Good old college days

I spent my college years at the school of hard knocks- many of my girl friends spent theirs at the school of hard cocks. So, it worked out well for all of us, and what a time it was. Birth control- very very few births and very little control, and lots of mind-numbing drugs. I look back and see how the curricula were down-graded, a gentleman's C became a B, short skirts in front rows were always good for a B- if extracurriculars were included a ladies A. Two things I remember from college:

On my first day I had my first black professor (instructor or whatever his title was)who shocked us deliberately by saying that if Christ were alive today (then), Christ would be classified as a paranoid-Schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur. For a Christian raised in the Eastern Orthodox Church this was anathema, it contradicted everything I'd ever been taught. I gave the idea a fair evaluation. You see my father was a paranoid-schizophrenic so in both ways this comment affected me. I did not like the teacher- color aside. He was arrogant and he purposefully sought to shock us. I do remember I asked the instructor that by the definition he'd given us, weren't our state mental hospitals were full of people who thought themselves to be the Risen One.

This took him back a bit- I don't suspect he expected a college freshman to be so quick to question his statement. But, to his credit, he agreed. I suspect this was the beginning of a lifetime of questioning- thanks to the teacher who had forced me to think differently.

A second major revelation took place on the last day of college. At the time I was out of if most of the time, deliberately numb. I had come into my Psychology Final late, loaded and looking it. I'd been cutting and arriving late all semester.

The professor, many thanks sir, did ask me why. Ironically, it was the day my father and mother were finally divorced or had their marriage nullified. I told the professor I had been looking after my father's business and that that morning my parents were divorced. A convenient lie- but it worked- I got a D and was able to graduate. It was a gift....My college education had many stops and starts, many calamitous events- divorce, questioning the religion I had been taught. I experienced lost love, lost family, lost values and was myself lost in a traumatic time. I had no family, no one to advise or counsel me. So blundered through making mistakes and loving it. I had what most of my peers thought they wanted- no parental control. Yet, I didn't want it.

I will digress to a funnier and happier occasion. One of the jobs I had in college was as a taxi driver. It was a Monday morning, my first day on the job. I was sent to an apartment building to pick up my first fare. He took his time walking down the long sidewalk to my cab. Got in and without greeting, he told me to take him to an office building in Towson, MD. I was unsure of the way so I took the routes I knew. When I pulled up the meter read 65 cents. The grumpy old codger got out of the cab and handed me 50 cents. I said Sir the fare is 65 cents. He said that I went the long way and that the fare was always 50 cents and 50 cents was all I was going to get. I took the money, and pissed as I was took off. I wondered how the heck was I going to earn money to eat, pay tuition, rent, books and grass, if I kept being stiffed. It was my initiation- every new cabby got to drive this fellow- who it turns out was a millionaire.

Well, that never happened again- I learned to ask fares if there was a particular route I should take to their destination. I learned to skim tips. If a fare was 75 cents, and the fare gave me a dollar bill, I'd take the dollar and say thanks, not giving the person a chance to ask for change. It usually worked. Well on with my original story. It was the last day of my career as a cabby for this cab company and as fate would have it, Mr. First Fare had called for a cab. I now knew the area well and I remembered the jerk that had stiffed me. As I remember it was a cold, rainy day, rain slashing with a whipping wind. When the apartment building door opened, I recognized the guy as my first fare, the guy who had stiffed me of 15 cents. The side walk was about 50 feet from door to curb and as I said the weather was atrocious. I watched the man walk to the cab, umbrella in hand, as he reached to open the cab door, I stepped on the gas hoping to splash him. He stood there a second calling after me.... I opened my window and waved a not so friendly finger flag at him. I could hear him yelling that he knew the company's owner and was going to report me. I finished the day, an average day, expecting to be fired or called into the office by the boss. When I got back, the other cabbies, stood up and gave me a cheer. The old buzzard was known to one and all as a cheap, nasty bastard. My fellow cabbies applauded me for sticking it to the guy. I'll related one other cabby story. It was May or June , 1968, the anti-war movement was in earnest. I had taken a fare from Towson to down town Baltimore, a nice fare. As I drove up Greenmount Avenue the streets were filling with black people. This was an almost all-black area but the shortest way from downtown to the Towson suburbs. Suddenly all Hell broke loose, thousands of people were streaming into the streets. Groups of people were rocking transit buses trying to overturn them. Rocks were flying through the air, shots rang out, a glass bottle hit a side window of my cab, people were coming after to me, throwing bricks which bounced off the cab leaving dents. A mob was about to jump the cab and perhaps drag me out. I was scared shitless. Ordinarily I didn't mind driving up Green Mount Avenue, occassionally I'd even snag a fare to Towson. But whatever the hell was going on, I wasn't going to stop. I ran the light at Green Mount and North Avenue and sped up, hoping to get out of the area as soon as posssible. I was still in danger and when I radioed the cab company to ask what was going on, one of the other cabbies came on to tell me they, "they killed that nigger." I said who? He said Martin Luther King. No wonder the ghetto had gone berserk. I drove that cab as fast as I could, disregarding signals, cutting in and around traffic. When I got back to the cab stand the other cabbies were standing around looking smug and self-satisfied. I broke ranks with my cab mates who were boasting that this would teach them niggers a lesson. My only comment was that it was not going to be a good time to be driving a cab and turned in the keys. Being a poor white kid from East Baltimore I was now in North Baltimore and had to get back to my neighborhood. The streets were packed with cars, stalled, stopped, or abandoned. Looters were smashing windows as I headed south on my Vespa motor scooter. The day was getting late, my fear level growing. How was I going to avoid being dragged off my scooter and beaten.

I took to the alleys, the sidewalks and as the sun began to set I didn't turn on my light. I circumvented downtown, 33rd Street (former home of the Orioles and Colts), skirted the areas around City College that were still predominately white and got to Edison Highway... In the dark I made my way to safety in Highlandtown. For days the city was under curfew and no one was allowed out after nightfall. Luckily I had that little scooter..I could dart down alley without lights to my friends houses where we played ping pong, cards, watched the news and got loaded. And that was the last day of cab driving for that company. But there were 2 cab companies in Towson at the time.

The first one I worked for had cabs which were bought second hand in NY- not allowed by law. Those cabs were in terrible conditions, hardly road worthy, bald tires, smelly. The owner was an Italian fellow, no names please. If you know the area and the time, I'll say the cabs were blue. The other company was owned by a family, their cabs were newer and white- no names. The second cab company was the better. One last reflection on my cabby days. One day while working for the white company, we had a woman dispatcher, unusual for those days, but even more remarkable was that she was blind...yes blind. Yet she could direct you anywhere in the area better than the sighted fellows. I really liked her- she was rather heavy, not very good-looking but a total marvel and easy to talk to. I still wonder how she could direct cabs to destination she'd never seen.

I was never robbed, nor seduced by a fare. One lady, rather odd if you will, did tell me that her mother had died in my cab the week before. I didn't speak until I got her to her destination and I certainly never asked her if it was the exact cab or a cab I was supposedly driving when the woman's mother died.

Cab driving was something I said I'd never do again...the split was 55% for the company and 45% for the cabby. I think that's how it went but it may have been the other way. You learn a lot driving a cab- how to eat a burger and drink coffee while driving; how to judge a tipper from a gyper; how hard it is to make a buck. How seniority gets priority. I drove for quite a while before I got a Towson to BWI fare...at that time a $15-20 ride. You learned what the dead times were- early afternoon, and when and who to talk to as you drove. I guess I thought I was going to see hot chicks and get laid a lot. Very few hot chicks have to ride in cabs, so forget that and as to being laid- no fare ever invited me up to her place. To be brief, it was a lousy job, plenty of time to smoke cigarettes and drink coffee, not enough tips, and barely enough money

to make it worth the time- especially for a college student.

But one last footnote to this blog- I never attended my college graduation, I was driving a cab that day. Now, the reader may take out a kleenex and wipe a tear. So sad, poor guy, etc...

But remember I had no family to invite. My Dad was in a Veteran's Hospital and I didn't have the money for a cap and gown, plus my rent was due and I was out of grass.

Note to reader- some parts of this blog are fictitious...even the writer doesn't know which parts though. All geographical names are as true to real as I could make them. The dates for the assassination of MLK and my memory of the event may be incorrect but it did happen and in the way I described it.

The Petrified Forest

Having just watched Humphrey Bogart's first major movie Petrified Forest, I must say it was riveting yet fanciful. The dialogue rolled like a stream with Leslie Howard and Betty Davis captivating the screen. Electric exchanges between Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart teetered on the absurd and the profound, augmented by a setting that both attracted and distracted. Most interesting that two of the characters were Black, cast not for PC but as real life people, one a criminal and the other a driver for the rich couple whom Bogart's gang has robbed of their car. The dialogue between the two Black actors was as important then as now. Drama at its best- as is often said, "they don't make them like they used to" really is appropriate for this movie. 1939 usually is cited as the year which produced the greatest American movies. Just say the 30's movies were special, and black and white movies, though some dislike them, were an art form never to be repeated. As with The Ox-Bow Incident and To Kill a Mockingbird, Petrified Forest would not have had the effect it did had it been in color. Why were those movies so special- perhaps because Hollywood knew what people wanted and would pay to see and perhaps that movie makers felt an obligation to use the new medium to say something, to be ART. Money was tight so for a movie to be popular and profitable, it had to be artistically done and produce an effect on audience. Today's movies are in the words of the Bard, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

No doubt television led to the demise of great American movies. The movies went from pure protein to pablum and then television came along and is little more than mental bubble gum. Televisions best use is sports. And now even sports are being molded by commercial breaks, ruined by talking heads, dreadfully unnecessary. And then there is the 'news'. The medium doesn't report the news, it chooses and creates news. And the news isn't really new, it is the same sad rehash of sorrow and human misery and evil brought to us from differing sites by roving maggots with production crews in tow. A death toll, a tearful replay by the unapologetically rude cameras and the half-educated on the spot reporters who use bad grammar and lack propriety. Nothing is sacred except the commercial break.

Critics, thinkers, intellectuals, faux philosophers and panel after panel of hired experts all infest the small screen which has become a big screen with small ideas and themes. Man playing with the bigness of his littleness (sorry e.e.). Sad to say that technology has had a detrimental effect on the quality of television and the quality of life. The multiplying villainies of improved technology and a lack of respect for the suffering and woe of human beings side by side. We were happier before television, perhaps in our ignorance, naive to the world, satisfied with our little lives, unaware of the vast suffering of strangers.

Now, television shows fester into movies which then multiply into sequels, the hydra-headed monster. There was a time when movies meant something, when there was art - no more. I've seen two movies at the theater this year, both dreadfully tedious and worthless. I admit there are still great movies being made but when measured against the number of releases, the great ones are merely the tip of an iceberg beneath which a monstrous collection of garbage rests.

Modern thinkers have long railed against the 'wasteland' of television some even and cite the TV shows of the 50's as being the classic or grand era of the medium. Was it? What is there on television that lifts us from the flat plane of our vapid, narrow world- almost nothing. Many have said commercials are the most carefully created things on TV- no doubt. What I often wonder about is effectiveness of commercials. Do they really work- not on me, well not that I know of that is.

I was born in a world that no longer exists and live in a world that no one could have anticipated. As a child I had no television and didn't begin watching it until I was nearly 10. For that I am truly grateful.

My apologies to the reader, as my pronouns have drifted from the impersonal voice of argumentation, I apologize for the invasion of the first person into this blog. It signifies that it is time to close today's entry. More to follow soon.

It takes an effort, a substantial, engrossing energy to write and often I'd rather not for fear of having nothing to say and doing that. One may go for the fable, wrapped in myth, showered by poetic images, add heroes, horses, houses rising and falling. Then, there's the real problem- what the heck to say, how to say it, say it, revise it and put it out for show. I can start with something I now realize: not being able to write in cursive is an obstacle to composition for many people. . Instruction in cursive emphasized sentences. capitals, periods, and in so doing was an important element in better writing. I noticed over the years that the failure to organize sentences and use of capitals became more and more obvious, wide-spread and were worth the time to consider what factors were at work. The experts had written off handwriting instruction because of spelling and grammar checks in word programs. The lock and key effect characterizes handwriting in that composing by hand gave one practice in the use of capitals, periods and other mechanics. Looking back it was just those kinds of errors that made high school compositions so poor.

Granted, handwriting in and of itself isn't the whole truth, but is links up very nicely. But, one may offer that many people are currently writing online who never really wrote anything out long-hand. I don't think we did the best for students by not teaching handwriting. So what, some may say. And they are probably more correct than I am. Readers and writers are all usually self-taught. Thus the more you know about the language, the better you write and read.

I feel lucky to have been a teacher. As jobs go, it was a very rewarding profession. Most of my remembrances are pleasant and many of the things I taught were a great education for me. To write, one must write; those who can't, don't; and many of those who can, don't. It's such a difficult task to say something, to tell a story, relate an experience, thus when a person who hasn't learned to write, to think of things in organized ways is faced with the task; he cringes.

Having had nothing to say this evening, I feel satisfied with what I have written, for I didn't have a specific goal in mind, a fixed method of delivery. All I can say is I expressed an opinion that has little support in modern education. There are few fixed laws about language and its use. This area interests me and I often give time to considering how people communicate. Too tired to bore, any more. Good night.

October 2009

Began a blog three days ago but let it sit. Not much to say about the world, its denizens, machines, people. Had it in mind to start promptly on October 1st. Well the 2nd is just as useful as the 1st.

First there is the matter of the day- what mattered, which is usually nothing; sometimes very tiresome and difficult; and even less of the time something memorable, satisfying or practical.

So this October 2nd 2009 was not an abnormal day. The weather moderated; it didn't seem so cold and later in the day a warm front pushed in and brought us rain. We were out most of the day even though it was Friday and a busy day now that people are working four day weeks. Yet none of the stores seemed rushed. The traffic was not maddening, not particularly heavy. Of course it's always heavy- traffic that is- because it's cars, trucks....

Have begun The Brothers Kamarazov for the third time and taking it slowly, getting to know the characters. Think I'll take until Christmas to read Kamarazov and then read Crime and Punishment. Doestoevski creates substantial characters, endows them with flaws and goodness and exposes them to a situation, an event. In so doing the characters come to life- Nikolai the disagreeable drunken sot lost in self-loathing and surviving on his loathsomeness. Alexy simple but complete. The one special character. And then the' elder'...

More about the book tomorrow. Yesterday was terrible, headache from the time I woke, magnified by going to the movie theater and the double decker head ache- front and right sides of forehead, drifting down to the eye and cheek bone. Eventually the tenderness, pain, discomfort, recognition of a migraine came over me. It was a time for serious medication: flexeril, lorazepam, Ultram and Ambien to the rescue. Ultimately I took Imitrex, put cold packs on my head and neck as I laid in a hot bath, chewed and sucked on a popcicles which really helped, drank a coke and had a honey bun and the head ache dissipated. I topped off the mini-stroke with a burst of caffeine and sugar. Gotta love it when it's gone. It was gone. I was gone to sleep that is, perchance to dream, Aye there's the rub. When I woke my tongue felt dried and hard. Had a glass of water at 4 a.m.. and then went back to sleep until 9. We've begun sleeping in more and with cold weather coming on we are beginning to hibernate.

Got something in the blog. If the reader will forgive me a short humble entry after a busy day, I promise the following ( few though ye be): a blog of humor, insight, and hopefully delight.

Good night.

Stratford

Today's blog is short for I am back in my unexamined indifference or the attempt of it. Of course that is a lie- the unexamined indifference.  Tired worries resurrected. Toil resumed.

We've been back in the US for two days and I'm ready to go to Ontario.  This is serious stuff for it's a six hour drive but always worth it.  I can't explain why I feel so comfortable in Canada perhaps it's just being away, not cooking, doing chores, and being entertained with no strings.

We'll check out what plays are available- I know Midsummer Night's Dream and Macbeth are being performed. Some may say, but you've seen both of those a dozen times (probably more) done in a dozen different ways. Why would you travel to see Shakespeare- simply it's live theatre and in live theatre the audience participates, each performance new and never before nor after to be repeated. Art in the making, flowing, live with a working knowledge of the text, so familiar that one is able to hear without listening, to see without looking, to enjoy.  Being in Canada and seeing plays reminds me of sex- it's always different, always wonderful. One feels as one did the first time one truly made love, not necessarily sex but the act with meaning.  

We've recuperated, feel strong and are willing to take a new adventure. I'm a fool but traveling and being in a new place feels good, particularly at Strattford where we nestle into a hotel room, walk to a play, eat cheaply at Tim Horton's (Canada's Wendys), go to  spa,  pool, peruse stores and breathe. 

Two days home and tired of driving.  Simple chores, going to grocery store, getting a haircut are unsettling. Traffic obscene in every sense. Tired of the same small cares, the rounds.  At first, being home seems so wonderful after the bustle of travel, a new bed every night, hauling body and baggage.  Then it relaxes into tedium, an unglamorous set rut.  While away, all faces are new, local tragedies unimportant, politics no more important than a  glass of orange or grapefruit juice. Whatever whim satisfies against an unimposing back drop.  Floating away, flying away, going away all vehicles of insouciant disconnect.  Gladly adopting every new city

without commitment. The cities themselves whores to the traveler's desire, forgotten or remembered but not real, surface only. No musts!

And in my Dreams

and in my dreams such shapes may rise

that shake the soul with much surprise.

I dreamed I was going back to teaching last night though I was not on the faculty list. Everything had changed. Curiously enough, Bill Poulos was with me and we went to Boonsboro High School.

The department chair was a black man named Joseph (make any connection you like) and the English curriculum had been radically revised. I was lugging a machine around with me as we were leaving and was stopped and asked to return it. I didn't know what the machine was for, so as I returned it I was told it was a reading machine. Sheets of paper with holes in them were passed in front of a beam of light and the text was projected as the words were pronounced. The machine was a cross between a light-brite and the SRA machines so popular in the sixties and seventies. I was also carrying a text that was being taught- a book I'd never heard of but promised to read. I recall that the text was thoroughly politically correct but being the compulsive reader I am, I fully intended to read it. I recall that the title seemed childish and the cover an abstract design of purple and green.

As Bill and I traveled back(wards in time) he left me at the corner of Eastern Avenue and Ponca Street. He was driving a Thunderbird and parked it right at the bus stop there. I tried to tell him that he couldn't do that- the car will be towed. But he responded that he was flying out of the country and was suddenly gone.

Make what you will of a dream- Freud suggests that the words- Mr. Joseph, Thunderbird, Eastern, purple, green- are the telling details- that the visual images are not necessarily key but that sounds and their relation to reality are more important- the reading machine (me) is important. The flight to another country takes on an interesting aspect. Every reader will infuse meaning according to the importance the words and sounds elicit.

To sleep, to dream, ah there's the rub

and in that sleep

what dreams may come.

Out, out brief candle

Man is but a poor player

that struts and frets his hour upon this stage

and then is heard no more.

It is a tale told by an idiot

full of sound and fury

signifying nothing. *

paraphrase and quote from Macbeth

Poor reader, I beg your pardon for the indulgence I ask. There are no pictures merely the phantom forms that came into my mind. Tense too is important as is syntax.

Traveling is a Fool's Paradise

Thoreau began an essay with this topic sentence and then proceeded to elaboarate on the why- the usual stupid stuff: You can't escape your problems or yourself, you carry your worries, when you get back your shortcomings are still there: blah, blah, blah. Well, if Travel is a Fool's Paradise- then I am a fool-for this trip was paradise.

Thoreau is often quoted for his transcendental, ecological, passive resistance views. I never bothered to read much of what he wrote- it was ho-hum for some in the sixties, and now that we are in our 60's- he's still being quoted and he is still rather "like so what".

Travel cleansed my soul. The views, mountains, rivers, accommodations did remarkable things to me- I called it our Woodstock, something never to be repeated. The people were lovely, generous, considerate and became a unit. Something none of us shall ever forget or be able to recapture.

But back to Henry David- obviously he didn't travel much. If I remember correctly, mostly he stayed in his home town and staged his tax protest by living in Emerson's back yard, camping out. Had he seen the Bow River, Athabasca Falls, the Columbia Ice Fields, the dining room at the Empress Hotel, or the Banff Castle- it would have done him much good. But then again he didn't live in our time where an escape from the cities provides a much needed cleansing of the soul. We forgot our trouble, left the worries behind and lived in the moment with and for each other.

I'm glad I got to know these people- like Woodstock Nation, we came together, cared for each other. And a wonderful thing happened to me- I found that I enjoyed helping the folks who needed assistance. I looked out for those who needed a little attention and discovered that that was why I became a teacher- something in me has always tended to be sympathetic to those whom I can help, love, and learn from. Serving is its own reward; virtue is the essence of the eternal in us, something many never discover.

On our last day in Calgary I discovered I might want to go to Stratford, Ontario to see what is supposed to be an excellent production of the The Most Lamentable Tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe (Mid-summer Night's Dream). Then in October we'll go to Orlando, followed by a 45th class reunion in Dundalk in November and the wedding in December. Whew- we'd better get some rest.

Banff to Calgary

Today we ate at a castle (Banff Springs Hotel) and the food on the buffet could have fed a starving country.  Rooms range from 400 per night to several thousand for the premier suite. What a place to spend a honeymoon, if money were no object. The castle is outside of Banff and believe it or not, the meal was free.  Holiday Vacations arranged it because of the early difficulties we had during the trip.   We got a meal fit for a king or queen.  Although Banff is a total tourist town, it is very lovely.  Some of the houses range into the 10 million dollar range.  The owner of the New York NHL Team has a house there.  The thing is you can own the house for 40 years but never own the land because it is a national park.  To live there you must work there. Today is the end of our tour. Eating at the castle, training through the Rockies, riding the ferry are just a few of the more memorable things. What really is touching is the friendships that have developed and the cordiality among us.  We laughed together, looked out for each other.  Our farewell dinner in Calgary tonight was a tear jerker.  To think that this grand adventure has to end tomorrow makes all of us sad though none of us is sorry to have taken the trip.  Many people said they'd been on Alaskan cruises and those cruises did not have the spectacular scenery, the incredible hotels, and the food...oh was it good.  The only disappointing meal was at Lake Louise but the scenery erased any negativity.  The trip was everything we hoped for and so much more.  We visited Olympic Village, site of the 1988 Winter Olympics at Calgary. Remember Eddie the Eagle- who still holds the record for the slowest downhill race in Olympic history? And then there was the Jamaican Bob-sled team.  After Banff and the Rockies, Calgary is ho-hum, flat. Or maybe it is melancholy that we are at the end of the tour.  Tomorrow we see if flying Northwestern is better than United- I hope so. It couldn't be worse.  

Columbia Ice Field

In the afternoon we visited the Columbia Ice Field. It was 45 degrees with a cutting wind. Specially designed vehicles transport visitors to the glacier.  There are 6 of these vehicles in the world- the Canadians have 5.  The U.S. has one in Antarctica.  The vehicles cost 750K in 2000, now they'd be a million and a half.  The huge tires cost $6000 each.  What pictures of the ice field and the glacier can't capture is the true depth of the ice. We were standing on a mile of ice.  The glaciers protruding like tongues off the mountains may be 250 feet deep and hundreds of thousands of years old.  We each had a drink of water from the glacier- the best water we've ever had.  At the staging post for the ice terrain vehicles there were chipmunks...the little creatures raided the trash and occasionally boarded the vehicle for a ride to the ice field.  Vast, deep ice such as it is here is difficult to comprehend.

Some of the mountains we photographed were 12,000 feet. At the glacier it was merely 10,000.

In winter temperatures drop to minus 50, 50 below zero and with wind chills at 70 below. Exposed skin will freeze in less than a minute.  To stand on this makes one realized how insignificant man truly is.

Lake Louise

Lake Louise is named for the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.  Her middle name is also fitting: Alberta.  Nothing I can say will ever fully describe Lake Louise.  Another gem set among the snow-capped mountains. Mom and I managed to have several pictures taken which didn't ruin the serene, breath-taking lake.  This is one place we'd always wanted to visit. Angelique Gonzalez's mother, who accompanied her on the trip, said that she had been all over the world and never understood why so many Americans and Canadians never traveled over seas- but why travel to another continent when we have these wonders in our own back yard?  She said Lake Louise was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.  

Moraine Lake

Moraine Lake , made from a glacier, is an aqua gem set in ice fields.  Even a photo cannot show its beauty.  The elk was having breakfast, chewing blithely until he turned his back to us and essentially mooned us.  He was one cool customer. 

Monday, Monday August 17

Monday, Monday- can't trust that day. It turned out to be memorable but not in a good way. At about 5 a.m. I took a cab to the local hospital for an all-night headache, neck cramp.  It costs a bundle but I should be compensated since we had travel health insurance.  After that the day opened itself up.  Victoria is a beautiful city with some of the most beautiful women in the world.

Diversity, flowers everywhere, street performers along the harbor.  The architecture speaks of the great wealth of Canada.  We had lunch at the Empress Hotel which had stores that carried items such as one would never believe. The totem polls, the Native American art over-awed me. I wanted to buy one or two of the pieces- but prices ranged from $17 K and. The clothing stores with She She purses...and the vast range of people from all parts of the globe.  The weather seemed cool but warmed...they actually grow orange in BC.  Winters are mild, hardly any snow- very few days when one needs heat or air conditioning. Luckily we dodged the hot weather which now dogs the East,  Tomorrow we'll be in Vancouver. There is a display of great Dutch masters- Vemeer and Rembrant are featured.  This is a real treat.  We're off to supper.

Later that day, a insignificant incident became cosmic.  While at the dump, I saw a new born vole (black back-gray belly) struggling to walk, its legs too weak to propel it.  The vole rolled onto its back as its legs could not support it, belly up in the hot sun. Of course that was death for the vole who had probably crawled away from its mother's teets or away from the cover the mother had found.  I thought a moment whether I ought to step on it. It was perhaps 2 inches long. Instead I left it to die as it rightfully should.  Why this bothered me I can't say.  After all this was a garbage dump and I'd seen many rats galumphing before which only brought out an instinctive repulsion for rodents. I'd been trying to rid our yard of pesky chipmunks. Why such compassion for this vole, who by this time has died.  I can't say, except to express my gratitude for never having had to kill another person for in this fragile little rodent, I saw life, struggling, riggling to survive and I felt love for life, even a doomed vole's tiny being.

Today is the day before the day. I  had a full six hours of sleep, a luxury as things have been going and especially since I had no dreams I could remember.  A mountain of small chores awaits us, everything from going to the dump to buying motion sensors for the outside fixtures.  They now have motion sensors that screw into a socket and then a bulb screws into the motion sensor.  It seems most of the neighborhood is on vacation for at night it is dark, dark, dark here.  The quiet is audible- sounds odd but it's true.  The crickets have begun their evening lamentations, a sound that makes me think of the creaking of the earth on its orbit through the seasons.  The fireflies are gone but other creatures are stirring in anticipation of summer's end.  

Speaking of summer's end- teachers went back to work here yesterday.  Aren't we happy to be retired.  Why so early I was asked?  A simple answer is to give students more time in class before the annual assessments.  It's the remnants of George Bush's No Child Left Behind, an unfunded mandate which has improved education in places where education was already excellent before NCLB.  In retrospect it was a good idea, but unfunded it promoted education in school systems that were already providing a good to excellent free public education. Washington County, Montgomery County, and Hartford County have achieved the goals of NCLB.  

We're looking forward to meeting Canadians, hearing their views, sharing ours, though a traveler to urban Canada will see a different Canada than one who visits the heartland.  It's probably the same as here in the States.

This morning's local paper ran an article about two signs protesters were carrying at the local

town hall. I'm not going to repeat what the signs supposedly said but it is alarming and totally

unacceptable.  In fact the supposed signs were so ignorant, so volatile, and evil, it wouldn't surprise me if the national media doesn't pick up on them.  True, the President didn't win in our county nor in the two other western counties but the sentiments allegedly expressed make me sick and are not representative of the vast majority here.  Those are not my emotions and feelings about Mr. Obama.  But even worse were the ugly things said about his wife and children. I cannot abide by anyone saying such wicked things- in fact I can't even allow the words that are reported to have been on the signs to cross my mind.

We're looking forward to seeing and reading news across the border.  One must wonder what others think about the US-and that is what we must remember: we are the US- everyone of us.  If you pray, pray for US; if you don't, hope that we do not allow our differences to divide us.