!I bought a print awhile back, of the Camino,  a road  from France to the Spanish town of Santiago de Compostela.  The print was in a series of images in our library exploring the nature of roads. In my print , standing on the road, a trail really, was a  solitary lengthened shadow of a pilgrim supported by a stick. and the low sun, the sense of impending twilight, and the antiqued paper gave the road the quality of roughness and endless distance.
      A road always suggests a journey ;  leaving somewhere,  or something, or someone  and going to somewhere or something.  But the gist of the journey is the process,  not the beginning nor the end.  Not the future and not the past. The shadow on the road is fully on contact with it and its shape changes with the position of the sun on the traveler.  Our shadow portrays the nature of our journey much more than we credit.  The shadow looks forward and backward throughout the journey, leading and following, and foreshortened, watches the traveler from one side or the other as well, through much of the day. , the traveler footsore, and his progress is confined by the direction of the roadway.
          If it was the Road to Zanzibar  Dorothy Lamour makes with her friends, or the Yellow Brick Road , or the Camino Road, that  place. is where we are. This is where we are a step at a time and and moving  that distance at a step.  In my print  the solitary figure with a stick expressed by the shadow gives a feeling to the viewer of the loneliness of the roadway.  There is no Bing Crosby or Bob Hope to accompany Dorothy !  There is no Toto to accompany the other Dorothy ! There is no bicycle or automobile , just a narrow road in my print for which a  step is the only present and the only reality. My print could have been anywhere because  a road is a metaphor for life.
      I have never taken the Camino, the roadway to Santiago de Compostela and the Cathedral of St. James and I am now too old to do it, but a road,  is a road , is a road  and we all are on a roadway to somewhere and leaving somewhere with a goal of sorts.  We may find during the journey the shape of our shadow changed and sometimes learned from the roadway the real purpose was something else !
           

)When my father read the newspaper or a magazine in the olden days he often absentmindedly tore a corner or two or more off the page and swallowed it as he absorbed the news of the day. Cellulose is as indigestible as the news is, both in those days, and perhaps even more so today. Phytophagy (cellulose eating) can occasionally morph into a  compulsion to eat large amounts of indigestible plant matter unselectively and those who do are diagnosed as Phytophagiacs.
      The pathophysiology that may ensue leaves a growing mass of cellulose in the stomach that expands by accretion and becomes in time too big to leave the stomach and enter the more narrow aperture of the gastrointestinal tract beyond. This ball of cellulose and mucus is known as a Phytobezoar. A little like a wet snowball that rolls down the hill getting bigger and bigger until it can no longer enter the narrow mountain pass and obstructs any further travelers. Suffice to say this Phytobezoar is a result of a neurotic disorder and  becomes a surgical emergency.
        My dad never ate enough that accumulated, but as i reckoned back to my own life at home and his habit as I studied interesting psychiatric disorders in medical school such as this and  the equally colorful Trichobezoar (a Hair ball) ,  engendered in the same manner by eating your own hair, equally indigestible.
      My dad rarely read books so our books were unmarked. One always knew when he had read the paper or magazine however from the absent corners. It was like the neighborhood dog idly pissing against the tree without much thought, marking the corner of the neighborhood.  or Kilroy, here for a visit, marking with chalk  an a wall without much point except  to say that he was there.
       I confess I did the same corner munching as my father from time to time, embarrassingly, especially with books, tearing off a corner and  chewing it as I ingested the material and its content. It offended my friends if I had borrowed their book. Cellulose from paper is one thing but wooden matches, toothpicks, popsicle sticks and other wood and cardboard pieces are worse. Human beings are not beavers.The medical diagnostic  term "Pica" describes the activity madness of paint and dirt eating as a somewhat prevalent neurotic disorder in institutional patients. I am proud to say,  at least I only chewed and ingested  literature but, that's lipstick on the pig, paper  also qualifies as the madness of eating the describable indigestible. 
     When I first married the pianist she was horrified to see the ingestion of the corners of her books as I sought to read and ingest her interesting material. I realized then it was a form of marking, claiming ownership, territorial affirmation , however warped, but unconsciously and innocently done. A habit idly acquired is easily dispensed with in the interest of literary harmony when love holds  sway. I have never gone back to that bad habit.
      When my son, as a grownup became a bibliophile and had his own library I often read his books and carefully avoided eating the corners but often bent open the book spines for easier reading on the tighter new books. Again I was castigated for my destructive book tendencies. I am careful now to eat candy or popcorn  not paper when I read and strain to read newish books obliquely when semi-opened. I want to be good and avoid the sins of the father!
   
   

Having lived with the pianist for 64 years, our apparent differences in eating styles has remained largely unchanged over the years, so I asked myself to comment. It is also wise to watch someone eat before you consent to marry them as the eating styles display a certain reflection of their persona.
   I rush to say that  the pianist was an expert at food and menus inherited at her family home since her father was a wholesale grocer and her mother a scrupulous adherent to menus. At  their table, food was always a stable topic of discussion and healthy cooking was a premium consideration. In her family they ate and conversed throughout the meal. Assuredly since  eating and talking with decent intervals between chewing and swallowing for talking will minimize the risk of aspiration of food and the need for the Heimlich maneuver.
     On the other hand in my family of origin we ate, and then we talked. It may ,in part. have been we were all boys so conversation  gave way to eating. Once the plate was empty, we talked. This resulted in bolting our food but,  by not talking, the epiglottis remained closed over the trachea and aspiration was highly unlikely. I never remember the Heimlich maneuver ever having to be done in my family.
       The pianist and I are fork stabbers but i stab where the food lies and she gathers the food into the center before poking. Neither of us  use the ergonomically unsound American way of pinning the meat down with the fork so iy won't fly off the plate, and cutting it and changing the fork to the knife hand to scoop up  to the mouth.
       If we eat soup or cereal she spoons away from herself and I spoon toward myself. I often end up with a spot of soup on my front and crumbs of cereal in my tablecloth.
     She rotates around the plate eating in strict turn it seems one forkful of each of the four portions on the plate, whereas I eat the entire portion of each of the four one after the other. I suppose it matters little because they all mix up in the gut shortly thereafter.
   

This is no critique of the beautiful movie with Judy Garland, etc.,  but is only concerned with the published story of Frank Baum.
     The story of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is , in my opinion, an exciting children's story with beautiful allusions of a psychoanalytic nature that has never been fully explored and never was apparent in the movie version.
        Most deconstructions written about the story have been centered on the political rather than the psychological or mystical aspects of the characters within Mr. Baum's story. As in any story of fiction,  it can be concluded that the characters always have some reflection  of aspects of Frank Baum himself. However moving along to the nub of it all, Dorothy is the psychological integrated self and therefore the least interesting.  The Wizard is a chameleon and therefore the disintegrated self !  The trio of Dorothy's co-adventurers are the most easily identified and have in fact the most interesting psychopathology from my standpoint
         Even though the characters eventually recognized the Wizard was a humbug, they clung to the crutch he offered. Or was he a humbug?  The analyst returns a bit of your own juices to you and calls it treatment.
He can't give you what you already have. He just puts a knob on your door to yourself. The successful analyst never seeks to alter the authenticity you own.
         Did the Cowardly Lion only recognized his courage other than though a magical drink, a given  placebo, a draft of courage.  He didn't know that he always had courage. He found that out when he realized that the Wizard wasn't a whiz. But wasn't he?
         Did the Scarecrow finally get his brains from a magical source?  He didn't twig to the fact that he was always smart until the Wizard took off Scarecrow's head and added a mix of bran and pins and needles. When we realize that what we seek is already inside of us, latent and awaiting discovery ; then the bran new sharp brain becomes  a useless reality a placebo !
          Did the Tinman get a heart other than a silk valentine transplant from the Wizard  using a can opener to  his chest? Nonsense!  The Tinman always had a heart but his heart was in the right place ; his head ! His attitude throughout the journey with his companions always told us that fact. He just didn't recognize it. He never knew that there is in everyone a place for the heart in the head.
           None of this trio realized their gifts until they combined their brains,  love and courage,  to help Dorothy to get home. We will never know what went on in the author's head. Maybe it's a mistake to deconstruct a story. Still,there are two bookends to any story.  The author and the intent, the reader and the understanding. What he said and what I heard. They may not be the same. It may not be important that they are the same.
        In any medical practice the power of placebo and mind over matter is seen over and over again !
        

An architect who designed and supervised the building of a house for the pianist and me in 1970 phoned sometime a decade or two after,  to tell me it was featured in a Legacy Show in a gallery in Victoria,  ie ,  "  "Lotus City" ! The house, although only 38 years old at the time,  was also declared a Heritage House earlier by the Municipality of Saanich. The house apparently broke new ground for design at the time in the 70's,  though in retrospect,  it wouldn't certainly have been everyone's cup of tea.
         I had friends that felt sorry for us,  others that said it looked like a bank,  but we ignored them since by then we had alresdy crossed the Rubicon. Still, the house  was interesting and evocative and after it was built the architect told me that he was most appreciative of the fact that he had a free hand thoughout the design and building process:  a situation he rarely encountered. The pianist and I were young and I , at least,  certainly felt at the time sufficiently naive that I had no right to tell someone as knowledgeable as an architect what he should build.
         We came and watched it  being built and growing every day and it became slowly our own so when we moved into it, we readily adapted and the house became our home and we knew every stick. A house is only a home when a heart beats strongly within it.  Mine did, and so did my sense that I had somehow arrived when the evocative house seductively took up my identity within itself.   We sold the house after seventeen years when our needs changed,  but I never forgot the house thoughout the intervening years as it became a statement of mine during the time we lived there. When we left and the furnishings were gone, I never returned to see it because for me a part had been excised.
         The pianist however went back to look at the empty house and as she looked in every empty room she knew:  "A house without a force vitale, is only a beautiful empty shell."
          The heart in any house, whether beautiful or homely, is what creates the home. The pianist shared my feelings about leaving it, but it became apparent to her as she toured the empty house that it was a corpse, albeit a beautiful corpse, without a heart,  awaiting a new transplant.  I wish now that I had the pianist's foresight to visit it once it was empty, so that I could write  "finis" to the sense of loss I felt at that time.
        The loss of course is never to you,  but to the house, since the force vitale is the force the house can never retain, and that,  we carry away with us. I guess we should always assess the relationships we create with our symbols. There is a danger  lurking for all of us that as times change, the visible symbol as a sign of an invisible presence can become an invisible symbol , indivisible, from oneself.  Or to put that sentence more plainly,  " You are more than any bloody house."  One needs vigilance  to maintain control of one's own orbit.

There was an abiding mythology  in the residences at the University of Manitoba I attended in the 50's that the food supplied to students was adulterated with saltpetre. That, coupled with the myth that saltpetre reduced the libido of the young, was enough to foster a seasoning of mistrust. I was so shy in my first year of university that I would have not recognized saltpetre's effect,  anyway, real or fanciful. More likely, worry, late nights, loneliness, maladaption, and culture shock of the young, were the proximate causes,  at least for me.
       Despite the suspicion,  it was never talked about much because in those days we all did what we were told and believed  "they"  were right,----or at least most of us did. Control of the student body was never an issue then. Compliance was high,  for at least those of us who were afraid that we wouldn't succeed.
        Saltpetre was , less a mythological thing and a more reality product when I was  in grade eight in the 40's when my friends  and I made gunpowder in our town of Kindersley. We mixed saltpetre, ground charcoal, and flowers of sulfur in equal proportion until the color was a dark and dirty green. I can still see in my mind"s eye vividly, the color of our recipe. Little boys blowing up things in the Kindersley town dump. As I think of it now, what was the druggist, as he was known then, thinking of,  to supply us with those ingredients? In some ways it must have been a much freer time and less supervision. How we all avoided blowing ourselves up I don't know.
          Growing up,  however, we learned to knuckle under for our own good, or at least it seemed for our own good.

The Northwestern  crow is normally a gregarious animal. When I was engaged in writing one day  a broken winged crow walked  up the road path in front of my window.  That waddling bow-legged strut was altered by the broken right wing that dragged on the stones of the path. As I watched,  its walk was slow and deliberate. It knew I thought,  that it was doomed.
        The crow  had a stoic look on its face that said it all. I don't understand the entire multiple complex phrasing of the Northwestern crow,  but I know body language pretty well, and I knew that crow knew, it was walking  into the abyss. It was silent. I never thought I would see it again and put the crow  out of my mind.
          I was working in the orchard two days later and there it was. Still alive and hopping from bush to bush for cover. Hiding to avoid detection from the predators, both its own kind and the raptors. Still doomed. It doesn't seem fair.
         You or I may break an arm or leg and it's usually an inconvenience ;  rarely ever a tragedy, and hardly ever are we doomed. If we were, we would not likely bear our fate with the stoic silence and grim recognition of the injured crow.  Natural justice and Mother Nature. Crows gave no quarter and received none The Northwestern crow should have been chosen as the emblematic bird of British Columbia rather than the awful Stellers Jay.  The crow is a soldier !








      

 The wooden prairie elevators are now an iconic reminder of a special past,  and part of  a way of life when industrial farming was nonexistent. My first summer job when I was 15 was cleaning out the grain dust in the bottom of the bins in the Pool elevator for Bill McClugan, the Pool operator. We lived in the railway station across the tracks from the elevator which also had an attached annex. My brother Ken used to sit in the front office of the station and shoot rats around the annex with his 22 when dad wasn't around. One day he aimed too low and the bullet ricocheted through the window. That ended his rat hunting.
     The elevators announced each town in large letters  to those strangers that passed through on the passenger train, a signal to the world that was important to us, even though it was fleeting information as the flyer raced through and about all they saw of us !
       Each elevator had a grated weight scale at the entrance where the grain truck was weighed when full and then again when it was empty. Grain was dumped into the grate;  samples, when dumping, were taken for grading during the dumping and then the grain was carried up to the top of the elevator by elevating buckets to one of the 16 ,80 foot high bins and poured out into the bin selected.  During the time after harvest, when the grain was loaded in boxcars, it was not taken directly from the bottom of the bin. As a consequence, the detritus, rat droppings, chaff and dust settled to the bottom of the bin over the winter and spring to three or five feet deep. It was a dusty job shoveling and cleaning the bins dust out in preparation for the harvest to come.
        That was my first summer job. The material got in your hair, clothes, and nostrils. I was happy with my first paying job,  but I understand why Bill didn't want to do it. I was strong and never got sick. There was no running water in our town so our water had to be carried from the town pump and heated on the stove top. My water in the galvanized tub in the kitchen looked like porridge after the bath each day. I may have acquired a somewhat jaded view of the romance of the prairie grain elevator but many could thank me for the absence of rat droppings dust  in their wheat flour to be.
      
     

In the early 70's my hair was thinning. The pianist was off with the children on a trip and I was having dinner with my parents. My mother said to me that I might look better if I had a permanent wave. At that time I had a few adventuresome colleagues who recently had adopted long curly hair. Big hair in the 70's was becoming a statement for men.
       My mother knew nothing about statements. She just noticed my bald spot. She said she had a friend who did Toni Home Permanents.  "Sure  " I said,  feeling cavalier, " Why not. "  The next day I had my perm. When I was sitting down in my parents home and being worked on , as I looked in the mirror with big curlers in place I realized how much I looked like my mother. My perm worked out pretty well, curly but not too tight. a bit bigger hair, and my  having the appearance of being somewhat risque.
     Some people asked me later if I was having mid-life trouble. George Robson, a senior gynecologist asked, " Are you as horny as you look ?'"  When the pianist got home she was thunderstruck, but amused and reflective. She wasn't sure she should go away too often. I appeared to have made some half-assed attempt to join a youth movement where I probably didn't belong.
       I remembered that the ancient Jews believed Samson's power came from his hair. People may have resented big hair in Samson's time for its supposedly regenerative power and production of singular strength. Certainly Delilah destroyed the power of Samson by having him shorn of his locks.
       I went back after a year to my conventional haircut after my 14 year old grew his hair below his shoulders. Trichotollimalia can strike you when you are careless and thoughtless around your mother, and I was never stronger  or  more popular with my big hair.

William Safire died a while back and the Economist Obituary recorded some of his lexicographical tidbits that I have taken liberty with. He analyzed nabobs, nattering and negativism but didn't include nitpicking. Certainly in politics at the Federal level in Canada today, the opposition, all three of them, are guilty of a certain degree of these elements. I don't think the present government is any less guilty when it was in opposition. In fact all levels of government are guilty of this and the media thrives as a result of all of it. Gloating is good ; schadenfreude is splendid.
       When you are in the business of government or opposition of whatever stripe, it is so easy to fall into the habit of the four N's.  Both the media and the partisans promote them!
       What if, wonder of wonders,  electability were put on the back burner for a period of time in order that the public good may be served by genuine collaborative action on their part. Many have forgotten the true definition of the adjective, "politic".  Sometimes we should trash the noun "politics" , for the adjective. Unfortunately the voting public has been robbed by the hyperbole of the nattering nabobs of nitpicking negativism and joined them. What the Hell !