Soul Work

Yahweh is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

In grassy meadows he lets me lie.

By tranquil streams he leads me

to restore my spirit.

He guides me in paths of saving justice

as befits his name.

Even were I to walk in a ravine as dark as death

 I should fear no danger, for you are at my side.

Your staff and your crook are there to soothe me.

You prepare a table for me

under the eyes of my enemies;

you anoint my head with oil;

my cup brims over.

Kindness and faithful love pursue me

every day of my life.

I make my home in the house of Yahweh

for all time to come.

Psalm 23

Something Fishy

I was really intrigued by a letter to the editor that appeared June 7th in the St. Catharines Standard. R.D. Bowman asked why the G20 Summit Meeting, which is scheduled to take place in Muskoka, Ontario, later this month, isn't being held in the Diefenbunker.

For non-Canadians or people under forty-five who happen to read this, the Diefenbunker was a top secret facility built at the height of the Cold War to house Canada's top politicians and military personnel in the event of a nuclear attack. The name Diefenbunker comes from the name of John Diefenbaker who was the Prime Minister at the time.

I have to tell you that I did not know that Diefenbunkers existed until a few years ago. (I say Diefenbunkers with an 's' because I just read that there are quite a few of them spread around the country, most located near major cities. The main one, an underground four storey behemoth, is located outside of Ottawa and is now a museum.)

Silly me. I thought if we were going to be obliterated, we were all going to be obliterated. I didn't know that the politicians and generals, i.e., the people who caused the problem, had made arrangements to save their own sorry behinds.

Maybe it's a good thing that I didn't know because at times it was darn scary growing up in Niagara during the Cold War. Air raid sirens were our occasional creepy lullabies and we were taught to duck and cover from our first days at school. The fear of a Russian missile attack on the hydro electric power plant at Niagara Falls was palpable for years.

But I digress. Sorry. Back to my topic.

R.W. Bowman says that we may end up paying more than a billion of our tax dollars to protect 20 people and their entourages during the G20. Ouch!

He says the main Deifenbunker was built to accommodate 256 Members of Parliament and their families for weeks and could have been easily used by the Summiteers at big savings to us. R.W. Bowman has a point and it's a shame it won't happen because, financial reasons aside, there is also the small matter of the Diefenbunker's address.

This is where the most powerful, cantankerous politicians in the world should meet.

This is good...

The main Diefenbunker is located on Carp Street in Carp, Ontario.

Smokin'

I saw a cartoon a few years ago that, at the time, struck me as very funny.

Two old guys were sitting in wheelchairs in an old folk's home. One said to the other, "Just think, If I hadn't quit smoking thirty years ago I would have missed all of this."

I decided to quit smoking in the early 1980s. The first strategy I tried was called, 'total humiliation'. It can only be used by teachers, but I suppose it could be adapted to any workplace or household where there is a captive audience.

I was teaching grade four and as a math problem, I had my class work out how much money I was wasting on cigarettes each year. We also estimated how much I had spent since I started smoking at age fourteen. Even in those days when a pack of smokes was relatively cheap, it was a staggering amount. We all decided what we would buy with such a large amount of money. To this day I can still see the looks on their little faces.

They thought I was a total dunderhead.

For an addict, humiliation and shame only last as deterrents for so long. I soon had to implement the second part of my campaign which was the 'alternative medicine strategy'.

Acupuncture was right up there with witchcraft as far as health care went in those days, but I was desperate. It cost me $15. The acupuncturist, who was also a physician and the rather unusual Mayor of Whitehorse, gave me a great big vitamin B shot along with the acupuncture. It worked. I went home from his office feeling free for the first time in years.

Three months later the craving returned.

As a last resort I launched stage three, 'the dangle a carrot in front of your nose strategy'. I promised myself that it wouldn't be forever. I would light up again on my 65th birthday.

I can start smoking again in four years and the closer it gets the more attractive the prospect of becoming a born again smoker becomes. That cartoon about the ex-smoker in an old folk's home isn't funny anymore . I'm willing to forgo the dementia and incontinence of old age and help ease the health care crisis of the 2030s - but guess what? I can't afford it.

Do you know how much a pack of cigarettes costs these days?

Jeesh!

The Death of Johnny Two Rivers

My last blog got me thinking about Christianity and from there I started thinking about something that happened a few years back when I was teaching in Dawson City, Yukon.

There were only about 500 people living in Dawson when I was there. For excitement we occasionally took a trip down the Klondike Highway to Whitehorse. Depending on the weather and who was driving the trip took anywhere between 8 and 12 hours. If possible we drove in a convoy. The highway was a dirt road, the conditions could be treacherous and you never knew what could happen.

On one trip back we were surprised to see a woman standing at the side of the road, crying and waving her arms at us to stop. We were a little north of Carmacks, which is maybe about 1/5 of the way to Dawson and like most of the Yukon it was complete wilderness on both sides of the road.

I can't remember how many vehicles were with us but we all pulled over and followed her into the bush. Her father wasn't well she told us and she didn't know what to do.

When we arrived at their fish camp, it looked as if the old man's time was over. It was Johnny Two Rivers, a well respected Yukon elder. He was lying on a blanket on the ground, he looked comortable but he wasn't conscious and was having difficulty breathing. There wasn't much we could do for the old fellow so we were standing commiserating with his daughter when there was a sudden disturbance in the bush behind us.

Now I wouldn't have been too surprised to see a bear wander into their fish camp or even a few Russians who had made a wrong turn somewhere up near Tuktoyaktuk but I totally taken aback to see a group of young white people suddenly appear out of nowhere and race at full speed toward us.

The man in the lead screamed, "Stop! Don't anybody touch anything! I'm a Christian!"

" Well, thank heavens!" I thought, "He's a..."

By the time it had registered that he hadn't said doctor, he had thrown himself on the dying old man, and was shaking his fist at heaven (?) and shouting," SATAN, I COMMAND YOU TO LEAVE THIS MAN!"

In the next instant while the exorcist was still doing his thing, and we were all standing around dumbstruck, a small car appeared at the camp. I have no idea how they managed to get it so far into the bush. They literally stuffed the unconscious old fellow into the car with his daughter and they all took off back to Whitehorse in a cloud f dust.

It happened so fast and was so strange and even violent that I have never forgotten it.

We wandered sadly back to the road and our vehicles and continued on to Dawson City. I heard on the radio the next day that Johnny Two Rivers had died in the hospital in Whitehorse. I'm sure the old man would have preferred to die at his fish camp.

It was as if we had witnessed a five minute lesson on the history of the dark side of Christianity.

Sigh.

a North Pelham Journal

Journal  1. a daily record such as a diary, a ship's log or written records of a meeting or society...

   

***

I've decided to call my blog 'a North Pelham Journal'. It was surprisingly difficult to decide because titles, especially smart alec ones, usually come to me quite easily. North Pelham Journal was suggested by Doug Jamieson, aka GeezerOnline. At first I thought it was too much like North Pelham News and I wanted something with a little more pizzazz,  but the more I thought about it, the more the word 'journal' seemed to fit.

I've read that the most successful blogs have a theme, but sticking even loosely to one idea is not something I am able to do. Lately out of necessity, I've become more of an observer of life than a participant as a lot of my time is taken up with caring for my ailing father. What the Nazis couldn't do to him on Juno Beach, Father Time is attempting now.
The blog grew out of my desperation to escape to a funnier world during a hard winter when we lurched from one health crisis to another. Fortunately it wasn't that difficult to find.  My personal ship, (see the self -portrait above), was caught in the doldrums, but the rest of the world was sailing merrily on its goofy way and I could comment on everything and everyone from right here in North Pelham!

So, 'a North Pelham Journal' will be my ship's blog log.

A great name. I'm happy.

Thanks, Doug.

Eden Christian High School - A Commentary

I read Christina Blizzard's column in the St. Catharines Standard, Funding For Schools Splits Community, Wed., May 26, 2010, with great interest.

 It isn't the first time she has written about the fact that the District School Board of Niagara runs Eden Christian High School, a fully funded, faith-based school in a province that seemingly rejected the notion in the last election. But reading her comments this time made me realise I hadn't really ever stopped to think about why something that is, (on the surface), so blatantly unfair, i.e., the funding of one faith based school over another, is completely acceptable to me.

The answer? Eden Christian High School is Mennonite.

I'm not Mennonite. I did however grow up in Niagara and if you grew up in Niagara you probably had many Mennonite teachers. I always knew which teachers were Mennonite, I could tell by their modest, unadorned clothes and quiet voices. More importantly I could tell by their loving firmness in the class room - the way they respected us and demanded respect and obedience in return. Never once did a Mennonite teacher try to impose his or her religious beliefs on us. What they did impart was their values of decency and concern for others.

Mennonites have been quietly going about the business of educating children for a long, long time in Niagara and they've earned a lot of respect. They are the known, the trusted, the proven.

I don't think the voters of Ontario said no to faith based schools. I think we said no to someone's half-baked politically correct notion of what is fair.

Serviced Again, Ontario

Last week I received a phone call from the local medical clinic asking if I had found my Health Care card.

"I didn't lose it," I said.

"The last time you were here you used a card that was later identified in our computer as 'lost'," insisted the receptionist.

"Oh?" My eyebrows were furrowed in puzzlement. I had no idea what she was talking about.

"You'll need to phone this number and straighten your problem out."

I definitely wanted to 'straighten my problem out' so I hung up and obediently dialled the number she had given me.

"Service Ontario," was the crisp salutation when we were connected.

Oh no! The enhanced driver's licence swindlers! My heart sank.

"Um...Hi... The medical clinic says I've lost my health card," I said bravely. (I mean what were the chances that anybody who worked there had ever googled 'Service Ontario' during their coffee break and happened upon my sarcastic blog, Service This, Ontario 2/28/10).

"Where did you lose it?" asked the voice with the sigh of one who is forced to deal with the imbeciles of Ontario day in and day out.

"Well, actually I didn't lose it - the medical clinic thinks I lost it. I'm looking at it right now."

"Humph. What is your health care number?"

She took my number then said, "When you applied for your new health care card last year it was returned to us because your address was incorrect. Your card has been cancelled."

My health care cancelled? What good is a Canadian without health care?

"Well! I'd like you to know that Canada Post delivered my Health Care Card right to my house and I'm holding it in my hands as we speak!" I let a lot of annoyance creep into my voice. Some things like health care are worth fighting for, (unless you are from the U.S. apparently).

"Yeah? Well what colour is your card?"

"What colour is my card?" I gave a nervous laugh.

I was stalling because I was 98 % sure my card was the same colour as everybody else's card but I was beginning to feel guilty about something. I just didn't know what I had done.

" Well I used to have a red and white one but now I have a green one and ..."

"Dark green or light green?"

Yikes! Was this a trick question? Dark or light green compared to what?

Hoping we could meet half way I opined that it was sort of a medium green. My hands were starting to sweat.

"Well, Frances...

"Here it comes," I thought. I gripped the phone and braced myself for whatever bureaucratic nonsense was about to befall me.

"I'm going to send you a new one! Have a good day."

I'm sure I imagined it, but I could have sworn I heard the laughter of a room full of civil servants before she clicked of.

Jeesh!

What's in a Name?

I've been thinking about changing the heading of my blog. North Pelham News seems a little presumptuous now that I think about it.

I took the spy car out for a little spin around town today and although it is not exactly clear where the boundaries of North Pelham are, I estimate there are about 100 homes here plus the feed store, the Avondale, Ivan's Garage and the crooked church. (I don't mean that it's crooked because it's run by a bunch of Presbyterian ne'er-do-wells, I mean crooked in the sense that just like everything taller than 3 meters on this windswept part of the escarpment, it lists heavily to the east.) Could even be 150 homes here, but like I said who really knows where North Pelham stops and Effingham, Rockway, Boyle and Ridgeville start. I suppose someone must know down at Regional headquarters, but that doesn't matter, my point is that my news is not necessarily the news of the other North Pelhaggonians, therefore I have erred in the naming of my blog.

But what to call it?

Songs From North Pelham - hahahahaha, I'm tone deaf & can't carry a tune
News from a 7th Decade Girl - yawn, too boring
Ramblings of a 7th Decade Girl - Hello Alzheimer's? This is Francie...I think 
Musings of a 7th Decade Girl - too intellectual sounding for moi
Life in the Retirement Lane - give me a break
Life in the Asparagus Patch - season is almost over
Ticked Off - let's not go there
I'm a Cranky Old Broad And This is What I Think About Things - hmmmmmm

Kinda like that last one...

Bugged

Catastrophes in North Pelham

Day 1

It was a windy, cold, wet Saturday and I could see that the purple martins were in great distress, swooping and buzzing as I pulled into the driveway. It didn't take long to spot the problem. Their house was lying on the ground. It had stood on a pole on the corner of this property for 25 years.

From about 2 p.m. until about 6 p.m. the birds sat in the driveway. They sat facing the bird house, perfectly still. It was very unusual behaviour and I wondered if they were in shock.

At one point I went out and set the bird house right side up again - the wind was still blowing hard and had upended it again.

The martins flew a short distance away but as soon as I left they took their positions again.

But there was nothing else to be done.

I came in and turned on my computer. Within minutes I had lost my internet connection.

Jeesh, what a crumby day.


Day 2

Still can't get online.


There was a dead martin in one of the compartments of the bird house. It must have been inside when the wind tore the house from the pole.

I thought of David Suzuki's "A Murder of Crows". He spoke about the mourning that crows appear to go through when one of their flock dies. He described how they all gather in one tree near the body and spend a quiet, still time together.

I wondered if that was what the martins were doing yesterday. Do they understand death? How sad.


Day 3

"Uh oh," said the guy at Niagara.com when I described my computer problem over the phone. "That doesn't sound good."

A few martins were still flying around the bird house when I left that morning with my computer strapped in the passenger seat of my spy car.

"Uh oh," said the guy at the Future Shop as I put my computer on the counter and described my problem. "That doesn't sound good."


Cold, wet and miserable. I mean the weather is still cold, wet and miserable.

I'm just miserable.


Day 4

The new martin house is up but there are no martins. The sparrows are really over the moon about their new digs though. The starlings tried to muscle their way into the neighbourhood and if I wasn't so anxious about the martins I would laugh about how the starlings steal stuff from the sparrows' nests.


The Future Shop called. When I took my computer in they told me I wouldn't have it back for at least a week and here it is, ready in 2 days and my warranty covers the cost!

Even though the weather is still crappy maybe things are looking up??


Day 5

Woke up to find four male martins at the bird house roughing up the interloping sparrows and starlings. The weather is supposed to finally start to clear up tomorrow and they'll bring the girls back then I guess.

Hurray! Bird crisis over! Computer problem solved!



Now if I could just catch those no goodnik asparagus thieves...

Genesis Revisited

The apple was

a great mistake.

This time instead,

let's eat the

snake.

Is that an Asparagus in Your Pocket, or...

I just read that 4% of human genes are Neanderthal. Seems they didn't disappear after all, they are us!

And I have to tell you after seeing the state of my asparagus patch this year I believe it. What kind of a scoundrel would tromp through someone else's patch and take only the tips? I picture these thieves outfitted like dew worm pickers - tin cans tied to their knees and lights strapped to their heads.

But all is not lost. Like all wild asparagus lovers, I do have my secret patch. You can see that it is not on the side of the road. The location is a secret. My dog, Flynn, guards it vigilantly and is trained to kill trespassers. Or bark at them very loudly. Her choice.

Asparagus contains folic acid, vitamin C, potassium and beta-carotene. It is a natural diuretic. It is good for the heart and contains no fat, cholesterol or sodium. What's not to love?

My very favourite recipe, which I found in the Summer , Taste of Home Magazine, combines black beans, (great fibre source) and asparagus and is the hands down, best summer salad I have ever tasted.

You don't have to have wild asparagus to enjoy this one, folks.

Black Bean and Asparagus Salad

1 lb fresh asparagus cut into 1 inch pieces

1 can black beans rinsed and drained

1 medium sweet red pepper cut into 1/2 inch pieces

1 tablespoon finely chopped onion

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon cider vinegar

1 tablespoon fresh minced cilantro

1 clove garlic minced

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

dash pepper

Directions: Steam the asparagus for 4 to 5 minutes. Don't overcook them. You want them crisp! Combine the asparagus, beans, red pepper and onion in a bowl. In a smaller bowl whisk the oil, vinegar, cilantro, garlic, salt, cumin and pepper. Pour over the vegetables to coat. Cover and refrigerate for at least two hours.

Yummy.

 

This One Goes to New York

The bomb scare in New York City this week made me realize that is almost a year since my last trip to the Big Apple. New York is my favourite city. It is the only place I've ever been that lived up to what I thought it would be.

The number of New Yorkers who stopped to help whenever we looked the slightest bit baffled was unbelievable. Some people went out of their way to take us where we wanted to go. It is a wonderful place, friendly, clean and safe and I hate to think of all of those people living in fear again. If you can dedicate a simple blog to a city and its people, this one goes to New York.


I went with a bus load of teachers. The idea was that we would leave after the teachers finished work on the Friday before the 24th of May long weekend, drive all night, do the city all day, spend one night in a hotel and drive back on Sunday morning. It sounded like a good idea when I heard about it. I loved New York when I was there three decades ago. And this trip was cheap, cheap, cheap!

What didn't occur to me until I had committed myself and bought a ticket to see South Pacific on Broadway was that I was thirty years old the last time I was in New York City and I flew there in a nice comfortable airplane. This time I was...well, older than thirty and I was planning on sitting up all night on a crowded bus.

But an adventure is an adventure. We took off in a cloud of dust and merriment which ended abruptly at our first stop which was about three meters from our point of departure - the duty free shop in Niagara Falls. That was actually okay with me though. I had won the bus draw and was entitled to pick up a free bottle of wine.

Half an hour later we were off again. We were told that we would be stopping at a restaurant at 7 a.m. to eat and freshen up. The freshen up part became very clear when we found out that the bus wasn't going to take us to our hotel first, actually it wasn't even going to come to a complete stop when we arrived in downtown Manhattan. It was going to slowly roll by Macy's, as close to the curb as it could get and we were going to have to leap out, hopefully not into traffic. Sixty year old women don't leap all that well, but for the price we were paying I guess I was lucky the bus slowed down.

The Flying Wallendas didn't rush over and sign me up for their seniors acrobatic team but I survived.

We went right over to the World Trade Centre site. The site itself is a construction zone but we decided on the spur of the moment to take a tour offered by a group of volunteers. The World Trade Centre Volunteers are people who were either in one of the buildings or lost someone on Sept. 11th.

The guides that day were a woman who lost a cousin and a man who was high up in the second tower and got out. Their stories were very difficult to listen to, the family's last phone call from the cousin when he knew he wasn't going to get out, the man's trip down the stairs in the dark. Both of them told stories that were remarkable for the lack of hatred and because of their resolve that those lost will not be forgotten and that an amazing city will go on.

We managed to see South Pacific on Broadway and get back to Times Square in time for our prepaid tour of the city which ended after dark. We finally arrived back at the hotel at 11 p.m. The next morning our bus picked us up at the same spot outside Macys . It is much harder to leap onto a moving bus than it is to leap off one in case you are wondering.

When we arrived back in Canada later in the day the Canadian Customs Agent climbed on the bus and yelled, "Anybody bringing back anything they shouldn't be bringing back?"

"No!" we all shouted dishonestly in unison. He laughed and climbed back off the bus.

Ah, Canada! It was good to be back home, but you know if I couldn't be home and had to live somewhere else, I'd be proud to be a New Yorker.

The House of Sober Women

In 1867 the people in power chose to model the Canadian Senate after the British House of Lords. It was always intended to be a place for the upper crust to rest their unelected bottoms. But I think we just don't have enough of the historical upstairs/downstairs mentality to carry it off. It may work in Britain because most people there, after a few thousand years of conditioning, really believe that a few aristocrats are entitled to a life of money and leisure. And most aristocrats really feel, not only the weight of the family name, but also beholden enough to the nation to do their minimal part in the governing of the U.K.  But it doesn't seem to be working here according to the shrieks we all heard coming from reporters in Ottawa last week.

There are 105 Senators. Each Senator is making about $300,000 with travel expenses allowed on top of that. Those are your tax dollars and my tax dollars. Is that money being used the way it was intended to be used? The media is making it sound as if we have a group of unaccountable and seemingly unconscionable people draining our coffers. It is hard to prove or disprove something like that when even the Auditor General of Canada, Sheila Fraser is not being allowed to inspect the books.

Do I detect the aroma of Senate reform in the air? Hope so.

This week I came across a quote from George Elliot. She said, "It's never too late to be what you might have been." Maybe we need to go back to the beginnings of the Senate and turn it into what it should have been in the first place. Not modelled on the Brits, modelled on the Iroquois.

My proposal is that we base the new Senate on the Iroquois Clan Matron system. It would be made up of women. There are thirty-six there already and some of the names I recognize as women who have contributed greatly to Canadian society. We would start with them. The senators would continue to be unelected, continue to be chosen from all parts of the country, but have some real power.

The passing of the bills would not be a part of the Senate's mandate anymore. The Iroquois clan matrons controlled the warriors by withholding food if they disapproved of their actions. I'm not saying the Senators would starve an out of control House of Commons into submission. I'm suggesting that each new law or tax would have to be presented to the public showing the Senate's thumbs up or thumbs down. The withholding of approval could be very powerful.

The older I get the more I see the sexes as equal but different - way different. The House of Commons is never going to be a comfortable setting for most women. Why not just give it to the men? They can holler and shout and curse at each other all they want and the women can meet in the Red Chamber, bring the grandkids, drink tea and do the work of monitoring the actions of the Members of Parliament.

Then, truly, at long last, we would have the "house of sober second thought" that Sir John A. always wanted.

The Secret Diary of Frazzee1

Dear Dairy,

I'm being followed by a tomato in Twitter.

The tomato doesn't do anything. It never posts an entry. I mean I suppose nobody really cares how things are going in the vegetable garden, but still you'd think it would make an effort. Post a new recipe for chicken cacciatore or something.

The tomato found me. I didn't follow it first, I swear, although I might have if I had known about it. I mean If there had been a vegetable category when I first started browsing through Twitter looking for interesting people to follow, maybe I would have picked the tomato over say, the bean sprout.

Not that there is a lack of things to admire, but sometimes I wonder what is it about me that is so attractive to the tomato. Given my gene pool, if it had been a potato or a haddock following me around I could understand. But a tomato? I'm at a loss.

It's kind of creepy knowing this big, red blobby thing is in my personal cyberspace. Watching. Well maybe tomatoes don't actually watch. But they can hear. Remember the earmuffs in "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes"? Or was that in "Killer Tomatoes Eat Paris"? Hard to remember, so many good movies.

I guess I shouldn't go to Twitter alone at night, diary, but I can't help myself. I need to keep up with things. I'd even miss those two weirdoes who keep trying to sell me naked pictures of themselves.

You are the only one who knows about the tomato and I trust you not to tell.

Until next time, dear diary, I remain your intrepid,

Frazzee1

Beam Those Socks Up, William Shatner!

My whole outlook on the future of Canadian politics was changed because I decided to search through my coloured sock drawer this morning.

To be politically correct, I suppose I should call it my 'socks of colour' drawer. Anyway I had a half baked idea that I would do something about finding last year's summer clothes. Don't ask why I was looking at socks, I know we don't wear socks in the summer. It just happened that way, okay?

One of my favourite pink socks was waiting for me when I opened the drawer. It had obviously squirmed to the top of the pile overnight. A grim reminder that its mate went AWOL last year and I have been waiting far too long for its return. I was wracked with indecision. When do you actually give up on a lost sock and put the other one down? How long do you wait? I poked at the drawer while I contemplated the question and to my horror I found four more socks without mates!

I did what everyone of us would do in such a dire situation - I googled 'lost socks'.

Not much help out there, but I learned that the Americans actually have a Bureau of Missing Socks. It was a government agency formed on August 1, 1861 during their Civil War. It was run by a man named Joseph Smithson who was terrible at being a soldier but very good at finding socks. He was the first person to document the 'lost sock' phenomena, noting that most soldiers lost only one sock at a time.

The Bureau of Missing Socks passed to civilian control at the end of that war and to this day is still deeply involved in the study of missing socks. They consider all theories from extraterrestrial thievery of socks to... well, ...extraterrestrial thievery of socks.

Hey, at least they are doing something about it, and I think it's time we Canadians stepped up to the laundry basket too.

I feel so strongly about this that I have given up my former goal of finding a home grown monarch for Canada and am now officially on the William Shatner for Governor General Bandwagon. If the Yanks are right then we'll need someone at the helm who has experience dealing with extraterrestrials. And my money is on Shatner. Rick Hanson is a hero, a modest and genuinely nice man who has done much as a goodwill ambassador for Canada, never mind the money he has raised for spinal cord injury research, but can he force evil aliens to return our socks? I think not.

To my mind there is only one man for the job of Governor General of Canada, Canada, and that man is Captain Kirk!


Oh Sh-t. Did I say Captain Kirk? I meant to say William Shatner. Maybe nobody will notice...

Sex, Trees and Dalton McGinty

Boy that was fast. My mind's ability to process things is a lot slower than Dalton McGinty's ability to change policy I'm sad to say.

I'm sure he didn't ask a teacher before he flip flopped on sex ed in grade three and that is a shame because even I could have told him how to introduce the topic to the primary grades. You don't teach about human reproduction. Not at all. You teach the life cycle of the lascivious pine tree.

The first and for some reason, the only time I was called upon to teach the life cycle of the pine tree was at the beginning of my teaching career. It was long before sex ed was introduced into the curriculum. The raunchy behaviour in the staff room ceased the moment the door opened to the rest of the school - no lap dances by teachers in the gym in those days, and certainly n the classroom no attention was given to hormones and changing bodies.

I was teaching grade four. When I first read the notes from the unit on pine trees I was surprised they didn't come in a plain brown envelope. Now thirty years later and after having taught sex ed for years to older kids who probably knew more than I did, I just think it is sweet.

I don't know if I remember all of the details correctly but written for a primary student the story might go like something like this:

Where Baby Pine Trees Come From
You see, children, there are two types of pine cones on every pine tree. The boy pine cones are at the top of the tree and the girl pine cones are at the bottom. When they are old enough the boy pine cones release pollen which is also known as sperm. When the girl pine cones are old enough they open up and release a sticky substance to catch the sperm. If the sperm is caught by the sticky stuff, a long tube is formed inside that section of the girl pine cone. It leads to a special cell deep inside of her called an ovum or egg. The sperm starts a long journey of a year or so as it slowly travels down the tube in search of the egg. When the sperm meets the egg they join together and a seed is formed. This seed is called an embryo. The embryo falls to the ground and if conditions are right, that is, if it finds itself in good soil where there is water and sunlight, a baby pine tree will begin to grow.

And that is just one very charming way to introduce the miracle of life to little kids, Mr. McGinty.

You should ask a teacher next time, okay?

A Pardon For Karla?

I didn't know that people who had committed manslaughter could seek a pardon after a certain length of time.

However, now that I know it, I can tell you that I don't care if Karla Homolka receives a pardon. She's been hounded out of the country with little chance of ever being able to return to live a normal life here, she's pushing forty and raising a son who will one day find out what his mother did. Her day of reckoning will come.

I do care about people who might find themselves through happenstance, in the horrific situation of having been the cause of someone else's death. It could happen to any one of us.

The dictionary definition of manslaughter according to the Gage Canadian dictionary is "the unlawful killing of another humn being accidentally or without malice or premeditation." As it stands now the law doesn't seem unreasonable to me, if anything it is an example of the compassionate society Canadians have built and I would not like to see this law changed because one woman got away with murder.

By This Umlaut Ye Shall Conquer

Apparently Queen Elizabeth II of England is arriving in Canada on June 28.

No doubt she read my January, "Queen of (Seal) Hearts" blog, and is trying to reëstablish her sovereignty. Personally I think it is too little, too late. However we do need to tread carefully here. We don't want the Brits to get cranky with us because there is nothing they like better than a good invasion now and then. That's when they get all lean and noble like Alec Guinness or David Niven say things to each other like, "Damn those colonials all to hell, old chap." Which is very intimidating.

Michaëlle Jean's tenure as Governor General ends in September. Rumours are aswirl that Elizabeth II may appoint a new GG while she is here. We need to politely decline the English Queen's appointment and get on with our future as a constitutional monarchy with our own monarch.

In my January blog I presented all of the reasons why Michaëlle Jean should replace Elizabeth II and become our Queen, i.e., the wardrobe, the contacts, the goofy husband, the daughter, etc., but not being aware of it at the time, I unwittingly left out the key argument, which is of course - her umlaut! How regal is that? I spotted in on the official GG website this week. Very impressive. Definitely a sign from heaven that this was meant to be, sort of like Constantine's, " in this sign ye shall conquer".

So here's the thing. We need to coördinate and double our efforts. We must continue our letter writing campaign to every MP and MPP, except maybe Helena Guergis. Letters are important and they work, they really do, but we need something even more powerful to muster the troops.

Think umlaut, my friends. As a show of solidarity with our future queen, I think Canadians should revert to using the umlaut which evidently hasn't been seen here since the 1940s. It disappeared about the same time as the last timber rattle snake was seen in Niagara.

It is very easy to figure out when to use one. Whenever two vowels that are usually a digraph, (i.e., make one sound, example: ea makes the ee sound), but are not a digraph because each vowel makes a different sound, the umlaut goes over the second vowel. For example cooperation which to a new reader of English probably looks like it must be a type of chicken farm, would be spelled coöperation.


It is a little more difficult figuring out how to get them. You need to go to accessories, then system tools, then use the character map.  Unfortunately there is a lot of cutting and pasting and I haven't figured out how to get the font right yet - but the cause is just!


Time is short and there is much to be done. To arms!

Oops...I mean:

To Umlauts, Canada!

S.O.S.

When "Body Works", the collection of posed plasticised human bodies, first hit the Ontario Science Centre a few years ago, it made me uncomfortable although it was carefully marketed as a science exhibit. To me it looked like an art show. At the time though it wouldn't have occurred to me to question the Science Centre.

But now the science/art line has been crossed and I think we need to think about it. A similar show of plasticized human bodies is coming to Niagara. This time it is being advertised as "artistic, entertaining...also educational" and a real money maker for the area.

A more truthful marketing ploy, I suppose, but still very disquieting because it is literally an art exhibit of soulless humans.

Suppose a local sculptor managed to find a number of dying people and offered to pay them for the use of their bodies after death. Suppose the people were in need of the money and so agreed. Suppose the sculptor draped their naked, dead bodies across frames that made them seem as if they were engaged in an activity of some kind so that we could see the miraculous way the skin works to cover our internal organs and muscles. It isn't likely that many of us would go and see this art show. Because we might have known one of the people? Because it smelled? Actually it doesn't matter because the police would close it down.

I believe the adage that art reflects society. We've become so desensitized to death, especially death that happens far away to people we don't know, that we too are in danger of losing our souls.

Pretty and sanitized as it may be, this art show smells.

Actually it reeks to high heaven.

The Good, The Bad and the Only Too Human

I know the last thing the free world needs is another comment about Tiger Woods, but I just can't resist it.

Is he a good man? A bad man?

A good man is a protector of women and children and sometimes the sole provider in a family, particularly when the children are young. A man who is particularly successful at these things is likely financially secure, intelligent and healthy, jam packed with just the kind of genes the female of the species is hard wired to want to pass on.

Tiger Woods is a very successful man who people clearly identified as 'a good man' and because of his success and 'goodness', women were drawn to him. The problem? It seems he took advantage of several women he had no intention of providing for or protecting and somebody, I'm guessing one of the women, told his wife. Women don't take that sort of thing, if you'll pardon the terrible way I'm going to put it, lying down anymore.

But Tiger Woods didn't kill, maim or mutilate anyone. It doesn't seem that he fathered any unwanted children.

His being good or bad is moot. Few of us will ever meet him and find out. What we know for sure is that he's human and he erred. So have we all.

Go play golf, Tiger.

Honk if You Love General Motors

Before I retired, I needed a vehicle that would get me out of the driveway during a snowstorm if the farmer down the road didn't arrive with his tractor on time.

Not being a large person, I asked the local car dealer to show me the smallest four wheel drive he had. He took me over to see the only Jimmy on the lot. It was love at first sight. I knew the Jimmy was a keeper when I took it for a test drive. I felt safer in that vehicle than in any other car that I have driven. And it had so much power I was sure there were testicles hanging between its back two wheels.

So I was in a good mood when I arrived at work the Monday after I bought the Jimmy, eager to get to the staff room to brag about my new mode of transportation. I parked, turned off the vehicle and pulled the visor down.

No mirror.

Now you might not think this is a major defect in a car. It will likely depend on your sex. Most women will probably understand my feeling - that GM should announce an immediate recall.

I leaned over and checked the passenger seat visor. There was a mirror. It slowly dawned on me then - this wasn't a manufacturing defect, my poor Jimmy was made that way on purpose. There wasn't a mirror on the driver's side, because GM didn't think that women ever needed four wheel drive and men evidently don't worry whether or not they have a piece of their breakfast hanging off a front tooth.

I wasn't happy about it, but I learned to live with my Jimmy's one defect. My cranky attitude towards GM did get me thinking about some of the other things that bug me about cars though.

For example, I would like a selection of pleasant noises that I could use to communicate with someone who is not in the car with me. I hate being limited to the 'F--- you' sound of my present horn. I would like a polite little beep that I could use if I needed to get another driver's attention. I would like a cheery "Hi,how ya doing" chirp that I could use if I saw someone I knew walking down the street. A friendly ' see ya later' sound would be nice, too.

And what about my purse? It goes everywhere I go. It is my most important possession and yet there is no place to store it safely in my car. I need my purse close at hand but up off the floor away from pedals and dirt. Putting it on the passenger seat is sometimes okay if I have no passenger, but too many times my purse has gone flying if I've had to make a quick stop and if I haven't closed it I have to spend half an hour picking up lipstick, coins, keys, cards etc from the floor.

I could go on, but in the interest of brevity I'll only mention one other thing. In my whole life, absolutely no one, and I must stress this point - no one has ever asked me how many revs my car engine makes. So why is the gas gauge, which is REALLY important to me, such a tiny little Tinkerbelle sized window that I have to squint to see while the dial that shows the number of engine revs is the size of the porthole to the whale aquarium at Marine land?

Well, I don't have the Jimmy anymore. If there is a snowstorm I have the luxury of staying home and besides that, the payments were killing me. I went back to my GM dealer because I'm a loyal customer but I don't know if I would have if somebody else offered a girl friendly vehicle at a reasonable price.

Are you listening GM?

Women buy a lot of cars. You need to sell more cars.

Safe, affordable, practical, friendly, attractive .

You can do it.

A Cover Up in Quebec?

Quebec seems on the verge of banning the niqab, though evidently there are only about a dozen women in the whole province who choose to veil themselves.

I find it a strange but somewhat romantic practice. If it had been at all common in the early 1970's when I was a young art student I might have taken it up myself on occasion. I love the look of the flowing robes and the mystery of the veil.

However this being 2010, I do find it disconcerting to see an Islamic family strolling down the street on a blazing hot day, the husband and children in cool western summer wear and the wife covered from head to foot in long robes. I have seen the same sort of thing in Mennonite communities, ordinary men standing beside wives dressed in traditional garb.

I may wish that the women didn't seem so subservient but I don't feel threatened by Mennonites. I feel more uncomfortable when I see a veiled woman. My mind immediately flies to the 'honour killings' that have gotten a lot of press in Canada recently even though I know that the number of women killed by their husbands or lovers is probably ten times higher in the general population. It is unfair and I've had to really think about how I feel about these things. Watching the Twin Towers fall changed a lot more than the landscape of New York City, unfortunately.

So here are my thoughts on the subject:

The main question that is troubling Quebec politicians seems to be whether veiled Muslim women should have to reveal their faces for things like Canadian driver's licences and passports. From what I have read it seems to have become a question of frightening political correctness.

I think that if it hadn't been for 9 11 we would probably see these Muslim women as just another interesting part of the Canadian mosaic and they would be expected to comply without question to Canadian laws or they would be deported. Obviously the Quran is open to interpretation because some women do not wear a head covering at all, some wear the hajib or headscarf and some the veil or niqab.

Women who choose the niqab must be prepared to show their faces for identification purposes. It is a no brainer and not worth a lot of fuss in anybody's legislature when there are so many real problems that need attention. However, the niqab should not be banned. Women should have the freedom to wear what they want and to practise their religion the way they want.

It's the almost-totally-free-to-do what-you-want Canadian way.

It Isn't Easy Being Greenish

I'm now a member of the Federal Green Party AND the Provincial Green Party.

But I find it harder being green than being NDP orange. For me, social justice issues are much clearer than environmental issues. Oh I know social justice is part of the Green Platform, that's one of the reasons I joined, it just isn't the raison d'être, and isn't what people have had time to discuss at the meetings I've been to.

" Shift" might happen, but it doesn't happen easily for some of us.

The backlash against the global warming theory unnerved me shortly after I joined the Federal party last spring. There is a strong contingent of very vocal people out there that believes global warming is hogwash. Naturally, just because I had committed myself, every newspaper and magazine article, as well as radio and television show I happened upon, seemed to be promoting that view.

I searched for the truth. But the truth on environmental issues isn't always easily found. Research on Google was overwhelming. I couldn't just pop up to the Arctic and see for myself.

In the end I thought of Hamilton.

For me, the Burlington Skyway has always been the link between Niagara and the great outside world. I remember when there was just one bridge. Heck, I even remember when you had to pay to go over it. But mostly I remember those giant Stelco smokestacks. For decades they spewed a toxic smelling black smoke across Hamilton harbour. The sky and water were a sickly steel gray even on the sunniest of days. The paint peeled on the few houses that were strung along the beach and they looked grim and abandoned. The stench was nauseating. I pitied the few small people I would sometimes see scurrying below as my car safely sped over the span and away from the hellish scene.

I realize now that the environment had to have been affected by Stelco and I believe that global warming, or to use the new and I think more apt phrase, "global wierding" is a direct result of human activity.

So I was in a self-congratulatory mood as I headed to last week's Green Party meeting. "In like flint," I thought to myself with relief, "I've finally got it."

After signing in I made my way across the head table where the books, pamphlets, buttons etc. were spread out for the party faithful to fondle. I picked up a couple of things, more for show than anything else. The buzz in the room was loud and as I'm not one for mingling, I returned to my seat. Waiting for the meeting to start, I turned over one of the pamphlets.

My hair stood on end. I didn't know the Green Party was against nuclear power. I thought nuclear power was 'clean' energy - dangerous maybe, but environmentally friendly unless there was a melt down and millions of people and animals suffered endless agonies and then died lingering painful deaths. But there it was in black and white and green, "We can keep the lights on without nuclear." The pamphlet went on to note that Ontario's wind power potential is more than ten times greater than our total electricity consumption. There was even a cheery little picture of a wind farm.

It shouldn't have been a problem. I should have been able to 'shift' my thinking. Right? Not exactly because lately I've been concerned and puzzled by the reports coming out about windmill farms making people sick.

Sigh. It still isn't easy being Green.

Frogs and Snails and XM8 Lightweight Assault Rifles

On Face Book this week I had a message from a young man. Well actually there was no message, just a request to become his friend. At first I was puzzled. The accompanying photo showed four laughing young men who looked to be about nineteen or twenty standing in a line, arms draped over shoulders, on the pavement in downtown Toronto. Not one of them looked familiar.

I studied the name and out of the misty depths of my teaching memories, a face began to emerge. A thin blond grade six boy with an big, loveable grin. He and his younger brother had been homeschooled but for some reason the family had decided to send the boys to public school one year and I became the oldest boy's teacher.

He was enthusiastic and genuinely glad to be in school with other kids. I liked him a lot. There was only one issue that I remember worrying about and it had to do with something he told me about himself, his grandfather and guns. For the life of me though, after all of these years and so many kids that I worried about, I can't remember what it was. I just remember that an alarm bell rang quietly in my head.

Thinking this might be who was trying to contact me, I went to his home page photo gallery to see if there was a better picture of him. I was quite taken aback by what I saw. A number of photos were of young men in camouflage uniforms holding guns. They seemed to be involved in some kind of military exercise. There were photos of young women holding rifles too but these women weren't Canadian army women, unless halter tops, lots of skin and hip huggers are allowed on the shooting range. I had no idea what I was looking at. Boy Scouts gone bad? A scary gun club? Camp Borden after hours? An Aryan paramilitary group? I found the images alien and disturbing.

Little boys grow up and change but I didn't expect this one would grow up and move to such a hostile planet in some other universe.

I suppose the warning bell that went off in my head as he described the activity he had done with his grandfather was a hint of the direction his life would take.

Jeesh. I wonder what some of the kids I really worried about are doing now.

Hey, Who's the Naked Canadian Guy?

We don't have free speech in Canada and yet everybody is up in arms over this Ann Coulter thing. Somebody needs to tell the emperor he's not wearing any clothes.

If we had free speech we would be able to buy newspaper ads threatening death and dismemberment to any person or group we didn't like and we would be able to encourage others to join us.

We don't even have freedom to own certain things. I'll never be the old lady next door with the Uzi.

I think freedom is what this whole brouhaha regarding Ms Coulter is really about. A lot of people have forgotten who we are. We are the people who accepted the War Measures act in 1970 during the FLQ crisis. We had one Cabinet Minister murdered, a British diplomat had been kidnapped, bombs were going off in Montreal and our Prime Minister did away with our civil liberties. Can't imagine that happening in the U.S. The part about the civil liberties - not the murder, kidnapping and bombs.

As a nation, we prefer law and order over individual rights. One in six Canadians is descended from a United Empire Loyalist after all. They are the folks who were willing to pay the heavy taxes on tea and other commodities rather than go to war against the powerful British during the American Revolution. Sitting on the fence backfired though. People were either with the Patriots or they were against them in 1776 and thousands of refugees had to flee the U.S. for Canada where they could live peacefully under the established British law.

So maybe it's in our gene pool.

Actually, I think that how our acceptance of a modified form of freedom came about, isn't as important as the fact that we need to see ourselves as we truly are. We're not free to spread hate and despair. We aren't free to arm ourselves. Good? Bad? I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that our way is the better way.

Now cover up, you great big naughty boy!

And About Those Baby Seals...

Since my last post, I've spent a sleepless night worrying that anyone who happens to read my blog about polar bears will come to the conclusion that I support the seal hunt.

I don't. I don't I don't. The seal hunt is something far beyond what a human being with a soul would do to a defenceless animal. Unfortunately, up until now I have been burying my head in the sand about the seal hunt because it is too upsetting. I have been leaving the room when there was a television story, glancing away from pictures, and trying generally to avoid thinking about it.

But I crossed a line somewhere in my psyche with my polar bear blog and here I am, finally giving my opinion on sealing.

I was pleased to learn that even PETA, (the international paint and pie throwing group), is not against the Inuit people hunting seal for the traditional reasons. Having spent 12 years in the north I know that food is shockingly expensive and artificial fur will not protect you at 40 or 50 degrees below zero. Seal meat and seal fur are a necessity of life for many Inuit. Inuit use all parts of the animal, not much is wasted, whereas the sealers take only the fur of young seals in the most cruel manner possible.

Sealing started in 1720 or thereabouts. It is not a traditional hunt done by indigenous people in a humane, spiritual manner. It is a merciless slaughter done on an icy abattoir.

So who buys seal pelts? The largest market by far is Norway. The most important seal pelt processing plant in Newfoundland, Carino, (according to the most recent info I could find), is actually owned by a Norwegian company. But don't think they need the pelts, because although Norway is a northern country, it has a fairly temperate climate due to the warm Gulf Stream. Finland and Germany are the second and third largest markets but there are many other countries who import thousands of pelts each year.

PETA and likeminded groups need to go after these markets with a renewed vengeance. If there was no money in sealing the industry would die. Our politicians need to wok to find alternate employment for the workers.

The seal hunt must stop.

Inuit Need Support, Not Critcism

I was quite interested to read the recent reports that Canadian and Inuit leaders were instrumental in the defeat of the proposal to classify polar bears as a species threatened with extinction at the UN wildlife observation meeting. The great white bears can still be hunted. I'm sure that many Canadians are upset at this turn of events and I must say the killing of animals is abhorrent to me as well. However, having had a firsthand glimpse of what our southern values have done to some of our northern indigenous people, I have to say that I think we need to butt out on this one.

Many years ago I learned that you can't teach a child who spent the previous night sitting outside a bar so that he can make sure his parents don't pass out in a snowdrift and freeze to death on the way home. Nor can you teach a child who comes to school dirty, cold and hungry because there is no heat or food at her house.

These things happen to some children in Canada. They happen because a spirit, a culture and a way of life were destroyed.

I don't know if there is a way back for our native people or even if they should go back, but whatever the future holds, we shouldn't try to do it for them. They will find their own way. As Canadians we need to support them.

I think the government did the right thing.

Take the Gun, Leave the Asparagus

_{The hunt for wild asparagus in southern Ontario brings out the Alaskan frontierswoman in me}

_{Many years ago when I was teaching in Dawson City, Yukon, I would on occasion cross the border into Alaska. I went by river a few times. My friends and I could leave Dawson on Friday night and arrive in the village of Eagle, Alaska on Sunday. I have some fine memories of paddling down the Yukon River, eating fresh salmon and camping out under the midnight sun.}

_{Sometimes we would fly into Juneau, other times we would take the 'Top of the World Highway' and drive to Skagway or Chicken.}

_{Chicken, Alaska, in those days was about the size of Eagle but as the name implies, it didn't have the same fierce charm. What it did have was an old lady named Anne Purdy.}

_{Anne Purdy had a big gun and a super-sized Alaskan personality to go with it.}

_{When I first moved to Dawson I came across, " Tisha", a book written about her life. She had been a young New England girl who had gone north to teach school in the 1920s. She had fallen in love with a young man who was part native and the prejudice they faced kept them apart for years. Sarah Palin wasn't the first Alaskan to take advantage of Canadian health care, the climax of Mrs. Purdy's story involved a harrowing, life and death dog sled race to Dawson City for medical treatment at fifty degrees below zero.}

_{When I found out that she was still alive I decided to go and meet her.}

_{Around that time Mrs. Purdy was in the middle of a political brawl with the Alaska Bureau of Land Management. I heard her threaten to shoot every last one of the s.o.b.s if they took one step on her (disputed) property. Imagine a proud old lady, tall, with long gray hair, a floor length gingham skirt over rubber boots and a rifle she was prepared to use. The image stayed with me.}

_{Now years later, back in Ontario, I'm the old(ish) lady with the gray(ish) hair. But my land dispute isn't with a faceless bureaucracy, my dispute is with sneaky city people who steal my wild asparagus. We're talking important issues here, folks.}

_{You see, asparagus often grows on the edge of the road in Niagara, the part that is owned, (on paper), by the region. But psychologically, emotionally and spiritually, that little strip of land on the other side of the ditch belongs to the home owner.}

_{I believe that people have no business picking the home owner's asparagus from the home owner's land!}

_{So be warned, if you are on the trail of the wild asparagus in North Pelham this spring, the crazy old lady standing in the ditch will be me. Being Canadian I don't have a gun, but I have a broom, and by golly this year I intend to use the bristly end of it.}

_{So be afraid, you asparagus thieves, be very afraid...}

The Sky is Falling

re: the national anthem

I’ve always been able to vote. I can’t imagine what it was like for the Suffragettes who struggled for the right to be a part of the democratic process. I wasn’t refused entry to university because I was female. Those battles were long over by the time I became active in the women’s movement in the early seventies.

Was I grateful? Did I feel that we were picking up where they had left off? I’d like to think that we felt a connection but truthfully, winning the vote might as well have happened in the 13th century. We didn’t identify with those long gone women in their big, feathered hats, corsets and ankle length skirts. They were the past, we were the future. We were young and caught up in the excitement of the social change that was steam rolling across the land.

I can’t imagine what it is like to be young in 2010 any more than I was able to imagine what it was like to be young in 1910. But I’m proud that girls today have opportunities that were unheard of in my time. We had a lot to do with that. Because of us, most sexual stereotypes and sexist language are things of the past.

Are they grateful? No more than we were to the Suffragettes. They’ve never known life any other way. Thank heavens.

So I suppose I can understand the lack of interest in changing the lyrics to ‘Oh Canada'.

But geez Louise, it’s the national anthem we’re talking about, the most important song in the country. This one matters - oh, and for those who worry that changing one line will open the door to the atheists, etc., women aren’t a special interest group. We “hold up half the sky”.

The anthem should reflect this.

God Has Great Hair

Hair dressers somehow sense that they hold my self esteem between the blades of their scissors. I walk into a hair salon every six weeks glad to finally get something done with my mop of odd cowlicks and inevitably walk out an hour later looking like a shellacked, semi-plucked chicken. It’s a vicious cycle of hope and despair and it has been going on my whole life.

Now, anybody who has taken Art History 101 or has picked up a magazine that features an archaeology dig in Europe, knows that not only was God exclusively female in prehistoric times, She also had great hair. Braided, beaded, coiled, wrapped around the head, the dos were really something. So much effort went into the carving of the hair styles on the ancient Goddess figurines; it seems obvious to me that great hair had as much importance to those women as it does to women of the 21st century.

But who were the early stylists? Without mirrors, the women couldn’t have managed such elaborate coifs by themselves. I can only surmise it must have been a mother/daughter/sister, you-do-mine, I’ll-do yours, sort of thing. Pity the poor cave woman without female relatives. She must have been the schmuck of her clan, forever whining about her hair, avoided at the drinking stream and in the berry patch, passed over by the best hunters.

The conclusion is undeniable. I am channeling some poor cave woman who was an orphan and without sisters or daughters.

Now that I understand this, I can relax. Maybe I’ll let my hair grow. Revisit Woodstock, (not that I was actually there). Get in touch with my inner prehistoric woman. Because one thing is for sure, if the Goddess is reemerging and if you’ve ever seen those small sculptures of Her, you’ll understand, my fellow female persons, we’re going to have other things to worry about.

See you at the gym.