugs, gambling, watching tv, having all consuming self aggrandising romances or whatever. Later they said ‘poor me’.

A minority of people have difficulties for other reasons. The majority of people have difficulties because of laziness and arrogance. Laziness and arrogance are common.

This is not a politically correct attitude. It is common though in those who are ‘achievers’ and do well at university. They don’t believe someone else should take care of them and they don’t believe they should get something for nothing. They do have a very good ‘work ethic’.

I will elsewhere explain how one can succeed once one has a positive attitude with a positive work ethic. If a person is doing the minimum numbers of hours of study and still not achieving it may not be because they’re ‘stupid’ but rather because they’re ‘studying wrong’. Once you’re putting in the time the refinement can be made but until you’re actually putting the hours in the ‘refinements’ can’t be done. The brain is like a muscle. If you’re not working out regularly you’re not going to succeed. Efficiency of study is done after the person is putting in the hours, not before.

Returning to Vancouver

2012-01-24T10:14:00.001-08:00

I was ready to come home. I really enjoyed the Spanish group. I study well and work well. When the weekend came and I had time to myself. I was glad to do the things I did but was ready to return to work. There's a lack of purpose in being simply a tourist. I remember bicycling across Europe that by three months it was a kind of life between lives and I was glad to get off the bike and take a job. A tourists flits about like a bird. There's a relationship with other tourists which is itself superficial and passing. In work one is in the depth of a place and culture. The relationships aren't purely consumer. As a tourist I begin to feel a bit like royalty must feel, other than. I would have liked to have gone on the river boats and taken more pictures of birds. I would have loved to have driven to the capital. There's so much more to see in Costa Rica. I really hope one day to see the Caribbean side too. In Quanacaste those I talked to enjoyed the hikes and I 'd have like to do that. Maybe it was because I was alone. Alone I'd done enough. Even together when I was sailing for months I was glad to return to the routines I associate with work. Were I independently wealthy would I worry about money going out and none coming in. I suspect so. There's something in the Scottish blood that doesn't like that equation. It just seemed the break had done what it was meant to do. I'd go back another winter for sure and ideally would sail to Costa Rica. l loved studying Spanish. I think learning another language teaches one so much about culture, anthropology, sociology and psychology. There's a real doing in the experience. So many of my patients have English as a second language and when I've been learning Spanish I relate so much better to all of them after that because I really appreciate how much effort they are making to communicate with me. When we went to Italy last year we didn't take a course in country but before going studied the phrase books and tried to speak Italian while we were there. That makes the whole tourist experience that much richer. Language is such a window to the people of a place. I enjoyed the teacher and the classmates. Taking a course right off puts me in a relatiosnip with others and these people were great. I enjoyed we were all medical and had that in common plus our study of Spanish. When I'd studyied Spanish in Cancun my classmates and I subsequently rented scooters and went off on a day of exploration and Spanish speaking. It's a great way for a lone person to meet others. This time we all dispersed but it was from the other doctors I learned of the Swiss Tavel tour that everyone had loved most. I was the only one interested in Scuba Diving but would gladly have told everyone about Resort Divers of Quanacaste. In Israel I was staying in the Anglican Church hostel and having breakfast there. This caused me to meet a group of ministers on vacation and we'd breakfast together sharing our days experience with exploration. It was the same when I stayed in youth hostels much younger and playing chess met other tourists and linked up with them to go to different places. I liked all that about travelling. Travelling alone is more exposed and spontaneous so it's less buffered. I've liked the Joni Mitchell "Freeman in Paris" experience of travelling alone but missed the good company of going with a friend. Certainly ex wives and girlfriends have added to travel experiences in the past as did sailing the Hawaiian Island with Tom and then returning across the Pacific Ocean to Vancouver with him. Very different experience than when I sailed solo to Hawaii in winter that other year. There's a lot to be said for the variety of travelling experiences. I enjoyed this. The everything included Hilton Package and everything one could want onsight at the Hilton Papagayos made it an adult playground. I felt a bit like I was in a precurser to an adult nursing home with all my needs and wants cared for. I simply had to take my body to the pool or the restaurant or the bano. It was all there. Most people didn't leave the gated community. Were I to do one of these again I think I'd do just that too.
I was glad to return to English speaking world. I have difficulty after a time with money and the second language issue. That sense of being an alien that causes 'culture shock' which results in admission to psychiatric wards for immigrants seems to touch me. I feel alien. Certainly being alone increases this. But it's around money that I become slightly paranoid. Everything required division by 500 since 500 was $ 1 roughly. I think those who do well with arithmatic in their heads do better with this bit of travelling. I begin to worry I'm being ripped off at little purchases. I then pull out the calculator and see that what was my fear of losing large amounts was only in truth cents because the $5,000 colons was only $10. I hate it most with tipping. I had the paper money figured out in the week but the coins were difficult still. Then too in Quanacastre American money is used equally to Colons so sometimes I 'd be using American dollars and other times I'd be using Colons. Then I'd be worried I was 'being "taken advantage of" or being 'cheap'. I began to worry what I was thought of in these silly transactions. Yet the whole business is to get the tourists money. Especially in the little shops in the shopping malls the potential for 'deals' was incredible. So buying a trinket for $10 was disappointing when a round the corner it was sold for $1. I had to psychologically adjust to these things in a way that I don't have to in Canada. I like 'fixed' prices. I don't like bartering on every transaction or thinking like 'sharp' businesman on every transaction. I don't like the 'paranoia' that is the basis of 'business' and it tires me to function in this mode. I can function is this mode amazing well but to me it's like being an assasin, I'd be great at it, really, but I'd much rather be a healer. There's a better feeling I have inside and I like to focus on feeling more like that. I like to look for the common hunanity and not compete to take advantage of each other in every business transaction. I don't like that after I am a 'mark' or a 'sucker'. Very quickly I'm not interested in playing the game.
So I was missing Canada the day I departed. Arriving in Houston I liked that I was in an English speaking country. It reminded me of the wonderful feeling I got returning to England after months in Europe and hearing English being spoken all over on the streets. I liked that in Houston too. But it wasn't Canada. America is more barbaric and wild and raw and I always want to be carrying a glock with a lawyer chained to my wrist and a half naked woman with me beside a ferrari. I feel like the society is blatantly hollywood at times with so much emphasis on the superficiality of power and money. That's in passing. When I 'm passing through in the airports that's my feeling of America. Not in the street. When I'm in the states travelling on my Harley or in the truck or going to medical conferences it's a whole other things. My american medical friends and my other american friends are like brothers and sisters to me. Yet in the crowd there's that other thing I can't put my finger on. Something about the collective.
I like Texans too. Yet when I landed in Seattle I felt closer to home. I've spent alot of time in Seattle and love it. But getting on the Air Canada Jazz jet and hearing the stewardess speak Canadian and watching her politeness and concern for others made me feel at home. Canadians really are a well mannered bunch. There's a whole different thing going on in Canada that was apparent to me on that jet. We do have our assholes no doubt but overall there's something about Canadian culture that really attracts alot of people here and makes it hard to leave. It's definitely not the weather that makes Canada so appealing. So it must be the people.
I loved coming home. I liked the familiarity of the Vancouver airport. I liked the Punjabi taxi driver. I liked the multicultural experience that I encountered immediately that carries alot more mutual respect and appreciation somehow for Canada. I"ve met the occasional Chinese or Indian or Russian person who would like to change Canada to their country but mostly there's an appreciation for what people are leaving. Most people I know want what is here and don't want what they left. There's that sense in the community of Canada as alien as it can be. I think that's different from what I saw in Latin America and in the US. There's none of the poverty and hopelessness here that is there either. In Costa Rica people were moving all over the country looking for work to pay the rent. Here it's a very different kind of poverty.
I didn't see a drug problem in Quanacaste. I didn't see a public drinking problem there either. In fact if anything drugs and alcohol were pretty much frowned upon and discouraged in a way alien to pot head BC where the whole idea of the populace at large seems oriented to getting stoned or drunk. I'm sure there was drinking and drugging but it wasn't mainstream like it is here. 70% of the country is Catholic and that conservatism seems to have protected the mainstream from the secular rave.
It's all superficial generalizations that one makes as a tourist. Observations mostly made on ones own past. I didn't like being disconnected from the internet. $17 a day for connection. I realize I check out facts hourly now with my iphone here and didn't there. I want to know things now. I saw birds there that I didn't know the name of but here if I don't know something I learn it now. So I really appreciated returning to the free wifi of the airport and the whole attitude of Canada and the United States regarding education. I don't know any country in the world where the Smithsonian would be free. That's what makes America the greatest country in the world. It's this desire to learn and the support of learning. Free education is Canada was what made Canada a world class nation and the exclusion of the majority from higher education is going to be the downfall of our nation. Only in the inbred wealthy children of England in the end could compete with the raw self educated Americans in their Revolution. The same is occurring now.
The whole scholarship thing was what got me my education. Meritocracy is what is necessary to make a nation strong.
I see that in all the free wi fi spots in America and Canada. I see that in Blenz coffee shop free wifi. I can go there and have the world's libraries at my fingertips. It's happening elsewhere. Cellphones were ubiquitous even with the young people of Liberia. So it's happening. Its jsut happening faster here.
I was glad to be back 'on the grid' when I arrived in Seattle. I'm glad to be on the 'grid now'. I 'll be phoning my dad today and glad that the whole phone communication thing won't be so much of a challenge as it is elsewhere.
I was really glad to see Gilbert. He went berzerk. It's the longest we've been apart and he was running in circles and squealing for ever. I felt fairly welcome. Angel was rubbing up against my leg and it was good to hug Laura too. I feel alone in the cosmos alot and it's moments like this returning that I feel special and connected. I don't think people care for me that much. I don't think people are very connected. The sense of life's journey as being born alone and die alone is with me much more especially as a result of the horrors of divorce. I believed in community., love and all those other human creations before divorce. But divorce is that utter destruction where the person who you trusted most and knew you most intimately turns into Hitler and Osama Bin Laden. It's learning that living with people they can suddenly become psychotic and change to swamp things and unrecognisable mutants from another planet that makes living itself among humans terrifying. I never saw it coming. I never thought that my 'true love' could be a Sigourney Weaver Alien killer. I suspect that my partners felt the same for me too. So I think those who don't divorce can keep a higher measure of self worth and the worth of the fellow man. I'm paranoid of people since my last marriage. I believe she was trying to kill me and almost did. I believe my friends were rather impotent to deal with authorities on other occasions and that community is a frightening place. I know patients who have been jailed for questionable reasons, seen people throwing into psychiatric hospitals and horribly abused, known patients from other countries who were tortured. Humans can be very un nice.
So I really appreciate friends I have today. I really do care for the guys I know. But the fact is every time I meet someone I look at them carefully because I wonder at some level if they are 'infected'. Maybe it's my work that has made me so sensitive to the changes. But I've been talking to beaurocrats and watched them 'lose it'. Suddenly I'm their mother or their ex husband or something and I see the change. I start ducking and worry how can I get away from this mad person. It's safe in my office because madness there is about people who have some insight. They're seeking help. But the madness in the street is terrifying. The madness in beaurocracy is the worst because these people have a whole lot of power. So suddenly I'm talking to an armed policewoman with kevlar and she's checking my passport and I'm more concerned with talkign softly to her than any rattler or grizzly bear I've been with. She might jsut lose it here and then I'm caught up in her personal dram.a.
In other countries and other languages I'm not as 'fine tuned'. I'm like the fool in the tarot deck where as back in Canada I'm watchful and can be careful around the children with power and arrogance. I'm safer in a way but much more alert in a different way. I had great encounters with all the authorities on this trip and wondered what it was about me, them and the weather that resulted in this positive experience. Other peoples emotional states are often like weather to me and yet sometimes I'm the one causing the storm in the tea cup.
A Chinese lady in the airport dragged her suitcase over all of our toes and hit our knees in this little space she had chosen to find a seat in. She was with a surly husband who dragged his big suitcase to the same place but didn't hit anyone. I figured what she was angry at him for wanting to go to this seat and therefore hit all of us. Her look was blaming and angry acting like she was the perpetual injured person while all of us were looking up at this rude unsocialized child. She was obviously wealthy but probably never toilet trained. Nonetheless it was that experience of 'bullying' I didn't encounter till I was back in the US. The Latins were so gracious by comparison. When we bumped each other everyone said 'excuse me'. Not at all like this woman who appeared to think we were an offense because we were 'in her way'. I'm sensitive to these things and had to stop myself from acting on behalf of the half dozen injured people rudding toes and knees. I wanted to get up and talk to her and her husband but then thought , whatever. Children.
Now I'm back in Canada. I feel home. I got the sunshine I needed. I really felt after last years long last flu andwinter sickness I needed a bit of sun. I could well have gone to los vegas for a quarter of the price if not less. I could have taken spanish classes there too so will think about 'getting the sun'. Also I know in the past going skiing at Whistler and Blackhomb gave me the 'sun experience too so it's not just going south that will do it. In Winnipeg if we got out cross country skiing enough on sunny days the winter was so much beetter.
The other culture makes me see my own differnently and I admit I have a whole new appreciation of my own surroundings. I always return to Canada with such appreciation for this plac.e. Vancouver is a beautiful city and it's a blessing to live here.
Time to go. Enough rambling. Work to be done and the routine to be re established. Normally getting off a week as a doctor requires doing twice thew work the week before and three times the work the week of return. I've had colleagues who stopped taking vacations because they couldn't stand the overwork required when they left the office. I was taking emergency calls and emails the whole time I was away so have some second thoughts about connectedness. Still I think that means that some of the work that might have been horrible isn't. In my first years of practice I returned to a death from every vacation I took. Somebody died and usually because they were turned away at the hospital or there wasn't any cross coverage. I'm always afraid to walk into the office and see what has occured while I was away. These days I'm hopeful though.
I'm looking forward to going to work. I'm glad to be back. I've slept alot while I was away too. Lying napping in the sun reading books I enjoyed. I think everyone here should have a SAD Lamp. I really must gett to a tanning salon. Laura says I look so much better tanned. She looks great always.
Thank you Jesus for the blessing of time off from work, study, travel and sunshine then the blessing of return to friends and Gilbert and Angel.

More Birds of Quanacastre, Costa Rica

2012-01-23T19:29:00.001-08:00

I took the Swiss Travel Tour to the Verano private ranch. It was horseback riding and zip lining, hot springs and great dinner. I happened to have my long bird lens along so got a few more bird pictures. I had to leave that camera with the driver along with my bag because the zip lining through the jungle wasn't a place for a big over the shoulder bag. A packsack with two shoulder straps would have been fine. I certainly didn't need the big zoom for the shots of that tour. The guide, Allehandra, figured the best birding pictures would be on the river boat tours. As it was I got some interesting bird pictures so am adding these here. I love the white throated magpie jay. The white winged dove . I couldn't figure out for sure what this little brown bird was though it may be the clay coloured robin, the Cposta Rica National Bird.I liked the group of big birds which were either black or turkey vultures.

Zip lining Canopy Tour- Quanacaste - Costa Rica

2012-01-23T19:23:00.001-08:00

http://www.swisstravelcr.com/tours-and-activities/
I had a great day zip lining with Alehandro from Swiss Travel Tours and young people from Ohio and Pennsylvania. It was wild. As an old guy I kept up with the young, barely. They were smiling and laughing a lot more. It took me a couple of trips before the terror of the first go turned to excitement and real fun. Allehandro took pictures and caught me looking pretty grim. I actually smiled alot, especially after I got off. I didn't ever get to the horsing around phase though that the young guy did. The girls were clearly immortals as well. The burn nurse told me she actually liked jumping out of perfectly good airplanes. It's really safe with safety lines and such that still doesn't sink in psychologically on that first run. It was strenuous by the end but what a great day. After we luxuriated in the hot springs before having the most magnificent 6 course lunch mostly produced by the ranch itself.

Costa Rica - Swiss Travel Tours - Horseback Riding - Zip Lining - Hot Springs

2012-01-23T18:50:00.001-08:00

I loved the day long tour arranged for about $100 with the Swiss Travel Tours. Alehandra was the tour guide. He was fun and a wealth of information about local sights and customs. I was the old guy with a terrific group of young people from Ohio and Pennsylvania. Nurse, OT, Executive Assistant and Financial Planner. As representatives of todays young adults there is serious hope for the future. My office assistant Joanne had said her parents loved the zip lining through the jungle heights. I'm now convinced they are younger and in better shape than me. I had the idea of something less exciting and less strenous. It was way more fun. I really loved the horseback ride. The whole tour occurred on a private ranch. I'm pretty sure it was Verdanna. This is a terrific place, a functing farm that produced most of the food we later had for a magnificent meal at the end of a great day. The white hatted cowboy - horse master - really was the real thing. The horses were obviously family. Nothing 'trail ride' about this group. Really well cared for horses which the family themselves were riding about their fields. It was a thoroughly beautiful ranch near the volcano. Great to see this beautiful countryside .On the ranch horses were an active means of transportation. As grandad was a big northern rancher I really appreciate cared for horses and ranch and farm folk that really take pride in their world. One of the sons accompanied us on the ride and spoke with enthusiasm about building an additional water slide complex to add to their already luxurious hotsprings complex. The water is natural mineral healing water but it's heated because it cools off getting to the pool. I liked the honesty. I liked everything about this. The company was funny too. I wished I'd had more time for more tours. The river boat tours were popular and Alehandra said these were great for bird pictures. These are horseback riding pictures. I have to put the zip lining ones on the next blog.

Another Morning in Quanacaste

2012-01-22T05:07:00.001-08:00

Another beautiful day. Sunshine. Warm. I'm booked to do a mixed tour in the National Park an hour north of Liberia. Some horse back riding, some hiking, some ziping through the tree tops and best of all lying about in the hotsprings. This trip has been first a medical conference. I've so many cross cultural patients I'm interested in learning one language especially medically to understood better how they perceive their illness and relationship with the doctor through a second language. My course and the experience of struggling to find words for symptons especially was fascinating. Further it was certainly a break from the winter. I wouldn't have gone to Norway for a medical conference this time of year with such alacrity. The weather here has been all I could ever hope for. Then too it's been for healing as much as anything. Physically I've not responded to my injuries and here I gave some time to my much abused body. Exercise, relaxation, and massage have all done me well in recovery. Then too the mental stress, quite overwhelming before I left. This time of year it's always that way and the pace continues till late spring so a break will make me better able to cope. Were I in an English speaking country I'd be thinking and reading the news and watching the tv for latest developments. Here I'm struggling for the term for "soup' - sopa - and my mind has slowed in a sense returning to that time in childhood when fundamentals are of such importance. Now I struggle with the meaning of life, focus on corruption in society, ask questions of my relationship with God, search for better understanding of my own life in totality, think about death.

Here though it's a bit like a nursing home. The day revolves around meals and rest. After scuba diving yesterday, excellent exercise and all round fun, I lay by the pool sun bathing reading "Impact" an excellent thriller by Douglas Preston. He has been likened to Michael Creighton and that's certainly fair to Creighton's books like Congo. I loved reading it. I got red. I took a dip in the pool to cool off. Every once in a while my eyes strayed from the page to look at the utterly gorgeous women all about in the teeniest bikinis. Definitely eye candy to compete with the flowers and exotic birds. Worn out I got up and walked back to my room where I snacked on crackers and cream cheese. I lay down and read some more, then had a nap. I woke and showered and dressed vacating the room so the girls could make it up. They are especially good at this cleaning business here.

That's when I drove into Liberia, went to church, had dinner then caught the rodeo on the way back to the Hilton. Early to bed and now up to go out on another adventure. Not very intellectually demanding except in the search for words.

There's certainly a lot of giving thanks to God. I return to Canada tomorrow and actually am missing Vancouver, my friends, my dog and cat, the boat and work. It's just the right amount of time. Longer and I'd ooze into this experience and never want to leave. I can see how tourists come for a season only to return and never leave. It's got that attraction here. Friendly happy people and glorious glorious sunshine.

Quanacaste Costa Rica - just out and about

2012-01-21T19:52:00.001-08:00

I'm staying at the the Hilton Papagayos Resort and Spa. I was here for the Medical Studies Abroad "Basic Medical Spanish" course. It's the end of January and the weather has been excellent, hot, with no rain. I've not worn a jacket or sweater the whole time I've been here. Mostly shorts, t shirts and sandals. I completed the course and got the certificate. I booked a couple of days extra for scuba diving and hiking in the nearby national park where the hotsprings and zip lining in the jungle is. Those pictures are to come. We've had time off in the day for sightseeing and I rented a car so could drive about a bit. There's a lot of bicycling here and also motorcycling. I found the driving a bit 'aggressivo' in Liberia but in the countryside it's been okay. The beautiful modern white church is in the centre of Liberia. Night time was worse and I suspect that some of the other drivers may have been drinking despite that being very heavily penalized here. I'd certainly recommend day time driving in the Quanacastre region. I was also out snorkeling on a boat dive and loved it.

Rodeo - Liberia, Costa Rica

2012-01-21T19:47:00.001-08:00

I drove to Liberia for dinner eating a terrific meal in the restaurant just behind the church. I actually went to church but other than "Le Senor" couldn't make much of what was happening. Some colour festival. So prayed and went on to dinner. Marvellous Pollo. Our Spanish teacher told us Costa Rica was known for it's chicken and fish.
After driving home I came across a rodeo, stopped and joined in. What fun. The riders rode the bulls well. I've got some of it on video so when I have time I'll upload it to utube as that's what I need to do first to load it to the blog. In the meantime these are poor night shots I took. Everything was happening very fast so the camera can't be faulted. What was funniest was that once the rider was thrown or the bull stopped and he jumped off the kids in the ring had the job of convincing the bull to go back into the stall. The bull's were out and wanted to chase and poke humans a bit before they were ready to go back to bed. Lots of excitement.

Resort Divers - Quanacaste, Costa Rica - Incredible Scuba Diving Experience

2012-01-21T12:44:00.001-08:00

After certifying as a life guard, snorkelling for years and spearfishing, I did over a hundred dives scuba diving. . I first learned open water diving in Mexico then continueddiving in Vancouver, Canada. I did my Padi Advanced and Rescue Diving in a dry suit in the murky freezing cold waters of Georgia Strait. I am surprised to say I did quite a few recreational dives there, night dives, wreck dives and such. Then God was truly kind to me. I worked in Northern Marianas Islands for two years. Each week I did the world famous dives around Saipan and Guam. I returned to Grotto cave dives over and over again but a couple of us would usually simply walk out from any beach and have an incredible diving experience. Lots of cave dives, sharks, wreck diving, float diving and some dives beyond a hundred and 20 feet. I returned to Canada and began diving their again. It was when I was doing my dive master training that I got the sinusitis, had a bad dive because of that and stopped diving.
My friend, Dr. Bernie Klassen loved to scuba dive and he loved Costa Rica. I had always hoped one day to dive here with him but he passed away a few years back after a rich and long live. I still miss him.
So I went out for my first dive, paying for one on one instructor, not taking the offered pool experience but then having a bad experience because the kids who were running the dive scared me and I scared myself. I liked the manager of the place and she'd cautioned me about my need to re familize myself in the pool before going out in the deep water. I should have taken her advice. Maybe then I wouldn't have found the kids so irritating. I almost gave up diving for good though.
Fortunately for me I talked to the Resort Diver folk at the HIlton Papagayo Resort where I was staying. Before leaving Canada I'd booked a dive with them for Saturday. Now I wasn't sure. So I told them about the sinus infection, 2 years of sinus problems, 5 years without diving, then the bad experience and panic attack earlier in the week. They said they'd talk to Robert, their dive master and instructor, who had 17 years diving and teaching experience locally, had done 10's of thousands of dives in these waters and instructed countless individuals and lead as many groups. I figured I should face my fears, as usual.
Later that same day I had a chance to watch Robert teaching a couple of newbies in the pool and was very impressed with his manner.
Saturday morning came and we met. Tall, white bearded, short hair, twinkling eyes, white Resort Divers t shirt. "Are you the fellow I'm diving with today," he asked.
"Yes, " I replied.
"Don't worry," he said. "I heard you had a sinus problem and its natural to be anxious diving after sinus problems. We'll go very slow. I'll be with you all the way. Often a problem is just a series of little problems which need to be broken down. I'll do this with you and soon your problem will be so small it will go away."
I liked him already. Great psychology! Very calming.
We went to the pool and he had me put on the equipment and balance myself just up from the bottom. That went well. It all only took about 10 minutes before we were off to the very skookum sturdy dive boat. That was one sturdy boat. As a yachtsman I loved the boat. In minutes we were at our first dive site. Minutes later we were geared up. Melvin, the boat driver, helped me with my equipment, assisting me every step of the way, physically.
Robert then checked everything out himself to make sure I was okay to go. He was especially careful with the weight belt. He inflated my jacket too giving me more air than I'd done already. He stepped into the water and I followed. I was immediately buoyant. Just like the old days. No sinking like a stone and paddling water trying to inflate my jacket after I was underwater. No sense of terror at trying to keep my head above water while being pulled down by my weight belt. Serenity. Glorious serenity.
"See, that's okay, isn't it? Now hold onto the boat and relax." The boat had a skookum hand rail attached around it just above the water line.
"Enjoy the view. Isn't this the way a holiday should be?" I was really pleased with myself at that point.. My love of diving was already coming back. No rush. I moved over to the anchor line.
"Ready to go down or do you want to wait some more, " Robert asked. "I'm loving just being here. So we don't have to rush. Whenever you're ready we can go down the anchor line. I'll go ahead but I'll be watching you. Take time to clear your ears, go as slowly as you want."
We began to descend. Just like the old days. It was heaven. As close as flying as one can get without a plane, I'd say. I cleared my ears and floated. At the bottom I adjusted my buyancy. Then Robert began to meander along looking at everything. I was a kid inside my fish tank all over again. Here I was back in that alien world with all these incredible fish inhabitants checking me out. It was sensational.
My breathing was fine. My sinuses weren't a problem. A big ray came near us. After that a huge moray eel swam by. I was sorry I didn't have my camera for this dive. Robert even pointed out a lobster in it's den. Lagoosta!. He was smiling like a boy treasure hunting. This was a good time! I thought of all the dives, especially those incredible ones in Saipan with my friend, Willi. Scuba diving is just great! Fish everywhere.
I love scuba diving. It was a great swim under the sea and eventually at 1000 we began to consider going up taking three minutes break to avoid nitrogen getting trapped in the body and the resultant bends.
"That was spectacular," I told Robert back on the boat. "I'm certainly back in the game".
"You did just fine. You only needed not to be rushed." Melvin was feeding us pineapple slices while Robert asked what I did. I told him I was a psychiatrist and that he was a great psychotherapist. He laughed, "That's what I do. Help people overcome their fear so they can participate in what I love and enjoy. Alot of people have anxiety but they want to dive and I want that for them too."
Of course he explained everything carefully and went over the equipment a couple of times. He talked in technical detail but nonetheless as if I was a beginning taking nothing for granted, going over everything. i liked that. I liked that he repeated himself. I liked that he was so calm and teaching in the way he reviewed everything.
The second dive was like I'd never been away from diving. Great schools of fish swam all around us. I had my camera and took pictures but mostly I meditated on the wonder of this underwater world. I'm so glad I came back. It never ceases to amaze me.
After the second dive, back on the boat, Robert said, "Despite doing 10's of thousands of dives about Monkey Head, (where we'd just dove), I always see something new."
Melvin drove the boat back to the Hilton. We just about flew over the sea. What a great ride that was. I was elated with the dive and so thankful to be over my fear.
I would recommend Robert and Resort Divers to anyone. He was certainly fun but experienced, safe, knowledgeable and wise, as well..
I took the pictures with my Canon IXY with underwater camera housing. There's an underwater setting on it. Unfortunately I don't have the photoshop on this macair. Photoshop has an underwater correction feature which with one touch corrected the light for the depth underwater. The water was a little murky but visibility was far better than the pictures depict. The dive was just perfect. I had a fabulous time and am looking forward to returning to scuba diving in Canada when I return there. Maybe when I'm 70. Dad was hang gliding in his 70's so I may have to switch to hang gliding when I get older. My older brother still plays competitive soccer and cycles for days on end whereas I think my Harley Davidson is a far better two wheeled device. Come to think of it the only thing that might make diving even more fun is a harley power underwater torpedo, something like what Dirk Pitt has in those Clive Cussler novels. . If I see Robert again I'll ask him if he can arrange for us to get hold of one of those when I come back to Costa Rica for more scuba diving. Now that I've got slow and serene back again maybe speed would be fun. "Sometime" in the future.

Coca Beach - Quanacaste - Bad Scuba Diving Experience

2012-01-21T11:21:00.001-08:00

I choked scuba diving. The manageress had recommended I begin with a refresher course in the pool when I told her. it was 5 years since my last dive. I didn’t want to go back to the pool. I equated it with being sent to the corner. Not a good association really. Ego in place of brains.

Instead I asked to pay for and have an instructor one to one who would work with me on my first dive. I’d hoped to be alone with an instructor. I’d made myself clear that’s what I wanted.

When I went out in the boat there was a group and the young master diver said he’d swim with me. Unfortunately young women have a way with young men. The young woman divemaster said she needed him to help her find the way for her group. He said he thought he was supposed to be with me alone. She said she needed him. What could I say? Things were going sideways fast. He said he thought that he and I were diving alone and she said that he had to go with her and that he could just stay with me on the group dive.

I’d explained that when I’m anxious I breathe heavily and didn’t want to go with a group because I feared that my excess use of air initially would cause me to have the group returning early. This had happened once before and people complained they had to leave on my account even though we only rose 5 minutes at most before we’d otherwise would have. Most of my diving had been with just another person or three at most over the last few years.

I’d also bought the top of the line equipment some 10 years before and not used anything but my own equipment. New equipment makes me nervous. Alot of things about diving with strangers, in strange waters, makes me nervous.

Young adults who aren’t particularly professional and complain alot, talk negatively about a lot of things, about the pay, about the day, like the coldness, the wind, the chop, etc. don’t inspire me.

Next thing I knew I was struggling in my scuba gear being rushed, really. The fellow whose personality seemed lame began to give me some confidence as he reviewed safety matters with me. Yet the girl was insistent that we get going and the rest of the group was obviously being held up.

I had my wet suit on with the tank and was standing about on this tossing boat thinking about how I’d hurt my back rolling my ATV in the fall and thinking this wasn’t comfortable and quite possibly not the best thing for any old guy given our backs in general. Instead of sitting to get my flippers on I had to bend and put each on with the boat tossing and rolling and these people looking on at the slow old guy. I was trying hard not to show how difficult standing up was but then I’d been hauling elk and deer out of the woods and doing a lot of hiking and climbing all year so figured I was probably ahead of the curve for age. Probably I cover up very well and young party animals aren’t the most sensitive of people at the best of times.

Oh yea, I forgot to mention everyone on the boat was half my age. The instructors for sure were no more. The local fellow driving the boat may have only been 20 years younger. The rest might have been my children if I’d been lucky enough to know their mothers. The customers were very attractive and exceptional people I learned from talking with them.

Just to look at them the women were all hot in cute bikinis. The men were definitely studsky. I was thinking my pot was still there wondering how I was I going to get rid of the mid riff bulge without being in the company of hard bodied youngsters.

Then the girl diver was telling me to step off. I’d done this 50 times years back. Rolling off boats, stepping off boats. Walking in from land. I guess I would have liked to walk in from land.

It seemed I didn’t have buoyancy. I was kicking to stay up and very aware of my weight belt. The guy had told me not to touch my jacket equalizer and had said he wanted to manage my buoyancy. While he wasn’t and I was sinking. I had too much weight and I hate that feeling. He was in the water with me and she was on the boat flashing A okay and I was flashing A okay back but feeling like I was being sucked down by my weight belt.

It was all I could do not to drop it. Meanwhile I couldn’t find the button on this gear and he’d told me not to adjust it last thing before we’d gone in the water. I figured out later he was referring to when we deep but it was there in my head as a weird taboo. I was hyperventilating too. The older guy on the ship told me to switch to my snorkel to conserve air. I did but it didn’t make things better. I had one fellow on the boat asking me if I was okay. I was looking up at the PADI okay sign and giving it back. Then my identified instructor was asking me the same thing.

I felt claustrophobic in the equipment. I had an intense hatred for my weight belt. It was hard for me think I was just swimming in the water with this gravity reaching up from the very bowels of the earth to suck me in. There’s no poetry for such moments.

I figure with time I would have settled down, got oriented. I had a hand on the anchor rope and was trying to tell my heart and lungs to cool it. Years back I’d had a panic attack and stopped it with all that yogi training I did. I used to slow my heart for parties but I wasn’t having any fun and I didn’t trust these people. I was work and it was clear they seemed to think that I was the problem rather than asking me about buoyancy or whatever the correct checklist was. I was waiting for him to do something and he was all for getting rid of me. I also felt the girl had considered me excess weight from the onset since she really didn’t seem to like old people.

I was having thoughts of having a heart attack then. I don’t know where they came from. But when the guy in the water said let’s get him back on the boat I saw an end to my ordeal.

I think that’s when I panicked too. Prior to that I was working to stay afloat. Now I had an out and I was glad to take it.

If I was going back then there was no way fast enough. I swam to the ladder. I had the weight belt off and handed that up. I thought I would feel better then but I was still hyperventilating. I got my flippers off and handed them up. Then I was climbing the ladder out of the water with this big tank on my back . The guy on deck was helping me with it.

I didn’t see the beautiful girls at that time. They may have still had their brightly coloured bikinis on but for all I knew the world was a bit of a blur. I was glad to get out of the claustrophobic gear and sit down. Sitting I was calm and collected and happy once again.

I was happy to have the tank off. The young people went off on their dive. The guy didn’t stay with me. I thought that interesting since I’d paid for his time and would have liked a de briefing. In my world we are very interested in something going wrong. Back when I taught students if one of them had a panic attack or anything like that I’d go over it with them. Young and old. But I’d taught at universities, physical skills and academic skills. Thankfully the boat operator, the older guy was there and turned out to be a really good guy. Local and wise. I was happy in the sun on the boat an alive.

Come to think of it I was thinking about my 93 year old father in a home complaining that he’s useless and no one wants him. His children do but I know what he means. All the 50 year old women and 60 year old men who have come to me to talk about their apparent overnight invisibility and the facts of agism came to mind too.

The boat operator told me:

“I used to be a dive tour guide. I started driving the boat. If I don’t dive for a year I feel a little panic getting back in the deep water. All the guys I’ve seen who have what happened to you happen to them hadn’t been diving for a year or two. It’s the normal thing then.”

It was nice of him to say that. As the saying goes he may well have been just being a good guy. I don’t think so.

I was wondering if I really wanted to keep up diving. I’d got sinusitis when I started my divemaster course in Canada 5 years ago. It had taken nearly two years for my sinuses return to normal. I’d remembered then that I’d been the oldest guy at that school. My good friend though had been diving into until nearly 70 and he was the one who recommended Costa Rica.

Then I remember too, all the talk of sharks hadn’t helped. This was a heavily shark infested area apparently and the girl diver was looking forward to seeing sharks. I’d swum with the sharks in the Pacific Islands where they’d had a feeding fest on the Americans and Japanese after the war. I’d seen my fill and wasn’t excited about meeting any here. I had had enough to worry about strange equipment, loss of the dive master, suddenly thrown into a group and the prospect of being eatten by a shark thrown into the mix. Maybe that didn’t quite set the right tone for me.

I’m getting older, 60 in a couple of months. While I like doing things that keep me in shape my work is so sedentary that I’m going from hardly moving to overdrive. Weekends and for weeks at a time in the fall I’d been ATV’ing and hiking in the mountains. Shooting the elk in the fall and spending a day packing out hundred of pounds of meat over bog a mile or so through bog and uphill hadn’t been that appealing. Shooting the two deer earlier had been a lot of work too. Solo sailing, even if I’ve not crossed an ocean in a few years, is still something on the pacific coast .I enjoy riding my Harley and have done days of long distance driving. I’d guess I’m in pretty good shape given what I do.

So I enjoyed sitting on the boat thinking about life in general and where I was right that moment. Sitting on a boat in a harbour on a sunny day bouncing about on anchor is always a great experience. When the group came up they went down again. I’d thought I might be asked if I wanted to give it another go. I would have gladly then. But I wasn’t with the group and the group was what it was about. I knew that. I’d made arrangements and paid for a very different dynamic but boys and girls will take a few years yet to understand. I certainly wondered with grave reqret how many times over the years I’d been as insensitive to my elders. It’s all I can do to show my father the respect he deserves.

He’s bent over with age now and walking is hard with his knees. He’d rather sit or lie down and doesn’t take kindly to my brother or I pushing him to walk more.

I snorkelled while the group was down for it’s second dive. THe boat operator told me where the best snorkelling was and encouraged me. I even got a couple of nice pictures. Lots of fish on the reef near by. No sharks, thank goodness.

I had anxiety diving and returning for air the first time I dove snorkelly. I seemed not to have enough and couldn’t get my breath at the top. It was all psychological. A little while later I’d stilled my fears and was swimming and diving just fine each time staying longer and longer below the surface. So much psychology to all this. Memories of near drownings as a child and the close calls as an adult. I’ll never forget getting caught in those rip tides.

I’m old enough too that I’ve got a near death experience tied to everyone of my outdoor activities. I don’t know why they’re coming back to haunt me now. Something to do with aging. PTSD probably.

The police just walked by. A couple serious children in uniform and flak jackets and holstered guns. They looked like teen agers.

The others were fine with me. I was just a stranger who had had a personal trial. Cowardice would be what it’s marked up to. That and being old. I didn’t show well for the nearly 60 crowd. My Dad was hang gliding in his 70’s. My older brother Ron still plays competitive soccer.

I remember when I started out as a surgical intern, old people would be nervous with my young age. My colleague who looked younger used to get, “Can you send in your father.”

I know what they mean now. Last thing I want to do is end up in hospital with kids treating me. Yet that’s not that far around the corner.

I think I need to go back out but with an old guy An old gal would do too. Someone who could understand. At least relate to me.

I talked to the Resort Dive Shop at the Hilton Papalagayos Resort. They’ve got one guy in his 50’s, an instructor with alot of experience, whose going to check me out in the pool and then take me out, just him and I in the boat. I think it’s going to go better.

I'm writing this now though unless it isn't.

(Addendum: I faced my fears. I didn't go back to the Coca Beach dive shop I'd gone to initially. I've specifically not mentioned their name because I think most PADI dive outfits are pretty good and I wouldn't want anyone turned off by my personal experience. I would hope that older people would learn from it and that PADI outfitters would take some time to be more selective and do better training with their staff. It's not enough to just like diving when it comes to taking groups out and instruction.

After that experience I approached the wonderful people at RESORT DIVERS in Quanacaste. I'd arranged a Saturday dive with them before leaving Canada. I had considered calling it off. Fact was I was seriously considering never diving again. RESORT DIVERS have an office at the Hilton Papagayo. I've seen their name elsewhere in Quanacaste so think they may work out of other sites as well. I explained to the beautiful women at the front desk my problem, the sinusitis, the anxiety about diving after the sinusitis clearedt, the 5 years off diving and then the recent bad experience and panic attack.

They said Robert, their dive master, was in his 50’s, had 17 years of diving and instructing in this area with 10’s of thousands of dives locally. They asked him. He said he’d take me out. I watched him coach a couple of new comers in the pool later that day. I was impressed. So I went out with him. He told me I’d been rushed and that anyone who is anxious gets more anxious when they are rushed. He’d go at my time. Break it up in parts, slowly. We did. And I had the best dive I’ve had in years. I told Robert he wasn’t only a dive instructor, he was a psychologist. He laughed. “I came here from Belgium 17 years ago and the best part is they pay me to do this.” It was obvious he loved to dive, loved to teach and didn’t want anyone to have a bad experience diving. His heart and soul was in what he was doing. I was very very thankful. )

Snorkelling Quanacaste Costa Rica

2012-01-20T17:19:00.001-08:00

I loved snorkelling in Quanacaste in January. It wasn't hot like Cancun. The water wasn't as clear as Sea of Cortez. I didn't see the big fish like groupers and tuna in close to shore like I did in Hawaii and the Mariana Islands. Still there was a lot to see and pretty good visibility. Most of the fish pictures I took were right off the beach at the Hilton Papagayos. Though I'd brought my own snorkel and mask I was able to sign out flippers for free there. The mottled green and brown fish posed for me off Coco beach. That's where I saw the herd of dozens of fish all about a foot across. That's the size of the puffer fish I saw off the Papagayos beach too. Given the limits of my underwater camera, a Canon IXY with plexiglass housing, all the fish were within arms length. I took some pictures of the coral because my brother has salt water tanks and grows it. I was most impressed with the blue worm like things sticking out.

Sandra Chacon Esquivel, BS and Medical Spanish Abroad

2012-01-20T09:31:00.001-08:00

Sandra Chacon Esquivel is our teacher in the Basic Medical Spanish in our Medical Studies Abroad program in Costa Rica. It helps that she is very beautiful but that's really secondary to her vast array of expressions. Her facial expressions and hand communications are an art in themselves. No doubt Spannish people could understand what she is saying by her body language alone. Smiles and laughter are a dance unto themselves. I have thoroughly enjoyed watching her explanations and instructions as well as listening to the actual content of the course.
As a result I've noticed when I try to talk to other Costa Ricans their faces and bodies are doing a similar dance. It makes me feel, in comparison, like the human robot, DATA, in Startrek. I think it stems in part from the closeness of family here and the importance of community. In the north we live much more separate lives with such distances between us. Here the proximity of relationships gives rise to the subtleties and depth of communications.
The language itself is highly specific for person whereas English is increasingly denuded and increasingly removed from the intimate. This makes for good science and technology but nothing is gained without loss. I suspect at an earlier time when people were much more important than things, English too was as familiar.
Profesora Esquival is teaching us as doctors and nurses how best to communicate with patients when they are vulnerable and often afraid. There are diminutive forms of Spanish words that lessen the fear upon hearing them. There are imperative forms that clarify actions. English and Spanish share Latin roots so that much of the vocabulary overlaps amazingly. I find I understand Spanish far easier than speaking it. Yet in the class, we talk and share. Much to my surprise all the others are roughly on the same page. At the start the course was divided into those who were essentially beginners and those who wished to do more advanced study having already learned advanced common spanish in university or elsewhere.
It really has been fun. After class we discussed how much we'd like to come back and do the same course again but this time having studied what we have now learned. I don't think I'm ready for the advanced class but I've taken great pleasure in coming so far along in my knowledge of basic medical Spanish. Having to translate English to Spanish in class exercises I've been really surprised at how much I actually have learned.
I'd already taken a Spanish course at Simon Fraser University with Profesora Tejeda. She was also delightfully expressive and entertaining so I wonder if some of what I appreciate in process is just a product of the difference in culture. There is so much more southern colour compared to the relative black and white of functional northern communication. Profesora Tejedaa's course increased my vocabulary and helped me understand better sentence structure and tense. I've used that Spanish in the restaurants and getting around here in Costa Rica.
I would certainly never have learned medical procedural Spanish from any of the guide books, what to say when sticking someone with a needle, for instance.
The book, Basic Medical Spanish, by Olimpia Piccardo is great, having sections for complete medical history and examination. Profesora Esquivel has taken us through these correcting our pronunciation and explaining why we might say 'do' whereas in Spanish the word used is 'take'. The mix of general grammar with specific medical examples has been extremely helpful.
I am very thankful to have had such a delightful and amusing teacher for this very important study.
Writing now I find myself simplifying my sentences in a way I do when I try to express concepts in Spanish. It's a whole different part of the brain from the now 'automatic' forms learned since childhood in English.
Comparing this course with regular scientific medicine courses I told a colleague that this involved much more exciting learning. Advanced in my speciality most of what I hear at conferences now is not new. I could even be accused of being jaded listening to some of the drivel I hear from young academics. Worse are the pompous pundits promoting some business niche for themselves. I go though because I'm still blesed to hear 'pearls of wisdom' that come from experienced colleagues. I'm also there for those rarer new breakthroughs that help change my practice of medicine. Here, however, I feel like a medical student again recapturing all the joy of simple learning because so much of it is new.
The cross section of specialities, obgyn, surgery, ent, er, etc of all ages plus the nurses with a fair mix of gender and even a spiritual director thrown in makes the class rich in diversity. The questions asked come from the individual clinical background and the discussions that follow are fascinating.
Profesora Esquival brings knowledge of local culture and idiom into the discussions as well sharing her knowledge as a patient and as a person from a medical family. I couldn't help but think that the problems facing Costa Rica with it's aging population and mix of social and private medicine were very similar to what Canada is encountering.
I will be sad when the last class finishes later today. More and more of my patients are from other cultures and many come from Spanish speaking countries. I think all of them speak better English than I speak Spanish so it's unlikely that I'll be conducting my clinics bilingually any time soon. I have greater empathy for their struggles with language though. I know I will be more attentive to facial and body expressions. You really do have to watch to hear Spanish spoken. Who knows, maybe I'll be able to throw in a diminutive spanish word or colloquialism that will improve rapport.
I am thankful to Profesora Esquival and Medical Studies Abroad for this wonderful learning experience in a truly beautiful country.
That said, I thought to take the teacher an apple. However, thanks to this course, given the complexity of communication and culture I respect that this particular Canadianism might not apply here. For all I know Costa Rican children take their teacher a plantain or orchid. It's like the words mano, meaning hand, and mono, meaning monkey. We all laughed as Profesora Esquival explained how patients thought it very strange that English doctors learning Spanish always wanted to see or shake their monkeys.

Todo va a salir bien. No tenga miedo.

Gratitude today

2012-01-20T04:47:00.001-08:00

Thank you for the sunshine today Lord. Thank you for breath. I awake and have running water and in door plumbing. I am grateful that. Yes, and the tooth brush and tooth paste. This internet is something else too. Another way to stay in touch with friends and family. I am thankful for the senses that allow me to connnect with others and communicate. I appreciate nature Lord. Thank you for these eyes that see the birds and flowers, scenery and sky I so enjoy. Thank you for the sounds too. I like the sound of ocean lapping on the beach. Thank you for the people who are friendly and thoughtful too. I am looking forward to breakfast and am thankful for the good food I eat each day. I am thankful for my body and the movement and feel of living. I am thankful for this life Lord. Guide me that I may use it best to your design. May I be of more service to you today. Thank you for my loved one in the distance and especially for my father who is sick today. Help him in his trial and stand with my brother and his family as they are close to my father helping him day by day. Thank you for my childhood and the love and care of my family. Thank you for my education , the excellent teachers I was blessed to have, the incredible learning and the work that followed. Thank you Lord.

Massage for Men

2012-01-19T19:58:00.001-08:00

Massage for Men, Costa Rica

- William Hay

I had a massage today. I rolled my ATV in the fall elk hunting north Vancouver Island. My lower back is still in some pain. My neck is intermittently painful when I’m under stress since I rolled the truck, or it may have been the car or the when I was hit by the car bicycling.

I noticed some low back tension driving my Polaris 500 ATV and the Ural Side Car Motorcycle this winter. I’d like it to be better when I take my Harley Davidson Electraglide out of storage early spring for road trips on the highways.

I bit the bullet and went to "massage world" again. I did this at Harrison Hot Springs Spa last month and my body loved it. My doctor friend, George recommended it. My chiropracters Richard Cho and Stan Jung have been great but I’m a bit squeamish about manipulation right now.

I’ve taken flexeril and celebrex to get through the night. At first I could only sleep an hour or so as every time I turned I woke up. Now I’m good for most of the night. Maybe I’m woken once and pee too to kill two birds with one stone.

"Massage world" is definitely feminine in these spas. They’ve got all that fragrant female scent thing happening. The colours are subdued and pastels. Lights low. Eastern 60’s music is playing somewhere in another room.

Here there was a lot of white and wood and cleanliness. Spa people are big on hygeine. They also look like vegetarians. I expect they all chant and meditate and sit naked on the beach without sexual thoughts to bother them. Sweet people.

When they’re not giving massage they’re plucking hair out of ladies faces. Delicate touch and all. This place had it all.

I was directed to a change room, given a key and a robe. Hospitals would do well to find out where they get their robes and bid on them. The hospital gown went out with the 50’s. I was supposed to get slippers but didn’t. I could have asked but was so troubled by whether to leave my underwear on or not I was happy to make a statemtn walking about barefoot. I'm 'massage world' hip!

They had me fill out that form that says I’m healthy enough to withstand the rigors of a massage too. . Apparently I was fit enough because this very pretty young Costa Rican woman, who told me her name was “Nancy”, invited me to follow her to this cute little hut. Inside it looked just like a fancy massage office from some big city spa. The view was ocean and palm trees.

More flower fragrance, subdued lighting and pastel colours. She asked me to get under the blanket and stepped outside. I figured that was my cue to drop the gotch. If she’d stayed I would have got under the blanket with it on. She must have left the room for some reason more than just not wanting to see the old guy awkwardly struggling onto the massage table. I got onto the table and under the blanket naked. The lighting would have been much more subdued to make that into a spectator event by any means.

The massage was magnificent. Yes, she returned. She didn’t shriek or slap politically correct charges on me. Instead she used the cotton sheet to cover my modesty (ha). Lots of ritual around that. Probably more to save her than for my sake. I’m having less that ‘massage world’ thoughts about now. Every once in a while I actually think that maybe I’d like the other type of massage Wouldn’t do anything for my back but the thought passes through my mind. That got me praying, at least. I was there for healing so I just kept praying in my mind. In time it felt like I was shedding physical tension and psychic tension as well.

I was lying there with all that sweet fragrance, soft background music and this young woman’s very professional hands kneeding my muscle deeply and caringly. My only concern was that I didn't want to fall asleep and start snoring. It really was heaven . When she worked on my low back I had all these negative thoughts dissipate . Then she had me turn over and began working on my neck. I carry a lot of tension in my neck. I say some people are a ‘pain in the neck’ and really mean it. She got right in there softening things up that had been tense way too long.

I couldn’t have been there for more than a minute when she said that time was up. I looked at my watch and someone had turned it an hour ahead. She stepped out of the room.

I got my gotch back on, put on the robe and walked back to the change room where I dressed. At the front I paid the $100 with a credit card. I was having trouble focusing on this world. I was kind of floating and my back didn’t hurt. Same thing had happened at Harrison’s. The amazing relief from this gnawing constant pain.

I walked outside into the tropical sun and sat down on a cushioned reclining lounge chairs by the pool..

That’s when I had the realization that massage is really really good. Spas are wasted on women alone. I’m not being sexist here. I think women are really smart and deserve the whole massage spa thing. I just think there's room for expansion. Roman Legionaires and Spartans were getting massages thousands of years back.

The only trouble I can see is with the environment. I wouldn’t change a thing about the masseuse or the massage. Last thing I want is some heavy big boned handed fraulein or sumu wrestler pounding on my back. I liked Nancy just the way she was and the pressure she put on was just perfect. She was so soothing.

What I figured was missing though was a show cased Harley Davidson Motorcyle. That would go along way to improving decor. A few racks on the wall would help too. I know they don’t have moose in Costa Rica but Harrison’s Hot Spriings could have a big moose head rack right there in the massage room. They must have deer here so they could get some antlers up so guys would have some place to hang their gotch. A Costa Rican taxidermist could get a wild boar's done up and have it up on the wall beside a big marlin fish. Some wooden sailing ship models in glass cabinets would add a thing or two for sure.

Instead of the flower fragrance, I think camp smoke would be just as restful. Maybe add a little pipe tobacco and cigar smoke for flavor. The soft colours could be improved with the new cammo designs. Tasteful green and grey commouflage designs out would really spruce up the decor.

The music doesn’t have to be that anemic eastern stuff either. The massage I was receiving was originally called ‘Swedish Massage”. I figure a little Swedish “Death Metal” band music could be used. It wouldn’t have to be played full out. Softly as back gound would do just fine.

Being of Scottish Irish Canadian origin, I think bag pipes would definitely add to the massage experience too. Come to think of it a gun rack and some vintage car and jet fighter pictures on the wall would just about complete it.

Otherwise the massage was perfect. Just wish my hunting dog, Gilbert, could have been there to enjoy it with me.

My Relationship with God today

2012-01-19T10:28:00.001-08:00

My God is everything and nothing. I believe in a Creator who made the heavens and the earth. There was no Creator and building blocks. So today there is just God stuff. The Bible says I am made in the 'image' of God. Genesis 1:27 "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."
"Image" to me is the 'imagination' of God. Dr. Carl Ridd taught me this in my first theological class at University of Winnipeg, "Literature of the Bible." I never forgot that insight.
I am by nature God stuff and God dream. It's good to remember in a hierarchal world where authorities are forever belittling, humiliating and dominating you to secure their own position and priviledge. In the eyes of God we are equal because there is no less and no more than God.
Science tells me that E=MC2. Energy and matter are one, matter just slow energy in reality. My sense of the duality of self is that of thought which is like energy and body which is like matter. I believe that duality is a product of my mind which divides the indivisible. I am a spiritual being living in a material world.
I further believe that I am like the orobunga (?spelling - the snake eatings it's tail). The story goes that God being lonely divided itself creating the first duality. In this God who knows himself as God is half and God who doesn't know himself as God is half. So the journey is from God unknowing to Knowing God. This is spiritual evolution. There is no need for this 'progress'. Indeed much of our sense of the spirituality is 'arbitrary' and based on the learning of childhood and culture.
What I know further is only this time for yesterday is gone and mere memory while tomorrow is yet to come. All divisions are intrinsic or arbitrary.
I live in this flow. God is a good word for the stream in which I'm becoming more aware of my liquidity one might say. There are countless images of the transformation of self.
When I studied chemistry in the lab I enjoyed the process of changing solid to liguid to vapour and back again. I like that rain becomes cloud becomes rain.
It gives me hope for my own transformation. I feel mostly forgetful of Godness. I live in a secular limitted gravity dominated world with expectation of death among those who insist that everything is heavy and there is but death and taxes.
What I want is to soar free, levitate and dream manifestations. My friend wants to pray a person alive or restore their lost limbs. I confess I'd settle for the capacity to manifest a porche. I am amused at my own materialism and the fear that underlies all such consumerism. Trungpa, the great Buddist spiritual teacher describes the modern westerner as a 'spiritual consumer'. I would hope that I could be more.
In the Christian sense this is 'disciple ship'. The essence of 'black magic' versus the 'white magic' of Wiccans is that the 'ego' of the dark megalomaniac master is trying to make things go their way whereas the white witches work with the forces of creation and are trying to 'right' matters in the best interest of others. The Christian message, I think, goes even further. Jesus was the 'servant king'. A great parable and image from the Bible is of God Incarnate washing the feet of his human disciples.
Bob Dylan sings that great spiritual song, "You've got to serve someone, maybe the devil or it may be the Lord, but you have to serve someone."
Dr. Willi Gutowski in his recent ebook at Amazon, called Living Life, says that we are all listening to a spiritual radio and have to learn to keep ourselves tuned to the God channel.
In the meantime I muddle along.
God is a kind of central office parental relational thing. I pray and talk with God and thank God and try to remember God and life is better. It seems that way. Certainly there is extensive research to support the benefits of spiritual life. Less pain, less fear, better mental and physical health and all statistically significant.
I am always asking for guidance. I think there's a better way. I believe in Jesus Christ. I believe God became human and resurrected. That like chemistry is a message about my nature and my eventual return to Godstuff. Death then is a passage. But it may be a loss of ego. I believe also the Bible is a Holy Book that can guide me on this journey in life. Days also go better when I consult this regularly. I've read it cover to cover several times but daily make a point of reading some passage and reflecting on it. I learned this as a child and lost it sometime as an adult. I was glad to return to the practice. There's no 'resting on one's laurels' in the spiritual life. I have to take care of my spiritual health on a daily basis just as I do my physical and dental health. If I don't I'm that fat old man with poor teeth talking about his last football game in high school.
The Yogi sings "I am the bubble , make me the sea'. In Hinduism there's much talk of the separation of self from the whole and the isolation of the ego. Hindu's don't see Jesus as the son of God but see him as an enlightened one as with Buddha. His teachings are ranked high in India along with their own home grown truth. Jews recognise Jesus as one of their own but don't see him as the messiah. He's ranked as best as a great prophet. I loved studying at Regent College where despite the ecumenicalism of the day I heard it very distinctly taught , "The Jews are wrong" when it comes to Jesus. No doubt in a Jewish school they same the same thing about Christians. It's easy to forget that Moslems have been influenced by Judaism and Christianity. The 'twist' they take on Christianity is 'wrong' in my mind but I think the Suffis have alot in common with the mystical traditions in Christianity. The great Catholic monk, Thomas Merton who studied with the Buddhists saw the similiarities.
Ecumenicalism is searching for similiarities. The fact is Adolf Hitler and Mother Theresa were 99.9% similiar according to DNA and genetic mapping. There is difference in the detail. So while one must keep an open mind, hopefully it won't be so open that one's brains fall out.
The Christian mystic longs to experience God more fully. There's that sense of 'grokking God' which was Heinlein's word for the mystical ineffable union. The Medieval called this also the 'cloud of unknowing'. I have a connection but it's often vague whereas sometimes it's crystal clear and absolute. I don't know why or what makes for the maintenance of that state of knowing the sacred so directly so that it 'works' all the time. I have to be present, that's for sure. There's much that can be done. Certainly prayer and meditation, reading spiritual works, studying the Holy Bible, sharing in spiritual practices, becoming a regular attender and follower of a spiritual tradition. It's too easy for one to consider spirituality as a 'smorgasbord' which may be fine at first but as one progresses in their spiritual life there is room for greater selection.

Personally, I'm too often too mundane for my own liking.

So God fill me with your awareness. Guide me today and always. Thy will be done.

Dental Clinic, Coco Beach, Quanacastre, Costa Rica -Dr. Daianna Morales Q.,Odontological Integral

2012-01-19T10:01:00.001-08:00

I had a temporary filling put in a tooth in Canada. The dentist said I 'd need a crown. It would mean taking time off from work. I'm too busy this time of the year. Time off is expensive. I don't consider a dental procedure a 'vacation', just more work. The dentists in latin american countries come highly recommended for regular procedures for healthy individuals. They are often American trained and see a lot of people. The cost is often a third the price of the same procedure in the US or Canada. I was attending a medical course at the Hotel Pagagayo. There were very good recommendations for dentists elsewhere in Costa Rica but the dentists i talked to on the phone were hours away from where I was staying. The reception at Hilton said they had only good recommendations for Dr. Morales.
I had an appointment booked by the battery on my rental car died overnight. Thrifty replaced it but I was going to be late and had to book for the next day. This was unfortunate because a crown would take at least 5 or 7 days and two visits. If I'd made the first visit I'd have been able to get the crown. As it was I had a regular filling which hopefully will last till I get to see my dentist friend in Mexico on another visit or bite the bullet, take time off from work in Canada and see my extraordinarily good dentist there.
Dra. Dianna Morales secretary is a delight. She's a regular fashion model. Her English is just fine. Her personality is helpful and uplifting. It turns out that Dr. Morales husband is the doctor in the medical clinic next door. I believe they share the same secretary. I met him briefly. Handsome bright young man who was helping an elderly gent in a most caring manner. Dra. Dianna Morales was beautiful, young, in her 30's, well dressed, very professional, excellent English. She reminded me of my female medical colleagues. Very competent with a sense of humor and yet no nonsense. She wore gloves and everything about the clinic was hygeinic. The equipment reminded me of what might be found typically general dentist office in Canada.
I had a painless comfortable procedure which was done efficiently. The price was $60 about half what I'd pay in Canada for a similiar procedure. She was sorry that the lab would not have been able to get the cast back in time for me to have a crown done. I was satisfied. My tongue which had been bothered no end by the chipped off tooth was happy.
The best part was no time off work. It was on holidays so a kind of adventure in tha context. But the best of all was that I could recuperate beside the pool lying around doing absolutely nothing wholly guilt free. I highly recommend Dra. Daianna Morales. I also suspect her husband whose English was also excellent would be a good choice for a medical consultation if the need arose..

Birds of Quanacaste, Costa Rica

2012-01-19T09:57:00.001-08:00

I love bird watching. My parents introduced me to this as a child. I actually followed in my older brother's footsteps. (Ron Hay - http://www.megapixeltravel.com) Today his bird pictures are displayed in natural museums and guides. We both follow in the footsteps of a scottish uncle who took seagull pictures for audubon. When as a young man I met the deaf white haired old gent why he specialized in seagulls. With typical Scottish economy, he'd answered in his thick brogue, "No shadows."
I'm booked to go on a tour in the rainforest later this week. I'll take my camera along then. These are just a few of the birds I 've seen so far, either around the grounds of Hilton Papagayo or at Coco Beach.
The orange fronted parakeet sits on the tree outside my room.
The boat billed flycatcher is fairly common around the hotel grounds.I love watching the antics of the pelican. I think this is just called the brown pelican.Without my uncle or brother to consult with I think these may be Royal TernsTerns. The Laughing Gull is seen locally but it's whole head is black not just the cap. The white throated magpie jay has a little head tuft like the Canadian quail but it's behaviour is more like our stellar jay. It lands on the bar and cries "cerveza, por favou!"

Monkeys of Coco Beach, Costa Rica

2012-01-17T17:28:00.001-08:00

As a tourist it pays to look where others are looking. As I was walking through the little sea side village of Coco Beach, I followed a man's gaze upwards to see 4 monkeys travelling through the trees over the road to the buildings beyond. Having my Nikon D5000 digital SLR camera and 150 - 500 Sigma telephoto lens handy I was able to run under the trees and get a few shots of monkeys running free. A local Costa Rican surgeon told me later, "Here we see them as often as you see deer up north." The spanish word for monkey is 'mono'. Apparently Gringos get the pronunciation of this mixed up with 'mano' which means hand. Costa Ricans wonder whatever you want to wash your monkey or shake their monkey or some such thing in Spanish. Here I was glad to get some pictures while watching the old and young together.

Coco Beach Pelicans and Water Birds, Costa Rica

2012-01-17T13:43:00.001-08:00

I loved Coco Beach. Watching the boats at float in the bay, the pelicans diving for fish, families on the beaches, took me back to my year sailing the Giri down the Pacific Coast to Mexico and around the Sea of Cortez. The beach certainly is lovely here in Costa Rica

Iquanas of Quanacaste, Costa Rica

2012-01-17T13:21:00.001-08:00

I'm staying at the Hilton Papagayos on the Pacific Coast in Quanacaste. I've enjoyed seeing these harmless vegetarian iquanas around the grounds. These are pictures of a few of them ranging from 12 inches overall lengthen to one big boy with at least a 3 foot body and 6 foot overall. One boy was feeding one a slice of apple. Mostly they avoid humans as we are the threat, not them. The big one wouldn't let me get closer than a telephoto lens could bring me.

Guanacaste, Costa Rica

2012-01-17T13:16:00.001-08:00

I flew Continental from Vancouver to Liberia, Costa Rica. Liberia is the capital of Quanacaste, the northwestern province. There was a stop over in Houston and each leg of the journey was 2 to 3 hours long. I had reservations at the Hilton Papagayo Costa Rica Resort and Spa. I rented a Toyata Yaris from Thrifty being picked up at the airport and driven to the lot 10 minutes away. I didn't see any rental cars at the airport, all the companies having lots just outside. It was about a half hour drive to the hotel on Arenilla Beach on the Pacific Coast.
The medical conference I am is called "Medical Spanish Abroad" and uses the text Basic Medical Spanish by Olympia Piccardo, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, 13th edition, Houghton Mifflin. The course has classes Monday 7 am to 10 am then 4 pm to 630 pm. This is the same for Tuesday. Wednesday is a free day then Thursday and Friday the same schedule of morning and afternoon classes continues. I'm on Day 2 and loving it.
The hotel is truly magnificent. Costa Rica weather is perfect for this Canadian who left a blizzard. It's t shirt and short weather in the day, very hot mid day and then more short sleeve shirt and shorts or slacks in the evening. I brought a jacket and haven't worn it. I did bring sun tan oil. I was told to bring insect spray but haven't used it or needed it. I expect that's for excursions. So far I've just stayed by the pool reading and tanning with a little bit of swimming. The beach and ocean are right there too but I've not made it beyond the pool. There are several restaurants here in the locked and guarded compound of the hilton. I've had the breakfast and dinner smorgasboard in the main one. It's incredible cuisine with terrific variety. There are a couple of bars off the pools but being a non drinker I've not even gone in. People seem to be having fun. It's not a sports bar atmosphere but a cross between the beach pub and southern night club flavour. Grass roofs and open air. Exotic birds flit about and even land on the counters when people are not near.
I've driven to Coco Beach a couple of times and really enjoyed the 20 minute drive. It's hilly with views of dry coast scrub trees and brown grass, a.bit like northern California in the summer. Coco Beach is definitely more of a loud tourist place with none of the retreat like flavour of the Hilton Papagayo. While there are families with small children and young people romantically involved at the Hilton Papayo, Coco Beach seems more like a shopping place with lots of local crafts on display, more 'party' bars and various tour guides and attraction.
I was initially there to visit the excellent dentist, who the Hilton recommended. She's young bright and beautiful with fine sterile technique, fluent English and married to the young clinical doctor in the office next door. The secretary is a very pleasant fashion model. I had a cracked tooth filled for $60 Typical of rates here they're generally advertized at about a third of Canadian. The same procedure would have probably cost me $120 to $200 in Canada. I was glad to get it done here as I would have likely had to take time off work. A trip to the dentist isn't really a break from work whereas it was a bit of an 'event' here. I rather enjoyed the 'excursion' and the communications with the locals in the process. Lovely people all in all at the clinic with several chatty customers waiting their turn for either doctor or dentist.
I'm very much enjoying it here. I've book scuba diving in Coco Beach because the Hilton rates were nearly 4 - 5x the local going rate. Some of my fellow students are booking a tour on horse back or hiking in the national park, Rincon de la Veija for tomorrow. By map it looks about h alf an hour north of Liberia. I drove to Liberia and it was just a half hour from here. The guide books report hot springs and great bird watching so I'm truly looking forward to that.

Freight - the movie

2012-01-13T23:44:00.001-08:00

This was amazing. Incredible action, guns and car chases, spectacular bad guy characterization and hearts of gold. The sad part is it's really about human traffic for sex trade and forced labour out of east europe passing through London England. A must see movie. Billy Murray, Craig Fairbass, Laura Aikman, Sam Kennard starring. Sad statement about impotence of police around the civilized world.

Lighted Dogs In Late Night School Yard

2012-01-13T21:44:00.000-08:00

Laura and I walked Gilbert to the local school yard. We'd just watched Apollo 18. It was Friday night. We thought it was late. We didn't really expect to see others there. Yet there were all these low flying fireflies dashing to and fro. Near them were the dark outlines of humans huddled together chatting merrily. Closer, I let Gilbert off his leash. He bolted off to join the lights now rushing towards him. Then he was off in the swirl of shadow and light.

After some time watching them, half listening to the conversations about, I called Gilbert to return. He'd run the length of the school yard a dozen times over in a fierce game of tag and chase.

"I'd like him to have a light like that, " Laura said. "I can't see him in the dark."

I could but a light on a dog really would be a safety feature.

"I'll get him one tomorrow," I said. "I really want him to keep up with the pugs."

Apollo 18

2012-01-13T21:16:00.001-08:00

Alright I don't want to go to the moon any more either. Now that is one scarey movie. I love science and I love science fiction. I don't normally like horror movies. This is different. This may be true. Canada should adopt an isolationist policy right now. I'm under my blankie already. I'm not going to let anyone in. Nope. Not anymore. I'm not going to get dressed either. Nope. That's it. Not going to sleep either. Apollo 18 is one scarey movie.

Canadian Author's Association - West Coast Branch - Jan. 11,2012

2012-01-11T22:17:00.001-08:00

Notes from the CAA-West Coast Branch taken with two finger in put into digital note pad then emailed to myself and copy and pasted here:.
Not suddenly, by any means, very laboriously, really!
Jan11 12 CAA
President :Bob Mackay introduced new exec
Past pres - m hume
Margo Bates - v pres
Doris Pamela Grain secretary
Missing person
Ben Nuttall Smith - member at large
West coast author - needs name
Russ Harvey web master
- ---------------editor's note - if you get the spelling of any of these writer's name wrong they will boil you in oil!
Ben announced new book publication - Secrets Kept, Secrets Told.

Bernice giving workshop 'business of writing'

Reading on north shore
Reading 20th risin cafe
-------------------------------editor's note - you idiot - you are supposed to write down the dates and places where Bernice Lever is reading.

Soldier of Horse listed top 2011 books in January mag
---------------editor's note - you said you asked Bob before the meeting began if the American blockbuster movie now out called War Horse didn't follow the publication of his Canadian masterpiece. Bob, with characteristic Canadian modesty only said, "yes". Why didn't you put that in your notes?

Annita from Ottawa announced that downtown writers circle Starting jan 26
----------------editor's note - idiot, isn't that the writer's circle you're supposed to be attending?

Student doctor 7th in Irish doctor series already national best seller
--------------editor's note - Isn't this Patrick Taylor's book - you might have thought to mention his name.

8th Open Mike Next meeting
--------------------------------- editor's note - What's this about it being about anything or Open Love because it's Valentine's Day. What the hell is Open Love?

Editors Assoc presenting

Website attached to CAA $25 a year - Russ would help
-----------------editor's note - I think you were trying to say that writer's could have a website on the CAA site

Dennis E Bolen
BA u vic 72-77
MFA Ubc- Jerry Newman
Taught at ubc and we were colleagues
Brian Wade a tv producer there
Vanc Sun
Judge for National Book Award CAA
Successful writer 30 years
Literary advocacy

"anticipated results'

Reason I like fiction is it is a form I can achieve a truth greater than newspapers and other forms that claim truth

Described growing up on Vancouver Island as an outsider

'I'm always suspicious of people who loved high school'

UVic / studied with Robert Skelton, an English minor poet,
A great teacher and weird looking person - practiced witchcraft

People take too long to start a novel , must rock and roll from the start

Federal parole officer 1978 to 2000

1975 -Published short story in Canadian fiction magazine

1988 wrote novel based on parole service

1992 'stupid crimes' Book
Anvil press - landmark serious west coast publisher
Later put out by Random House
'this genre has yet to find an audience' - Canadian crime - no machine guns or car chases'
---------------------editor's note: You say this is an example of typical Canadian dry wit"

Optioned - by tv and movies - got $5000 a year

Editors choice book by globe and mail

1995 'stand in hell' - about holocaust - Shane commission 1980's -

1997 'krekshuns' - street term for corrections - reviewed by Steven Reid - just released on parole - had just written his own prison book - ran a truck over my book
But got interview on Peter zosky's morning side - great getting a lot of exposure

My sales so bad I was fired by random house. No more limousines waiting at airport

I liken this time to being with the Yankees and being sent back to the juniors

2005 'toy gun' final of the corrections trilogy - very good reviews

2009 kaspoit! - my version of the missing women case

I no longer use he said or she said because if you are writing solid prose it shouldn't be necessary

2011 "Anticipated Results" my take on my generation - 50 year old men who didn't make it
-

taught at langara

I can improve your writing by 30% - don't use

Really very sudden (ly)

Most overused words in English language - only place acceptable is dialogue

There are critics who say if they see suddenly in a book they chuck it

Catch a glance
Cast a glimpse
cliches
Watch out for cliche

Reading from "Anticipated Results" - 'not all of us made it .....
Many of us boomers. ... Looked for love that left like everything else "
Book is about falling asleep in the good times and waking up in the bad times
----------editor's note - this is the book you told me was brilliant - the one you bought after at Chapters ? Why didn't you buy me a copy too?

Sam shepherd said 'only assholes explain'

Discussing reading : encouraged readers to read not explain and entertain and 'don't drink and read'

Jean Kay said 'we give them 2 minutes and then applaud'

Me and publishing
Wrote book and sent round and no one wanted it then entered play competition and met Brian Kaufman and I gave him my book and some money and started anvil
Sent out and globe and mail review took off, kind of self published.

Find someway to get exposure
Get on mailing list of all the small presses
Go to book launches
In a year you'll be a known person and will know publishing scene

If you are a prose writer study poetry and cross boundaries

BC book publishers association is good

Spend a couple of hour in social media - I cranked out my own trailer for 'anticipated results'

I expose myself a couple of hours a day.
-------------------------------------editor's note "Did he really say that?" Can we quote him?
Best thing I was invited to Vancouver Writers Festival and met acquisitions manager - now I'm working on another book

3 parole books were optioned as a package - for tv series - was author and tech advisor - Global - almost got it
2008 big decline of business hit

----...............Editors note - "I think it's good but we're going to need a couple of car chases and machine guns if we expect to sell it south of the border.

Sent from my iPhone
-

Clive Cussler and Crescent Dawn

2012-01-11T17:37:00.000-08:00

I have been called an 'intellectual'. I have "read" the classics. I've even been accused of 'literary aspirations'. My work has required me to read extensively in the sciences, medicine, theology, philosophy, ethics and law.

What I really like is a good story. I may read the Bible in the morning and often have several 'texts' on the go, slowly wading through some very important writing. Yet every night and when I have a moment free, and especially when I'm waiting for a plane or rarely on a beach, I have a special attachment to a 'thriller'.

Today this is Clive Cussler. In the past it was Tom Clancy. It probably all began when as an adolescent I became addicted to the 007 series.

Because I'm a sailor, having soloed blue water, I love Clive's often almost 'corny' character Dirk Pitt whose adventures admittedly are the stuff of sophisticated Hardy Boys. Mark Twain would likely read Clive Cussler. They have that kind of Tom Sawyer flavour and a touch of Twain's humor too.

Compared with Michael Crighton's work they are called 'techno-thrillers'. I love the marine innovations that he includes in his writing but as well like the geo-political observations.

It turns out Clive Cussler is an underwater explorer himself and actually was the founder of the National Underwater and Marine Agency which plays a major role in his novels.

I can't say I've read all his novels like I have with some of my all time favourite novellists but I'm beginning to see a recurring pattern that I do pick a Clive Cussler novel like I might choose to watch a Clint Eastwood movie. There's a reliability factor. Always a good story, fast adventure and fascinating surroundings and context.

Right now I'm reading Crescent Dawn. It's set mostly around Turkey so I'm not only learning a bit about the American view of fundamentalist Moslem terrorists but also the difficulties the Israelis have with antiquities as well as a whole lot of history from Instanbul. The boat chases and kidnappings and epic battles have my heart racing. It's hard to put them down.

It's probably a bit 'escapist' but really I love it. So there, I've confessed my closet attachment to Clive Cussler books. It's not very elitist since literally millions love Clive Cussler books. I'd rather have an erudite appreciation of a writer so ahead of the curve that they have only 1 or 2 followers but the fact is I've 'everyman' tendencies. As unique as I might like to believe I am I share my literary love of Clive Cussler with the masses. It's a very common love, indeed.

Gratitude List January 2012

2012-01-08T14:47:00.001-08:00

Thank you God for this life. Thank you for the lives of those around me. Thank you for my family and friends. Thank you even for my enemies as they are my greatest instructors. Thank you for the light and the darkness. Thank you for love and healing. Thank you for Gilbert, my dog and Angel, my cat. Thank you for the colours. Thank you for the sun and the stars. Thank you for the forests and grass. Thank you for all I eat and the air I breathe. Thank you for the vegetables, grains, the birds and animals. Thank you for running water and hot and cold. Thank you for showers especially in the morning, hot showers in the morning. And beds. comfortable beds. Thank you for all the working parts of my body and for the uses I'm able to make with it. Thank you for speech and lips. Thank you for morning coffee and the various coffee machines and milk and honey. I especially thank you for honey and for oils and butter. Thank you for scenery, the views, and the sky and clouds, the sea and mountains. And thank you for technology, the vehicles and cameras and machinery and microscopes and stethescopes and xrays. Thank you for music and books. Thank you for churches and temples and places of worship. Thank you for prayer and meditation. Thank you for mandarin oranges, lime and lemons. Thank you for butter. Thank you for cell phones and portable computers with the libraries of the world. Thank you for knowledge and games like hockey and chess. Thank you for radio, my hamm radio and am and fm and yes even CBC.. Thank you for electric blankets and razors and soap and soft toilet paper. And clothes. Thank you for warmth and cool breezes. Thank you for safe harbours and fair winds. Thank you for motorcycles and RV's and campgrounds and motels and jet planes and holidays and vacations. Mostly thank you for work and the opportunity to be of service and the rewards of service. Thank you for my colleagues and yes Lord, thank you for the authorities, the government and the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Minister of Health, even the Attorney General and of course the Prime Minister, Nato, the United Nations and the United States and Britain. Don't forget Asia the Middle East or Australia. All the nations of the world sepecially the islands especially Saipan. Thank you for history and archeology and anthropology and psychiatry and medicine and surgery. Thank you for community and all the services of caring and all the inventions and the businesses and innovation. Thank you again for my family, my friends, my work, my love, my play. Thank you for smells but mostly thank you for the pleasant ones and perfumes. Thank you for senses and dreams but mostly thank you for those moments I feel mostly at one with you. Oh yea and thank you for sex and memory, I just remembered.

Unity of Vancouver

2012-01-08T14:20:00.001-08:00

I finally made it to Unity Church. It's located at 5840 Oak Street Vancouver BC V6M 2V9. I first heard of it from Dr. Bernie Klassen. He said he had attended Unity and spoke fondly of his experience. Bernie took me to my first 12 step meeting nearly 15 years ago. Once when I was feeling very down I called Bernie and he invited me to his home. There he just took out his banjo and played and sang "How Great Thou Art. " It was exactly what I needed to get me over that seemingly insurmoutable hurdle over a decade back now.
I was encouraged to read "Sermon on the Mount" by Emmett Fox because this was one of the books that the first 50 members of AA had read before the Big Book of Alcoholics was even written. It was in that time that the miracle of Akron occurred. Later the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous would be the cornerstone of what went on to be the 12 step movements in general. As a researcher I 'd taken a greater interest in the origins and seeds of this movement reading Rev. Frank Buckman's writings in the Oxford Movement, and Moral Rearmament, Rev. Sam Shoemaker, the Episcopalian, Father Fred Dowling the Catholic mentor of Bill Wilson and such. Dr. Bob and his wife recommended daily Bible readings and the early 12 steppers were so fond of the book of James, the James Club was one of the names considered for the group. Emmett Fox's, Sermon on the Mount and The Golden Key were recommended readings then in the 'fellowship' and are still today though not 'approved' literature of the AA Corporation. In fairness the Board of Directors of the 12 step programs they have kept their focus narrowly on the illness addressed by each individual organization.
The Christian view of the individual is that of one who is 'broken in spirit' or a sinner, ie 'off the mark. In contrast to the 12 step movements the Christian message is more generic. In many ways the word 'addict' means 'idolater.' CS Lewis, the great Christian philosopher would say "why look in the wall for the Architect'. Yet that's exactly what the addict does, literally worshipping something of the material world. To the Christian this material world is illusory, the permanent world being spiritual
Unity Church of Vancouver is a lovely facility. The chairs are cushioned and the whole atmosphere is conducive to reflection. The music was provided by piano and the piano player was truly accomplished singing solos with a bit of a jazz bent. Rev. Glenn and Martha Mosley opened the service sitting together at the front before we all rose to sing songs of celebration.
Years back I had spoken to the previous ministerial team a couple of times on the phone and knew they'd be sadly missed. Glenn and Martha have now arrived and those I know, like Fred, who attends Unity religiously, speak highly of their leadership.. I enjoyed listening to the audio tapes of the former pastor as they were so uplifting and inspirational . Glenn and Martha have that same calm and confidence. Martha lead us all in the opening prayer:
"There is only One Prescence and One Power active as my life and as the universe, God the Good, Omnipotent."
After we all sang The Lord's Prayer, Martha lead us in meditation focussing our attention of love and the healing heart.
Glen's "sermon' which was called a 'sharing of ideas' at Unity was an interesting discourse on humanity and spirituality spiced with anecdotes fro m his long experience in ministry.
Before I knew it the service was over which was surprising because I confess I'm a squirmer if church goes too long. There were refreshments but I could not stay as like Frost I had 'many miles to go' today.
I know so many people from 12 step programs who have found that Unity Church ran so closely parallel to the spirituality people find in Recovery. It's not surprising given the overlapping roots of inspiration these organizations share. As well, from what I know, Unity puts more emphasis on the mystical and spiritual than some of the more mainstream churches that have focussed more on community and prayer for instance. The Catholic Church as an example has great focus and depth of spirituality with the teachings of St. John of the Cross and Thomas Merton but this emphasis is more likely to be found in the monasteries than in urban cathedral.
I look forward to returning to Unity.

Israel and Iran 2012

2012-01-02T10:03:00.001-08:00

The Arab spring riots are not by radicals but by moderates. Canada has just opened an Office of Religious Freedom under Conservative Prime Minister Steven Harper. I forget that my friends include Moslem, Jewish, Buddhist, and Christian professors and doctors. Only in countries where Christianity prevailed was religious freedom what it is in Canada today. Even the Buddhist countries, despite the pacifist nature of that religion, have been generally intolerant of religous freedoms. The restriction on religious freedom in the south has been called the 'Bamboo Curtain'.
Christians are routinely killed by radical Moslems. The bombing of Christian churches on Christmas isn't new. The Voice of Martyrs tells of Christians killed all the time for their religious beliefs but this doesn't make the news here in Canada. Canadians despite being overwhelming of Christian background don't think in religious terms like so much of the world does. Like Americans we' have separated Church and State. The Radical Moslems don't want this. I known many Moslems who were tortured in moslem jails. I honestly don't know of a Canadian who was 'tortured' in a Canadian jail. I suspect they exist but it's a matter of scale. In many Moslem countries the abuse of power, rape and torture are systemic.
To put it in perspective the equivalent of the 'residential school system abuses 'are likely presently happening in a whole lot of the world and we don't hear about it.
When I asked a Moslem man whether Iran should have nuclear weapons, he said, "Iranians don't want the Iranian state to have nuclear weapons. The religous fanatics in charge are killing Moslems, their fellow Iranians. The more power these people get the more people they kill. "
From talking with my friends the religious fanatics would prefer to kill Christians and Jews but when those aren't readily available they're kill a Moslem instead. Aetheists are at greatest risk in Moslem countries. Wiccans and pagans wouldn't stand a chance. In Canada we take religious diversity for granted but that's simply not the case in most Moslem countries.
When I was in Israel, I saw in Tel Aviv especially a modern and post modern city and country struggling to exist surrounded by neighbours where the abuses which we have heard about since the beginning of Arab Spring are normal.
When I objected to the Israeli governments piracy at sea and the propaganda to cover up that event of international terrorism I was aware that Israelis reacted even more strongly against their government. Israel, like Canada, tolerates diversity and people can demonstrate and speak out against the abuses of state. There's opposition in Israel. It's a country like Canada is. Not the same for Iran. And not thes ame for Syria. Talking with friends from those countries they describe 'disappearances'. It's like Argentina was. If a person says something against the state they simply disappear.
I admire the Israelis who have spoken out against the rabbis who like the Catholic priests here were using their positions for rape and pedophilia. In Canada we have laws and accountability. Rape and torture seem to be norms of the prison systems and police forces in the Moslem world. We're not soon going to have a vetting of the Imans who are raping or involved in pedophilia. Our countries are so different and it's hard to remember that especially when a city like Dubai can aopear so modern on the outside with all the evidence of material advancement. Then doctors can be jailed and sexually abused for treating wounded people in another Moslem country just down the road. The wealth of royal families in some Moslem states is staggering compared to the poverty in the streets which can be horrific.
Israel is modern and post modern with the problems that go with that. These other Moslem countries are medieval with widespread abuse of power and corruption. I'm not surprised that Israel would be as concerned about the growth of power of Iran. If the way countries like Iran and Syria treat their own people is any example then Jews and Christians need be very concerned about the rise of fanatic Moslem states. The Canadian Moslems I know, who are moderate and learned are much less concerned about Jews and Christians than they are about the radical Moslem religious fanatics. That says alot to me.

Cymbalta (duloxetine)

2012-01-01T21:41:00.001-08:00

Cymbalta (duloxetine) is a new serotonin norepinephrine re uptake inhibitor (SNRI) antidepressant medication developed by Lilly Pharmaceuticals. After the Tricyclic medications which were the first truly effective antidepressant medications which came out in the early 50's, prozac became available as the first of the Serotonin Specific Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI's).. Subsequently antidepressants like Effexor were developped which worked on both the serotonin neurotransmitter pathways and the norepinephrine neurotransmitter pathways. Cymbalta is not there fore the first SNRI.
What it is however is the first of this class of medications which has FDA approval for pain disorders. Prior to this amitryptalline, a tricyclic antidepressant was the treatment of choice for fibromyalgia for instance. However patients commonly complained that they only had limitted benefit and the tricyclics have alot of hard to tolerate side effects. The side effects in general assocaited with all the new antidepressants are mostly annoying and not particularly dangerous. The tricyclics however could cause heart failure.
Cymbalta in contrast is a major breakthrough and relatively safe with much fewer side effects than those early antidepressants. Already it has given many patients improvement in pain which they did not have from any non narcotic agents. .
Naturally when a new medication is developed the pharmaceutical company would like everyone to switch to this medication. Medications are like cars in this regard. Commonly family physicians and psychiatrists are given 'free samples' to help start patients on the latest medication. This is a marketting strategy but it's also a very valuable clinical tool. Commonly in psychiatry a patient may have to try more than one medication before that which is most effective is found. Each time they fill a prescription they are charged the full amount even if they can't tolerate the medication or it's ineffective and they stop it aftera a few weeks. Free samples allow a patient to try a medication without cost to them and if it works without negative side effects then they can fill the prescription.
I have some patients who are still taking the original tricyclic medication prescribed to them 30 or more years ago. It worked then and it works now. Several other patients responded to later SSRI's called Paxil and Zoloft. They benefited from these medications when they had their first bout of depression, recovered and stopped the medication only to have the depression occur 5 or 10 years later. I tend to try the medication that worked for them before in the hope that they will benefit from this once again. It's not disimiliar to antibiotics in that way.
Roughty 75% of patients with depression or generalized anxiety will respond to whichever antidepressant you choose first time. Of the 25 % non responders, roughly 75% of them will respond to the second line choice.
When I worked in the states patients without plans would ask for the cheapest medications and I'd be able to know the oldest cheapest antidepressant would do the trick but the side effect profiles were a concern. Not unlike cars, the shocks on the old ones aren't what they are today. Prozac was a break through in medication as compared to the tricyclics and MAOI inhibitors because it was hard to kill yourself with it.
The newer antidepressants collectively have a safer profile and overall improved side effect profile. The antidepressants compared to most medications are very safe.
Cymbalta is effective for generalized anxiety disorder and depression. So normally a specialist, especially a consulting specialist will see the 'non responders'. There are patients in my practice who have simply not got better with any antidepressant medications and have been sent to me. This is where cymbalta is the 'first line choice of medication. I am truly happy to say that I have already seen Cymbalta work with non responders.
Further, people who had less than complete results with trials of several of the other classes of antidepressant medications have had excellent response to cymbalta.
Also benefitting are those people who have chronic depressions or anxiety disorders and whose medications seems to wear off after a year of two requiring higher dosage with increasing dose related side effects. These people tend to respond immedidately to the lowest dosage of an untried antidepressant medication, like Cymbalta.
What is offensive in psychiatry and why good universities demand that psychiatrists working for drug companies declare their bias is when these 'trend setters' make unreasonable claims for a new medication. These colleagues get called 'drug company whores'as a result. For instance they might say some new medications has a 95 % success rate with depression or suggest that patients already responding well to an earlier antidepressant medication should suddenly switch to the newest and more expensive medication. For this sell out they get a trip to Hawaii or help getting up the academic ladder.
The fact is Cymbalta has something the other medications don't have and for that reason is my first line choice when I'm treating a combination of either a generalized anxiety disorder or depression with a pain disorder. My patients especially the older ones with traumatic athritis and those with fibromyalgia and even a patient with migraines have reported significant improvement in their pain as a result of starting cymbalta.
This happened when I gave wellbutrin, also marketted as zyban, to smokers with depression, a number of them found it easier to quit somking. Hence if I have a patient who wants to quit smoking and has depression I would consider well butrin as a first line treatment. Wellbutrin is also called buproprion and has been used successfully extensively in addiction psychiatry.
Cymbalta now is the new drug of choice for that mixed state where pain and depression or anxiety prevail. I love scientific advances in psychopharmacology and this truly is. My fibromyalgia patients are especially pleased with it's benefit.
The side effect profile is roughly the same as effexor with some nausea and possibly tendency to make one sleepy. The key is starting the medication at 30 mg and slowly titrating it upwards to the best dose for the patient, which so far in my practice has been in the 60 to 90 mg range though it's likely to be beneficial at double this dosage or it may turn out there's a window between 60 and 120. It's too early to tell but responses are being noted in the early weeks at as low as 30 mg which was what we saw when we started using prozac and 10 mg to 20 mg was sufficient. Later we learned that obsessive compulsive patients often needed 60 to 80 mg and it's possible there will be a subcategory of patients who need higher dosages of Cymbalta. For now I'm just really thankful to Lilly for providing a product that is such a breakthrough.
Pharmaceutical companies spend millions and millions on research and development something the 'health food industry' is not in the habit of doing. Consider the making of a new Hollywood movie with all the jobs and all the new ideas and compare that to late night 're runs'. That can be said for alot of 'alternative medicine'. Yes I know their are exceptions but I think people forget that these are 'big business' too and don't appreciate the contributions that are provided by the pharmaceutical industry.
Almost all my patients have tried 'everything' when they get to me. I am thankful for all the help I can get. Cymbalta is just that kind of help. Lilly is a great pharmaceutical company that has done amazing research and provided great breakthrough in medications. Thank you, Lilly.

William Hay, Writer: Eclectic Psychotherapy - 3) Insight Psychotherapy

2012-01-01T17:28:00.000-08:00

William Hay, Writer: Eclectic Psychotherapy - 3) Insight Psychotherapy: I am best described as an "Eclectic Psychotherapist". I was originally trained in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Note my dog, Gilbert, on ...

William Hay, Writer: Eclectic Therapy -2) Hypnotherapy

2012-01-01T17:27:00.000-08:00

William Hay, Writer: Eclectic Therapy -2) Hypnotherapy: I am indeed an "Eclectic Therapist' simply because of all the training and experience in a variety of psychotherapies I've formally and info...

William Hay, Writer: Eclectic Therapy - 1) Counselling

2012-01-01T17:25:00.000-08:00

William Hay, Writer: Eclectic Therapy - 1) Counselling: I am an "Eclectic Therapist". I have been formally trained in a variety of therapies so now use them all either when indicated specifically...

Eclectic Psychotherapy - 3) Insight Psychotherapy

2012-01-01T17:11:00.003-08:00

I am best described as an "Eclectic Psychotherapist". I was originally trained in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Note my dog, Gilbert, on the couch!
In psychoanalytic psychotherapy, the therapist is verbally passive to a large degree. The patient is taught "free association". Free association is a very different process from the directed communication that most people encounter in counselling which is very much a 'rational' and 'conscious' often 'educational' process. Free association by contrast is learning to speak about whatever comes to mind continuously without censoring. The therapist listens to this 'unconscious' processing of whatever is on the mind of the patient. The patient may recall dreams, events from the the past and anything that may be associated with the primary material being presented. Eventually as 'patterns of assoctiations' become apparent the therapist shares these 'insights' with the patient and asks for feed back.. Commonly the therapist asks the patient what they think a dream, free association, or focus of thought means. Therapy is often a quest for meaning and if Jungian an attempt to tie the meanings to the greater world of archetypes. Another more generic term for 'psychoanalytic psychotherapy is 'insight' psychotherapy. The patient with the help of therapist is gaining 'insight' into otherwise unconscious process and beginning to make sense of otherwise obscure behaviour and thought process.
In psychoanalytic therapy Freud considered the internal processes of the mind to be a kind of family dialogue with the id, the out of control unconscious, the ego, the conscious and the superego the controlling unconscious. Eric Berne in Transactional Analysis made sense of these divisions by describing Freud's Id as "the child", the Superego as the Parent, and the Ego as the adult. Later variations on this included the good child and bad chlld, good parent and bad parent. The ego or adult was the individual who managed the demands of the id and superego. Kernberg was by far my favourite theorist and practitioner of modern psychoanayltic psychoatherapy though it took Masterson to better communicate the developments of the field. Kohut developed Self psychology which looked beneath the ego to perhaps what might be called the true potential.
The defences were unconscious processes, later called 'coping strategies' in the conscious realm for dealing with unacceptable material. Hence 'denial' might be noted by the therapist who found that the patient couldn't talk about sex and couldn't remember a year in their life when they were in a particular foster home. Projection might be interpreted when a patient described a 'bad' sibling and how they were so hurtful when in fact in time the patient might gain insight into how they were infact 'projecting' their envy at the next born child. Acting out was a defence like somatization which served the pateint by keeping them in the dark about some truth that motivated them. Hence a person might have sex with people indiscriminately when in fact they feared rejection so jumped the gun, acting out some childhood trauma. Commonly in psychoanalytic psychotherapy the 'patterns' of behaviour noted today derived from dramas that began in the childhood of the patient, in their family. Bradshaw was very good at explaining these early childhood dramas Transference referred to the patients tendency to transfer emotions and roles from past onto the present especially on the therapist. The therapist in insight psychoanalytic pscyhotherapy 'interpreted' the relationship of therapy in the here and now.
Depth therapy was specifically looking into the darker recesses, the sex and aggression, which Freud said dominated the development. Interpreting patients 'sexual feelings' towards therapists, or 'lack of sexual feelings' towards therapists (defended against) and feelings of 'hostility" or 'fear' of therapist and working these through without 'acting out' lead to a person being grounded and confident in relationships with clear sense of their own behaviour, their 'boundaries' to use a poor modern term for the membranousness of human relationships, but really having 'insight' into their own motivation and seeing when other's falsely accused them of other motivations or denied their own underlying motivations. Often there are 'motives in motives' and the the patients of psychoanalytic psychotherapy become very conscious of the behaviour of themselves and those around them.
Indeed administrators and leaders of society commonly sought psychoanalytic psychotherapy so that they would not just mess up society and their workplace with the unresolved issues of their childhood.
Today psychoanalysis despite it's hugely demonstrated benefits is rarely covered by health care because cheaper and often more effective less labor intensive therapies have been developped to address specific psychiatric problems. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy, as evidenced in Cameron's book on cost effectiveness of therapies for the Ontario Government , is still widely used and hugely beneficial. It's limitations is in the rigors of training which fewer people are willing to undergo. A cornerstone of true psychoanalytic psychotherapy training is for the therapist to themselves be in therapy. This is often too humbling for the modern practitioners who claim 'bigger and better' brains and see their role as 'fixing' patients.
The fact is, experienced therapists rarely today are 'purists' and hence the designation "eclectic'. One may begin with one therapy but in time and with more advanced training add to the original basis. Psychoanalytic psycotherapy and psychoanalysis are still considered the best trainings for therapists because, frankly, too many counsellors use therapy to work out their own issues and to propagate their own agendas. Insight helps patients and therapists alike.
I will go on to discuss the therapies I learned in the order which I learned them giving some insight into the terms used so that people might be better 'consumers' and make more sense of their own experience, their therapy and possibly guide them better in the direction of what they need rather than simply accepting what is offered.

Eclectic Therapy -2) Hypnotherapy

2012-01-01T17:11:00.001-08:00

I am indeed an "Eclectic Therapist' simply because of all the training and experience in a variety of psychotherapies I've formally and informally learned and applied. Maybe if I was ever really a great therapist I'd not have to continue learning as I've had all these years. The fact is I'm fascinated by the human mind and behaviour and the more I actually learn the more I realize how little I actually know.
Having already learned "Counselling" and "Supportive Psychotherapy" I next learned Hypnotherapy. I was working as a country general practitioner in southern Manitoba at the time. I was doing deliveries every couple of weeks and doing minor surgery. I had already learned how to anesthetize every part of the body with a long needle. The one time I was forced by an emergency to do a high forceps delivery I was very thankful for this knowledge. Otherwise I'd have had to do a caesarian section with spinal block. I hadn't done a spinal block myself though witnessed enough. I'd done countless spinal taps and the block isn't that much more technically difficult, just potentially more lethal. Anesthetists aren't well appreciated by the public but they are the unsung heros of surgery and obstetrics. I have thanked my lucky stars many times when I've had the benefit of an anesthetist present.
Despite my basic surgical training and training in intensive care medicine I was frankly often alone and scared in the backwoods. If I had a competent nurse things were much better. I have the greatest respect and love for some of the old battle axes that helped me in those early years. In contrast I've had nurses green or incompetent nurses screaming at the sight of blood or fainting in the emergency room. I even had to ask one nurse to leave in a delivery because her fear of childbirth was getting the patient all worked up. When she and her 'textbook knowledge' left this lovely country woman delivered easily a rather big boy.
It was in this context that I learned about hyposis as a therapy for doing medical and dental procedures. I thought that as I was often doing home visits and working in places without an anaesthetist including the country hospital where I was principally located, this 'skill' could be very beneficial. The Amercan Society of Hypnosis had a 2 level training program taking a matters of weeks to obtain. I read extensively and took the time off work to attend the hands on training workshop and attend the examinations. When I finally got my certification I was amused that I could use the acronym CASH after my name as I truly had obtained a Certificate of the American Society of Hypnosis. Unfortunately hypnosis never made me any money but it certainly was an eye opener.
ndeed I think all my colleagues should be required to observe surgery done under hypnosis. It's one thing to know that 90% of pain is processed mentally and another thing to witness something so revolutionary as to see a person being cut open without even local anesthesia. The fact is I went on to do it when I got back to my practice, electively. I cut out moles and warts using hypnosis and had a marvellous old time for a while until I found that just using xylocaine 1% took a tenth of the time and was more certain. It had cost me roughly $10,000 in training and loss of income and then this further experience to have a skill which really was never compensated by the health care system despite it's proven benefit. Nonetheless it sure was fun. Talk about feeling like a wizard. Gandolf Doctor Hay!
I'd become a certified yogi too with years of formal training, papers from a highly recognised International and American Institution, and even later a trip to India where I studied advanced meditation. I've even a childhood friend Kirk who I thought at one time had overdosed on yoga and definitely must be a saint. Despite the scientific double blind evidence of the benefits of meditation therapy (see Herbert Benson MD and Relaxation Therapy) and today (Mindfulness Therapy) that too was never compensated or paid for. Another $20,000 to $30,000 training and experience which was never 'supported' by the institutions despite the overwhelming 'evidence' scientifically and otherwise of healing benefit.
I mention this because I can't get over patients expecting doctors to 'learn' alternative therapies and keep up with latest developments in medicine when to do so we have to put out the time and money ourselves and very little except the narrowest areas of study are supported financially. The cost of all the alternative practitioners even the phd's is minute compared to the expenses we accept to be healers in the modern sense. The richest, most powerful and hence most influential physicians do their basic training and then the minimal level of training to keep up with their 'niche'. Relatively, I made the most money I ever made as a country gp and lost all my income to do advanced specialist training and never have been compensated for the training or the skills. Indeed I've not even been able to use a third to a half of my most advanced training because there is no support network for the training 25 years later despite the evidence supporting those therapies. I trained as a psychiatrist with the promise of having hospital beds for the elective admission of patients for therapeutic treatments. Even when I was a member of a hospital all I was ever able to admit were emergency suicidal or psychotic patietns because of lack of resources. I'm not alone. Many of my surgical colleagues are trained in advanced surgical approaches but can't get operating room time becasue of the politics of hospitals and most importantly so much of what is proven scientifically and advanced is simply not funded.
Many of my finest colleagues have left the so called 'mainstream' and moved into private areas, some have even left medicine altogether ,to go completely private. Most of those I knew who went to the US didn't go for money alone but rather they went so they could do procedures which required MRI's. Canadians simplyt don't know that while Canada was at the height of world medicine 20 years ago Canadians limitted to the public care system are often getting only third world medicine. Europeans and sometimes even Cubans are appalled by how limited our health care system is. The amount of administration and regulation that has arisen in the last 20 years is eating away all of what was once 'medical' care and now has become 'health' care. Millions of dollars in 'advertising' are called 'health care' funding and people don't realize that. .
But I was talking about Hypnotherapy.Ooops!
Milton Erickson, MD is the psychiatrist who is the father of hypnotherapy. He was a midwest American. He said Freud was wrong about the ID. Jung had said Freud was afraid of the Id and the 'irrational' as well. It might have had something to do with Freud's relationship his wife's sister and the experience of genital mutilation as a child. Maybe it was just the residual effects of his cocaine abuse. That said, Freud is still to my mind, perhaps the world's greatest psychotherapist and certainly to psychiatry what Einstein was to Physics. He was a true adventurer. I accept that I stand on the shoulders of those who went before and with the knowledge they gave us we can advance but we'd not be where we are were it not for them. I sail and I see this in navigation and maps without having to listen to the petty political criticism of Columbus mistaking North America for India. If Columbus were a psychologist, boy would he be pilloried today for that. Freud unfortunately went astray when politically he got into the business of empire building. That said, I save 'reverence' for God and tend to irreverence with myself and my fellows, a fault that no end of therapy has been unable to eradicate. I can't help but think that Jung and Erickson would have enjoyed Monty Python and Seinfeld more than Freud despite Freud's intellectual support of laughter. Now Anna Freud on the other hand would have loved even George Castansa and the Canadian Air Farce.
Milton Erickson said that it was the 'unconscious processes' that caused us to 'automatically' protect ourselves when we fell. We didn't think about putting up our arms to 'block a blow'. Milton Erickson believed in the 'child' within and felt that we had to 'free' the natural healing process of the human. Jay Haley wrote the classic "Uncommon Therapy' describing best the work with Milton Erickson. Though I was fortunate to know and train with Jay Haley and his wife Bianca Jenks I missed meeting Milton Erickson by a year or two when I began training in hypnosis and later in Structural and Strategic Family Therapy and Strategic Therapies in general. I even studied with the original Palo Alto group whose research gave rise to the mind body therapies that produced EMDR for instance. "Mind Body Therapy" and other "Psychosomatic' therapies were foundational to hypnotherapy.
"Frogs into Princes' by Grinder and Bandler is a marvellous text teaching the basics of inducing a trance. These students of Milton Erickson went on to develop Neurolinguistic Programming which makes alot of Erickson's work more accessible to the lay public. Milton Erickson was famous for saying everyone could be hypnotised. What he didn't say is that some took seconds to minutes while others could take hours to days.
I feel terribly guilty for not remembering the name of my original hypnosis teacher. He was the most extraordinary doctor whose job it was to hypnotize people for major elective surgery who were allergic to anethesia. He told amazing stories about hypnotizing people for heart surgery and lung surgery. Despite having learned and done extensive work using local anesthesia I was still impressed when I met a Russian doctor who'd removed a lung in the Urals because he had no anesthesetist. This doctor who taught me hypnosis and wrote a classic book about his work trumped us all. I witnessed him hypnotise people stick them with needles and their showing no physical or psychological changes. Having learned hypnosis from him I too went home and cut people under hypnosis was amazed.
Thanks to hypnosis and yoga I even learned the party trick of slowing my heart to where medical students couldn't feel it beating. Those were halcyon days for learning about the mind and body in the early years of training before learning that the 'powers that be' were simply not interested in anything that was not 'orthodox'. Indeed the medical legal crisis was such that doctors who tried anything new were at the greatest risk for being punished royally. Adding lawyers and administrators to the healing equation guarateed mediocrity would reign. That said, there have been major gains for all in the development of ethical research policies and advances again can be made but usually only by committee and with large financial funding. It didn't surprise me to hear of a recent potential cure of cancer going unnoticed in Alberta because there was no likely profit from the development. Business medicine reigns and with it comes pros and cons.
There are many ways to induce a trance. Later I'd even use amytal to do amytal interviews, injecting what has been called 'truth serum' into the veins of patients and then doing interviews and hypnotherapy with them. Most people who belittle pharmacology do so because they haven't learned it themselves, can't do it and don't have a license to do it. It's called "cutting the heads off others to make yourself taller." The "holistic' doctors often would be left with nothing to say if all their criticism of traditional medicine was removed from their repetoire. And here I'm doing the same.
So hypnosis doesn't require pharmacology. Hypnosis is done by joining with a person at their unconscious level using ritual and repetition. It's really easy with children. I ask a person to stare at something and this wil cause their eyes to tire and their eye lids to droop. It's classic. So I begin by using that 'tarot talk' , 'hypnotherapy' ' "mesmer voice' low and slow saying "I am observing you breathing, you are breathing in and out, your eye lids are fluttering and growing tired, you are breathing more slowly now, your eyes are drooping and as I count backwards from 10 to 1 your breathing will grow slower your eyes more tired and you will enter deeper and deeper into a relaxing calming pleasant thoroughly satisfied trance like state where you will be able to hear my voice and respond to my requests or commands but you may not remember anything that we say and do thereafter, I'm beginning now as I observe you breathing in and out, in and out, your eyes more and more tired, 10, 9, you are going deeper and deeper into that semiconscious realm, 8, deeper down deeper into the trance, where you will hear me and we will be able to communicate but your body will be so relaxed that you won't be able to move without my voice helping you 7, deeper now, your breathing in and......out, ....in and out....6, you are getting sleepy but not like sleep going into that twilight state, where you can hear me and respond to me but only as I ask you to where you won't remember what we have said because we will be so tired, 6 5 4 3 2 1....you are hypnotised now and your eyes are closed but your are able to hear me, can you hear me ....etc.

This 'induction of trance' is done in a whole variety of ways. It's used in marketting and advertising and commonly most adults aren't even aware when they are being manipulated and hypnotised. Everyone should read 1984 and the Animal Farm. These are dangerous times. Especially with corporations like Abercrombie and Fitch marketting padded bikinis bras to baby girls.
That said any party animal should be able to hypnotise his friends to be clowns at a party. What separates the professionals from the amateurs is if the patient lets you cut them open with a knife or tells you in horrifying detail about some memory that is frankly unbecoming and surprising.
The trouble with hypnotherapy is that alot of what one can learn using techniques such as reqression of a patient back through the ages is that for the benefit to be gained this 'unconscious' material must be 'learned' in the conscious.
Freud was probably one of the world's greatest hypnotists and hypnotherapists. His development of the technique of 'free association' and use of a couch was indeed a means of establishing a' partial trance' that faciltated the development of 'insight'.
Many is the time that I learned things about paitent's pasts in hypnotherapy but it did no good for the patient until they were subsequently 'ready' to 'learn' and 'accept' the material.
As every psychoanalyst and every psychoanalytic psychotherapist knows it's all albout the 'timing'. Of course I know I want to go back in the womb and I want to be on another planet but telling me this is of little value and importance than if you tell me at exactly the right time I need to hear it.
Zen teachers call that the 'aha' moment and frankly amateurs are 'impatient'. I was lucky to have surgical training prior to psychotherapy training because I'd already learned to wait for an abscess to be ripe before cutting it or squeezing it.
Hypnotherapy is also all about association. Being a poet before learned hypnotherapy I found it easy to use allegory and metaphors in my work with patients. This allowed me to bring patients to get around 'blocks' without having to address them directly. A famous Erickson metaphor was when he talked to a woman about growing tomatoes and her fear of sex left her. He never mentioned sex but he did talk about stroking ripe red tomatoes and the tall green stalk.
I don't think I could do hypnotherapy in another culture or as a second language. Maybe if I was Joseph Conrad I could do hypnotherapy with English speaking people but despite my little knowledge of spanish and french I simply can't imagine doing hypnotherapy outside of my primary language of English and my culture.. I certainly couldn't see myself doing it with a translator. I've not tried but it seems foreign.
I did hypnotherapy extensively for anxiety disorders and mood disorders. Ironically people would want me to do it for quitting smoking and I'd not see it as that effective in that regard. But then in addiction psychaitry I wasn't doing forrmal hypnosis and hypnotherapy.
What I found was that I had to have a therapeutic setting for doing psychoanayltic psychotherapy and especially hypnotherapy. It's been over a decade since I've had a practice in which I can guarantee that my sessions won't be interrupted by an emergency or in which I can guarantee silence in the room. Indeed most male psychiatrists and female psychiatrists as part of the organized destruction of the therapeutic process hardly feel safe with their door closed. Most doctors would like a lawyer in their office for all patients. And most doctors simply won't discuss sex or ask about sexual matters because of the risk of false accusation, or as is more often the case down right 'extortion'.
More pateints also have a 'secondary gain' issue when they see the doctor in a public setting. Their insurance company needs a report and often my role is 'illness recorder'. In the mental health teams the psychiatrist is often told they're only there to prescribe and indeed if a psychiatrist does anything more than prescribe he or she will make less money. I am paid most for recording illness and I can face severe penalties if I 'confront' a patient. Indeed whereas 'confronting' illness was what we were trained to do in medicine, telling a person they have cancer, I found increasingly I was told that patients shouldn't be told anything they don't want to hear or they can 'sue' you. We used to mock 'feelgood' medicine likening the valium prescriber and hand holding counsellor to the pusher and masseuse. Now here we are terribly afraid of saying anything that might upset a patient for fear they might complain. Family physicians actually sometimes refer patients to me rather than tell them an unsavoury diagnosis for fear of retaliation.
I heard one doctor afraid of telling his patient he had cancer because he was afraid this very 'litiginous' patient would blame them. The stress that doctors work under just going to work and making diagnosis is such that many colleagues have taken to calling everything 'bipolar II" because it's a diagnosis which actually has no clear specificity and if anyone doubts it the doctor can say its because the patient 'rapidly cycled'. Epidemiologically there's been epidemics of 'bipolar II " diagnosis breaking out everywhere without the World Health Organization even investigating it. It's terribly infectious to say the least. The most cowardly of doctors and lowest of doctors flee the frontlines of patient contact and hide in administrative office or worse police doctors acting out their own unresolved 'identification with the aggressors'.
The only treatment I've read for Bipolar II is pharmacalogical.
A pharmacalogical psychiatrist can see 6 to 10 patients in an hour billing for visits every 5 to 10 minutes whereas a hypnotherapist takes usually an hour and a half. The provincial plans pay at most for 50 minutes of therapy wiht any one patient but will pay ad infinitum for 5 minute visits weekly ad infinitum. The richest most relaxed and satisfied of pscyhiatrists are the pharmacological psychiatrists. Their frequent trips to Hawaii providing by drug companies revive them.
Psychotherapists don't make anyone any money and the payment for psychotherapy is the least that a doctor can receive despite the fact that psychoanylitic pscyhotherapy and hypnotherapies and couple and family therapies are the most intensive of work.
So I don't do much hypnotherapy. As I've got older I've learned that I'm stupider than alot of my colleagues. Rather than criticize them for doing those things that are remunerated I've come to realize that the 'market system' repays those things that people want. I get great satisfaction personally from alot of the successes that I've had as a result of my training and the exdellent teachers I've had. I use the lessons of hypnotherapy in my day to day language and in the way I talk to patients and do therapy itself.
One of my favourite hypnotherapy techniques is to 'seed' conversations and by 'story telling'. I talk about 'irrelevant' matters and 'seed' this material with whatever it is I'm 'selling " the patient. So I may talk about my dog and comment on how the young are constantly exercising. It's no surprise that all my obese patients have heard these stories but none of my athletic patients would hear about my dogs constant exercise. I tell a story about a patient who recoverd from cancer giving up smoking and indirectly I'm telling my patient who I've already told to stop smoking because of her cancer, to stop smoking in another way. I never do 'nocebos'. I never undermine a person's work on their wellness or suggest they can't.
I've dozens of students in my practice whose grades have gone any where from failing to passing or from c's to A's and I take that as evidence of the effectiveness of therapy. Naturally I have all manner of psychiatric disorders improve or get better but take even more pleasure in seein my patients with somatic illnesses and addictions get better because these have more obvious 'markers' for the success of the interventions I'm using. Some of my patients are just living a lot longer than their doctors predicted and I like that too. I actually take great pleasure in my patients getting better and leaving practice where I had a locally famous pharmacological psychiatrist say his patients never got better and always had to see him. He didn't see any irony in this because frankly he's a fairly stupid rich thug and gives pharmacalogical psychiatry a bad name by his barbarianism.
These days I enjoy working with addicts and take every success to heart because the life expectance of a downtown eastside addict is maybe 30 years of age or so. I love seeing alcoholics and addicts achieve sobriety or needle users get off needles.
Alot of my work with somatic illness is to get patients otherwise dying to adhere to their medical regimen. I work with some of the finest endocrinologists, cardiologists, neurologists, gastorenterologists and internists who every once in a while phone me and tell me that they realize that their patient is alive and following medical regimen since seeing me and that before that they didn't think they were going to live out the year. I am blessed to work with some of the finest of family physicians as well and so often together with a motley team of community resources manage the most difficult of patients watching them go from the dregs of life to whatever passes for normal living.
I had alot of fun working with a pediatric endocrinologist getting teen agers to accept their diabetes and take their insulin. She was great to work with and together we had tremendous succes with this really tough crowd. Overdoses and diabetic catastrophes literally stopped the year we worked together.
Trauma interests me now. When I worked with the military and police what I learned in hypnotherapy helped me walk people through the trauma that had given rise to often chronic ptsd. It's one thing to remember but remembering can re traumatize. So how one does this is really tricky and I enjoyed honing my skills with these amazing heros of our society. I loved having them tell me their nightmares were gone but mostly I had a great deal of fun working with a military captain and his secretary who truly loved the vets who had been in the front lines. Often these were the ones who were most stoic and least likely to talk about their experinces. This beautiful captain doctor would send these amazing men to me and over time they'd tell me stories that I was truly priviledged to hear, often stories that had never been told. Not only would Veteran Affairs be able to help these individuals then but also we could get psychologists trained specifically in the treatment of ptds to help these folk regain their lost lives.
Oh well, that's about all I'm going to say about hypnotherapy. I did regress a guy in hypnotherapy once by saying "I want you to go back to when you were happy' and he told me he was surrounded by blue and felt warm and there was this loud comforting drum beating. He was back in the womb. He had chronic depression and never had a happy day in his life as far as I could see so my task went from restoring a sick man to health to teaching a blind man to see. All the failed therapies he'd had hadn't taken into acount that he simply had nothing to build on. Hypnotherapy certainly helped him. His telling me he actually felt what he understood to be happy one day, really did make my day.

Eclectic Therapy - 1) Counselling

2012-01-01T14:40:00.001-08:00

I am an "Eclectic Therapist". I have been formally trained in a variety of therapies so now use them all either when indicated specifically or as an amalgamated therapy drawing on the parts I've found most effective over the years.
My first therapy was 'counselling'. Counselling is fundamental to training in general medicine. Even surgeons, not noted for their interest in verbal communication are trained in counselling. Counselling is a process of one person listening to another and then providing feedback. The family physician commonly hears a person's complaints which can be physical but as commonly are biopsychosocial. Counselling in family medicine involves listening carefully and discriminately and asking questions specifically to elucidate the nature of the problem in it's entirety. Friends often 'counsel' one another but rarely explore the situation with the experience and training of a medical doctor. Common questions are 'how do you feel?, how do you feel about this? When did this begin.? What started it? What makes it worse? What makes it better?
Indeed when I worked as a country family physician I was the town de factor secular psychiatrist. My good friend the Lutheran Minister and I would discuss how similar our roles were in this regard. He did 'pastoral counselling' and I did medical or secular 'counselling'. Later I'd study pastoral counselling in my ministerial training at St. Mark's, Vancouver Theological School, Regent College and Almeda. Frankly, as physicians we often had more to offer than the ministers who often had better 'bedside manners'. The art of medicine is really to a large degree 'counselling'.
My research interest in psychiatry was 'non adherenece to medical regimen' and 'non compliance'. I was fascinated that 80% of schizophrenics in many studies didn't take their medications yet there was this almost cult like following of the 'neurochemistry' effect of medicine without consideration of the 'relational' aspects of the process of prescribing. Psychologists given the right to prescribe as well as pharmacists or even family physicians rarely had the success with prescribing to the mentally ill as psychiatrists. In my early practices my personal results with medication or any therapy in fact were commonly lightyears ahead of those reported in general because of a wide variety of research bias factors. My patients in those halcyon days were 'selected' and highly motivated as compared to some of the post licensing multi centre trials where the rubber hits the road and commonly patients don't respond despite the 'halo' effect of the research.
Not surprisingly an anciety physician said that medicines must be novel and changed frequently to maintain sucessess. He was referring to the 'placebo response'. Placebo is the tendency of the person to be self healing. Neuts will re grow tails and our evolutionary heritage is this self healing propensity. Much of therapy is removing whatever obstructs a person from healing especially in what are often self limitting illnesses. As a country gp I remember putting three casts in three weeks on a teen age hockey player with a minor fracture who refused to stop playing hockey. Were it not for me, his minor fracture would have ended up a gross disability not because of his lack of healing capacity but because he was a teen age boy and stupid as a mule.
It may be that all medicine works to enhance this 'placebo effect'. Nocebo is the opposite. I had a doctor (see quack - despite the letters after his name) tell me I'd never heal from a condition. If I had kept him as a physician that would have been a 'self fulfilling prophecy.'. Lucky for me I saw his shifty eyes and smelt the sulfur in the room. My second opinion was decidedly more favourable and that doctor indeed 'cured' me of the aliment I'd sought treatment for. His bedside manner was decidedly superior. Unlike his predecessor , he didn't slither like a snake.
Counselling was first studied in depth using scientific rigour by Rogers. Rogerian Counselling was easily reproducible and easily taught and proved decidedly effective for mild and moderate conditions. It's still a mainstay of treatment in student mental health. Here the therapist listens agreeably and validates the person's emotional response and generally is very 'supportive'.
The word 'supportive' is key in Counselling. Indeed counselling is often called "Supportive Psychotherapy". This refers to the tendency to 'take the side of the patient." The patient for instance says, "My boss treated me like shit today." A supportive therapist or counsellor would say, "that's awful". As the person went on ad infinitum about the terrible boss the therapist would 'validate' their emotions and sympathize and empathize with their feelings of being abused.
Today more often than not a 'legal advocate' will be a 'supportive therapist'. Neither will go to any great lengths to ask 'why do you think the boss said you were a danger to society'. Tyrants love counsellors, supportive therapists and advocates. Mad Magazines wrote a very funny piece on the therapists of Hitler and Stalin. Very sympathetic indeed.
In contrast those trained in insight therapies or other forms of psychotherapy might dwell on helping the patient see a connection between their behaviour and the boss firing them. In 12 step facilitation therapy the person is asked to 'clean up their side of the street' for instance. In this case, the patient might for instance have been a gas station attendant who insisted on smoking while filling school buses. A counsellor or supportive therapist and certainly a Rogerian might never learn this important detail.
Supportive therapy indeed and counselling go beyond the 'empathic listening'. They involve exploring the whole context. The early feminist therapists were notoriously inept at this and only last year I had a patient who mistakenly went to a so called 'professional' and was told to leave her marriage of 30 years in the first half hour of therapy. The husband was never physically violent and his so called verbal abuse was a product of a head injury which had resulted in a tourette's like phenomena. A dozen of the cities finest specialists were involved but this stupid and arrogant self serving feminist counsellor in 30 minutes destructively advised this beautiful, vulnerable and intelligent woman to give up on her marriage, her kids, her future all because of the counsellor's grotesque political agenda own political agenda. Indeed in one community I worked, the mental health counsellor "marriage therapist' was a man hating radical feminist divorcee who had a formal complaint lodged against them and it was found that of the hundred couples who had gone to her for marriage therapy all had divorced. Unfortunately counselling is not scutinized like Obstetrices were a hundred baby deaths would be noticed, the marriage itself being called the couples first 'baby' in formal marriage therapy training. Indeed often counsellors just assume that individual training in counselling makes them capable of working with couples or with groups when in fact I've had to take formal training in both modalities and know well that my individual therapy training used out of that context could be seriously damaging, something I see counsellors doing not uncommonly.
I confess I've seen the best of counselling and worst of counselling and must work to forget the radical feminists or the religious nutcase who had my patient flailing himself naked alongside the minister counsellor. Despite years of training and experience and heavy punishment I know psychiatrists who have had sex with students and patients. Now that psychiatrists, priests, and teachers have been vetted we're slowly moving through society and putting an end to these extreme abuses. Right now the Boy Scouts are addressing their cover up of homosexual pedophiles in their midst. The Girl Guides have yet to explore the lesbian sexual abuse that went on in their community. A northern BC equivalent of the attourney general's 30 year sexual abuse of countless teen age girls has finally been halted. The Divorce Lawyers association has finally accepted only because of public outrage that they can no longer accept sex in lieu of payment for their extortionist bills. Residential school hearings netted the highest levels of administrators, principals and politicians as well as the janitors and orderlies. We can be truly thankful for Chief Justice of Canada Beverly McLachlan's demands for increased transparency in the courts because historically abuse was never so bad in the initial round as it was when society subsequently abused the victims as was the norm in courts in days gone by. Indeed the concern today is that as only the truly rich can afford 'justice' we're going back to those medieval era times when money and power meant everything.
Back to counselling, advice giving is acceptable. Often psychaitrists are said to 'lend their ego'. We can spell out for patients what their options seem to be and even suggest what we might do. Supportive psycotherapy and counselling can be that directive. When I worked with brain damaged patients I had no difficulty telling them to brush their teeth for instance or get a lawyer or take the medication. I didn't ask them the meaning of tooth paste and I didn't discuss their cognitive attitudes and distortions. Some of them didn't remember what I told them the week before so my work was literally finding the most important issues and focusing on that.
This indeed was counselling but ironically I learned the 'techniques' from 'Focal" Psychoanalytic Therapy which I'd learned from Sifneos and Malan. Only I actually applied it to developping strategies for team approaches to working with brain damaged individuals. Rather than having them being told a dozen things we would reduce our counselling efforts to gaining success in a few areas because success begets success.
I consider my work in Addiction Psychiatry to have been highly benefited by my learning in "Focal" therapy. If a person can do such a simply discrete task as stopping taking a needle with heroin in it and instead take their opiate by mouth as methadone maintenance therapy it's not surprising to see these same individuals learning all manner of complex self care matters and societal normals later. Too often the 'focus' of therapy is really off and horrendous effort and resources are squandered. I'm cynical enough to think that the people getting paid for the problem aren't obligated to find a solution so are very happy to continue appearing to do good while 'enabling'. These' do gooders are painful to say the least. Freud followed by Kernberg and Kohut said that alcoholics were untreatable with insight psychotherapy. Motivationa therapy and 12 step facilitation therapy both cornerstones of addiction psychiatry, unlike general psychiatry, take a very clear position on whether the addiction is good or bad.
Like Forensic Psychiatry Adddiction Psychiatry in contrast to traditional Psychoanalysis takes a position on abuse of heroin and cocaine. They are not good to the Addiction Psychiatrist as murder and theft are not good to a Forensic Psychiatrist. In contrast I remember in residency training discussing with a psychoanalyst in group analytic training a patient seeing a colleague, the patient being a cocaine abuser, thief and enforcer, and the trainee continuing to ask them the 'meaning' of their theft and violence all the while the community the patient lived in was ripped off and violently assaulted. I was not terribly impressed by the popular psychiatrist playing psychiatrist to the Sopranos.
As an aside I have been the psychiatrist to many people who had committed criminal acts such as murders who weren't caught or even in war did horrible things which they later saw me about. I was trained that I could not continue to see these people and thereby implicitly 'validate' their behaviour if it were to be ongoing. In the classic Tarasoff case the psychiatrists confidential responsibility to the patient and the responsibility to the patient alone is overriden by obligation to the community and need to protect specifc targets. Further I always discussed such cases with senior colleagues so that i was not manipulated by psychopaths and sociopaths as the Soprano psychiatrist was. In fairness to this actress , she too sought colleagues for advise and in many ways her performance deserved the award she was given by the American Psychiatry Association as it exemplified the true complexity of modern psychotherapy.
Every day there are advances in our understanding of mental illness and how best to apply therapies and which therapies are most likely to work. For example Cocaine and sex addiction commonly go hand in hand. All efforts to treat the sex addiction without treating the cocaine addiction are likely to fail. This has been demonstrated ad infinitum. Interesting 75% of the those who had sex addiction and cocaine addiction, if only they stop their cocaine addiction will hot have evidence of sex addiction a year later.
Counselling and supportive psychotherapy and indeed 12 step facilitation involved 'self disclosure'. I enjoyed working with obstetricians who'd tell their patients 'when I had my baby I found breast feeding helped stop the colic." Pediatricians commonly tell parents what they used with their kids and counsellors often recommend products they've found beneficial. Self disclosure is not used in psychoanalysis. It's foundational though in 12 step facilitation therapy. Indeed a psychoanalytic psychotherapist who moved into addiction psychotherapy was only able to get success when he learned to "share' with his addicts and alcoholics that he himself had been an addict to cigarettes and had had great difficulty overcoming his own addiction. Something about the field of addiction with it's underlying anti authoritarianism and long history of hearing 'advice' from 'do gooders' and those who are 'superior humans' causes patients to shut off anything from anyone who doesn't meet them half way.
Indeed Christian psychotherapy as well and pastoral counselling are distinctly different from the 'Psycho educational" counselling model used as a mainstay of psychopharmacological therapy. In traditional psychoanalytic psychotherapy of the Freudian model the therapist was actually fairly paternalistic but having to go through therapy themselves was 'non judgemental' and usually humbler. One of my favourite Jewish Psychoanalysts was famous for saying 'we all must find the 'eichman' within because he was trained in the non paranoid model of humanity in which we're half good and half bad and there but for the grace of god go I. The Christian and Pastoral Counselling models see patients as 'sinners" ie those who have 'fallen from the Way' but we are all 'sinners' and we all 'fall' at different times .This is the nature of humanity. In the psycho educational model and the pharmacological model, I am okay and you are not okay. I am the doctor and your brain, mind, being are broken and I will 'fix' you wilth a "pill' with "shock" therapy or even 'neurosurgery'.
The Transactional Analysis folk summarized these various therapies as I'm Okay, You're Not or I'm Not Okay, You're Not Okay but together We Can Be Okay. In the Jungian psychoanayltic model we are all on a journey and the therapist is just a little further ahead and acts like a guide. This notion of a guide is common in the counselling models that stem from First Nations roots.
Lawyers are decidely counsellors and commonly called such. Advocates too.
Family physicians have long been trained in these more conscious therapies as well as the standard psycho educational model which every surgeon must learn if only to explain to patient's why he plans to cut off their legs.
As a family physician in the country, the city and the far north, working within my own culture and cross culturally and with individuals, families and communities I had extensive experience and formal and informal training in counselling and Supportive Psychotherapy. Indeed supportive psychotherapy seemed to be the mainstay of hospital care in psychiatry whenever I worked in hospital settings. One must establish rapport, build therapeutic alliance, learn a common language and common symbols and share information and help change behaviour or thinking and facilitate progress or at very least acceptance.
I trained for a week workshop with Elizabeth Kubla Ross, author of Death and Dying. Her whole work as a psychiatrist was a very elegant and refined form of supportive psychotherapy. To see her working with a dying patient was to watch a ballerina doing swan lake. She was a truly brilliant and loving psychotherapist but she didn't tolerate foolish colleagues well. Probably that had to do with her efficient Swiss background. I am very thankful that I have had the teachers I've had.
I still do Grief Counselling occasionally, last year having at least a dozen such cases, and this is not a place or time for Psychoanalytic Therapy perse or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Supportive therapy is, to my mind, the best form of therapy for grief work. It's also well documented in assisting people with straightforward psychosomatic difficulties that cause time off work. Commonly 'stress therapists' and 'personal coaches' etc use alot of the techniques of Supportive Therapy.
They include things like journalling, and tracking an illness, monitoring, using score sheets, and all manner of pen and paper techniques. I've even used gold stars on calendars which I learned in child psychotherapy with great success working with adults. All manner of Reinforrcement scheduling is part of the repetoire of counselling.
And generally where there is a 'positive transference" , ie very good rapport and the patient is highly motivated, young, educated, attractive and affluent these techniques work well. They are severely limitted where there are 'negative transferences' and where there are unconscious resistances to getting well. Where there is incongurence, ie patient says they want one thing but do the other the problem is usually beyond the level at which counselling is by itself sufficient. In the more major psychiatric illnesses other and more specific psychotherapies have been developped to deal with the more resistant conditions. That said, 'supportive therapy and counselling is usually a part of even the greatest 'purists' repetoire.

The Mighty Judgement

2011-12-31T19:46:00.001-08:00

I am reading Philip Slayton's "Mighty Judgement, How the Supreme Court of Canada Runs Your Life." I'm only a third or less into it and enjoying every 'revelation.' I was immediately taken by the first chapter beginning with a discussion of Dugald Christie. He's a BC Lawyer. He burnt his robes on the stairs of the Supreme Court in protest that the poor of Canada were no longer able to access the law. He was killed in a hit and run on his way to protest again, having said that only the rich in Canada have access to the law.
Philip Slayton's book explains how Canada changed from a democracy to what I've called a "Legal Theocracy". He uses terms like "Lawyer Aristocrats".
I wouldn't have taken any interest in the subject because my own experience with Canadian judges had been positive. I've met many. Indeed having shaken hands with three Prime Ministers and spent an afternoon with one I've been more than blessed in my access to powers that be. In the US I enjoyed lunching with judges and have been thoroughly impressed with how bright and knowledgeable judges in general were.
In contrast to most physicians I've actually learned to admired lawyers because too often I've seen or been involved in horrendous abuses of power. Indeed the only judge I'd not appreciated was the fellow whose court room, lawyer Jack Cram called "Nazi". I had met one poor fellow who was still working with early dementia and then I met a truly pompous fellow whose arrogance and self importance seemed the stuff of Dickens novels and not what we'd expect in a Post Modern scientific world.
I respect authority. As a Christian I worship a servant king. Dugald Christie and I attended church together. He convinced me to do pro bono work having established pro bono services in the BC jails. I'd ride with him to jail and go in to see prisoners who from all I gathered had been poorly served by a justice system I had come to believe in.
I recently saw a Corruption Index from the late 90's showing Canada as number 6th in the least corrupt of nations. A transparency index showed it as one of the most open of societies.
Yet Philip Slayton says that judges are not this way inclined. They tend to be private and resist media scrutiny. Yet they are very much public political figures and we know a great deal more about the obviously less elite members of Cabinet. There is an exception. The present Chief Justice of Canada, Beverly McLaughlan has made "transparency" of the courts one of her constant public themes. This is pertinent as BC courts are challenged to televise the procedings for the recent hockey riots and all manner of arguments were raised for 'closed doors". I'm not sure about the Supreme Court, only a third of the way into Slayton's book, but Beverly McLaughlan already had my vote and might certainly as well be elected were she not appointed.
A decade or more ago a lawyer told me she'd left 'corporate law' because she said "I couldn't be a woman and a lawyer'. Today the BC Law Society has revealed that 2/3's of women graduating as lawyers leave law. One might naturally think that these little women go off to have babies with big powerful rich male lawyers except that female doctors who have far more onerous training and experience seem to stay in medicine. Gender counted in the Supreme Court as Slayton explains in Mighty Judgement. These ultra powerful political figures are 'appointed', 'powerful', 'middle class', 'lawyers', and have predominantly a white male bias.
An older male friend said "I left corporate law because I couldn't be a Christian and a lawyer.....I still can be a Christian and a lawyer but I'm not sure if I'll be able to say that for much longer."
Isn't that frightening? These are not nobodys but indeed the cream of society.

I was thoroughly terrified by the judge I encountered. He acted as one truly above the law or at least as a law unto himself.
Retired law professor, Robert Martin wrote an 'incendiary book called "The Most Dangerous Branch; How the Supreme Court of Canada Has Undermined Our Law and our Democracy." I never heard of the book. So I'm thankful that a PHD Political Science student gave me Phillip Slayton's "The Mighty Judgement" after I told her I'd heard an excellent CBC review of this book. Phillip Slayton's book is superbly referenced and far easier to read than anything legally written in the last decade, despite the call for 'transparency'.
Phillp Slayton says it's time for reform. It's certainly time that Canadians wake up. Given what a great place Canada is and how I personally believe most of our judges, the Supreme Court included are a godsend, having seen the one or two bad apples in the barrell, I must admit it's time for review. Dugald Christie was one of the brightest and finest men I've ever known. He wasn't the sort to burn his robes on the Supreme Court stairs. People might expect me to douse myself with gasoline and set myself on fire for some such cause, saying oh, that's just Bill being a drama queen. No one would have said that of Dugald. He was a very serious Christian and very deep thinker. I was touched to know him.
I would recommend this book to all Canadians if only for this paragraph: "Post 1982 constitutional law has had a vast effect on our country. In 1988 the Morgetanler decision invalidated Canada's abortion laws. Delagamunkus in 1997, determined the extent of Aboriginal Title. The 2004 Amselem case decided that the state cannot in any way regulate personal religious belief, however eccentric. The Same-Sex Marriage Reference, also 2004 determined that the federal government can change the definition of marriage and give gays and lesbians the legal right to marry. Chaoulli, in 2005 struck down a Quebec law banning private medical insurance and changed the shape of Canada's health care system. In 2005, Labay decided that group sex at a commercial club was not indecent.' p13 Mighty Judgement.
Those who know me well would know I'm in favour of some of these decisions but what I ask is whether having things the way I want them is worth jeopardizing democracy. The sad part of that 'ends justifies the means' argument is that it can easily swing the other way. There's immense power in these few individuals. These examples reflect it. What if the next batch of Supreme Court judges include a couple of bad apples?
I turn 60 this year and realized as I talked to a judge my age, with less education than I and much less broad based experience that he considered himself vastly superior to me and was extremely superior in a way I'd not encountered since grade school. What if such a man got on the Supreme Court? Would he care for the experience of majority of Canadians who Dugald Christie said were no longer of importance to the courts of Canada?
Should we not ensure that Canada remains least corrupt and most transparent of countrie?. I'm reading Phillip Slayton's book because I want the good guy judges to prevail. I think we have to pay close attention to Chief Justice Beverly Mclachlan. She wants transparency in the courts. She must have a very good reason. Phillip Slayton's book is a good start because like me Phillip Slayton respect the law , the lawyers and the judges collectively we have today.

Ron Hay, Photographer

2011-12-29T22:05:00.001-08:00

My older brother, Ron is a photographer. He's also a husband, father and worked many years raising his family working in the federal government ensuring that Canadians had safe health care. After a science degree at University of Manitoba and a stint as a food and food production inspector he moved on to Ottawa. I think my family was glad because his research into 'acceptable amounts of rat droppings' in local restaurants and such had turned the family off eating out.
He'd always taken pictures. A great love of our father's was making home movies so it was no surprise that the sons would take an interest in visual representation. Now Ron's son, Graeme, is a movie maker as well. Check It Out Films. Having been my high school year book photographer I tend to carry a camera with me still. Ron on the other hand has taken mere picture taking and recording to a whole other level. When I visit Ottawa I am simply amazed at the quality of his photographs and their originality. It's not surprising that he has won awards, had his photographs chosen for museums and travel books such as Frommers. I especially like his nature photography given our family love for the outdoors. That said Ron's pictures of lights and cities and people are equally rivetting.
I personally get a camera and use it. Ron on the other hand has umpteen lens, knows every facet of lighting and colour and studies subjects scientifically and late into the night. He was much like this when we were kids, fascinated by science and physics, intrigued by mechanics, working on cars with Dad. Both he and his son love to talk about comparisons of f stops with different lens and the pros and cons of different shutter speeds. I'm generally happy with my iphone camera and usually only on a specific 'photography outing" carry along by Nikon digital SLR and even then think the lens are way too heavy and bulky. I prefer a camera that fits in my shirt pocket. I can't even remember what number and letter my Nikon is while Ron will ream off the pros and cons of different pro d series of Nikon and compare them with Canons listing the advantages of each. He also never leaves home without a camera and more often than not has a veritble back pack of cameras and lens slung over his shoulder.
He's also in an international association with other photographers with similiar interests and travels around the world meeting and discussing the arcane world of digital photography. Basically he's a camera geek.
This last trip to Ottawa I enjoyed snapping his picture. Photographers sometimes like to hide behind their cameras so it's fun to expose them. I'm also huge fan of his blog too. (http://www.megapixeltravel.com/)
Often he takes our father out on his photography jaunts. Dad, has macular degeneration so Ron ha taken to blowing up his pictures to allow Dad to enjoy his nature pictures which please Dad immensely. This Christmas he had me out photographing deer, chickadees and red breasted nuthatches. As always I had a heck of a good time. Oh yea, I used my Iphone 4S to take my pictures. Note Iphone 4S, not just an 'iphone".

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

2011-12-29T21:16:00.001-08:00

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, CBT, is not new. It was developed by Aaron Beck. I did 6 months of formal weekly training in this psychotherapy approach in my psychiatry residency in the mid 1980's. At that time it was not a standard part of the psychiatry residency. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy was the dominant form of therapy in my training program. CBT training was an 'elective' then whereas today it's fairly mainstream.
The principal behind CBT is that 'mood disorders' and other psychiatric dysfunctional states are a product of 'cognitive' internal process. Simplified it says 'we feel what we think and behave what we feel.' Therefore if you change your 'thinking' then feeling and behaviour will change accordingly. Though the actual techniques that Beck developped were fairly original the idea of the effect of thinking on mood and behaviour was in fact ancient. It's part of the standard teaching of Christianity and Buddhist so heralds back thousands of years. Beck himself acknowledged the origins of his work in the Stoic philosophers of the ancient world. In psychology 'positive thinking' therapy had turn of the century application in the early hypnotists proponents. Mesner's 'Everyday in everyway I'm getting better and better" self affirmation may as well have been early CBT.
Beck's real genius was in the development of a particular strategy of positive thinking and teaching of this that could be replicated and reproduced to allow for scientific study of the basic premise. His methodology was such that with CBT alone there was an approximate 75% cure in the treatment of depression in a roughly a few months.. Without treatment depressions commonly lasted a year. CBT was equal then to the response rates of patients treated with antidepressant medications. When the two forms of treatment were combined the response was enhanced even more.
In contrast to psychoanalytic psychotherapy which on a weekly basis similiarly administered resulted in relatively equivalent response rates, practitioners in CBT could be trained in shorter periods of time with great effectiveness. My own training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy as a psychiatrist took place over 4 years and was quite intensive whereas I learned CBT in a matter of months. Further CBT could be given to groups whereas psychoanalytic therapy was much more labour intensive and effective one on one. Even better CBT could be self administered. Burns, a student of Aaron Beck, wrote the best seller 'Feeling Good' which today still stands as a terrific text for patients to be given suffering from mood disorders.
Being relatively cheap and easy to learn, it has also leant itself to being used as part of research, it's value shown to be beneficial far beyond just 'depression' and having benefit in anxiety disorders, thought disorders, and addictive processes.
In contrast to psychoanalytic therapy that worked to 'weed' out misinformation acquired in childhood, CBT focussed on the 'present' and didn't really consider it that important how a person had become 'misinformed' about how to think effectively.
For example 'catastrophizing', is seen as a 'cognitive distortion' in CBT. It is recognised that people who tend to catastrophise in crisis are being 'irrational' and less 'effective'. Individually, with a therapist or in a group one learns to 'identify' this trait, see it , in fact, as an 'error' and bypass it or work around it. The techniques that Dr. Beck developped for this included 'talking back' to the 'misinformation'. As an example, "I don't get paid today because the mail doesn't arrive, I think, I'm not going to be able to pay the rent and am going to be homeless." Instead I should think, 'it's not the end of the world', I will contact the people who expect me to pay them that day and advise them that the mail has been delayed and I will pay them tomorrow. " This is 'normal reality' unless one is dealing with the mafia or government beaurocrats. Government beaurocrats actually respond humanly if you give them the same information in triplicate with a witness of a lawyer or doctor or prime minister as notary. The world doesn't need to end.
Interestingly these 'irrational tendencies' were common and formed the basis of the development of the 'fallacies' in the study of 'logic'. Beck's contribution was to simplify these 'fallacies' for the lay person, counselloers,r psychologists and others by putting a memorable spin on them. An example from Dr. Burn's list of Cognitive Distoritions in Feeling Good was 'disqualifying the positive". In this situation the person says it doesn't matter if I have the money in the bank to cover the rent, I didn't get the cheque in the mail so I'm going to be homeless. The nature of the focus here is to 'disqualify' the assets one has.
My mother used to say 'count your blessings' because frankly depressed and angry people commonly focus on the negatives and as long as they do commonly create a 'self fulfilling' prophecy. "CBT has been used in sports training athletes not to 'psych themselves out' but rather to 'psych themselves up'
Ironically, the business psychology world had been using many variations on CBT in their 'inspirational' talks and 'motivational' sales training. If anything the academic world in this case was commonly playing catch up to the business world and refining what worked. Scientific study has proven what often common sense already knew.
Maslow, developped the term 'self actualization' in his study of highly successful people. He wasn't a CBT therapist but rather his approach was to study 'well people' and then suggest that the very strategies that made them well be applied to helping the sick. Freud had originally in the early years of the study of mental illness only treated 'sick' people and learned their differences. Today therapists have learned many 'effective' ways of thinking from those leaders in society and are taking these strategies into psychiatry. Not surprisingly Thessalonians of the New Testatment of the Bible had CBT recommendations telling people to 'think on positive things'.
In addiction work Hal Morley, now deceased, always encouraged an 'attitude of gratitude'. He said with an 'attitude of gratitude' one simply could not remain depressed and negative.
In CBT work the relationship with the 'client' or 'patient' is much more like a 'teacher' student relationship than the traditional psychoanalytic psychotherapy relationship where transference and counter transference, the 'process' and the 'relationship' itself were the focus of therapy. In CBT patients are given 'home work.' They are encouraged to 'journal' and it's accepted that 'success' in therapy is no different than one would expect for 'success' in geometry'. The more one does, the better one gets at 'changing' one's negative thinking to 'positive thinking' and 'purposeful and effective' living.
I commonly ask patients with depression to avoid daily news since it's commonly negative and fear mongering. In this way I'm not acting at all like a traditional psychoanalytic psychotherapist but am being very directive and drawing from my experience as a family physician addressing allergies in children. In that world I'd remove those things that caused sneezing and today in the process of CBT I help the patient remove daily news for instance from their daily repetoire and not uncommonly see patient's moods improve immediately. I also tell the depressed to stop listening Sylvia Plath. An analytically oriented session in constrast would encourage a patient to reflect on the meaning of their listening to, say Kurt Cobain, when they were insisting they wanted to live not die. I might simply tell a person to listen to Bach or Sarah McLaughlan or Bare Naked Ladies.
Going over a particular stress we would look at what the person was thinking and how they could think more effectively. The questions asked are 'what could you have done differently? What would you have liked to have said." What were you thinking?. What would be a better way of thinking given those events?."
Indeed in the Christian community there seems to be a bit of CBT going on when people ask 'What Would Jesus Think/Say/or Do?"
CBT has been called physiotherapy for the mind because it's done in much a way as a person with a physical injury goes to a physical therapist to learn how to walk or move an arm in recovery. In CBT people are trained to think differently about situations, people and relationships. Often pen and paper examples are used much as teachers do in the class room. In group therapy, examples of difficulty are shared and other members are asked how one could think better about such an experience.
It's not 'rocket science'. It's common sense, mostly. However in day to day reality people rarely are exposed to what others are thinking. They just see that a person is 'acting' poorly and rarely know how 'odd' and 'different' their thinking may be.
As CBT therapists can themselves 'think' their 'thinking' is 'superior' and come across unknowingly as terribly arrogant, I encourage everyone who has studied CBT to read Job in the Old Testament. Job is a character who is blameless, thinks well indeed, and accurately but his friends faced with his difficulties do their own version of CBT without any benefit and far too much judgement and arrogance.
That said, CBT is a tremendous asset for anyone and worth the learning. There are superior therapies and ones which are better for specific conditions and individualized therapy is usually better than any of the 'off the rack' therapies. I'm an 'eclectic psychotherapist' so I've been formally trained in several of the major modalities of psychotherapy so am least at risk of the criticism of 'give a boy a hammer and everything is a nail." That said I'm very thankful for my training CBT a quarter century ago and the advances I've acquired in this modality over the intervening years. I doubt a day goes by I don't get to use some aspect of this therapy.
For anyone interested in CBT I strongly recommend Feeling Good, by Dr. Burns. I still remains a classic and can often be bought cheaply at a second hand store. The first copy written circa 1980 was probably better than later editions anyway. It's bright yellow, like sunshine. Go Figure!

Chrysler 200

2011-12-27T12:11:00.001-08:00

I like renting vehicles when I'm travelling, not just for the convenience of transportation, but because it allows me to truly test drive a vehicle I might one day wish to own. That was the case with my Harley Davidson , Electra Glyde. I rented it first in Boston then later in Texas. A year later I bought one at Trev Deely, Vancouver. I
was fortunate on this trip to visit my father in Ottawa to get a Chrysler 200 from Alamo car rental. All I specified was a small or mid sizer car easy to park with trunk room sufficient for a wheel chair and walker. They gave me the sleek Chrysler 200. 4 door, automatic, with roomy trunk, it was aerodynamically designed for gas mileage efficiency. A really pretty car. What struck me at first though was the visibility. Something about the shape and fit of the front windshield made for increased visibility. The console was elegant. At night there was just enough light up front and not too much. Everything was accessible and visible. Classy really. I liked the key fob for it's feature that the car could be started from inside. A must in winter weather with snow on the ground and flurries of snow in the air. It came with heated seats too. Easy to operate radio too. So just sitting in the car with my luggage in the trunk which would hold Dad's walker well, was a pleasure.
Driving was even better. I was seated low to the road and felt like I did in my old mustang. It was sporty. Great pick up and go. And most important superb breaking in slush and ice. I drove it for 5 days and loved it. So did my father and brother who rode with me. My brother, used to a Toyota or Volvo, liked it well enough driving it on an icy slushy sleet and snow morning when I thought his experience of Ottawa road conditions would be superior to mine. Dad appeciated my older brother driving knowing too well of my preference for speed and maneuverability. The Chrysler certainly was maneuverable. It parked superbly too.
So it was indeed with regret that I left it at Alamo in Ottawa to return to Vancouver. I'd certainly be glad to own one.

Dad, 93, Christmas 2011

2011-12-27T12:10:00.001-08:00

Dad developed a severe lung infection that required hospitalization and chest tubes late fall. He was even quarantined for a bit when they worried he might have TB. With the excellent medical and nursing care at the Queensway Carleton Hospital he revived and was able return to his assisted living home, Stonehaven Manor.
My brother and I were in close contact during this time. I even phoned his doctors and was reassured they were indeed the best, doing all I could hope for. When he was discharged he wasn't fully recovered by any means, improved from before, and stable, but suffering from inactivity of illness, stress and the loneliness of modern hospitals. Talking to him I was concerned.
Normally I'd fly out to visit after Christmas because with nephews, their friends and Adell's family he has a lot of stimulation already then. This year though, talking to him ,I was concerned he might well not rally and this might well be our last Christmas together. My brother and I decided a family Christmas everyone together would perhaps be best than our usual staggering of the winter visit.
Unfortunately we were told that Westjet wasn't allowing pets to travel, so Gilbert, my cockapoo, who Dad so loves, wouldn't be allowed to come. I was told all the the airlines had a Christmas policy excluding pets. As it turned out Westjet told me later they would have allowed me to take the little guy as carryon but they weren't allowing animals to travel down below.
Gilbert rallies Dad. His enthusiasm for life is infectious. Last year Gilbert jumped on his lap, licked his face and ears and the two of them wrestled. Dad always had dogs. We grew up with dogs. Now Gilbert would have to remain in Vancouver while I went off to Ottawa. Since I often depend on Gilbert to rally me I was disheartened.
Asked I would have Dad was 92 but he corrected me this trip telling me he was 93. "No wonder you fell old, " I told him. "I thought you were only 92." Ron told me he'd begun to get better in the week before I arrived. He'd lost 40 lbs recently but was beginning to eat again. He'd had such difficulty getting out of bed, walking with breathing difficulties, arthritis and problems remembering where he was going, all one could do was admire him.
One of the fellows who he eats breakfast with daily, told me, "Your dad is a tough one, after all he's gone through this fall." I could only agree. The man telling me this had just got out of hospital that week after a heart attack himself. I told him Prince Phillip just had a heart attack too so maybe he was now "related' to the Royals. He was French Canadian and replied, "I don't care for the Royals." Late 80's he was the youngest at Dad's breakfast table.
When I got to Stonehaven Manor, I was just glad to see Dad sitting up in the festively decorated lounge. He has macular degeneration and didn't recognise me. He usually calls me by my brother's name but even with cues this time he had difficulty identifying me as his son. Then he knew me. Then he beamed that I'd come to visit. I've friends who dutifully visit their parents who have long forgotten them in their disease and dying. I felt how they must feel and thanked God that Dad's mind was still intact. I felt so good to be recognised by my father.
My brother Ron is with him every week taking him on outings every day or so. Stonehaven Manor is an excellent place with lovely facilities, white table cloth dining, great food, variety, entertainment in the evenings, bus outings, near by restaurants and parks. Dad's loved being there these last 4 years making many friends some of who have passed away. He always hushes his voice when he mentions the deceased.
Ron and I've enjoyed the staff. Administrations have changed but mostly the wholesome family oriented flavour that first attracted Adell to this place has remained. When Mom died in Winnipeg Ron and Adell accepted it would be best for Dad to move to Ottawa. Ron was retired while I was still working more than full time and living on a sailboat. The nephews could visit Dad in Ottawa as well, and Adell whose done so much for him. I feel guilty at a distance and love the care my brother and sister in law extend to my Dad, our Dad. I make a point of calling every week or more, and flying out to visit each season. I should do more.
Ron and I got Dad out for lunch the next day. We got him out to a mall figuring the hustle and bustle of frenzied last minute Christmas consumer shopping world would do him good. He insisted we get Adell a present and he just happened to need a rest beside a jeweller. The lady said she thought Adell would enjoy the emerald necklace. Dad was so pleased. "She does so much for me and everybody else," he said.
Over the next few days we had him over to Ron's place for Christmas turkey dinner and Christmas present openings. After a delicious Christmas turkey dinner at Stonehaven and another at Ron and Adell's, Ron figured we had stopped his weight loss and maybe given back a couple of pounds of all he'd lost. I'd shot a deer this fall and had brought a venison roast figuring that would perk his appetite. Adell did the roast to perfection in the oven and sure enough Dad was delighted to have venison again. "I used to shoot a deer for food every year," he reminisced, telling me hunting stories I'd first heard in childhood. Dad then reminisced about Mom and trips they'd taken. Dad shared how he missed going to church this fall, his illness and the cold weather stopping him from attending the Anglican church down the way.
"I feel useless," he said. "I can't see anything, I can't do anything. I don't think I'm going to make it. " he told us. It was apparent that Dad's negativity with his brush with death this fall was wearing on my optimisitic brother. Ron's always been energetic, outgoing, a natural leader, and one who rallies people. Dad wasn't having any of it when we took him to the park for a walk. "I can't walk, " he said, "My legs are useless and I can't get my breath." We'd just walked him to Macdonalds and he'd done just fine, complaining all the way mind you.
"You don't think about all the bullets you've fire but concentrate on the ones you've still got in your gun," I said,
"You can still eat and sleep and be with your family." Encouraging Dad to look at the positive I remembered them doing the same for me after I'd lost games in sports. What goes around comes around.
"Yes, that's true," he responded. He seemed to like the answer. "Count your blessings," I said wondering how many times I'd heard my Baptist mother say that to me.
When we were younger Dad had been the heart of enthusiasm. He was forever planning adventures, taking us on cross country car trips, camping and boating, always excited about people and things. Now we had to be there for him. He started out farming and logging with his father before joining the RCAF for WWII. After the war he worked as a millwright before completing his engineering. Working for Mathews Conveyours he was in charge of projects supervising a hundred and fifty men at a time. Those men he worked with I knew, told me, my father was a good man. It was years later I learned that 'good men' weren't that easy to come by, especially in those you had to work for. In his spare time, which he didn't have much of, he loved working on boats, cars, trucks and machines, He had the best of friends. An avid fisherman and hunter, he loved the outdoors. Most of all he loved mom and he loved his family.
Now ,h
e's afraid of falling down. Sat down on the floor when I was with him mistaking the space between the table and couch as a chair. I tried to catch him but all I could do was help him get up. Ill health can be depressing. He's lost weight and had lost his appetite but that's to be suspected with elderly people after major hospitalizations. Ron, with the years of training as a parent of three boys , him a hamburger at Macdonald's even when he said he wasn't hungry. He ate it all and said, "that was pretty good." I can see it's hard on Ron, parenting his parent.
Adell's cooking also got through to him and he even had the hot cherry pie with ice cream he'd insisted he couldn't eat. I loved my brother and his family seeing how much love they give Dad. He wouldn't be alive today were it not for Ron and their love.

When it came time to leave I told Dad that I'd be back in the spring with Gilbert. "I miss that little rascal," he said. I know, I thought, and wished I'd had him with me to spark Dad even more. But with his nephews and Adell fawning over him over the holidays and Ron and me prodding him to participate he really had rallied, nonetheless.

He had pedal edema and shortness of breath in the evening with some delirium as well. Watching him carefully I know the staff probably put that down to dementia. It's hard to sort these things out but I was glad to talk with the nurse and ask her to mention this to the doctor. I told her how I was really impressed but thought he might benefit from some medicine " tweaking" so he'd be less confused and disoriented in the evening. She'll mention it to the visitting doctor. He'll do what is right with the observations I've made. Being a physician I certainly didn't want to tell him what to do. But blood work is usually done in the morning and potassium abnormalities might show up in the night. He's on some potent meds that certainly can cause electrolyte imbalance and the geriatric patients are like babies when it comes to mental process and electrolyte balance. Even a fever can thrown them into another dimension. Really pleasant caring staff make all the difference..
But like all staff in medicine these days, over worked ,over stretched and caring for a lot more fragile or complicated and older population than days gone by. I never see the 'harried' looks I see in health care in general beurocratic offices so just feel that in addition to the constant proximity to diseasea and death the staff are working with restrictions and shortages that others can't imagine.
"I"ll be back in the spring with Gilbert," I told Dad hugging his frail body. It was the best Christmas I've known since Mom passed over. .

Nuba Restaurant, Vancouver

2011-12-22T12:09:00.000-08:00

Aim, who works part time as my assistant when she's not teaching university or writing international columns on world affairs, picked Nuba for our Christmas office party.
8 people were there. Great company. Beautiful intelligent women and handsome non belligerent men.
Nuba on Hastings at Cambie was packed. It was Wednesday night and everyone seemed in that 25 to 45 affluent with it set. A few older guys like me were dotted about here and there but definitely not a grey carpet shiny dome place by any means. Alot of conversation but none of that 'loud' crowd. Very New York, Parisian eatery atmosphere. Surprisingly fluid.
The hostess was helpful and the waitress was a delight. Lots of suggestions. Interesting and novel drinks and food. By group consensus we went with the group platter with individual items. A wide range of exotically prepared Lebanese delights, mostly vegan, were to be shared , with wedges of bread for convenient nibble and bite or toff amounts. In addition everyone got to choose a personal kabob or something similar. I had a delicious lamb kabob while I noticed others had chicken and shrimp.. The Lebanese are known for their sea food but lamb is what I like best. If I say so myself, a very good choice.
But the communal platter with hummus spreads, and greens and just a whole boodle of tasty bits, more than enough for everyone, was the most fun. Everyone was sampling and comparing. Aim commented on the cultural aspects of food at one point with her and Joanne discussing how in Asian culture the discussion of food in general while eating food in particular was so much part of the process. Mark who had travelled the world over shared insights into food by comparison and actually had pictures in his iphone of recent dishes he'd enjoyed on his latest international flights.
Everyone was sharing stories as well. The laughter was infectious. After something Chris or Phil said we were all laughing and I wondered if we were being 'loud'. Laura or Elizabeth was telling a story when I realized every other table was bursting out with intermittent laughter too.. Some of it was the Christmas Season for sure but I really did think something about the decor, the staff, the way the tables were dispersed and the food just brought out the best in people.
Eventually we all seemed to slow down then stopped eating Even the occasional picking came to an end as we all sat happily sated.. The waitress appeared, asked if we wanted more, we were fine, the bill appeared and was extremely reasonable, not at all a burden by any means, given the luxury of the repast.
Then we were collectively mobilizing and saying fair wells and holiday well wishes outside across from the Victory Memorial Park on Hastings.
I really can't remember a group dining experience I more enjoyed in recent years. I've never had such an enjoyable work and staff outing, by any means.
Nuba seemed just perfect for a group function though I imagine all those couples who were interspersed among the larger tables might well go away ad say it was just right for them as well.

Waldorf Hotel, Vancouver - Brunch

2011-12-18T23:31:00.001-08:00

It was only a week or two back when I posted pictures of Laura and I enjoying brunch on facebook. We bemoaned that the place we'd gone after church was closing. Laura's friend , Tracy, came back, 'the best Mexican breakfast is at the Waldorf' . We rememberd the Waldorf as a bar. "She and her husband have been all over the world. I'm pretty sure they would know a good breakfast place when they found one."
So it was the Tikki Room at the Waldorf for Laura and I today after church. Gilbert protected the car. Sure enough the atmosphere was fantastic. The waitresses were delightful. Great energy. And the Rancho Huervos were out of this world. Best I've had in Canada. I even ordered them in Spanish thanks to my Simon Frazer spanish class. We loved it. The coffee was perfect too.
They won't have brunch again until the first week of January. Feliz Navidad.
It was fun. Thank you, Tracy!

Christmas Presence - Pacific Theatre-Dec182011

2011-12-18T23:12:00.001-08:00

http://www.pacifictheatre.com
It was good to be at Christmas Presence again. I've gone annually many years and never been disappointed. The musicians volunteer. There are actors and actresses, skits, readings and poems. It's about Advent and the Coming of the King. Christmas. Mary and the Manger. Jesus the Baby. Wisemen. All the Christmas Story told in emotions more than words. Songs of love and celebration. Witty tales of homespun lore. Stories told of contrasts between Christmas and consumerism. Tonight there was even the hilarity of Santa seen through the eyes of Mulder and Skully. If you visit the site you can see all who were there, keyboards, double drums, banjo, stand up bass, guitars. Sheree Plett, Peter La Grand, Jeremy Eisenhower, Nelson Boschnan Trio. Colin Stewart. Dwayne Harder. I bought those CD's on the table after the show so suspect these were among those playing. I don't know if they all were there. Everyone who came to play, to act, to perform arrived this evening and the consumate professionalism was amazing. Touched by grace no doubt. Thanks to all who played and came. Each year's a celebration of the mystery. A full house

St. James Anglican Church, Vancouver, Dec. 18, 2011 - 4th Advent Sunday

2011-12-18T18:38:00.001-08:00

"You know we'd be able to make it to church on time if we skipped our morning baths and showers," I told her.
"I'm not going to do that. I feel awful when I'm not clean." she replied.
"But we're already washed," I reminded her. Referring to our baptisms, of course. That which differentiated us from the 'unwashed".
"I'm still not going to church dirty," she answered
"What's the use of confession then" I said. She's the kind of girl who cleans up before the cleaning lady comes whereas I'm more likely to throw a bachelor party the night before the cleaners are due.
We both were happty to arrive in time for the sermon by Father Mark Greenaway-Robbins. With my Baptist background, church is all about the sermon. That and the gospel singing and bible readings, of course. Father Mark though doesn't beat us up with descriptions of hellfire and damnation so I'm never really sure I've heard a sermon. Growing up in an evangelical Baptist congregation I remember well the minister frothing at the mouth and painting glorious pictures of hell in such detail my father wondered if he knew more of that place than the destination where we were supposed to be heading.
Father Mark's sermons are mostly inspiring, informative and transcendent. He's even amusing at times. My friend, Laura likes his sermons immensely but given her Catholic background, she's only there for the wafer, if the truth be told. Just give a Catholic the body of Christ and they'd be happy. If ever the Catholics and Jehovah Witnesses got together they'd have drive through wafer's for sure to serve the need of busy Christians belonging to the 'wealth and health' evangelical factions.
St. James is afar more traditional Anglo Catholic. Father Mark's sermon touched on trust in God wisdom and love. Father Mark actually talked about the 'communion of saints' from the creed and prayer to Mary. Quite revolutionary thoughts for protestants but well in the mainstream of the mystical meditation revival in today's church. Televangelists can go on and on about prayer such that Christians decades back had to go to India to learn about meditation. Today the 'relationship with God' is central to the spiritual journney of Christians. We gather together in church to share peace. Yet our real spiritual journeys are in the work weeks between these oasis of gathering in the desert of modern materialist consumer society.
Christmas is a time of celebration. Advent tells us that Jesus is coming. Hallelujah.
After the service we joined dozens of other parishioners for coffee, tea and cake, the after church fellowship tradition. Laura borrowed a St. Thomas a Kempis book from the library and I kept Gilbert in chec. He was so excited to meet Bear and Dido, a couple of other church going dogs, that I was terrifed he'd want to express himself in piss elation. While Laura conversed with Elizabeth, Phil and I waxed poetic about world affairs and spiritual matters. Out of nowhere Karen appeared with Mathias and there were hugs all round. Mathias is walking now but Laura and I remember his baptism when he wasn't much bigger than a flesh formed idea.
Father Mark had in church today welcomed a 9 day old baby bringing the family to the front where we applauded them all for being there together so soon after such a monumentous occasion. The choir sang Emmanuel with especially fine voices.
And later Laura and I walked back to the car with Gilbert , all of us feeling just a little bit closer.

Pet Therapy

2011-12-17T12:31:00.001-08:00

Joni Mitchell's song Yellow Taxi has the most profound lyrics, "they paved paradise and put up a parking lot'.
Always a head of the curve Joni Mitchell spoke to the conflict in society between those who liked machines and antiseptic surfaces and those who liked life and natural fractuals.
In the therapy context this revolves around 'pet therapy'. Naturally I don't want pigs in the operating room but all too often humans in recovery houses and nursing homes and even extended care wings of hospitals are denied live contact by some insaneity of cost effective management and a bit of parking lot mentality.
Gilbert is my pet therapist. He's a part of my office and does amazing work. I love watching my depressed patients come alive as he greets them with immense enthusiasm. My autistic patients warm to his touch and those isolated and alone find smiles with his happy presence.
He came after the fish. All my offices for decades have had fish. Long ago research showed that fish were calming. I was even more pleased when I learned in a feng shui review that fish tanks attracted wealth.
My fish tank remains in the waiting room while Gilbert goes from waiting room to office and back and forth with an interesting routine. A previous pet therapist dog, Shinto was more mature when he enterred my office and learning his mannerisms often gave further insight into patient's guarded emotional states. Gilbert as yet seems mostly to bring happiness to all.
I left a position as consultant to an extended care facility when the administration, far removed from reality among anything, very caught up in the bottom line and other anal matters, refused to allow the nursing staff to have a cat. I decided the writing was on the wall and that all the work we might try therapeutically was going to be against the effort of the administration to sterilize the building of all life including my own. I much preferred working for a head injury home where cats roamed the halls with patients.
I liked that St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver has long had a pet visitor service taking dogs about the wards to visit with anyone who cares to meet the pleasant canines.
It came as no surprise to read "The vital function that pets fulfill in this world hasn't been fully recognised. They keep millions of people sane". That's from Eckhart Tolle, author of Power of Now. I wholly agree. Gilbert wags his tail!

Global Police State

2011-12-17T11:33:00.001-08:00

A friend said that there is no longer any reason to run away. "There's no place left to go." Corruption and police abuse occur locally but are also global. Whether it's overt or covert isn't as important as the fact that 'geographical solutions' no longer seem likely to be any more than lateral displacements.
The true nature of the police is to 'serve and protect'. Their success stems from their close relationship with the community they serve in. Further they are most successful when they represent the community ideals. The fact remains that a fraction of all individuals are simply ferral and lack darwinian advancement to be able to consceputalize society at all. These are the psychopaths. Psychopaths object most to being put in jail with other psychopaths. They thrive on victims. A good police service is like the sheep dogs that serve the shepherd.
What is problematic is when the police serve tyranny or are politically at variance with the majority aims of the people. Further, police are distinctly different from the military. The military's function is to find the enemy and extingquish the threat. The paramitarization of the police is a concern because of the paranoid devision which results. Military need an group enemy whereas police theoretically don't.
Organized crime today is becoming for some a 'blue collar' police force acting where the 'white collar' police force has failed. Russia is described as in bed with the mafia and Japan has long cohabited with the Yakuza. Gangs provide an order out of disorder. There's a history of gangs and unions that speak to the service this misled groups have in adressing chaos. 'Steal a little and they put you in jail, steal alot and they make you king, ' was a saying of Dr. Johnson, the english political critic.
Meanwhile bullying was a means of gaining power whereas killing might cost one the power that threat and extortion gained. Southern writer Carl Hiaasen has quipped that the only things a southern politician can't do, all else being acceptable, is "being caught with a dead girl or a live boy "in their bed. There's a blurring of the boundaries which has given rise to various privatized 'security' forces and increased powers for 'private police'. Meanwhile in the school teachers are all on about 'anti bullying' which was once the 'private boys school learning grounds' for next generation leaders with hazing as central.
During the 30's in Germany and Europe as a whole there was a time of great spirituality and a time of eco awarenss.The great nudist and nature movements thrived between wars and prior to the development of the great police states of Communism and Nazism. It is both exciting and concerning that we are faced again with a time of great spirituality and eco awareness.
Today we have a soldier on trial for releasing secrets that Wikileaks passed on to the people. The 'secrets' showed the corruption in the high places of governemnt. Naturally this corruption undermined the 'police' themselves in North America. 9-11, the OJ trial, and countless other events have eroded our faith in the 'purity' and 'honesty' of leadership. At the height of the Goldman Sachs, Franny Mae and Freddy Mae debacle there were cocaine drugged executives whoring with high class prostitutes.
Locally a new 'watchdog' has been brought in to 'police' the 'police' yet hundreds break all manner of law defiantly squatting ('occupying '- note the military language) in public parks and 'disrupting traffic' because they like to. The normal police are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Increasing all over the world police are faced with containing 'protestors' in increasing 'civil war' like scenarios. Yet if they 'act' in day to day scenarios they will be scrutinized and if they avoid acting to catch criminals they will be playing it 'safe'. It's a confusing time to be a police man or woman.
The 'police' state depends on the judiciary. Increasingly there's 'centralization' of control and judges demanding that there be no criticizm of them while increasingly there's a demand, much like with 'wiki leaks' to film proceedings. The Vancouver Riots court cases are due to be televized. Not "Judge Judy' by any means, thank God, but a return to Solomon without the exclusivity and dark corridors. Meanwhile Philip Slayton's book, Mighty Judgement , How the Supreme Court Runs Your Life has been published to show Canadians just how free Americans are compared to Canadians who behaviour politically fluctuates from silliness and irrelevance to abject vassal stateship.
Meanwhile as Christians we believe that God is in control of all aspects of life including politics and law though Jesus did say that a different ruler ruled the world before his death by the judges and police of his day was supposed to change things. Hitchens died recently and was famous for saying if the religious felt their homes were in the afterlife and heaven why were the religious organizations, be they Christian, Catholic, Moslem or Jewish so intent on acquiring land and power in this world.
The paradox has always been that we are 'gods that shit'. We have minds capable of imagining peace on earth especially at Christmas but our bodies war with the very idea. Freud was afraid of the "id' and the unconscious, according to Jung and Milton Erickson who felt the unconscious was to be embraced.
The police state is all about the rational limitting the unrational to all extents and purposes. Historical 'rationality was the domain of man and irrationality the domain of women." This resulted in the quip that the heart has reason that the minds does not know of. Yet in British Columbia, though half of the lawyers graduating are female, two thirds leave law rapidly because they apparently are so excluded that the law society is now finally attempting to make more room in it's irrationally rational corridors for the rationally irrational sex. World War I was the war to end all wars and confirmed that the 'age of reason' had culminated in the most unreasonable of behaviour.
I for one am a healer. I'm on the side of motherhood and children. I think Dad's a bit over the top at times still I love him dearly. It's balance I love best. I'm a student of Freud but love Jung and Milton Erickson. I believe that all the gold and bullion put into the hands of the controllers with first the failed war on Drugs and now the war on Terror would best be divided with those in education and medicine. I think theres a place for prevention and enforcement but I think that we're way over the top with tanks in police forces.
I think it's time to win hearts and minds and if we did that we'd have a global police state that 'served and protected' rather than tended more and more to the para military.
In Canada we all have to re think Troudeau despite my personal love for his red carnation. His calling tanks into the streets of Montreal may well have been the greatest failure in our history. Perhaps the resurrection of the Canadian Liberal Party could phoenix from a re think of that sad moment in Canadian history.
I want to believe and see God in charge and know that I am safe in the hands of the Lord. I want to know too that my leadership isn't lying and stealing while smiling like Robert Hare's 'Snakes in Suits'. I would have more faith in the future if countries like Canada lobbied on behalf of Julian Assange of Wikileaks. We need to support authority but we can't stand for tyrrany.
Of course if Obama declares a state of war with China then we will have to accept 'loose lips sink ships' but until then we need to here and now to accept a Global Police State but work together to ensure that it's role remains 'to serve and protect'. My friends says, "there's no place left to run to." Of course, I'm following the latest Mars expedition with keen interest.

Fisherboy Park Motel and Campground, Sayward, BC

2011-12-14T20:10:00.001-08:00

http://www.fisherboypark.com/

Laura, Gilbert and I loved the Fisherboy cabin I rented for a weekend of elk hunting this December. Terry and Barbara greeted us when we arrived with the warmest welcome. There's a general store with all we could want. Laura bought the makings for snacks and breakfast while I headed out with Gilbert to the bush. Fisherboy is right off Sayward Junction. That first night we walked the city block (our measurement) to the Cypress Tree Pub and Restaurant. Great meal and lovely host. Sayward has another restaurant but we would have had to take the truck for that one. Terry had given us directions to everything we wanted. His friend even recommended the areas where I might prove successful hunting elk. Gilbert enjoyed a walk around their grounds with all the great carvings. While Gilbert and I spent the next day hunting elk Laura enjoyed the cabin and grounds.

I shot an elk but rolled my ATV getting it out. Steve Mitchell, a local logger, helped me upright the ATV, drove it up to the road and helped Gilbert, me and the elk get back to my truck. Aching back happy spirit I rolled into Fisherboy. While I had a hot soak Laura was off to Terry and Barbara to get ibuprofen. Without their help I'd not have slept that night. In the morning they were all concerned I was okay. Terry had even offered the night before to hang my quartered elk in the freezer. The weather was cold enough I left it hanging in the truck. When I lived on Vancouver Island a decade or two back I always hunted in the Sayward region. It's even more notorious as a place for fishing. I'd love to go back anytime. It would be a great place to bring my RV next year for hunting or fishing or just exploring the mystical north Vancouver Island. Terry and Barbara certainly made Fisherboy a wonderful place to stay.