Home from the Fall Hunt

2 Partridge. That’s what I brought home from  8 days of getting up at 5:30 am to be in the woods around sun up 6:45. Several days I was in the hills sitting in ambush waiting for a deer to come up past me.  Each day I stalked and hiked for several hours. In the afternoon and evening I pretty much drove slowly around logging roads off the beaten track staring out over slash.  No bucks

I saw a fox and a coyote. I saw lots of doe. Rabbits, squirrels and grouse.   I saw a red brown black bear, a spirit bear of the local people. I’d never seen that colour of bear. Almost Irish hair colour. Given the sexual proclivities of that people, one had to wonder seeing this magnificent beautiful fat full haired red head ready for hibernation. I wonder if they considered ancestry now.

Then there was a skunk. The second last day of the hunt running along the road a head of me. Almost like God saying , “You’re skunked”. With humor. It’s not about the outcome. It’s always about the journey. Leave the outcomes to God. Carpe diem.

So I didn’t shoot a buck, or a bear or a six point elk. I’d hoped for that at the beginning of the hunt. I mostly wanted venison for venison stew through the winter. I like wild game gourmet cooking and also barbecuing so have always enjoyed a freezer full of meat ready for preparation. With the ranchers hurting with Covid I even thought of approaching one to buy a quarter. Maybe this winter.  We’ve an American world election to get through.

What I did gain was the escape. I had a tremendous break from working at home. I find my work wears. So many people are hurting with Covid. The anxiety levels and relapses and addiction and depressions have sky rocketed. Domestic disputes and separations. Grieving loss of elderly family who couldn’t be seen because of quarantines.  All that is tiresome. I’m isolated too.  I’ve been to zoom meetings and watched some zoom church but participated little. 

There was Gilbert’s death. I was surprised at how his departure awakened all the losses in recent years.  It was reassuring to have glimpses of the other side through his eyes. He told me he had his sight back and he could run forever. He even let me see my other dogs running with him and my father and brother throwing ball for him. My mom and aunt were there too but I didn’t see them.  Mostly it was Dad and him. Dad called him “monkey dog’ and they loved to play with each other.  

In the truck hunting, I missed his prescence in the passenger seat but we talked for the first few days. Every once in a while I’d remember something special and we cried a new. So the trip was a time for me to deal with grief.  I felt each day I became stronger and now I’m ready to move on. Laura and I will bury the ashes in the next few weeks.

We have a new cockapoo on the way. I was able to get through to a breeder and put down a down payment.  He’ll be ready to come to my home in a few weeks. It’s not that far.

I loved having lunch with Laura each day. She’d make soup and sandwiches. Then she’d tell me of the visits in her little neighborhood around the camper. The geese coming and going. The momma deer and her couple of young ones. The day the bear got into the dumpster bin and made a lot of noise and mess. 

I loved taking pictures the whole week, mostly with my iPhone. The Clark’s Nutcracker was a real treat. I’d never seen them before and Rob sorted me out on them when I posted a picture.  I loved the Downy Woodpecker on the Mullen and the Whiskey Jacks that visitted me.

There was a first.  That was the unloading of the camper from the truck so I could use the truck to hunt. It worked out really well though the last night I was up several times worried the struts wouldn’t come up to allow me to reload the truck.  They did. The other technical thing that worked so well was my Iridium Satellite phone and the Garmin Insight watch. I was able to get the watch GPS coordinates and text them to Laura on the Satellite phone. That was comforting. I was climbing up and down mountainsides slipping and sliding and worried about breaking an ankle or falling and hitting my head. I’m simply not the guy who was called ‘billy goat gruff’ when I was younger. I loved the exercise though. The hours of hiking and stalking mostly.  Then the rushes after bunnies or deer or grouse that got away. I ran straight up a hill after what I thought was a buck but though I could have had a shot in the woods I couldn’t confirm the horns. 

Laura said her shoulders came down from her ears, the tension and demands of her work taking a couple of days till she relaxed. She loved the peacefulness of the place. I realized I wouldn’t have relaxed so thoroughly on a beach in the tropics but 4x4 ing along steep mountain trails alongside cliff fall off focused my attention away from anxiety and grief.

Hunting is a vacation. I admit I’d rather have someone feed me grapes as I’m poled down a southern stream in the warm as opposed to the cold and snow and rain, but God knows best. Home I feel I’ve had a fabulous vacation and I do have two grouse to cube, fry in butter and serve on rice.

It turns out I’ll even get another weekend of hunting yet so can be hopeful.  Next year I’ll have another trained cockapoo companion.  I realized that Gilbert’s enthusiasm made the hunts so much more and a dog is really so much of what makes a home. Since childhood I’ve known dogs as companions and love their company and joy.

Laura thanked me and was off to work at dawn in her red smart car. I’m going to go to the computer and video screen home office now. It’s great to be home. Thank you God. 

Tues, Covid, Summer, Gilbert

Yesterday was rudely hot. I wilted inside working. Gilbert with his heart disease found breathing toughest.  At the end of the day I hopped on the Harley to get the mail. I picked up a fan for my office.  London Drugs only had USB desk fans.  Canadian Tire had a wall of fans.  I have air conditioning but if I have it on high it flips the breakers.  Low it helps.

I love the heat.  Outside it was glorious to stand soaking in the sun. The problem is working. Sunshine is good for improving the immune response to Covid.  Vitamin D3. Love it. I could lie on my lawn chair all day and looking. I am forward to the weekend to do just that.  I did a little last weekend. With the fan I hope to survive another day of work. I Remember working in the tropics, stifling. All one needed was a breeze. Then it was heaven.

There are moments when I just feel good for no reason. It’s warm. I’ve food and water and shelter. I’ve vehicles. It’s summer in the city. I’ve a long list of positive memories which flow through me. Outside with friends as kids, playing in the sun, baseball, hide and seek, tag. All those good time memories in the sunshine. Later it’s swimming in lakes,then fishing, and later sailing in the tropics.  

Now I’m here in the middle of this glorious season of warmth and cheer. I’m sitting during the day in a rather dark room in front of video screens and talking on cell phones questioning if this is wise.  I work.  I get paid. The evil government takes the money and abuses my trust and faith.  Criminals have coopted Canada. Billions of dollars have gone missing. Terrorists and money laundering are all the rage.  

Meanwhile I’m working.  Quieting the fear.  Each day at least once ,sometimes more, I feel what I’m doing is really important. Mostly I’m keeping the system rolling, greasing the wheels, oiling the cogs. So many bits of paper needed in the paper mill. I have to sign my name to it.  It seems frivolous at times but then there’s that one when it’s critical.

 I go through the motions.  Then a secret is disclosed. The knots unravel, the abscess is broken. The healing comes in.  It’s occasionally a deluge of pus, like yesterday.  I said the right thing. The knife made the cross incision in abscess so long hidden protected. The truth was out. The healing began.  So many years of pain and shame.  I was glad to be there and thought I’d not have said what I said thirty years ago. Yet somehow what I said was necessary. Truth and timing. Itworked perfectly. Mostly it’s baby steps.  Cleaning away debris.  Weeding.  I putter and muddle along , mostly taking for granted what is now second nature.

I remembered when all I wanted was to be a good doctor. I remembered when medicine was my first love. I remembered my youth. I’m often reflecting on that time now when I know and there’s not the daily eureka and the mystery and the uncertainty.  Now I’d like a SPECT scan and Functional MRI.  I’m tired of third world medicine in a first world country seeing all the parasites and lies.  But it has its feeling good days.  I”m an odd bit.  Near the end rather than the beginning of a career. Wondering if this is what I should still be doing.  I dream of driving a camper across the country for three months.  Like the sailing escape. Or the travelling.  What is it I would learn then.  Do I need to go back to university and study something new. I’ve achieved most of my major goals. 

I’m accomplished. Doing what I do now is second nature.  I’m more than good enough. I’m a thousands times better than the bureaucrats by any measure. They don’t even know it.  Their arrogance and ignorance are still mind boggling.  Herding cats. Now I’m just doing as they say.  I’m not going to fight the stupidity any more.  I’m worn out from that.  It’s what sucks my own energy, living in fear of government thugs with suits and fake smiles.  And lies. Low brow barbarians.  I’m tired of the lies and more lies. The threat of communist invasion wears on me. More stupid Herods, Marx and Nero’s.

I have amazing dreams these days.  I dreamed of being at Oxford with a friend from Cambridge and we’d developed a new glue that held universities together. It was just a bit of the roofing we were saving, a place where we’d brought the roof together and the experiment had worked. It remained now to heal all the holes where the rain had gone through.  We were smiling, shaking hands, thankful for our success.  

Gilbert woke me through the night, his heart worsening. He’s resting now. In the heat he had such a hard time yesterday getting his breath. I rubbed his chest asking God as I do to heal him, thy will be done. I don’t know if he would best die faster or revive. There was a time when laying on hands I’d heal. But today I don’t know. Would it be better. What am I to learn from his illness. I held him this morning till he calmed and his breathing restored.  He’s sleeping now. 

I know I’ve been blessed with healing. A Gift. My mother was that way with plants. I’ve almost willed people back to life in youth when I had faith to move mountains. Now I’m struggling with the gargantuan stupidity of politicians and money men and greed.  The bullies are so stifling.  Now it’s the communists.  Always the shallow and superficial , hardened criminals , the image ever of the Buddhists in prayer and the Communist Chinese killing them en mass with their machine guns. 

 The Quakers and Mennonites with their pacifiscism escaped to Canada. Kindly musical intelligent people. I loved their outlook on life. Acceptance.  Now I don’t know. I don’t know where to escape. I do the next right thing. I don’t drink. I don’t drug. I don’t take many unnecessary risks. Riding a motorcycle is insane but eating can cause death. My friend looks at the shelf dates. 

I see everything as rituals and what we do to meet the fear.  Existential fear.  Fear of not breathing. Fear of death.  Denial and humor.  I call on God always, everywhere. I pray. I ask for protection. I asked that God help Gilbert. I know he healed the fear but I don’t know that Gilbert will live much longer.  Thy will, not my will, be done.

Covid continues.  More and more people are taking it in stride. At the Post Office I remember the early days, the fear, the empty mall.  Now there are masked folk going about their day. On Facebook there’s anger and fear.  I see the Communist Chinese hand in the BLM.  It was the same in the 60’s and 70’s. Putin talked of his work in the peace movement , encouraging it for the sake of USSR war machine. George Soros is a traitor, destroyer.  Trudeau’s friend. You know a man by his associates. He was on Epstein’s island with Clinton.

It’s all about my pay grade. Freedom.  I am blessed with relative freedom.  I’ve had a wonderful life but asked about relationships on the weekend thought first about God. We play hide and seek always. At least I do.  I see God in the eyes of family and friends.  Now God is in my dog . I’m asking about Jesus and Lazarus. But  he’s an old dog. I’m an old dog.

 Life is very good but death holds no fear. I believe so much in the other side that I believe I’m there in my dreams. I see this other world so clearly, my boat, my mother, the sea and peninsula, the friends. It’s Greek like, Mediterranean.  I loved Robin Williams in what dreams may come.. My idea of heaven.  

There is no hell except for those who don’t want heaven.  The law of attraction.  The godless who know only lust and believe it love. 

Now I’m waiting. I really do feel I’m sort of on the bench. There’s probably another 30 good years to go for me. Maybe one or two for Gilbert.  We’re in this together.  Covid. It’s got a year maybe. But the war with China, that’s something different. I don’t want communism.  The bureaucrats I’ve know with their petty vendettas and stupidity have been a view of such a world where the loyal swagger and greed is all that matters. I remember the utter wastes of time and resources and humans I experienced working in government services.   The lowest common denominator.  

Now I don’t know.  I really don’t know. I just live day to day in this sitting in the box watching the game waiting to be called in for a part. I have these moments when I’m on the ice then I’m not.  I’m certainly no star. Just a player in a game. The Kazoo in the symphony of life. But it’s good.

I’d like to be on a beach today. I’d like to be swimming. But as I’ve done for 50 years I’ll go to work and do my part and feel self pity about all the slackards starting with our PM.

Oh well, one day I’ll ask St. Peter what that was all about. Then I’ll know the answer. I’d like that.  Heaven is a place where I learn the answers to all the questions I’ve had that I never knew the answer to.  In the meantime I’ll hoe a new roe, chop wood and carry water and be of service.  I hope. I pray.

Horse Lake, Tuesday

Yesterday was a cool overcast day with showers. Today there’s blue sky and white fluffy clouds. It’s already warm.  I’ve just returned from a long walk with Gilbert. He was so excited this morning when I lifted him up on the bed to be with Laura. He’s had his medications wrapped in bits of roast beef.

I have nothing to say but will speak anyway. Everyday is a relationship with God. I’m talking with God, listening for God, watching synchronicities.  In my dreams I was with lovers, long conversations, like we had as adolescents. Now we are careful as adults. Offence is easy. The world is in rage.  As youth we sought commonality. Now they look for differences to pounce upon. 

I saw a deer crossing the road this morning and a lone mallard drake in the playing field. Fishermen were heading out in their boats. I was thinking of coffee. No real plans in my heavily unscheduled day.  Fishing I believe. Target practice perhaps. Drinking coffee and reading for sure.  This vacation is rapidly returning me to those idyllic days on the boat in the Sea of Cortez. Nothing happening. Or the times on the homestead when feeding the chickens was so grounding and uplifting.  I was so fortunate to know pet geese as guard geese. 

When I was young I wore names like champion, genius, intellectual, husband, professor. Today I look around the park at all the old guys and know they’ve had their collection of names. Mostly they tell me their favourite is father or grandfather. Yesterday was Father’s Day.  BLM didn’t even acknowledge it. All the fatherless son’s afraid of their mothers. 

I miss my Dad. We’d be out fishing by now. He was a pragmatist. A William James of the 20th Century.  Wisdom came with doing. As kids we followed behind him climbing hills, trekking through forests. I never cease to wonder at the foods he’d give us to eat as we struggled to keep up. ‘Rosehips,’ he said and we dutifully chewed on them as we walked.

My favourite time was catching pickerel in Northern Saskatchewan. After we’d caught our limit,  he beached  the aluminum boat wit the 5 hp Johnson outboard on the sand, cleaned the fish, filleted them and in the pan he always seemed to have fried them up in butter. They tasted so good that to this day some 60 years later my mouth waters with the memory.  Sunny days sitting in boats or on the sides of a lake with my Dad.  Endless blue skies.

When we drove long distances, he’d sing the one song he seemed to know,  “Home, home on the Range, where the deer and the antelope roam, where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day.”  Mom would always be laughing.

The coffee tastes especially good this morning. I’ve switched from a machine espresso to a stove top espresso maker. There’s an art in grinding the Ethiopian coffee beans just right.

My mind is like a ping pong game sometimes.  This morning coffee was playing against fishing and coffee won. Sometimes it’s a pin ball machine with a pinball of thought bouncing off all the barriers.  Each day I’m here the cacophony of the city’s anthill of intruding thought stills. I’m so conscious of the pressure of congregated sentience in the city and how in the country self is freer.  I feel the expansion and safety in looseness. I remembered that feeling living on the acreage.  Now it’s returning.  I love that feeling. Expanding and contracting consciousness.  I love flying dreams as well.  I love the freedom of movement in dreams and imagine those in wheel chairs and confined to bed love to dream if their conscience is clear.  My grandmother loved to sleep in  her final years in our home. She loved the warmth of the sunshine. Little things.  Learning to pay attention to detail and appreciate the nuances.  I loved the subtleties. When life moves from the solid colours to the pastels. I remember that day I felt the pastels return after the months of reds and blacks. I am so thankful to friends and family.  

Across the way a young mother is playing with some kids, aged three to 6 by appearances. She is blowing bubbles and the kids are chasing them trying to break them.  They are as precious as the god kids or my nephews when they were small.  I knew my nephews as rug rats and now they are amazing men and one has a child with the loveliest lass alive.  When I was young I was so keen to climb mountains, see distant lands, sail across oceans, build igloos, spear fish beneath the sea. It was different then. Not better or worse just so different. The stages of life. I love watching the young today.  My brother coached his kids in soccer and loved watching them grow from stumbling to gangly then to the adult men today whose limbs work like professionals even if they wind much sooner.   Out walking the dog I passed a stooped older guy and enjoyed our few words. . His young  dog was a little boston bull dog that jumped straight up and down on stiff legs when he met Gilbert.  

I once lived in libraries, spent hours exploring old book stores, then the churches and religious art.  The sacred spaces in the city that felt proximate to the  serenity among trees or watching northern lights on the Tundra.

God is all. I am living in the mind stuff and star stuff of collective thought and the programs of God who wrote the language. “In the beginning was the Word.” I so loved John so many years.  The mystical resonated. Like love making without the sweat and grunts.  Moments of distraction and being.  The ‘aha’ times. The days she gave herself to me. Opening like a blossom.  The unequivocal invitations. 

Today’s reading, so applicable,  1 Corinthians 14:33 KJV “For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints”

May 10,Happy Mother’s Day, Covid 19, Lightening up

I was truly blessed to have the most incredible mother.  She was amazing.  She’d do so many special things for my brother and I.  We were always cared for, food, clothing, shelter. She was so loving to my father. The dog was another member of the family. She loved her boys, her man, her garden and the dog. She loved her mother and we cared for her in the last years of her life. She was a Christian woman, a Baptist and the church meant so much to her. She loved her sister, Sally and her other sister Hannah. She loved our cousin, Ruth Anne and the extended members of the family in Scotland  and the US. She loved my father’s northern relatives, especially, Annie. She made a point of keeping in touch and making sure we knew as children we were interconnected with a huge family and clan.

She fed the birds all winter at the feeder outside the kitchen.She knitted but loved to crochet. She played organ and sang hymns.  She loved to camp and helped butcher the game Dad brought home. I was tasked with plucking the ducks and cleaning the fish I caught but she cooked them all and accompanied my dad and us boys on all our fishing trips.  She spent hours untangling my fishing line when I was at a child. 

She cheered my brother and I at our games. She encouraged our school work and insisted we complete our homework. She was intimately aware of our lives and listened, taking a special interest in us whenever we were happy or sad. She laughed. She had the sweet laughter of an Irish schoolgirl and Dad and her kibbitzed all the time making the dog bark and us kids laugh.  When I came out of a trying adolescent I became close to my mom again admiring her love of God, her home and her garden and their motor home, the long trips they took to Good Sam RV sites and all the cruises they took in later years.  She and Dad were always busy, always working on some project, always there to help us kids.  She was amazing.  I love her.  I pray for her in heaven.

Now my sister in law Adell is the other greatest mother I know.My nephews are the most amazing men, so kind, intelligent and accomplished with great senses of humor. My brother was so loved by Adell and the two so loved their children. I’m so in awe of Adell’s love for her sons and now her grandson.  What an amazing woman. She is so thoughtful and caring, intelligent and talented.  Her voice is truly that of a nightingale and her mind is wonderful. She has the biggest heart and my brother loved her truly knowing the depth of her love and remarkable ness of her person. And now Tanya is the great mother of my great nephew who melts the heart of anyone who sees him. He is so special and so loved by his mother, grandmothers, and aunts and all of us.

My dearest friend and love Laura is a grand mother several times over and so cares for her children and their children.  She also loves her niece Robin.  She suffered through her husband ‘s terrible illness and continued to work and care for her children. Today they are still her true love.  My dog, Gilbert gets all the spoiling they would get if they were near. She works in the city and they all live in the country.  The families get together as often as permitted. I’ve seen her light up with good news of her son and daughters. She’s forever praying for them. Meanwhile Gilbert gets back massages and the best treats from her own plate of food. Gilbert, her fur baby, adores her. 

And thanks for Anna, the great mother of the god kids, she is so sweet and caring and with Kevin are another loving family.  I love that the mother and family are at the centre of the church. Creativity.  

Mother Mary.  In Christianity we celebrate the Mother of Jesus, lifting her up to the highest level of reverence.  The Church so admires women and motherhood. Even now I’m wearing a mother and child pendant from a St. Petersburg Orthodox Cathedral.  Hail Mary, Full of grace, the Lord is with you, blessed are Thou among all women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Lord Jesus.  

I have been blessed to work with the finest women in medicine, so many of them mothers as well as exceptional humans. I love my friends who care in all aspects of their lives. We grew up in the Game and Fish Clubs with wild game banquets and now I know mothers who shoot with their families and hunt with fathers and sons and daughters. I also know mother who sailed with their families and adventured across continents with their husband and children.  It’s a whole new era of accomplished women. 

When I was in Israel I was so impressed with all the Jewish mothers who’d served in defence of the country and were down to earth no nonsense women so atypical of New York stereotypes.  I loved all the European mothers I have known their pride in their family and heritage. The women so commonly kept the culture alive. The Filipino mothers and Thai mothers and Chamorro and Carolinian mothers I knew in the islands loved to cook and loved to dance. There love of their children was a wonder to behold.  In the north the aboriginal mothers all cared for and loved their children and grand children. The South American, African mothers, Asian mothers were all the same, immense love and pride in their children and great joy caring. 

Life was children to all the mothers I’ve known.  The world of creativity is definitely female.  Boys and girls destroy, men and women create.  I am so blessed to have known so many incredible mothers.  They are connected in a special way with the Creator God and all Creation. It shows in the sensuous confidence in the way they walk, life’s great dancers, hips swaying, 

Thank you God for mothers. Thank you God for my mother. Thank you Lord for all mothers. Hallelujah! 

Saturday, Covid 19, Quarantine

I learned today that in other countries they are not even allowed to step outside, even to walk the dog. That’s hard quarantine.  A couple was walking a very well trained dog off leash today. They do not realize that their individual arrogance is why others lose rights and privileges.  I picked Gilbert up as they walked by.  They thought me queer and inconsequential. Old man cowardly cuddling his blind old heart murmured dog .  They wanted me to trust them. My friend’s dog was attacked.  A couple of weeks back a man’s dog got off the leash and suddenly was in our face before the man breaking social distancing protocols retrieved his dog.

I liked that Dr. Bonnie Henry, our local heroine, with her own fan page, complimented the people of BC for their good behaviour.  I believe too that our good behaviour reflects the history here of good leadership and good police. The corruption is in the white collar money laundering elite thievery and the street level lower class gangster driven drug trafficking. In the middle class, what communism and dictatorships, historically, wish to destroy because of the history of the Magna Carta, we’ve been rather well treated by the police and authorities.  

We need to thank our judges and lawyers for the civil liberties , that while  fought for them and earned,   are now protected by these very respectable public institutions. It is not this way elsewhere.  In Communist countries and other dictatorships the people generally know that the government is their enemy.  The corruption is rife and whatever the government says is purely self serving. So why not break the law. Why listen to these uniformed rich thugs and their corrupt courts telling you to stay inside.  There’s  only the threat of violence and force that keeps people ‘obedient’ elsewhere. Here we trust our authorities mostly.  

Unfortunately at the national level we have the most unethical and corrupt politician in the history of Canada who fired the female aboriginal Attorney General simply because she would not countenance a dirty evil deed by a wealthy corrupt Quebec corporation backing the unprincipled PM.  

Despite that our Canadian premier’s especially Mr. Horgan of the BC NDP have been outstanding in their service to their people.  The tentacles of Chinese bribery and U.N. globalism haven’t reached to the state and city level so in this crisis we’ve seen none of the WHO political nonsense that has plagued the scientific and medical communication and response at the national level.  

We also have a free media other countries don’t have.  The  news of the CBC reads increasingly like the People’s Daily.   But we still have access to the internet.  Local news like Global and even nationally,  the National Post are mostly publishing the truth. China would not allow any social media in it’s dictatorship unless it could be restricted to ‘state propaganda’.  We don’t realize how dangerous it is for those living under dictatorships to get anything but propaganda. 

The vast majority of Canadians historically have been law abiding, cooperative people who are now not appreciating increased taxation as a kind of punishment for what Dr. Henry correctly identifies as good behaviour. Thankfully our local government is planning to relax the restrictions in a few weeks because we’re over the major medical threat and peak of the first wave of the pandemic. My friend Kirk shared the metaphor, just because we are getting closer to the ground doesn’t mean we can take off the parachute.  The Corona virus is still there. 

The spread and speed of spread to vulnerable populations has been dramatically slowed by quarantine and social distancing, hand washing and masks.  The Scientific medical community has had time to identify cures like Hydroxychloroquine and Remsifer.  We’ve also learned better identification and management. The public health services and virtual offices and even robots in the ICU have all been developed in a miraculous matter of weeks. What in the HIV epidemic took years, we’ve done in 2-3 months. The pandemic would not have occurred if science rather than politics and self interest had ruled in China. Italy was sacrificed before we knew the old and immunosuppressed were most at risk.  Until the testing of the quarantined cruise ships and Iceland’s research we didn’t know that 50 % of people get the virus but not the disease. They develop natural immunity.  It’s 3-5 days of the disease being spread in the asymptomatic in the first few days.  All this was unknown.  In New York we learned that the fomites carrying the virus were the metal railings in elevators, the buttons and the dense spaces. Unfortunately Canada’s chief health minister told people not to wear masks despite the success of this measure in Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea.  Thankfully BC had Dr. Bonnie Henry who was not swayed by politics , but instead with the support of the Health Minister Mr. Dix,  focussed on preventing disease and  saving lives with truth.

We had the Chinese fentanyl epidemic of overdoses and in our DTES the poorest of people, the sick and homeless addicts are now being hit by the Chinese Covid 19 virus despite all the attempts by the free Chinese of Taiwan to warn us all about the Communist lies and it’s take over of the WHO.  Now we see that the leaders of the Hong Kong uprising are all being rounded up and persecuted. Days before this pandemic was ‘allowed’ to spread, after it’s most likely leak from a Wuhan Virology lab , the million strong Hong Kong revolt was subjected to brutal crackdown. Nothing like a pandemic to solve internal domestic problems and further what an added advantage is the western democracies suffer and that insufferable critic of Communism Mr. Trump gets swept away as well. Better to have ‘useful idiots’ like Canada’s Mr. Trudeau to do trade with.  He gave us 16 tons of emergency equipment against medical advice in February, stolen from our doctors and nurses.  The communist chinese gave back defective crap that may as well be aimed at killing first responsders. . The Communist Chinese Central Committee, all hard men, with only one very hard token woman, has always laughed at the ‘softness’ ‘effeminate” ‘democratic’  west.

Meanwhile I’ve worked from my home with a virtual office daily seeing and talking with patients, rather enjoying only commuting from the living room to the office without having to use my car.  Even the low price of gas can’t entice me to return to hours a day of sitting in my car despite my using the time to listen to medical podcasts and speaker meetings.  At home I walk the dog more and exercise and feel healthier and less like a lemming or sardine.  I loved the year I commuted an hour each way by train in London only because everyone had a seat and I could read and write on the train. This standing room only makes commuting with public transport unsavoury.  Elsewhere women only cars and cars or times for the elderly or disabled have humanized the public transport.  Perhaps we’ll see more of that. Gender fluid I’ve not felt safe on public transit at night and been thankful for my car. Safety grows more important with age.

At home I feel safe. Not just from the cornavirus but increasingly from the lawlessness of the drug addicted and the arrogant.  I’m thankful in many way for this quarantine which has overall worked so well here compared to elsewhere because it reminds me that I see a skewed slice of the population. Having my life and my dog’s life threatened repeatedly in my work and felt the callous disregard of the immediate authorities who live themselves in elite gated communities I became more and more exhausted.  The suburbs were safer.  My home is the safest and I’m just so thankful to have the space to relax and let go of the tension of going out and mixing with strangers every day.  

People forget that for hundreds of thousands of years humans didn’t mix and lies like “Diversity is our strength’ would only fly on television and pornography raised populations.  The workplace can be diverse but all the scientific literature shows that our homes need to be places of safety and routine where we recuperate.  I feel I’m recuperating among civilized neighbours who mostly walk their dogs on leashes and say good morning and good evening.  Even most of the cyclists slow to pass and there’s a regard for others which I so often missed in the road rage world of self absorbed superior diverse drivers.  

It’s Saturday. It feels like a Saturday.  I don’t work.  I’ve an open slate. Yesterday I did the laundry and a variety of errands including picking up my Harley.  I’m looking forward to a ride, perhaps to the country. A little wind therapy and motorcycle meditation goes along way to bringing me closer to God and stilling the busy beast and settling the monkey mind. If I think of anything else but the ride I’m toast. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance really speaks to the two wheel experience. 

Thank you God for helping us through this time. Thank you for all the good people in the world and the good leadership we have locally. Thank you for kindness and love and thoughtfulness.  Hallelujah!

Friday, Covid 19, Gratitude

Thank you Lord for waking me to this day, light coming through despite the the blinds, the warmth of the blankets, the fuzzy little dog cuddled beside me.

I checked my throat and took a deep breath and was glad to be alive.  Thank you for the dreams I barely remembered of lecture halls, discussions with colleagues and kind and brilliant mentors. I wish I could remember what was said but the feeling of academic adventure and camaraderie lingered. Thank for a remarkable career and the joy of working with such compassionate and stirling individuals. Thank you I am well today.

Thank you for Reuters.  In a world of fake news and low brow journalism and rehash it was rather refreshing to read a review that was surprisingly lacking in partisanship, propaganda or cliche.  It was a nice way to waken my mind.  There was good news and bad news but the world is balanced and moving forward.  Thank you for technology and mail. Thank you for heat and running water and the toilet.

Thank you that my body is still able to exercise the minimum I do with such complaining each morning.  Thank you for the meditation and that training time with my monkey mind. Come Holy Spirit Come.  Let me be a channel of your peace.  May I know you more dearly and serve you more surely.  Thank you for the Ethiopian coffee though it’s such a shame that the Ethiopian head of the WHO failed so badly colluding with the Communist Chinese who caused this pandemic with their lies.

Thank you for the doctors and nurses, researchers, technicians, pharmacists helping to win this fight against time. Thank you for all the supply lines and those serving us all by their work these days and nights in shipping, Post Office, on trucks and ships and planes.  Thank you for the warehouse workers and all the people whose jobs are essentials. Thank you for the men and women in communications and computer technology and those who maintain the lines and hubs. Thank you for the grocery workers and the pharmacies.  Thank you for my local London Drugs. Thank you for the repair people and tradesmen and tradeswomen and the mchanics and the help lines. Thank you for Google, and Netflix and Utube.

Thank you for artists and entertainment and recipes and incense. Thank you for clothing and dog walks. 

Aside #1 - test

(Thank you immensely for Gilbert the Heroic old blind dog with a sore back who fought off another dog whose cretin owner had allowed him off leash.  Gilbert’s daring defence not seeing where his assailant was gave the more than likely slow dope crazed owner time to see that he was within a nich of being pummelled to his death, the encounter having reminded me I need a bag of lime before there is a run on that.

 After a day of intense work and a desire for a safe walk with my own I don’t take kindly to these fools who are so ignorant of the times that still callously abuse the normal tolerance of good people. But we now have turned our cheek 70 times 70. 

Thank you God for the restraint that would have had me seeing police and all manner of strangers and making the encounter worse than better. Seeing Gilbert so attacked by such an bully of a dog and his passive aggressive owner who was glad to use this opportunity to act out his aggression and claim it was all just an accident. Like the Chinese today gaslighting the world. They are no better than traitors like their ally , the decadent incompetent arrogant PM Trudeau.  

Thank you that I didn’t seal his doors and burn his home down last night , because he has and cute wife and his dogs are innoscent. He most likely is just scared and that’s his defensiveness and poor coping skills, a fat old guy whose life has been far less than he would have hoped for, now locked in isolation with his wife and no doubt hearing his life’s savings are gone and he will soon be the slave of some carpetbagger politician and his imported ISIS brow shirts.  Thank you Lord that I have maintained a minute modicum of adulthood in these trying times. Still thank you for the reminder, I will get the bag of lime before there is a run on that too.)

Aside #2

(Because we mixed with outsiders, the dog coming in contact with Gilbert and me almost coming in contact with his idiot of an owner, I bathed Gilbert last night, a major event in the little guys life, definitely a break in the boredom for him and me. When Gilbert has a bathe, I have a bathe and the bathroom has a bath.

After that, All evening I had a damp dog trying to cuddle. Today is better he’s finally dry.

A new day.  

I wonder how long before we are carrying swords like we did in the 19th century to keep the law breakers back.  How soon will we all have the right to concealed carry so that people don’t ‘just drop the leash’ and play cutesy ‘it was just an accident’. Not even an apology. No acknowledgement of accountability. Uncivilized. 

It is a sad statement on humans as a group that there remain those who flaunt the rules and feel entitled to have everyone else care for them, and ‘understand’. I believe most of these people are on drugs and alcohol and that it is a temporary problem that could be addressed. Recovery could make them more useful than simply as organ doners. But the low brow mob mentality is out there. Waiting. Hoarders here. Queue jumpers here. Food riots in Africa.)

So thank you great lord for your love and compassion and keeping us civilized in these difficult times when the uncivilized are hoarding and swaggering.  Help the collective group to continue to do the amazing things they are doing.  I have seen only one or two abuses while millions are being mature and sensible and working together.  Thank you Lord for the inherent goodness in people.  Thank you for peace.  Thank you for all your love and the love that flows from one person to another. 

Thank you for the inspiration of my patients who I talk to each day and learn that despite their often horrendous disabilities are helping families and neighbours and staying inside washing their hands,social distancing, contributing.  Thank you Lord for the example the mentally ill so commonly exhibit in times of community stress where so often they rise above their former limitations and magnanimously serve.

Thank you for my friends and family. Keep them safe, please.

Thank you for the great leadership we have here in the province. Thank you for Mr. Horgan and Mr. Dix and Dr. Bonnie Henry, the Faculty of Medicine UBC and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC.  Thank you for the researchers and the communication and the enlightened leadership. Thank you for intelligence and heart. Thank you Lord Jesus. Thank you God of God. 

Gilbert the Cockapoo, 10 years old today

Today is Gilbert’s birthday. He’s 10 years old.  That’s a wonder and a miracle.  My buddy, that long, so many adventures. So many cuddles.
Plane flights, car trips, boating,  truck and camper excursions.  All the friends.  He’s a blessing.  Blessed by the Bishop.  A church dog and a puppy that gleefully showered under the shit of the  first cow he met. I had to rescue him fearing the cow would step back onto this crazy puppy glorying in a steady flow of shit.
Like he’d arrived at a candy arcade. It was almost as good as the dead fish he rolled in on the way to work one morning.  I’ve never been able to look at a perfume counter without thinking of the eau de dead fish my dog would revel in.
I loved his company hunting and sailing.  I loved his company riding on the motorcycle. Ride for Dad. I loved his company bicycling.  He’s been a constant companion in all the play and fellowship and coming to work as a loving therapy dog as well.  I have the fondest memories of his visitting Dad and my brother Ron. Dad called him “monkey dog”.He’s a good guy.  He alerts me to risk.  More false positives for sure.  But he’s on duty. He finds the grouse and raises them for me to shoot. When he  became blind and his hunting duties were reduced he just increased his cuddle time.He loves his friends Max and Dave and Shane but his best friend of all is Emory. It’s taken some time but Hank is warming up to him. He likes his  Corgi mate too  and a few other friends like Lucy are best buddies. Down east he sure likes his cousins,  Pepper and Eva.Laura is his mommy but he just loves women. He’s a little lady’s man.  A love bug. Laura’s “Little Bear.”  My sister in law Adell is a special favourite. Then there’s Belinda and Karen at work and his friend Anna with all her human puppies. He loves the Bustards out camping. Likes visiting Kirk. Loved getting into trouble with Tom. Loved George.  Always  demands girls  rub his tummy forever, roiling over on his back just to make it easier for them. . All my female patients have been commandeered for tummy rub duties. He misses Joannea,Hannah and Aim who worked with me and he thought were his assistants. He just loved to drag Aim about the community on their walks,. “He’s so strong,” she’d exclaim.  Gilbert would puff up.
Today he’s 10.  A lot of fun years.  I’ve got to get out and pick up some steak to barbecue and share. He loves to share. He’s just so happy to  be part of all we’re doing.  He especially loves to cozy in between Laura and me on the bed ensuring he gets twice the pets.  I’m convinced he’s here to teach us love. He's here to teach us to have fun and love.

Valentine’s Day Harrison Hotsprings Resort

Laura and I had a great time at Harrison Hotsprings Resort.  Gilbert loved it as usual.  Laura was the best looking girl there  I told her after our first night there that she was too young for me. I was going to have to date older women. The hotsprings was essential but they really need an in house  chiropracter. I retrospect I could have booked a massage. It really was a fun time for an old guy.

I walked Gilbert around the lake in the morning picking up coffee and our breakfast sandwiches from Suzy’s Cafe.  

We so enjoyed returning to the the hotsprings each day. . So many young people in love and a few of us good looking  older  folk.  Gilbert loved the walks around the lake. The geese and ducks were returning. I played  with the Go Pro and IPhone Pro 11 cameras.    We loved room service. The pepper corn steak was superb.

We watched Parasites and truly loved it, a Korean movies subtitled about a con artist family that moved in on an architect and his wife encountering another con artist couple competing over the same family. Incredible plot and great acting. The next night we watched 1917 and also loved it. Superb stark cinematography. Moving true story.  A splendid weekend.  Typical of Harrison’s .  The Harrison Resort is the best, so elegant and such great service and dog friendly. Before Gilbert we used to love dining and dancing at the Copper Room. 

I’ve been going to Harrison’s every year for decades. I’ve camped in the campgrounds or along the lake. We stayed in many of the hotels and cabins. Last year we came up with the camper. Then we use the public hot springs pool. The resort is the most elegant.  Special. 

Harrison Hotsprings, Harrison Lake and the environs is just a never ending wonderland so close to Vancouver but another world away.

Valentines’ with Laura and Gilbert was the best.  Thank you Harrison Hotsprings Resort.