I LIKE GEOLOGISTS

 There are a few things that Princess Pirate complains about because I mention them too often. Hexagons are one.  The thing is, she points them out to me now, so I know that they are growing on her too. I mean, it’s a perfect shape, the hexagon. Except for when a designer goes a little crazy and tries to make something new like an elongated hexagon, which is always a mistake. Spring flowers like trillium are another. There is, however, an obsession that we share, and that I never get complaints about. We both love rocks. 

So I was looking for some cool sites to explore that have local geological interest. Since we had plans to go this past weekend for the Tulip Festival, I looked for information about Ottawa. When I found this website about Ottawa Gatineau Geoheritage Day, I was very excited. It was exactly what I was looking for. It had a map, and pictures of what we would see. 

One picture that particularly caught my interest was a familiar phenomenon that I had seen at McGill’s Redpath museum when it was open (pre-COVID). Unfortunately, we did miss the Geoheritage day, packed with tours, as it had already passed a couple weeks earlier. I did, however, identify where the formation of fossilized stromatolites (only two living Cyanobacteria reefs still exist - the Bahamas and Australia) were just off the Champlain bridge, and hoped to visit with my friend. In the end, she was game, and it was just the excuse we both needed for a wander around the streets and along the river on the Quebec side. 

I had noticed that, on three occasions, rocks described on the website were in “plane sight”. I wrote a comment (my inner editor could do no less) that I thought they may be mistaking the homonym for in “plain” site, and I was please to get an immediate answer back. It was even more gratifying that the mistakes were corrected within hours, accompanied by a hilarious email apologizing for the mistake because they did not have a pilot’s license! (Full disclosure, there is a term in geology that can be used with the word plane and not refer to aviation, but in this case I was right!)

Besides giving us places to go, I found that there was a book for sale that reminded me a geologic tour that  Princess Pirate and I loved in downtown Montreal from the Redpath museum. In this case, it was based in Ottawa, and advertised for $20, which seemed a reasonable amount for a risk of possible poor quality or disinterest. I reached out to Dr. Quentin Gall by email, and with a few back and forths, we agreed to meet just beside the Tulipfest.

I suppose I should have been more specific than deciding tomeet at a busy corner of his choosing without even exchanging phone numbers. We didn’t know who the other was, but he did say he was coming by bike, and there was a biker was wearing a very red obvious red shirt that passed the intersection twice while we walking nearer.  Encyclopedia strikes again! 

Quentin was charming, and full of enthusiasm for why I was looking for his book, and what I thought of the website.  He came with change (and wouldn’t keep a tip). The book was sponsored, so what I paid for two copies was a bargain for the work that was put into it! 

He asked me if I was a scientist, and I didn’t know quite how to answer. Not really, was the first thing that came to mind, quickly followed by the thought that, yes, I kind of am. It was the first time in a long time that when I admitted that I was a physician that the conversation didn’t change. He was a doctor too, and that was that, which was lovely.

The book was of such excellent quality, and arranged in small areas perfect for walking tours. He clearly could talk for hours about the rocks in the buildings listed in the book, but he was clear that he also provided the architectural context that I am more used to recognizing as a real bonus to my joy. The book also has an extensive intro to all the terms I need to know and some excellent charts in the back that have already given me a great deal of data that I have enjoyed, sitting at a table reading it. I cannot wait until I can walk around on a nice day and use it for reference. I should be able to make some educational guesses in Montreal with the glossary until I get back to Ottawa later this summer (for Hamilton!)

I’ll also have to return to the Champlain bridge late summer when the water table is low enough to see the fossilized stromatolites, and I think that will not have to twist my friend’s arm to come with me on a geological architectural walking tour next time I can come to town. She might even check it out before I make it back!

So, for now, I have in my calendar to look for Jane’s Walk next May, and look for more geological and heritage events in future.

Here’s another lead for another day. In this case, June 4, 2022. Alas, this year I am working. Most of them are Toronto and beyond, but there is one in Ottawa, in case that’s where you are in  3 weeks time!

Ontario has a heritage site for buildings and an open door day to visit.

HANNAH ARENDT

Hannah Arendt: German Jewish Philosopher

The Human Condition
Between Past and Future

On Revolution

Men in Dark Times

Crises of the Republic

The Life of the Mind

I found this DVD at the library about a woman I had never heard of named Hannah Arendt. I grew up with a family named Arendt, but we pronounced it like one word “aren’t” . It seems the original is two syllables, like A-rend(t). 

She was an academic tenured professor and wrote about a lot of ideas, but the movie’s story was about her most controversial work called Eichmann in Jerusalem. It had the usual effect on my historical knowledge. It expanded it in a highly relatable format that I love (movie investments are short and sweet, if the writing or the acting or the cinematography is good, and great if it all comes together!) 

Like too many religious critics, her work was often reduced to controversy by word of mouth and reactions based on superficial knowledge instead of actually reading the book! Even the revised audiobook I obtained had a long preamble trying to tell me what I should think about it. It gave context that I better understood than most starting the book, because I had watched the film. Still, it bothered me so I skipped ahead to make up my own mind.

The movie director features actual footage of Eichmann on trial, which is brilliant, and manages, like many European and occasionally Quebec films, to flip back and forth between German, English, and Hebrew casually, spanning her life and languages.

I can’t say yet if the script does justice to her words, and I suspect she has a lifetime of other thoughts that I do not have knowledge of that the screenwriter, as a university professor, most likely does. I do, however, like the way she thinks, making up her own mind, no matter how the cards are laid on the table.

From what I gather, the trial, set in Israel, and made possible with Mossad agents and President Ben Gurion’s involvement skewed the public from the get-go. I have very little knowledge of international law and how it works for crimes against humanity, but (spoiler alert) Eichmann is hanged in short order. 

So far, Hannah Arendt, of the film, is not sure this is the right outcome, which to me is a brave position for a Jewish woman who was interred in France for over a year during the war to have.

Afterwards, I found that McGill library lends the audiobook, and I did errands lost in the first three chapters of her book. I have lots more to learn.

What she clarified for me was the definition of totalitarianism. I don’t think I really understood what it meant before. She defines it as being separate from “despotism, tyranny, and dictatorship”, all more easily understood concepts. This is how she made the much necessary distinction: that totalitarianism “applied terror to subjugate mass populations, not just political adversaries”. 

She is quoted as saying “Niemand hat das Recht zu gehorchen” [No one has the right to obey]. She is credited (although may have later regretted) coining the phrase “banality of evil”, which is in the subtitle of the book on Eichmann’s trial. It was really an astute observation that given the right bureaucratic pressures, we could all be capable of systemic evil. Replace evil with racism or sexism, and it’s a little easier to see.

There is a lecture she gives that I will quote here (subtitled movie English may not be the perfect translation, but with my rudimentary German skills, it seemed to track well):

“Western tradition wrongly assumes that the greatest evils of mankind arise from selfishness. But in our century, evil has proven to be more radical than was previously thought. And now we know that the truest evil, the radical evil, has nothing to do with selfishness or any such understandable sinful motives. Instead, it is based on the following phenomenon; making human beings superfluous as human beings.”

She was talking about the concentration camp system, designed to  convince the prisoners that they were unnecessary before they were murdered. Work doesn’t free you. (ARBEIT MACHT FREI). No matter what you do in that system, it doesn’t matter. The system of the concentration camp teaches you that everything you do is senseless.

In this way, “absolute evil is when it exists, whether humans are in the system, or not”. I would argue (especially in light of the Ukrainian Russian war currently) that all humans are harmed by this evil. Yes, those in it who are not the victims have it better, but they too pay a price to the evil inherent in such systems of systemic racism and dehumanization. For me, the problem I cannot wrap my head around is; how then do you dismantle such a system without too much cost to the humans already serving as cogs in the wheel?

Arendt criticized the cooperation of the Jewish leaders as well as the failure to resist. I imagine my own life at that moment would feel incredibly valuable at the train station before you board the train, even though that would be the best place to revolt, before you are herded towards the gas chamber, or worse. I am not as sure as she was that this obviously the right choice. It must be incredibly hard to risk you life now when everything is screaming  for the need to survive until later. 

What are the options between resistance (which survival instinct may make impossible) and cooperation? 

Another problem I have is that this feels familiar. With no intention to diminish the concentration camp system level of evil, it feels like so many systems in which we humans play the cogs is rigged in such a way that evil exists. It is hard to see how to change it from within. The temptation is to revolt and dismantle, but no one can do that alone. 

So what is my personal responsibility? Eichman is criticized and condemned to death for upholding the rules of a system that ultimately lead to harm for others. How do you know if you are are doing your job for an evil end? If your terrorist cell just gets the victims to the murderers, and you don’t know the murderers, are you responsible? If you follow orders, and are disconnected to the next chain of events, should you blame yourself?

My thoughts are always to the mid-COVID pandemic health care system around me, and how do I find a way to change things that fail our patients. Patients and health care workers seems to be experiencing record high amounts of moral and personal distress in a system that seem, like Eichmann’s work, leads to inherent evils by making it so difficult to do the best by the patient because it is often at cross purposes with the efficiency of the system. 

It is so easy to “just do your job” and go home so overwhelmed and exhausted that you just want not to think about it. But years later, even if it was the job that never allowed time to consider, discuss, evaluate and criticize what the outcome was, aren’t you still to blame?

Those of us who try at every interaction to keep it human can succeed for a beautiful moment. It seems clear to me, however, that these acts of humanity are like cogs, being worn down and crushed again and again under the wheel, which feels no cost to our use and wear. We have to see this, and figure out how to change the way the wheel works. We can’t accept the consumption of our humanity and energy as the price to pay for the system to work. It is clear that right now, don’t win as a rule, then, but as an exception. We need to find a way to change the system so that it spares the cogs and the wheels turn without crushing those in the very system they were designed to serve.

DURA MATER

 My autobiography title translates roughly as tough mother. It is, in part, a story of one of my favourite aspects of life; relating to my daughter. I tell her stories calling her Princess Pirate. Tonight she created a new one when she said good night. I kissed her on her head in a hug, and she said in her best teen voice, “Ugh, you are killing me with kisses!”

I told her a Princess Pirate story recently, and she thought that I was the Queen and her dad was the Pirate, when I always thought it was the other way around.

He liked (and took) the china, crystal glasses, and Waterford utensils. He stayed unemployed for long periods of his life because so many jobs he was eligible for were “beneath” him. He was content to live a tiny life, and only went along, never inspiring or creating any adventures. 

I had the drive to travel, try new things, and do knew things or at least fun things we like. I could care less about china, or crystal, although I do like the feel of well made utensil! I will do whatever it takes, because who else is going to do it if not me?

I am not sure which version bothers me more. As a queen, I have no King, but how does he get the exciting role of pirate? Because this is what male culture assumes, even to my child? It’s not based on his personality, surely?

As the pirate, I feel I am appropriately counter culture, and suits me the best in the coupling of two fantasies that created the amazing Princess Pirate!

STEWART HALL EXHIBITION

rom the permanent exhibition called Visions of Stewart Hall 1885-1963

CHRONOLOGY

1855

Pointe-Claire opens its railway station.

1885

Thomas and Alice Amelia (Armstrong) Crane acquired a parcel of land in Pointe-Claire. Gradually they bought other lots. 

1890 

Upper-class families begin to look for summer homes for fresh air and rest in the country. Charlesvoix and suburban Montreal, along the St. Lawrence becomes a popular choice.

Construction of the villa finished called the Knoll. It was a building made of wood, with turrets, a colonial roof, and a black and white upper story (half-timbered look). There was a windmill that used gravity to provide the villa with water. 

1891

The Cranes owned from Lake St. Louis to the railway, St. Jean to Sunnyview Avenue. They were travelling between Montreal and Toronto for business. They lived in major hotels like the Windsor hotel.

1898

Farm operations were productive enough to require a distribution network for milk and eggs. There were cows, chickens, and pigs. 

1900

Bourgeoisie were increasing in number by the end of the nineteenth century. Most were men from “liberal professions”, but increasingly members of the merchant class. Modern transportations were predominantly trains and steamships. Two-thirds of Canadian fortunes belonged to Montreal’s English community, and the majority of them were of Scottish origin. Most wealthy families lived in homes in the Golden Square Mile or Saint- Antoine neighbour hood (at the foot of the mountain).

1901 

Hugh Andrew Allan buys the Knoll. (Crane keeps part of the land for the Canadian Nursery).

He was the president of the Montreal Ocean Steamship Company (the official carrier of Royal Mail across the Atlantic, and whose oceanliners were the first to be equipped with turbines in 1904), and director of several other corporations (Halifax and East Railway, Grand Trunk Railway, Shipping Federation of Canada)

He was the husband of Margaret Elizabeth. Guests of the Allans would spend the day playing cricket, tennis or enjoying water sports. In the evening, lavish meals, dancing, card game, and business discussions were common. There was even a telephone line installed as soon as it was possible.

Their Montreal residence was on Stanley Street in the Golden Square Mile.

1911

Charles MacLean buys the Knoll and begins constructing a farm. He is the first to live in Pointe-Claire full time.  The farmhouse was ultramodern, made of stone, with heated marble floors, and they played classical music for the cows to get their the best quality of milk. 

This is one year after his first wife, Martha Fulford and their newborn, died. 

Charles was raised in Lachine, and joined the Canadian Army in 1904, and served overseas from 1914-1918 with the Scottish Light Dragoons.

1915-6

The Knoll is demolished to make way for living year round in Pointe-Claire.

Mull Hall is built, inspired by Fulford Place in Brockville, and named after the memory of Clan MacLean’s ancestral home on the Isle of Mull, Scotland. Locally, it was called Château MacLean.

Robert Findlay was the architect of the neoclassical architecture building, with a symmetrical facade, except for the main entrance portico adorned with columns, and a formal colonnaded veranda out back overlooking the water. The walls are made of locally quarried limestone blocks, and the roof was originally covered with cedar shingles. The facade was symmetrical, except for the main entrance portico adorned with columns. The colonnaded veranda was formal in taste.

1917

Charles marries Doris, his second wife, in London.

1919

They returned from Europe to settle at Mull Hull with their first child Ian.

They live as “gentlemen farmers”, for pleasure, with about 25 employees doing the work. 

1920

Morna MacLean was born at a rented suite at the Ritz Carlton.

1931

Muriel MacLean was born.

The children ate most meals in their nursery, on the second floor, with a dumbwaiter bringing up food from the kitchen. When Nannie had the day off, they enjoyed the solarium (located on the west side with a wrought iron frame) or winter garden, with parrots, dogs, and mischief in the fountain!

1940

The Religious of Holy Cross arrived in Montreal in 1847, and are still active internationally today. In Quebec, they founded College de Saint-Laurent, Montreal’s College Notre-Dame, Petits Chanteurs du Mont-Royal, and Les Compagnons de Saint-Laurent (theatre). Saint Brother Andre (born Alfred Bessette, and initiated the construction of Saint-Joseph’s oratory) is their congregation’s most famous member.

The priests buy Mull Hall, and turn it into a noviciate, and operate the farm. They moved from Sainte-Genevieve, and called it Saint Joseph Novitiate. 

The attic was used as a dormitory. 

The chapel was in the room next to the solarium (grand salon) with the altar facing north where the stage sits now.

The basement housed a workshop to make candles for the Oratory. 

They made no major changes except adding a statue of St. Joseph in front of the portico. 

They kept in use the volleyball and tennis courts. 

The initial price was “derisory”, and the farm fed the community with surplus eggs and milk sent to the Saint-Croix priests’ college (now Cegep St Laurent), but it became a financial burden as the student numbers dwindled.

The priests lived reclusively during the 17 years there.

1950s 

Montreal suburbs experience a boom, and farmland starts to be subdivided and sold to developers.

1957

Development Corporation buys the property, with plans to tear down the mansion and build high-rises (in 1959)

1958

The farm is destroyed in a fire, and the abandoned Mull Hall suffers serious damage during the winter.

1959

Walter Montcrieff and “May” Beatrice Stewart (born in Jamaica, trained as nurse in Edinburgh) lived as neighbours to the MacLeans for nearly a decade just east of Mull House (now Stewart Avenue). They buy the property before the demolition occurred. 

Walter was heir to the Macdonald Tobacco fortune (shared with his brother Thomas Howard, their father Sir William Macdonald). He was the sole head of the business from the 1920s to 1968.

 He met May at the Royal Victoria Hosptial, and were philanthropists, donating to  Macedonian College, McGill University and the RVH. May wanted to save the MacLean house. They bought it anonymously before it could be demolished.

On September 12, the Stewarts sell it to the City of Pointe-Claire for $1, with the understanding that it would be developed as a park, and maintained in perpetuity.

The city opened dialogue with the citizens of Pointe-Claire to decide the future use of this newly acquired building. Vi Duncanson headed the committee that proposed to use it as a cultural Center, which the city accepts. The goals were to make culture more democratic and to provide access to high quality courses and content. 

1962 

Stewart Hall Cultural Center opens, with Vi(olet) Duncanson as the administrative director. She involved Jean-Paul Morissette (director of National Art Gallery), Evan Turner (director of Montreal Museum of Fine Arts), and Winthrop Judkins (McGill University professor and art historian) in the designing of the first policies. She hired Helen Judkins and Ruth Auersperg to develop the culture programs and art gallery.

It was inaugurated in 1963 by Governor General George Vanier.

It was remodelled with a new roof, HVAC, and to house the new functions. The third floor became the Art Gallery, the second a library, and the ground floor and basement housed various associations. Because of the Cold War, the Pointe-Claire Rifle Club was among the first, with a shooting gallery set up in the basement! Other groups included Claycrafters Pottery Studio, Lakeshore Weavers Guild, Lakeshore Camera Club, and The Stewart Hall Seniors.

1967

Art Rental and Sales Service starts and continues to present day.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Archives of the Lake St. Louis Historical Society 

City of Pointe-Claire Archives

Stewart Hall Archives

Album universal, Vol.22, no.1113, pp.560-561, Sept. 2, 1905 Bibliotheque Nationale du Quebec

SALT AND IRON AND THE MILITARY MIGHT OF CHINESE HISTORY

 China has many inventions to be proud of. They include paper (Marco Polo took it to Italy), printing, gunpowder, and the compass. They used their beginning of 4000 years of written word to record their history of inventions!

The Chinese creator is Pangu, who made humans from the parasites on his body. He died but he was followed by wise rulers. Fuji domesticated animals, and invented marriage. Shennong invented medicine, agriculture, trade, the plow and hoe. Huangdi (Yellow Emperor) invented writing, bow and arrow (weaponry), the cart (transportation), and ceramics. Legend says presided over the the first war over salt. Yao passed over his unqualified son to name Shun, a modest sage, his successor. 

Salt was harvested in crystal form each summer when a Shanxi lake called Yuncheng dried up around 6000 BC. It took until 800 BC for salt production to be recorded. They boiled ocean water in  clay pots to reduce it to salt crystals. 1000 years after the Chinese account was written, the Roman Empire spread the same technique through souther Europe. 

Iron first came into use in China around 1000 BC,  so Confucius taught morality after it’s invention, but before salt was being boiled in iron pans.  The western Qin (“chin”) state had a new philosophy develop, called legalism. They attempted to oust aristocracy, and attempted to create a meritocracy system that rewarded achievement. Unfortunately, by 221 AD, Qin took the Qi policy of price-fixing, which exploited the desperate and asked of them the highest prices for salt. A monopoly on salt and iron, justified for economic stability for the state, raised the prices even further. It would also be taxed for revenue over the centuries.

The conquering Qin state was the first dynasty to be ruled by an Emperor, which would continue until 1911. The revenues from salt would fund armies and the Great Wall, in defence against the Huns. Although the monopolies would be debated the Han dynasty with discussions of the “responsibilities of good government” (“duties of grove ent ent, state profit versus private initiative, the logic and limit of military spending, the rights and limits of goverment to interfere in the economy”), recorded in the Discourse on Salt and Iron, they would remain in place until the first century AD.

During the Tang Dynasty, the salt monopoly returned, after a six century hiatus. Aristocrats would show off their salt wealth by serving pure salt at the dinner table, in a lavish, ornate saltcellar. Now we can buy it at the dollar store, and find it so cheap that I cannot imagine there is a household without a box of it in their cupboard or a shaker near their table.

There are two great rivers in Chinese history, both running from the Tibetan plateau to drain to the East coast. There is the Yangtze, which is the wider and more navigable, and the Yellow river, which is knows as “the father of all floods” and named for the silt that colours it yellow.

The golden age of ancient China was ruled by wise Emperor Yao, and it was believed he tamed nature and introduced the much appreciated concept of flood control. This became part of his mythology. By 250 BC (Punic Wars raged in the Mediterranean between Carthage and Rome over Sicily), that mythology was becoming reality. Water management skills were critical in the development of China, and hydraulic engineering skills and political leadership went hand in hand. At this time,  Li Bing was the governor of Shu, Sichuan, and he built China’s first dam called Dujiangyan that still functions in a modernized form, off a tributary of Yangtze. He placed 3 stone figures in the water as gauges. If their feet were visible, the dam’s gate’s were opened to let in water. If their shoulders were submerged, the dam’s gates were closed. It is because of this system that eastern Sichuan became an affluent agricultural center of China. It was recorded as “Land of Abundance”. Two later versions of the stone figures, carved in 168 AD were discovered, and is ascribed to be the figure of Li Bing.He is considered one of the greatest geniuses of hydraulic engineering of all time. He also discovered that natural brine did not originate where it was found, and drilled the first brine wells.

At first, the brine wells were wide, and as the drilling skills improved, the shafts got narrower. Sometimes those drilling wells were poisoned, and explosions occurred. By 100 AD, the concern for evil spirits was replaced with the utility of the invisible substance, and this was the first use of natural gas in the world. They learned to insulate bamboo tubes and pipe the gas to boiling houses, where brine was cooked into salt crystals. By 200 AD, iron pots helped the process further.  Complex webs of bamboo piping resembling rollarcoasters transported the brine throughout the Sichuan countryside. By the 11th century percussion drilling advanced things further.

Salt, for a long time, was so precious that it was stretched by using it in condiments instead. From the Mediterranean to SE Asia, fish fermented in salt was a popular condiment. In China, soybeans were added, and eventually fish was dropped. Soy sauce came first from China, but was brought to Japan by Buddhist missionaries in 6th century. By the tenth century, Japan had industrialized soya sauce and sold it around the world. 

Other notable inventions from the Chinese: fish farming, arrows, and gun powder (from saltpeter).

Mao, during his 1950s literacy campaign, simplified the language to 40,000 characters, and although the words are completely different (jiangyou and shoyu), the character was the same in Japanese and Chinese.

Fermenting soy beans was done by “lactic acid fermentation” or pickling. Fortunately, this happens at room temperature (64-71degrees). Full immersion of the vegetables prevents oxygen (by sealing or weighting down the vegetables) and around 1% of the vegetables weight in salt keeps them from rotting. 

1000 year old eggs take 100 days to make, and keep another 100 days (but better earlier on!)

SALT AND INTENTION

 FOR PRINCESS PIRATE

I am on the train today and trying to read a book for book club. As I have told you, I don’t like it and I’m not sure I will finish. It doesn’t draw me right now like Rick Riordan’s series on Jason does. So I just finished a page and a half, I am already off on a tangent based on this fact: The communist leader of China named Mao, in attempt to improve literacy, simplified the shared characters of Chinese and Japanese to a total of 40,000. This is a number that seems, to me as an English speaker, attainable. But it’s an investment of time, and it would still take a lot of time, so most of us will not learn them. Honestly most of us won’t even try.

Sometimes I think, at least I am one of the those who have tried and fail. I think this a good thing, but it is only the first step, and it’s important that I not feel too proud, because it is truly only a good thing if a keep on trying after I fail. 

The book Salt is explaining the origin of soy sauce. The Chinese salted their fish to keep longer, and this is the basis of Asian cooking. The word is Jiang. The salt and fish had soya added to it. Eventually the fish was left out of it, and it was called Jiangyu. After the Chinese, Japan started using their own soya sauce and called it Shoyu. They industrialized it so we probably got it from Japan before China. We call it soya sauce, and despite being two different words in two different languages, the character for both Chinese and Japanese is identical. 

It got me to think about the idea that it takes 10,000 times to do something well. It’s actually necessary that you do it with intention, and, therefore, improve what you are doing, but that’s another story. I started to do the math. If you or I do something every day, that’s 365 days a year. In three years that’s a thousand times. Imagine how easy it is for 3 years to go by without doing anything. It takes a tremendous amount of intention, planning, and action, but it is easily started. 30 years every day, you get to 10, 000 times. Actually, it’s 27 years, 145 years. 

The truth is, like usual, somewhere in between. Look at what you did in your first three years. Sure, you walk and run better than ever, but you were walking and talking and running and eating and laughing and learning in that short period of time, with leaps and bounds of improvement. One year of every day becomes three years, and three years of intention is a remarkable improvement. 

So, Princess Pirate, start something today. Do it again tomorrow. Plan what you want for your future and work towards it. It may take a long time, but anything is possible if you start it today!

TONIGHT I HAVE THE WORST JOB IN THE WORLD

I was just about to go to bed tonight after a nail-biting 14 hours of call. I had started to imagone a long walk tomorrow morning for a decadent coffee after a sleep-in without alarm, and time to shop for needed extra scrubs so that if I forget them at home, I have an extra pair in my car. 

It all came to a screeching halt thirty minutes ago when I got a call with no name. I answered it with hesitation, knowing where my notes are for code orange, and praying it was not a disaster that would be remembered in the minds of Montrealers for decades to come, like Dawson was.

The best of all worlds, which is why I have determined to have the worst job in the world, is the following: without any time to sleep before hand (anyone who does nights knows this is a mistake), I am called in to do the night shift. That’s my best cast scenario. On a 24 hour day of call, I get to work the worst shift, with no appreciable notice, and my tomorrow day off is written off.

You can’t pay someone enough for this to be worth it. Other work places, you are on call and called in, you stay home the next day and the hours worked overnight count. To us, it’s just additional work.

So, tonight I have the worst job in the world. My consolation seems sadistic in context, because the only way I can make this seem better to remind myself that at least I am not a patient.

WOKE RACISM

How good intentions may be hurting Black America

John McWhorter, linguist

1619

?Beginning 

First wave anti-racism

Civil rights act 1964

Voting rights act 1965

Desegregation, battling disenfranchisement

Second wave anti-racism

1970

Unconscious racism

Not all problems were solved post desegregation

Third wave anti-racism

2020 post George Floyd

Reparations

Is it logical or is a sermon? If it’s not logical, it may a religion

“Passion play” “Minuet” “Virtue signaling”

“Hyperwoke”- internally focused, betrays black communities with gestures, not action

Based on a suspension of disbelief (on extremes, a faith, an ideology, akin to)

Defund the police, Black Lives Matters

”Soft Bigatry of low expections”, if black students do poorly at the test, get rid of it instead of reflecting and changing the underlying reasons for it

Marginalizes people for trying not to be racist but without perfect result

Being fired for saying something judged to be racist because it was about a person of colour

“That’s exotic” (new, novel, we haven’t see this before)

Not for those exploited by racism, but a thing in itself

???meta

If you are not centrally commit battling power difference, you are part of the problem, you are immoral, and you are marginalized and shamed mercilessly. 

SUGGESTIONS:

Phonics is better for kids without books at home

Social injustice of not being able to read impacts all further schooling

Distrust your impulse to suppose that people who think like you don’t think like you are either naive or evil. 

With any debate, disagreement is not just about facts nor moralities. It’s usually about differing priorities about which you might argue but that’s different from decreeing that people are stupid or bad. And that’s what a diverse and large society is all about. That’s what diversity of opinion is.

From 72. Leaving Black People in the Lurch

April 22.2022

People I (Mostly)Admire

WELLNESS REFLECTION NUMBER ONE

 In an attempt to cope better with Friday nights alone, I have started to schedule time for wellness, or some will call it, well-being. 

Today this is easy to do because I spent the day hiking in the outdoors on a cool spring day with a good friend that lets me say and be who I am, and likes me because of it. She is a rare gem! 

I have spent the week with certain necessary deprivations, and have made a few exceptions. I gave up sugar, coffee, and wine, but it was a tough week to start a new 60 day habit, what with Easter candy, and leftover bird’s nests from my kid’s generous giveaway at school. I did have a tea with condensed milk (should have used that up before starting!) and tonight I ate both cocoa oatmeal coconut haystacks with Easter eggs instead of saving one for later. Still, I ate late at night only once, and the overall balance of eating was NOT bingeing. Win win!

I like to breakdown personality traits (we too often throw around traits like pathologies) and we are both introverts, so that’s fun too. But there is no breakdown of what makes a person happy, and we both recognized the need for a person (especially in an institution) to be in the sunshine, and feel the wind, and smell the grass, and taste food. I may not be energized by people, and I may not be energized alone, but I am recharged by a walk in the woods, with running water, and wind gusts. I am recharged by sunshine and exercise in the fresh air. I am recharged by the company of a good friend. I am renewed by the sacred crossing with a red fox (who dislikes walking on squishy mud as much as any human!) and a herd of eight grazing deer. 

THESE LEGS

 My mom was always hiding her legs. She had varicose veins, especially on one side, and I only remember her wearing shorts a couple of times.  It always seemed that she was embarrassed. She was probably the one who started me shaving my legs. I don't really remember a time when I didn't. I remember a few nicks around my ankles (the razors got so much better, thanks to Gillette's Venus design) and an early attempt with the sulphorous smelling nair. I missed the waxing until I was in Montreal. An expensive way, but lasted longer. I might have continued if the local esthetician wasn't hairless and gave me the impression that she couldn't related to my hairy body in any way and made it her mission to eliminate any hairs, at least in the area I paid for that day. 

The reality is that I had good legs for a while. Sure, when I was a teen, I wished they didn't taper like chicken legs that I inherited from my dad. I only had one kid, so the varicosities I had were not as bad as if I had carried three. I never shaved above my knees, so there came a day that it just didn't make any sense to me why society didn't care about some parts of my body being hairy while others were frowned upon. I am a furry person. I have arm hair and facial hair and belly hair. If I removed every one of them, it would be a fulltime job! It would also look weird to me. When I stopped running and hit my 40s, my legs started to look worn. 

When I look down on the legs I took a picture of in my 49th year, I know they are no longer great legs, but they are good legs. They work, get me where I need to go, and they are probably the best they are going to be for the foreseeable future. So I embrace the veins, the hair, the scars, and the wrinkles. Today, I celebrate these legs. These legs are my legs, and I am proud of them!

A PROMISED LAND

Barack Obama's memoir was the third similar book I had read, beginning the Michelle Obama's Becoming and Hillary Clinton's What Happened.  

His style of writing reminded of a recent read (the best book of the year to date) called The Sky Is Not the Limit, by celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. They both seem to write capsules of information. In the latter's case, some were essays published on their own. I think this is a smart way to write.

I found it interesting to see how the three authors linked together in time, and how they referred to each other, or didn't. I wondered what I missing from not reading their previous books, in the case of Hillary and Barack. At some points in all their stories, I felt angry, which I found hard to explain. 

"You show me someone okay with losing, and I'll show you a loser."

Gates: "something short of friends"

MINE: FROM PODCAST TO BOOKCLUB

BOREDOM KILLING YOUR CREATIVITY? TRY OBLIQUE STATEGIES

 Listening to the podcast #7 Bowie, Jazz and the Unplayable Piano, I was introduced to the character called Eno. He is British musician that was described as working with David Bowie in Berlin, and he had a pack of cards that motivated inspiration (mostly about making music, but many can be used for any creative process). The cards were used with two simple rules: Pick one. Do it. (No exchanges).

Tim Harford makes the argument that limits inspire creativity. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention!

Here is a list from Carine L'Allemand.

Abandon normal instruments 

Accept advice 

Accretion 

A line has two sides 

Allow an easement (an easement is the abandonment of a stricture) 

Are there sections? Consider transitions

Ask people to work against their better judgement

Ask your body

Assemble some of the instruments in a group and treat the group 

Balance the consistency principle with the inconsistency principle 

Be dirty 

Breathe more deeply 

Bridges -build -burn 

Cascades 

Change instrument roles 

Change nothing and continue with immaculate consistency

Children's voices -speaking -singing 

Cluster analysis 

Consider different fading systems 

Consult other sources -promising -unpromising 

Convert a melodic element into a rhythmic element 

Courage! 

Cut a vital connection 

Decorate, decorate 

Define an area as `safe' and use it as an anchor 

Destroy -nothing -the most important thing 

Discard an axiom 

Disconnect from desire 

Discover the recipes you are using and abandon them 

Distorting time 

Do nothing for as long as possible 

Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do 

Don't be frightened of cliches 

Don't be frightened to display your talents 

Don't break the silence 

Don't stress one thing more than another 

Do something boring 

Do the washing up 

Do the words need changing? 

Do we need holes? 

Emphasize differences 

Emphasize repetitions 

Emphasize the flaws 

Faced with a choice, do both (given by Dieter Rot) 

Feedback recordings into an acoustic situation 

Fill every beat with something 

Get your neck massaged 

Ghost echoes 

Give the game away 

Give way to your worst impulse 

Go slowly all the way round the outside 

Honor thy error as a hidden intention 

How would you have done it? 

Humanize something free of error 

Imagine the music as a moving chain or caterpillar 

Imagine the music as a set of disconnected events 

Infinitesimal gradations 

Intentions -credibility of -nobility of -humility of

Into the impossible

Is it finished?

Is there something missing?

Is the tuning appropriate?

Just carry on
Left channel, right channel, centre channel
Listen in total darkness, or in a very large room, very quietly
Listen to the quiet voice
Look at a very small object, look at its centre
Look at the order in which you do things
Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify them Lowest common denominator check -single beat -single note -single riff
Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame
Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do and do the last thing on the list
Make a sudden, destructive unpredictable action; incorporate Mechanicalize something idiosyncratic
Mute and continue
Only one element of each kind
(Organic) machinery
Overtly resist change
Put in earplugs
Remember those quiet evenings
Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics
Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities
Repetition is a form of change
Reverse
Short circuit (example: a man eating peas with the idea that they will improve his virility shovels them straight into his lap)
Shut the door and listen from outside
Simple subtraction
Spectrum analysis
Take a break
Take away the elements in order of apparent non-importance
Tape your mouth (given by Ritva Saarikko)
The inconsistency principle
The tape is now the music
Think of the radio
Tidy up
Trust in the you of now
Turn it upside down
Twist the spine
Use an old idea
Use an unacceptable color
Use fewer notes
Use filters
Use `unqualified' people
Water
What are you really thinking about just now? Incorporate
What is the reality of the situation?
What mistakes did you make last time?
What would your closest friend do?
What wouldn't you do?
Work at a different speed
You are an engineer
You can only make one dot at a time
You don't have to be ashamed of using your own ideas
[blank white card]

OBLIQUE STRATEGIES © 1975, 1978, and 1979 Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt (Formatted from Gregory Taylor’s web site. Composers please note: individual results may vary.)

PARENTING STRATEGY FROM THE MEDICAL AND BUSINESS WORLD

 Tim Harford is an amazing storyteller, and his podcast called Cautionary Tales is full of half-hour story arches that teaches lessons, like fairy tales to adults!

Episode 20 speaks to the idea of masterly inactivity being the opposite of micro-managing, and it rang a bell for me from the basic logic laws that all doctors follow: First, do no harm. *For some people this is easier than others. It's sometimes taught to students "just sit on your hands". It is easy for some people to want to jump into action, in an emergency, and when you child is struggling with something. If it is not truly an emergency, it is important to know that, more often than not, things will resolve themselves. In those cases, doing something might mean doing something harmful. 

Take for example that someone has fainted. I have seen it over and over an instinct to act, sitting the person up, and thus stopping the natural reestablishment of the circulation that would happen if they had been left supine, and sometimes resulting in seizure like body tremors from the brain's lack of oxygen circulation. Even in health care's hands, some nurses don't lay them flat, but use a stretcher to lower their head in a positional called Trendelenberg. This, unfortunately, decreases the ability of the heart to pump because it shunts blood away from the atrial chambers. Just leave things alone! 

I think it's important as a parent, especially with teens, but at any age, to practice masterly inactivity. When they are young, you help them establish the limits of their own body by respecting their individuality, and it sets up the boundaries they need to understand the need to grant and receive consent. When they are teens, you allow the parts of them unlike yourself to be put forward and what they want to do with it. I don't mean ignore those who have no sense of their own boundaries. You need to step in when that boisterous relative wants to kiss everyone on the mouth, or hug your shy kid when they clearly don't want it. There is a difference between politeness in greeting and non-consentual physical contact. 

CRETE/PARIS 2018

 I visited the island of Crete with two adventurous wonderful women, and we stayed on the coast on a beautiful property called Villa Le Reve, near Skepasti (google says Milopotamos). It was managed by Kostas and the Tour Company Etouri (271 Arkadiou St) in nearby Rethymno. We stayed there Saturday to Saturday, October 13-20, arriving after 15h and leaving by 11h.

We took Aegean air from CDG-HER AT566 from Charles de Gaulle, Paris at 12:05 to Heraklion arriving 16:10 and returned to Paris AT111.

We were terrible uninformed about where we were, and learned in pieces that Crete was the start of Greek civilization with the Minoan era centered at the Knossos Palace nearest Heraklion, which we never had a chance to see! We also tried to find the center of the Greek mythology, Mount Olympus, but due to difficult navigating and roads littered with rockfall, we never saw that either!

In fact, the whole trip was based on a geographical error. In her desire to see the island of Corfu (or was it Cyprus), my friend convinced us to go with her, and she found the villa, and we ended up in Crete!

What we did see was amazing, with harrowing adventures of incredible driving (not me, Tina!), swelling tides with brave naked swimmers, thorny rocky fields with noisy grazing goats, construction of incredible roadways and fortresses, and the ever-changing Aegean sea and sky. 

The pool was extravagant, and bracing! The electricity was solar, until it was a noisy generator when that ran out. The place locked up like a fortress, but it would take a determined person just to find it, winding up terrible roads and twisting turns to get there and back. 

The driving was difficult, but we bought the insurance that covered everything, including the undercarriage, and had no regrets. The drivers were very respectful, and we saw evidence of a bus route along the major roads, but would have a long walk down to them and back.

In Paris, we stayed at Hotel Marcel Ayme, where I discovered that this author had inspired street art that I remembered from a previous trip to Montmartre (in the steps of Amelie Poulin) with his book le Passe-Muraille (The Man Who Walked Through Walls) .

DU COLLEGE METRO

It was a long, harrowing, nausea-inducing, unwelcome ride to work last week, but it did get me to a metro I didn't remember visiting before.

It turns out the 202 East comes to the same bus stop as the 485 East, and leaves 1 minute before.

Classic colours from the 60s with clever design.

End of the benches of Du College and more floor detail

It wetted my appetite for a systematic visit for the Montreal metro system.

MY ELECTORAL DISTRICTS

 National Assembly 

Nelligan 

MNA

Canadian Parliament

Lac-Saint-Louis

MNA

MONTREAL BIKE TRAILS

  VELO QUEBEC

US STATE ABBREVIATIONS

Gary Gulman is comedian that does a great bit with the very real problem of shortening the states to a two letter abbreviation. It's a postal norm that I still find terribly challenging. 

Here he is on How the States Got Their Abbreviations.

Here is the list to make it clear:

State/District             Postal Code

Alabama                     AL

Alaska                     AK

Arizona                     AZ

Arkansas                     AR

California                    CA

Colorado                     CO

Connecticut                CT

Delaware                    DE

District of Columbia  DC

Florida                    FL

Georgia                    GA

Hawaii                    HI

Idaho                    ID

Illinois                       IL

Indiana                      IN

Iowa             IA

Kansas              KS

Kentucky           KY

Louisiana           LA

Maine                  ME

Maryland          MD

Massachusetts MA

Michigan         MI

Minnesota MN

Mississippi MS

Missouri         MO

Montana         MT

Nebraska         NE

Nevada                 NV

New Hampshire NH

New Jersey NJ

New Mexico NM

New York NY

North Carolina        NC

North Dakota ND

Ohio         OH

Oklahoma OK

Oregon         OR

Pennsylvania PA

Rhode Island RI

South Carolina.       SC

South Dakota SD

Tennessee TN

Texas         TX

Utah         UT

Vermont        VT

Virginia        VA

Washington        WA

West Virginia        WV

Wisconsin        WI

Wyoming        WY

Territory/Associate Abbreviation Postal Code

American Samoa                 AS

Guam                                 GU

Marshall Islands                 MH

Micronesia                         FM

Northern Mariana Islands MP

Palau                                 PW

Puerto Rico                                 PR

Virgin Islands                         VI

It is notable that in 1967 the abbreviation for Nebraska changed from NB to NE to avoid confusion with New Brunswick!

TECUMSEH

 Near my house, on the way to the nearest Costco, I cross a street called Tecumseh. 

What I did not know was this is the name of a Shawnee chief and warrior, born in what is now Ohio. He was a folk hero, travelling widely and forming a Native American confederacy. 

His younger brother Tenskwatawa became known as the Shawnee Prophet, who founded a religious movement that rejected European influence and valued their traditional lifestyle. 

The two brothers would go on to establish Prophetstown, Indiana, a multi-tribal community, that would be destroyed by Americans in 1811. 

In the War of 1812, Tecumseh joined with the British, helping capture Detroit. He participated with the British in the failed campaign against the Americans in Ohio and Indiana. When US Naval Forces took control of Lake Erie in 1813, he retreated with the British into Upper Canada (a town near Windsor is named after him), and was killed at the Battle of the Thames on October 1813. 

His death lead to the collapse of the conferacy, and the lands he fought to defend were ceded to the US government.

THE DROPOUT

 It's a lot more functional for me to drop into a podcast wormhole, because I can listen to it incessantly while commuting, doing dishes, laundry, shovelling, exercising, cooking and cleaning. A similar binge of video makes my bum a little flatter and wider, so when I started to watch The Dropout on Disney, it was fortunate that only a few episodes existed in video, whereas the podcast series had 24 episodes that I have eaten up in the last week while staying relatively active and productive!

If you don't know the story, it's a gripping one. Another Stanford dropout becomes a billionaire, but this time it's a woman. Elizabeth Holmes was, for a few years, the youngest female billionaire, by founding and becoming CEO of a Silicon Valley company called Theranos (therapy and diagnose) based on a revolutionary idea that blood tests didn't need to from a traumatic needle in a vein, but from a small quantity of blood from a smaller puncture to the fingertip. Unfortunately for many, it was never a reality, and Elizabeth's trial is followed from the beginning to the verdict. 

Attorney Jay Edelson says in the Verdict: January 5, 2022

"I think overall this is going to lead to a tremendous shakeup in Silicon Valley. We've had 20 plus years of Silicon Valley playing fast and loose with facts, and everyone kind of just agreed that it was okay, and it really isn't okay. It's not okay to steal a billion dollars ... It concerns me that Elizabeth Holmes was, at the time, the most prominent female startup, and the number of men who have gotten away with stuff that Elizabeth Holmes did, if not worse, it would fill (you know)journals. I do, just as someone who believes so much in consumer rights in not defrauding people, I am glad about this guilty verdict. It makes me uneasy that.. um, I don't want there to be one scapegoat here. I am not saying that she didn't do anything wrong. She deserves her sentence, but I think that there are a lot of other people, a lot of men, who have done similar things, and I hope that justice will done in other instances as well."

Silicon Valley investor and critic Roger McNamee  Crime and Punishment: October 12, 2021, 23:43

"The thing about Elizabeth Homes that I look at, that gives me hope for humanity: you wouldn't have had to go back more than 5 years when it would have been impossible for a woman to raise that kind of money, even for a great idea. Men have been raising money for bad ideas for a really long time... that actually represents social progress."

WORDLE

It seems ironic and slightly frustrating that the name of this popular online game of solitaire is six letters long, when it only calls for five. It's a lot easier to find a word six letters long, so each time I have to find with five, it is a challenge.

This game reminds me of the game mastermind, but it seems more fun and marvellous that I can shuffle through my unseen dictionary of my memory and find a solution with 6 attempts almost all of the time. 

It's become a daily habit, and a monitor of my fatigue. When I find myself putting the yellow letters in the same place instead of moving it to any other spot, I know I need to check my fatigue, hydration, and nutrition.

If you haven't heard of it, you need to try it. Apparently it exists in other languages. Maybe I'll look for the french version next. 

LISA COOK

 The study of economics in my life has largely been a post-secondary personal pursuit. My high school teacher gave me the impression that the financial system was increasingly unknowable following the uncoupling of currency and gold. Additionally, our investment into Air Canada (which was, to be fair, only a year long) was a failure, earning less on the sale then we had put it, which hurt in 1989 when a GI was returning 10%. Needless to say, I learn to save, and invest safely, which doesn't help me much in the current market. 

Since then, I have moved from personal budgets to financial planning to investment. I am still learning, so a few years ago, when I happened on a podcast called Planet Money, I began to see that economist have a point of view on far more than money. From my personal viewpoint, they are some of the greatest modern philosophers in the world. They analyze date and come up with solutions. They have insight into almost every system out there, and that is very exciting and comforting!

One such economist has sparked even further interest in her extensive historical research. Her name is Lisa Cook, and her articles are worth reading.The podcast called Patent Racism that introduced her to me was on Planet Money was an analysis of black racism and the impact of black innovation. She found that people's general understanding of the history of black was lacking, and even had to provide that as the basis of her economic study and argument that lynching/violence kills innovation while it's killing victims. It's a pivotal note in history, and a modern day cautionary tale. 

From her work, I was introduced to the lynching of Emmitt Till (and his remarkable mother, in Women of the Movement on Global), the devastation of the Tulsa Race massacre (imagine your neighbourhood razed to the ground), and the Tuskegee report on lynchings (a brutal short history here).

 Racism and lack of diversity kills innovation, and both need to be avoided. The paper that started it all is titled: Violence and Economic Activity  with its abstract.

Here is a talk she gave on Diversity and Innovation. Another on What Promotes Or Kills Innovation?

Here is the blueprint for the present proposed implementation for an Innovation Economy, called the Hamilton Project.

I look forward to follow and aspiring to more Lisa Cook ideas.

BOOK REVIEW: THE INCONVENIENT INDIAN

 Logo of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People

CLEANING UP MY PHOTOS

 I have too many photos. Lots of people say it, but I really mean it! I have reached the limit of my computer's generous memory capacity with over 600 GB of photos. 

I love most of the these photos, and now most of them are on computer. If they hadn't been, I would likely have a room full by now, so I am glad for the technology. Here's what I didn't realized, though, about the technology. My photos are replicating, like mice in the attic, and they need tending, more than a physical collecction does. 

As I write, my photo app is being repaired. This is the second "library" of photos that I am doing, with yesterday's first main library now finished. There is one more after that, and then the plan is to import 2 of the older ones to the main one, and see what redundancies I can get rid of.

One of the problems of digital photos is that there is little urgency to edit, and then all of a sudden I have thousands of pictures that have multiples, either because my device reloaded twice and didn't notice, or I take a series of 5 photos of my teen each time in an attempt to get one decent photo without tongue sticking out or eyes rolling.

Here are some critical steps from apple support (the website is great, but the phone service even greater, and when they end they send links to the website that I should have found in the first place but didn't understand until they walked me through). 

I am trying to avoid calling again, and more comfortable to look online for help if my notes fail me, but here is the number to book a followup just in case: 1-800-275-2273. Ask for photos/creative media.

It all starts with OPTION key then one-click photos. The system library default is called Photos Library. It took several hours yesterday to repair it, and today I am repairing Photos library A and probably iPhoto library. When I migrated photos following a robbery years ago, I restored from a hard drive and I think I missed the step of deleting after importing. I will not make that mistake again!

An important setup for any longer task, including upkeep of the latest operating system is to go to SYSTEM PREFERENCES, then ENERGY SAVER, then choosing: prevent your mac from automatically sleeping when the display is off, wake for network access, and Enable Power Nap.

When the libraries are repaired, I will OPTION PHOTOS and make sure in finder that I am in PHOTOS LIBRARY. I will go to FILE, then IMPORT PHOTOS LIBRARY A, then iPHOTO LIBRARY. Then I will laugh and cry and brutally edit the collection until I have only one copy of the photos I want to keep. Then I will say thank you and good-bye and delete forever 400 GB of data, and back up my SINGULAR photo library. Oh, happy day! I can feel the burden lifting from my shoulders already! 

March seems like a good month to make a photo book. I have 23 years to catch up on!

VIRTUAL ESCAPE ROOM

 We signed up with virtualescaping.com for a game called Artifact Isle.

We could be a team of 6 but ended up with only 5, for a reasonable price of $35.

We were recommended to sign on a few minutes before, on a desktop, laptop, or newer ipad (2019), with 90 minutes to escape. We meet in a lobby, where we can strategize before pressing the start button. The team leader is the first person on the platform. We communicated within the ingame video chat.

If we get stuck, we can have up to 3 hints during the game. Another hint we were given was that not all clues will solve a problem at the same location as you find the clue, so I plan to take notes! Apparently, we may also have to split up to be in different locations around the island to solve the clues.

I am excited!

What I know:

I was given a diary from my late grandfather, and the information in it leads me to a forbidden cave and its treasures. My grandfather, and others, have been at this island, but no one seems to have survived. There are many clues to find, but the island is sinking!

From the pictures, there is a tropical beach with a 3 digit code, there are totems that are built in different sequences, there is cave with wooden crates and a movie projector, and a manmade entrance with totems on either side.

Things we had to do:

notice colours, groups of things, maps

CODES: coloured shape directions, codes, scramble words

Things I learned - if I have the key, I am fast! "Put me in coach. I'm ready to play, today!"

Even virtual escape rooms are fun!

Not everything means anything!

I like cooperation. People who just play around and don't explain themselves don't contribute much to the team. I

TIPS from The Escape Game

1. Communication is the key. Clearly and continually communicate. There are no bad ideas. Speak up if you think something is worth exploring. Close the loops.

2. Your game guide is an invaluable tool. Have them search the entire space after entering the room. 

3. When in doubt, ask for a clue. Don't get stuck too long on any one puzzles. There will be a lot to solve!

4. Make sure you are online in advance, and that you have everything you need downloaded before your start time!

5. Split your screen if you can.

6. Computers and laptops are better than ipads, so that you can see both your teamates and your game dashboard at the same time.

7. If you can, get a 360 degree scan of the room on entering.

8. Keep a pen and paper handy, to decipher or rearrange numbers, letters or words. 

9. Give clear instructions to your game guide.

10. Stay organized! Keep track of clues items and kinds of locks and codes you need to escape, and where you found them!

Have fun!

CLEANING UP MY RAM

I am almost not even able to use my computer. It am no longer able to open anything without delay, and when I use the "sweeping" app EaseUS CleanGenius, I have no memory freed, even though I have 3 GB in inactive memory, and the free memory is 110 MB of 8 GB!

So I am going to restart my computer (I tend to leave it on because the startup takes too long), and follow this advice.

These are the steps will try and update:

1. Restart your computer. Done

2. Update software. Done

3. Change browser. Still using safari.(chrome/firefox are better for RAM)

4. Clear my cache. This helped.

Finder-- Go tab--Go to folder dropdown--~/Library/Caches--Go to folder--Edit tab--Select All--File tab--Move to trash

5. Disable extensions

Recommended to follow:

Spotlight (command+space)

Finder -- Preferences -- right click -- clear (chose open folders in tabs --instead of new window)

Activity -- memory - i (information) -- quit (i didn't highlight and didn't recognize ANYTHING!)

              -- CPU 

Lastly, recommended to advanced user (so for me, to be used with caution as a last resort!)

Open TERMINAL

Write "sudo purge"

This should clear inactive

BOOK REVIEW: GARCIA'S HEART

Liam Durcan may have written his Opus Magnum, and if I were him, I would incredibly proud to have peaked with this novel. It is complex, beautifully written, and required me to google definitions, geography, history and art!   

I have not read his short stories, which was the first thing he published, but I did read The Measure of Darkness, which was well-done and a fascinating idea (an architect that loses both a portion of his vision and the ability to understand its loss i. e. neglect), but the character is not very sympathetic. 
In contrast, the protagonist in this story (one of only a few characters that is NOT a Garcia) is complex while still being sympathetic.

This is credited to being a "neurologic narrative" (Barbara Sibbald CMAJ), although I saw an interview where Dr. Durcan minimizes his role as neurologist in writing. Certainly, both novels I read do not overdo it, but have been certainly well-informed by his medical knowledge. I also learned in an interview that he doesn't do research, but his character Patrick refers to those who do as "narcissistic". 

I loved his imagery, and there were so many perfect phrases and sentences that, at first, I started writing them down, but had to stop, because I would have needed pages to note them all!

Here are a few gems:

"A boat. Affluence squared. The confluence of money and stretches of leisure time."

"The trumpet of Josh's raised righteous voice ushering them out."

"The allegations against Hernan outlined in the book were like anti-matter, altering the rules of the universe as he knew it."

"...causing his heart to make that thin-air no ropes climb into his throat."

When his heart started beating fast with emotion: "He knew the circuitry: pathways converging on his amygdala that, in response, fired like an automatic weapon, a heartbeat pattering after, spent shell casings bouncing off the floor."

And my favourite: "For all of the mighty tasks a brain was capable of doing, nothing was underrated as the ability to forget."

Here are some vocabulary words:

prosopagnosis - loss of ability to recognize faces
beatific - blissful
Shibboleth - the motto or catchphrase identifying yourself with a group (something that distinguishes outsiders from the group, as in Judges with the pronounciation of the Ephraimites of the word enough to betray them and have them killed

autodidact - a self-taught person
scion - descendent of a notable family
parse - analyze for underlying structure or meaning
redolent - fragrant

Some ideas:
Crying baby dilemma thought experiment and fMRI (solved by a mother in the novel) 
Classically utilitarianism says killing the child to save the village is worth it (John Stuart Mill) vs Deontology says that killing the child is wrong (Kant)

Declaration of Tokyo (hadn't read it!)

A physician shall not "countenance, condone or participate in the practice of torture" (boarding in ER with no lights being able to be switched off, etc.

Always the ornery editor, I thought the spelling "en-passant" strange coming from a Montrealer, and would have spelled it in French italics "en passant". I wondered if it was blooper on the beach at Scheveningen that the sand was between them and Germany, when I think it would have more like England. Lastly, he refers to something gravely important not to "bear repeating". I think it does bear repeating, but she doesn't. That should be described some other way. 

Still, nitpicking aside, this is a monumental work crafted sentence by sentence like Lin Manuel Miranda wrote the raps for Hamilton. It's worth the read, and a real credit to the writer.

I have two things I have to ask next time I see him on consult service: When is Flash Forward coming out (I look forward to a female protagonist), and what's the deal with the cover art? The brain is oriented upside down, where does Mercury and the letters K and S fit in, and is that a sea anemone?!

And if you need a reader for your next novel, I am happy to give my feedback! I am looking to transition to another career, and proof-reader would be one place I can see myself!

Read it! 4/5

BOOK REVIEW: MADNESS OF CROWDS

 A book a year is an incredible feat, and Louise Penny continues to deliver. Sometimes, though, I wonder if the editing was really finished, and whether or not extending the deadline wouldn't improve some of her last works. This was one of them.

One of things that kept repeating in my head while listening to the audiobook, was the warning from Stephen King (or was it George Lucas, or was it Stephen King to George Lucas in reference to Jar Jar Binks) to "Kill your darlings".

If Ruth's duck never said "Fuck Fuck Fuck" again, I would be forever grateful. How long do ducks live, anyways? It feels like Rosa is getting far fetched in her survival, even if Ruth is somehow providing her optimal care, which I wouldn't think is being carried around everywhere. 

How many times did she refer to "The Asshole Saint", and sometimes still needed to repeat who he was. We know! Your readers are not idiots!

I got tired of hearing about specters, even though I spent advent reading Dickens and watching different versions of The Christmas Carol. Referring to specters in the Victorian era is okay. More than once is too much in 2021!

That being said, Ms. Penny tells a nice story while making social commentary appropriate for the times. 

The most annoying conclusion, but who could know how little omicron would be affected by the vaccine, was that the pandemic was over with herd immunity from vaccinations, and life returned to normal, but she gets to write fiction, so I can accept this and move on.

I did find that a Nobel Peace Prize winner was an unlikely guest in Three Pines, and was disappointed that she was played as the simpleton at first. I was honestly aggrieved by Gamache's decision to ignore his son-in-law's breech of protocol, and not upholding the morals that he dug in with in the past with much more at stake. 

Unless this is going somewhere, if Gamache is no longer Gamache, I think it's time to develop other character and go somewhere other than Three Pines.

It's worth a read, but not a recommendation. 3/5

BOOK REVIEW: VIRAL BY ROBIN COOK

 I picked up this (audio)book while waiting for the one I really wanted to read, Pandemic. It has not been easy. I thought that this was a departure for Robin Cook, and read reviews that agreed with me, but when I reviewed the 35 odd books that Robin Cook has written, I realized that I haven't read that many, and what I read was a very long time ago.

Coma was old paperback copies when I read it, but that was still back in the 1990s when Kevin Bacon played a medical resident in Flatliners. I would have to look at the stories of Fever, Outbreak, and Vital Signs to be sure I actually read them. For me, Robin Cook was a master of medical thrillers, but maybe I didn't read that many of them!

Fast forward to this week, and I found myself reacting badly to the unsympathetic character that leads the story. His idyllic life falls apart when his wife contracts "EEE" on the beach at Cape Cod, and his low budget insurance plan becomes a looming debt that he cannot pay. It should be a tragedy, but his egocentric brain carries on without feeling any human emotions of grief and loss, he outsources his sick daughter to a variety of women, including strangers that are all more than eager to serve his needs for free, and he gets angry at every turn of events, bordering on entitled rage with every emergency encounter. 

It drove me nuts!

The reader of the audiobook made a few mistakes, calling Ver-sed "Versed", and the French patient was called the male french version Jean  when it was supposed to be Jeanne. (True, Jean in English as a female sounds like denim, but you still have to say the -n at the end when you say it in French!) The accent varied too much for me, and I would expect that any French speaker who repeatedly used the colloquial word "shannanigans" may not be speaking with an accent. Similarly, he assumed the American ER doc who has a Sikh name had an East Indian (?Irish) accent, when it was more likely he talked like an American, because he was! 

I kept waiting for the husband to find out that his wife's cardiac arrest was a medical error, with Versed 5 then 10 mg more in keeping with Valium doses, and possibly the reason she died, and not the seizure. Alas, that was not the plot twist.

I have great sympathy for the writing of a bad book. Even that takes a monumental effort. I wondered if at age 80, we are seeing the cognitive decline expected of the age or if a ghost writer was writing their first attempt at a copy cat (the name Robin Cook, like Robert Ludlum, is a brand unto itself). The prose was tediously repetitive, and the story read like a report, with no plot, no tension (except for the toxicity that emanated from the un-woke immature man that unfortunately talked the entire time), and no complexity of emotion or normal life. Characters were one dimensional, and the ideas were pat (no charge, everyone perfectly followed the covid precautions, a woman hired for her business savvy and another who was a total stranger were used as caregivers with the father oscillating between overreaction to neglect of his daughter, and in total denial of the needs of his family, colleagues and himself. If this was the tragedy, I could accept it as a character flaw, but it seemed that the author was unaware that a father could feel emotion, and make decisions that would acknowledge the feelings and needs of others, and not only himself.

What is the worst, SPOILER ALERT, this is a story of an angry shallow man who rages his way through the health care system, and repeatedly assaults health care workers verbally and then physically. His behaviour, while understandable to be inappropriate given the circumstances, is unchecked and totally inappropriate. The doctor's response of ambivalence is unlikely, given assault is uncommon, and would not be tolerated. Brian's misguided rage has no insight into what the real issue was, and his - this grief is terrible because it is no one's fault.  This reality never even comes up. 

The coming reality of mosquito borne disease in the ongoing climate changes, and the inequity of for-profit health care are real issues that bear discussing. Vigilante justice and the unlikely escape of the law is unacceptable, and unchecked misguided rage and  assault are serious issues, and not to be romanticized and oversimplified, as in this book.

I don't recommend this book, and give it a 1/5.