Burnaby Victoria Day journal

I'm here in my motorhome with Laura and Gilbert. We'd planned to go away hunting and fishing but because of a minor financial shortfall with taxes and high overhead I didn't feel up to spending money on travel. We'd planned to go to Clinton and frankly I didn't feel much like driving up the canyon towing the motorhome.  It's serious scarey business.  People die on roads.  Towing means all the concentration of driving my Harley without the sense of freedom. I feel like a water buffalo in the truck towing my RV whereas on the Harley I feel like a free spirited stallion.  I just have to concentrate a whole lot more.  The Mazda Miata is a gelding compared to the Harley but much more responsive to the touch and a joy to drive.  I don't have to worry about Gilbert beside me whereas when he's behind me on the Harley I always worry if he's okay.  Laura loves the Miata and the motorhome.
I love Burnaby.  Came here circa 1970 after the Strawberry Mountain Peace and Love Festival in the Colorado mountain.  True hippy ecological peace and love event where you had to back pack up the mountain and there was only acoustic guitars, gorgeous girls, tents and hugs. After that we hitchhiked to San Francisco wearing flowers in our hair, marching through the streets by the 10 thousands and dancing.
 Then we came to Vancouver for a European songfest. Thousands of voices singing of peace and unity.  Most had been written between the wars, after the War to end all Wars before Hitler then Stalin tore up the world with megalomaniacal dreams.  We were all afraid Vietnam was the beginning of WWIII and a nuclear holocaust.  Easy to think back now and see that things didn't turn out that way.  I like to think the peace movement had its influence on the industrial war complex.  Caused them to rethink war.  Okay to keep blowing up foreigners but had to figure out a way to kill less of one's own.  After Vietnam the world needed popular wars.
But Stalin had enslaved most of the world then and it wasn't even possible to think of the Berlin Wall just coming down.  Later that year we'd be in London with IRA bombings and all the talk would be about Carlos and terrorism. We never envisioned 9-11.  The terrorists just scared us and made us thankful for our own laws and order. Government by suicide bomber.  Later I'd learn all the ammunitions, studying physics and chemistry with an appreciation I'd not have had were I to stay in a suburb, go to a university and not ever encounter the Europe of the 70's when such skills seemed necessary as we all might have to fight terrorists with  their own tools.
I was raised by cowboys.  Long gone were the days of honor and men fighting one on one.  It was a dark world of shady deals and gangs on one.  No heros.  Just survival.
Burnaby at the time was the house of a family friend with all the loveliness of my mother's home. Quilting and embroidery and gardens and family and fine meals.  I loved the greenery outside the window. It rained the whole weekend that I recalled. But it was lovely rain.  Like the rain today.
There's something special about rain when all around there's grass and trees and bushes.  In Vancouver downtown the rain is an irritation because there's just concrete and parking lots. The city doesn't need bike lanes. It's needs boulevards and more sky trains.  I love Stanley Park but it's out of the way.  I don't get over there enough.  Maybe I should get an apartment off Denman so I can use the park. I did when my sailboart was moored near there in  Coal Harbour. Every day I'd walk around the lagoon. Stuart loved the walks in the park and I loved taking pictures of the ducks. The swans laid eggs that year.  The year before vandals had destroyed them. What kind of people destroy the eggs of swans.  It's always a reminder that port city hide trolls and psychopaths.  It's why Vancouver and New Westminister have so much drug traffic whereas Burnaby is relatively free of such sordid insaniety.
I've just come from swimming in the pool. Earlier today I walked Gilbert for an hour along the Brunette River.  Yesterday I spent hours researching medical legal topics, reviewing the literature regarding patients cases, trying to stay up to date this year, 2012, when only last month I read the report of a rich administrative doctor who'd not cracked a clinical text in 30 years or more by his recommendations, yet he was still practicing and telling others how to practice. It's all the rage to get MBA's instead of specialties.  Money is more important that learning yet I want my patients to get better and maybe there's something new I can learn. Always learning. Always driven to study and go to lectures, go to conferences, search the internet.  I miss working overseas when I could read for an afternoon and be available for the hospital at the same time. I was on so many physician discussion sites back then.
These days its hard to keep up again.  I feel behind and know it's at most only months.  There's no money in knowing the latest or doing the best.  All the riches go to the businessmen not the clinicians.  There's no bafflegab in the life and death questions.  And I realized that I haven't done what I set out to do when I entered medicine. I wanted to lazarus and be like Jesus, heal by touch and raise the dead.  Now I'm a cog in a wheel.  Anyone who actually questions the system is called a 'disruptive person'.  Anyone who wants to cure cancer really is called 'grandiose' and delusional. There's such negativity and heavy weight in the overly beaurocratized system of non believers and pay cheque seekers.
And I'm not much better. I'm older now.  I sometimes find myself working for weekends. After a year or two of being caught up with morons, psychopaths and criminals in the system I'm only happy seeing patients and trying to figure how to save just one.  What can I do for this person. Mostly it's just band aids now.  So little time, no resources and a deluge of sick and dying, the aging, like me.  Too many of the people I thought were heros too have retired and I don't know the young who are smarter into 9-5 and overtime.  I never was paid for over time.  Millions lost in service when she told me "it's just a job'.  The doctors call them clients today and even customers.  I gave my pound of flesh.
There's nothing in self righteousness or self pity.  Both are dirty urinals.  I have to raise my eyes.  Climb another mountain. My friend still does the Grouse Grind.  I wonder if my knee could do it. Its been several years since I could climb stairs without pain.  I always feel better in the desert. Loved being in Arizona and Texas.  The rain is beautiful today but it's hard on the joints.  Something about barometric pressure.  The joints love celebrex but the stomach doesn't
I'll go back to my book. It's about India and terrorists.  I just learned 70,000 Indians died in WWI and 9-13 was the Mumbai equivalent of 9-11.  Hundreds killed by terrorist bombers.  One character commented on the Pakistan Indian War.  Another talked about the War of Independence. They're trying to protect athletes in the games from terrorist bombs.  Canadians aren't described as good sports.  Helicopters and Chinese near Kashmir.   So many of my patients or their parents are immigrants. I read histories of the areas where they come from.  So many have been tortured or jailed, some from refugee camps, boys who sold themselves, a woman raped dozens of times by roaming gangs.  I see the soldiers who have nightmare about what they can't forget but would like to forget.
Just had some Murchies Golden Jubilee Tea - Queen E II 1952 to 2002.  Laura says her diamond jubilee is coming up.  Today is Victoria Day.  British empire and the queen who said, "we are not amused'.  I  listened to the CBC podcast Divine Blake and read some William Blake poetry after listening to Bob Smiley the hilarious Christian comedian.  We ate elk curry I made a couple of days ago and put away for a rainy day in the freezer. Laura's daughter just got some baby goats. We pray each day for the baby that is coming too.
God the rain is beautiful with all the green around. Thank you Lord for this day and for this life. Thank you for the challenge and prividge of medicine and healing.  Help me through another week and help me pay the taxes and not regret all the nights and days and weekends I worked for free.  Instead God make the monetary system a 'calling' and let them work for free for a change.  I'd rather that than think the materialists are all headed for hell and I'm going to be in heaven with saints and me a sinner knowing even Jesus supped with tax collectors while Paul was as much a beaurocrat as a tent maker.  Let me be less critical of groups and focus on the individuals who make Darwin's Awards so appealing to even Christians who otherwise have no use for such religion.
It's a short work week and I'm already worrying about all that needs to be done and how little time there is to do all that others say you must so they can be idle.  Lord let there be more Indians and fewer chiefs.
I talked to Dad today.  That was good too. Thank you Jesus for caring for him.  I read my brother's blog and enjoyed his pictures. Thank you for family Lord.   It was sunny there.  Dad was glad to hear of Gilbert and his always wanting to play ball.