Tucson Conference

IDAA….the flight down was long.  I’m awake at 4 am because I had to wake yesterday that early to arrive here for the teen banquet.  It’s hot.  Desert country.  The taxi was a hundred dollars from the Airport.  I talked to the taxi driver about treating vets with PTSD, Harley Davidson Motorcycles and  fine quality of American highways compared to Canada.  Like Rome’s whose roads hundreds of years later were  still evident  in Europe.  Like their Aquaducts.  Thinking of Time , permanence and impermanence.

I checked in at the Hilton EL Conquistaor resort.  War and rumours of war. I’ve just read about the American invasion of Mexico, their conquering of Mexico City and annexing of half the Mexico of the day, California, New Mexico, Texas and some of Arizona.  

The first person I saw I recognised was my flamboyantly gay colleague from California.  He’s was in deep conversation with a couple and by the time I’d checked in he was gone. I saw more I knew then, shaking hands, hugging, being welcomed and thoroughly feeling a part of.  These were my people. My tribe.   I stopped at the gift shop and bought a bathing suit having realized on the hot ride over I’d forgotten mine.  Everywhere was air conditioning.  Glorious air conditioning.

Tucson is a city in the desert with lots of trees and khacky shrubbery and cactus but also desert and bare high hills.  Hard for me coming from the Canadian Rockies to call them mountains. I missed the emerald green forests of my home.  The terrain and territory of this oonference spoke to survival.  The land here was tough.  Where I come from nativies have used words like ‘Comox’ which means abundance to describe their homeland. . Here it’s definitely a place where folk have carved out an existence and fought against the desert to make an existence.  

40 degrees.  I felt it after my shower walking to the teen banquet.  The Conquistado resort is spread out. I’m in the second three floor building across from the main resort conference centre.  The banquet was down the hill and I walked with a truly beautiful woman who was wearing white cowboy boots , white hat and baby blue frilly western dress.

“You still have the tag on your cowboy hat,”  I said.

“I know ,’ she said , “I wasn’t strong enough to break the tie.  Do you think you could do it.”  

I was glad to, Helping a beautiful young lady in distress does an man’s heart good. Following her I met up with my friends of years, the quite handsome, tall John with his loving beatuiful wife. They were with another couple.   I was now part of a group of 6, maybe the oldest with the beauty queen cowgirl, by far the youngest.  We headed down to the banquet where all sorts of friendship bloomed.  I was simply enthralled to see my colleagues of decades.  Hugh,  Nathan, Dave,  Art, Daryl , Julie, and so many more.

After Covid some still bumped knuckles in greeting but most shook hands and hugged. It was good to be home. I realized with the joy of joining how alone I’d felt,

My closest of  friends of have ed in the last few years.  My parents were gone, then my brother. And George I met in rehab. We’d go for dinner and a meeting once a month. Sharing, reminiscing.  Never was their a finer friend. He called these our ‘soul food’ times because we had sole at the famed Chez Michel.  He was like a brother to me and for decades we shared so much.  I cry thinking of him and my brother. Then my friend John died.  His son Luke has had a baby since.  Called me and I’ve yet to visit.  I loved his father. He;’d had a horseback jumping accident and become paraplegic like Supervamn.  He once said to me as we were walking and wheeling, walking our dogs , “You know I think I’d rather be in this chair, than your head.”

John,my psychiatrist friend introduced me to his wife , “This is Bill, “ to some of us, ‘wild bill in purely affectionate way. “’

 I was so thankful Dave was there. H’d survived his recent heart surgery. Saw him virtually in an office gown in recovery.  Darryl was looking more stooped  but I remember when we were all younger .  Now we looked at the older men. We were all a  little stooped. I complain about my back ache these days but I still stand mostly up right. Over dinner I shared that sex hurts because of the back pain.  One colleague said he too is  not having sex much because of the pain but another’s wife commented about their marriage, “I’m thankful we don’t have that problem.”  She smileed at her husband who hardly blushed

“I lost Vivian to Covid last year. She was a grandmother , Medicine woman, decades sober, very active in AA. She became an Anglican priest. I loved to serve on the Aboriginal Urban Ministry with her.  She worked with the street natives. We would have a banquet. I’d shoot bear and venison and give her lots of meat for these because I didn’t particularly like bear meat.  But I gave her moose too so I was generous.  I enjoyed the irony that the big native feasts east year were suppled by a white man.  I miss her though.  I don’t realize how much grief has taking ti’s toll in my life in recent years.”.

She was a beautiful young woman from Louisiana and I told her about my first psychiatrist mentor from the south, Hank Olivier.  “We met in 97 at the meeting in Toronto’s.  He feigned he needed help finding a Tilly hat. It was his sneaky way of getting me out of myself . I’d felt such shame and remorse coming to that meeting, celebrating’ We are not alone’.  I’d been so stigmatized and isolated , bullied and truly rumbled. In a divorce and not working I’d thought I’d leave psychiatry and return to general practice, missing the collegiality I’d known in my year of surgical residency. Now here I was betrayed and lied to by the drunken drug abusing psychiatrists that I’d chosen to be among.

————-

I’ll never forget Graham saying to me in those days I contemplated suicide and thought I only had God. “Some people run with the cheetah’s and some people run with the Turkeys. You’ve surely been running with the turkeys.’  Those were the years before UBC became the shining light it has become today.  I remember the head of psychiatry and my self talking about our quitting ringing in a meeting of AA.  It was a big meeting in North Vancouver with lots of celebrities from the movies being made in Hollywood North.  I  remember saying to one fellow getting coffee with me, “You know you look a lot like…..”.  “Yea, I get that a lot.’  I sat down with my friend Julie, who was on Baywatch with Pamela Anderson at the beginning of the show. Just sitting with Julie was special. She was the sexiest most head turning woman I’d ever known.  My friend Bill from Fort Gary childhood whose sister was my brother’s friend used to sit with us and we’d make such a fun time of it.  

Did you see the guy who looked like,….?” I asked Julie.  

He doesn’t just look like….. He is him.  I talked to him at the beginning of the meeting. WE were in a show together. 

Just about the most greatest actor in Canada and Holly wood I’d say.

“He’s a real spokesman for recovery too,’ she said.

Now here I was with my other Julie friend. The gorgeous brilliant New York ballerina Julie.  We’ve talked dance for years and visiting art galleries and d museums. I love New York and talked about my friend Laura. “She taking care of my dog at my home right now,”. 

The halibut, burghers, salad made a fine meal. I drank lots of iced lemonade and iced tea.  I was sharing with my plastic surgeon friend.  I’m suspicious because they never seem to grow older looking handsome and lovely as the day met them , a cover girl and a cover boy.  Meanwhile the rest of us seem to have a whole lot more wrinkles.  

“One day I think I need a face lift and the next day I rather like the wrinkles.’  

“I’ve made a living taking taking them away,’ he laughed.

The psychiatrist with us added “I’m not sure I’d want to lose mine since they’re the one thing I truly have earned myself,”.  

I thought then of the years of sailing in trade winds and the open sea.  The wrinkles I see in the mirror always remind me of that and I don’t want to forget the days outdoors.  

Another rabbit hopped along the sidewalk as I returned to my room that night saying a series of good nights. I’d notice a whole lot of rabbits by the air port and thought it must be a cycle of proliferation. They come and go.  I had talked some of hunting  with a man who fished sharing that I’m not as keen to hunt as I once was, if only because the work of bringing in big game is so overwhelming. I’m thinking of fishing more remembering my father shifting that way in his 70’s and 80’s .  

“I’d shared over dinner with John How I tried my big electro glide motorcycle I’d ridden to the meeting in Colorado on and another time at the Portland meeting, for a new smaller Nightster Special and how much more I enjoyed it.  Like grouse hosting versus deer hunting. “I’m considering selling my 14 ton sailboat for a smaller one I could handle solo without such work and effort.”  

“You ‘re getting ‘right sized” John said and laughed . We talk abot about ego especially egomania with inferiority complexes.  .  Yes I guess. I’ am , finally I’d said.  

It was so good to see all the old friends and then to meet Ann the psychiatrist  and Rick both decades sober in Rhode Island and the Carolinas but at their first IDAA meeting. We were reassuring a necomer.  “I got into drugs and alcohol and lost everything. I was so down I was living on the streets and someone convinced me to go into treatment. I did and it’s been 9 years . Now friends have convinced me to return to work as a psychiatrist and I’m shadowing a colleague at the hospital and being facing review to have my licences fully restored. A lot has changed since I quit work for booze,’ he said.  “I’m studying and being revived for my knowledge. I’d thrown myself i onto recovery after treatment and I’m pretty solid in that regards.

Ann had told him that ‘we re thought of as better than before for so many.’  Like broken bones that heal stronger.  

“I was a program director for many years,’ Rick shared . “We were all so glad to have people who’d fallen and risen back up return. They ‘d shown real resilience and character and related so well with patients offering so much more than they had before.

Daryl laughed, “I was drinking a micky a day when I was head of the alcohol treatment program in our hoss;pitas. I certainly was a much better doctor when I got sober.

“I had a DUI and that’s what brought me to the attention of the authorities.  I was glad for the monitoring. No one could doubt me after that and I’d found as anoyiong it was I found it helped.

I felt warm and cozy like a late night cookies and milk treat my mom sometimes gave me when I couldn’t sleep. 

Last night I slept really well. No nightmares.  I’d shared our gun stories with another psychiatrist. The patients pulling guns on us and demanding narcotics or bentos.  I was thankful to laugh about us getting out of the situations. “I was supervising a resident watching through two way mirror when the patient pull;ed a gun on the resident who smoothly said he’d have to discuss this with his supervisor and stepped out to talk to me the patient following with the gun and now me the resident and patient with the gun all continuing the discussion.  He said he’d had a few of those occasions working in forensics with the vets.  “I was in charge of a group. They’d all killed and they were all packing and I admit it was pretty dicey at times but such a good feeling to watch them settle down after their years of deployment, the paranoid dissipate. I don’t think one had a gun on him when we had our last meeting together.  ‘

The air is dry and fresh here.  The sun has risen over the bare brown hill and the sky is a turguoise blue like the jewelry worn here.  Since I’m up I’m going to make it to the early morning Attitude of Gratitude meeting I used to attend when Hal was alive.  So many have died but I’ve known them and been touched to the very core by knowing them.  Art was so proud. All my sons are in recovery now, he said.  I remember his wife Carole and he at the Portland meeting having dinner with another psychiatrist and his wife sharing their concerns and anxiety about their children ‘s addictions and how they were handling it and their hopes they’d find their way out of the misery.  Art’s son was taller than d his father, what people would call a ‘strapping young man’.

Standing in line for burgehers I said to Art, “you’re a good father’.  “It’s been a long haul but we’re feeling a lot more hope these days and I’m thankful I’m still doing it.”

Art had been my mentor when I worked in the states. He was on the executive of the American Psychiatric Association at the time and I’d phone him late at night to discuss a difficult patient especially the ones with PTSD from the militartym.  My said had been RCAF and Art was Air Force too.  A decade older and truly an inspiration.  I feel it in my heart seeing him.  He’s stooped a bit now. He’s had surgery for his knees afte all that jumping out of planes and carrying heavy packs overwrought terrain.  His wife had told him when the children were little, “You can either have me or the bottle .”  “Best decision I ever made, said Art looking across at the beautiful blond whose stood by his side all these years.  

It’s as Ptttsburgh and we’d all gone off to the Andry Warhol. Museum with Hank who’d been a flight surgeon in the Navy begore coming into recovery .  We’d laughed at and with Art who couldn’t see the merit in a soup can painting. There was some big Pittsburgh game playing that night and we were talking football and Andy Warhol and Hank was asking me about the time I served in Churchill and was chasers by polar bears.  

“We are not a glum lot,”. The banner statement shared one year. I’ve yet to know what this theme is this conference.  I’ll earne today .  I missed registration so didn’t have a name tag at the meriting. “I’m truly anonymous,” I quipped and an old timer I ‘ve known decades, said, “I”m sorry I’ve known you forever but I’ve forgotten your name. I’m having some troubles with my memory.”   I was hearing him through the hearing aids I was still adjusting 

“Bill” I said. Smiling. I’m here feeling sorry for myself thinking of all the friends I’ve lost and here’s my friend of decades, another psychiatrist colleague, aging gracefully and slowly losing his mind.  

I still cry thinking of that first meeting in Toronto and the banner, “We are not alone,”. Hank and the search for a Tilly Hat and that feeling of coming home.  Now here I am again  

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.  

Canada Day

I love Canada, the country, the people, the history, geography. I’ve travelled from Sea to Sea, north to south, represented Canada at international conferences, personally met four our prime ministers, was even a representative in my 20’s at the Canadian Youth Partliament in Ottawa.  I gladly wore Canadian flags on my pack when my first wife Baiba and I bicycled and danced across Europe.

Canada was thoroughly admired then because of the contributions of Canadian soldiers in WWII and the diplomacy of our leadership.   Talking with old people they’d wax poetic about our men and women who had liberated France, Holland, Germany and Spain.  It was a quarter century after that time when we were there and people talked of the Canadians soldiers as ‘strong and well mannered, humble and helpful.’  All these sorts of adjectives came up spontaneously where as the same folk would describe the ‘British liberators ‘. “Stiff and stuffy and the Americans ‘as brass and arrogant’.  

The Russians weren’t spoken well of at all but by then we’d had decades of Cold War with Communist Russia backing Communist China in the invasion of Korea and countless others democracies attacked by these aetheist dictatorships.  So many Canadians had died due to Communists.  The Kennedy Missile Crisis was in our minds and the young minds of those we met still talked of the Berlin Airlift and the Marxist hoards so little different to the days of the Attila the Hun and Ghengis Khan Power mongering bullies. Communists have always been the best at stealing the creative genius of the west. 

 I was in Western Europe and the East was still perceived as barbarian .  Canadians were the west and the British Empire had been the most civilized of all the colonial powers.  The Chinese and Middle Eastern Warlords and the war lords of India and Africa made even our Western Vlad the Implaler look moderate. In the west the Crucifixion  of the Romans had lapsed centuries before but continued with the millions Armenians genocide and the tribal warfares which continue today. The Germans we met still carried their  shame as did the Vichy French.  

It was good to be Canadian and even Americans would wear Canadian or Australians flags on their back packs.  Everyone hates #1 so the Americans being the principal superpower in the world were hated and envied liked every winner in history.  Canada was simply not a threat and their ally.  

In England I was actually helped immensely by the Canadian Consulate in a way I can’t imagine being helped to day It was all so friendly back then and the governments of Pearson and Diefenbaker were all  so homey just as Mulroney and Chrétien were like folk who’d you’d associate with in the neighbourhood.    Canada , all of Canada back then, not just the ‘city Canada’ today ruled by Toronto and Montreal, was friendly and safe. Nobody wanted to defund the police of the day.  We liked leaving our doors unlocked and the judges lived in our neighbourhoods rather than in private elite enclaves like West Vancouver.  Elitism was ever present but our leadership lived next door like Harper and Turner not like some jet setting playboy who preferred private island orgies to campfires in the wilderness. .  

I graduated from University of Winnipeg and University of Manitoba.  I fished and hiked and skied.  Canadians collectively were people who spent their holidays in the woods or outside at the beach,  Festivals were in parks not indoors. We were an outdoor people.  Guns were sold on the shelves in the store and everyone who didn’t know a hunter knew someone who hunted. The north was not the isolated region of the day. There was just not the polarization and division of later Marxist Trudeau years.  The world wasn’t black and white. My doctor was black. My friend Jewish. My family Métis. I simply didn’t think in ‘class’ or paranoid ‘him and them’ terms. We really thought of ourselves as Canadians .  There was west and east and there was the north and maritime but we all were joined by Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Anne Murray, Stan Rogers. They sang songs of Canada, Northwest Passage and Edmund Fitzgerald.  Our history was our culture. There was none of the globalist cancel culture or Marxist culturess homogenization.  Canada was Canadian. 

CBC was a Canadian radio station as Canadian as Hockey before it became the propaganda channel of today.  Pravda or People’s Daily.   I loved to listen to Barbara From as much as I enjoyed hearing hog prices and wheat prices on the news.  The Winnipeg Free Press really was amazing long before the left wing media of today began its censorship attack on free speech with the government wanting to ban Little Sisters and Sun and Fox News.  All the UN Canadian behaviour of dictatorship culminating in today legislations of censorship in the media making Canada a province of Beijing. 

Canada was small and local and Canadians who came here were from all over but the culture of Canada was deep and full of spirituality.  Even today the vast majority of Canadians except lying aetheist communist leadership acknowledges belief in a higher power.   The boy PM Trudeau liked the angry adolescent glitz of Montreal and Hollywood  and never understood the depth of the Laurentians.  Canadians did. We embraced Canada as French and English and we’re welcomining of all before Pierre Trudeau made the constitution in his image and imported the stupidity of the revolutionary intellectuals, those perpetual partriarchal boys who simply didn’t understand the Beatles ‘we don’t want a revolution’ and ‘all we are saying is give love a chance’.  

I loved taking the train that John A. Macdonald built across the country the early Canadians built  hold to hold Canada together.  John A Macdonald and the visionary early Canadians saw Canasa as a nation long Trudeau did nothing when the Macdonald statue was destroyed by his brown shirt friends.  The west wisely or unwisely wanted to join the US by Macdonald kept us together.   The train was everything..  It was the incredible chain that bound east and west .  Living in Winnipeg at the hub and centre of the nation I felt the breadth and depth of Canada which was so well represented in the movies “My Winnipeg” by Guy Maddin.  

There was the RCMP and their history with Musical Parade. There was Canada’s most exemplary relationship with the indigenous   It was the best in the world where other conquered peopl were simply killed or starved.  We had treaties something unheard of in Africa and South Asia where the ‘big boys’ trampled the little boys. The oldest law in the world was the Chinese Law of the Fish , there are big fish and little fish and the little fish nut be fast and numerous.  Yet here in Canada we had the experiment of treating the French and the indigenous better than any other conquering country or tribes in history and better than either of these groups treated their conquered people. Yet today that is never spoken of as comparison is always intellectual and there is some paradise or perfection that history is compared with.  

Captain Vancouver and Frazer and other explorers were all there then ,   Today that heritage was the basis of Colonel Hatfield, Canada’s explorer extraordinaire.  . Our scientists made the Space Arm for NASA and the most amazing man of all, the crazy jet test flight guru , Bowie’s Major Tom, Colonel Hatfield , became the leader of International Space Station maintained by east and west.

The Berlin Wall fell and we heard about it as Canadians and we cheered as when Reagan and Gorbachev met and  the Communist Marxist Dictatorship of Lenin and Stalin that killed a hundred million and worked only because of the misery of millions that Solzenitzen exposed like the Auschwitz work camps of Germany, fell.  The collapse of the USSR was cheered by hundreds of millions .

Canada was civil rights and freedom. It was health care and education and peace.  When ever I travelled to Europe I was met with smiles and friendship no longer a hippy on a bicycle but now a physicician specialist and writer coming from an admired country.

That changed in the last decade.  The last time I was overseas in London and Paris and even when I was in Milan people asked about the censorship and dictatorship and the abuse of women and the horses riding down elders.  I was ashamed of our leadership and have been since the first lies began with the double speak and gas lighting and arroganee so natural for the father and son became the norm in parliament. .  None of the humility that Canada had worn so well as a spiritual centre,  Just more  flash and shallow words or virtue signalling and platitudes.  The regime of the selfie .  All the ‘foreign’ aid no longer about what the poor needed in other countries but just photo op opportunities and non accountable money stashes puppets.  Third world banana country gave rise to third world maple syrup country.  

I want to celebrate Canada Day. I am a Canadian as were my parent , the sons of immigrants, My grand parents came to Canada because of the law and order and education and lower and middle class opportunities.  They came to work not to take.  They didn’t come for welfare but rather to build and grow.  They left the tyrannies of other countries and embraced the freedom of democracy .

I’ve white water canoed the northern streams and stayed in igloos and tents. I ‘ve hunted and fished and hiked and skied.  I’ve loved listening to the wilderness songs .  I’ve visited our spectacular Canadian Art and War Mueums.  I’ve loved the Group of Seven and admired the works of Frank Lloyd Wright.  Robertson Davies and Farley Mowatt writing.  Margaret Lawrence and Emily Carr. I loved Canadian art and that distinctive feature of the Canadian melting pot of indigenous and immigrant all so inspired by the culture that our present PM was too stoned or stupid to grasp .  Our PM puts down Canadians , Canada and is so lacking in culture and character he simply cannot appreciate Canada. He preferrs instead by his behaviour,  the Beijing urban Maoist gang mentality and Hollywood paperrazie.   Cooperation was the key to understanding Canada.  Kindness was at it’s core. Those are forgotten words too often today. 

Mines and logging and fisheries and people who knew the land were central not the gamblers of Wall Street and Montreal.  I loved the architecture of Halifax and Victoria. I loved the research station in Churchill. There’s the Great Lakes and the Laurentians.  But today I too often meet people who have immigrated to Canada but continue to live in their Old Country.  Even the refugees seems to prefer to return to places of war they escaped to than see the Yukon or cross the country on the train and droad trips that were the mainstay of my child hood. I meet immigrants today who never left Richmond who don’t know English or French though thankfully their chilren have embraced Canada and we all love to hike and swim in the ‘wilderness’ together. .  

I loved hunting with a new Canadian from Afghanistan and a new Canadian from Greece men who had hunted with their dads in their mountains of childhood. We all enjoyed eating Chinese Canadian and Indo Canadian meals in the little town cafes we stopped owned and run by locals who embrace Canada, all of it, not just a pavement patch like their pavement patch in another part of the world that may have had old culture but not the new culture of Canada which grew from all these strains and ideas  

Today I hope for Canada. I pray for Canada.  I believe that Canada will survive our present dangerously stupid corrupt leadership as it survived MacKenzie King who cavorted with prostitutes each night and believed his dog Spot channeled his dead mother. Canadians have been resilient if not tough. We’ve had to be collectively because we’ve had the weirdest anti Canadian leadership and swung back from these radical Marxist nutbar sto the central saniety we usually rally for.  

Canada is my home. I love it as I love my family.  But I’ve lived in Britain, America and Mexico and I have always come back to Canada as my home.  It’s my home. I don’t criticize Niagara Falls or the Rocky Mountains.. I love the people and the architecture of the cities and the distinctive towns like Pemberton where the best potatoes grow or Kenora and Napanee and Salt Spring Islands and Bouchard Gardens. I talked with a Persian who loved their country the same way despite the Hitler like leadership that drove them out of Iran to live in Canada instead. 

 I fear the corruption of our present government with all its lies and egomania might make more leave again.  Mobs love the Trudeaus of the world.  The brain drain of Africa was caused by these sorts of little Napoleons.  Not my idea of Canada but the brain drain of Canadians leaving for the freedom and meritocracy of the US where 80% of millionaires are self made in their own time and creativity is not stymied by the over whelming weight of corrupt institutionalize baksheesh Beurocracy of Canada.  

Well, I’m ambivalent like a man who married the greatest bride and saw all his children grow and now fears afraid in old age because Trudeau promotes euthanasia like Pierre pushed abortion. I love Life and God and don’t want to live in fear like everyone does in countries that don’t know the Magna Carta, the French Revolution, the American Revolution or 60’s Sexual Revolution.  Canada was a post revolutin country till Trudeau paid a terrorist murderer 20 million dollars. The writing was on the wall,

 I feared when Trudeau won another election that Canadians collectively were like the Germans of the thirties but thankfully despite his censorship we know the last election was won by Beijing and the dictator Xi .  Canadian voted collectively against UN Canadian Trudeau.  There is hope. We know this corruption today.  Our media is more than the Corrupt CBC. We have an informed Canada though the SCAB Voters brought in on mass to destroy Canada rather than build it up like the immigrants of the Harper Chrétien days. Those were people who wanted Canada and what Canada was,  not Antifida terrorists and radical iberal domestic Terrorists. Not the church arsonists or the climate change arsonists burning our forests.   Even Queer Canada was Canadian before this anti maple leaf rainbow flag radical alphabet soup group began screaming we are coming for your children.  I”m Canadian.  We don’t do shit like that.

I’m old and opinionated and Canadian.  I sill sing Happy Birthday Canada.  Thank God for this amazing country, my home.  

26 years

Another year has passed.  It’s been one day at a time.  Much has transpired in a positive way. I’ve carried on and contributed. I’ve served as usual.  This last month has been hard. It always is the anniversary of the time I left the gang who had seemed better for their poverty and dishonesty than the other gang, the lying white collar sociopaths.  

I just wanted to care for my dog and needed somewhere to sleep and I couldn’t sleep with a cocaine addicted wife who didn’t go to work but stayed up all night ‘partying’ while I tried to carry on.  I’d left and stayed in hotels to get sleep but facing waiting rooms to say again she wasn’t coming in.  I just couldn’t take it. I didn’t know how to carry on. 

I’ll never forget all the lying and the coast guard ship coming out of the sunrise right at us and me screaming, “You’d better not have brought any drugs with you because we’re about to be boarded and searched.”  I was screaming. She brought out the drugs and I put them in the head.

I drank and I smoked some dope but I didn’t do cocaine and saw too many people hurt by that.

“Didn’t you know she was called Hoover” her friend asked me.

“You’ve got to get her out of town. The dealers target rich women.’ My doctor said. She refused to see doctors and refused psychiatrists and therapists. 

She did’t go to the treatment centre but lied and lied and lied and I left.

Sexual role plays and all the dancing and the skiing and sailing had been fun till the refusal to get help and the failures and the others. Fun, fun and trouble, then trouble. The last couple of years whereas the early years were idyllic. The beginning was great despite meeting drink and stoned. There were so amany good times and she was amazing, accomplished fun early. 

It was a nightmare.  I was seeing a psychiatrist.  He was advising me and told me drinking some wine and smoking some dope wasn’t a problem. He was concerned about my wife and her cocaine. He told me to send her out of town for treatment.  She wasn’t able to function, absent, disoriented, erratic, drunk and stoned , dysfunctional, angry at home all the time, not sleeping, plotting revenge against other women, perceived slights. Drugs and alcohol were a problem but the cocaine was apthe problem. I confess I was lucky not to like it.

I was overwhelmed with the insaniety.   Iwas No RD Laing.  I had lawyers lying to me and thieves stealing money and I’d escaped several attempts at death like when drunk she drove the car at high speed into the wall or when she altered the radar so we were lifted off the bow beam of the tanker in the fog.

The lies were constant.  The lies and more lies and I just gave up.  I went to stay with the old hippy friends who ‘d had a grow op and we drank wine and made music but while we were away they’d got into cocaine too.  Thieiving psychopaths.  I worked on engines and enjoyed my days smoking more and staying at a distance , letting it all go, work and home and enjoying sleeping,  

She’d party all night and I’d go to work and it was awful.  I was Just awful. I said ‘I can help a hundred people or you. I can’t do both’ she just lied compulsively. Her drinking lawyer friend epitomized the old adage, lie,lie,lie, deny,deny,deny.

I really thought I could manage and that one day I decided okay I’ll stop drugs and alcohol completely. I’d been smoking two packs a day in that last month and trying to exchange marijuana shake for tobacco but was rolling drum and bud instead we drank beer and wine.

Today looking back on that last year is just insane. She’s doin all these drugs and I’m seeking help and she’s refusing and lying. The greatest irony not lost to the sober was they thought she was fine. Fucked inside Nice Exterior. My long term friends said I was lucky to be alive.  So I h betray lies an.  

A fellow Christian phoned and offered to help. I told him I wanted to leave and go back to church.  He picked me up and I stayed with him and returned to church and saw the Christian psychiatrist and the ‘reboot’ began. I hiked with my dog and I didn’t drink and didn’t smoke and I bicycled and that first month went by and I talked to Christian’s, the minister, Father John, and I cried in church. I cried whenever I was in church remembering my mother and my father and our home and the safety , the pews, and the children.  

Graham introduced me to Bernie and Bernie introduced me to AA.  I want to my first meeting. Bernie had a new truck.  She’d blown the head gasket on my truck and I’d been reduced to a bicycle.  I remember thinking maybe if I listen to this guy I’ll get a truck. That’s where my head was at. The guys I’d stayed with had taken the $30,000 I’d had in RRSP’s which had been taxed at 50% though I’d had no income and wouldn’t have for a year. Her lawyer , the white collar sociopaths who made the blue collar sociopaths look good,  took the $50,000 lying when she had me sign promising and promising and making meaning of the empty promises.

But I didn’t know then that I would set up scenarios so I would be the ‘victim’ and ‘poor me’ would be the modus opera di. I didn’t know about the reincarnation in Christianity before Nicaea or the reincarnation in jusagism and the Tibetan book of the dead and the players acting out the different roles of the theatre of life till we knew all sides,  IF the reds slayer thinks he slays and the slain thinks he’s slain they know not well the ways I keep and turn and toss again.  We are all one. Jesus taught do not be afraid.  Love God and Love your neighbour as yourself.

The famous psychiatrist asked what I wanted. I said, “I want her to stop doing drugs and alcohol and to go to AA.”  He said, “Women don’t go to AA’.”

I was demonized and slogged along witnessing miracles as I prayed and meditated and didn’t drink or do drugs trusting that they wouldn’t help. The world was an acid trip and the game was fixed and the players in the courts and government were just as insane as those in the asylums. It all seemed relevant,  

It was all insane.  I just did the next right thing and saw that they couldn’t help us.  The promise of children and marriage was dead and I had to accept that drugs and alcohol had killed that and looking back I’d seen the black sliver growing in those last years.  She wasn’t the problem . I liked her because I first met her smoking dope and drinking.  She’d not changed. She liked to party.  I was the one who felt further and further from God and no longer could make sense of what I was doing.

I loved Amazing Grace. I felt so bad that I wasn’t a good example.  We might have made the marriages last but the genetics of alcoholism in their families was too great and I was just too traumatized by plane crashes, being taken hostages, betrayals , death threats and near death and they had their share of these too. We we’re all wounded and sick and I was judging and afraid.  So was she but I couldn’t help them.  I had to help myself .  Number 1 life saving. They didn’t want to get clean and sober. They wanted to drink and drug and they did but I stopped.  Pride. I thought i was superior. An ego maniac with an inferiority complex.  

It was fun then fun and trouble and trouble.  It got really bad when I defended the indigenous people. It got really bad when the betrayals began. It got really bad when I trust drunks who were using me and using us.  It got really bad when I didn’t think of her and we were so selfish and self centered together. It got really bad .

Sometime in June of 1997 , in the weeks before June 25 I stopped smoking and drinking and turned my life over to god as I understood him..

I never knew her. I wish I’d known her off drugs and alcohol. She was a really great person and has so much .  We had so much fun for years and shared so much love but she and her mother refused to see psychiatrists and I was lied to an abused by the pscyhiatrists I saw till I turned to only psychihatrists who believed in God and law.  I don’t trust people who don’t believe in truth believe everything is of their own making, 

I remember when I lost peace of mind and when I regained it. 

I wish I’d been kinder to her. She could have killed me and nearly did so many times and was so destructive of life and crazy on drugs but she didn’t kill me. 

I made amends.  I have carried on. I’ve served and learned and been blessed beyond my wildest dreams . I hope and pray that she found what she was searching and got help. I did my time.

My colleague said, “If you’re not willing to do the time, don’t do the crime’. It was illegal to smoke marijuana then. I broke the law. He was head of psychiatry and he’d drunk and worked. I really admired him and thanked him for his pragmatism.  Dr. Bob had said ‘keep it simple’.  We don’t want to wreck this thing. That was yesterday and I have a psychotic representation of the past that tries to make me right and them wrong. It’s alcoholism.  If I’d not been with drunks and addicts the shit wouldn’t have happened If I’d not continue to drink past closing time those last couple of years might never have gone awry.  There were good times and the trick was to quit while a head.  The house always wins.  It’s demon drink.  I was lucky I escaped thanks to God, Jesus, AA, family, psychiatrists, doctors and good friends.  I have been blessed beyond. This anniversary of the crash of a life is hard,

In the following years I continue to work as a physician and psychiatrist for decades. I did subspecialization exams in Canada , the US and internationally in Addiction Medicine. I studied theology and obtained divinity training and a master in religious studies.  I worked and served with amazing godly sober people. I sailed solo to Hawai through hurricane. I became an accomplished rescue scuba diver. I’ve travelled to Israel, Ireland, Scotland, Italy, Azerbaijan,  Ethiopia, attended countless medical and psychiatric conferences and been the speaker and the participant.  I done my bit, serving as my teachers taught me.  I maintained  decades of a love affair, shot many moose as a big game hunter and became an accomplished motorcyclist riding 5000 km over a couple of weeks tenting on the way and attending Sturges. I had amazing friends. I was sober and there for the deaths of my parents and my brothers and the closest friends.  I ‘ve been sober for the deaths of two dogs and have a third as amazing companions.  I have been truly blessed. I”m forever grateful.  

Thank you God. Thank you Jesus.

Awake Sunday

I was up late last night.  I dressed in the new Reitman and drove to the 7-11 for drinks.  Partly that and the change that had me out at midnight experiencing the Burnaby late nights Much like childhood, no one about, most everything closed. Not like a small town but close to it.

Madigan glad I returned an hour later. He’s anoxious when I’m away.  We watched another episode of the Australian Animal Kingdom.  Sons of Anarchy with Skateboards. Criminals and gangs.  Very busy lives in pleasant settings.  Lots of drama.  

Meanwhile going out after 10 is drama for me and I remember when I stayed up all night going to parties. No thanks.  Aging makes a more leisurely life style attractive.

I’m affected by aging. It’s repetitive and boring to bring it up but it’s what I’m facing.  Along with death. So many my age telling me of another loss.  It’s like going to a new school. No old friends.  Re inventing oneself regularly.

Enjoy dog walks. Talking to guys about their retirement and/or being on disability.  I’m thankful for work. It’s the contrast that appeals. I like Friday being a special day and Monday less so.  Like seasons, rain and sun. I appreciate the sunny days here more than when there were all there was in Mexico.  

I am preparing for my snow bird experience , going south for winter months and continuing to work virtual.  I was helped by Starlink service as well as changing out the old router for a new. I don’t know that the new Router was what restored the internet. I wish there was a place I could have this router checked. I’m going to moving the Starlink satellite and pole to the Truck Camper and back.

My next event is my 26 year cake then the  IDAA conference.  Laura and I have booked a couple of weeks in the fall.  I need to book a place for glamping …hook up and such so while I’m off with Madigan on the ATV , Laura has the comfort and charm of the little house .  We’re planning the first break in Pemberton area because they have grouse and deer season open, the deer being any bucks , not the 4 point requirement in the rest of BC. It’s hard enough to find a buck I don’t want to have to wait for a 4 point. I didn’t like that about Cariboo hunting, having to measure the tines.  Grouse bow hunting weekend will be followed by rifle season so that’s the plan and I’ve booked in the ATV to be serviced before the fall. 

I’m thinking of a week virtual work by a lake while Laura is off baby sitting. I loved the au femme time at Osprey lake just sun bathing, cooking meals reading and swimming every day. Very self indulgent and self caring.  I had the Vespa then but will have the ATV.  I loved the north end of Harrison but the road was where I damage the Camper last time so I’m much more cautious of off road travel when I have such plans for the year with the camper. We lost it for repairs for almost two years. 

I pray to God and talk with God and feel God’s presence but not so much as I have at other times in life. I’m struggling with the stoicism debate and the epicurean debate and the lust versus gluttony or avarice debate.  The hierarchy of pleasure.  Certainly the sexual community seems to be what the LGBT is compared to the ‘married with children’ prudish or monogamous community.  When the function of marriage was child rearing for work and support and life expectancy was shorter this was a different proposition.  I’m foregoing the pleasure of alcohol and cigarettes but not sex.  Masturbation and fornication are loving as compared to those who would argue that the state needs to be involved to sanctify this. Clearly there’s merit in the AMish life and the various religious mainstreams have their merit They’ve lasted so long by working. I just don’t like their judgementalism and pride .  By contrast to women most ment I know feel ‘rationed’ by some and the obesity that reigns as much in women suggests that the gluttony in religious bodies is epidemic.  Yet this year there’s all the rage about ‘fat shaming’ but no similiar group going on about ‘lust shaming’.  

Given my experience with women lying and engaging in proxy violence I’m as loath to be around strange women in Canada, often any women ,and also children. The false accusations are as ubiquitous as the double standards applied to Trump. I feel safer among men.  I admire the mature women who didn’t vote for Trudeau and his victim consciousness. The whole legal judge industry has turned the country into a quagmire of social injustice masquerading as justice.  Doom zooming,  Anxiety and invasion of the body snatchers. 1984.  Everyone is guilty.  

I have only god to turn to and pray everyday.

This morning I didn’t meditate. I slept in.  Now I think I’ll nap,.  I am grateful .  It’s an especially fine day.  I”m challenged by the assembly project I started and stopped yesterday 

Thank you Jesus for this day.

Quiet Saturday

I’ve another vacation day. No real plans. 

Things I can do]

1. Assemble my inversion table

2. Continue to attempt to get my Arlo Security Camera to find the new Router Wi-Fi. One works and the other doesn’t and they didn’t return my call yesterday

3. Get the blue tooth to head set to work with the iPhone and new Harley so I can read the maps from the phone on the Harley face

4. Pick up mail.

What I will do is, shower and walk the dog

I imagine riding my motorcycle with the dog somewhere.  There are trails to explore and beaches to go to. I might swim here.  I could arrange a massage. That’s a real Cadillac problem. 

I could go to the storage locker and declutter.  So much that can be reduced, especially old clothing from slim days.  That’s the least appealing because its a sunny day and I don’t want to be in the dark. I want to be outside.

One of my joys in life is riding to Commercial Street or Davie street and sitting outside and having coffee and writing and people watching. Madigan likes both. There’s no equivalent place in Burnaby.  Too sterile yet.  Davie and Commercial are stocked with characters. I expect this is done in spring when they are stocking the lakes with trouts.  All sorts of fishy and unusual people on those streets.  Theatre people.  Full range of gender expression.  Ethnic groups,  Beautiful people and ugly people.  Rich and poor.  A reall cross section.  Robson is by contrast touristy and yuppie.  East Vancouver is dangerous. I do like 4th in Kits , probably the upscale students,  A lot of eye candy there.  Kits beach is definitely the place to watch the young. Bikini city.  But do I want any of that. Not really.

I’d like to ride my motorcycle and I’ve been building up Madigan’s patience.  I fear him forcing his way out of his harness or his box.  I loved that I could ride with Gilbert everywhere but even he young escape to sitting on top of his box twice both times hanging once from the ATV and another time from the back on the motorcycle . EAch time I was terrified,  He seemed surprised.  I expect his intention was to climb over me onto my lap.  Madigan by contrast seems to like being in the box so I’m slowly moving forward. I’d drive out to Chilliwack if I was more certain of his being ready.  He’s really settling down with me though when Laura is a bout all his obedience training goes and he’s unruly again. 

I must admit with covid and lockdowns he was undersocialized and further I’ve not had the aims for him to be primarily a hunting dog and therapy dog so I’ve not been doing the formal training and obedience classes et  I’ve done with previous dogs.  He’s too shy and irritable to be a therapy dog after his bad experience with the groomer.  He’s afraid of strangers especially insensitive intrussive sorts. Gilbert being around people was much friend ly and calming.  He was good with people in crisis.  I’m not sure about Madigan.  Though I may be comparing a young madigan with the older Gilbert.  We’ll see .  

He really is intrussive and I’ce not made ‘no’ a solid command so it’s my own fault he carries on a bit beyond. Right now he’s become slow to call in from his night pee as he thinks it’s sometimes an excuse to check out the yard and it’s a task specific event. He has these lapses. He’d stopped chewing blankets but after many months with that done he’s chewed another. I expect food falls on it.  He was totally house trained but when I was out he’d pee on the wastebasket in the bathroom. I expect that’s anxiety.  But it’s gone now. He’s a good dog. So much effort into training him and companionship eve though I’ve been fairly Laissez fair. I don’t know why these ‘relapses’ but we’re going forward .  

Thank you God for this day. Thank you for Madigan. Thank you for Laura. Thank you for my home. Watch over my family and keep them well.  Thank you for the summer weather, Tahnk you for the sun. Thank you for work. Thank you for freedom from pain. Thank you for the hot tub and swimming poool. Thank you for coffee. Thank you for the shower.  Thank you for this leisurely weekend such a change from my normal on the clock and constant demands, This is a a real break.  Thank you for my motorcycle. Thank you for technology even if it is frustrating, Thank you for Starlink and my progress to being able to take it with me on the Truck Camper into the off grid world. . Thank you.  Thank you for the black and white gang. Be with Emory in his old age and with his best friend in these trying times.  Thank you for your presence in our game of peek a boo.  Be present and may I be present today. thank you.

It’s a lovely day, I’ve the door open and there’s a slight breeze. Maybe a hot day. Yesterday the sun was out and it was perfect.  Time to move along

Thank you

Open day

I woke up today knowing it was a blank slate day. Now long work day. No routine. No agenda.  Just a day, like summer holidays as a kid.  A free weekend,

Normally I’m working and when I’m not working I’m doing lots of projects.

Today all I had vaguely planned was to re install my Starlink Router which I’ve done and it seems to have fixed the problem.

There are definitely things I could do.  There’s always the storage locker that needs reduction and sorting out.  

But I’m enjoying this day off without plans.  It’s like summer vacation as a kid , those days I usually ended up bicycling forever.  Now I’m enjoying blogging.

I don’t know what the blog or journal is today, whose reading it, what purpose it serves.  My own mental ‘selfie’. It was a bit original when I began and I really did want to challenge the idea of the ‘sane’ man.  I’ve found these ‘types’ to be deeply anxious with much posturing and tremendous fear based behaviour, conformity and business and limited insight with lots of tribal behaviour.

I am different socially.  I’m elite in terms of education and IQ. I’ve upper middle class.  More importantly to me now is that I’m older. There are less of us the older we survive.  The other major difference I experience is lack of children. I did twenty years of marriage and paid the price that usually begets men children for their old age. Instead I had a woman abort my child and I had no choice. So here I am alone in a way that my friends who are parents and grand parents are not. It’s a major differences. I have all my life belonged and supported family based services like the church and school and government. I’ve contributed so much in taxes I’m like the person who is taxed extensively but doesn’t have a car or house.  So much of taxes have gone for children and parents and I’ve just paid beyond my fair share.  I don’t really like the kids I mostly encounter on the streets in passing, children whose education, health care, parents have all been subsidized by my taxes..

I take offence at being called prividledged as I’ve worked since I was a teen and often had several jobs. I don’t get tax brakes. I don’t have the incredible pensions that government and union workers have. I’m like so many in that regard. I’m part of the collective destruction of the middle class and the taxation for third world financing of the criminal elites by our criminal political class in ottawa. 

I’m aware of my differences. We reduce our ‘uniqueness’ and individuality to be apart of ‘institutions’ and groups.  In my AA association they mock the ‘terminally unique’ but I appreciate that in regards to disease like kidney disorders and diabetes, but then I’m in this group and as usual am different as we each are in our individual ways.  

I look for my tribe. I wonder where I fit it,

A day like today is a bit like retirement might look more like.

I have a dog so he defines my life with walks and meals and exclusion from so many stores, restaurants and activities.  

I ‘fit’ in my academic groups and even in the later theological studies but I took offence as the university commercializations and marketting and decline of meritocracy.  The granting of medical degrees to students who failed and got lawyers to contest it was a first crack, as well as the financial slavery of so many for education loans, then when I did the post graduate degrees and they were bic lighters , with validity only for 5 or 10 years, obviously to hit on the education prone again.  A monetary evil crept into the university administration with the process of certification and recertification without any really validity to the need.  I became cynical especially as I saw that ‘who you knew’ was increasingly more important than what you knew as the international degree programs were marketed for 3 years as opposed to 4 years but supposedly equivalent and nurses were being groomed to be cheap and replace doctors. It was all unsettling and undermined my idealism. On line degrees and equivalences and letters after names.  I remember wanting to be able to marry at sea and the process of that ‘certification’.  

I have to date specialist certification in family medicine, psychiatry, and addiction medicine with a number of special certifications, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, hypnosis, group therapy, family therapy, motivation therapy, CBT, psychopharmacology, Pain, opiate treatments, medical review officer, assistant professor, clinical lecturer, medical author, and remote doctor, american and Canadian licensing, wilderness medicine and psychiatry…….then the religious studies and writing and history interest and other academic pursuits and board membership ….and aboriginal indigenous association, ….then the professional dancer, and ship’s captain off shore solo sailor, …then motorcyclist and cyclists, and big game hunter and survivalist ……now motorhome and RV guy.

I feel no longer apart of the heterosexual baby producing tribes dominated by women and the men supporting them. I was so attacked by that set and unprotected by the worm when their group members lied and made false allegations. They were radical feminists weaponized by the communist leaning authorities and men were not safe even in the church ,  Women believed the lies like the women in authority who said ‘women don’t lie about sex’.  There wasn’t any progress just a new exchange of bullies.  Revolution and not inclusions.  So I didn’t feel safe after that

I felt part of the LBGQ tribe because it didn’t trust the government and seemed to be enlightened to abuse of power and forces of censorship.  I found myself comfortable and among people who had been abused, who were bisexual or had experiences outside the rote…..I cross dressed and didn’t see the relative evil in a Klinger dress compared to the lying and cheating and bullying and abuse going on by the avaricious and power seeking sorts.   I feel that my sexual self is welcome in this community whereas in so many other tribes and communities one is faulted even for comment, or looking ,or a joke.  It’s a mine field and it was once blamed on the old ladies or as my friend said the old ladies of both sexes but now I see that lust is judged by those who are most unrepentant of their pride or gluttony or one of the other sins like envy and avarice.  

I mostly feel alone and often feel safest in the woods and away from people. I liked when my friend now dead told me I needed to beware of stupid people in groups.

I like people with a sense of humor and the folk who now claim inclusivity are the most easily offended.

I have these ideas and look back on the free ranging discussions we had at university when it was a place of learning opposed to the propaganda focus of today.  

Today I feel mob violence rules and is encouraged by the people who forcefully collected taxes and demand perfection from people like me. Thugs in position of power virtue signalling and wanting us to applaud to kazoo playing and Jew’s harp symphony.  I miss listening to Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar or James Taylor and Fleetwood Mack. 

I’m old to most. I don’t like much of today’s culture and miss the days we were hippies and the days of travel not for selfies but to learn culture and connect with others   Now I’ve been at so many conferences with the education elite of the world and enjoyed so many lectures and presentations .  

Today I’ve the gift of time and think I’ll have another cup of coffee and be grateful for an incredible life of adventure, Adventure is certainly what describes it.  I’m very thankful. I’m very grateful.  Now what next?