Baking whoopie!

The fragrance of fresh bread baking is almost as alluring as Chanel #5 in the cleavage of a lover and the anticipated delights to follow nearly as enticing. No, not completely so. I’m not that elderly yet.

But, I love baking bread. I have a loaf on right now.

Unfortunately for me, a few decades of laboring at a keyboard – both typewriter in the early days when men were men, and latterly at a processor – have left me with a slight carpal thing. Not major, but enough to make me collapse on the floor in excruciating agony should I attempt to knead bread dough. It was with that in mind that I bought my first bread machine about two decades ago, back when they were steam driven and you had to take pains to not get any coal dust in your dough mixture.

Truly that was a bit of hyperbole, but the early ones were pretty rudimentary and not entirely efficient. You sometimes ended up with bizarrely shaped loaves, or underdone loaves, or loaves that would act entirely differently each and every time despite the fact you were using the same exact recipe.

The machines have improved immeasurably. I am now on my 3^rd one and it turns out perfect and tasty loaves every time. I won’t tell you the brand because it would look like I’m shilling for the company. However, if that same company would like me to shill for them and was prepared to pay me handsomely, I’d gladly do it. I can be bought. Freelancers always can. I am such a slut-boy.

While a bread machine loaf isn’t necessarily exactly the same as what might have come out of Grannie’s oven, it is an awfully reasonable facsimile with a tiny amount less soul than a labor intensive loaf of yore. I love my bread machine and all bread we consume comes from it. I also am the breadman – as opposed to the eggman or the walrus, indeed – and reserve the right to ponder assorted recipes or to devise ones of my own. That’s easy, too, since all bread has a basic proportional recipe, and then all you need to do is try some variations. A hint to the wise, raw rice doesn’t work worth a damn.

Making one’s own bread also makes one want to shun commercial bread. Our beloved local supermarket is one of those rarities with an in-house bakery that turns out fabulous bread. But, the loaves also cost nearly as much as renewing your car insurance, so you could hardly feed a family on them with much regularity. That leaves harried mothers of 8 kids reduced to buying what I like to refer to by the classic baker’s term – ‘shit’ bread.  You know, that icky soft white crap with a half-life of a decade.

Bearing that in mind, and realizing there are many who in recent years have lost their jobs or are among the ‘McJob’ working poor who might be reduced to purchasing big loaves of shit bread, I propose that in the cases of every family falling below the poverty line that such households she be given state-subsidized bread machines. I’d happily contribute to such a charity. I’m quite serious about that. For literally, and with no exaggeration, pennies the kids and parents in such families could avail themselves of not only tastier but infinitely healthier representations of the staff of life. I mean, really all you are paying for is a bit of flour and a bit of yeast, small smatterings of sugar or cooking oil and you’re on you way.

I think the time is right for an international bread-machine drive.

All the milk of human kindness

There’s a Canadian TV commercial that shows a couple of old guys sitting on a park bench bemoaning – as old guys will — the deteriorating values of modern times. They decry, among other things, what a bunch of lazy, spoiled slugs we’ve all become. In the old days, asserts one, “If you wanted something you had to go out and get it.”

“Except milk,” says his companion. “They delivered that.”

“That was good, wasn’t it?” says the other in agreement.

And it was good. I say that because I notice that we’re down on milk, which means I have to burn up a few hydrocarbons to go out and get it, rather than going to my doorstep and picking up the bottles that have been delivered just this morning. “Memories, of the way we were.” Sigh.

I like milk, and drink a lot of it. In light of health realities I have (with some resistance) weaned myself off the “good stuff” and now consume 1%, but it’s still milk and I almost like it. Wendy likes it, too. So, we run out pretty regularly, and then have to go out and get more.

When I was a kid milk was always delivered. That reality was not only logical but was very handy in those less mobile times. You’d get up in the morning and there it was, as if by magic. The empties were put out the night before, yet by morning they’d have been miraculously filled. Took me a while to understand that the morning arrivals were actually new bottles.

Not only did the milkman (aside from having his way with all the lonely housewives of the neighborhood, so the myth went) bring milk, he could also bring butter, cottage cheese and even ice-cream. What a fine thing to be; a person who brought healthful sustenance to households, but also got a lot on the side.

Then the arrival of the big supermarkets made that business go away. The dairies could stock the market shelves with their wares, and we were left inconvenienced for the sake of corporate bottom lines – like a lot of other things I’d add if I were in a real bitchy and whiny mood. So, milk deliveries waned and then they died and not a few former milkmen entered monastic orders, I understand.

So, when I found myself in England for a year in 1980 I was delighted to find that milk delivery was still a way of life. It was like stepping back, but in a really good way. ‘Drinka pinta milkaday’ went the slogan. And it was ‘real’ milk like when I was a kid, with the lovely rich cream sitting on top. Early on a weekend morning I would just barely hear the electric milk ‘float’ coming down the street. If it was a weekday I would be up. I struck up a nice acquaintanceship with the milkman, whose name was also Ian. Ian and I became buddies of a sort, though the neighbor girl, who was a high-spirited 16-year-old, had her own thoughts about Ian. In the first place she informed me he was a gypsy, and secondarily he was, in true milkman fashion, getting it on with dozens of females. She knew that was true because she’s seen ‘love bites’ on his neck. I believe she was actually secretly fascinated by this perceived rogue.

Anyway, the jolly old milk delivery was a splendid adjunct to my year abroad, though I never quite understood why it came in those dorky little pint bottles.

All I can say in conclusion is that the death of certain traditions is not always a good thing and I believe it is high time for somebody to start up a milk delivery business. All that is needed apparently is an ability to arise very early in the day, driving skills, and an insatiable libido.

You call it what you choose, and I’ll call it what I want. OK?

For heaven’s sake, can’t anybody in contemporary society be content to leave things alone?

Almost lapping at my back door – well, it’s actually a couple of miles away, but it sounds better if I suggest a closer connection – is a body of water that I (and anybody else I know) have always referred to as Georgia Strait. Even Strait of Georgia, if you will. It’s an extensive arm of the Pacific Ocean that separates Vancouver Island from the Mainland. It extends north to Cape Mudge near Campbell River, and runs south to the US border. It was named after early explorer guy George Vancouver. He was pretty famous and he got the strait commemoration for this first name, and he got the city of Vancouver, BC from his surname, as well as this big honking island and a further city so-named in Washington State down across the river from Portland OR. Not bad commemorative laurels. It enabled him to write to the family and say: “Hey, Ma, how do you think your wastrel son is doing now? Not quite the slacker you thought I was.”

Off to one side and running into GS is another body of water known as the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It separates southern Vancouver Island from Washington State and also includes Puget Sound, whereupon Seattle sits. Senor Juan de Fuca was the Spanish explorer equivalent of old George Vcr.

My brooding discomfiture with all of this is that because of the whim of somebody they are planning to change the name of this familiar body of water to the Salish Sea. And, essentially we’ve been told we can’t do anything about it. Now, there is nothing wrong with Salish Sea as such. It does nod in acknowledgment to the dominant native tribe in the area. In that the Europeanized names (big-big taboo to be Eurocentric in a politically-correct time, by the way) are no ‘better’ than the alternative. But, they are familiar. It seems that counts for nothing. And the arbitrariness of the move says that what I think is of no relevance any longer. Change or be the skunk at the garden party.

Anyway for about 150 or more years everybody has been quite happy with the existing names. I’ve never heard any complaints. Even the Native Americans and Canadians who live on those bodies of water seemed to be content to leave things as they were. I mean, these are people who have much to be pissed about, but Georgia and Juan de Fuca seemed to sit OK with them. Added to which, they never actually gave the big ditch a name, Salish Sea or otherwise. As a final quibble on the name, I might add that it is not a ‘sea’ by geographic definition, so at the very least Salish Strait would be much more accurate.

They’ve done a lot of that in this part of the world. To the ‘precious’ the North Central Coast of BC is now known as the Great Bear Rain Forest. That is except to those that live in the remote region. They stick with the old name rather than the trendy and romantic one. Meanwhile, the Queen Charlotte Islands are now Haida Gwai. So, screw that old Queen Charlotte, whoever the hell she was. Again, Haida Gwai is OK in that the Haida were pretty damn impressive people that used to go on warrior raids in their great canoes all the way to northern Mexico. Cool. But, I grew up with the old name, so why must I be seen as an antediluvian reactionary jerk if I am more comfortable with the name I grew up with?

And, quite frankly, despite the noble intentions of those who would change the name of the respective straits, I suspect that for those who have been around for a while the arbitrary nomenclature imposition won’t have much impact. People will still make the old references.

Case in point, just outside Vancouver there is a major bridge across Burrard Inlet that has, since its inception, been known as the Second Narrows Bridge (pictured above). Now, that bridge has a tragic legacy. During its construction in the late 1950s the center span collapsed into the inlet. Many workers were killed. It was quite an awful mishap. So, out of respect for the men who died or were severely injured it was decided a few years ago to change the name to Ironworkers Memorial Bridge. A nice gesture, albeit an unwieldy name. Indeed, unwieldy enough that today most folks still call it the Second Narrows.

I suspect the same thing will happen with Salish Sea. In cute circles the new name is what it will be called. The fishermen and towboat operators who ply those waters I imagine will stick to the traditional.

And I’ll call it what I choose to. I mean, I live in a community that has a Coast Salish name, as do many other communities around here. It’s a fine name, so that’s enough for me. The adjoining community is named after a white guy explorer and that works, too. Who says my traditions should be valueless?

 

 

Come on, Sarah, give the schmucks of the writing trade a break

I’m resenting the hell out of Sarah Palin these days. No, not because of her astonishing and erratic political ambitions — that’s between her, her God and the GOP (though I believe God and the GOP are interchangeable in the minds of some Republicans, though I wouldn’t know as I am a suspect foreigner from the land of illicit drug smuggling and nests of international terrorists massing along the 49th Parallel). No, her delusions in that realm are of no consequence to me.

What I am resenting the hell out of is her %$##@ book that is titled: I Can See Russia AND the Country of Africa From My House  Going Rogue: An American Life. And what I am resenting is, aside from the preposterousness of a person whose mastery of the spoken language lies in the realm of that whole linguistic subgroup called ‘Speakers of Vintage Bowling Alley Clerk’ (no offence to bowling alley clerks intended) having the presumptuousness to suggest that she could actually write a whole book with no pictures.

And what pisses me off even more is that she received an advance of $7 million from publishers HarperCollins. But what infuriates me to the maximum utmost is that people are buying this masterpiece of ghostwriting in their droves. Well, maybe it’s unfair of me, with no actual information to the contrary, to suggest her great big tome was ghosted. Come on, do you really think that’s an unfair suggestion?

Anyway, the fact that people are buying this thing leads me to believe that the folks at HarperCollins weren’t misguided in their decision to end big bucks to the Divine Sarah, since she stands a good stead of turning a pretty penny on their investment. Times are tough in the publishing biz.

Admittedly, my outrage over Sarah’s book is hubristic and self-indulgent. I have been laboring in this writing realm for ages and I believe I am moderately talented (piss-poor at marketing myself, I’ll confess) and nobody has even advanced me $7 let alone $7 million. That’s because I do not have a name to trade on. Therein lies the corruption of the business. If a person can trade on their name, like Sarah is doing, they are immediately fodder for the publishing mill. If a person cannot do that, then the publisher is going to think, who is going to buy a book by this Lidster guy even if his manuscript is even more evocative than the DaVinci Code? I mean, who are you going to lay out your bucks for, a book by Sarah, or a book by me? Humor me and say it will be me — please. It’ll make me feel better and I’d have no way of knowing if you ever had bought my book.

Of course, I have to get a publisher to buy it first. Maybe I should run for public office. There is obviously no demand that you actually be any good at it. Sarah proved that.

Not quite international show-dog capacity, but he’s getting there

I had a disturbing dream last night. I was out walking with Max (our newly-acquired Wonder Dog) in the park across the street. The dream was highly vivid – one of those ‘real-time, real place’ situations – and the park looked almost exactly as it does. In the dream Max took off and ran around the corner and up onto the playing field. No problem, I thought. He does that all the time. But, as I rounded the corner he was nowhere to be seen. My eyes studied the expanse of the field, and no Max. I felt heartsick as my eyes teared up, and all I could think was that this wonderful creature came into my life, when he was needed in my life, and now he’s gone, just like that.

Then I awakened. It was a dream; I was relieved but residually upset. I came to realize how, in just three brief weeks, this big strutting dog has moved into our lives and how quickly we have come to value his presence. There seems to be a lot of symbolism around his presence, although I haven’t yet figured out all the mystical stuff. Maybe there is nothing mystical. Maybe he was just an element we needed in our lives.

So, three weeks in, it is. Even though I’ve had dogs in the past, this has been a revisitation to canine behaviors that I’d forgotten about over the years. The 21 days has been a period of adjustment for the humans in the household as well as Max. In that I have tried to regard the situation from his perspective. He gets sprung from the slammer by a couple of complete strangers in whom he must place his complete trust. Those strangers have only a cursory knowledge of his background, meanwhile, and he can’t feed them the information to fill in the gaps. So, that need for trust works both ways.

For the first week or so he was going through his big adjustment. He’s a warm and loving dog with no aggressive tendencies, so that’s a bonus, at the same time we came to realize dogs have emotions and we had to respect them. For example, we were initially concerned because he tended to eat just sporadically, and was often puking up what he’d been given. We were already concerned because he’d left the shelter underweight. A  check with the vet and a few Internet sites put our minds at ease as we learned that not eating, or not keeping it all down is part of the process of adjustment to a new environment.

Even though Max has obviously already had some obedience training and knows how to behave with a certain respectability and has virtually no bad habits like barking inappropriately, crotch-sniffing or, worst of all, leg-humping, we still wanted him to not continue going into fits of ecastacy whenever he saw another dog and consequently pulling our arms out of their sockets in his enthusiasm. It is always an ego blow to humans to find that their dogs are much more interested in other dogs than they are in their masters, regardless of what fine and generous folk those masters might be. So, last Sunday we took him off for his first obedience school session.

Like all caring parents, of course, we wanted out dog to be the brightest and most astute in the room. We definitely didn’t want him hanging out in the back smoking and cussing with the pitbulls and rottweilers and other canine hoods. Our boy is scholarship material for certain.

Actually, he did pretty well compared with some of the C-student dogs, but we discouraged him from gloating, as there are still five sessions to go before graduation day. We haven’t yet fitted him out for his forthcoming cap-and-gown.

Anyway, the past three weeks have been something of a delight with a big ole dawg who has proved so far to be no fuss or muss.

Excuse me while I blame absolutely everybody for this fiasco

If you’re ever in doubt about anything, blame the media. Having toiled long in that realm, and still involved at a periphery level I know what knaves, villains, charlatans and hypocrites those in the business can be. Never me, of course. I was always honorable.

Case in point, a political columnist I rather admire offered his musings for many months on the profligate waste of resources going into the 2010 Olympic Games here, and in such columns he regularly pilloried the self-seeking politicians of our realm and exhorted his readers to see things his way. And yet when the much-hyped Torch Parade (or whatever it’s called) began a few days ago he excoriated a motley and ill-focused cadre of protesters who caused a little ruckus on the parade route. I agree with him that they were largely assholes but my point is, didn’t you, in a kind of way, encourage the attitude? Just sayin’.

But, this screed isn’t about the Olympics, it’s about the H1N1 flu and the ensuing comedy of errors that accompanied its arrival. And here I blame the media for fomenting masses of public anxiety about this pending latter-day bubonic plague that is about to lay the world waste by knocking off people like flies. For months now threats of pending doom have dominated our pages and television screens, and the public was exhorted vehemently to get inoculated or face the lethal consequences. In their stories they invariably cited the musings of assorted public health officials, and it is therein that I select my next blameworthy body – public health.

Here we see an even greater source of culpability in the swinish flu scenario. That is because these are the bozos and bozettes who have been feeding the media the panic-city scenarios of death and destruction. I mean, their musings have really been excessive and consequently they have frightened many people especially those in the most threatened demographic – the young.

At the same time, their handling of access to the serum with which the public is meant to be jabbed – and we all must be or face doom, they maintain – has been piss poor. Supplies have been shorted, and mixed messages about who is the most vulnerable have left the public confused, ambivalent in some cases, and downright contrarian in others. Furthermore, it was initially stated that those past a certain age should only get the seasonal flu jab, whereas others must get the H1N1 (which is in unacceptably short supply despite its late start). Now the seasonal flu thing seems to have been lost in the shuffle and guys like me have no idea what they are supposed to get. Finally, there have been questions raised, and not effectively countered, about potential risk in a largely untested drug. Trust Us, the public health folk exhort in almost hectoring tones. “Why should that be,” I believe I am entitled to ask.

Finally, it all comes down to the politicians virtually around the world who have gone into panic mode about the whole flu thing, but are doing little to see that the public is being served in this maybe real, maybe nonsensical panic situation. We are still being told on a daily basis that the ‘season’ of death and destruction is upon us, and don’t be fooled that it hasn’t really manifested. Yet, and back to the media and its responsibility/irresponsibility, we are regaled with newspaper articles and TV broadcasts telling us the queues are stretching out 10 city blocks and that there just may not be enough vaccine.

I think I’ll just take to my bed with a good book as a precaution and not interact with anybody and just ride this puppy out. Probably as effective a plan as any other suggested. Ultimately I’ll either catch the flu, or won’t, or I’ll die, or I won’t.

The Day of the Dead and other fun stuff

Every November 1^st when we returned to school after Halloween activities it was the same thing – the Sun shack would have been rolled down the hill at some point the previous evening. The teacher would look out the window and with the predicable tone of resigned exasperation exclaim: “Well, I see the boys were at it again.” We would all laugh at this little act of senseless vandalism. 

The Sun shack was a hut used by the Vancouver Sun newspaper as a distribution point where the carriers would come and pick up the papers to be expedited to the customers on their routes. It was also a great place for boys to cuss, smoke, and get up to other activities unsuitable to be mentioned in a general interest blog. And, every Halloween it was the default target, especially since it was situated with a downslope immediately behind it.

I don’t recall Halloween in those days being punctuated by any truly malicious vandalism. I mean, a few houses got egged, some care windshields got soaped and there were firecrackers everywhere, but it was rare that shenanigans got madly out-of-hand. For one thing, there were penalties in those days. The police acted like cops, and were not necessarily the friendly folk of today. They were cops and some of them were mean. And, any kid who truly transgressed always had the specter of reform school staring him in the face. Reform school, borstal, industrial school, call it what you want, it was still the kiddie slammer. The big one in our community was known by the acronym BISCO (Boys’ Industrial School of Coquitlam). If your desire was to grow up to be a full-fledged criminal, then BISCO was your prep school and you wore your legacy with pride when you swaggered back to junior high. Sometimes, when I’m feeling particularly peevish and curmudgeonly I will think: Those were the days.

But, aside from waxing nostalgic, I wanted to look at another aspect of this season. I opened by making reference to November 1^st because, despite the sometimes crass commercialization of Halloween on the 31^st, it was the 1^st that was the big day in the Christian calendar. November 1^st is All Saints Day, and in Mexico it is widely celebrated as the Day of the Dead. That is the day when the graves open and the deceased wreak havoc until they are smitten by the assorted Christian saints, or something like that. Halloween is a truncation of the phrase All Hallows’ Eve, hence the day before the bad (and good) stuff happens.

We found a shop in Old Town San Diego in June that was devoted to Day of the Dead memorabilia and we found some of the stuff pretty cool, if ghoulish. At the very least the assorted skulls would make good biker jacket insignias. If you are genuinely ambitious you might want to read Malcolm Lowry’s sometimes ponderous but also fascinating Under the Volcano, which is devoted to the events in a Mexican town of one particular Day of the Dead. The spookiness was bound to have appealed to the hallucinating alcoholic hero of the tale, much as it appealed to the hallucinating alcoholic author.

As far as Halloween itself went this year, we had a virtually minuscule number of kids when compared with other years. What’s wrong with them; it’s supposed to be a festival of greed, isn’t it? Anyway, we bought enough candy for about 75 and got 25 at the most. That left us with a great abundance of calorific sweet and tooth-rotting confections. That’s both a good and obviously a bad thing. We got Max partially to knock inches off the waistline by his demands for walks, and then we got Halloween to stick them on again. So, we grimaced, packaged the stuff up and deposited it in the deepfreeze vowing to only consume small amounts on special occasions.

Anyway, I don’t know where the kids have gone. Very few little tiny monsters (my favorites), and a few teens who, to give them credit, were in costume. Poignantly, and we both commented on this, was the odd pre-teen kid who arrived solo. I don’t like to think of a kid that age having no friends to trick-or-treat with. Doesn’t seem right, and is somehow sad.

Our favorite was the first, however. He was a teeny-tiny Spiderman (maybe age 2 ½ tops) who arrived with his dad and, when the door was opened, blithely strode in and threw a hug on Max, who was at least three times his size, and promptly shuck his little Spiderman hood and told his dad he wasn’t going to wear it any more. My kind of kid; contrarian at even his tender age. That little boy has potential.

Chuck, baby, seems folk think you’re a bore

According to some sources the publishers of Mad Magazine caused great offence in royal circles many years ago with their cartoon suggestion that Prince Charles was uncannily reminiscent of the magazine’s iconic mascot, Alfred E. Neuman. It was all done in good fun, but evidently the household was obdurately unamused by the comparison.

However, eventually the issue died down and, as far as I know, nobody was beheaded as a result of the insult.

On the other hand, I just read that Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales and heir-apparent to Mrs. Queen (that’s what I affectionately call her, either that or Grandmama) is not particularly affectionately regarded in my own country.

Not only that, according to a recent poll, the majority of respondents suggested they found Chuck to be an irrelevant bore and nonentity in the lives of contemporary Canadians.

All I can say to that is, about bloody time.

Those polled also said that they thought Canada’s connection to the monarchy should end with the passing of the Queen. The Queen is generally respected, and even loved in a lot of circles, and she deserves to be. Chuck? Not so much.

Time to move on and become a real country wearing some big-boy pants.

Why on earth anybody thought this vestigial connection to our colonial past should still be honored amazes me. I would be ashamed of my country if we didn’t feel that way. As I mentioned a while ago, a lot of monarchist types were right testy about the fact that Governor-General Michaelle Jean presented herself as Canadian head-of-state (rather than the Queen, who actually bears that title) a while ago. I wasn’t irritated by that gaffe. I absolutely didn’t care. What I did care about is that we actually have a Queen’s rep here. Shouldn’t we have an autonomous head-of-state sort of like ‘real’ countries do?

Canada is a fully-independent nation, much like the US, France or China, so why this vague connection with a former overlord place? I say this as an unrepentant anglophile. I have lived in England, have visited many times, and have friends and family there. Furthermore, my progenitors came from there. But I am a Canadian and in that sense am no more connected to the UK than I am to the US or any other political entity on the planet.

I think too with Canadians in reference to this question, it is the Charles thing. He is not a particularly inspiring man. He is seen as overprivileged, pompous and a bit of an ass in general. He may have some green creds, but they are green creds of convenience for him, not necessarily commitment when he must make sacrifices. The point being, there is nothing inspiring about him, nor particularly relevant.

Years ago, of course, back in the Diana years people quite embraced the couple – largely (let’s say 98 percent) due to her presence on his arm. When he dumped her for the sake of the other one, then a lot of respect went out the window and back across the Atlantic.

So, if Charles is a big yawn in these here parts, that is solely as it should be. I wouldn’t want it to be any other way.

So, no — I didn’t go, and this is why I didn’t

I blew off a funeral last Sunday. In fact, in contemporary context, it was a ‘memorial service’; you know, the kinder, gentler, no God-squad way of putting somebody in the ground based on pretending he/she is still around. Well, everybody knows that isn’t really true but, somehow, it just seems not quite so final.

But, I still didn’t go, mainly because they couldn’t fool me. I knew it was really a funeral no matter what it was called. And I didn’t think my presence there would make one iota of difference to the honoree. People will sit around. There will be some sort of master or mistress of ceremonies, sometimes a clerical person fills that role, other times it is a lay friend of the family or perhaps family member. After a while music will be played, strummed, sung, chanted or whatever. These are ostensibly favorite ditties of the deceased and that is to enable us to feel closer. Then certain pre-appointed folk will rise to say something nice. When they are done, members of the general mass are invited to offer their impressions. Some people will bite and say something. Some other people will go on far too long causing others gathered to shuffle their feet and feel a huge longing for a cigarette even though they quit smoking 11 years before. Further people will punctuate their address with sobs, which effectively adds mood to the occasions but renders the gathered multitude uncomfortable.

When the formal informal service is completed people will be invited to go to the assembly hall next door and partake of coffee, tea, wee sandwiches, pastries and so forth, and to offer condolences to the immediate family. Shit. I hate that. Not because I don’t feel hugely for the family, but that I do not (nor does anybody else for that matter, and if they protest contrariwise they are lying) have a clue what to say.

“Really sorry about Charlie,” I say to his wife.

“Yes, it’s been quite a blow to us. But it’s wonderful to see everybody here. He had so many friends.”

“Yes-yes he did. Many friends. Now I’ll move along and let some other people offer their condolences.”

“So good of you to come.”

“Yes, it was – no, I mean — I wouldn’t have missed it – no, I mean, er, of course I would be here.”

The foregoing is the hard part. The rest is mainly mix and mingle, lots of hugging, a few tears, banal comments like “Its’ too bad it takes something like this to get us all together,” and finally people look at their watches (they have been desperate to make a break for an hour), sigh, and say they’d better be on their way, they have a sitter, the dog needs to be let out to pee, they’d already arranged for company that evening, etc.

Now don’t interpret from this for a second that I blew off the memorial service for one of the people I mentioned in the earlier blog because I wasn’t saddened by the deaths. I was deeply saddened, and had huge affection and respect for those who passed on and will miss them hugely. It’s just that no matter how much well-intentioned people want to sanitize a service it is still essentially a funeral, and I would always prefer to remember the person in my own way, with own private thoughts of grief. And that, I believe, is my right and I need apologize to nobody.

Whatever is the case with the modern memorial service, it is a damn sight better than the old-fashioned funeral service. Such services are formalized and much less human. They involve religious ritual (usually) and many prayers, assorted hymns, and offer assurances that the decedent is in a “better place.” Well, I do like to think that, though am not entirely convinced, I must confess. The worst of these (especially for kids) are services of the open-casket sort. Aunt Hattie lies there, thoroughly mascaraed and rouged and bears only a vague resemblance to the woman who baked the best damn gingerbread in three counties. It’s creepy but is designed to convince the multitude she is still with us. She ain’t. Sorry, and no painted manikin of the person will convince me otherwise.

It comes down to this. We really, despite protestations to the contrary, are not at ease with the death of another because it reminds us that one day such a party will involve us. We don’t like that. It’s strong medicine.

Do I feel bad because I did not attend? No, in truth I don’t. I spent my afternoon planting bulbs and raking leaves, and thinking fond thoughts of my late friend. This is what the living do, they tend to matters of life in hopes of awakening another day, though they know they have no control over whether or not that happens.

Love my dog; tale of an unfortunate man; an award

As we are still in the mode of marveling at all the facets of newly acquired canine, Max, we were thinking of all the commonplace terms that involve the use of ‘dog’. This is indicative of how significant these creatures have always been in our lives when you consider their prominence in everyday lexicon. 

So, you have dogged, doggone, dog-in-the-manger, mad-dog, doggerel, dog-tired, f—–g the dog (wasting time), dog-work, and so on and so on.

But, the conversation also took me back to a guy. A guy who was arguably the most unfortunate soul I think I have ever met. His real name was Don, but he went (as a grievous insult to him perpetrated by the Vancouver Police Force) by the street sobriquet ‘Dogface’.

Dogface was a junkie and a small-time crook. He was also, ironically (perhaps) an extremely intelligent and well-informed guy who could natter on indefinitely about virtually any subject.

Facially unfortunate (I’m being kind here, he was frighteningly ugly and deformed, hence the Dogface), with bulbous forehead and virtually no chin, he was very short of stature and sort of hunched, and also had hands so tiny that the Vancouver cops had special cuffs just for him, since he would slip out of the conventional ones no matter how hard they were cinched. He took glee in that fact. He was so homely his own mother made him sleep on the back porch because she couldn’t bear to look at him. Or so he told me.

I got to know him during a university summer job in a plywood mill. He was on probation at that time and the company took him on partially out of compassion. It was a benevolent firm, and you don’t get many of those any more. Needless to say, because of his personality quirks (and there were many; he was capable of terrifying rages when he was frustrated, and that was usually), he was a kind of scary workmate. At the same time, I felt compassion for him and he appreciated that I actually deigned to converse with him.

He was also a hopeless workmate. He could not keep pace and if I were partnered with him on a crew, my own quota would diminish. I was, by the way, known as a productive employee.

One evening the foreman (a colorful but vile-tempered martinet) came by. Looked at our accomplishments for the shift, and shook his head disdainfully. I waited for him to erupt. But, he didn’t. I caught up with him as he walked away, and said I hoped he understood that my workmate wasn’t the most efficient person in the plant.

He put his hand on my shoulder and said: “Ian, I didn’t have the heart to say what I thought. If either of us had as many strokes against us as that poor bastard we wouldn’t even get out of bed in the morning.” My respect for my foreman soared due to that statement.

Anyway, I finished that job and moved on with my life, and thought little more of Dogface Don – by the way, it arguably would have been worth your life to use that adjective around him.

A few years later a large headline in the Vancouver Sun caught my eye. The story concerned a vicious gangland slaying in which the victim, a drug dealer had been so riddled with bullets even the most hardened coppers were appalled. The story concerned the brutal murder of a man who was known to the underworld as “Dogface.”. How terribly sad.

He deserved better than that. We all do.

 

But, on a brighter note, I got an award. The award was sent my way by French Leave, and I was very flattered to receive it. It is the One Lovely Blog Award, and she seems to think I am a worthy recipient. That is very gracious of her. I like her blog very much and since she was the earlier recipient, I commend her for that. She is a UK expat who has lived in France for a number of years and I like the fact she takes no prisoners when she is exasperated by her life across the Channel, but also exults in the treasures she finds in her day-to-day life. Give her a read. I recommend it.

Now, my role in getting this was that I had to choose three others to get the same award. I hate doing that. You know, the narrowing down thing, especially just to a trio. If you are on my blogroll I consider you award-worthy. And, French Leave already took the wondrous Pearl and made her one of her awardees. But, I also found it quite easy to find my trio.

They are:

 Laura Jane, who is droll, sometimes ribald, screamingly funny and frighteningly intelligent. If you haven’t gone there, please do so.

Dumdad (the name he goes by with his blog) is a genuine gem of wit, wisdom and information. I feel a certain empathy as he is also a former active journalist. Like French Leave, he also chooses to spend his retirement days in la belle France, in his case, Paris.

Jazz is one of my longest duration blogger friends and we have a huge simpatico. It is good we are both happily married because I otherwise utterly adore her. Love her whimsical take on the perversities of her day-to-day life in Montreal, and always welcome her no-bullshit honesty.

Please enjoy them all.