A 2011 Christmas

The old man pleads age, health, failing grey cells and other distractions that led to disinclination as the cause of his abbreviated snail mail card list this year. He and the old lady, the light of his life, have for many years observed the Christmas tradition mainly by sending cards and notes to those who are important to us. This year we started late as usual, responded to the few already received and left the rest to the old man as they came to him.

It is now Christmas Eve. It strikes me that this medium might catch the attention of a few that I missed on my list, some we will still send private notes to, as well as others who were on my list, and everyone else who may happen upon The Old Man's Post. Perhaps you would allow me to add a special note or two:

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  To a thoughtful church couple from the past: Thank you for again remembering us with your Christmas Reflections, which we received just yesterday. Please know that we share with you the "momentous dimension" of your personal sorrow. A brief but more private response is on the way.




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  To the old man's activist niece, Linda: But we can print your "virtual card", feel it and display it--if we had a mantel. As for your "Christmas Memory" of Peter, I think we might have received his 1957 silk-screened card in Regina and if we did Shirley still has it squirreled away somewhere. I cannot believe the Patience and skill involved. He wasn't doing that process when he often "baby-sat" this somewhat self-centred and pompous 21 year-old wannabe college kid in his home studio, patiently explaining and demonstrating his detailed preparation while he went about his work, listening to me, listening to the old 78's and sometimes humming along. We are especially grateful this year for your thoughtful Christmas Greetings!




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  To the old man's Pennsylvania cousin who still lives in Bethlehem: Thanks for sharing your age seven Christmas 1952, Ron. Before you consider the need to atone for your failure to share with them your family Christmas time of warmth, wonder and joy with less fortunate pals of the day you should ask yourself this. Where are they now? Your opportunity to be a childhood hero to your friends is gone, cousin. Besides, no matter their family situations then, they very likely rose above the dysfunctional families and lack of resources and did very well. At the same time, I look at what was your mother's situation at her age seven in 1922, just 30 years earlier. Her family may not have been dysfunctional that year but it had no resources at all to speak of. They spent that Christmas in a European refugee camp on their flight from oppression. She did fine in spite of, or because of that and created that family warmth for you in those next 30 years. I won't bore you with my own age 7 Christmas 1934 not far from where I sit right now. ..... Thanks for your greetings, Ron! By the time you complete your contemplated move in 2012, Shirley and I will complete 85 years of our lives and 62 years of marriage. We are still hoping for better health to come. We are, however, already into Shakespeare's sixth age having shifted this year into "the lean and slipper'd pantaloon". (From "As You Like It", the "All the world's a stage" speech). May you enjoy all your "interesting times" to come and never slip into "sedate deportment".

Unfortunately, that exhausts the old man's stamina this Christmas Eve, though I hope to copy this special issue of the Post" directly to others who know by now they missed his list. To each may I say:

May your Christmas be bright,

May it bring your heart's delight,

May next year be full of light

and each day end just right!

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Colourful Reflections Re-Visited

The old man is a creature of Canada’s west coast. Reared and in his early years restricted in large part to the Fraser Valley, the realities of the rest of Canada were largely unknown. Though he had briefly explored the washboard gravel of Canada’s cross country highway in the forties through the Fraser Canyon and east as far as Armstrong with the family Model A, the wonders of the Rockies and the Prairies were yet to be discovered.
So when my favourite Facebook “friend” from Saskatchewan admired my colours in the last issue of the Post and complained about the cold, the snow and the drab foliage of his town, I decided to show him at left above, the change to BC drab just five days later.
The comparisons reminded me of my first experience of the Prairies when I took a job in the oil patch there after completing my schooling in 1952. My wife and I travelled coach class by CPR and arrived exhausted and dishevelled at the Revelstoke stop by morning in time to see the glories of the Rockies. As we left Banff and rode through the foothills into Calgary I had my first experience of what, at first, looked like a barren and empty land. The western Alberta ranch country reminded me of the sagebrush country I had seen in the forties around Kamloops. Approaching Calgary the horizon stretched out to encompass flatter grass lands and periodic grain fields being readied for planting. That was my first view of “the prairies”.
My seven years on the prairies gave me a certain hypnotic attachment to the romance of the big open sky. I found the excitement and electricity of sudden storms, the mystery of the cloud formations at dusk, and the boredom of mile after mile of flat, dusty road as I drove through the barren looking countryside. I experienced the loneliness across the vast night plain interrupted only by a lone hunting hawk flashing through the headlights until all at once the lights of a town or city twinkled in the distance. That sensation then reminded me nostalgically of leaning dreamily over the deck railing on one of the Union Steamship vessels late at night as the captain guided it toward the cluster of lights along the waterfront of a small port along the inland passage of BC.
The Prairies are different now, of course. Still, in the fifties we found the people of the plains more purposeful and alive than the people at the coast, and usually less worried looking. My lovely Fraser Valley environment sometimes breeds lethargy when compared to the vibrancy found on the prairies. Enjoy the vibrancy, kids!

- 30 –

The Colours of November

The colours of November shown here represent the ending of another cycle in the wonderful world of nature here on Canada’s south-western Pacific coast. In other ways they represent the continuing cycle of the terrible world of politics. Here at home, November brings the bi-annual cycle of urban and rural municipal and regional district politics. In the States November is the month of many national and state elections in what appears to have become a continuing cycle of campaigning for power or raising money by political professionals. There is no obvious connection between the two, you say? But we find civic elections here at the coast in Canada dominated by local versions of New York’s Occupy Wall Street protest movement. That has become, at least for now, an international protest movement inevitably linked to the upcoming American November 2012 presidential and congressional elections.
Almost exactly two years ago, the old man published his then reflections on the state of Canadian and American politics. Obama had been president less than a year then. Since then we have seen many natural, economic and political disasters, especially in the States but with global effect. Has anything really changed since then in the way our Western democracies govern their societies? In part I reflected those two years ago:

In the States President Obama too is becoming a toothless tiger as ruler of the White House. No matter what his good intentions as a candidate, he is still a prisoner of the system. On domestic and economic matters he must rely on advisors he chose, all establishment figures in finance, public relations and politics, and pushed one way and another, he must opt for a decision, usually a compromise, which he must then try to sell to the body politic. As he nears the end of his first year in office, it is unlikely that anything approaching a successful health plan will take effect. Many of his economic and finance advisors are products of the banks and organizations who caused the near Depression in the first place, and as yet there is no indication that his government will come up with any way of bringing Wall Street under any reasonable control.

Today, Obama’s health plan, which the Republicans have vowed to squash, is scheduled for testing by the U.S. Supreme Court, with numerous States questioning its constitutionality. The recession, though declared over some time ago, seems to be over only for the Wall Street banks and investment houses bailed out by the government to prevent a depression. Joblessness continues disastrously high. Foreclosures are going on apace. Homelessness is getting worse. European economics are in deep trouble. The Middle East is in turmoil. The American national debt has just exceeded 15 trillion dollars. The many Republican presidential candidates, most of them revealing their total ignorance of practical affairs, think nothing of advocating pre-emptive military action against Iran for pursuing its nuclear program.
The insanity goes on, much as it has done from the beginning. Right now, I am in the process of reading Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel, Oil. In many respects the left-wing protest groups ranging from Wobblies to Bolsheviks to Anarchists of countless variety, each group sure it had the only answer and fighting with the others while oil capitalists were making Harding president, were doing the same thing in 1920 as the many uncoordinated groups forming the Occupy Wall Street protesters are doing today. Will they turn out to be just as useless?
Who knows? If all the veterans returning from the many distant countries left damaged and unemployed join their ranks, they might affect the body politic as did the anti-war protesters of the sixties. Would that improve the welfare of America’s 300 million plus population? I doubt it. What it could do, if successful, is change the life of what has been the individualistic American’s dream to become a capitalist, to one of dependence on the social collective. In the end such a collective is bound to live well beyond its means through years of consumption, only to find grief that comes when the piper must be paid. That is really the case with social welfare Europe as it gropes for answers today.
The old man has no answer. Our politicians and economists have no answer. Our species has obviously not evolved into cooperative individuals. I’m afraid we will always consist of the haves and have-nots, the leaders and followers, the good and the bad, the wise and the stupid, and nowadays the many that just want to consume and have a good time, and let tomorrow or the government look after the rest.
In the meantime, let the old man continue to enjoy the disaster-free colours of nature in my pleasant part of the universe for as long as I have left.

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The Gathering

There were ten of us the other day. It was a case of the next generation catering to the previous generation, which in this case was the old man’s generation. What is a generation? In this case it was a matter of child, niece and nephew catering to parents, uncles and aunts. Age differences were not that great in our case. The four of us in the old man’s generation ranged from age 84 to 90, while the youngest of the six “kids” may have been 60 and the oldest 76.

Practically contemporaries, one might say, but generational divides were observable even within the two groups. Lifestyle differences are notable especially between those in the old man’s generation and the younger of the “kids”. Though the oldsters were only married once and achieved sixty plus years of togetherness—for better and for worse—only one couple of the next generation identified here did the same, with fifty plus years of togetherness. Among the others we counted a total of at least six divorces or separations and if the old man’s descending generations not at the gathering and other extended family members were included, many more would have to be added.

Even with a group of only ten around a tea table, conversations can be a problem. The conversation ice-breaker was the nature of the goodies provided by the youngsters and of course the graceful tea table arrangement and tea provided by the host oldsters. The simple cookie or two and pot of tea originally requested and promised had turned into various home-baked cookies and loaves and fruit. The old man is often disciplined enough to decline such richness but risked consuming more than justified due to a subconsciously pre-arranged hypoglycaemia for the occasion. They were, after all, made from family recipes of the past and that led to other family reminiscences, which the youngsters would not often share with their own next generations.

Given the Rapid Aging Syndromes of the old man and his wife and my wife’s relatively recent emergency cardiac problems, health issues dominated after the ice-breaker reminiscences. As my wife is still in recovery mode, though her improving appetite for the goodies soon became apparent, the kids wanted details, so without allowing my wife to make light of her condition, I managed to capture the entire audience with what I hoped was a succinct description of what led to the emergency, the trip to the doctor, my drive from there to the Hospital Emergency Ward, the breathing difficulties, the failing and erratic heart rate, the attention received, the transfer to the Cardiac Care Ward, the arterial stint inserted to stabilize her condition, the monitored transfer and return by ambulance to a distant trauma centre the next day for implant of a heart pacemaker device, the return home the following day, and the slow recovery to ordinary activity since that day.

The health conversations evolved into the already fragile health status of the oldsters and a number of the kids present and references to the inevitable consequences of that fragility for all of us. I sensed an obvious discomfort with that subject and various separate conversations with loved ones nearby soon ensued.

With his defective hearing and steadfast refusal to purchase hearing aids the sometimes whispered conversations with him and between others at such gatherings can be a problem for the old man. However, I have been known to intervene loudly and rudely if the revealed identity of a subject turns out to be a current public figure I do not admire. As happened at this gathering, my rude intervention is usually dealt with quickly by the quiet embarrassment of that figure’s admirers around the table, including my wife.

Generally and in this gathering, sensitive divides in both politics and faith exist between generations and even between family members otherwise close in affection. They are generally best left un-discussed. Among us were both political liberals and opposing libertarians. As a sometimes confused but traditional social liberal and economic libertarian, the old man did risk a political reference to Obama. Fortunately wiser heads soon intervened to permit a quick escape from that taboo. Fortunately I left the faith question untouched.

I did make known the old man’s dislike of the changes brought about in modern society by the many current technological advances now running modern industry as well as the global economy and international politics. I expressed my disgust at the ubiquitous omnipresence of the various mobile gadgets like the various smart phones and other communication devices. Must everyone be connected to “friends” or bosses or employees 24 hours a day and 365 days a year? Though some in the gathering did agree with the constant use of cell phones, no one expressed any real concern about that need to be always communicating with someone, not by personal touch or eye to eye but most often through some wireless device. What is wrong with being alone once in a while? I have seen people at the same table in restaurants sending text messages to each other and another relative across the continent admits to sending emails to his wife sitting at another computer in the same room! The old man’s mind boggles. I found little agreement in our gathering about that. Though hardly conspicuous at the gathering, at least three wireless voice or text message calls reached our small group in those two hours.

Neither I nor anyone else in the group brought up the question of the environmental, health and privacy concerns involved in the rapid spread of microwave transmitters. No one at our gathering, no government body with jurisdiction, and few members of the global population appear to have any worry about those concerns. Even fewer seem to realize that we are on the brink of experiencing the Big Brother dystopian governments predicted in George Orwell’s 1949 novel, Nineteen Eighty-four. The old man has not been helpful to her but he is thankful that at least a few activists like another niece, a cousin of the youngsters at our gathering, is working heart and soul to counter the uncritical acceptance of the bland industry and world government assurances about the safety of all this new technology. I urge everyone to take a look at her group’s extensive information on the subject at: http://www.citizensforsafetechnology.org/

Whatever the generational, lifestyle, religious or political differences among us all at the gathering, let it be known that the old man and his wife have long accepted each one of them as they are and we love them dearly. We certainly felt the warmth and love coming our way throughout the gathering. It was another memorable afternoon among the many that have become a memorable annual tradition with this particular family segment since the nineties and I look forward to the next gathering in that tradition with all of them next year.

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Behind the Dyke

In the August 17th issue of this publication, the old man reminded readers that one excuse for starting this effort was to track one old man’s changing capacities as he moves through his aging years. In doing so you may note, as does the old man, that it is easier for him to use the sometimes previously recorded memories of his childhood and teens as subject matter than it is to discuss events and observations of the day. When it comes to the latter, I often find myself being less than positive about the shakers and movers of the day, bitching about generational differences and generally disapproving of the effects of the so-called technological advances that make things like this publication possible. So, indicating another aspect of those changing capacities, I take the easy road once more for another trip to that Fraser Valley village beside the Vedder River of long ago!

For a diffident child of the twenties growing up in my somewhat closed and self-centred village society of the thirties and forties, the public lands behind the dyke adjacent to our small farm patch were an immense asset. The area provided ready and soothing refuge for a sometimes lonely school boy. When the dyke failed in part during the 1948 floods and brought about removal of much of the changing growth that had made it so special for me, I still sought the restorative power of that river area behind our farm of the Depression Era when I returned to the Valley after a fifteen year absence. By the late sixties and seventies and even into the eighties, when work or relationships became too much for me, I booked off for a solo afternoon drive to the nearest dyke access to rest, walk the memories and look for its magic to put me back on course.

Those public lands had been fenced by the province on completion of the Sumas Lake Reclamation project in 1924, which spared us the cost of fencing that survey line but like every other adjoining owner we had free access to it and used it as additional grazing at times and a source of firewood as well if we ran out of other sources. The dyke and river area expanded my four-acre existence and gave me a freedom of movement I would not have had without it.

A body of water like the Vedder and its environs brings out the Huckleberry Finn Syndrome in kids, though I was never as bold as Tom Sawyer or as independent as Finn. It became a better recreation area than a formally dedicated park. We had no supervision or interference from authorities and without it we never saw the sort of vandalism and abuse so common and costly in most city or provincial parks today.

It was freely open to all in practice and had many purposes. The village church elders sometimes found a new pond after the spring freshet for poolside baptisms of the regularly accumulated conversions. Youngsters used it as a lover’s lane and often unsanctioned couples were seen from my adjacent garden plot as they walked the length of the dyke in free time weekends. There they could find some secret bower, unlikely to be discovered by the church elders, sometimes called the Gestapo by the kids in the forties, who were always on the lookout for such illegal activities after dusk.

Each year the changing courses of the streams in the river brought new surprises. New log jams, new swimming holes where water was trapped in low lying elbows by the receding freshet and always new growth in the freshly deposited silt. Steelhead and coho salmon were plentiful then and though I was not a fisherman I explored the area interminably and watched the exploits of daredevil friends from school who climbed the lofty trestles of the railway bridge and ran along the narrow top beam high above the river to its north side and back.

During excessive runoff years the freshet rose to within inches of the top of our dyke and stayed there long enough to leave seepage ponds on our low lying patch. Usually, though, the willows and cottonwoods kept budding and leafing through the flood above the water line and after the water receded I would find new little clearings and meadows with new growth. Sometimes I located dense little bowers where I could spend hours of silence with the birds or a book in the summer sunshine. Alone or with friends behind the dyke I had my escape, my refuge, my solace, my dreamland, my inspiration, my happiness!

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It's a Hop Picking Morning!

It was chilly when the old man got out of bed at 5:45 this morning. It took me back to the same August morning in 1938, though it was then nearly an hour earlier and on a weekday, rather than on a Sunday. It was hop picking time in the Fraser Valley and I had clung to my bed covers too long. Mom finally roused me and shoved me out the back door. I ran down the path along the dewy back yard grass for my early morning meeting with last year’s Eaton’s catalogue in the outhouse. Though the sun had not yet appeared over the Cheam Range skyline in the east, the sheen of dawn indicated another hot and humid day in the hop field coming up.
There was no time to dilly or dally with the scantily clad Eaton’s models. Mom, my sister and me had to finish porridge, bread toasted on the oven top and hot cocoa, clean up, get ready and walk to the main road half a mile away to catch the hop yard truck by six! So I quickly washed up at the kitchen sink beside the pump and sat at the table. Dad, already finished with milking and other chores, was ready to eat and soon after prayers and porridge climbed on his bike, lunch box behind the seat, for the long ride along the mountain road to start his eight hour day at the cut-off saw in the sawmill.
We had no time to waste, so after cleaning up a bit we packed up lunches and any other gear we might need through the long day in the field, and hurried to the truck stop on the main road. A knot of villagers had already gathered at the corner and the social networking of the hop picking season began for the day. Someone saw the truck heading our way from its stop for pickers further west and after the usual jostling among both elders and kids to be first up the ladder, we climbed to the stake truck platform for the best seat on the benches, standing room, or floor seating still available.
The driver, also a musical director at the village church, made sure everyone was secure and followed that rough gravel road to the Vedder River crossing, there to follow the main road to Sardis for the remaining miles to the hop field. The field was only half harvested, so he bumped across the field of already stripped vines, where everyone climbed down and headed for the family row to pick as much of the still dew-heavy hop clusters as possible before the first weigh-up.
Our village contingent took up only a few limited rows of the many in the forty acre field that had to be picked while still at its optimum ripeness. Pickers came from all over. We were surrounded by as diverse a group of racial origins, languages, religions and colours as you can imagine. Many came from the big city and lived in the row cabins at the office yard for the season, as we had done earlier in the Depression years. We did it again in 1939, as I remember being in the main yard camp cabin when the war started. For the most part everyone got along, at least for hop picking season, though “the company” separated the Japanese contingent from the rest in a separate cabin camp.
I was an early teen in 1938, still inclined to goof off as I had earlier in the thirties if I could. Still, by then I knew if I wanted proper clothes and supplies for school in September I needed to join the competition to see how many pounds I could pick in a day. The penny a pound paid by the company added up to about the only cash families would have all year for such extras.
They were good times, those long, hot August days in the hop fields. And they are good memories for the old man! I remember the competition for the “best” row when an un-harvested field of clusters was started. I remember the jostling and shoving to get near the front of the weigh-up line, when it paid me to be a little pushy; the buzz of dozens of conversations to be listened to, the calls for straying children (W-i-l-l-e-e-e-e-e! in my case), and the sudden and surprising beauty of a Swiss melody yodelled by a picker at the far side of the field, followed by the haunting summons for Wire-Down! from another direction.
For the old man, that was the romance of the hop harvest in the thirties after the quiet beauty of a hop picking morning.

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A Death in Canadian Politics

This morning when the old man switched his breakfast news dollops from the local channel to CBC Newsworld, he found himself immediately in the midst of a special Politics program revealing the sad and serious voice and visage of its host. I found out then about the death, in the early hours of this Monday morning, of John Gilbert Layton, Ph.D.
Dr. Layton was the brilliant scion of a well-to-do Anglophone Quebec family long steeped in Quebec and Canadian politics since Confederation in 1867, generally on the centre right side of the spectrum. His father, Robert Layton, was a cabinet minister in Brian Mulroney’s government. After studying political science at McGill in Montreal, he moved his young family to Toronto in 1970 when he was only 20, went to York University there for his Ph.D., took employment as a professor at Ryerson University and became a prominent activist for various causes. He became popularly known as Jack Layton, likely from the time he went to York, a place sometimes in the news in the 1960’s as the haven of hippy radicals who became professional “protesters” of that era. From activism to city politics to federal politics was his determined course. He persisted and became leader of the New Democratic Party in 2003. Through several elections he kept improving the party’s standing until he became official Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons at last spring’s election. I think he was himself surprised by his success in Quebec.
When I heard the many tributes from political friends and foes alike, I shed a few tears myself, saddened that he died so young. Like the biblical Moses he led his people to the Promised Land, briefly climbed his Mount Nebo to see it with his eyes but would not “cross over into it.”
I was not a fan of Jack Layton. He was young enough to have been my son. I never met him or even saw him in person, but I never warmed to him as I had to Tommy Douglas, though just as opposed to that prairie preacher’s politics. In spite of Jack’s stalwart appearance and smooth leadership style, my age and background led me to dislike his lifestyle and his political opportunism. Jack inevitably reminded me, both in appearance and in his youthful “activism” of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who was equally brilliant and even more politically active as a young teenager. The image posted above shows Lenin circa 1910 at the age of about 40 adjacent to Jack Layton, likely in his fifties in this picture.
I was very impressed with Layton’s letter to Canadians, composed within days of his death, which has already been declared a historic document by the CBC. Likely his followers will follow the recommendations for the NDP he outlined, but I see trouble ahead. I expect changes in his party and others happening sooner rather than later as a consequence of his departure. An earlier Liberal-Democratic union perhaps? With my usual cynicism, I felt at last spring’s election, that the NDP’s virtual sweep in Quebec, was thrust upon Layton, rather than achieved by his party’s efforts alone. I speculated (Why not? The TV pundits do it all the time!) that a group of left wing nationalist Quebecers had given up on the Bloc Quebecois and decided that the NDP would be a better way to exercise clout for Quebec in Ottawa. I expect the NDP split between the Quebecers on one hand and the rest on the other hand will become evident at next year’s proposed leadership convention if not before.
Notwithstanding my likely wrong assessment of Jack Layton and his politics, I grieve with the rest of you, over the loss of one man’s promise, and sorrow with you for his family and his friends.

- 30 –

One Old Man's Night

It was 10:30 PM, Masterpiece Mystery was over and the old man was exhausted. He made the usual wayside stops and fell into bed for the sleep of the virtuous. It was not to be. After I closed my eyes in a sleep inducing position I did my best to release the flickering images that usually beset my consciousness even at rest. Very soon, though, the pressures of the weakening infrastructure of an aging and poorly designed disposal system demanded attention. Reluctantly I pivoted through the usual dizziness and vertigo to bedside seating, reached for my cane, turned on the lamp, struggled to my feet and wended my way carefully along the path to the little house in the backyard, disguised as the bathroom in the hall. The usual old man’s complicated procedures and frustrations followed.

Fortunately my wife in an adjacent bed managed to sleep through all that, for the same procedure repeated itself four times within the first three hours after retiring. With frayed nerves by 1:30 AM, I rolled into bed again, soon followed once more by the same pressures. Determined that this time I would not budge, I somehow shifted into another dimension. There I found myself struggling with my cane’s support and leverage up a steep mountain trail through dense forest until I reached the tree line. I rested and gazed across the expanse of my beautiful coastal valley and felt at peace.

Somehow I found myself elevated beside my mountain top, gazing at the hillside below me. With no sense of my aging weakness, dizziness or fear of falling I saw individual trees near the upper limits of the tree line budding out into startling white blossoms. As I slowly drifted beside the occurring phenomenon I changed my position at will to focus my digital SLR camera, which I found hanging around my neck, on each tree and clicked the shutter on its various aspects as the budding white of the blossoms burst into bloom.

I continued down towards the valley still in my elevated position at an increasing velocity as I reached the densely forested part of the mountain side. Tree after tree appeared in my sight so rapidly that I could not keep up with the changing scene of nothing but white blossoms until I found myself in the midst of a virtual blizzard of blossoms shining a brilliant white all around me as I pressed the camera’s exposure button and held it down.

I decided it was time to get up again. I sat up on the side of my bed without stress, dizziness or vertigo of any kind, reached for my cane propped at the bedside as usual and turned on the light. It was 3:30 AM and time for my fifth trip to that little house in the backyard—one trip in two hours!

Was it a dream? A nightmare? Or was it one of those near death experiences sometimes cited by believers in some version of a happy hunting ground awaiting them after death? They find themselves going down a long dark tunnel until they see a brilliant white light at its end. They absolutely know that if they proceed into that brilliance they will there be embraced by the Great Hunter himself and greeted by all his previously arrived friends and relations of every generation to live in peace and harmony into eternity.

Well, that was one night. Nothing much has changed in the few days since then. I did think, though, that it was one way to get myself back to The Old Man’s Post, which has been sorely neglected since last March due largely to serious health and aging problems of both my wife and me. In determining to start the Internet publication with that name some forty odd issues ago, I supposed it would be a way of tracking an old man’s changing capacities as he moves through Shakespeare’s seven ages of man as described in the All the World’s a Stage speech from As You Like It.

As for me, I would like to think of myself at 84 plus as still in Shakespeare’s sixth age of “justice” in fair round belly with good capon line, with eyes severe and beard of formal cut, full of wise saws and modern instances; but am now beginning to realize that I have likely entered the sixth age, which shifts into the lean and slippered pantaloon with spectacles on nose and pouch on side; his youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide for his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice turning again toward childish treble, pipes and whistles in his sound.

The old man refuses to speculate about the seventh age, for then he will definitely be beyond any tracking capability for this or any other publication. May he not be around for that mere oblivion and all those withouts!

The End

Wondrous End Times

From where the old man sits, it seems these first decades of the 21st century abound with endless reams, nay volumes of published material I would classify as futurology. One way or another, almost all seem to predict the imminence of some apocalyptic event within the current one hundred year period.

The current collection bases those forecasts on science and technology, which has already made such rapid strides in recent years. Many seem to follow in the trend of the two books I reviewed on February 22 last in the issue entitled Terminal or Rational Century? The author of The Rational Optimist suggested the advances already achieved, thanks mostly to the benefits of harnessing fossil fuels, were already making our species “gentler and kinder”, but all the scientific data quoted is unable to claim any effective change in human nature. Considering the ongoing wars and rumours of wars in our day, I see little evidence of such gentleness.

From week to week I have the impression that world trade and whole competing economies depend on the success or failure of some new gadget or gizmo that allows the millions to play games, talk to each other or in some way change the way we live. For the old man the changes accomplished are ever more rapid, vapid, confusing, debilitating and frustrating. The “friends”, who so rapidly can increase in number on the new “social networks” sometimes reveal facets of fascination, but I have not yet found a way to improve existing relationships in that way.

The wonders of quantum mechanics, nanotechnology and biotechnology may lead to a way for our species to determine its own evolution into a form of human robotic android that can adapt to the environmental damage caused by us and by the vagaries of time and space. Yet we may well run out of the needed energy and money to find the “black swan” that will bring about the true green energy to replace fossil or nuclear energy to save the billions unable to adapt. In the meantime, the natural processes of time and space, generally with chaotic unpredictability will continue beyond our control. Will this century then, as believed by many, whatever our wondrous achievements, or perhaps because of them, be the end of our species and our world as we know it?

Imminent “end of the world” stories have always been there, haven’t they? Certainly for the writer of the Revelation in the New Testament and for many others both before and after him of every belief, the end of the world was indeed imminent, for they died as we all will. For the rest and their progeny, however, we have gone on. Humanity has survived previous ice ages, global warming, continental shifting—all kinds of cataclysmic events, and one way or another I suspect a substantial number of our current billions will survive the current dreadful prospects for our kind without much changing our nature. My longing for peace and stability has been and continues just a dream.

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Together

What can the old man say after so many years to the woman he met when they were both 21? We were both unattached and somewhat lonely then. Ever since, we have been constant companions, best friends, confidants and lovers and we still are. Children, friends, relations, acquaintances, jobs, business ventures, communities, associations, political parties, residences, all have come and gone. But we have stuck together. It has all been said, of course, many times, in many ways.

I looked through her photo collection and noticed again the picture with her kid brother, Morris, captured by some long forgotten travelling door to door photographer in the early depths of the Great Depression on the front stoop of her home in Saskatoon. They were the days of our innocence. So I made up a card showing that innocence in the attached cut-out and added this:

Shirley ....
“What larks” we’ve had, eh?
Ups, downs, in betweens,
From innocence shown
To what we are.
The clock ticks on
The parts wear down,
We now look back
And it was good!
The innocence gone
Yet our glass not drained,
So “what larks” to go, eh?

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A Terminal or a Rational Century?

Last November the old man’s weekly news magazine, The Economist, published a categorized list of books published in 2010. I made a short selection from brief descriptions and got one novel and two non-fiction books from my public library. The novel did not live up to its hype and I gave it but a brief scan.

The first non-fiction book I chose is a tome of some 650 pages called Why the West Rules—For Now, by Ian Morris, a young history professor at Stanford University in California, who was educated in England as an archaeologist and historian. Unfortunately I was allowed only a two-week non renewable loan. The second was a more manageable 430 odd pages on a three-week loan I was able to renew, called The Rational Optimist, by Matt Ridley.

There is little correlation between the two but they both deal with our world and our human condition in the present century. Morris traces that development from our ape-like beginnings in various parts of Africa to our as yet unknown but perhaps radically mutated bio-genetic, cloistered, or insect-like future. So does Ridley, though more succinctly and in a way to support his purposes. Both authors, perhaps coincidentally, also seem to consider the next one hundred years a kind of tipping point in that development.

The Morris book is a careful and serious study, written by a scholar but for easily absorbed public consumption. Morris has no obvious axe to grind except to add credit to his record as a scholar and philosopher. To develop his thesis, Morris reviews the several beginnings of our species in Central Africa the way H. G. Wells did in his early 20th century work, The Outline of History. He then concentrates on the differences that developed between the branches that evolved in the East, being China and South-east Asia on the one hand, and the West, being Eurasia on the other. He details the story of and the causes for different rates of social development through the long eras and describes the race between East and West currently continuing between China and America. In spite of periodic so-called scientific theories to the contrary, Morris considers people all over are basically the same. Differences in rates of social development often depend on geography and available resources.

History, he says, is “a single grand and relentless process of adaptations to the world that always generate new problems that call for further adaptations. Throughout this book I have called this process the paradox of development: rising social development creates the very forces that undermine it."

Personally, perhaps because of the somewhat transient nature of my background, I have generally looked for some kind of stability, though it has been elusive. Since I more or less gave up on my individual stab at upward mobility in the mid-1960s, I have attempted to demonstrate that “small is beautiful”, that there are limits to growth, that enough is enough and that local community self-sufficiency is possible. Readers may well say I was trying to show that a pipe dream was reality! History says such readers would be right.

As Morris says at page 560 of his book, “Societies rarely—perhaps never—simply get stuck at a ceiling and stagnate, their social development unchanging for centuries. Rather, if they do not figure out how to smash the ceiling, their problems spiral out of control. Some or all of what I have called the five horsemen of the apocalypse break loose, and famine, disease, migration, and state collapse—particularly if they coincide with an episode of climate change—will drive development down, sometimes for centuries, even into a dark age."

Though my dream of stability and order would have it otherwise, observations even during my lifetime indicate he is right. Change and chaos seem to be the only order, speeding up rapidly. In my June 2010 issue of The Old Man’s Post, as these books were still at pre-publication stage, I wrote about current scientific advances, saying, “I have no wish to be known as a Luddite opposed to all scientific innovation. The gods know that the wonders of technology have made it possible for me to enjoy in old age the challenges of continued learning, frustrations and all. … And yet I continue to believe that every “improvement”, each new tool or gadget to make our lives easier, more interesting, faster or better, carries with it the seeds of our own destruction. … Every time we take a bite from Eden’s tree of the knowledge of good and evil, humanity seems to look only at the “good” part without considering the “evil” consequences that will likely follow.” It boils down to trial and error—the same process Morris calls “the paradox of development” mentioned above.

The Morris book provides a great deal of fascinating and sometimes surprising history as well as amusing fictional scenarios. The future of the West’s race with the East does not look promising. As most futurists tend to do, he suggests there is still opportunity to escape the ravages of the “five horsemen of the apocalypse” to a deadline, which according to his cleverly reasoned “social development index”, is the year CE2103. He thinks this whole century is a race between what he calls “Nightfall” and “Singularity” and for the old man the prospect for either eventuality is equally frightening.

I will not spend much time on Matt Ridley’s book, The Rational Optimist. This writer is by nature an upwardly mobile positive thinker and doer. He frankly discloses his purpose in the book is to make optimists of us all. Through briefer but carefully selected bits of history of both East and West, Ridley acknowledges that all the wars, the greed, the climate changes and human nature will continue. In the meantime, though, he makes the case for the argument that in spite of all the turmoil, evil, loss of life, failed civilizations and natural disasters, the human condition has been steadily improving since our species emerged from the swamp.

Much of that improvement, he claims, came about with discovery and use of fossil fuels from coal, oil, and gas, and he makes no apology for that, obviously proud of his heritage as the scion of a mine owning family. He blasts the policy of encouraging bio-fuel development and there I heartily agree with him. He says the whole expensive acid rain treaty to save the lakes of Canada and the U.S. was a hoax and supports it with statistics and government reports. And he proudly claims that much of the improvement in the human condition came about with the increasing concentration of people in urban centres, a claim that runs irritatingly against my grain.

He argues at page 188 of his book, “Trade draws people to cities and swells the slums. Is this not a bad thing? No. Satanic the mills of the industrial revolution may have looked to romantic poets, but they were also beacons of opportunity to young people facing the squalor and crowding of a country cottage on too small a plot of land. As Ford Maddox Ford celebrated in his Edwardian novel, The Soul of London, the city may have seemed dirty and squalid to the rich but it was seen by the working class as a place of liberation and enterprise. Ask a modern Indian woman why she wants to leave her rural village for a Mumbai slum. Because the city, for all its dangers and squalor, represents opportunity, the chance to escape from the village of her birth, where there is drudgery without wages, suffocating family control and where work happens in the merciless heat of the sun or the drenching downpour of the monsoon. Just as Henry Ford said he was driven to invent the gasoline buggy to escape the ‘crushing boredom of life in a Midwest farm’, so, says Suketa Mehta, “for the young person in an Indian village, the call of Mumbai isn’t just about money, it’s also about freedom.’"

Ridley says the world will be a better place in 2100 than it is today and the twenty-first century will be a magnificent time to be alive. Science and technology made possible by the continued use of fossil fuels will make things still better, he thinks. “Dare to be an optimist” he urges us. He is a naturally good salesman and many readers will accept his arguments but the old man is still “from Missouri".

Both books are a fascinating read.

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The Cougar Scare

The old man was six that spring. Where was my home? I may well have wondered for I had literally been on the move since conception. First, still in the womb, by Model T from Kansas to Washington. Then as a baby I was moved by train to Ohio and several farm places there. At age one, it was back in the car, a 1924 Studebaker then, by slow trek and various stops and north to the Canadian border and the newly settled Yarrow Village. That was the new Mennonite Brethren land of promise where recently arrived Russian Mennonite refugees could re-create there sect’s old country order in the New World.

Little or nothing of my age one and two experiences stayed with me but by the time we were flooded out at the rented Duncan farm east of the Vedder dyke, I was four years old. Our next move was from the flood plain to the Vedder promontory called Majuba Hill. We moved our mixed farming efforts to the old Chadsey place on the hill above Yarrow Village. 1933 was my third summer there. It had become my special place. There I experienced my first independent consciousness of the world around me with its adventures and difficulties, creating memories or exaggerations of them that stayed with me ever after.

Early spring that year provided one such adventure. The walk from our rented clearing along Majuba Hill Road to the post office and BC Electric Railway station, then south on Wilson Road to Central and west again to Derksen’s General Store was 3 miles or more. Still, one Saturday, Mom decided she needed some things to prepare her spring garden, so she took her two youngest kids with her to the store. About a mile down the road we took the short cut into the village. It was just a narrow footpath down a steep cliff down to railway level, across the tracks through heavy bush and tall firs and cedars to the foot of Eckert Road. From there it was only a short walk to Central Road and the store.

Our loyal dog, Sirdo, ( the above image shows Sirdo on the raft at the Duncan farm with my brother Henry, then age 17, during the 1931 flood) who had been with us at the Duncan farm, trailed along as he usually did to keep us company. Mom bought her few supplies, likely on credit, perhaps visited briefly with her older sister who lived on the Eckert and Central Road intersection and headed home by the same short cut. Days were still short and dusk approached as we headed into the narrow footpath to the rail tracks.

Going into the dense bush and large trees, our brave Sirdo acted strangely. He stopped repeatedly. When told to “heel” he slunk along reluctantly with tail between his legs. He suddenly stopped again as we neared the tracks, stiffened, and the hair on his neck stood straight up. He barked and ran back toward Eckert Road time and again. We backed up.

The previous winter we had experienced a late night cougar raid at Mom’s goose pond just a few yards from our kitchen add-on to the back of the Chadsey house. The hungry cats were known to roam the forest above our clearing and we kids were told frightening stories about the dangers, just to keep us from wandering up the many trails into the Vedder Mountain bush. The raid left the lone cat still hungry because Sirdo’s barking frightened it off and brought Dad out of the house with a ready lantern to see the big cat take off with one of Mom’s valuable geese in his teeth. Next morning the dead goose, well bled, was stuck in a deadfall not far from the house. There was an unexpected goose dinner, and Mom added some fresh feathers to her supply.

Back at the foot of the shortcut, Mom considered our position. She knew from experience of Sirdo’s courage that our dog was trying to protect his charges. She could insist on taking the shortcut where a cougar or wildcat might jump out of the branches of a large tree to attack the kids, or drag two tired kids, supplies from the store, and her own nearly two hundred pounds at the time, back around the extra three miles. We walked home the long way.

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