Rainy Wednesday, Peter and Bella

Peter and Larry are back with Bella and Lucca.  Madigan and Bella noticed each other first across the space in the parking lot, Little Bella squirming and bellying up while Madigan tugged on his leash. It was good to see Peter. He’d grazed his head in a fall but said he’d not been concussed.  They’d had their motorhome in Canmore Calgary for the summer and his mother had visitted for a week, loving the pleasant site on the Bow River.  

“So what have you done this sumner?” Peter asked after we’d commented on mutual friends we knew,  Laura doing well. Helena and Dave fine.  Mack and Kim doing well.

“I was hunting with Madigan last weekend,”.I said, “My cockapoo retriever,  I shoot the partridge and he actually fetches it back, the bird as big as his head”. 

I talked more about my hunting dog but couldn’t remember what I’d done in my summer,

“Did you and Laura get up to Whistler?” He asked

“Yes we did.”  Pet4r is so gracious and remember people and their events.  I had to reflect that I was having a simpler life, I work. I went to the British Columbia Royal Museum in Victoria to see the Stonehenge Exhibit. I’d ridden my Harley with Madigan to Squamish meeting Carolyn and Rogina in the late spring,  I told him I’d done damage to my Camprr taking it off road bear hunting north of Pemberton,

“I’ve paid off all the repairs and the camper is ready again for a week vacation and hunt Thanksgiving week.”

“I’ve been wanting to visit museums and art galleries I’m hoping to get to Berlin because I’ve been studying the Airlift and the falling of the Wall.I’m planning on going south for a couple of months this winter but I want to stop in LA to visit art galleries and museums there.’

“That’s where we are wintering this year.  Long Beach”. Said Peter. 

The dogs were walking together all three of them.  Part of what we called the ‘black and white gang’ when there were more of us.  It’s fun to watch them.  They look proud to be with friends and a group like teens on summer vacation,

I’d forgot to mention Baltimore. I’d enjoyed the conference there and going to the Walter’s Art Museum, or selling my sailboat, or taking the course in Religion in Prehistory from Oxford, I’ve been reading and studying a lot,  Genetics, Intelligennce, AI, Berlin.  

It was a good summer,  Almost forgettable bccause of the lack of negative drama and the all around pleasantness of the time.  Long walks with Madigan to Brunette Lakes.  Drives to the off leash dog park,  Nothing exciting but all of it good.  Even a bit wholesome.  Meetings with friends on Wednesday night at the Burnaby Fellowship Centre and on line meetings Saturday and Sunday mornings. Trips to the chiropractor every few weeks.  Watching tv at night. NCIS. Seal Team, movies with Kidman.  

Peter headed home after we talked with Max. I learned a neighbour had beat cancer and had good news.  Peter is social and interested in others in a neighbourly way. His greeting of folk reminds me of th time in the my childhood when we walked about the neighbourhood and stopped to chat with folk. I do that at church I suppose but when I walk the dog I am listening to audio boots while Peter is stopping to chat for a moment here and there mostly with other dog folk.  I realize with him I’m part of this community and it’s comforting. I’m quite driven to learn.  Reading about evolutionary materialism this spring I’d felt out of step and now I’m quite abreast of development. 

I’m glad that Peter is back and so enjoyed seeing Madigan with Bella and the group walk.  Laura is coming on the weekend .Her brother in law had a heart attack and fall up north so it was quite the scare till he was able to be Medivacked from the Queen Charlottes to VGH.  He had three stints and is recovering well. Folks I know with stints are all doing amazing well. We’re relieved. Laura was really frightened but is so happy he is recovering well,  Her sister and nieces were there when she left work to be at the hospital He’ll be home on the weekend,  I was thankful. I pray daily and give thanks and this really was good.  John is young and such a good guy.  I really am thankful.

It’s a good life.  It’s raining. Fall is here,  I must get dressed and walk Madigan a bit before I sit down at my desk and screen and see patients for the day.

Thank you God for all of your blessings. 

R & R Day

I”ve been lying on the couch reading. I woke at 530 dreaming a mix of scenarios.  One was the  washroom at the group home where the toilet seat had been pissed on. I had to sit and found paper towel and cleaned it.  Another was the truck in the mountains.  I let Madigan out to pee then lay down on the couch and thought I’d just sleep.  On a work day I’d meditate and exercise but yesterday we slept in. Laura enjoyed sleeping in. Madigan had gone back lie beside her. I thought not to wake her. She was enjoying the fresh sheets and pillow cases I put on the bed last night.   I was fine on the couch once I added the second blanket . It was chilly in the morning.

830 I woke after more dreams, positive, this time.  I was kind of hung over and depressed the way one gets after over sleeping. Yet I felt it was good. I’m a human ‘doing’ and sleeping was good.  

I had roasted Ethiopian Sidano beans yesterday to perfection.  I enjoyed making coffee, grinding the beans from the expresso machine, adding cream and honey.   I had one ready for Laura when she appeared and brewed another for myself.  Madigan was excited with the day.  It took 2 cups and then Madigan went ballistic. He heard Bella, the little havanese bark. His girlfriend.  He was barking and whining and yes he deserved a walk and hopefully we’d meet with Peter, Bella and Luka.

What a fantastic day it was outside!  Canada Day Weekend. Sunshine.  Fresh air. Others’ have the woodsmoke from climatic change cult arsonists, the domestic terrorists that have abounded these last few years.  No one talks now about the 70 plus churches burnt to the ground last year. I drove through the town of Lytton which was burnt to the ground by fanatics.  We’ve had lightning fires in the past but these are different.  Premeditated. 

I like the fresh air this morning. We do meet up with Peter, Bella’s high pitched bark triggers Madigan to almost drag me throug the air to get to her. She immediately bellies up. We laugh.  Helena is there to and greets the puppies. She’s a dog person. We chat a bit.  Several busses are leaving. Mack says hello to Madigan. Peter and I continue the walk round the park.  The Black and White Gang.  Little dogs and their owners on patrol.

I discussed hamburger with Peter. He’s really into cooking and reads recipe books daily.  His discussion of hamburgers inspired my making them again. I’d not done it since the last deer I shot 5 years ago.  I used to get ground back from the butcher and use it in chilli’s and hash and burgers.  Laura loved the burger I made yesterday.  I learned more from Peter about spices.  Gave him some beans I’d just roasted thanking him for the inspiration and remembering the cupcakes he shared last year.  Laura noted he was baking bread yesterday.  We were returning from having pedicures and manicures with Vietnamese girls in the mall’s professional nails.

Laura was still raading when I returned.  I microwaved back bacon and used the new microwave dish for poaching eggs I served on toast for her.  Now we’re sated and I’m lying on the couch reading the latest Baldacci.  I’m also reading a history of the civil war having just finished reading a book about the fall of Berlin and Eisenhower letting Stalin take the city against the wishes of Churchill probably because Roosevelt was more focused on his UN for future peace.  Churchill of course was right and the Cold War began immediately.  I want to read about the airlift next.  I realize today that to me all this was yesterday in my lifetime but the young don’t know history.  It’s obvious given they’ve collectively forgotten the mess Trudeau’s father made of the country with his Communist ideas and hatred of England and America and love of Cuba, Russia and China.  Here we are today repeating history with more debt and higher cost of living all the same as what followed the father.  The hope is we can dig ourself out of the hole though it’s going to be a struggle. You can vote yourself into Communism but you can only fight your way out.  

I’ve been lying on the couch reading and remembering as a child loving this.  Mom says,g “Billy, stop reading and go outside and play.’  Here I am reading. I feel guilty as I really could be outside lying in the sun in a lawn chair. I could be riding my motorcycle. We could go to an off leash dog park. We could go for a long walk by the lake or river. We could set up the inversion table. Just take it away from the wall and open the base so it can allow inversion. It’s not like I have to put it together. I ‘ve had another coffee.  I’m muddled a bit and almost feel I could sleep more.  I’ll go back to reading. I’m at an international conference this week and have work tomorrow. It’s a holiday so I can’t get the lift for the harley to mount on the front of the truck. The bits for the Starlink to be carried on the camper arrive next week.  I’ll have a trial of that while Laura is house sitting. I’ve to notify the office that I’ll be working virtual and want to make sure this is all copacetic as I’m planning to be dependent on the Starlink for virtual work from the camper. The plan is to be by a lake off grid and work 6 hours a day but go swimming and fishing daily, getting more exercise.  I hope to have the harley with me then or I could pull the ATV.  I have to find a lake with no tree obstruction to block the satellites from the satellite dish.  It will be like my Osprey lake vacation but this time I’ll keep working Iike I did the year before at Horse Lake.  The big advantage is lake swimming and off sleash for Madigan and evenings of motorcycle or ATV with Madigan rather than tv.  More summer wilderness holiday.

I phoned an RV park to book the week in Zone 2 in Sept and we’re planning an Oct hunt too in Princeton or Clinton area.  I always like the grouse hunting but do hope to get a deer this year.  I’d really like to have more barbecue venison and venison stews.  I would love to shoot a moose too but he work of getting it back is unfathonable.  A deer is as much as I can handle feeling out of shape as I am.

I’ve gained weight since covid and really must face it. Maybe OA .  We’ll see.  I usually lose weight in Summer and the injuries last year didn’t help exercise any.  

I am blessed and thank God for this day.  We watched John Wick Chapeter 4 and Hi God this is Margaret the last couple of evenings.  It’s a pleasant routine.  Thank you Jesus.  

Sunday, Cariboo Bonanza Resort, Horse Lake BC

We have so enjoyed our stay here. Horse Lake is between Lone Butte and 100 mile House in the Interlake Region of BC.  I’ve had a lot of fun getting my Coronado XT pontoon boat with electric motor out onto the lake. I’ve fished but not caught anything. Everyone else around me did. Rainbows and Kokanee’s. I also bought a Chiappa 22LR /20 gauge over under shot gun, the “Double Badger”. I rode all over on my KTM 690 motorcycle and shot targets. I took some great bird picture with the Nikon Coolpix P1000.  I read some westerns and sci fi novels. I scrolled a lot of FB and added flippant thoughts and political commentary with knee jerk genius contributing to the cacapohonousbedlam of social media.

I felt blessed. I prayed. I was with my beautiful friend Laura who is easy on the spirit. Gilbert the blind cockapoo with injured back, valvular heart disease and congestive heart failure was a true source of joy. He had us up all night coughing and struggling to breathe. We phone Dr. Biernacki at North Road Animal Hospital and he told us is was the higher elevation in the Cariboo that had caused it.  He upped his diuretic furosemide and Gilbert’s been so much better since. Yesterday he was rolling up and down the hill and playing with his ball. We have a family of ducklings join us each day with their mom and he is just fascinated by their chatter.

We’ve had wonderful heart warming fires and beautiful sunsets. Everyone about has been so civilized.The resort attracts  international visitors as well as locals.  Rustic cabins in the uptown section and downtown RV camping where we are. Lots of old people and children.  Serious fishermen.  Not me.  I even sought the advise of the great fishing guru, Bill, to no avail.  I felt Sentimental hooking the worm.  I’d become a vegetarian again but their sentience disturbed me as much when I cut into a zucchini.  Not surprising, given my Irish roots, I loved potatoes here. I barbecued steaks and smokies and pork chops and had them with boiled potatoes and sour cream and mashed potatoes.  I made bacon sandwiches and bacon and eggs. I’ve enjoyed cooking.  I especially love barbecuing.  It’s been a wonderful vacation with that sense of cares dropping away.

I’ve worked some. With wifi and cellular service I’ve been able to connect to the Oscar Remote by computer and talk to patients on the phone. It was rainy some mornings and I was able to be of service and help.  I only thought about Covid and the catastrophes its brought to some people when I was working. Here its seems another world away.  I’ve seen the continuing corruption of Trudeau politics and Communist China and diabolical UN on Facebook but it’s at a distance. The background here is forest, lake and woodsmoke.  

This Adventurer camper has provided all the amenities with sewage hook up , running water connection, propane heat and hot water.  I’ve really enjoyed reading westerns and sci fi, rich allegories of good against bad.  Lots of tribal justice and revenge.  I then meditate on faith, hope and love.  Forgiveness is always a theme. Letting go. I’m older and still bothered by lustful and fearful thoughts and feelings. I struggle to let go of guilt and shame. Acceptance is a key idea today.  I have to remind myself I’ve not stolen millions from hard working Canadians to launder overseas with euphemistic projects, done any abortions or cannibalized my neighbor. On the balance sheet I’ve not been doing too badly especially this week when I’ve mostly been self critical for not getting up early and catching fish or getting up early and writing the great Canadian novel. I’ve been kind of lazy. I have slept in and napped. Walking Gilbert at his pace with his heart condition. I’ve bought a couple of pairs of sandals at Work Wear in 100 mile House.  I’ve bought a half dozen fishing lures that would have worked better if I had my line in the water more. I’ve kind of stagnated.  Lots of coffee and reading.  I’ve enjoyed my little corner here at the table stretching my legs out to rest my feet on the second drawer where I’ve put a cushion to create a self made couch. Laura has done cross words. Gilbert has slept.

I expect this is a kind of proto retirement. It’s a bit like a lot of my older and younger friends do.  I’ve thought about life and accomplishments. I put a decade into training at the highest levels and struggle like a number of colleagues and educated friends seeing others rewarded and given positions not on the basis of work and meritocracy but through cronyism and bullying and frank criminal behavior. I would have liked to loot a bigger tv. I obey the law and feel often like the Last Boy Scout.  When I’m with Laura I’m comfortable and feel a bit like my old man. I’ve followed in his footsteps, camping, hunting, fishing. He left me his love of the wilderness.

When I’m alone though in the city, I think  jazz and traveling to exotic lands.  I miss the theatre and television. I gave up a relatively hedonistic life of fun and pleasure for a life of calling and service.  That unforgettable moment praying in the University of Winnipeg chapel and my friend inviting me to come along and do the MCAT.  I thought Jesus was a healer but I wonder if I’d not have had a better life as a carpenter. I loved Herman Hesse’s Narcissus and Goldmund, discussing that very theme. 

A lot of the time I think of God and want to be closer, to know his will for me and to have the power to carry it out.  I look back on my life these days and it’s been full and exiting. I’ve been truly blessed. I celebrated 23 years of recovery this week and I’m in my late 60’s. For a guy whose been in plane crashes, sailed through hurricanes, been shot at , surrounded by Swat teams, stood up against all manner of social injustice , fought with really bad people and served the highest courts and spent days with Prime Ministers and Generals and Nobel Prize Winners and Olympic Athletes I’ve been truly blessed. God is good all of the time. But I’m never satisfied. I’m always feeling like I’m falling short of what I could be. I don’t want to be crucified like Jesus or his disciples. I’m a wuzz. Part of my reason for liking skirts and hair salons is because I’m old and feel vulnerable as an old man in todays culture and society.  I’m like an enlightened worm. Or a smart ant. I loved the metaphors of St. Francis. 

I don’t feel protected and don’t feel I can rest on my laurels.  I find myself think of Valhalla. I see the old men, the farmers and such, congregating in the MacDonald’s and A&W in the morning and think that may be me soon. I miss my brother Ron and his fish tanks. I miss my father and his fishing.  I’ve not the patience and confidence that they had. The men and women with children seem complete. The grandchildren give them meaning and purpose. I’m here with a dying dog and feeling that I’ve failed. It’s all in the self pity.  I’ve tried my best but been way laid by evil and corrupt bureaucrats and systems. Years of my life I’ve defended myself against lying psychopathic women and men.  I’ve been so disturbed that I’ve been caught in their low life games. I wanted to play the Glass Bead Game not Days in our Life.  There are times I’ve felt I reached for the stars but looking back so much has just been slogging through the mire of human existence. It’s all perspective and I’ve lived in fear and resentment and muddle.  There’s no merit in beating myself up. It’s tied to envy. I judge my insides by others outsides.

Now we’re leaving here. Packing up and moving to a lower elevation for the sake of Gilbert’s heart and lungs.  It’s an unknown destination.  We had booked this week but on a whim and due to the days July 1st came we took another week of vacation. I’ve not known this amount of unscheduled open time in years.  Again I think of this as a what retirement might well be like. Like a summer vacation in school days and each day an open slate. This truck and camper is like a land yacht and I actually enjoy it more than my sailboat, the land appealing more to me with better wifi and hook ups and the culture of Good Sam RV world. My parents loved the RV world and it’s a more appealing lot than the yachting world. I like the motorcycles and quads and all the dogs.  Life is good.  I am very grateful.  Now I must get stowed and on the road. 

Thank you God for another day in paradise. BC is God’s country and the views are just constant eye candy.  Thank you Jesus.  

John Rauls and Academic Fame

My friend is a philosopher who lectures college students.  She gave me a copy of John Rauls decades back. I duly read it, mostly because she is extremely beautiful and worried she'd quizz me about it at sometime in the future.  When I'm not reading about neurochemistry and Higgin's particles I'm more often than not reading theology.  I liked that Rauls said to paraphrase, justice is to social institutions what truth is to the individual.'  I've always liked the 'as above, so below' connection between macrocosm and microcosom. I just didn't realize that John Rauls, Theory of Social Justice would become so important. It was written in the 70's and I read it in the 90's and today I learned it's one of the most cited of social philosophers.
I've had this experience with individuals before. I read Harvard's, George Vaillant's book on the Grant Study, wrote to him a very appreciative letter in the 70's long before I knew he was one of the 'grand men' of our age.  I was just delighted that he corresponded with me and later I had the opportunity to meet him, a truly wise and remarkable man, a few years ago.  I read Thomas Kuhn's, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' a few years after it was published in the early 60's .  Today paradigm is a garden variety word thanks mostly to his book.  I read Turing early in my interest in computer programming when I was writing in Basic and MS Dos long before I cursed program language realizing I could speak swahili, punjabi, mandarin and spanish if I had devoted my attention to learning living rather than techno language. I still enjoy learning spanish but will likely die before I ever  learn swahili. There is simply not enough time for learning all one wants to and so much interference in the study of what really matters.  
Recently I read Jared Diamond's first books and happened to share the tastes of the world as that great genius has also gone on to acclaim he deserves.
When I travelled I used to carry a copy of the Bible and I also had a copy of Plato. I enjoyed in my 20's  reading the discussions  of Socrates.  Over the years I'd routinely read three texts, one about some aspect of sociocultural world, from the  arts , a scientific text, which might be from any aspect of science, medicine or psychiatry, and finally a novel which commonly discussed matters of importance in the other fields.  I've loved the writings of physician writers like Michael Creighton and recently Daniel Kalla.
I loved Love in the Ruins and the Joshua Tree.  I've loved those books that spoke to our times and culture, like Robertson Davies trilogy.  Obviously reading Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain was an insight into asylums, tuberculosis and the human spirit just as that other nobel prize winner Magister Ludi caused consideration of meaning as much as Victor Frankl's writing does.  Recently I was reading an economics text, a physics text and an evangelical theology text side by side getting relief from them by reading the antics of Flashman by Macdonald as he boisterously raced through the hot spots of history.  Most of the ideas of science fiction a hundred years ago and even only 50 have come to pass.  I laughed because several of my patients were called insane for thinking exactly the same way as  characters out of a William Gibson's novel.  I thought meeting these exotic creatures some of my colleagues should get out more.  Not at all insane by global standards but definitely beyond the mindset of Georgia and Howe.  
An old friend, the father of my dear friend, before he died told us how he'd supported himself in the latter years. He'd had very little or modest returns from all the best stocks and investments. However he chose to invest in an obscure company because he thought what they were up to was rather brilliant. This man was a scientist in chemistry himself but chose to buy stock in this obscure little start up.  "It was called IBM. It's provided more returns than all the other blue stocking stocks put together and allowed us to live as we did after retirement." he told his son.
I feel like I've invested well intellectually.  There's a kind of 'social justice' in that.  It's the truth.  John Rauls was a good read even if my brilliant and beautiful friend never asked me about it later.  But today as his name has achieved an even greater popularity I am thankful to her too for recognising gold in the dross.