Second year University French  was mandatory in the Pre-med Science programme at the University of Manitoba. I had only one year of high school French in Saskatchewan. It soon became abundantly apparent that I was out of my depth and destined for disaster. Most of the class were from St. Boniface, taking the class to refine their own working language and to belong to the French Club that met regularly.
       I was sitting with a senior student in the cafeteria eating my bag lunch  and probably had a doleful look  since my cause seemed hopeless at that stage and I saw no way out. He listened to my tale of woe, my putative career gradually eroding away in my mind, failure looming large.  "Hey listen, " he said, " If you get out the old final exams in French for the last ten years you'll see that there is always 50 % of the mark for an essay in French. They give you a choice of topics and if you choose something like a " trip to the farm" it'll probably apply to a topic choice. I received a glimmer of hope from my rescuer, but I'm sure I looked dubious.
         However , what that sage said was true!  The topic choices in the old exam papers I reviewed included, An Exciting Experience,  ( A Trip to the Farm ) , What You did Last Summer ,  (A Trip to the Farm ), An Enjoyable Journey, ( A Trip to the Farm ). This was the straw I was willing to grasp. Sure enough, the angel I met at lunch over my Baloney sandwich was right. Before the examination I carefully crafted a French essay, letter perfect, accent perfect, on A Trip to the Farm and memorized it.
         I scraped through French with little to spare. I learned a lot that year. If you have a lot of cunning you can get by if you have a will and a way, but it's not a substitute for smart.  The teacher who marked my paper must have wondered how a guy that dumb in the other 50% wrote an essay that was that perfect,  and didn't cheat.

" Baa- Ram- Ewe, Baa-Ram-Ewe, to your breed and fleece be true, Baa-Ram-Ewe !"  In the movie this was the password and creed Babe learned to communicate and gain the trust of the sheep with, and he never let them down in the end, nor did they him. Remember, these are sheep  that follow the creed and the leader of the flock. Babe, became an individual but it was hard for him to be a pig and learn to be an individual,
.His parents and extended family were all eaten so he had no parenting that prepared him for pig-hood, but when a Border Collie with the right stuff began to mother him, he slowly began an apotheosis: pigness with a mantle of dogness! He developed the right stuff as well because of the kindly "parentis loci" of the Collie.
        Babe was never pigheaded but was always open to suggestions. He suffered derision through the pilgrimage of his life because he was different in the animal farm, but despite that parlous state he found himself in, he remained loyal, saw things with optimism, and ultimately prevailed. The farmer, gradually seeing the heart of his pig, his courage and his brains and took the same risk that Babe did and and entered him into sheep dog trials as "Pig" since the rules never contemplated that anyone would enter a contestant that was not a dog.
         To be an individual in this world and to be true to oneself takes courage, not running  like sheep with
the crowd. No matter how consoling it might be to run with the fleece, if one has a muse there is a need to follow it. To belong may not be one's karma. The need for a creed by which to live will limit one's horizon. Yes, it's safer to belong. In the end, Babe and the farmer overcame. This of course was a fairy story and real life will not often come with a win. That's the risk. Taking a fall is reality.
            Better alone and followed our star, than compromised for the second best. In the end we have only to answer to ourselves and our maker .

A he said ," I yam what I yam."  I'm not sure he knew what he was, as if any of us do.  He was often beset by Bluto,  a big hairy bully, and he had the job of protecting Olive Oyl from him, but Popeye  may have never realized that his own internal dark side was Bluto and his Anima was Olive.
     " I Yam what I Yam " is pretty complicated stuff . Our nameless God says just call me  "I AM " and Descartes said, " I think. Therefore I am." but Popeye the sailor man is an equal challenge for us. Moreover he has to rely from strength outside of his skin because he cannot battle his big hairy bully  or protect his anima without a can or two of spinach.  And so do we as we find out, usually painfully, that we need a tonic of spinach from time to time when our Bluto appears or Olive is threatened, usually both.
        I may say blithely, " I am what I am. "  but wholeness is an elusive state and for me it includes Bluto and Olive Oyl and the great I AM, who is my giver of spinach.

In my library there are some books that sit, neglected for no good reason other than a boring title, a should read example, or just down the list. A good example is From Sea Unto Sea, The Road to Nationhood 1890-1910  written by WG Hardy. It was published by Doubleday in 1959 and republished in 1960 and 1970 clearly for schools. On the flyleaf is a stamped library record that says Arbutus Junior Secondary School. It was clearly brought home by one of the three offspring of our's in the 70's and has sat, wasting away. I say wasting away because it has never been cracked open, characteristic of our junior secondaries at that time as well of course of me, so the glue has dried out over the years and it is falling apart as I read it now.
       It is one of the most exciting and readable books I have ever read as a history of that period of time and clearly has been written by a historian who relishes literacy, surprisingly racy opinion, and scholarly accuracy. If you love your country and want to taste its triumphs and its warts it will fill your appetite. Typically Canadian, it is evenhanded and has nothing Jingoistic about it.
        The period it addresses is, of course, the amalgamation of the federation as we know it except Newfoundland. Other than that exception, it is the Canadian experience par excellence. I was so enthused after reading it that we ordered three new copies from Amazon for the fifty year old offspring, whichever of the three  had never read it before. We need to look at the long view of our country to counteract the sometime dismal space we are constantly told we occupy today. If you appreciate Hardy's manuscript and know you belong, you can sing O Canada and really mean it.

In the four years 1934 to 1938; it was the tail-end of the great depression that had begun to wane. I was born in 1934 and during those years in the summer my mother and I lived in a tent on the prairies during the summers. She told me that it was the happiest period of her life. She said, " I got up in the morning, swept out the floor of our tent and we picked wild strawberries with the farmers cream from next door. Then you and I did all the nursery rhymes until you could do them by heart. " I was two years old in 1936 and my mother and I  were following my father in those summers. As the depression abated, he finally got work again with the railroad as a telegraph operator, substituting in two week stints for  the station agents here and there though out the prairie railroad depots.
        My mother and I were like camp followers, but she thrived on the change and the bonding with her first born and the gypsy life style. The summers were generally glorious, particularly in the northern part of Saskatchewan in the park lands. In the winter in those years, my father had much less work available to him and we lived with my grandfather and nanny in Little Britain, their roomy house on the Red River where my mother grew up. 
          The four years I had alone with my mother,  in this fashion in the summer, linked by indissoluble bonds  not connected with things;  house, bed ,bicycle.TV, internet, may have left an imprint that differs from today. The stability that is supposed to be supplied according to the received wisdom  that a home must be provided with all the accoutrements in place before family planning occurs, possibly today makes sense. However, a little love, a lot of attention and bonding face to face with your mother, union of mind and body over nursery rhymes, makes up for any irregular camp following, any suspected hardship that wasn't,  and all the diverting stuff of today.                                                                             

The skill with which a pedestrian we passed in Prince George could propel a bolus of snot through the air and onto the sidewalk without a dangling sticky element clinging to the finger or face filled Joan with awe, the first and possibly the only time she had never seen such an act. The mechanics;  blocking one nostril completely with the index finger, the thumb and rest of the fingers out of the way of the projectile  in an almost graceful fashion, the shotgun violence produced by harmony of the gun-barrel nasopharynx and the explosive chest wall and diaphagm gave rise to a new form of artistry.
    We were passing through Prince George in 1958 for the first time on our way west to Vanderhoof, naive and untested in the north, our Keenex at the ready. but the consummate skill of the pedestrian's naked finger nose romance has always remained as her lasting vivid and sole recall of Prince George. The skillful management of naked nose blowing without contamination of nose and hand, is not, if you will pardon the expression, to be sneezed at.
       I don't say this skill is probably confined to Prince George but it was impressive. There were a lot of lesser towns in the area but at that time they may have only perfected low level projectile spitting without getting remnants on the chin.There is a lot to be admired about in the North

Thucydides notes that right solutions can only be achieved by those that are equal in power. The reverse corollary from the quote is that--- " the strong do what they can;  the weak do what they must."  Thucydides must have believed in the pursuit of self-interest:  there was little or no place for a balance that addressed as well the self -interest of the other in the reverse corollary. Thucydides (460- 400) BC  was a politician and a general and clearly  always saw the other as an opponent. If we good little Canadians, as the "weak other" will have to do as we must, can we succeed by inventiveness, persuasion, and good will? Not likely and we shouldn't blame those negotiating for us. Thee characteristics, if we adhere to them , however, are honorable and will serve as modifiers. We should not forget that the strong are struggling with the "headstrong " at the present time and somehow have to save themselves. It's really not the best time to negotiate but I am sure that Thucydides is right!
NAFTA 2
Challenging my NAFTA paragraph,  my brother took issue with "good little Canadians were the weak other". He implied that I was behaving like the 90 pound weakling, lying on the beach with his Softwood Lumberette girl friend and Donald Trump (aiias Charles Atlas) the muscular bully was kicking sand in my eye. 
       I don't really mind being conflated  with Canada, or Thucydides, but not the 90 pound weakling. Besides, it was Thucydides, not me that said right solutions can only come from disputants of equal power. However the fact that Thucydides may be right is a challenge for our country that sand not be kicked in our eye and that power does not come exclusively from having the most Triremes available in the water. In addition, sand cannot get in the eye so easily,  if you are standing up at the time of the kicking.

 It was fall, the day I cranked up my Bearcat Shredder and munched and ground up my large pile of pruned branches and twigs to a pulp. I am old and feeble and have Rheumatoid arthritis but with my tool as an extension of me I am mighty. I am Marlboro Man employing a machine in a rugged activity that my forefathers at my age could have only dreamt about. I eventually ran out of gas at the same time as the Bearcat so we both called it a day.
      We all have tools that can be an extension of our arm, hand , leg or brain or also senses that make us explorers, visionaries, artists and rugged adventurers. Whoever said, " It's not what you do, but who you are." was not telling the whole story. We are creatures of our tools.
       In the olden days my father would watch my mother cut slices from her bread loaf. She exerted pressure,forcing the knife heavily on the loaf rather than deftly sawing at the loaf with light force. To be fair, she was always in a hurry. Her slices always ended up being crushed to an inch high. My father would look at us and intone, "  Let the tool do the work."  Good advice!
       When the first primate or the first crow used the first tool to do a job that they had previously used an arm or a beak to do, they began the process of advancing to a new identity that separated one from another. The artistry displayed by the operator of the excavator is astounding, who with his hand and foot working harmoniously together can accurately pick up either a small pebble or a one ton rock with his bucket. The machine has become part of the body. With time and skill the tool incorporates into the organism so there is no space in between the two. There is an area on the gyrus for the tool.
      Whether the golf club, the hockey stick, the brush, the egg whisk, the ivory keys, the strings, the chalice, the pottery wheel or the scalpel, when you have arrived at that golden moment when you are one with your tool you will no longer see yourself apart from it.

In 1957 I was a junior intern in the Vancouver General hospital. Myself and Gordon Warme were in charge of the medical ward called 1a, for staff patients in that month that had no other doctor. We were supervised by teaching consultants that came daily to observe our care. One was Dr. Boyce, a rheumatologist who was the Junior consultant and Russel Palmer, the senior consultant and notably aside , the originator of renal dialysis in North America.
       I was on call for 1a in the early morning hours when an old woman was admitted from Emergency in extremis. She was in the late process of dying, her blood pressure was 60/0 and she had a large, fungating cancerous tumor, grossly infected, on the right side of her neck at least as large as her head. She was unresponsive and there were no next of kin listed.
        These were the days of Levophed in the hospital. All patients that presented with blood pressures being unsustained,  if not by blood loss, were required as a routine to be given a Levophed drip, monitored by the interns, to raise the pressure to acceptable limits. No conditions were usually excluded from this routine. Thankfully this madness didn't last beyond the next  Medical executive meeting or so. I couldn"t bring myself to start a Levophed drip on this  dying person with tremendous pathology and gave her adequate sedation instead.
        When Dr. Boyce made early rounds that day he reamed me out in no uncertain terms for failing to treat the patient, as he termed it, not only for setting aside the hospital routine for unsustained maintanance of blood pressure, but for making an assumption that life or death was my decision to take. Accordingly I started a Levophed drip and monitored a miniscule blood pressure rise without any other change observed.
          When Dr. Palmer made his rounds in the afternoon he said to me, " What madness are you doing here with  this unfortunate woman who apparently still has no one to sensibly care for her." The message to me was clear. His opinion was my opinion. I took no solace from this because we were still in the uncertain state where individual decision making about treatment about each patient needed individual consideration rather than blanket ideas. Thankfully death took its course and her passage was serene and beyond our fruitless efforts and madness.

Every house including our's has night sounds. It's been particularly cold on Lotus Island this week and the temperature gradients between the inside and the outside of the house make the beam and studs and boards shift and squeak and crackle a little, the wind shakes the house infinitesmally, to which it objects. and the boughs of the cedar brush it gently.The sleeper who is hypervigilant also hears his head and ear contact on the pillow, his tinnitus, the bruit of his carotids at times and the crow on the roof. Thee sounds we have become accustomed to and are a collection unique to our house. Another's house sounds will have a different singularity.
       At 4am this morning I awoke with a new and unaccustomed sound. Was it the ice-maker dropping chunked ice, an intruder, or something else? As I went down the stairs into the kitchen where the sound was coming from it seemed to be a metallic sound originating from the tile floor. There had been a suggestion that an uninvited visitor had arrived the day before and I had set a mousetrap that night on the floor beside a baseboard with a bait of peanut butter. In the trap was a mouse and it was alive and struggling. The metallic sound came from the thrashing around of the trap on the tile. The mouse had ventured to far into the trap than usual to gnaw on the bait so his head was not crushed and he was trapped by the body.
        I have always had a primal fear of vermin, a legacy from my mother and the Middle Ages. I could deal with, albeit difficult, a dead mouse, but a living, wiggling, squiggling, pelvis and tail waving mouse struggling in agony is a different matter. I went back to bed to await its death and silence. I couldn't sleep however,  assailed by thoughts of the waning life force and with the reminder from the continuing sounds emanating from the kitchen floor.  I took my courage and put the mouse and the trap off the kitchen door onto the deck.
       Silence!  This morning at 8 o'clock he was dead. He had struggled another 18 inches from the spot I had laid him.  I'm sorry!  I must kill.  Rest in peace!