Eunuchs, Bureaucrats ,Strongman, Conformity and Transsexualism

In society the “strong man” surrounds himself with loyal followers and a harem of available mates and potential ‘breeders’.  The castrated male , or eunuch, was the chief bureaucrat or apparatchik for the strong man. Thecastrated man was not a threat to the strong man or his harem. The very act of participation in the castration ritual was as binding as the partial tribal circumcision rituals. Psychologically there is an inherent “Stockholm Syndrome” with the “identification with the aggressor”.

The androgyny of Jesus and the self castration of the priests of the church was a public statement of ‘conformity’.  Indeed ‘conformity’ is the central tenet of the eunuch creed. It is witnessed today in the modern eunuch equivalence of the transsexual male who voluntarily self castrates then spends the rest of his/her life wanting to ‘pass’ as the female. The argument for Identfication with the aggressor can be made clearly in some if not all.

Psychological mindedness is the tolerance of the tension of opposites.

The aboriginal ‘twin spirit’ was the ‘priest’ of the tribe.  The ‘other’ was normally not accepted for its strangeness in the Traditional Society where survival depended on accepting only sameness. Racism then was a natural survival mechanism as were many phobias and taboos.

The petty bureaucrat/apparatchik is the twisted eunuch with a creepy sexual proclivity. In Armstrong’s , Fields of Blood the uncorrupted  bureaucrat is a perhaps unattainable Platonic shadow given the tendency for bureaucracy to grow like cancers and individually to resist accountability and behave inhumanly in the security engendered by either the mob or lemming sense.

I didn’t have my dog Gilbert castrated because I hoped to breed him.  However as the majority of male dogs in the city are castrated to reduce the competition and tensions which arise in proximity to females in heat and the city females dogs are also castrated to reduce the number of puppies, my dog is not allowed in dog day care.  Contrary to what one would believe that the dogs with excess ‘testosterone’ are the ‘fighter’ it turns out that the castrated dogs attack the uncastrated dogs.  The low testosterone dogs “initiate” fights. The high testosterone dogs may well win because of the beneficial effects of testosterone on muscular development but it is the low testosterone dog that ‘initiates’ fights.  So my dog is excluded from daycare and I am commonly being advised that male dogs ‘should be‘ castrated.

I am encouraged to conform.  But I have always dreamed of my dog and a female dog with puppies in the country somewhere. As a pedigreed pure bread his intrinsic value is thousands of dollars more ‘uncastrated’ but the owners mostly of “mutts” would have me castrate him.  Indeed if a dog becomes violent to humans, whether he initiates it or not, he will be castrated or killed.

Considerable evidence supports the view that females initiate violence or encourage violence between suitors and while overly complaining about violence are sexually aroused by the violence. Dr Carl Jung pointed to the persona or public conscious “face” and the shadow or unconscious or covert other self. The central feature of psychological assessment which in absent in the outdated rational court process is the idea of congruence between word and behaviour. Seductive sexual behaviour is commonly seen in court rooms coupled with inauthentic horror. Even Shakespeare observed “the lady protesters too much”
 However as Christine Summers notes in Who Stole Feminism, How Women Betray Women, the “victim” can serves an ulterior purpose. Hitler invaded countries on the pretence of rescuing German victims. North American had been described as the center of “caregiver”and “victim” industry with the devolution today of everyone offended and everyone a victim.

Arendt described the ‘banality of evil’ when she studied the ‘bureaurocracy’ of the totalitarian system.  The totalitarian system she studied was the Nazi beurocracy. The Nuremberg Trials only occurred yesterday but already the Nizcor Projects concerns are being realized. Without the bureaucracy Auschwitz could not have existed. As “None is too Many” by Arabella And Troper showed clearly the Anti semitism in Canada yesterday it arises again today under another Liberal government.

Erving Goffman studied the ‘totalitarian’ regime of the asylum in his classic “Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and other Inmates”. Totalitarianism is the natural consequence of increasing authoritarianism. As the insane become more out control themselves they demand increasing control of those around them in a devolving system of natural self destruction.

Dr. Jordan Peterson, in his 12 Rules of Life describes the fluctuations between the fundamentals of chaos and order.  He describes order as symbolically male and chaos as symbolically female, yin and yang, or yoni and lingam, etc.

The interspace between these two , the grey in the black and white, is the ‘intersex’, an actual biological construct which exists and is considered well in Alice Dreger’s classic, Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex.  Those who would argue that heterosexuality, homosexuality or intersexuality or indeed changing sexuality is ‘unnatural’ are proved wrong over and over again by biology which is the lodestone of the natural.  Indeed “civilization’ is perhaps the most ‘unnatural’ creation of the human species.

Morality is distinct from biology though Darwinian Imperialism would dictate that ‘survival of the fittest’ is the morality of all including the gene. The power of the ‘strong man’ and the ‘adherents of the strong man’  aim to maintain a mutually beneficial ‘order’ and resist change ,most often by offering the same, disguised as change,  with the ultimate effect that “the emperor has no clothes’. Social Darwinism is the bureaucratic bible.

The survival of the bureaucrat/apparatchik  or eunuch is dependent on the success and maintenance of the status quo.  Order begets power to those dependent on the throne.  “Steal a little and they put you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king , to quote Dr Johnson paraphrased by Bob Dylan.

Today’s strong man is in flux and a source of uncertainty but likely is the banker as they are most portrayed as ‘order’. Only the richest elite can afford obscurity. The Mao Jacket Sculpture of Sui Jianguo epitomizes the overt austerity of a man whose wife and he enjoyed personal wealthy and debauchery the likes not seen since the sultans while the masses were murdered and impoverished.
Veblen by contrast mocked the outward appearance of the American businessmen in their suits of Puritan simplicity while their treasure horse wives staggered about under the weight of gold and jewels and minks expressing the “conspicuous consumption” of the rising consumer cult.
They are the Straw men of  T.S. Elliott.  Money as a ‘construct’ is most controllable with the immediate value independent of it’s inflation peculiarities of confidence. It is one thing to forego the  “gold” standard which the new Chinese currency wishes to restore as compared to Canada’s Decadent PM Trudeau who would have no standard and declare the “budget will balance itself”.  Marx, the world’s greatest Kafetch, biting the hand that fed, proclaimed, “money is the God of the jews” and “religion the opiate of the masses”.

 The strong man once was the warrior but war today is commonly fought in board rooms and lawyers and corporate leaders are the new knights of the realm.  If they succeed they in turn share the spoils of females and gold. War is the failure of diplomacy but equally its own business. The principal role of the UN is to maintain the order brought on post WW2. The “security council” of US, Russia, Britain, China, France are the principal arms dealers of the world and compete routinely in “dry” or “wet” wars to compare advances in technology and a more intimate Olympic competition for humans.

Hitler was the ‘strong man’ whose existence depended upon his Goebbels and Himmler, the most powerful of his inner circle being the sole female, Eva Braun.  Lenin’s circle was Stalin, Trotsky, Molotov and Krupskaya and Armand the wife and mistress of Lenin.  Even Jesus had his Mary Magdalene, portrayed ironically as  celibate though it was known that Jesus surrounded himself with ‘fallen women ‘as well as the most upstanding women like Mary and Martha.

To gain real loyalty the strong man in the Hell’s Angels ,kills. Stalin and Lenin and Molotov were the killers , and being willing to kill and steal, these ‘bolsheviks’ overthrew the moderates’ mensheviks’.

So the Hell’s Angel Strongman kills himself without witness then witnesses the killing by his second in command and so forth. Today the binding in the elite may well be with pedophilia of as the author Patterson suggested cannibalism. Reality by comparison is often stranger than fiction. hiaasen the great southern novelist perhaps outdated said “the only thing a southern congressman can’t do is be caught in bed with a dead woman or alive boy.” That’s the elite where there is a “free press” but in Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia or Buddhist countries such as Thailand where any criticism of the elite leadership is prison or death all bets are off.

In the Abrams history, Pink Swastika, Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, homosexuality was rife in SS. The gay men gassed in Auschwitz werehowever the “queers” and  the most ‘effiminate’ , the ‘bottoms’ as opposed to the ‘tops’ .  The passive is considered ‘effiminate’ so that in the lesbian culture the ‘butch is ‘dominant’ aggressive and most likely ‘top’. In domestic violence. Studies  lesbians were the most violent followed by gay male couples followed by heterosexuals.  There is no comparable data on the intersex as yet. Domestic violence against children is mostly done by females which follows the standard abuse of power where power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  While the negatives of single parenthood are flaunted the lust for tyranny is rarely addressed.

The ‘strong man’ is commonly coupled with the ‘priest’ or ‘medicine woman’, both being ‘aserxual’ or at very least not a threat to the power of the strong man.  Historically the survival of church and medicine , scientists, physicians etc depended solely on their abject agreement with the ‘strong man’.  If they ‘disagree’ they die. History records the carnage of the threats to the strong man. Stalin’s wife suicided. The great play  of T.S. Elliott, Murder in the Cathedral starring Thomas Beckett is perhaps the best example and indeed, object lesson.  Bonhoffer’s tale of morally standing against the Nazi and Lutheran church is just a more recent example.

Herod of the Great of Biblical times got the gold and became the prototypical strong man mall developer and the harem of wives who produces the incestuous daughters including Salome who made John the Baptist’s head her jewelry box, Thank heavens for the the Salome opera. Despite Herod’s evil which might well have been explained away in Job, this strong man tyrant of Roman Empire appears outwarded to have got more John the Baptist or Jesus or the massacred innocents. Christians might not get the virgins of the Muslim conformist followers of the the strong man of Islam but at very least Anglicans talk much about the mansions they are promised in the afterlife.

The eunuch is the symbol of ultimate conformity. Whether Origen self castrated or not, the strong man wanted the priest celibate and the bureaucrat castrate by conformity so as to not be a threat to himself or his harem.

Loyalty to the leader is all that is necessary , hence the strong man quote goes, goes “I don’t need your loyalty when I’m right. I need your loyalty when I’m wrong.”

The petty bureaucrat  makes ‘conformity’ not ‘truth’ or any other ‘virtues’ , but “conformity” his Perverted Virtue.  Living in fear of the ‘strong man’ he or she self castrates or actually castrates.

In the modern world this would suggest that the ‘outed’ trans sexual would make the best prime minister or leader of the government bureaucracy. The argument here being that the modern day politician is no longer the leader themselves but a kind of ‘mascot’ for the power behind the throne. Recently Canada’s prime minister returned from India having given Indian business men hundreds of millions so he could use their country as a back drop to his photo op, only to be followed by the French Prime Minister who returned from India with nearly 20 billion in bullion from his trade visit.
The leaders of the UN, the Security council of China, US, England, France, and Russia are the only ‘strong men’ in the mix, perhaps the other ‘politcians’ which are not ‘mascots’ but weld real power themselves.  In the US the politician leader is the supreme commander in chief and in the past the George Washington presidential typeswere formally military leaders. The epoch of lawyers in America ended with the Clinton, Bush, Obama lawyer schemes floundering with lawyer Hillary’s failed bid. Now a businessman is in charge reflecting a shift in the leadership and of the beurocracy.
It is always to be remembered as Robert Graves so clearly showed in Golden Bough that the role of all leaders to the greater group is as potential sacrifice if things don’t go right.

The Eunuch remains male or female as the Confuscian goal. Without children they are less likely to be controlled by the traditional threat to the competitionof that the killing of killing of the children imposes. Lenin killed the children of the Czar to show what he would do to his followers, more than for any other reasons.  The ruthlessness of the ruler is the morality of the ‘strong man’ in comparison to the’conformity’ ‘truth’ of the eunuch beurocrat. A woman might better be manipulated through threat to her children,

The ‘outlier’ is like David to the paranoid and later certifiably insane King Saul. The more  insecure the strong man the more they cannot  tolerate ‘difference’ as the traditional socitety tale of anthropologist Diamond of Guns Germs and Steel  tells. Difference  is cause to kill.  The thug is threatened by the creative.  Creativity is the most feminine bottom passivechaotic position  as compared to the agitated desperate order.business of the rutting monkey order.

The ‘reformer’ is the enemy of anyone who benefits from the status quo. Bureurocrats live lives of quiet desperation. As Victor Frankl learned from his up close view of the bureaurocracy of Auschwitz his life was meaningful in comparison to the meaningless of the butchers of the camps.
If Joseph Conrad were alive today he would indeed shout again, “the,horror, horror” all the while the chief paediatric surgeon of Milan Kundera’s the “Unbearable Lightness of Being” made the best of window washing.

Sunday Morning, Amotivated

Spring Forward.  I lost an hour.  No doubt the dog or cat took it. They are definitely the usual suspects. Came in last week and all the pillows and rugs were off the couch and all the books and such were off the table.  The dog and cat look innocent.  They definitely stole the hour.

Laura and I watched Murder on the Orient Express.  Loved it. Loved the great actors and actresses.  Kenneth Branagh was perfect as Hercule Poirot and I so loved Michelle Pfeiffer as Mrs. Hubbard. Penelope Cruz and Johnny Depp were incredible. Willed Dafoe, I didn’t see his disguise. Judi Dench was all the princess, truly regal.  The plot was Agatha Christie but the filmatography was the best. I loved the lighting and the train.  After that I loved John Travolta in From Paris with Love, a fabulous shoot em up 007 anti terrorist thriller with humor.  Late night.  

I woke late too. No church. Hadn’t planned on church this morning. Wanted more of the sun.  Sitting outside at the picnic table. Walking the dog.  Tic season and he’s to be groomed next week. Sticking to cement.  Next week we’ll be out in the woods. 

Harley Davidson coming back. I keep lusting after a Honda African Twin, 1000 cc “Adventure Bike”.  I don’t need two bikes, (but I want them. Meditating today God didn’t free from moksha. I had a cat and a dog lie on either side of me. Breath is special. We take it for granted.  I find long stretches of time have gone by and I’m not cherished my breathing.  

I made coffee and bacon sandwiches for Laura this morning.  We’re spoiled. 

I shaved. Laura has showered. I’m planning on that.  The big event of today. I’ve got smokies to barbecue and Cobbs hot dog buns.  We were at the mall yesterday. Laura renewed her driving license and I got some summer closed toe sandals.  Aging footwear is not longer anything off the rack. The orthotic folk would like these.  It really is spring with summer panting behind when I can get out of clogs into sandals.  I wasn’t meant for winter clothes. Sailing shorts, tshirts and sandals is what I was born for.  I wear jackets and vests in winter for the pockets.  I saw a police man with the weight around his waist and thought he’s going to regret that when he’s fifty.  The older girls like their ‘comfortable shoes’.  Milenia is a trooper. 

• I’m often overwhelmed by the ‘free choice’.  I could go to the beach in Vancouver. I haven’t scuba dove in 2 years. It’s been too long. There’s a horse riding place near by and that’s been too long.  It’s been three or four years since I was riding in the mountains or in the desert with friends. Time flies. There’s the ATV and I could be in the woods in an hour or two. I never made it to Whistler for skiing. It’s been several years now since I was down hill or ever cross country skiing.  It’s as long since I was snow shoeing and even longer since I was on a snowmobile. Yet each of these things I did intensively weekly for 10 or more years at a time. I gained proficiency and then wondered off to something else. Now I always love returning but never seem to have the ‘time.” I’ve not been dancing in years. Other than working and meeting the infinite demands of the increasingly bullying and terrifying government hacks and wannabes I fear my life is ebbing away reduced to a number in a beurocratic office. I then think more clearly and realize with gratitude I’m living but have given far too much to the ungrateful company store who sucks the soul out of people and claims they ‘volunteered’.  I came to serve people not fascist communist corporate sociopaths. 
  

I’ve not been sailing.  I was biking. Bear hunting season opens soon. The cure for cancers still awaits someone. The great Canadian novel has yet to be written though Robert Davies and Margaret Lawrence came close. The great exposee of the criminal corruption of Government has yet to be done showing the influence of Mafia, Biker Gangs, Drugs, Pedophilia, Saudi Arabia and the Communists are all involved has yet to be written, a kind of Canadian Dream to match Tom Cruises American Dream. The difference would be that we’d given our water to Nestle for free and were trading bear gall bladders and marijuana for politicians on prime time with American comedians. 

 There’s just so much to be done and I’m doing nothing here but bitching , complaining, whining, and  procrastinating  Elon Musk is working on a space ship but what’s am I doing today to get myself to Mars. I’m really lazy. I’ve been reading Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules of Lifea and a generic espionage novel with some good insights but overall a bit low brow.  I do like how these characters in novels solve their interpersonal problems with bombs and poisons and seem to get away with it. Somehow the ‘ends’ justifies the means’ . Not in my world. That’s the fantasy. I need an alien ray gun and hearing of radioactive hits in London wonder where I could get some of that ‘good stuff’.  

 I ‘m been fantasizing sailing the Atlantic and instead moving along towards the northern canada RV trip or southern US RV trip.  I like land RV and hanging out as much as sailing expeditions.  It’s the easiness of it.  I love the woods and wilderness too. I do long to be before the mast or anchoring in a distant bay. I could be fishing. But with only a day to do things I’m not likely to get a spacecraft out of the galaxy and back before I have to go to work tomorrow.  I think of retirement as a time for longer projects.  I miss wood work. I haven’t played my guitar and sung the old songs and those uplifting Christian songs I love.  It’s been a while.I could do that. I’d love to find , Be Thou My Vision and belt that out for the song birds about here.  That’s an achievable project.  I probably should stop this pathetic whining journalling or blogging and do something godly like bathe. Laura’s smelling better. I could follow her lead.  The shower is free. The dog certainly isn’t going to compete with me for that. After a shower I might get a spaceship to tour the galaxy just so long as I get back for work in the morning. 

Some one really should find where that hour went.  It’s probably with the missing socks.  

Sunny Saturday with Laura, George, Gilbert and Churchill

I love the sun.  I love that I’m sitting outside at a picnic table.  I awoke from a dream where John and Susan from Fort Garry days were playing guitar in the living room. My brother was there and Gilbert and the family dog from childhood.  How much better can it get?
I have a new Sealy Posturpedic mattress.  Laura’s hot menopausal body was beside me.  I didn’t even need the electric heating blanket. Eric fixed the furnace after a few days of dysfunction. The snow is all but gone outside. I’ve lots of propane and had just changed the tank the night before.
Some asshole called at 7 am.  I wake normally at 7 am but it’s Saturday and I had hoped to sleep in till 8 am.  The caller didn’t respond.  “This is Dr. Hay. Yes?”  I didn’t wait. I hung up.  Years of the trauma of being on call. Wee hour calls to deliveries, trauma or people suicidal or even drunk and family members of the above.  Nurses, doctors and northern or folk at sea in desperation seeking help.  And this ass hole calls at 7 am. Might well be a family member or friend just not thinking. Like the telemarketers who more often call when I get home from a long day and want to eat.
With the phone ringing and master moving ,Gilbert began hrrumfffing, wanting up on the bed. My bladder which had not been awake suddenly demanded attention.  Laura had rolled over.  George the Cat was just beyond Gilbert. I think George had already run across my legs. I got up.
I love indoor plumbing but I really wouldn’t mind stepping outside and hosing down the street if it wasn’t a municipal offence. When I had my acreage in the country the dog and I would often happily wander outside to water the trees and look at the stars or watch the sun come up at dawn.  With men as persecuted as Christians in Canada it’s good to reflect on the benefits of external plumbing.   Now in the urban centre of offence and rules and regulations I am truly thankful for indoor plumbing.  Ah.....Relief.
I am back to meditating.  After I feed the cat and dog I sit cross legged focussing on my breath.  I used to do this for days.  Now I’m good for minutes. The dog and cat think my being down in their territory is invitation to play.  It’s never long before one or the other is curled up in my lap expecting a scratch.  Maybe this is what Nirvana or Samedhi is supposed to be.
I do sit ups.  I’m pear shaped. I’ve used the excuse of accidents to explain my sloth but the fact is I watch crime drama and war thrillers and binge eat.  Without late night tv I’d be evacuated.    But last nights Ghost in a Shell Japanese futuristic movie with Scarlett’ Johanneson just demanded chips and cheese and a peanut butter sandwich. When I’m on top of these things I have carrot sticks and butter less pop corn. Kind of like packaged blood products for a vampire desperate for the real thing.
Laura and I watched the Netflix “Churchill” not realizing it wasn’t the “Darkest Hour” Churchill movie
“Everyone said how great it was, but I didn’t think it was that good,” Laura said.
“It’s all PC nonsense with revisionist American Hollywood and feminist crap.  Churchill wasn’t a nincompoop before D Day.  His wife certainly wasn’t an airhead like Justin’s Sophie.   People yelled at each other back then.  It wasn’t called bullying. Mistakes got everyone killed. Just as much as ‘loose lips’.  I hate this retrospective falsification aimed at tearing down the greats of western civilization.  The same violent barbarians are tearing down the George Washington statues.  “ I eloquently bitched.
“They portrayed him as having PTSD because of the Gallipoli and WWI experience.”  She said.
“It was a wonderful soap opera, and really I loved the acting and the scenery and everything but it would be no different than showing Stalin murdering the millions he killed portraying that great warrior killer sociopath as a kindly old man who wasn’t breast fed enough. It’s great Hollywood tv drama but it’s not true. I’m surprised they didn’t have a Kardashian having an affair with him to the music of Justin Bieber. No wonder young people are ignorant and fatuous with the shit people put in their brains.”
“I just can’t understand why my friends who are really smart liked it.” Laura kept saying and I kept thinking her friends must be mentally retarded Communist whackjobs.  “They said the film showed him drinking all the time and he wasn’t drinking that much.”
Thank God for Internet. We sorted it all out. Before we had a major argument between us we learned that this  Churchill movie, really a parody with all it’s American Arrogance, ( to hear them speak of WWII they won it single handedly and didn’t need the Allies or Russia) was not ‘The Darkest Hour” movie
In Instabull they have magnificent large scale model of the British Turkish encounter and the errors made by Churchill.  It really is a incredible exhibit that shows how sly the Turks were and how duped the English were leading to one of the greatest defeats of all time.  The Ottoman Empire lasted 700 years and was not the ‘sick man’ that it was portrayed as by Europeans who underestimated them to their detriment.
I’d been in Moscow  where their War Museums have real life Tussaud type exhibits with maps and the numbers of Russians who died to throw back Germany. I’d seen just how much they sacrificed, how much Germany lost in men and equipment,  and what Stalin’s strategy  had done to defeat Germany. The Allies contribution was more a mopping up after the carnage the Russian wrecked on Hitler.
The Americans acted more like mercenaries holding out while the British and Europeans fought among themselves so they could get the best financial deals.  Hollywood portrayed the Americans as high minded but Roosevelt and his cabinet acted  like regular low life horse traders rather than caring about saving Jews or democracy.  The American for years were just bankers and extortionists and then when the Japanese attacked them and Germany declared war on them, they got into the Atlantic war. Very slippery characters. Not at all like the greatest people of the world, us Canadians, who won the war single handedly (just ask our Minister of Defence who also apparently won the Boer War, 30 year War and advised Napoleon).
No doubt the Americans more or less won the Pacific war with the help of Britain and the Aussies but their grandiose portrayal of themselves in all their Hollywood propaganda movies has been as far fetched as this comic book Churchill presentation.  Probably this is not a reflection on the American military but more a reflection on the draft dodging drug addicted sex addicted Hollywood producers of the Harvey Weinstein ilk.
Anyone who knows history knows Churchill’s wife wouldn’t be phoning the King and tattling on her husband or that Churchill’s wife would be considering leaving on the night of D Day. Gloria Steinem  and Jane Fonda would be doing that for sure.  But not the Clementines of the world.
Well it wasn’t Darkest Hour. “Thank God for that,” Laura said.  “Now I really want to see Darkest Hour.”
“Me too,” I said.
Now she wants to go renew her Smart Car insurance at the mall. I’m going to finish this up.
I’d actually started a report I planned to finish this weekend , long over due, but it turns out I don’t have the notes I need. Being in different clinics with records dispersed in the clinic computer systems doing medical legal reports is a major challenge. It was so much better for the report writing when I had all the information on my own computer.
The trouble with the keeping of my own notes is that the fat cat lawyers and their beurocratic Greek Chorus have made the statue of limitations for doctors eternal. The College of Physicians and Surgeons is calling back doctors from Heaven to accuse them of touching female patients 500 years ago and insisting that they publicly produce records saying where their hands were during deliveries because anesthetized patients remember themselves being touched by the Obstetrician during the delivery in the genital region and their unborn babies are complaining that a lawyer wasn’t present when the ultrasounds were done which ended up on Facebook without their written permission.
I wouldn’t have taken notes all these years if I knew I had to keep the records for life and multiple reincarnations after that. I’ve got a storage locker full of files and the cost of digitalizing them would be $10,000s and they say there will be help for this when I retire but I can never afford to retire because of the threat of new rules and new threats as beurocrats and lawyers create millions of new regulations by the second  just to keep themselves in business. Meanwhile Trudeau and the government have sold all Canadian grandchildren into slavery with a debt load rising daily by tens of millions just the same as his father did who put the country in debt till Alberta oil saved Quebec ass.
Oh well, it’s a sunny day. I can’t do the work.  God loves me. Instead I get to play. I wanted to get out in a boat but that will have to wait. Motorcycle comes home next week. I rode my electric bicycle strenghthening my injured knee along the horse trails yesterday It was great to see the horses exercising.
God I love this spring air. Sweet scents on the breeze. Gilbert napping beside me, his ball securely under his nose.
Thank you Jesus for this glorious spring day. It’s a great day to be alive.  Hallelujah. Halleljuh!!!!!

My Birthday (older than the hills)

I remember my mother at Christmas would save up purchases we needed but would wrap them up and give them at Christmas. Things like tooth brushes, socks and pyjamas.  They are ‘gifts’ technically but we’d have got them  anyway. As kids a gift was a toy. But looking back we appreciated the unwrapping and it filled out the gifts under the tree.  I noticed my sister in law Adell gave the boys 'nail clippers' at Christmas. It's a family thing. Touching.
I needed a new mattress. . Even if it was placebo I ordered a Sealy Posturpedic Mattress from the Bay . It arrived before my birthday.  I love it.
I think my parents died because they just became tired.  A new mattress can stave off fatigue. Extend life.  The flowers of spring also were kind enough to appear with renewal of hope and increased faith despite a last ditch dowsing with snow.
 I also have the capacity to ‘write off’ as a business expense new technology I use predominantly for work. So this year I upgraded my iPhone 7s to the iPhone X with faster processing and more data space. Having closed my office where the computer was the principal tech I’m working out of three clinics,  carrying much more about, and depending more on my iPhone.  Laura gets my hand me down phone.
 Friday we were at one of my favourite places, Apple Centre . Pacific Centre.  I now have a new phone.  Laura  had my iPhone 6 and now has my iPhone 7s.  Nonetheless I really like the iPhone X and Laura loves the iPhone 7s mostly because it’s rose gold (ie pink).
At the BC Sportsman Show I bought the real "toy", the adult 'boy toy".   Porta Bote folding boat which I’ll be able to attach to the side of my RV to free up storage. My kevlar canoe is in consignment and will pay half the new boat. I love the ‘trading up’ capacity which comes with aging acquisition, being able to have something to ‘trade’. I remember the raw expenses of younger years.
Laura bought us Han’s Chinese take out and we had terrific time watching Miss Congeniality with Sandra Bullock at home. Gilbert and George were delighted with the company and the treats.
Sunday morning was special. My friend Barry plays organ at the All Saints Anglican Church. I’d missed his organ concert at Christ Church so was pleased to be able to hear him play piano and organ in church.
Laura and I met Kevin and Anna and the God kids there. We all enjoyed the service. The minister is a godly man. He reminds me of Dr. Lam the EMAS colleague who was always so kindly and caring.  I love Christians for reminding me of ‘my utmost for his highest’.  There’s a humbling aspect to their presence.
It was all round a positive experience. Even better was coffee after and meeting Barry’s psychiatrist mother in her 90’s and a friend of Dr. Willi Gutowski, my admired Christian psychiatrist mentor.  We had cake and coffee chatting while the kids crayoned.  Everyone  was terrific.  Jesus was happy there.
After it was a great time with the god kids at Swiss Chalet at Lougheed and Boundary. The restaurant and staff were welcoming of the little munchkins.  Kendra is so sweet.  Alex and Isaac and Kendra were listening to their mother which made for a good  time for us adults. We could chat about plans and futures. Kevin’s father is dying.  Hee had been back to the maritimes and would be returning in the coming week with Anna.  We talked of family,  death,  God, photography and our choice in cars. A regular mutual appreciation society.
Laura and I spent the afternoon at home. I walked Gilbert along the trails. Later she walked him on the cement walk. We watched more movies on tv and read books.  I”m enjoying Orphan X and a Jordan Peterson book I ordered from Amazon.
Laura liked my new mattress.
She gave me chocolates too.
On Monday night Dave, Mack,  Shane and I took the sky train to BC Place. I”d got tickets for the Canucks versus the New York Islanders at the Simon Frazer Pipe Band Robbie Burns Dinner gala and fund raiser.  I love supporting these incredible young people.  We were all delighted with the seats behind the goal.
It was 4 to 3 with the Canucks winning in overtime.  We got to see that goal up close , along with other.  Markstrom is a great goalie.
Mack had got me a foot long hot dog.  Dave had got us white spot chips.  It was great game night with a feast included. I loved the Zamboni machine.  The anthems and hostess and music and wave were all fun.  I was reminded of the days as a kid in Winnipeg shovelling the snow off the rink in 40 below before playing a game out doors. Several of us had known that experience between 6 and 12 years old. I played pick up til 16 or 18 and ‘old timers league’ in my late 30’s.  I actually skated last a few years back.   That night I dreamed of scoring the winning goal, stealing Liepsic’s glory, a legend in my own mind.  I also fell in love with the young ladies who skate on the ice pushing shovels.  Somehow in my dream I was a young guy again and they were admiring me as I drove a big zamboni machine.  I can't remember a dream like that in years but it really was something to see that overtime play off and watch that incredible score.
I know the guys through our dogs.  Gilbert’s friends.  Emory is Dave’s dog. Max is Mack’s and Hank is Shane’s.  Mack had been driving the snow plow the week before. Shane drove a truck starting work at the ungodly hour of 5 am. Dave works heavy machinery. But we all like the Zamboni.  What a wonderful machine.
All that was missing at the Hockey game, our best friends.
I like the sky train too having never taken the new Burnaby line.It really was impressive. No sense taking a car down town for concerts and shows and games.  The sky train was perfect.
At Royal Columbia clinic Dr. Waterson, Belinda and Karen gave me a fruit cake and at Docside Clinic , Dr. Horvath, Mari lou, Judith and Jerry gave me a chocolate cake.
My nephews and sister in law sent cards and phoned me to wish me well. I got great emails from so many friends.  I felt loved.

Today I’m blessed and too frequently I don’t keep my head in the same room as my ass. I lose my joy to resentments about past or worries about the future. I’ve one step in the future and one step in the past and i’m pissing on my day. I keep fighting this and am thankful for friends and birthdays to get my head our of my ass. I really felt loved and felt that I wasn’t alone and that it was going to be  alright. It’s good to be a year older.
Thank you Lord.

Gratitude Thursday

Thank you for sound and vision. Thank you for the sunshine. Thank you for the spring and flower blossoms. Thank you for the promises kept of winter gone and summer coming. Thank you for vehicles. Thank you for bicycles and motorcycles and trucks and boats and planes. Thank you for computers and smart phones. Thank you for friends and family. Thank you for honor and character and belief and duty and willingness. Thank you for the history of my home. Thank you for my work and the people I am blessed to work with. Thank you for the servant king. Thank you for water and wind. Thank you for the ocean and rivers and lakes. Thank you for colour. Thank you for quantum physics and multiverse and relativity and mathematics and chemistry. Thank you for minds and brains and hearts and anatomy. Thank you for rational thought and emotion. Thank you for compassion. Thank you for heaven. Thank you for life and beyond. Thank you for Gilbert and George. Thank you for this day Lord. May I make the most of it. May I serve you and do all that is right and good. Thank you for this Thursday.

BC Sportsman Trade Show, Tradex,Abbotsford

It’s my birthday. So I get to decide what we do today. That’s what she said.  “Let’s go to the BC Sportsman’s Trade Show, “ I said.  “I kind of wanted to go to the mall to get some body lotion, but it’s your birthday.”  I could tell it was hard but she was willing to sacrifice.
Since the mall was on the way to the Tradeshow, we were able to compromise. “I’ll just run in a get a book and some body butter.” She said as we separated.  I had to go to the Post Office any way.  I’d bought a new skookum hard drive and screwed up getting the PC version rather than Apple. My techie movie making nephew can sort it out. I included the American Dream DVD as well.  Tom Cruise. Incredible film.
Back in the Mini CooperS , she’s smiling.
The sky was blue with clouds and sunshine. Sunshine!!!  Spring!.   Great day for a drive in the country.  I love my car.  “This is what I like to do on my birthday. A drive in the country.”  The mountains with ice caps and forest along the highway with interspersed farms were spectacular.  Great views along the Highway for Hero’s.  In no time we’re at Tradex too.
I love Tradex.  We’d been at the BC Sportsman’s show last year and loved it.  Everything.  Boats, motorcycles. Lots of ATV’s.  Fishermen and fishing equipment galore.  ATV’s of every shape and size.  All the best manufacturers.  Honda, Yamaha, Polaris, Can Am.  Some new companies too with great deals. Guns. Knifes. Binoculars.  Optics.  All weather all terrain boots and clothing.  Tents. Campers.  RV’s.  Did I mention boats?
Porta Bote. I’ve been researching boats all year ever since I sent my AB hard bottom inflatable with 30 hp fishing machine down to the nephews for fishing at Hay Bay.  My sailboat and inflatable dinghy are out east as well.  Sailing with my brother is one of my fondest memories.  I’d had a Kevlar Hunting Canoe from the amazing Western Canada Kayak and Canoe store but now it’s up for sale on consignment. With closing my own office and going to work in clinics, I’d  lost a whole lot of storage room.  The place is stacked high with tens of thousands of files.  The perfect canoe took up too much room andwas just too long to go on the top of the truck now that I had a fifth wheel trailer.
Porta Bote was the solution I found after extensive internet research and consideration of just what I’d be using it for and the biggest issue storage. It folds down to 4 inch depth and has a mount to go on the side of an RV.  I’d tried to buy one at the boat show from Maple Marine out of Langley, the distributor.  They didn’t have one there but they had one with my name on it here.  With Godly synchronicity a fellow hard parked his RV with a Porta Bote on the side near me. I drove by it several days a week.   Talk about synchronicity and a ‘tease’.  I didn’t even know about Porta Botes before but now they began to appear everywhere. I watched a Utube showing how easy  the assembly. I could even put it on my Mini roof rack. The 10 foot one good for 2 people and even three could take up to a 6 hp engine. I had a Honda 2.5 hp which had worked on the canoe but without the weight of another person created difficulties in the wind.  However thanks to the resale of the canoe which held it’s value so well, I’d only pay half for the Porta Bote. I pick it up from Maple Marine in Langley next week. Oh boy!!!
Laura loved the Hummingbird Micro Home custom built in Fernie.  “I could live in this just fine. It’s a home. It’s more than an apartment”.  It had wheels to move it and all the amenities.
“With all the street people and their government fed dogs using up the streets and sidewalks I think you could park it on the City Hall lawn and get a better view. It might even  fit in a bike lane.” I said trying to be helpful. Amazingly affordable.  Laura began scheming about put one in the city graveyard. “I own a plot in Surrey,” she said.  
She’s been working all her life and feeling recently that the government wants to euthanize all us seniors so they can take more money for themselves and their lavish behaviour. I don’t think of us as old but she worries about the future and feels betrayed.  The Left never respects the ‘social contract’.  Right now Canada and BC and even Vancouver are being sold to foreigners by the big chiefs in legislatures and parliament.  I feel like the Indians must have felt 200 years back when their chiefs made deals to give up the land in exchange for party favours and kegs of whiskey.  The people always suffer. I just don’t know that all these new wealthy immigrants buying up the land and resources are going to give back money to the grand children of today’s Canadians getting shafted for the kick backs to their leaders.  We can only hope for a new set of land claim deals a couple of hundreds years hence  when the grandchildren demand that the dirty deals that gave the mayors, premiers and Prime Ministers of Canada their land get compensation.  But somehow I doubt their generosity. Everyone talks about the homeless problem but it pains me to see all the middle class and lower classes unable to afford to live in Vancouver where the rents are $2000 for a closet. Yet all the elite, the criminals and government big wigs  swagger about the city and seem to forget that people like Laura are the very backbone of the city.
BC, the province is still God’s country.  It amazes me that i keep meeting immigrants who have lived here their whole lives and never been to the country.  I wouldn’t work and live in this ridiculous slum city of Vancouver were it not for the weekends and vacations I get in the country and off the coast. Vancouver with it’s traffic jams, bike lanes, corruption, tent cities, filthy streets and side walks, belligerent street people with their entitlement and dogs, it’s night time shootings and constant police sirens, and gross mismanagement is the price so many of us have to pain so we can enjoy the lakes, sea and streams forests and mountains that make it all worth it.  I was so s thankful for this BC Sportsman’s show because it reminded me that in only a few more weeks I’d be able to go camping!!!!
“Laura! Laura!” Laura  turned to see  this bearded man all in black running after her. She didn’t recognize Derek with his beard. He was volunteering for the National Firearms Association.  “Did you shoot anything?” I asked. He’d gone to the Charlottes at Christmas and indeed had got black tail. His friend had flown up with him. Then Naomi now 7 months pregnant had joined him.
”The Charlottes were wonderful. Walking in those woods was mystical. Naomi loved it.” He shared.   We’d told Derek and Naomi about how much Laura and I loved the Haida Quai.  How the people were so friendly and the land mystical.  The north island peopl were so inviting compared to the political Haida on the South Island.  Russians had begun trading with the north island Haida before Captain Vancouver even landed to the south.
Derek was there with a delightful former town mayor and we talked rifles and gun laws.  Nobody there liked the Liberals.  It’s comforting to be with people who see that Justin Trudeau is just a little Stalin “want to be”.
 “Give an inch and they take a mile.There’s no negotiating with them.”
“They only want the rich and criminals to have guns.”
“You don’t see judges , politicians or Justin Trudeau trusting gun laws. He’s surrounded with guns and probably his nannies are packing.” We all laughed.
“It’s all about taking guns from the middle lower class so that only  rich can afford the guides and hunting like all over Europe..”
‘We had the best gun laws in the world with Conservative Kim Campbell but then the Liberals came in and started the registry like we were some kind of criminals besides giving their Quebec gun toting security cronies 2 billion dollars boondangle.”  The rural men were spitting angry and being forced to pay for what they considered necessary equipment in the north.
“I”m tired of a bunch of girls pushing paper in Montreal telling all of us in the north how to live our lives.”  One fellow added.
A great little discussion followed.
Derek was laughing. “It’s just divide and conquer. These people don’t even know what an AR 15 is.  I really enjoyed target practicing with the Chinese 223.  After Naomi delivers she’s going to enjoy that rifle. It’s the perfect size for her.”
“Laura likes her Ruger 22/10” I said.
“It’s got a pink gun stock,” Laura added with a big smile.
I had to tell the guys about all us guys out hunting without getting anything only to return to camp to find Laura  with a big grouse on the table. “It landed in the tree above me so I shot in case you guys didn’t get anything for lunch,” she’d said.  Everyone was impressed.
The best ATV was the tank tredded one that would  go everywhere, CF Moto from Frazer Valley Power Sports.  Mud, sand , snow.
I loved the hand crafted knives and the different camping and cooking accessories too. 6 pm came too quickly and we had to exit.  We’d stopped for a hot dog when we arrived and loved making a day of the show.
“I really liked the Sportsman show”.  Laura said.  She had long sleeved shirt from the BC Wildlife Federation. I’m a member.
I was especially pleased that I now had  a folding hard boat I’d got at boat show discounts and would  pick up next week in Langley. The whole experience was a great birthday outing.  Camping and summer seem all that much nearer.   There is hope in this winter world.

Jim Donahue, folk singer and friend

Jim Donahue died recently. I remember first hearing him play guitar, a Gandalf like character, with the good magic of Tolkien. It was the deep muffled strum that caught my attention, so powerful and regular that it sounded like eternity’s  freight train . He played a few chords with that magnificent strum and may as well have had a symphony to accompany his deep melodious voice.
Then one night I heard him play a classical guitar piece, one of the classics,   it might have been Handel. It was so  amazing to hear that wondrously intricate heavenly sound watching adept fingers span the whole neck of the guitar. This was years before the ‘unplugged’ era.  It was the time of electric rock and roll ‘lead’ guitar rifts, the most famous being Jimmy Hendrix’s. Yet every once in a while Jim would break off from his  set of Dylan, Guthrie, Seeger type songs and throw in a ‘lead’ that would have pleased the Edge.
He was so inspired.  Mystical and spiritual.  A modern day Hurdy Gurdy man.  He was also a guildsman musician, an old master of his craft, his instrument and voice.  He was a true artist who’d be at home with the Travelling Wilburys, Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar. There was a humility about him too. And wisdom. He’d tell stories between songs, Zen, Socratic, Apostolic.
I had helped organize the YWCA “Wise Eye Coffeehouse” at the time.  The going rate for a  singer was $10 a set and the best like Jim , the real draw for a night, might get as much as a $100.  I doubt Neil Young who was playing the same circuit at that time got more.  The coffee houses didn’t serve booze.   Booze was where the owners made their money to pay the talent better. I MC’d the coffeehouse and hired the sets mixing and matching entertainment. Like the night Downchild Blues and Jim played together and the building rocked.
Around the same time I was on Vincent Massey’s High School Student Council with Wes Hazlitt. Carey Asselstine and I were in charge of publicity and entertainment.   We hired the Guess Who that year for our high school dance for $500, a tad before Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman made their millions.
Jim had been in Toronto in the late 60’s. His name was on coffeehouse billboards, in varying orders with Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot.  I asked him once why he’d not made the big record deal contracts.  I knew he’d had the offers.  “The record companies are just business.” He told me.  “It’s all about the money. They didn’t want the musician as much as they wanted his soul. ”  
Jim was a free spirit.  Creative and unfettered. He really would rather be poor as he often was than be contained in some gilded cage or limosine. Not that he wasn’t occasionally caught like the elusive butterfly he was. More than once a truly lovely young lady captured his heart and brought him in from the wild, befriending and mothering him till the inevitable day he left to follow his muse.    He spoke so gently of his mother and his loving creative sister was his very good friend.
I laughed later when his brilliant younger musician brother, Dan Donahue, after making his own perfect record ‘Long Distance Runner” stopped selling his soul to the company store. Instead he began to produce with a sense of what Abbey Road Studio and George Martin did for the Beatles. I loved his contribution to the incredible Bruce Coburn. The Donahues celebrated originality rather than the ‘as like’ factory approach that Joni Mitchell called ‘stoking the fan making machinery behind the popular song.’
Music in that day was about ‘raising consciousness’ ,”finding meaning”, ‘knowing”. The Vietnam War was threatening to become WWIII.  There was an intensity in art.  Visual art had dominated the world in an earlier age with Picasso, Dali and Munch  but this was the era of music with Jim Donahue a regular monk of the day.  So often he’d close a set with the Quaker song, “May the Long Time Sunshine Always Surround you and the Pure Light within you guide your way home.”
We didn’t have contemporary sheet music in the early days and songs were passed along word of mouth or someone would listen to the radio and try to write out the lyrics each time a song was played. Without Jim Donahue I expect it would have been years before Winnipeggers heard the likes of Leonard Cohen’s Bird on a Wire  or Dylan’s “All Along the Watch Tower’.  The kids call it ‘playing covers’ today. But Jim was a wandering minstrel of the day literally introducing us to songs and musicians and ideas that simply weren’t mainstream.  He was so much ahead of his times.
He stayed with me for months one year. It was a particularly tough time in his life and mine.  He’d put aside alcohol after a betrayal and  binge. He was smoking marijuana instead. I’d been injured in a major accident and separated. Late into the night we’d talk philosophy, politics and theology with our visiting genius Jewish friend. I had an East Indian Harmonium.  There was a blizzard raging outside in the Winnipeg winter while Jim like George Harrison filled the space with chants from every tradition.
It was years later we’d meet up again in Vancouver. We’d go for lunch and talk about the ‘times’ mostly.  I loved to hear his tales, He really was a Seanchai, that traditional Gaelic storyteller/historian whose insights are so deeply intuitive.
I will miss him as so many tens of thousands will.  Before Facebook and Instagram and social media he was the “unplugged”  man who had a million hits.