Portrait of an Activist

The old man is blessed with a number of fascinating relatives. One of them is a niece called Linda. In recent years I have dubbed her The Activist. She is a mid-generation Baby Boomer born about a quarter century after the old man.

Unfortunately Linda inherited a certain determined and very private individualism and a congenital heart condition from the old man’s family. Much more fortunately she got her talent, intellect and positive personality from her father!

Linda’s mother and the old man, who was the baby of his generation, had an always loving but often disapproving-of-each-other sibling relationship. Partly that was because of their age difference. In spite of that the old man eventually gained some maturity as did the relationship, which soon included Linda’s father, the old man’s wife and then Linda herself. Linda’s father brought a new, different and rather exciting dimension to the old man and his whole family.

That persisted for some four short years until the old man decided to leave the coastal environment to begin his own struggle for upward mobility. They lost touch except for occasional visits, even after the old man decided to return to the gentle valley of his childhood in the frustrating pursuit of impossible dreams beyond his capacity. He found his older sibling still beautiful but with only a shadow of her vibrancy. Linda suddenly lost her mother to heart disease when she was just eight.

While the old man became ever more absorbed in his personal, family, professional and community struggles, Linda grew up under her father’s guidance, developed many friendships and a new generational sophistication. We saw her periodically in family group settings and while visiting her father but learned little of her complexity and achievements until the old man’s later retirement. In the meantime she had taken voice training at the university, travelled Europe by car with a friend of many years, took teacher’s training and taught school for many years. Linda had a special bent for taking up causes, certain she would make a difference and make the world a better place. Somewhere along the line, though, she was diagnosed with the heart disease that seems to affect many of the females in the old man’s family. She suffered through a number of surgeries, developed a super-sensitivity to electro-magnetic radiation and after years of disability finally accepted early retirement from the teaching profession.

For a number of years now Linda has made the anti-wireless, anti-WiFi and more recently the anti-Smart Meter causes [Linda is the one with the glasses shown in the photo above] into completely absorbing, totally demanding causes while the old man cautioned her to take it easy in what seems a losing cause in our time. Ever ready to help others, including the old man with his aging problems, Linda has not slowed down.

In early February the old man, along with many others, got e-mail notice that Linda, who lives alone, had been roused by friends sufficiently to admit them and get her to hospital. Her childhood friend of so many years was kind enough to call the old man later the next day to provide a few details.

Since then the old man has heard that after a few days of observation, Linda has returned to her home under the care of her friends and according to visitors who saw Linda during her hospital stay, Linda is her bright and cheerful self.

Through all this trauma and clan gathering, the old man has been his usual contrarian self. He has made no effort to visit, sent no flowers or get-well cards, totally intent on giving her time to heal, stay as quiet as possible, and get a clean bill of health. Then, lo and behold, a mass mailing e-mail arrived from Linda in the old man’s Inbox this morning urging him to sign another community’s anti-Smart Meter petition on behalf of Citizens for Safe Technology. Linda seems to be back at work!

Though the old man and his spouse of nearly 63 years have not told her so privately, they wish to tell her in this sometimes public way that they both love her dearly and that she is proving once again that she truly is Linda the Activist with a capital “A”. No matter where they are positioned in her personal universe or whether they agree with her personal decisions or not, for them Linda will always be on the side of the angels!

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Aging Security

In his dim and distant politically active past the old man has variously supported the Conservatives (of whatever name) and the Liberals. In Canada that has really meant a choice between Tweedledee and Tweedledum, as our Socialists (of various names) have charged. In our parliamentary system my reason for the variety had more to do with what I considered necessary periodic changes in the ruling dictatorships than any real hope of changing the national trends and goals in our country’s practice of the art of the possible.

     Since the advent of the first of our species during and after the glacial periods, the developing body politic of this continent, including the part that became Canada, has been fractured. The arrival of the French, the English, the Scots and the Irish, not to mention the earlier Iberians and later Africans and Asians, encouraged more tribalism and division. Electoral policies since World War 2 have catered to that division in Canada's large national area to make it even more ungovernable that it was in the century before.

The old man has been known to rail against multiculturalism, against the codification of “rights and freedoms”, against multiple citizenship possibilities, against capital punishment, and against many of the equalizing policies that have created so many dependencies in Canada, Europe and even in the United States to the point that they exceed government ability to collect and pay their costs. The most nonsensical part of these policies is the universality aspect of them.

     In this piece the old man’s contrariness again rears its head because of the furor caused by Prime Minister Harper’s casual comments at the Davos economic forum in Switzerland that his government would have to take steps to change our pension system. I assume he did that deliberately from the European context to get the furor started at home early in his new majority mandate. If one listens to the talking heads on television and reports from pension recipients and the parliamentary opposition, it is apparent that Harper is now exercising his Machiavellian secret agenda to eviscerate the “poor” for the benefit of his banking and oil company friends. God knows what other secrets may be found out before he completes his four year majority.Perhaps even some of his back benchers are worried lest their overly-generous pensions after retirement or defeat should be tampered with?

     I say such an overhaul is long overdue! Take the Old Age Security Pension, which is sufficient to express my contrariness here. First let me confess in retrospect that throughout my working years I expected that by the time I retired all the contributions I made to the welfare programs in taxes and assessments would be exhausted by payments to those already retired, and no pensions would be available for me. However, when I did retire at nearly age 57 for health reasons, I took into account the various programs then still available including Old Age Security at age 65 for  both my wife (25 days younger than I am) and me. The monthly CPI indexed cheques have been hitting our bank account for 20 years since then!

     Now I know the government did not force me to apply for OAS when I reached 65, but at the time we felt sufficiently insecure to apply. And how many who are already millionaires at 65 do you know who fail to do so? It is also true that our stay-at-home life style and depression born frugality has stayed with us. We could manage for the rest of our limited presence here without that pension. Perhaps we could terminate the entitlement before we die but when we consider the consequences of opening that particular can of worms, we decide to leave it closed.

     There is absolutely no reason why the already wealthy should be entitled to the extra windfall. Though it may never be politically possible and will not be in Harper’s time, the old man has always believed such payments should be means tested, not universally awarded.

     Furthermore, extending the eligibility date from age 65 to age 67 is simply a matter of keeping up with the times. Life expectancy has increased more than 2 years since the age 65 retirement date was set. Most healthy individuals at age 65 would actually prefer to keep on working as long as they can and many do so even after applying for the pension entitlement. Others strike out in new and perhaps even more strenuous undertakings and sometimes start new businesses. Most of us would prefer to continue with an expertise in regular work environments and routines. There is no reason why we should not continue to contribute for two more years to make the funds available more viable for pensioners getting in line at 67.

     It is a fact that the universality principle has already been tampered with by establishing Old Age Security Supplements and other adjustments for the poor and some manner of clawing back the taxable OAS from the wealthy, though I have not looked into the status of that in current tax law. Why not simply use the tax returns to index the amount of the pension cheque at both ends of the spectrum, sending a larger amount to those below a certain proven income and sending none at all to those above a maximum proven income? Surely some computer whiz civil servant could design a program to simplify the tax form and accomplish that result.

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A Puzzling Problem

The old man is troubled! As one of his usual rituals designed to keep the “little grey cells” functioning, the old man has been working crossword puzzles for many years. In more recent years after working on simpler theme puzzles, he started working the Herald Tribune’s more difficult Challenging Puzzles books, which normally begin with the easier daily puzzles, then graduate to increasingly longer and more obscure subject matter in the Sunday Morning, Sunday Brunch, and Super Sunday puzzles.

Each puzzle lists solving times for Ace, Sharp, and Good solvers, none of which I seem able to achieve as yet, nor have I been able to solve completely all the Super Sunday puzzles without looking up the answers for a few vacancies that seem insoluble before I lose interest. I have persuaded myself that the reason is not my stupidity but the leisurely, unfocused manner of completion between bites of breakfast and drinks of coffee, sometimes while watching the morning news. My failure to become an Ace did not disturb me. That was not the problem.

Then, a week or so ago, I reached one of the last ten or so of the Super Sundays nearing the end of the 70 puzzles in the book. I though I had done well enough considering that the clues included some very obscure novelists, artists, rock groups and so on, none of which have been part of my experience. I found the new start difficult but eventually I achieved what I considered were likely correct answers. However, one clue for a long vertical word combination or phrase left me totally confused. The clue, as I recall it, was “Having the quality of being empty.” The answer, as I remembered it a number of puzzles later, took up all or nearly all of the 23 or so vertical spaces beginning with space 3 or 4 of horizontal line 1. Although I had missed many of the cross letters of the first 4 or 5 horizontal lines, I did fill in many of the lower ones but still I made very little sense of what was to be the “quality of being empty”. Eventually I just guessed at and filled in a word that spelled out something like “unininitionalabilitation”, which was still obviously not correct as it did not satisfy the requirements of all the involved horizontal words. Finally I looked up the answer at the back of the book. It turned out to be something like, “inanitionalabilitation”, which reminded me of have sometime in my experience seen the word “inanition” which I then found definitions for in Webster. The remainder of the compound word I figured was the puzzle writer’s made up addition having to do with “having the quality of”. Having then completed the puzzle to my satisfaction after finishing my breakfast coffee, I discussed the uniqueness of the compound word with my wife and both of us wondered at the gall of the puzzle writer to include such an impractical word in the puzzle.

That whole described event is still not the old man’s problem. The difficulty lies in the fact that several days, perhaps a week after the event, I was unable to find any evidence that the event ever took place. What happened? Was the whole thing one of my half asleep early morning fantasy events? Was it all a real dream? Was it something that happened many puzzle books ago? Did it happen to me in another lifetime? Or are the synapses in the frontal cortex of my brain no longer properly synchronized? Is the event actually a symptom of some form of dementia? You see, that short period after the event, the memory of the strange made up word stayed with me. I decided to go back to that recently completed puzzle to confirm the exact wording of the clue, and the completed word I filled into the puzzle with many inked corrections in evidence, just to see if I could make up a sentence using that word. I could find neither. I spent hours, days in fact, scouring that puzzle book from beginning to end. I scanned through almost every clue in the book, examined the face of the completed puzzles and the answer pages too! I can find no such clue, no such filled in puzzle, no such answer at the back of the book. My wife remembers no such conversation with me. She has even helped me go through the book itself in case I missed it in my repeated scans.

I have tried to forget the puzzling problem by finishing the last three Super Sunday puzzles. I have one left to do. Will the problem then go away? Or will it continue to disturb me, as being just another indication that the old man is indeed getting old?

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!

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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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