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Saturday, January 21st, 2012 10:35 p.m.

I always said to others, "I am here for a good time, not a long time." Well, it used to be a good time but now it just seems like a long time, yet not all that great. In fact, I have been trying for the past couple of weeks to make the long time a good time and I seem to be succeeding but it sure needs certain controls. My status as a pre-diabetic occurred on the Thursday during my monthly visit to the doctor. By the following Tuesday, the doctor's office called and told me I needed some more medication because in five days they figured out I was now a Type 2 diabetic. Thanks guys, it only took you nine months and eight more monthly visits to figure that one out while I suffered the consequences.

In any case, I was bound to end up here with the way I was going about food. I have this great love for cheese, meats and just about everything else, especially sweet stuff.....well, now I have to start thinking differently and eathing differently and you know what, I already feel healthier and it has only been eleven days. So I started to think about people who are obese and how they got that way. Well, most of it has to do with the brain. First they have the natural things that go on in their particular bodies that dictate how well food is digested, goodness is extracted and used or not used up. Our metabolisms are very different and the pressures on us are very different. I finally recognized what my body has been doing for the past sixty-seven years and I have worked back so that I finally understood why I had this great affection for food....largely, to counteract stress. I live with the stress of being left handed in a right handed world. I live with the stress of trying to learn everything while I live with learning disabilities, a disorder of the brain while I have a great thirst for knowledge because of my high level of intelligences. I also have the stress of not being able to get an education while everyone else seemed to able to do so. That turned me into a class clown, got me a number of trips to the principal's office or the back room in high school for the strap across my hands. I did not know I was a bad kid in class or always dissrupting the class, I was just being my normal friendly self looking for a way of using my quick wit to make someone else laugh. Beyond my school days it has given me a happy nature and was generally well accepted in social situations or when I was at the microphone at a convention or meeting. However, in school it was a no-no.

Life is a journey, as I have often said and as I read somewhere recently, that today is a gift.

 "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery and today is a gift....that is why we call it the present."

  Kind of has a nice rhythm to it, doesn't it? We some times forget that our small troubles are little things compared to those of others. Take the case of the gorgeous fashion model and online fashion magazine editor who is recovering from an airplane accident. No.... the plane did not crash, it landed, she got out and absent-mindedly walked to the front of the airplane to go around it and not the rear. End result was that the propeller blade took off her arm and she lost her eye as well. Not the pretty sight she used to be but she is still alive and getting on with her life.

Another of my favourites is the one that goes,

"I felt sad because I did not have any shoes.....until I saw a child without any feet." 

Life is only a journey that takes us to the end. How soon that is depends on you, your lifestyle, your upbringing, your intelligence, your health, your race, your beliefs, your values, your education, your skills and your willingness to go down untrodden paths. I am sure there are a lot of other things I could also add to that list but these ones are enough to make you realize that you are a pawn on a chessboard and someone else is moving the pieces most of the time. Even if you become the king on the board, you won't win until you are the last man standing or you have cornered the other king into a place he cannot get out of. Becoming that someone who moves the pieces is your goal but your ability to get there is already decided for most of you by the things you and your family bring to the table. I like ot say that we all left the farm at some point...that move from an agricultural hunter-gatherer existance which our ancestors lived for hundreds of thousands if not millions of years and we moved to the other side of the chessboard. There we began to go beyond what was expected of us and not just accept what we learned at home from our own father. I have a new found respect for my great great great great grandfather, Allan Carswell who lived in the 1700s. The last of the farmers in my family, he agreed to let his sons become Wrights and builders. His own two sons became very wealthy along the way I suspect and lived a hard but healthy life until their days were done. Success allowed their families to spend their summers enjoying the fruits of their labour and sent their sons and grandsons on to better things.

Financially, my own life was not a big success but from a creative viewpoint, I feel I accomplished a lot more that will remain behind to be remembered by than either my father or grandfather left behind outside of decendants. They got me on that one. Still, I am excited because my own daughter is due to make me a grandfather in 2012....and it's about time too. Now, if only I could get my son to find a girl and get married, that would be nice. However, all in good time, I suppose. That is up to him and his life....a future grandfather has little else to look forward to as the end draws near.....heck....only another thirty-two years and a bit before I hit a hundred. Been there twice already....naw, not a hundred....ha!  First thirty-two were great, second thirty-two were tough but final thirty-two will tell the tale. So far, ehhhhhh? Have a good "today" tomorrow, it's the first day of the rest of your life.

Thursday, January 19th, 2012, whatever hour it is....

Well, I just wrote this great blog about grocery carts, hit some key on the keyboard and lost it all while I was finishing so, that's it for tonoght. Just remember that 24,000 children get injured in the USA alone each year in grocery cart accidents. So, don't drive yours on the road !!! Have a great evening or what's left of it.

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012, 9:15 p.m.

My sister turned 39 again yesterday, That's the 26th time. To remember this milestone she and her husband are sitting on a China Airlines jet at this very minute on their way to Thailand and Laos. I cannot get it through my head how big this world is when they slill have to sit on the plane for another eighteen hours of travel going east from the Netherlands to get there. At least, that is the direction they took I think and they will be gone for something like six weeks....that's quite a trips, something akin to earlier travels with her daughter and ones her daughter and husband have done together. Let's hope for no Sannamis along the way. Also Laos is on their agenda. I had just watched a documentary about the "Bombies" in Laos that turn up everywhere, a small ball of explosives that with easily take an arm or leg off, take a life and disfigure a person standing twenty feet away just as easily. These were dropped in mass amounts by the USAF bombers on their way back from hitting targets in North Vietnam during the Vietnam war. I gather too that the Laos route was often just another dumping ground which indiscriminate pilots used along the way without considering loss of life on the ground. War does that to people and it makes us wonder why? I suspect it is all part of the intense moment just as the recent photos of half a dozen soldiers urinating on dead Taliban in Afghanistan. It is not something that makes us or the USA look good in the eyes of others regardless of what they do to try and keep thier ancient value system that is not fitting in with the rest of the world. What will happen when China becomes a world military power around the globe? Will we all be expected to bow to everyone? The kstruggle for a better way of life goes on around the globe as more and more factions of the populations in the smaller countries in North Africa have begun their own personal journey towards change.....now...who is goiing to pay for all the broken glass and bombed buildings.....not me! Tell me did it ever cross your mind that the boys were only having a group pee for an insurance policy? Maybe not!

Tesday, January 17th, 2012, 9:10 p.m.

Fifty-five years ago this summer my parents and the four of us children packed up into our old 1951 Ford and towed a 1930s era camping tent trailer of sorts to Old Orchard Beach. It was a trip to remember, one that I did again, although very briefly about 7 or 8 years ago on a return trip from moving a fellow to a small town in New Hampshire. As I was only a very short distance from Boston, I thought I would head that way on my return trip for a visit. I would then come up the coast from Massachusetts into Maine and make a stop at both Kennibunk where my great uncle and aunt used to spend a lot of their summers, have a great seafood dinner there, and end up at Old Orchard Beach before sunset. Of course, this was the next day after having delivered the fellow into his new apartment and i took an extra day since I had not had a vacation in years and the fellow I moved paid for the cost of the transportation and gas. I remember that old Ford because even though it was already ten years old or so, we went for a trip one day and it was a long trip away from the campgrounds at Rollins Pond where we were staying at the time. As we worked our way back towards midnight, I remember waking up in the backseat and looking over the front seat to the dash. My mother, wide awake, but deep in thought had somehow got her speed up to one hundred miles an hour and did not realize it. She certainly slowed down after I pointed it out, waking my father, brothers and sister in the process, well, some of them anyway.

 Old Orchard Beach was like two worlds. I found the old campgrounds on my second trip which had expanded as far as it could go, I even found our old campsite and a few other landmarks. At the same time, the Boardwalk had been shortened and the town itself was a madhouse of tourists, ten times what it was when I was twelve. We went for three weeks. I remember being sick under the rollercoaster ride and not much else about the downtown or the funworld. What did attract me the most was the beach. Nothing had changed. I drove down one of the roads leading to the beach, parked the vehicle and walked to the end of the street. Like fifty-five years earlier the entrance to the sand was barred by a several old posts that had been there since the 30s or 40s and continued on. As soon as I passed them, I recognized the sudden change to the beach I had known so long ago. It was as if it had been left untouched by time and even the light coloured long grass along the fence was as I remembered. It was all I went to see and because of seeing the beach, it brought back wonderful memories of my youth. At the same time, I found Crawford's Notch, New Hampshire on the way to Montreal. It was not what I had expected. The days of 1957 were gone, so was the gas station, the wild animal park across the street and the restaurant. All that remained with the dip in the road but somehow I was able to identify the place where we pulled in back in the summer of 1957 with a blown trailer tire. We set up the tent trailer on a cncrete brick in the trees up an old back road once used for parking old vehicles...more like a tire track in the grass and trees. It was just enough room for the tent trailer and although we had to deal with gnats, we survived the night. The following morning the old fellow who ran the gas station arrived with an old tire left over from his old 1930s car that he thought was still hanging in the old barn. It was enough to get up back to Montreal where Dad was able to order a new set, even though they had been off the market for some time. That old trailer, built in France in the early 30s and imported into Quebec, most likely for the French Canadian market, was the most unique thing you ever saw. It was a high square box on wheels with fenders over a single axle. Whe the top was lifted off, the back end would fold down to expose the contents. It contained extendable poles, spring beds that also unfolded into a normal size bed spring that could be mounted over the fender on each side, mounted with a mattress and enclosed in an orange pup tent with long sides that ran down to the ground on either side, there by making room for two cots under each bed, one either side. On top of the orange tent, another white tent was mounted. It was large enough at one end ot take a picnic table inside and roomy enough to find space for all the luggage, coolers etc. Shaped link a circus tent with both ends opening up with flaps that could be mounted on poles, it also provided additional coverage for sitting in the shade outside when the hot sun was beating down. At night the poles holding up those two flaps which allowed air to flow into the two tents could be removed and the tent could be closed down with simple ties.

We had a lot of good times with that old tent trailer. It also took us through the Maritimes, to Fundy National Park, around Cape Breton before it was fully paved and right down to Peggy's Cove and Halifax in 1964. We got a lot of good years of camping at Rollins Pond near Saranac Lake in Upper New York State, in the Adirondack Mountains and I was sorry when I did not see it again after leaving for a job move to Calgary in 1966.

My father used to love the sound of the old train late at night that seemed to arrive like clockwork across the lake. He could hear the sound of its whistle in the distance. For many years it was an annual thing to camp for three weeks with a family from Swickley, Pennsylvania that we first met at Fish Creek Pond campgrounds, the first park we had to go through to get to the newer Rollin's Pond area. For as long as both parents were alive, my parents would meet with them, long after I had moved away. It was an annual thing and even to this day, I am in touch with a minister of the United Chruch down there occasionally.  He and I used to go chasing girls together in our youth using Tara, our giant Irish Setter as bait. It was an evening thing that certainly showed puberty in transition. While we spent the afternoon at play with Dinkey Toy cars and trucks in the sand we were handsome beast before dinner. When the afternoon began to head towards four, we got all dolled up, put on a clean shirt, filled our Elvis style hair with lots of Brylcream and headed off to the meeting point with Tara, hoping to meet one of the new families of campers there with their 13 year old daughters by then well into young womanhood. It was a time of young innocence to remember. I often wonder if the girls thought so too. Out of those years, I met a girl from Rochester who I wrote to for a number of years and took to her very special high school graduation.. Fond memories of my youth now to be set aside while I look up the old address which I remember to this day just to see what happened to it fifty odd years later. The house was pretty old back then so I would not be surprised to find it had been replaced by a highrise or a new row of houses. Then again, you will never know.......What?......No, I will not give you the address.....Bye!  

Monday, January 16th, 2012, 9:00 p.m.

Reality versus fantasy, now there's an interesting situation. Reality, in my mind anyway, is what the situation really is. Fantasy is what we wish it could be. What prompted these thoughts is a show on Netflix called Saving Grace which I have been watching for quite a while now. I really look forward to it to see what sort of new twists they can add to it to make it different and not the same old story that seems to carry on in other TV shows. Well, in my mind, the combination of a police department's crew of detectives working out murder mysteries, with the police antics, nudity, lovemaking, a nymphomaniac female detective with no conscious and everything else they do, when combined with a last chance angel is quite the byline. Having two brothers with very different groups, one a priest the other a fire department (medic, I think), the female detective is a unique personality. Even God appears in the program as a long-tongued dog....yes, Dog.......get it?....he has matched his role by reversing his name from God to Dog and communicates to this angel through thoughts, not words. In one episode, an Army of Angels was brought into the picture as they hunted down the missing detective. I have to admit, for an actress, Holly Hunter certainly does a great job and there is lots of "blood and guts" for anyone who wants it. The more that this program has been going on, the more that we seemed to be getting closer to the religious side of things and the reason God has selected this particular detective and allowed his top angel to look after her. There are always three or more mysteries going on at the same time which certainly make the show riveting.

As a person interested in film and suspense, this show offers a variety of things down both avenues and since it takes place in a city in Oklahoma, it is certainly a unique show because of the twang of some voices and the western cowboy dress theme that seems to turn up in every show. From a belief in God for those who are into the Bible and all its teachings, it certainly would fill the bill. For me, one who always wants to see the happy side of things, sort of a final happy climax to every show ( and the reason I love to watch Romance Comedies), it makes me smile and laugh. I am comfortable with the nudity which adds a new twist to an old reality that has been appearing in films since the early days, that of boy chases girl, boy catches girl. I also like the creative way the angel appears and disappears at times in a flash of light. As much as some believe in God, I do not share those beliefs although, I would like to. However, my need to be rational in everything I say and do does not allow me to have those personal feelings and no matter what I do, I fight being a follower to be able to control my life so that I know what I am doing all the time. I can still remember back to the days of my church-going years when I sat in the chruch pew saying a prayer and wondering why I did not get the sense that it was real to me. Perhaps it was because of my learning disabilities that I could never really sit down and read the Bible. As much as others had many different ways to each verse, I had problems of a more intense situation, of getting all the words right, nevermind figure out what the sentences meant..

I watch shows like Saving Grace and always wish I could believe but I cannot surrender myself to it. As some might say, perhaps it is God's Wish that I don't understand it. . Who knows? I also write fantasy at times in which beliefs actually do occur but then again, they are all a figment of my imagination, something I have always had which has stood me in good sted over my lifetime. Well, for the most part, anyway. There have been more times than I care to remember in which others have taken advantage of my kindnesses and found myself in situations that were extremely difficult to extract myself from. They too have left their marks and overtime have given me experiences beyond those that most people get to experience in their lifetimes, good, bad, or devastating. Whatever the case, the past is history, I keep very few friends around today and the future will decide for itself how I will be remembered. The longer we live, the greater our successes but also the more times we fail at things. Hopefully, along the way, others will get to know my shortcomings, accept my strength and learn from my life. At the same time, I also hope that my children do better than I have financially. I have found my satisfaction in later years in being creative in art and writing, in being a top researcher and successful family genealogist. It was something I should have started doing much earlier in my life. C'est la Vie.....that's life.

Well, tonight's going to be an early night so that I can try and get myself back on track to handle this diabetes stuff I am now dealing with along with everything else. Life is never easy, is it? Still, with the pills and trying to restrict my food intake, hopefully I will get better in the longrun. My fantasy tonight is that I will sleep for 8 hours, reality is that it will be three hours of sleep, up three hours and down three hours and so on. It has been that way for more years than I care to remember. Hope you are getting a few winks in there too........ 

Sunday, January 15th, 2012, 8:00 a.m.

I have been up for hours now and before I got to this Blog I did a bunch of things around the apartment, plus I re-editied my Home Page as I had been wanting to do. My only problem with editing is that it generally means I add stuff,  correct stuff and seldom take more away. It is a bad habit I got into with my book writing. My editor sent me back the last book she edited for my final review and rather than double check her work, I got off on a tangent and added more stuff along the way. Now I will go back and have to re-edit what was edited because it was re-edited....by me....when does it all end? I think most writers with a creative mind tend to go down that road because they want their product to be the best product possible. Enough said.

I referred to today as Leap Day because I had a good sleep, jumped out of bed, had a shower ecetra and began the new day with a lot of enthusiasm. I sat down at the computer and spent the last hours putting away  on the keyboard. I know that because my bum is getting sore from the sitting still while I type. A weight problem and replaced hip joints do not make things any easier. Hopefully, I won't have to go through that again and they will hold while I lose all the weight I have gained over the years. At least I am starting to feel better and my movements are better. Must also be a result of changes I am making in my lfe....well overdue. I began when I first moved her five years ago by trying to stop smoking after fifty years of it. It took a while but I finally did it for good and I never plan to go down that road again. What a waste of money that was over a lifetime. Don't you love hindsight?  Needless to say, it got me to eat more and when you are already fat, additional calories are not what you need. At the same time, something has to replace the smoking during times of stress. Food and sleep seemed to be it for me. Now that I am on a diet to cahnge my eating habits for good, that is another big leap for me. Then again, finding out you are diabetic is always a bit of a stressful thing and cuts into your usual thoughts as you ponder what the best thing is to do. My changes are going to be relatively gradual over time so that I do not suddenly bounce back to old habits. There is nothing hard about a new routine, it is just hard to stick to one. Sometimes life sucks though. This is one of those times. Now that I have a house full of food, I have to start finding new homes for the unopened dry goods. That should not be too hard as I need a good clean out anyway. Well,  as fast as I sat down to do all this computer stuff, it is time for me to LEAP up again to make some breakfast....I am a diabetic, you know....got to stick to a schedule more than ever now. Life goes on....well at least for another thirty years....yaaaaaah, RIGHT! Have a great day! 

Saturday, January 14, 2012,  2:20 a.m.

This is my 28th blog. Sort of like the numbers on a calendar page for the month of February except for leap years....and after two hip replacements I now have given up leaping! 

I guess I am treating these pages as a way to get my thoughts, reactions, family history and a variety of other things down on paper without actually having any paper. Now I am really starting to show my age in this modern technological world. I often wondered if the choices I made years ago were the right ones or not? I am a lot different person now than when my 12-year marriage ended thirty years ago. I went to school either full time or part time for 28 years of my life between 1949 and 1996. That was a lot of learning and likely even more than a student that did a PhD. I earned four undergraduate degrees and wrote an MBA entrance as an LD student at one point in the early 1990s but I have to admit that I decided, after taking something like eight hours to do it, I would find it a boring follow up to the two undergraduate degrees in business that I had completed already. I decided to do something different by then as my wife and I had separated and I had time on my hands having departed from other interests. I ended up taking some night courses in film, another of my many interests, and after another ten courses and transfer credits completed a BA in film with a lot of clay modelling, painting, drawing and printmaking studio courses thrown in at the same time, meeting a desire to expand my art talents. I always wanted to go to the Toronto Film Festival and only made it once for a couple of films in the early years. I don’t even think they had a red carpet back then. I always promised myself to go back again however my devastated financial situation and poor health would not allow it in later years. At the same time, I always seemed to filter back to school at some point or another when situations were bad in the economy or the need or time permitted it. I always enjoyed the competitiveness of learning. Busy is not the word for my life and I have to admit, it took its toll on me along the way and probably made it very difficult for my wife and kids who eventually moved on. That was more than thirty years ago now. It was after that when I was single and dating again, that I realized that it was not fair to a woman to bring her into the type of life I had chosen for myself. Lonely ?...at times perhaps but no great complaints about a lack of acquaintances in a ski club, a service club and wherever I was at later times in my life until my health began to give way again about ten years ago. I think 5 years of university food on a strict budget did not help much. I guess I got used to living alone and I did not let it bother me as I was too busy concentrating on how to survive the next few years as the economy went really bad. My medical history would surprise anyone. I have probably spent time in at least a dozen hospitals over the years, had as many small to large operations not to mention minor repairs, x-rays, scans and many more visits to undergo just the tests necessary to understand what was going wrong in my body. Good think health care is free in Canada for the most part. Even though I have been through so much, I continue to live on, though be it with some definite problems.

In my younger years before I married, I also used the hospital in a different capacity. It was a universal source of young females wanting to date others. In some respects, the leaving home syndrome to experience life was not soley related to universities, but also the live-in nursing schools attached to hospitals for the 18 to 21-year olds. . I used several hospital nursing schools in three cities for dating purposes. It was a common trend back in the free 60s and early 70s and was a lot of fun for both the young guys and nurses. We seldom had a dating problem after passing observance during a few telephone conversations once we had asked earlier in the week who was looking for a date that weekend.

Going back to the devastating economy of the late 80s to mid-90s, I was just reading a history of a ski club that was written in the year 2000 on its 50th anniversary and it suddenly dawned on me that my decision to return to school in 1991 and remain for five years was a good one since I was virtually living on air for three years up to that point. At times I could barely afford the gas to pick my kids up for the weekend. As thing got bad and companies were getting rid of middle management. I did not know then if I was going to survive much longer even with some social assistance at times when things were really bad. Fortunately, my ex-wife and her second husband, moved west and for a time removed the expenses for me. It was a blessing in disguise. When I left university for good, work took over again but because of latent effects on the economy, markets had still not fully recovered. My decision to go into teaching ended with my hearing deficiencies which became apparent in the classrooms during teachers training sessions. While I wanted to teach children with learning disabilities having finally identified the problems that plagued me with learning all my life, my hearing problems, even with new hearing aids made that impossible. I did not meet objectives and once again, I found myself living in a basement room somewhere until I could find a better situation. Somehow, I always end up next to the furnace room except for a cold winter when the city turned off the electricity thereby cutting heat. Although it toughened me, it also moved me from being a day to night person while I tried to get through to spring. .All these events tended to somehow affect my life. It was the 6 hours of heat and electricity overnight that allowed me to begin to write my first book so something positive came out of the wee hours of the night in a cold winter in Toronto that I will never forget. At least it was warm there during the night when the electricity and furnace were on and I had power for an older IBM Selectric typewriter. You remember the one with all the interchangeable heads offering a complete variety of type styles or are you too young? It was a fun machine and allowed me to do a lot more typing over the next ten years until I got my first computer in 1991 thanks to a government program for students with learning disabilities. My next move was the purchase of a computer on a government grant for students with learning disabilities. That was nice. It cost me nothing. A few years later I got another one to replace the first as technology improved and eventually a laser printer for my reports. Today I use a cheap rebuilt-rebuilt that cost me less than $200 to put together this time using a 12-year old casing and older parts. It seems to keep on humming. .

Over the years I have outlived a great many friends and acquaintances that died in their fifties and sixties. Perhaps it has been the fact that I was never bored that kept me going either trying to find work, helping others as I could or making opportunities for myself, even though the opportunities never really panned out. I remember those old friends I made along the way as vividly as if we had seen each other only yesterday. I also remember those supposed friends who took advantage of me during my lifetime and taught me how not to trust others, something my learning disablities taught me to do as a young child without my knowing it. For those and many other reasons, I have only a couple of close friends these days and a wonderful connection with my brother’s family that has gone through thick and thin with me over many, many years.

Perhaps it is my great desire to live and a willingness to keep fighting no matter how hard things get that keeps me going. My education took up a lot of hours in my life as did all of my volunteering to help the less fortunate. I also spent time in my community as an ardent participant in sports, both winter and summer. I was a contributor to the community through a local service club and went on to become a member of the National Executive as one of eight District Governors in Canada. Late each November, we brought a little happiness into the lives of local children as we brought the Santa Claus parade to the town. It was part of the magic of Christmas that I participated in twice in the City of Montreal in the 1950s as a pirate in the Eaton’s Santa Claus Parade, once walking, once on a float. I never forgot the excitement of those days and still fondly remember the spiced donuts and hot chocolate they gave the kids. I loved sweet stuff, anywhere and I fondly remember the Belmont Amusement Park and the annual visits to the old Montreal Forum to see the circus. I knew how important these things are for kids of any background. Where I was living in my thirties and forties in Markham, Ontario and even after I moved to North York, I continued as Santa Claus for fifteen years in the annual parade and before that move I was a cable television parade commentator. I also organized the judges at the same time for another five years and otherwise ran several candidates for election to the town council there and later in Pickering. I was always doing something that I was good at except being a husband and father. Unfortunately, I have to say I learned that from my own father, not a good example to lead. Such is life but simply, I was too involved in my own interests which my wife did not share for the most part and barely tolerated. I was president of an early York Condominium Corporation in 1970s from when we bought our first townhouse. I did that too for a lot of years. I probably should not have been so involved outside of the family as I was married to an English raised Air force ‘brat,’ to coin a common American military name for children who move around the world. She lived in England and Jordan in her youth, with summers in Germany and spent years at a live-in private school for girls while her father, a military doctor, lived out his life climbing almost to the highest ranks of the RAF military medical system from service as a RAF station doctor in WWII to becoming a high-ranking doctor who attended the Queen’s Garden Parties, there in case of emergencies I suspect but also to represent the British military for a few years before his death. The more I think about those years, I realize that we were really unsuited for each other right from the beginning as we were both coming out of other relationships that had devastated us at the time. Regardless of anything else that happened along the way, I would always say she was a great mother to my children and I regret that a combination of my shortcomings and the economy failed me. Life is an interesting journey, no matter how it turns out. All being said and done, at least we got to live a fair length of time in it. Many millions upon millions of people did not live as long as I have so far. Their lives ended due to war, Mother Nature catastrophes, crime, road accidents, job accidents, epidemics of various sorts, shooting, street drugs, disabilities, other sicknesses and a thousand other things. They never got that chance. Someday, I might write a book about a not so average guy who had to survive in a world that did not make it easy. But then again, we all have interesting stories, for the most part, just different. Maybe one day I will die too, but not today. I still have a lot more things on my “bucket list” still to do. Come to think about it, one of those is to go to bed now that we are past 2 a.m. in the morning again. I hope to get at least five hours of sleep this time around. Have a great weekend. I get to do this again on Sunday.

Friday, January 13th, 2012,  1:35 a.m.

Hey, I just realized it is Friday the thirteenth....maybe this is a day to stay home if you are superstituous.

From cradle to grave....

There is something to be said about euthanasia when the prospects of a good life ahead have come to an end. My sister’s mother-in-law went that way in the Netherlands when she was told she was dying from cancer and there would be no recovery. She picked her granddaughter’s birthday as the last day on this earth…It was an honour for them but .I don’t think it was a very appropriate way to be remembered. Then again, I am not Dutch nor did I grow up in that culture. I believe it is tolerated as a way to end a terminal life there but I do not know all the rules. I preferably would like to go quietly in my sleep around the age of a hundred after having just run a marathon, but I know from my medical history, that won’t happen. At the same time, there are issues that plague us here in our own world that would be greatly helped by allowing euthanasia. I have seen them time and again going into hospital while I was there for one of many appointments with various doctors or for one of several operations. Sometimes, sparing a life is just not feasible when there is no known chance for recovery. After all is said and done we always leave this world and someone sad behind. It is what it is. Sure, we cannot give a shot of a needle to beef and then eat the meat, nor gas them or chickens, or other forms of human food sources in the way of animals but we seem to accept that it is the decent thing to do to put a non-edible animal down when it is suffering. We also don’t allow people to eat horsemeat or human flesh but it is all food to indiscriminate hungry wild animals. I guess we just have to identify what we are willing to accept in the food chain. Things that are forbidden in one culture are considered food items in another. Well, I ask you, “aren’t you and I animals”….well, I have been known to be an animal at times, but I don’t mean that kind. I mean, we are part of the animal kingdom. It is just that we are at top of it. We make the rules, we pass the judgements and we decide what is real and what is imaginary, each one of us, depending on our place in the hierarchy of mankind or the beliefs we have grown up with or acquired along the way. Some countries are more tolerant than others when it comes to such things as euthanasia, whether or not it is legal. In other countries, people are put in jail for even the thought of it.

Technology is changing the world and bringing cultures closer everyday. Once we were divided by class distinction but now more that ever, technological advancement has saved more lives, brought us closer together and allowed some cultures to experience drastic changes. I remember receiving a Chinese delegation in Toronto in the early 1980s, there on a trading mission. The people came in three levels which I later understood to be the guy, I spoke to and heard from, the next level up who understood the conversation but did not speak to me at all and then the top guy who got and gave everything in a Chinese dialect. He did not speak English at all. It was the way they conducted business back then as they learned about foreign trade and introduced English into their world. Gaining back Hong Kong, made the transition more rapid and today, China is a lot different from what it was in my day dealing with them. My only problem dealing with China was that when then decided back then that the quality met the Chinese code of standards, it was shipped regardless of what we agreed to. Often those shipments did not meet the original standards agree upon so we learned by experience what to expect just as they learned how to improve their trading methods. Nowadays, with English becoming a world language, many cultures teach it in school and encourage their own children to go to university in foreign countries to acquire different experiences than exist in their own world. My Dutch nephew now speaks English better than her Canadian born mother….at least I think so, since she does not remember the English words sometimes.

As far back as I can remember the various cultures of the world have evolved at different times, always with one sitting on the bottom and exporting the poorest of qualities. After World War II, it was the Japanese, then the Taiwanese, then the Koreans after their conflict was over. Today these countries are becoming or have been, during their turn, the biggest suppliers to the world. There was a day when we laughed at the Russian car that the USSR was trying to sell into Canada and I remember a marketing case about a manufacturing system in Russia that paid the workers for making mistakes because they found the loopholes but increasing productivity at the expense of quality.. We also laughed at the first Honda motorbikes shipped to Canada, until they became top motorcycles and began to produce automobiles. The Korean cars were the same and now have a large share of the market. As well, India is beginning to export as the former third world moves up the ladder. In fact, today I watch a lot of great Bollywood films because I enjoy the cinema and it is one of many disciplines in film that attract my many creative interests. I earned a degree in film and worked as a movie extra at times over the years just to see how films are actually made. It was an interesting experience but now late in life, something I can no longer do physically.

So, while this blog has wandered all over the place along the way, my message is simple.

The world is changing faster than most of us realize and coming so close so fast that we will suddenly find ourselves wondering what happened to the last twenty-five years. I know I do….and then it will be gone…..just like I will be gone to bed shortly. Have a great day when you get up tomorrow, life is so very short.

Thursday, January 12th, 2012, 12:10 a.m.

I was thinking about nicknames today. A result of a conversation I had with my own daughter some time ago. She is pregnant with her first and without a name for the child, and not knowing if it is a girl or a boy, I started or she started referring to it as the bump. So, that is the nickname I have started to use for it. BUMP!

That got me thinking of how people got their nicknames and it took me as far back as my great uncle, an Irishman named Charlie Brown, of all things….try to find the root of that one? He drove tanks in the first war and lived to be over ninety like all of his brothers back in Ireland although, he settled in Montreal. When I was a kid, he nicknamed me “Smilerbun” because I did a lot of smiling back in those days. I probably did that to confuse them because I never had the right answers to questions and I often diversified from the point like I am about to do as an example. At age 70 a fellow who I have kept running into throughout my life, now a retired Dean of History and former radio commentator, once my running coach, earlier a YMCA summer school aids, told me that he remembered me coming to my grade school at one point and asking the kids what the thought would be a good project. I got the words “Bump Bump” or something similar in my head and kept repeating it. I suppose I was expecting him to ask me what I was saying and he did not understand that “Bump Bump” was a game we played against a particular tree in the schoolyard and each boy jump over the line of boys all bent over bracing for the next kid trying to jump on the train until someone could not do it anymore. We kept it up until the whole line collapsed with those on top landing on those on the bottom. No one every really got hurt but it was a lot of fun back then. Anyway, I was “Smilerbun” to my great uncle but this long time friend’s high school grade ten history student as well…then while he was doing his PhD I met him years later at my brother’s place in Kingston and we all had dinner together one night. Finally marrying late in life, I think for a second time, he had a daughter and twins who will know their father as an old man of a grandfather’s age. I saw him at the High School’s 40th anniversary reunion in 2000 and then later on the Internet I found he had moved to Moncton NB in retirement, a long trip from Montreal. We occasionally touched base since then but not for a few years now. Age is catching up to him. If I remember correctly, as a youngster in the last year of the war, he worked at Dorval shuffling people around here and there across the tarmac on an air force truck when it was a busy war airport waiting for the war to end so that always seemed to make him about 12 to 15 years older than me. I am pushing 68 so he must be pushing 80 by now. Fond memories of a name I knew from childhood, yet one I never heard with a nickname. During WWII everyone ended up with a nickname. It seemed to be the only way people became well known. Having researched dozens upon dozens of airmen who fought, lived through or died in the war, I found that they almost all had nicknames. One set of twins referred to themselves as Duke. As kids the other kids called them Dupes after the teacher tried to explain to the kids all about duplicates. The identical twins did not like Dupe so called themselves Duke and it stuck through WWII. Both in the same squadron as flight commanders, their Spitfires said Duke MK1 and Duke MKII to distinguish them apart. The MK part was an airplane manufacturer’s designation in use at the time. In fact, nicknames were so popular during the war, even my own parents had them. Patricia became “Paddy” and John became “Johnnie.” Most were a lot more elaborate than that like “The man from Longmoor,” a place in the UK somewhere. I think you get the gist of war life. Then there were names like, “Tailend Charlie,” “Radio” or “Radar” Some were referred to a “Swede, Pole, or Fighter and Frenchie. The list went on. “Kilroy” was a popular one all over the place, turning up with a nose hanging over a fence crayoned everywhere including on some of the bombs that went to Germany. So, now that I am running out of space I am going to just say that for now, BUMP is the baby’s nickname. Better than “Ba” when my own kids could not say Grandpa. “Waddaya tink?” Goodnight, BUMP!

January 11th, 2012, 12:30 A.M.

So there you have it, today's blog did not appear. That was the way today was. I wanted to try something to see if I could write a blog in Word and 'copy and paste' it here. So, I finally tried it and it did not work. Instead of redoing it, I am going to bed as it is well past midnight and I am not going to start again. I might mess around with it tomorrow but my brain is tired. Besides it wasn't a very good blog anyway and yhou probably have better things to read that this one. <chuckle> Have a great day.....OOPs, I figured out how to make it work on an after thought so here it  is!

Today was nice….that is what it was. No one phoned, no one knocked on my door, I also met the new mail man because the old one gave up walking this route which he had done for the past 9 or 10 years. He had been a mail carrier for something like 34 years and although he looked young and eager when I first met him almost five years ago, he finally gave up the route, sort of slowing down into retirement. This guy never looked his age. The new guy has a longer route. The post office is doing a number of things that makes it a long day for them. The new system of sharing a mail sorting section to cut down overhead and alternating start schedules interferes with the average guy’s life as he knew it when he first became a carrier. This fellow starts at 10 a.m. and basically finishes around 7 p.m. back at the station. That means 9 hours per day and often more.

Today was not nice in another sense because I did not hear the garbage truck with all the windows closed here due to the winter winds and I did not get the smelly garbage out in time. The bins were empty when I finally got to the front of the building where they were waiting to be returned to their spot in the back parking lot. Oh well, it is cold outside so no one will complain of reeking garbage.

Oh, I just thought of something else nice. Today I had some close contact by email with other family members I had not heard from for quite a while. With family spread across Canada, the USA, Bermuda, South America, the UK and the Netherlands, it is a busy life for everyone and getting together or keeping in touch is difficult and expensive. Such are the things about life that try us when it comes to keeping a family together. Five years can go by and we forget that time marches on with modern technology. Maybe it is just me, but I don’t miss people until I catch up to them. I do not have any concept of time anymore and suddenly five years went by. I had a hip replaced last May and it seems like it was just a couple of months ago yet it has been about 8 months now. Hard to believe how fast things are going. I have had some tough things of late hit me in the face but I just have to carry on and hope for the best outcome. I would like to live to be a hundred if I can get my issues under control but I suspect one organ or another is going to give out along the way and I will suddenly be gone. Darn, and I was just starting my life.

I don’t know what it is but even my parents had talked about letting go at one point. My mother had got up in the early hours of the new day, sat down in her favourite spot on her favourite bench and was reading her favourite fashion magazine, even at age 85. Dad found her there sitting as if she had nodded off for a moment. He knew then that she was gone. He was almost blind in one eye and the other was not great. He lived on his own with someone coming in to look after him but a fall from which he could not get up meant hospitalization. Then he went into a medical care situation and died there a couple of years later, having ended up with cancer of the brain. He died the night before my birthday. I often wonder if he was thinking about how we seldom got along and I wondered if the pressures of the father/son relationship finally took its toll. Who knows, I am not going to let me pin that one on me though. They are gone, I am still here….well, what is left of me anyway and I plan to live to be a hundred, give or take thirty years. It is a hard one to control. Knowing my own situation, I am making every attempt to sort out a few things and even though it won’t all get done, I will try to get a handle on some of it. The rest will be left for someone else to decide about. I know I am going to die, but I am certainly not going to worry about when. There is no other way out…unless you are an astronaut on the first ship to Mars or beyond. ….sounds a bit like the science fiction book I wrote, well, one of them anyway. Here is hoping life continues on earth and we do not reach the point of no return. I would like a piece of me remembered, how about you…..no, not my old face, my young good-looking face when I was in my early thirties. What about you?