When one looks at today's foods, the ethnic cooking, the diet food, the cosmopolitan choices of ingredients available, the prepared foods and restaurant meals, the food stuffs of yesteryear are frequently forgotten!  The things we ate during the thirties and forties : pioneer food, and poor person's foodstuffs are of some interest, particularly to me. I have tried some of these recipes to take a fresh look at what we ate in those days.
      Raisin Pie was at least as common as apple pie in those days when I was a kid. No one eats raisin pie today but I was reminded how good it tasted when I made one and experienced a certain reminder of days gone by. It wouldn"t  put any more pounds on than Shoofly  Pie which Joan and I tried only once. When all you had for ingredients was brown sugar and molasses then that's what you used. We tried Apple Pan Dowdy with the Shoofly . They were both a disappointment  but they were not part of our history.
        I tried Irish Soda Bread and to give it authenticity, cooked  it in the fireplace on a grate over woodcoals since I didn't have chunks of peat. It wasn't bad for a bread without yeast or peat. Just  a bit labour intensive. I never tried Colcannon till I grew gobs of Kale one year so tried it mixed just with potatoes. It was delicious.
        My mother made Mock Apple Pie a few times during the war, with soda crackers, lemon juice and sugar  as a substitute for apples. Apples were in short supply. That's why crackers, lemon juice and raisins instead. Mock Apple Pie is a poor substitute for apple pie but it was surprisingly deceptive when I made it from her old recipe. If we were still hungry after supper my mother said we could have bread and milk laced with sugar. I tried it the other day. It was filling.
          I had never eaten Brewis 'til we went to Nova Scotia and I ordered in a restaurant. We don't have salt cod here on the wet coast and available but Brewis isn't too bad at all and fits in with food of yesteryear for sure. The food available today is only a reflection of the preponderance of ingredients. If you can mix twenty ingredients together it will be fit for the gourmet to speak  about.
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Much ado has accompanied the widespread discovery of skeletal remains that suggest that several species of the Homo genera have existed in the remote past and that these genera have failed to thrive is attributed in part to the competition of Homo sapiens. Skeletal remains may suggest such species existed but the bones themselves do not provide a cogent or blanket idea of how or why the species were eliminated. For example, did Neanderthal mankind have an opposable thumb? I don't know and how would anyone else know if they couldn't examine the multiple bones of the wrist and particularly the position of the scaphoid and trapezium.
     In 2014 I wrote an article on the thumb of Homo sapiens and on mine and all others of that genera. The opposable thumb is provided with strength and motion by two small muscles in the hand, Opponens pollicis and its friend Adducter pollicis. The muscles provide the motor for fine pinch and grip, a skill available, refined as far a we know, only in Homo sapiens because of the completely opposable thumb. What I am about to tell you is earth-shaking news, not just about dinky little muscles making pill-rolling motions with the thumb and index finger. Pay attention because this is important. From the article *
       *  "Homo sapiens could never have the fine and complex pinch unless they also could lift the thumb away from the palm. Mankind's opposable and complex digital sinews brought into play by extension of the thumb has allowed the singularity of this early gift as the foundation for the development of intellect. How so you say. Intellect builds capacity, but capacity builds intellect. A stunning chicken and egg interaction that fueled the development of both. Possibly Homo sapiens overcame Neanderthal mankind due to the ability to perform complex pinch and grip and the ensuing intellect that lead to clever deception rather than simple head bashing activity." *
       The importance of anatomy in the development of intellect should never be under estimated. The evolution of change and its rate of change has gone from selection of Homo sapiens out of the Hominidae family to the conquering of interstellar space by way of the opposable thumb. To suggest the foregoing is overstatement, may be to deny the domino effects of evolution.  If you think this is a reach too far---not so----
time was on our side and great changes come from a chain of little things.

The phenomenon of mind body interaction is mysterious.
    When Joan and I bought our piece of ground on Lotus Island the first job was to look for water. We had the use of a jointly owned well but we needed a backup plan. We hired a witcher. There is a reason it is called witching. It may be more accurate to call it bewitching. I had some knowledge of the fruitless search for water from the movie Mr. Blandings builds his Dream House but we were on the wet coast, surrounded by water and in the drainage basin of the zone called The Hundred Hills.
      Our dowser came with his witching rod of willow and dowsed in the most likely of places. I expected the process to be amusing and primitive. Sure enough, his dowser dipped here and there but these areas
 were too near the surface for use other than watering plants if it were cribbed as a shallow well. More important to me than water however was the mystery of the dowsing.
        I was so intrigued that I began dowsing myself as an inquiry into the internal-external process. I used forked willow, forked vine maple and a wire coat hanger, When I approached an area on the property where water was probable each of the rods I had chosen dipped easily and strongly, including the wire  coat hanger of course. What was this phenomenon? Speculation is not a substitute for explanation. I reviewed the interesting literature on water witching, also called dowsing and divination. There are no studies that give credence to the process or suggest any evidence basis for it, but I had to determine if it was me that was crazy. I was convinced that though my mind said this was nonsense,  my body responded as if it wasn't, Cognitive dissonance. My dipping rods seemed real including the metal one.
        It was no surprise that water was noted because we had ground water everywhere and rising to the surface. It was no surprise to the skeptical that a wire coat hanger was identical to willow and vine maple. The only common factor was me and the incapacity to set aside the mind body reaction that misleads and allows reaction to supplant evaluation. Think before you act my dad used to say without having any idea he was talking about evidence based observations.I suppose it is understandable and human as dowsing for everything from gold and jewel to water has been done for 400 years and we all have a tiny bit of us that like to think that magic is really possible.

Margaret Mead, the famous Anthropologist was asked to tell us when that pivot point happened when mankind emerged from the animal world. It had resulted from antecedent discussions about Darwin, Wallace, Christian ideas, Survival of the fittest, Altruism and the like. In particular she was asked what existing archaeological artifacts she was aware aware of that reflected the departure from the animal world that mankind may have made. You may, like me, question  departure or emergence from that world. No anatomist or embryologist would see any separateness whatsoever today or in the  past. Margaret Mead's choice of artifact was the archaeological find of a healed fracture of an adult femur.  She said a fractured femur in an animal would lead to an early death. In the human with a fracture of the femur time for union takes a minimum of 12 weeks.  Someone had to feed, clean the toilet material, protect, harbor and splint the leg of the human . That might be altruism and is not likely an example of survival of the fittest. There had to be an natural impulse to leave and look after oneself. That would be normal in the animal world. To stay and nurture, is that the pivot point?
      There's lots of room to argue here with Margaret. What about my dog who is full of love and will stay by me forever, or what seems like forever and wait by my gravestone  for my reappearance. And my horse with whom I am bonded for life, or other animal oddities that demonstrate compassion that belies elevation of the fittest. Or do we have still members of mankind who still follow the precepts of survival of the fittest and are they therefore cultually certified members of the animal world?  Margaret was a Cultural Anthropologist so may not be interested in anatomy and embryological definitions but I am, and I see no pivot point here. There Is a pivot point culturally  in that mankind's departure from the animal world in music,  art, abstract thought and charity. On the other hand  there may have been the seeds of these originally according to Wallace who suggested Intelligent Design . And then no need for a pivot point. Who knows?

I was removing with difficulty a string of Christmas lights from the Quince tree that I had left too long into March. Some of the small branches were traumatized as the electrical wires clung to them and the freezing cold has still rendered them rather brittle. As i was working away on the stepladder, a small voice said,
    "You've made me look like a tart."  Then the voice said,
    "You've spent a long time yapping about Mother Nature and how organic you are and you even quoted a    poem about me once by Euripides and now you have made me into a freak."
I must say I was taken aback by this tree's assertion as I hadn't meant any disrespect. I didn't think it unseemly to string lights on living bones but now I realize for the first time it is an unnatural act and has nothing to do with Christmas either.
     " I guess you are right that I am a hypocrite, ' I said, "but it was out of ignorance rather than intent."
      " No way," The Quince said, " You have made such heavy weather of your connection to the vegetable world and apparently worshiped the dialogue between us. It gives us the suspicion that you talk a good game but have little understanding or respectfulness for living bones.  Rather than your feeble attempt to illuminate me,  try to illuminate yourself for a change."
Well you can  readily see that I felt pretty crushed particularly since she has provided faithfully every year beautiful quince for jellies and preserves, a home every year for the Western Flycatchers that grace our summers and she never develops powdery mildew. She has clearly discussed the matter in the orchard with her cousins the pears and apples.I have assured her that I will not repeat any unnatural acts in the future and will scale down my rhetoric, beating my breast about how connected I am when they all really know better!

A variety of soup we occasionally enjoyed in our house in the olden days was Bad Breath Soup. The name was coined by our saucy children who were of that age when our failings were transparent and easily exposed. Nevertheless both the name and the soup have survived hence for a further  forty years and they now speak  of it in terms of minor reverence. The soup was a derivative of the previous day's meal which was New England Boiled Dinner. This consisted of ham, onion, cabbage, carrots and potatoes boiled together. The second day the ham was finely diced, the original boiling water added, seasoning and a dollop of split peas and all the leftover vegetables into the large pot and recooked. There was always enough to freeze several  Ziiploc bags of soup.
         The nose and tongue, though aligned and working in concert are neurologically autonomous. The taste buds of the tonque are mediated by the 7th, 9th and 10th cranial nerves and the olfactory plate of the nose by the 1st cranial nerve. Therefore what an object smells like is somewhat different than how it tastes. The professional cheese and wine tasters know this, but they may not know why. Bad Breath Soup is a misnomer. It should have always been called Strong Breath Soup. That is a more apt name because it smells like cabbage and onion, both hearty and pungent vegetables that emit a superb scent. The quality of the delicate taste however is a blend of all the ingredients ; the sensations conducted by an orchestra of autonomous cranial nerves but in harmony with one another,
          Bad Breath was preferred over Strong Breath because they named it and it stuck. Children, grandchildren and great grandchildren now live apart from us but when they come back from time to time, and we eat this soup and say Grace,  it is pertinent to remind them,  that Bad Breath is better than no breath at all.
    

'Sometime in the early 80's Joan and I were atop of Mount Tabor, which tradition identifies as the Mount of the Transfiguration. We had been in Israel and Palestine for close to two weeks by then. We looked south from the mountain top down the steep slope to the valley of Jezreel and beyond to the cotton fields of the plains of the Gallilee. On the valley floor was the ancient road that took the Babylonian army to Egypt and the Egyptian arms to Babylon, Later it was the road for  Alexander and the Greek and then Roman armies, and eventually the Arab and Turkish armies, later the British and German armies. It is a famous road and in the way of these destructive forces though history was Israel and the city-state of Megiddo sitting dab-smack in the middle of the valley. It was destroyed , sacked, rebuilt  and destroyed many times and now, as we observed is a deep and testamentary excavation of the horror of war. The name of the city has given rise to the word for destruction, Armageddon.
       I often think of our visit to Mount Tabor and at this time of the year because Jesus was here atop the mountain with his friends shortly before he went to Jerusalem. As he descended the gentle North slope with them after his Transfiguration he must have had an inkling that it would be his last journey and he was facing his own armageddon. He wasn't stupid you know.
        It's hard to stand on that kind of mountain, look at that kind of valley, think of that sort of city, that man knowing the doom he faced and moving steadily towards it, knowing he faced abandonment in the end, and not feel  myself be touched by the history and conflictedness of death.

There is an old joke. It may have come from Socrates though it is not I believe recorded as his. As you know Socrates discourses'  were recorded by Plato rather than Socrates himself and the joke is "about", rather than "from", but is supremely illustrative of what might have been and always "is". I guess you could say it is Socratic.
    Student:  "Socrates,  Why do you always answer a question with a question? "
    Teacher:  " What's wrong with a question? "
Indeed!  Answer that student because it is hellishly complex.
     Socrates, as Plato records him, asked questions of students in response to their questions as a means of eliciting thought from them, rather than providing didactic statements. It may have been slow and painful and often seemed silly but it allowed thinking out answers for oneself. The students answer may well have lead to a further question in which Socrates feigned ignorance that allowed the student the revelation of coming up with a further answer. The discourses were extractive and often seemed like pulling teeth.
      Have we worshiped the accumulation of fact that  trumps question and thought,  and, will question and thought sometimes expose the nakedness of  "known" fact ?
       I had two teachers in my lifetime that took the time to employ Socratic methods. They were confusing, exasperating, exposed our ignorance, but were never arbitrary, in thrall of unquestioned facts or spent all our time thinking inside the box. It took me fifty years to realize it was no joke to question everything. There is nothing wrong with a question and it is still easy to be wrong!
     Rule  1   Fear of being wrong will destroy the willingness to think outside the box.
     Rule 2    Fear of being wrong will destroy the initiative to risk taking a voyage of discovery.
     Rule 3    Fear of being wrong will inevitably lead to a pedestrian lifestyle, safe but wounded.
     

In September 1951 my mother and I left on the train for Winnipeg to register me for the second year of the Arts and Science Programme at the University of Manitoba. We stayed with my grandparents who lived on Jubilee Avenue and took the bus out the Pembina highway to the campus where I registered for French which was mandatory, Botany, Zoology, Chemistry and English, which was also a requirement. I also was registered for occupancy in the university residence. My mother bought me a maroon corduroy jacket, tan colored trousers, three white shirts and a tie. There were probably other bits and pieces but that's all I remember. To be honest, I was so far removed from my mileau that week that the cocky assurance I always carried with me in my little hometown of Lestock had melted away. Whatever hope that I had for blending in had totally disappeared and I was simply swept away with the torrent of people, rules, feelings, confusions and decisions.
     I had turned 17 in June of that year and my dad had suggested a good job for me would be a brakeman for the CNR railroad. The pay was good and because my dad was a railroader, a station agent, our life was seen as a good way to make a living. I had gone to Melville, the terminal in our area, earlier that summer and was "examined" by the railroad doctor to determine if I was healthy enough for the railroad to hire me on as a brakeman. He said, "Drop your pants and bend over ", and he stuck his finger up my backside. I was confused but assumed I guess that this was part of being a brakeman and it was okay. In retrospect now, I wish I could ask him why he didn't give a 17 year old a little forewarning or counsel, but since I'm in my 86th year, he would probably be 141 tears old  and not answer.
      I was not to be a brakeman. My mother wrote to her father, my grandfather and her twin sister, a doctor in practice in Connectticut and told them my marks in Grade 12 were good and asked them for financial help to allow me to go to university. It was not easy for her to do that, but she was looking at her own life, living in railway stations, making do, keeping her family of boys  together and often on the move.  It wasn't that she didn't know any better as she had been in the same university residence where I was scheduled to live when she became a teacher in 1926 and knew that knowledge and the ability to impart it is a wonderful thing. My grandfather sent me two thousand dollars and my aunt a thousand dollars which was my turning point. I had lived with my mother at my grandparents for my first three years of my life during the great depression in the early thirties while my father traveled to earn a living, so we were close and I was named Darcy, after grandfather's nickname, acquired after Mr. Darcy, Jane Austin's prototype  of a dandy of yesteryear. That wasn't me at that time.
       Lestock, my little town in Saskatchewan was everything I needed at that time. School, friends,baseball, hockey, family, supremely happy, wrenched from this to culture shock, anonymity, incompetence, loneliness, and loss of identity. Small town boys, perhaps more so me, took a long time to become acculturated and then it may not have been all that useful. It took me a year to get grounded. I lived in four different places, scholastically struggled, barely passed everything and longed for home. I made friends with the equally troubled whose maladaptation was equivalent to mine but I recognized that distancing was useful. I learned one thing however, I wouldn't repeat the screw-up the following year. If I was to get into medicine the following year my pre-med year had to be good. I  had to jettison my maladaptive friends, accept that to study is lonely, but to learn is joyful. I studied six nights a week and celebrated on the seventh. My marks were good. I was awarded an Isbister  Scholarship and got accepted into Medicine.
       The summer before grade twelve and before my mother took me to Winnipeg, I worked in the Pool elevator across the tracks from the railway station cleaning out the bottoms of the elevator shafts in preparation for the new harvest to come. The chaff of wheat, barley and oats with rat droppings was three to five feet deep in the bottom of every shaft. Dirty , dusty jobs like that taught you two things.  Three things really. he third thing was that you needed to bath every night to get rid of the dust balls in your hair, eyes  and ears and had to carry the water from the town pump in order to heat it on the wood stove for the bathtub in the kitchen. Then what was one?---- That you didn't want to do it forever and two----that you weren't good enough to do anything else. Learning to be a brakeman might have seemed to be a good enough idea at that time but all things are relative.