In Saskatchewan in 1950 when I was in grade 12, a mandatory course in the provincial curriculum was called Agricultural Economics. It represented more than just another course. It was a signal that reflected the cultural imperative for the bald prairie following the hardships of the dirty thirties when the topsoil drifted off the land due to drought, wind and poor cultural practices in agriculture. The PFRA,:  The Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration was enacted to ensure that improvements in dry land farming would never again allow those dreadful times to recur. The shelter belts, contour plowing, deep furrow planting, stubble retention, summer fallow, early maturing wheat, and prairie grass seeding were implemented in my time in the 40's and 50's and were a deep and abiding part of our culture as evidenced by that added teaching to school curriculum and the cultural imperative it addressed.
        In Kindersley in the 40's I still vividly remember the wet rags around the windows amidst frequent dust storms. The relentless wind blowing the Russian thistle across the bald prairie, unhampered by fences, seeding as they tumbled into the piled up topsoil that lay against the fences and into ditches.. Later, in Conquest, the PFRA  planted shelter belts, 12 foot Carragana hedges (Siberian peashrub) in fields in rows every eighth of a mile apart to check the wind erosion and preserve the blowing snow drifts for precious water retention in the spring and protecting the roads from snow load when we went to school by cutter.
         Many years later I couldn't imagine a mandatory course in high school that would so reflect the overarching cultural mores and direct the interest to everyone of school age to the interest in and economic importance of preservation of the habitat. I have changed my mind. The zeal we felt then has reappeared in new clothing. Dressed in today's energy toward a green revolution,  and the ecological drive manifest by today's youth who are addressing a new problem with the same zeal and commitment to preserve that we had. In effect it is still the environment and still an appreciation , now as then, of the looming danger of loss.
         I don't have my essay from grade 12 now, since I haven't saved my paper from 69 years ago, but I remember Bill Cybulski gave me an A+ for my report on the work of the PFRA. The changes were a matter of survival of the prairie society at that time. We knew nothing about the presence of oil or potash, uranium or the tremendous diversity of grains now grown. For me it is wonderful to watch today's economic renaissance in Saskatchewan, combined with the need for economic balance described  in the care of the land we were given long ago.

Some time ago --- (BC) (Before Covid}  the pianist and I went to a performance of Chor Leoni .  They were a noted  Canadian  men's choir from Olympic City  and usually sang classical music,  whatever that is. The pianist says  "Within the common practice period." This time, however, they sang Gospel music and soul music from the pen of Stephen Foster. I went away thinking that there was little difference between the religious and secular when the soul of the music is exposed.
         It got me thinking more widely about Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Stephen Foster and the compelling nature of Gospel music, and that genre of thinking, and the Ovum,  that is buried in every human,   that seeks to be penetrated by the chord of truth and beauty. Though my association was admittedly a broad band,  both authors bravely swam in the time of  the sea of iniquity in their country.
          Stephen Foster in his short and desperate life provided soul music that lifted his nation and struck a chord deep in everyone who wept. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote a story that shocked and served to revolutionize an attitude that slowly cracked barriers forever. Technically they may not have produced so- called great literature or music, but they touched the spirit. Both were criticized mightily during their lifetimes and Uncle Tom's Cabin was shunned by many up to modern times. How would these two  have known the influence they provided has lasted up to now.?
         When you walk away from a performance with a warm glow in your heart and resolve for the umpteenth time to crank up your "anima" again, you can celebrate both classical and classy!  Religious is as Religious does.
        

You might say of a friend that they are a "good egg", or a demanding boss is "hard boiled".  An intelligent friend could be an "egghead".  And , if we were faux arguing, we could be "egging one another on". I don't profess to have useful etymological thoughts on all these weighty matters, but I know that I know a good egg when I encounter one.
     We live at sea level of course on Lotus Island so timing is important for the egg and  for our "good eggs" to remain at any state to be soft, contained and delectable. It is easy for us to treasure a good egg. On the other hand the best " hard boiled" are also perfect when heated slowly to the immediate point of boiling and then pitched into a cold shower. We learn more from tough experiences sometimes rather than soft handling.  One  however has to be careful with rough handling. When ever a young and fresh egg is badly over boiled it will have unsightly grey margins at the center.
       This is unattractive in person and in egg, giving a grey shade to the derivatives; potato salad, deviled eggs, doing business, meeting people, charitable acts. The grey shade will not happen if the cold shower is applied in timely fashion at sea level  to "the hard boiled".  As always in love, war, business and eggs, timing is everything, There are "eggheads" in the soft or hard boiled of course, but the hard boiled are a somewhat more difficult chew.

I bought a print the other day of the Camino;  the road from France to the Spanish town of Santiago de Compostela. It was in our library as part of an exhibition series exploring the nature of roads. Standing on the road  ; a trail really;  was the solitary, lengthened shadow of a pilgrim with a  walking stick; and the low sun, the sense of impending twilight, and the antiqued paper, giving the print of the road a quality of roughness and endless distance.
        A road always suggests a journey:  leaving somewhere, or someone, or something. and going to something else. But the gist of the journey is the process, not the beginning or the end of it. The shadow on the road is fully in contact with it and will look forward and look backward throughout the journey, leading and following the traveler and in the midday foreshortened, watching the traveler from one side or other throughout much of the heat of the day. Though the traveler passes through the country, the road hard and rough, the traveler footsore, he is confined by the direction of the roadway if he is to progress to the intended target.
         If it's the road to Zanzibar Dorothy Lamour made with her friends, or the Yellow Brick Road, or the Camino Road, the place to be is the place between. This is where we walk one step at a time. In my print, the solitary figure expressed by the shadow gives a feeling to the viewer of the loneliness of the roadway. There is no Bing Crosby to accompany Dorothy or Toto to accompany the other Dorothy. And these roads are beside the point. The Camino road is the point. The road in my print is for each step, the present and the only reality. My print could have been anywhere because road is a metaphor for life.
         I have never taken the road to Santiago de Compostela, marking the way to the Cathedral of St. James, and I am too old to do it now, but a road is a road is a road and we are all on a roadway to somewhere and leaving somewhere. It's a process that we live, from that road we decided to take, rather than the goal that would take us somewhere else. How many times did you start with a goal and find during the journey that the real purpose was somewhere else?

When I was a little boy in the forties, a cartoon, The Watchbird, appeared regularly in The Ladies Home Journal, a magazine to which my mother subscribed. The cartoon always featured a bad boy being observed by the Watchbird. The cartoonist would always draw and describe the naughty, or whiny, or stingy bad boy being surveilled by the Watchbird. The boy was caught in the sinful act and then the clincher would come. "This is the Watchbird watching a sneaky!" Named and shamed by his sin.
       A second view of the Watchbird would be drawn facing the young reader. The heading would read, "This is the Watchbird watching YOU1"  Pediatric ethics 101 from the lips of The Ladies Home Journal. But what was most interesting was that naughty activity provided the young reader a certain vicarious pleasure. The Watchbird was a simple line drawn, fat little cartoon bird, peering at an offender and then at me, the implied offender. I can remember hurrying to find the cartoon every month to see the bad boys.
          The assumption that we all bore close scrutiny at six or eight for our little secrets was never really challenged in those days. My mother told me she occasionally spanked  me with the hairbrush for no definable reason other than the gut feeling I deserved it.  She was probably right. She was a stay at home mum and probably knew far more than the Watchbird.  I don't think the cartoon had any lasting ethical benefit because even then, naughty was far more interesting to watch  than goody-two shoes. I guess it wasn't the enlightened child raising we see today, but there was never the feeling that I was shortchanged in the love game.
          My mother subsequently had three further boys and the hairbrush retired.  The Watchbird disappeared. Ideas changed. Parents relaxed. I didn't get any useful ideas from the Ladies Home Journal but, things carry on and we are still under scrutiny today by Watchbirds called Media.  Stingy, naughty, sneaky and whiny, are still around and in current play.

 On this weekend it  is Thanksgivng Day in Canada. In this country it coincides of course, with the Christian, Harvest Festival. It calls to mind an earlier Thanksgiving. My daughter is a nurse and worked a twelve hour shift at one time time, so her family, who often came to Lotus Island with us for Thanksgiving, were unwilling to leave her abandoned in order to come to feast with us. Appropriately so !  Well, that time the pianist and I went to the mountain.
       We were going to the mountain with the cooked turkey and all the trimmings. It's a bit complicated since iit's over the pond by ferry and critical timing of food as a warm mass in the hands  of transport is dicey. Our daughter asked if we could bring some of our home made fruit wine from the cellar . It's not rot-gut, but it's not stellar either.
        I usually serve that wine with family, but why is it that we take the people we love the best for granted and don't always provide what we prize the most?  Why should we provide or reserve our quality wine for the dinner party with friends, who we like, but do not love, and settle for less with some of the most important people in our lives? The answer to that is obvious.  Because we can !
         Perhaps we should reevaluate where we put our  "first fruits" .  It's kind of a useful question we pose ourselves as a new thanks giving thought for today. Too soon old, too late smart.