To make Comments write directly to Jim at jimt@quixotic.ca
29
Jul
2022
Thursday July 28, 2022
Last weekend marked a significant anniversary. Twenty-nine years ago, on July 23, 1993, Joan and I moved into our new home here in the Okanagan Valley.
It’s the longest I have ever lived in one place.
The previous longest was 25 years in Toronto – equivalent, I sometimes joke, to a life sentence without parole. Then we moved west. Back west, actually, since I had grown up in Vancouver, and Joan in the Kootenays.
So we watched our worldly possessions disappear into a moving company’s container, locked up our now-empty home, and set out across the country in a Honda Accord packed full of suitcases, house plants, and two panicky cats.
The cats yowled for 100 miles, and then became – dare I put it this way? – catatonic. They shut down. They didn’t eat, drink, pee or poo for five days.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: alone, Anniversary, moving, retreats
Sunday July 24, 2022
Earlier this week, the B.C. Wildlife Society released a disturbing report. Steelhead are headed for extinction.
If you’re addicted to fishing, you’ll know what a steelhead is. It is considered a world-class sport fish for its spectacular size and fighting capabilities,
Steelhead fall into the crack between migratory fish and resident fish. Indeed, the federal Department of Fisheries (DFO) oscillates between defining them as salmon and as trout.
DFO has historically based its classification on the “looks like a duck” principle -- if it looks like a salmon, and acts like a salmon, it must be a salmon.
Except that it’s not.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: steelhead, trout, fisheries
Thursday July 21, 2022
One morning this last spring, I went out for my morning walk. Unexpectedly, bird song surrounded me.
“Where did all these birds come from?” I wondered.
Then I realized they had been there all along. I just hadn’t been able to hear them. Because I had new hearing aids that let me hear the higher frequencies of bird songs.
As time has passed, I’ve learned to recognize some characteristic songs. The American Robin’s cheer-up, cheer-up, cheer-up. The goldfinch’s ti-dee-dee-dee. The doves, always in pairs, making cooing sounds at each other. And, of course, the magpies, which are capable of imitating every other bird, but prefer to sound like nails on a blackboard.
They were all there before. I just couldn’t hear them.
Tags: listening, Bird songs, hearing aids, mindfulness
Sunday July 17, 2022
I have a soft spot in my heart for the community of Clearwater, about 125 km north of Kamloops on the North Thompson River. The Clearwater River runs deep and clear (of course) out of Wells Gray Provincial Park – one of the best fly-fishing rivers in British Columbia.
The town of Clearwater is postcard pretty.
Sadly, though, Clearwater has become a poster child for emergency ward closures.
The hospital is supposed to have eight full-time nurses on staff. It currently has four.
Tags: triage, Clearwater, Helmcken, emergency
15
Thursday July 14, 2022
The other day, I heard a CBC announcer intone, “between you and me.”
I was shocked. He got it right!
Pronouns, it seems, have become the litmus test of language competency.
Back when Joan I and I were buying our first house, the real estate representative told me, oozing sincerity, “I would like for you and I to be friends.”
I considered any such friendship unlikely. Him and I were not grammatically compatible.
Back in high school, English teacher Jean Skelton made our entire class chant, over and over, “between you and me… between you and me… between you and me…”
Tags: Language, pronouns