Hoarding

The DSM V study group for Anxiety Disorders is proposing  including hoarding with the Obsessive Compulsive disorders in  the new American Psychiatric Association diagnostic manual due to come out in the next year or decade, depending on hoarding controversies.  I actually have treated several hoarders but in retrospect am surprised that it has not come to my attention more.  When i did home visits i encountered it commonly but didn't register it as a disease as much as an adaptation of aging and poverty.
More recent cases have definitely fit a pattern as the patients were wealthy and their hoarding was causing them personal distress and social distress. In one case the person's residence was considered a fire hazard by the fire department and they were ordered to address the problem that had accumulated over decades. in another case the pateint insisted on wanting to unload the clutter but found it impossible to let go of anything.
There's no agreed definition as yet.  The terms for hoarding include, hoarding, compulsive hoarding, pathological hoarding, and disposophobia. The suggestion is that the collection of things of various values is outside the normal and somehow interferes with basic activities and mobility.
It should be noted that there's a potential implicit social discrimination in this definition because obviously the rich can aquire several homes beyond the normal and yet with all that space to store loot in it would clearly not interfere with their mobility or community safety.  Indeed if the very rich were truly concerned they could buy a fire department to put up beside their houses of hoarding.  This might well be what museums and galleries are, a window dressing for a more nefarious disorder, a whole area of discussion best left for the political sociologists..
The first cases of obvious hoarding i saw were 'downsized' elderly patients I did home visits on. Because their finances were such they'd had to move from large houses to small apartmentsl  One man was living in a few feet of his apartment with the rest of it serving as storage space.  The difference between most hoarders and 'collectors' is that 'collectors' have a better appreciation of 'value' and their collections have potential financial value.  One patient had an extraordinary number of comic books which caused his family to joke and make fun of him until the day he sold just one of them for thousands.  This does suggest that the term 'hoarding' needs to clearly separate itself from 'collecting'. Further, one man's treasure is another man's junk.
Somewhat tragically one of my patients thought his 'stash' was potentially valuable but due to his schizophrenia and head injury his assessment of value was grossly impaired. I asked him what he thought the 'stuff' he had was 'worth' and what it would have to be worth before he sold it.  His assessments were grossly off and grossly inflated. Yet I've a friend now who has kept furniture from an old house in a storage locker sufficiently long that she might well have put a downpayment on a new house with the accumulated rent that the storage locker has cost her to store her depreciating furniture.
There is a false sense in the general public that 'stuff' has intrinsic value without realization that the buyer and seller of second hand goods must be able to store them, have them viewed and connect buyer and seller in some way with alot of work establishing attractive prices. Ebay and Craig's List and Kikiji have all turned what might once have been called 'junk' into good transferable 'cash'.  This then is another consideration in the world of 'hoarding'.
I have personally the problem of replacing old stuff with new and taking an inordinate amount of time getting the old out.  I can think of several pairs of shoes due for disposal but i don't want to throw them in the dustbin and keep meaning to drop them off at the special bin for recycling clothes for the poor.  The constraints of time and the priorities of my life make acquisition more important than disposal.  When I trip over the old I'm more likely to raise the priority to a higher level which is a trait that most hoarders lack. They seem to develop a 'blind eye' to the increasing abnormality of their environment  in a way 'addicts' fail to see themselves as others do.
This has caused hoarding to overlap somewhat with shopaholism, one of the addictive diseases.  Compulsive buying though in research is showing up to be a distinctive disorder, possibly part of a spectrum, but definitely distinct from the inability to dispose of goods.  Hence the term 'disposophobia suggesting that true hoarders suffer less from acquring than a failure to let go.
There's been an attempt to differentiate hoarders in a way like the traditional a, b,c classification of personality disorders.  Cluster A hoarders then are more bizarre with schizophreniform hoarding and explanations.  These are those people who have food items in their refridgerators for years yet ignore this eat them and become sick because they can't accept that certain things have lost their value.  Alternatively cluster b extroverted personalities are more likely to hoard things with a future plan and wheeling dealing strategy. Cluster C being introverts and more overtly fearful with the ocd classification thrown in here would hoard because of fears of 'not having'.  B 's intend to get rich while c's would fear the future and believe they would need the 'loot' in the event of a catastrophe.
Certainly there's a lot of 'anxiety associated with hoarding.
One hoarder I saw that comes to mind began hoarding in grief though..  This may well be a way things such as this start. A major involuntary loss in life is dealt with by holding on to what one can.  I know  that one person simply could not let go of many things that had been associated with a previous loved one till they had worked through their grief.  Perhaps this will be considered a special subset or if clinicians do detailed enough histories they would find this more common as a starting point.  As yet no one knows simply because the studies haven't been done.
For hoarding to be a disorder it must be a concern to the individual or society.  It's important to note that my concern for my neighbour's collection of vintage cars has nothing to do with my concern for him. I have frank envy and this might well express itself as my wanting to help relieve him of his obvious burden and perhaps even assist "treating' his disease by taking that particularly nice porche off his hands.
In contrast my patient was simply ashamed and embarassed by her own inability to deal with collected clutter.  She had taken to closing rooms and not having people over. It was affecting her life dramatically.
My own treament in the few cases i've been priviledged to be of assistance has begun with an SSRI medication such as prozac or cipralex.  There are a variety of these and as yet there's not a clear picture of which is best.  With my OCD patients prozac certainly was the best but zoloft seemed to work best as a first line treatment for the ptsd patietns who were considered part of the overall 'anxiety' classification.  So I've used an SSRI to begin with and found that in the few cases I've treated the dosage necessary was higher rather than lower than the normal dosage.
Naturally I've provided some insight, cognitive behavioural and supportive psychotherapy. Motivation therapy approaches have helped. Planning and setting a date and keeping a journal have also been useful.
In addition I've encouraged the patient to go through the clutter with a friend or family member.  The fact is, I personally can't let go of old t shirts, each with a memory attached but a friend could well make the task very easy by noting that many of the ones I work on my boat or motorcycle with are long over due for turning to rags.
"It's a Wonderful Wife" is a company locally where a woman recognised that men and women often needed a person to do things like clean clutter which was the role of the 'traditional wife'.  I've given patients the card of this organization and  another whose name i have at the office. These people have for a reasonable fee done wonders to 'cure' the immediate problem.  The fire department was definitely satisfied with their assistance in one particular case.  Given the established use of 'anxiety buddies' well established for use in plane phobias and agaraphobia it's not surprising that this approach is so successful. However, the disorder is a relapsing, waning and recurring one and my patients had a tendency to get right back into the old patterns so medication and therapy had to be continued for at least a year .
To date MRI studies can distinquish hoarders with OCD from non hoarders with OCD. It appears that hoarders have the greatest activity in decision making areas of the brain suggesting impairment and difficulties in those areas.
At present the research is 'early' but it's a particularly interesting area considering the 1 and 99% placards at Occupy Wall Street  Perhaps in the near future the  Goldman Sachs and Humbug Scrooge will be treated for their disorders with brain surgery rather than dream therapy.

Canadian Authors Association - West Coast Branch - AGM 2011

President Bob Mackay chaired the event with aplomb.  Of course he was surrounded by many beautiful and talented women, not the least of who was his wife.  Jean Kay, Margaret Hume, Bernice Lever, Perry Wilson,  and Margot Bates just to name a few.  They've all got great character and write remarkably so are far more than just another pretty face.  Bob would be that if his novel Soldiers of the Horse wasn't doing so well at the bookstore.
I forgot to bring home a program. And for the life of me now can't even remember the name of  the gorgeous sexy authoress who reads with a definitely lilting voice.  I can't even remember the name of the slyly brilliant thing who won the 'letter to Santa' contest.  Usually I take notes.
But Anthony Dalton, having published four books this year,  wasn't there.  I heard early that he was off working for the Smithsonian Institute lecturing on cruise ships.  Makes a writer like me literally want to throw in the towel.  Meanwhile,Patrick Taylor 's Irish Country Doctor series is now on the New York Best seller list.   Ben Nuttall Smith, having just won a Surrey Writer's Society prize for his book, Blood, Feathers and Holy Men was in fine form as usual.  Seeing his muse kicking the butt of my muse I at least thought to pull out the iPhone and make some record of the genius company I was in.  Without proof,  no one would believe a mere blogger such as I could hobnob with the likes of these celebrated and very real 'authors'.
I loved sitting beside the Mumfords having read his stories of living through rebellions and sea adventures.There was actually a fellow at our table who was publishing a book about bag pipe music.
I listened with interest to Margot Bates tell of her time as a young Telkwa beauty queen. Telkwa is a northern BC town of some 800.   Her latest book is  PS, Don't Tell Your Mother.   I talked to the man beside her,  a weathered intelligent working journalist,  who told me  motorcycle tales of a RUSH band member.  As a result I think his name is Russ but it may  well have been Charley. He was so astute in conversation that he might also  have won a Pulitzer Prize.  I was lifted out of my normal self absorption by his words and ideas.  But the turkey arrived.  I have reached an age where chowing down takes precedence over conversation.
I remember that some time later he didn't want his pumpkin pie and the waitress thought I was kidding when I said "I'll take his too then."  When she only gave me my pumpkin pie I thought immediately of consulting Perry Wilson. Perry has just published  a female detective e book series.  "Perry, what do you think of a waitress as your next victim."
There was the book draw after that. To stop ugly stampedes that have occurred in other years they call us up one at a time.  Laura was thrilled to get a book by the author of "Water for Elephants. "She lives here in Vancouver" Laura told me.  That left me wondering why she wrote about elephants.
Then we were all hugging and kissing and saying Merry Christmas and such. I still can't get over them all being some of the finest people I know personally.  I love their writing but who would guess that writers would actually be human.  It surely must be a trick of the Christmas season. Humbug.

Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychiatry

All medicine and surgery is "psychosomatic".  Yet politics and law and people's attitudes remain in the dark ages or simply there are alot more stupid people than intelligent ones.  No one wants to be told "it's all in your heads".
Yet that's essentially what I do, in a way, daily. I say that 'illness' is in your mind. I'm a hypnotist. I've hypnotized people so they forgot their illness and I 've hypnotized people so they had illness they didn't. I've hypnotized people and their pain has gone and I've hypnotized people and they have experienced pain.
I assisted a neurosurgeon and as we probed different parts of a patients brain they experienced pain, the absence of pain, ticks and the absence of ticks, smells and the absenece of smells.
Phantom limb syndrome is the experience of the limb that is missing.
Now face it, without a mind, and especially without a brain, experience is radically diminished.
Schizophrenia is a disese of the mind without any clearly reproducible evidence of 'body' damage.  In contrast I have patients who have existing brain tumors whose thoughts and behaviours are no different than any others.  A big wad of cancer tissue doesn't change their identity but one day a person with schizophrenia  wakes up and believes some one has stolen their identity and the identity of their familes.  One disease is bodily profound yet makes little waves in the patients life while an innapparent switch is changed in anothers and their whole life is relatively lost.
The head bone is connected to the toe bone and vice versa.
Further, psychiatrists and somatic doctors have an uneasy relationship.  The somatic doctors are really happy to pass off all the unknown mechanism disorders to the psychiatrists. After they have depleted all their millions and millions of dollars worth of tests they project their own gross inadequacy by denouncing the patient as 'invalid' in their strictly physical sense and hence 'psycho'.
Ideally as a psychiatrist and medical specialist I'd feel respected if I was consulted early on obvious connundrums but increasingly I'm stigmatized as badly as my patients.  No one wants to deal with the mentally ill or their caregivers.  We're too 'unknown'.
As a result we're desperately as psychiatrists trying to establish a physical basis for the illness of our patients to validate ourselves and them before our colleagues and society who would rather us all  be put back in asylums than allowed to walk among 'regular' people.  Indeed the stupidest of the lot, the ignorant bullies, deny any problem, deny mental illness, close asylums and put everyone who doesn't agree with them in jails.  Jails are simple places for simple minds.  Many a genius has known such confines.
Yet every time we prove a mental illness has a physical cause up jumps a physical doctor who wants to steal it from the realm of psychiatry.  Hypothryroidism was one of the last psychiatric conditions to be taken by the Endocrinologists. The Rheumatologists nabbed fibromyalgia , what we called 'somatic depression', when it seemed  there were consistent trigger points and some reason to believe it wasn't just a 'factitious disorder'.
Yet the fact is, all medicine began in psychiatry. As psychiatrists we're the oldest aspect of physicians and as physician psychiatrists were the original  witch doctors and healers. We dealt with the 'possessed' and the 'evil' and we were there when we found that so much of what was once thought to be 'malingering' and a product of 'masturbation' per se was found instead to be a virus or bacteria or a brain injury.  Neurologists are the greatest theives among our colleagues, happy to steal anything that isn't nailed to the floor of psychiatry. They even have 'behavioural neurologists' who are neuropsychiatrists by a different name.
So should we continue to lose our patients to these 'press gangs' of regular doctors or point out that most of the illness they treat with great sanctification is a product of the deviant thoughts and behaivour of their patients.  Heart disease patients are commonly alcoholics, workaholics or food aholics.
As an addiction psychiatrist I'm fully aware that most of the disease seen by family physicians is really in my territory.
It's no surprise there's a shortage of psychiatrists.  We've more psychiatrists than ever before but our colleagues have recognised that while they were pilfering our individual cases their whole fields of medicine have slipped under the umbrella of psychiatry.  Family physicians are desperately playing catch up to learn psychiatry in order to treat diabetes and asthma with any degree of success.
Everything is biopsychosocial and even the surgeon must admit his work is in the realm of the psychosomatic.
Psychiatric interventions follow diagnosis and psychiatrists have long been the end resort of diagnosis so have well documented skills in this domain. We're also therapists, psychopharmacologists and interventionists.
I just regret they disarmed me.  I liked that when I began in surgery I carried a knife and did so in family practice as well.  In psychiatry they gave me a choice, if you don't give up your knife we won't give you the keys.
I went with the keys.  Still some days I miss the knife.

The Committee

Jesus said, where two or more are gathered there too am I. The implication here was that where two or more gathered in God's name and in service of God then God's presence would assist in decisions.
Democracy says that the more involved in a decision then the better that decision is for everyone involved.
It's important, considering that people are dying for the idea of 'democracy'.
They aren't against 'spirituality' or the individual and community relationship with the holy and sacred.  They don't like authoritarian religion much and call it rigid and having invested interests that are long overdue for review and renewal. The very political structures that are derived from democratic institutions are themselves in doubt.
The committee is an interesting entity. The best joke about it's decision making is to say a 'moose was a horse designed by committee".  As I've been in many comittees I've seen that there's a serious amount of dead weight in them and understand that they delay process and interfere mostly with progress. They are the principal reason for the well know adage that the best government is by a 'benign' dictator.  It's just that benign dictators are in gloriously short suppy where as tyrannical dictators are a dime a dozen.
But people like committees, partly because they can 'hide in a group'.  Indeed people in groups as group psychology studies have shown have distinctly scary tendencies to bias that the average committee is usually unaware of.
Alot of people on 'committees' are pretentious and government by 'committee' has historically resulted in the worst of the worst abuses.  The anonymousness of the committeee allows for this.
And yet the 'committee' as an institution serves to go beyond individuals and even generations to provide an orderly progression.
Yet individually committees must be wartched like rabid dogs. Committees are the playground of psychopaths and sociopaths and need to be carefully monitored over time because they usually have the powers of 'numbers' when they might only reflect the views of a few.  Bullies love committees.
And yet we need them like toilet paper and mouthwash.

Advocacy -Legal and Medical

I attended the Trial Lawyers Association of BC conference on rehabilitation medicine.  There was about a 50% split between lawyers and doctors.  I was reminded of university when arts faculty met science faculty and how people forget the wide gulf of difference between arts students and science students.  Having begun my career as an arts students, straight A's by the way, become a scientist, with strait A's, completed a medical degree, speciality and subspeciality, then completed a minister of theology degree I am fully aware of the difference between the religious view and the secular view.  Yet there was this amusing anthropological confusion as to the 'manners' and 'style' of language to be used in which house.
The genius of the Trial Lawyers Association of BC medical topic conferences is that they challenge doctors and lawyers to consider that we are Chinese and they are American, or vice versa.
This resulted in two justices, several lawyers and doctors speaking to the concept of 'advocacy'.  Lawyers, collectively, have a conflict of interest in this matter, as their very income depends upon their role as 'advocate' .  As Jesus was to be the advocate of the individual soul before God so a patient's lawyer advocates for his client before the god like judge.  Yet physicians are routinely called upon to be an advocate for their patient. In the nether region, we stand beside him facing death ,going far beyond the court room when it comes to 'advocacy'.  I know.  I have caught too much illness at the bedside and seen friends die as they have stood without guards before deadly diseases and faced epidemics at the side of their patients.  I have entered rooms that families have closed the door on. I have wounds from my work in patient advocacy and scars. In the old sense I would be seen as snatching my patients back from Satan or out of the mauls of death.
I like the pristine suited world of the courts. The women look fresh in comparison to my colleagues who have done much time at bedside.  Not like the 'new doctor' who avoids touching patients and chooses instead to 'administrate medicine'.   There's an effete dandyism and ego beyond anything I've ever encountered in the humbling reality of medicine.  The board rooms of hospitals probably make the courts look pure and innocent but the medical office itself is more like a jail house experience in comparison.  Chambers and wigs and so much of the political are absent on the ground floor in the trenches where the rubber meets the road. .  Certainly the politics of university also make the courts look hallowed in comparison as well.
What's obvious though to me is the abscence of blood, and shit, and snot.  Even in my psychiatric office there is alot of snot and sometimes blood.  But the court and those who are advocates there principally deal in money and power and thought.  Guns on sheriffs in the court room contain emotion better than quiet rooms in asylums.  Hospital security can't kill people to keep the peace. There's no safety in medicine. It's raw and hidden.  Microbes are the experts in passive aggressive.
A patient expects their doctor to be their advocate. My patients, psychotic, brain damaged, personality disordered, often wholly incompetent, emotionally distraught, depend on me, as their physician, commonly to make decisions for them which they can't make for themselves. I commonly use the standard of 'would I want my mother or father's doctor to recommend this to my patient" or 'would I want my doctor to do this for me."  In fact I've been disappointed by some of my doctors and colleagues who have refused to go near me or near my sickest patients when they have been in greatest need.
It was in the early days of the Aids epidemic that I treated AIDS dementia biters and alone took paper bags off the heads of violent patients who had been chained by police and brought to emergency.
Yet as a 'medical advocate' I'm asked to be 'objective'.  I'm asked to be 'professional'.  I'm asked to have 'boundaries' and indeed I've noted that those who often are celebrated most actually 'treat' their patients as 'numbers' and make decisions without any consideration of the emotional and relational world of the patient.  They keep their eye on the politics and finances and I admire them their intellectualism even if at times it harkens back to nazism.
Our patients don't know that all of us who are doctors who 'care' 'too much' for our patients who 'cry' when one dies or who think about our 'work' on weekends are diminished by our superiors.  The new world order of medicine is not what it was. It's all corporate and glossy and long gone is the country family physician.  He or she is an anachronism like the family farm.  There's a lot of lip service towards this but the fact is any doctor who really truly cares, not in that smaltzy, politically correct, commerically relevant, consumerism caring, but caring, in an advocate sense will be punished.    Because a true advocate might well offer their life as ransom. And today even the ship's captain leaves the ship before the crew and clients. That's corporate professionalism. The country goes to hell in a handbasket but the CEO gives himself a raise and bonus.
However,  a long history of the heros in my profession's past did.just the opposite.  Many a doctor died living with his leper patients. . The war doctors and the missionary doctors didn't hide in rationalism.   All of those doctors gained the 'reputation' that we as physicians now stand on.  Those doctors I refer to gave us the 'brand' as the new world order would say.  But we're rapidly using up the good will in unholy alliances.
The courts ask us for 'legal advocacy'.  There's a lot of 'hair splitting' in this term and it's only beginning to be understood in a new way with a history of confusion as modernism, post modernism and ultramodernism compete as special relativity and string theory compete in physics.
The idea I garnered is that you must separate a man or woman from her ideas.  I can advocate for an idea but I can't advocate for a person. If I as a doctor say to a judge I believe my patient is sane and should be allowed to go free into the community, I am stepping on his robes. From what i gathered there's a tremendous 'parentalism' in the court and everyone is terrifed of the judge becuase he controls the sheriff with the guns and has inhuman powers granted by the emperor as opposed to a 'democracy' elected' prime minister whose first responsibility is to the people. The atmosphere among lawyers and in the courts is distinctly different these days and has indeed occasioned a recent serious book that says that Canada is no longer a democracy but indeed run by the Supreme Court.
Some have called the new world order a 'legal theocracy' with the Judge as the new God head.
The story of Dugald Christie is fascinating.. As a brilliant recently suspiciously killed Canadian lawyer he argued strongly that there was no justice for the poor in Canada and the year of his death was travelling to Ottawa to argue that there was no more justice for the middle class.
"Indeed in the 'occupy ' movements where there's the 99% and 1% economic debate the extension would be that there really is no 'court' and no 'justice' for the 99%.  The cost of 'justice' in Canada has made it no longer a 'public' utility but rather a 'commodity' and indeed a 'brand'. Naturally he was killed. They say it was a hit and run but these days everyone knows that such things are past because everyone can just 'hit and walk'.
So the doctor entering the temple of law must remember that he can argue what he believes is right about his patient but he dare not tell the judge what he thinks he should do. How dare he speak to a judge that way.  Naturally expert witnessess don't know the whole context and academically the judge is absolutely right to maintain that he is the judge and she is there to make the final decision.  But it's interesting because if I say, "I believe my patient is right and they should win the lottery" becausse I want the world for my patient, if only to get them out of my hair, then I'm 'crossing a line'.
The best message to be gleaned from the discussion is not what is 'right' or wrong but rather that if a person wants to 'advocate' for their patient then they can do it best by bringing the teacher an apple. The courts are telling doctors what best 'sways' them as arguments and what is best for their patients. At this level the judges and courts are genius. However at another level they are 'dictating' to experts in science as to how to present their postions and seeing that any who don't do the will of the judge are to be punished.
I couldn't help but think of the great arguments of days gone by and all the emotional joy in expression that people made to the point of begging judges to see the patient freed.
To be clear there are 'expert' witnesses. These would be free of conflict of interest if they were hired by the courts.  They are not.  Someone else pays for them, one side or the o ther. But money talks though in this world of influence and prividge even that is 'psychotically denied' or 'psychopathically denied' or simply the way business is done.  Witnessess are sometimes 'bought' but we must ignore this. In fact so much is 'ignored' that 'selective reasoning' best describes the rationalism of the court.  As researchers have shown cloudy days affect the decisions of the stock market we can only hope that sunny days will affect the courts.
There must be authority.
But if you are the 'treating physician' and indeed you are not paid the questionable sums that expert witnesses can command then the whole issue of 'advocacy' is a different matter.
Indeed the issue of 'unholy' or 'illegal' or 'unethical' advocacy hinges on 'motive'.  The motive for a doctor is the well being of his patient.  And if you say to a judge that if you put my patient in jail he might die as a doctor and a human you are doing your job correctly.  Naturally today's judges in comparison to their former 'brand' don't wnat to carry that responsibility and don't want a physician to say something that the 'media' might glom onto and embarass the individual judge. There are to be no other gods but me. .
Wheels within wheels.
Yet this is only 'unethical' if I have indeed been 'paid' by the patient, or had sex with her ,or was in a real estate contract with them, or was considering that my patient was the 'Queen'. and that future work with the Royal family might be jeopardisd. especially considering the consequence of this. now that Prince Phillip has confessed that he personally is of the blood line of Vlad the Impaler.  Why he should have to tell the world this now is itself grist for the mill.
So legal advocacy would say that a doctor should argue for his viewpoint regarding his patient without telling the courts how to do their business and indeed respecting the judge.  The Bible spoke most highly of Solomon and Jesus loved the Father but called him Papa to the great frustration of the Jewish lawyers of his day. Indeed Christianity respects justice but says that without mercy it is Philistine.
The Bible actually says that the judge has his authority from God.  Given that the judge's aruthority is from the Canadian people through PM Harper I certainly respect him and accept that when I go into another 'frat' house in the arts wing I must respect them because the 'arts' students have always had more numbers, more money, more power and the prettiest wingiest girls from fine arts departments. All I have is nerdy geeky stuff, bombs, biological weapons, paradigms and such. As a scientist I'm more and more an anachronism everywhere in what are increasingly termed the 'economic dark years'.  Faced with economic threat even Prince Phillip reverts to his wild darwinian dna. Naturally judges would be afraid and must worry that their sheriffs might turn  their guns on them
As a Christian I might look to God. But then Jesus questioned the authority of the father at the end crying out 'My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me".  The greatest healer and greatest advocate was alone in the end.  It's the Christmas season and time to consider advocacy in the light of Christ.
it's difficult in the world where the rules change with whim and people forget what they want to forget and those of us who remember will remember Kruschev pounding his shoe for Russia and Kennedy whacked on pills and Marilyn bringing the world to the brink of annihilation.  Einstein never believed that God played with dice.

A Christmas Carol - Pacific Theatre - Dec. 2-31, 2011

Bah Humbug! Ron Reed's adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic was a true delight.  Directed by Sarah Rodgers with truly inspiring acting by Ron Reed and Fiddler Kathleen Nisbet. Timing was all.  Costumes by Nicole Bach and Set Design by Bryan Pollock were superb.  I loved the teeny sausages and the laughter. The flow of emotions and culminating laughter charged the hall.  A full house opening night and applause that brought the cast back on stage for more bows and curtseys.  It's hard to believe it's another year and Christmas is around the corner. But this was really a perfect way to herald the season.  Bah Humbug! Merry Christmas.

Advent - St. James Anglican Church, Vancouver

The service starts at 10:30 am.  For some reason this morning I thought it started at 11:00 am.  So I ended up at the service somewhere after 11:30.  Better late than never. It's very dog friendly and Gilbert loves his visit with all his friends too.
The Advent Candle was lit.  I was thankful to see that.  Advent is the season of the "coming".  It's uplifting and hope inspiring to prepare for the 'coming of Christ'.