Sunny days

Snow family enjoying the Reservoir

Hapi's "gut reset" is working like a minor miracle. Not only is she producing lovely little hard turds but she seems to be energized by the relief from her former formless plops. What can I say, this is revolutionary for me and possibly for her too. Now I just have to figure out how to keep her on this diet without breaking the bank. I'm following a couple of leads, but the holiday on Monday kind of puts a crimp on things.

I called one shop that might carry a cheaper version of this diet but they seemed so out of touch that they didn't even know Monday was a holiday here ("Heritage Day"). I drove over to the shop and it was being "womanned" by a kid who was totally new to the job and didn't know anything. She tried to phone the owner but no answer, she even knocked on the owner's door but still no answer. Apparently the owner was taking an afternoon nap and the young woman did not want to disturb her. Oh well, I'll try again Monday. Or maybe Tuesday if they decide to close on the holiday.

In spite of being extremely cold (well, for around here) the weather is quite nice. The ice on the trails is nicely covered by hard-packed snow—but not too much snow—and the sky is sunny and mostly clear. I went to my writing group meeting after what seems like months of absence, I haven't written anything but it was nice to reconnect and listen to other people's stories.

I think my life is slowly shifting towards normalcy: physiotherapy almost over, visits with B in the hospital down to a dull roar, and Hapi's health seeming to improve. I have even developed a bit of a thick skin in listening to B's complaints, I can walk away at the end without carrying it with me.

Summer reminder

Happy Hour

A dog walking friend is always talking about "Happy Hour". Today she was saying her dog is getting fat from all the treats she gets at Happy Hour. She's an ex-American, so at Happy Hour she turns on the (American) news and has a drink. I think "Happy" is ironic these days and she can only stomach the news with a nice drink. I was saying to her that maybe I should try Happy Hour, and what time of day was that anyway? She said 4-ish, which is when I go for a walk in the woods with Hapi (a much more pleasant activity than watching to the news!), she said maybe I could take Hapi for a walk earlier, that is what she does.

So today I tried it. The weather today was beautiful, sunny blue skies and above (just barely) zero temperatures. Hapi and I went for our walk in the woods at 3 and were home by 4, I gave her half of her supper and poured myself a glass of wine. No news, just Beethoven on the CD player. I probably won't manage to do this every day, but today it was nice.

* * * * * * *

B is still in the hospital, her doctor told her it would be 2-6 weeks before she could leave. She heard 6 months and freaked out. I had taken 5 days off from visiting but the day I did visit was right after getting the bad news and she was being interviewed by a psychiatrist. Apparently she had been talking about killing herself.

Anonymous advice in the snow

On the bright side, she has a new roommate, S, and those two hit it off like a house afire. S insisted on having her bed moved right up beside B's bed, hardly room for a curtain between them. Turns out S is a friend of B's daughter. She has spina bifida and all sorts of disabilities and medical issues as a result, but very friendly and upbeat; hard to believe she has as many issues as she does to deal with.

The three of us yakked and laughed for a bit and then the shrink came to get B for further conversation, and S filled me in on B's reaction to the news from the doctor. Then she told me how she ended up in the hospital: fell in the bathroom, didn't have her emergency button on her and couldn't reach the phone, had to drag herself all the way out of her apartment into the hallway so another resident could see her and call for an ambulance. I am glad B has S for company, but I don't know how long S will be there. She thinks she broke her leg but nothing showed up in the X-rays so she's waiting for further tests.

Anonymous encouragement in the snow

I've decided I can only handle once-a-week visits to the hospital. I spent more than a week playing catch-up on all the stuff I wasn't doing because of physiotherapy, visiting B, and Hapi's various health issues, and yesterday was the first day that I sat down and thought, Okay, what shall I do now? I actually had an afternoon of Free Time!

I made a chocolate pudding cake, something I've been meaning to do for years and never quite got around to. I misread the recipe and put an extra tablespoon of cocoa in it, didn't hurt a bit! Maybe I'll read a book or knit something, or make another pudding cake. A friend told me her mother used to make something called Hasty Pudding that was almost exactly the same as my chocolate pudding cake, only caramel-flavoured with raisins. If I ever get tired of chocolate, I could try that!

One Out of Three Ain't Bad

(Three out of Three, plus The Dog)

This past week has been perfect winter weather, it has warmed up but there is still snow on the ground, there's no wind to speak of and the snow has been cleared off the long pond for skating. Supposed to get a lot of rain on Sunday so I don't know how long this will last. Yesterday Hapi and I went for a long walk in the Acadia woods and my youngest son called my cell phone, so we chatted while I walked. Hapi used to be his dog.

Things are going very well for him now, he has several projects on the go and they are all looking promising. The best one is his new girlfriend. He is in his forties now and has never had much luck with women. I can remember telling him when he was in early 20s that if he was still single by the time he reached his 40s he'd be in big demand, and that turns out to be more or less true. That's how it went with one of my brothers, he didn't meet his current partner until his mid-forties, after many years of not being quite good enough. Anyway, my son has a couple of other projects happening and they are turning out well too. He moved from the west coast to Ontario and this is his first experience since childhood of 'real' winter. It was nice to hear from a child who was doing well in life.

When I came out of the woods onto the road there were three young women walking towards us. They asked to pet Hapi and were oohing and aahing about how beautiful she was. My son was still on the line listening to this. When we parted ways he laughed and said he remembered when that used to happen all the time with Hiro, Hapi's brother.

* * * * * *

I visited a friend to drop off an application form she needed and to pick up some cheese her husband bought for me at Costco. We were talking about our various offspring and she told me a heartwarming story about one of her sons. She said, "One out of three ain't bad!" I told her some stuff another dogwalker told me, she also has three offspring and two are not doing well. I never hear about the third one, The Good Daughter. We both laughed and said, "One out of three ain't bad!"

* * * * * *

B is still alive and still in the hospital. She is a lousy patient. I was visiting her every other day but that became exhausting and very depressing so I dialled it back to twice a week. Still exhausting and depressing. Last night I googled "pity party" and thought, Yup, that's what we have going on here. She told me that her son F couldn't visit every night any more because he didn't have enough money for gas. I called him and said I'd loan him the money but he said he only told her that because he didn't want to go every single night. They moved her to another room, she no longer has a window and there's a woman with dementia in the bed across from her. I think they moved her because she was disturbing the other patients in the room she used to be in.

F says the doctor told him she won't be moving to a nursing home for 2-3 months. There's a bed waiting for her but she's not well enough to leave the hospital. I suspect they don't want to move her while she is in such a foul mood because they don't want her disturbing the other nursing home residents. She is not nice to be around. I know she's dying, I know she's very uncomfortable and can't sleep. She has to drinked thickened liquids and eat pureed food and hates it with a passion. She tells me terrible stories of being abused by the night nurses. F says to take everything she says with a big grain of salt, she's not in her right mind. Listening to a constant stream of complaints and nasty gossip about the nurses and orderlies is distressing. I may be some kind of naive Pollyanna but I just can't take that anymore. Beginning to see why F and I are the only people visiting her and we are both secretly trying to figure out how to reduce our time with her.

* * * * * *

Yesterday I walked by the skating pond with Hapi and another dog walker. I was admiring how beautiful it was. The other dog walker said I should take Hapi home and come back with my skates. I sighed and said I couldn't, that today was a day to go visit B. I thought about that last night, I don't think I am doing anyone any favours not going skating. Today is Friday and it's going to rain on Sunday and who knows what the ice will be like after that…

She's back!

Hapi and I coming home from the Reservoir

The ice on the Reservoir ponds is buried under a foot of heavy snow. It looks like someone tried to clear some of it but didn't get very far. I think skating is over. But the snow is good for X-country skiing so I've been out doing that and also snowshoeing. Snowshoeing makes trails for the other dogwalkers so I feel like I am performing a service. The town sent a little snow plough into the Reservoir but it didn't get very far, too small. They never used to maintain the trails but I guess with one suicide and a senior falling on an icy trail and requiring an ambulance made the town maintenance people rethink that. The part they cleared is okay but the part where they got stuck is a bit of a mess. The snowshoers and dogwalkers do a better job.

Dee is back! That was the big excitement at the Reservoir this week. Years ago she took a fall in another province and injured her back. One thing and another she had to return home to get treated, by car (2 day drive. Can you imagine? Two days in a car with an injured back?!?). Anyway, she had surgery but unfortunately it only partially fixed the problem. She could walk but she was in severe pain. For years. She and her dog came to the Reservoir almost every day and she was just the funniest, wittiest, sympathetic and sensible person I've met in a long time. Her dog Lily was scared of Hapi but eventually she got over it. Sometimes the pain was too much and she didn't come.

So last November she went back for a second surgery to fix the problem. It was very risky, she might have ended up paralyzed and there was no guarantee they could fix her. But I guess she figured she had nothing to lose. We dogwalkers didn't know until January how it went. The worst of the pain is gone and she is not paralyzed but the surgeon said she had to be careful or all his good work would be undone. Best physiotherapy was walking, so walk she did, just not at the Reservoir where the risk of slipping and falling was too great.

This week after the big snowstorm she thought she might be safe at the Reservoir. She said she would walk by the entrance and poor Lily would cry because she wanted to go in. Everyone who met her was so happy to see her, and Lily was happy to be off leash and meeting all the other dogs. She was even glad to see Hapi! Dee is her old self, funny and witty as ever. Said the walk around the Reservoir ponds was about ten kilometres (it's not), only slightly further than from her bed to her bathroom. She's still in pain but not like before. The surgeon thinks there was a tiny sliver of bone left behind after the first surgery, it's gone now.

It is so good to see her back, it made my day.

Making Change

Counting sheep

It has been 6 days since I deactivated my Facebook account. It does feel a little odd, I get these urges to post something and then remember that I can't. And I am out of the loop as far as what various Facebook friends are up to, but it doesn't feel like a huge loss. It's a little loss, one I can live with.

I read that someone conducted a major study in which half the subjects continued to use Facebook as usual and the other half were cut off from it. The end result was that the people who had no access to Facebook reported more well being and more free time than those who continued as usual. I can attest that I spend less time on the internet, I don't know about the well being. Yet.

I also decided to look into cognitive behaviour therapy for insomnia (CBT-I). Guess what, there's an app for that. I borrowed or downloaded a few books about insomnia and found one that I especially liked, Overcoming Insomnia and Sleep Problems, by Dr. Colin Espie. He walks you through the process with lots of explanations and suggestions. 

At the core of CBT-I is "sleep restriction": first determining how much sleep you are actually getting by keeping a sleep diary, and then restricting the amount of time you spend in bed to that amount of time. So, if you usually spend 8 hours in bed but are only sleeping for 5 hours, then you start by only spending 5 hours in bed. The idea is that you gradually increase the time you spend in bed as your "sleep efficiency" (time spent sleeping/time spent in bed) increases.

I am currently at the stage of keeping a sleep diary (on my phone app) to see how much time I actually sleep. I am also trying some of his suggestions around "sleep hygiene", such as turning on all the lights in the evening to make my living space as bright as possible and setting an ideal waking time and working back from that to determine an ideal bedtime. What I have learned so far is that I actually get more sleep than I think I do, but that doesn't make me feel any less tired. I am not getting as much as I think I need.

Dr. Espie describes "normal" sleep for different age groups, and of course normal sleep for old people is not great: waking up lots of times during the night and not reaching deep stages of sleep as much as one used to. He cautions old people that while CBT-I will probably help, it will not return them to sleep patterns they experienced as young adults. Those days (and nights) are gone!

In keeping my Sleep Diary I set an 8 hour period for sleeping, which means that I am now aiming to go to bed a couple of hours later than I used to. Between staying up later and getting off Facebook, I suddenly have many more hours of free time. But I am also very, very tired, I feel like I can't actually do anything with all that extra time. 

Dr Espie says it will get better. This is the downside of CBT-I: it's a lot of work and not very pleasant initially, but supposedly it is the best long term solution. We shall see.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Last week I went to a local shop that sells outdoor clothing and asked about winter boots. I wanted boots that were easy to get off and on, I thought zippered boots would be good. But the proprietor said he didn't carry zippered footwear because the zippers rusted and broke too easily. 

I saw a boot I liked the look of but it was very expensive. I went home and thought about that boot for several days and finally decided to bite the bullet and pay the high price. I went back and the boot was gone, but there were a whole lot of winter boots and shoes on sale. The shop was already stocking up on springwear and putting their winterwear on sale. 

I tried on some of the boots that were on sale. A woman who worked there showed me a boot I could try and it was the boot that I'd seen before and thought was gone. It was just the right size and very comfortable, and it was now half-price!

I love my new winter boots. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Reservoir eagle

Yesterday I took Hapi for a walk at the Reservoir and then drove downtown for groceries. It was such a nice sunny windless day that I took Hapi for another walk on the dyke. I ran into a man who was also going for a walk in the same direction. We had such an interesting conversation that we walked together for quite a long way, much longer than I intended. 

By the time I got home Hapi and I were both exhausted. That evening I yawned my way through to my new bedtime unable to do anything other than watch more TV. 

But it was a very good day.

Aspiring Recluse

This is a bit of a whiney post, but …

I have this friend who is a shut-in, health issues and poverty keep her confined to a basement apartment that she shares with her son. They both love my dog. They used to live just up the street from me and several years ago I got into the habit of taking Hapi to visit them and E would feed Hapi dog treats. I usually went around supper time because E's son didn't get home until then and I wasn't up for going there much later than that.

Anyway, they moved to the next town over but wanted me to continue to bring Hapi to visit, at suppertime. Now it involves a 15 minute drive on the highway one way and in the wintertime I am driving after dark and sometimes in bad weather. I have cut back the visits to twice a week rather than almost every day, but E notices and comments that I don't come often enough and do I hate her, has she done something to offend me?

Since the town they live in now is where all the big box stores are I usually try to combine the visit with grocery shopping, but I have to say it is my least favourite time to shop. Last week I didn't go for the whole week, due to bad weather and a mild sinus infection that sapped my motivation.

Another friend's father is 102 years old and just got out of the hospital after a bout of pneumonia. He's OK, but my friend tells me he is fading fast. His 103rd birthday is coming up in March and we think that anticipation of that celebration is his primary motivation in staying alive. I like this man, I have known him for well over 40 years. He's in an extended care home and I'd like to visit him while he's still around, but trying to schedule that around my visits to E is problematic. At first I thought I could do both in the same trip but then realized it was just too much. I still haven't managed to get over to see him yet.

I feel guilty that my ability to be helpful and compassionate is rather limited, I get impatient with it all rather quickly. I just want to be left alone, I don't want to be running around helping people or visiting them because they are needy.

I spent all of last week (when I was staying home not visiting E ostensibly because of the sinus infection) thoroughly enjoying sitting around reading and sorting through my accumulation of useless junk. Being home alone and without responsibilities feels like a holiday in paradise.

I get out with Hapi every morning for about two hours. I often meet other dog walking ladies, which pretty much satisfies any need I have for social interaction. When we get home she expects water and a treat (she doesn't come indoors and her water bowl freezes if I leave it out so I have to bring it in and out all day), then I have to remove all the winter clothing and put it away and then bring in a load of firewood for the day.

By the time all that is taken care of it is lunchtime. If I don't have errands to run or household chores to take care of then the afternoon is free time, although once a week I go to one of book club, needlework group or bridge club. I have my writing group on Friday mornings which means Hapi's walk gets postponed until the afternoon. She howls when I leave her behind on Friday mornings.

Due to increasing insomnia I have great difficulty getting enough sleep. That means I don't want to go to bed late and thus I don't want to go out in the evening. I do go out occasionally, but I pay for it in sleep deficit for a couple of days after.

I'm really having a hard time with this. I am at heart a petty selfish person who does try not to be, but at the moment petty selfishness is winning.

Big Raven

Hapi and I have been sick the past week, I am recovered but I don't know if Hapi is. She looks un-Hapi and she hasn't eaten her dinner in a couple of days. She does eat any treats offered though and still likes her morning walk. No one else can see any sign of her not being her usual self. I'm thinking it is temporary, she's done this before.

As a result of not feeling well I have had no motivation to go outside for anything other than Hapi's walk and I have to say I am enjoying that. I did get out skating once and skiing once at the Reservoir. The skiing was interesting, I got a lot of advice on how to ski as I made my way around the ponds. The advice was coming from older dogwalkers who used to ski back in the day. I think they were envious, they wanted to ski too. Two mentioned that they still had their skis in storage somewhere, maybe they'd dig them out. I'm not a good skier so I don't mind advice. Who knows, maybe I'll have company for another ski.

Meanwhile back at the ranch I've been puttering around. I got it into my head to finish the woodcarving that I started in Toronto years ago, it has been sitting on a high shelf in a closet since I moved to Nova Scotia (in 2010). I got it down and looked at it.

Where are my carving tools? I spent a day ransacking the house looking for them. In the process, found all sorts of other interesting things and decided to throw away half of them. Interesting garbage, not much more than that. Found the tools.

Then I thought I'd rearrange the furniture in the living room so that Hapi's bed is closer to the armchair I usually sit it, I thought she might spend more time indoors if she could be closer to me. Did that. Didn't make a difference, she seemed to think the new location was a bit odd but she could live with it.

Where are the notes I took in the woodcarving class? Another day ransacking, but still haven't found them. I suspect I may have tossed the notebook they were in. After looking at the set of tools I realized that I have forgotten what many of them are for. I may have to find a book on it.

The instructor in the woodcarving class was a woman whose name I forget. Most of the students were older than me and had been in that class for years, they had a nice thing going. It was a 4-hour class, but halfway through they took a leisurely coffee break and sat at a round table together just chewing the fat. We each had our own project that we worked on independently and the instructor was available for advice. When I joined the class (I was only there for two years), she took several half-sessions to get me up and running, and she did that with every new student. We shared the tools, which were high quality carving tools that she provided. She was a professional carver, actually made a living doing it. It was a very relaxed fun time and I very much enjoyed listening to their stories. One carver was the same age as my Dad would have been and he had the same name! Both given and surnames! They were both in World War II, what an amazing coincidence.

My project is a bas relief (that is what she started everyone on, once you completed that you could do anything you wanted) based on an Emily Carr painting called Big Raven. I love almost everything Carr has done, but Big Raven is my favourite. The instructor approved of my choice, she said it was not too detailed and would transfer nicely to a bas relief.

The first step was to photocopy an illustration of that painting from a book and blow it up to the size of the bas relief, about 12"x16".

Then I laid out a slab of plasticine on a piece of masonite and transfered an outline of the photocopy to the plasticine by poking a needle through the photocopy along all the lines. I also traced the same lines onto a transparent film of mylar with a magic marker. I used the mylar outline to draw the picture onto a 2" thick slab of balsa wood.

The plasticine was for a mockup of the final bas relief, I started by carving the plasticine using the same tools I would use on the wood. Plasticine is a little more forgiving than wood if you make a mistake.

I started carving the wood before I completed the plasticine mockup, the idea was to always be a little further ahead on the plasticine than on the wood. Actually there are parts of the final bas relief that are started (some background details and a tree) that don't appear on the mockup. I don't remember why that is the case.

While I was writing this my neighbour phoned and we had a long conversation about this and that. By the time we were finished I had been given three assignments—call my son about his daughter, call another neighbour about a concert ticket, and call a mutual friend to arrange to go out for lunch this week—which I had to complete before getting back to this blog post. All done now. Texted my son, left a message about lunch, and reserved a ticket for Friday.

PS, I looked through old blog posts about my time in the woodcarving class, the instructor's name was Ruth.

Death in the Park

One day this week I went to the Reservoir to walk Hapi, but a policeman stopped me and said the Reservoir was off limits for the day. He wouldn't say why. I could see that they had heavily sanded the icy road in, presumably to let vehicles drive safely into the park. There was ice on all the trails, I gave up on the idea of an off-leash walk for Hapi. I could have gone out on the dykes, but it was too windy and cold for me.

I went back to the Reservoir the next day, but other than the sand on the icy road there was no sign of what had happened the day before. The day after that I walked with another woman (the wife of the Fairy Door Man) and she told me. A young man, a teenager, had committed suicide in the park. There was already a memorial marker put up by some of his school friends. A crude cross, a tea can, and a full bottle of homemade wine.

This is the third young man in two months to commit suicide in this small town. Like the first one that I wrote about earlier, his mother was also well known in town. I do not know her personally but I recognize her name and many of my friends do know her. I don't know much about the second person, just that there are at least three now. It appears to be viral.

It has cast a pall. I have no doubt that the young man's family and friends are devastated. In addition, the whole town is aware, and it is frightening. I was talking to a friend at my writing group this morning and she said, this is what it must be like in those small First Nations communities when this happens. No where to turn, nothing to be done, and who is going to be next. I guess I now understand why some religions make the act of suicide a sin. It not only hurts family and friends but it tears gashes into whole communities.

After the first one I talked to several women who related terrible stories about their own children's battles with depression, drugs and suicide. It is scary how easily someone you love can be lost. One woman said, when the first one goes, the others who are struggling see that there is a way out. Not a good way, but a way.

Ice

A few days ago Hapi and I were on the trail where the ravens have been tearing up the pine tree branches. A raven in the woods whistled. Hapi responds to whistles (I can't whistle so I can't take advantage of that) so she went tearing off into the woods. She went right to the tree where the raven was perched but she did not look up, she didn't see the raven. The raven was looking down at her, kind of surprised I guess. He wasn't intending to call her. I thought Hapi would come back when she couldn't find the whistler but she did not, she went further into the forest where I couldn't see her. I continued walking, calling her occasionally so she would know where I was, and eventually she reappeared.

The next day I went into the woods where she had been the day before to see if I could find whatever had attracted her after the whistling raven. I found an area of trampled snow, lots of rabbit tracks. Hapi went into the midst of the rabbit tracks to sniff around and I looked to see how big the trampled area was. There were no other tracks, just the rabbit tracks. I'm guessing there is a warren in there somewhere. I mentioned it to a friend who asked if I saw coyote tracks as well but I didn't. The coyotes don't know about this yet.

Yesterday a major storm passed through here, coming from Toronto the day before. In the morning it snowed and was very cold, but since I knew it was going to rain later in the day I took Hapi to the park in the snow. At one point it was snowing so heavily that it was like fog, you could hardly see anything. I decided to walk across the long pond since it is well frozen and people have cleared a skating rink on it. Hapi doesn't like walking on the frozen pond, she knows the risks. She once went through the ice in the Wolfville harbour in January and had to walk home drenched in freezing water. Anyway, she came with me but made it clear she did not consider it safe. She started growling. Ahead of us on the other side of the pond I could just make out two human forms on the ice. Getting closer I saw that they were hardcore skaters with big shovels clearing the snow off the rink. That's what Hapi was growling at, she thought that was really suspect behaviour. I stopped to chat with them about the ice, they were hoping that if they cleared the snow then later when it rained nice smooth ice would form.

When I got home I shovelled the snow off my driveway in hopes that the rain would wash everything away and my driveway would be bare afterwards. But it did mean that it was very icy for awhile. After the snow transitioned to rain Hapi came indoors. She doesn't mind sleeping in the snow but the noise of rain on the deck roof bothers her. In the evening it warmed up dramatically. I went outside and left the door open, just to be in the open warm air. Could barely see the moon. If I had been able to stay awake past midnight I might have seen the lunar eclipse. Maybe. The forecast was for heavy rain through the night so the chances weren't great.

This morning most of the snow was gone. It was cooler than the previous evening but still above zero. We went to the park. The trails were totally icy and optimistically I had not brought my Icers. You could have skated on the trails! I met a couple of other dog walkers and we set out on one trail that didn't look too bad, however once out of sight of the parking lot it turned to a sheet of ice. The other walkers decided to turn back but one of them loaned me her walking stick to continue on.

There are two ways to walk on ice. One is the Old Lady Shuffle and the other is just sliding. I can slide on ice that is relatively smooth but if the ice is bumpy or has a lot of debris in it then the Old Lady Shuffle is best. Either way you have to go slowly. The stick helped. We made it all the way around both ponds but I did not dare go onto the bike trails because they are too steep. At one point I was walking uphill on ice toward the parking lot and the only decent foothold I could get was on some of the dog poop on the side of the trail. People are supposed to pick up after their dogs but obviously not everybody does that. Walking on it was better than trying to walk on the icy slope!

At the parking lot a friend arrived in her car with her big Pyrenees dog. Lulu is bigger and younger than Hapi and just wants to play; Hapi is not interested in playing but she does like the company of other big dogs. I told Lulu's owner E about the ice but she thought she'd try it anyway because she was wearing ice grippers. Not as good as the Icers though. We got a little ways down the trail before she gave up and we turned back to the parking lot.

It is supposed to get really cold tonight. The skaters will get their wish, the ice on the pond will be perfect. And I will not be forgetting to bring my Icers, it is going to be very icy for the foreseeable future.

On hibernation and courting

I have not been sleeping well the past week or so and as a result I have been getting to the dog park late. Not that that is a hardship, but it does mean I miss meeting up with some of my dogwalking friends. When that happens Hapi and I go off on some of the mountain bike trails which we both love. In the winter time there are no bikes to contend with, just the silence of the trees.

This morning that was what we did, and we followed some of the more remote trails this time. As we were arriving back at the parking lot one of the regular dog walkers showed up, she said she deliberately came late in hopes of meeting me since she was aware that my regular schedule was awry. So Hapi and I did one more round of the ponds with P and her dog Maddie.

It is a truly gorgeous day. Very cold, but sunny and windless with only a thin layer of snow on the ground. There is quite a bit of ice under the snow so one does need one's ice grippers, and those of us who frequent the dog park have determined the best grippers around and we all wear them (Lee Valley Icers).

Anyway I was talking about my sleep issues, mostly caused by a series of minor painful inflammations. Seemingly unrelated, but when they happen one after the other one does wonder if there might be a connection. I was saying that it might be a response to stress. Not that my life is stressful or that there is anything serious going on, but still. Even minor stress can be stressful.

P says, "You know, most mammals hibernate at this time of year. Perhaps you should hibernate."

Ahhh. My sentiment exactly. I just want to hibernate, say 'à tout à l'heure!' to the world. I want to run away from all social responsibilities. Spend a week or two in my jammies.

I also ran into A who was born the same year as my mother and shows up in all weathers no matter what with her cute little Teddy. In her bright red ski jacket with a fake fur trimmed hood, her ski poles and dark sunglasses she looks like a well-dressed Arctic explorer. And M with her big old Owie who is the doggy version of Eeyore. So I wasn't the only late walker. There are ice skate marks on the big pond. Even though the snow has not been cleared the ice is thick and the snow is thin. And the ravens are just going crazy.

I don't know what is happening with the ravens, maybe courting? There was always a pair of them at the park, with their nest by the parking lot. Last summer they successfully raised quite a brood of youngsters and now there are at least half a dozen of them. They are unusually loud and engaged in producing strange sounds, I heard one today that sounded like it was trying to sing.

The other thing they are doing is tearing off the growing tips of pine branches. Some parts of the trails are quite littered with the small pine branch tips. I watched one raven ripping off a branch tip, it did not appear to be eating it, just tearing it off and dropping it on the ground.

The singing raven was clearly directing its efforts at a raven in a nearby tree; when a couple of other ravens flew by it immediately reverted to regular raven caws. I think it was telling the passers-by to mind their own beeswax.

Haven't seen our two resident eagles lately, they are most likely participating in the annual Eagle Watch.

Back in the '70s and early '80s there were hardly any bald eagles here. Then one farmer got the idea to try to bring them back; he collected farm animal carcasses from his neighbours and put them out in a field to attract the few eagles remaining. Farmers all up and down the Valley heard about his efforts and were happy to contribute dead animals. It didn't happen right away but within a couple of decades he was hugely successful. Today we have a tonne of eagles. That farmer is long gone and large animal carcasses are no longer put out for the eagles, but the local chicken farmers do put their dead birds out, especially at this time of year. Facebook and Instagram are full of eagle photos from the Eagle Watch right now. So our resident eagles are temporarily away feasting, while the ravens stir up a ruckus in their absence.

Death of a young man

I went to a funeral yesterday. Left the house at noon, didn't get back home again until almost 5pm, so it essentially took up the whole of my day.

I picked up a friend who can't drive and we went early because we knew that half the town would be there and we hoped to get seats. It was the funeral for a young man who committed suicide, his family is very well known and connected in this town. I have known the family for over 40 years, and the young man helped me build a fence around my backyard in anticipation of Hapi's arrival in 2011. My friend's kids went to school with this man, he was part of a large 'gang' of kids who hung out together in those days.

He struggled with depression for most of his adult life. He was somebody who appeared to have everything going for him: attractive, talented, well-liked and at the centre of a good group of fun-loving kids. Also part of a loving family with lots of cousins and aunts and uncles around. But for whatever reason it wasn't enough.

I know two things about depression. One is, your brain lies to you. And the more it lies the more you isolate yourself from the people who can point out the lies. The other is, it's worse when you're young. Emotional experience is more intense and you don't have the acquired knowledge of life experience to deal with it.

The funeral was well done I thought. It was held in his parents' church, there was a slide show of photos and a display of some of his art and musical instruments. The hymns were good. That's saying a lot, I don't usually like hymns, to put it mildly. A Catholic priest who had befriended the young man gave the eulogy, his brother and a former girlfriend spoke of their experiences with him, and another friend sang 'Somewhere over the rainbow'. At the end they played a recording of the young man singing a Creedence Clearwater Revival song. No dry eyes, but a few chuckles over some of the stories, particularly as told by his brother.

His mother is the musical director of that church and all of the family is musically gifted. A few young people attended but around here most young people have to move away to find work, so a lot of parents of the kids who hung out together attended on their kids' behalf. Many more went to support the family of the young man. My kids weren't part of that gang, they were an older cohort, so I went because of my relationship to the family and because of my brief relationship with the young man who helped to build my fence.

It snowed heavily. I could barely get back up the hill to my home afterward. Yet another winter wonderland. The ducks really are gone now, the ponds are fully frozen. After dark the sky cleared and I watched Orion rising with Hapi. I love that she likes to just sit and watch the world. She even got me out of bed so she could go out and look at the snow one more time.

Ducks of winter

The ducks came back! They just couldn't stay away!

We've had snow and high winds and bitter bitter cold. A local Facebook friend posted a memory from last November: she was mowing her lawn exactly a year ago! Yesterday I dug out my warmest parka and folded out the furry hood to make a protective tunnel for my face and it was still bitter cold.

But the ducks came back. I'd post a photo but it was so cold my cell phone camera refused to function. The big pond is completely frozen and the little pond is half frozen so the ducks, masses of them, are huddled in the small area of open water. They try to stay as close to the shore as possible, but when Hapi and I walk by they head out away from us, quacking complaints about having to move.

The three blue jays keeping all the little birds away from my bird feeder had to give it up because the snow covered all the nearby branches where they were perching. So the little guys, the goldfinches and chickadees, one lone sparrow, a nuthatch and three cardinals, have been mobbing the feeder. The cardinals are very shy, they try to stay well out of view but in a bright red coat that's hard to do.

The female cardinal is easy to pick out, she's more brown than red. I was surprised to be able to distinguish the two males, one is bright red and the other more of a pinky-coral colour. I'm told their plumage gets darker as they mature so the coral cardinal must be a youngster.

I went snowshoeing on Wednesday with my walking-cycling group. We walked around a golf course in the fresh powdery snow. The first day of snow was heavy and wet but then it got cold and the second day of snow was powdery. Two people didn't have snowshoes so we walked single file to create a trail they could walk on easily. Hapi set out joyfully across the snow to explore the wide expanse of the golf course 'greens', but she soon tired of slogging through deep snow and joined our single file expedition with the snowshoeless couple. She's not a puppy anymore.

We saw deer tracks which Hapi investigated very thoroughly, and strange tracks on a frozen pond. We tried to guess what made them. We think it might have been a pair of creatures, perhaps otters, sliding on the soft ice. Hapi had the good sense not to investigate.

Today is Black Friday, I bought bird seed on sale. Feeding the economy, the birds and my soul.

November winter

Looks like winter is coming a little early this year. Snow in the air, ice on the ground, and temperatures low enough to prevent thawing.

Last week the wind blew so hard that my woodpile fell over. Had to restack it in the cold wind because the snow was coming and I wanted it back in place before that. But stacking in the wind meant it got thoroughly tested for stability, I am pretty sure it isn't going to fall over again.

November ducks of a previous year

I was at the reservoir early this morning and saw the last of the ducks leaving. Normally they wouldn't leave until well into December, but already one pond has frozen over and ice is forming in the other pond. Yesterday there were hundreds of ducks there, this morning there were maybe a couple dozen and by the time I left there were none. They were leaving in groups of 5 or more, heading down to the river I think. If we have a huge warm spell they might come back, but I doubt it. It was so nice to listen to them quacking in the morning, but now they're gone and I will miss them.

I did get my bird feeder up though so I can enjoy the chickadees and blue jays and finches and such. Today three jays staked out the feeder and chased off every bird that tried to approach. The chickadees waited them out and eventually the jays grew tired of the game and left. Then there was a flurry of finches at the feeder and juncoes and a mourning dove on the ground below.

I will miss the ducks though.

What to do after late-season snowstorm

I do love my new bathroom. Every time I walk into it I feel great, I love a bath in the soaker tub and I even love brushing my teeth at the new sink.

Yesterday I was going to vacuum the basement floor, in preparation for replacing rugs on said floor. I started up the vac and then thought it was rather full of dust and I should clean out the vac first. I took it into the utility room to empty the canister into a garbage bag, only I missed; half the dust ended up on the floor.

OK, I thought, I'll just get the shop vac to clean up the spilt dust.

I hooked up the shop vac hose to the wrong outlet and instead of sucking it blew. Not only all over the utility room but also all over the entire basement, since all the doors were open. So much for vacuuming, now I have to wait for the dust fog to settle.

Big snowstorm on Friday into Saturday morning. After a month of pseudo-Spring we're now into Real Winter. But since it is March, Real Winter means heavy wet snow that one can hardly move with a shovel.

Hapi and I went to the Reservoir for a walk in the afternoon (after half a morning spent moving heavy wet Real Winter snow). Lots of trees down from the Real Winter snow in their branches, every one of those trees was rotten. The ponds looked like they were covered in ice again (they had been clear of ice for over a week), but it was actually snow floating on the water.

Waterdog tracks in the snow

In the evening I went to a friend's place for Carcassonne and pizza. I usually win but this time my friend trounced me in the first game and narrowly beat me in the second. She refused to play a third game. As a consolation she gave me a huge chunk of apple-ginger cake that she had made for the occasion, to take home with me.

I can live with that.

No Boundaries

This week they moved to the upstairs. They are still working in the basement, they just expanded the worksite. Since the business end of the bathtub backs onto my bedroom they had to move furniture to cut a hole in the wall to access the plumbing, so I now have no safe haven from the dust and noise and workmen and tools strewn about. Plus, they found mould in some of the basement gyproc immediately below the upstairs bathroom (see photo above). The bathroom sink was leaking and I knew that, I just didn't know how long it had been leaking. Obviously long enough for mould to take hold.

Upstairs bathroom

They cut holes into the gyproc in my bedroom and in the basement ceiling to access the plumbing. All of the sinks except the one in the kitchen are disconnected, so the painter washes his tools there each evening. I brush my teeth there too. I thought it would only take a couple of days to remove the old bathtub and install the new one, but after a week it is still not plumbed in. Consequently I took a shower in the basement shower stall. But since they were painting in that room the curtains had been removed from the window, which is in plain view of the male student's bedroom window next door. There were no cars parked in their driveway last night so I took a chance. It's study break.

Downstairs bathroom

Bobby likes to spend his weekends with his grandkids so he tries not to work on Saturdays, but he said yesterday that he might come by this Saturday to do a bit of work. Oh joy. Once again, he thinks another two days and they will be done. Which is what he said a week ago. Since they are working in both bathrooms, I now know where all the publicly accessible bathrooms are in town. Washing up is a problem, but as long as I plan ahead I can make it to a reasonably private toilet.

Meanwhile back at the ranch my email to my financial guy to transfer money to my bank account landed in his spam folder and he didn't see it until I sent a follow-up email a week later. So I was unable to meet Bobby's weekly ransom demand.

The news both north and south of the border is crazy, but since my personal life is kind of off the rails the craziness in the world out there is just part of the scenery. Last night a friend called me to see how I was doing. When I told her that I have burned through most of what I thought of as my lifetime discretionary money fund, she asked me if any of the workers smoked. I told her that one of them does so she suggested that he might burn the house down and I could collect the insurance money.

She also told me that another friend of hers just pulled a live tick off her dog after a walk in the woods. In February. It is that warm now. She thinks it is just winter delayed, that sometime in March all hell will break loose weather-wise. I think she's wrong, that this is the new normal.

She says, Fine then, after the next big blizzard you can lead the Naked Yoga class in the school parking lot.

Basement Saga continued

Backyard visitor

Mid-February, no snow on the ground, no snow in the forecast. Every time it snows there's rain right afterward and the snow is washed away. Weird winter.

The guys are putting my basement back together again. It has been a long haul, they've been here for so long I feel like I should be charging them rent. Everything that could go wrong did.

Now I have a cold, I'm hoping it won't last too long. The guys figure they have one more day of work down there and then I can start putting things back where I want them, but with this cold I have no energy for it.

Hapi is quite discombobulated by the change in sleeping quarters. Usually she sleeps in the basement but she can't now so every night she has to decide whether to stay indoors upstairs or go outside. Usually she chooses to go outside. I don't mind, but it seems that all our rain is happening in the night and I know she doesn't like being in her doghouse in the rain because of the noise of the rain on the roof. And if I'm asleep I can't let her inside, so she goes out into the rain and finds the muddiest spot available to lie down in. By morning she is soaked and covered in mud, then she wants to come inside. All her white fur is brown now.

The last few days they've been cutting laminate flooring to fit back together again; the dust from that goes everywhere. There's no point cleaning it up until they're done, which I'm hoping is tomorrow. Then they're going to come upstairs and do some work on my bathroom. They think it will only take a couple of days, but I remember a month ago Bob thinking the basement job would just take a few days. You just never know what kind of disaster you're going to uncover when you start taking things apart.

I went to an amazing house concert over the weekend, a woman who sings Edith Piaf. She's very talented, plays multiple instruments and has a gorgeous voice. Her partner plays guitar and he is amazing as well. It was enthralling. The concert was at her mother's place. The couple now live in Montreal and they came back home for three Valentine's Day performances. I really hope their talents are rewarded.

Last night I went to a talk and slide show about the railway children of India. The mother of the singer went to India over Christmas to visit Father Abhi who works with the railway children of Varanasi. They have a centre there where they house some of them and arrange for them to go to school, also they help find adoptive families or reunite children with their lost families. Most of them are girls, their futures are not good. Father Abhi heads up an organization (DARE) that does this work and also he travels India and the world to drum up support.

There is a small network of groups in Nova Scotia, Belgium and one other place that I forget. When he needs money for his projects in India he tells the network. Usually it is something very specific, say a small bus or some piece of necessary equipment. Then the network raises the money and sends it to him. Sometimes it can take a couple of years to raise the money. It is complicated, there are rules governing how money can be sent overseas and also how money can be received by organizations in India. By being very specific they handle the complications. So my little town is part of that international network, to help the railway children. Of course it is just a drop in the bucket, but I guess every little drop helps.

The slides we watched were very colourful, the presenter was quite fascinated by the brightly painted trucks in India and also by all the dancing. The children are taught amazing dances and they love it. Father Abhi has all these paintings and statues of an Indian Jesus, he looks like a Hindu guru or a buddha. The Christmas celebrations were extremely colourful and full of dancing and coloured lights and flowers. It was beautiful and strange at the same time, Christmas celebrated in a Hindu way.

Full on winter

The long pond before the snow

According to the internet most of Canada is experiencing record cold weather, with the exception of Atlantic Canada which is experiencing only "seasonably" cold weather. Well I am here to tell you that is simply not true, this is definitely not "seasonable". Maybe warmer than central Canada, but still not seasonable. If it were just the thermometer temperature it would be very cold (for here), but the constant wind just makes it that much colder. We had one day last week when it was not windy and a degree or two warmer than usual, making it positively balmy in comparison to the days before and since. Taking Hapi for her morning walk is a flirt with frostbite. I thought I had enough firewood for two winters (I try to keep a year ahead), but I've been burning through it at a wicked pace and we're only at the beginning of the winter heating season.

Ice, ice everywhere! A couple of people who walk their dogs regularly at the Reservoir have really nifty ice grippers, I see their distinctive footprints on all the trails. I managed to collar one of them and ask where they got their footwear, but by the time I got to the website where they could be ordered, they were sold out. My inferior ice grippers will have to do for now.

The long pond is frozen sufficiently for skating (15 cm/6 inches) and some brave souls have cleared the skim of snow from part of the pond and already been out on their blades. I don't know how they stand the cold wind! But they are mostly kids and we all know how fearless kids can be about cold (Where are your mittens? Why on earth did you take them off?!?). The uncleared snow on most of the pond is meagre enough for the kids to skate right over it.

This past year has been my year of water issues (I have a bit of a history in that regard). First there was the sewage backup. Then I had a basement flood in part of the basement that I'd never seen water leakage before. Sewer pipe replaced, drainage tile installed and a finally a sump pump installed. Then a few days ago I discovered that water pipes behind a finished wall in the basement had frozen. I got them thawed out but I don't know if they burst or not so I turned off the water to those pipes to postpone having to deal with it until the spring. I suspect that the hot water pipes are fine but one of the (three) cold water pipes is not. A problem for another day.

Hapi usually sleeps in the basement but lately has moved upstairs. I am not sure why. It could be she is lonely because I have stopped sleeping in the basement, but that never stopped her before. Although she is noticeably more "clingy" (affectionate) as she ages. It also could be that she is finding the basement stairs more difficult, but she still goes down to the basement, she just doesn't stay there. It is definitely not the cold, she still likes to spend the coldest part of the day--the hours around sunrise--outside sleeping in her doghouse. And she occasionally still spends an entire night out there. Her doghouse is not insulated but it is positioned out of the wind. If she lived forever I still would not figure her out, her doggy brain is unfathomable.

Is it safe?

Refuge vows

It was my birthday a few days ago. I was not looking forward to it, if anything I was quite depressed about it. Funny how some birthdays mean nothing, some are happy events and some are dreadful. This was in the last category. My parents died in their 70s, neither saw their 79th birthday. I am now 10 years from that date with posterity, feeling my mortality in a big way. I know it's not rational, but it takes little excuse to get depressed. And it's not something one wants to talk about because everybody piles on with how silly you're being. Doesn't help, only makes it worse: not only am I depressed but I am also silly for being depressed.

Just so you know I am not depressed now, so I am not looking for advice.

A couple of days before my birthday I had a really bad dream. Trapped in a small fenced yard with someone shooting a gun at me. The bullets were really spots of grey-coloured liquid but I knew they were poison and the deadly effect would kick in very soon. Needless to say, I woke up breathless and stressed out. Went to the bathroom, got something to eat, had a drink of water and went back to bed trying not to think about it. Instead, I thought about all the things I'd ever failed at in life, all the things I had abandoned--you know--all the negative thoughts that come to you in the middle of the night when you're a little stressed out.

So one of those abandoned things was having taken buddhist refuge vows years ago and then promptly abandoned them. Supposedly lifelong vows, abandoned for something more interesting I guess. I tried to remember what they were. I spent a few minutes on that distraction and did manage to remember them. Thought about what they meant. It occurred to me that they weren't gone for good, I could always go back to them, if I so desired. That thought was actually comforting and shortly I was back to sleep again.

Next day I was supposed to go up the mountain to dogsit overnight. I thought I would just spend the time hanging out with the dogs and reading, so I looked through my books for something I haven't read in a while and might like to read again. In honour of the abandoned vows I chose a book about Buddhism that I remembered having enjoyed the first time but couldn't for the life of me remember the content. It was Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist, by Stephen Batchelor. Turned out to be a very good choice. So good in fact that it snapped me right out of the depression within the first couple of chapters.

In the evening the dogs and I sat out on the deck in the dark. One of them had a bone, the other just watched and listened. I tried to listen too, I don't know what she was listening to because I couldn't hear it, just silence. I felt alive.

The next day was my birthday and I went to an art show with a couple of friends and then to a local restaurant for a burger; April is Burger Wars month so a lot of restaurants are featuring hamburgers in a competition and a portion of the cost is donated to a children's charity. I think. Then we went to a pub for chocolate cake and wine.

I've been avoiding my writing group because the depression has stopped me cold. But the morning after my birthday one of the writing group members texted me to say she'd be walking by my house to go to the meeting and she'd knock on my door. I texted I hadn't written anything and she replied she'd knock anyways, I could come and critique. So I scrambled out of my PJs and brushed my teeth and was ready at the door with my jacket when she knocked. The sun came out and it was the warmest day we've had since last fall, and Environment Canada says we were the warmest place in the whole country that day!

Finally, winter is over. Even if it snows again, it's over.

Little house in the woods

I am house-sitting/dog-sitting. Murph is a 13-year-old labradoodle who has a lot of difficulty standing and walking due to arthritis. But he really likes Hapi and that motivates him to stand up and walk. His owner tells me that in his heyday he'd be mounting her and she wouldn't like that, but getting up on his hind legs is a bit beyond him now so Hapi likes him.

When I first arrived I brought along a cooler of food, including some pork for Hapi's dinner. Then I went out to visit a neighbour, leaving the cooler in the house with Murph. Bad idea. He opened the cooler and ate all the pork. So I'm a little more careful about leaving food where he can get at it, the cooler is now in the car. Murph likes chewing bones but he doesn't eat them. After he's done chewing Hapi takes the bone and eats it. Murph is okay with that.

We went for two walks today, once up the road and once down the road. Murph does his best to keep up but he's an even slower walker than I am. Hapi leaves us both in the dust. On the walk down the road, Hapi crawled into a culvert under the road. She loves culverts and if they are big enough she crawls in. I'm scared she's somehow going to end up trapped under the road but so far it hasn't happened. Murph thought it was interesting but he wasn't about to follow her. We got to a stream and I went off the road to look at the stream, the dogs followed. Then Murph started barking, there was a woman walking down the stream towards us. I thought she looked familiar and sure enough it was someone I knew. Here I am in the middle of nowhere and a friend comes out of the woods towards me. She told me that there was a waterfall further up the stream out of sight from the road and it was a favourite place of hers to just go and sit. I'd have liked to go see but I didn't think Murph would make it so another time I guess.

We walked back to the house I was staying at. My friend said she thought it was a cute house, at least from the outside. I said it was cute inside too, I was quite enjoying staying there.

Tomorrow I go home. It's going to be cold and my car battery is old so I don't know if it will start. We'll see.

Same place as shown in previous blog post.

Steal Away Home

I think we got all of our February snow in one week, since then it's been melting and evaporating (lots of fog). In that one week we got almost as much snow as we did in February of the Dreadful Winter of 2015. It sure felt like it! But a lot of it is gone now, and there are no big storms forecast for the near future. I bought new skis and snowshoes last week but I may not get to try them out until next winter.

Since the week of blizzards I've only been able to shovel for a few minutes at a time before I start getting chest tightness, but no other strenuous activity affects me that way. I have a theory about that. I think I have a hiatal hernia and the twisting motion of shovelling just corkscrews my stomach up through my diaphragm causing the hernia to get worse. So right now I am concentrating on deep breathing from the abdomen to strengthen my diaphragm and a form of self-massage to help push my stomach back down where it belongs in order to relieve the hiatal hernia.

A couple of days ago I went to an author reading associated with Black History Month here. The book was Steal Away Home and the author Karolyn Smardz Frost. It was so much better than I expected! Quite an amazing experience in fact!

First of all, the author was introduced by Lynn Jones, a prominent black Nova Scotian activist, an amazing person herself. I'd never heard of her before (I am woefully ignorant of such things), but she radiated joyful wisdom and loving attention, her critical message couched in gentle but direct terms. She started by saying that in her culture it was appropriate to ask permission of the Elders present before speaking, so she was going to do that first thing. She said you are an Elder if you think you are and then asked permission to speak. She got a firm and loud "Yes!" Then she spoke about how her people followed an arduous journey seeking freedom, and that in coming to what would soon become Canada they brought a huge contribution to Canadian life that deserved honour and recognition. She believed that Karolyn Smardz Frost's book gave honour and recognition to that contribution and deserved to be widely distributed and read. She then lead us in singing the traditional spiritual "Steal Away Home" for which the book was titled.

Karolyn (I'm going to refer to her by her first name because it's simpler) then told us about the subject of her book, Cecelia Reynolds. She did a little bit of reading but mostly she told us the story. Clearly she loved her subject and was very excited to tell us about Cecelia. Her love and excitement was contagious, I don't think anyone left that event unaffected.

Cecelia was a 15 year old slave who left Kentucky to journey to Toronto in search of freedom. She was aided in her journey by a very sophisticated system known as the Underground Railroad. Like many former slaves who successfully journeyed to freedom she then spent a good deal of her life aiding others to make the same journey. Karolyn is an archaeologist who was involved in the excavation of the first Underground Railroad station in Canada, in downtown Toronto. It was the home of one of the men who helped Cecelia and who she eventually married. He was heavily involved in helping other slaves on their journeys to freedom. At one point he even travelled to Australia to participate in the 1852 gold rush there to make money to pay for the release of slaves in the United States.

There were several things I was struck by that evening. One was Lynn Jones' reference to her people as freedom seekers. They weren't escaping, they weren't runaway slaves, they were freedom seekers: heroes. A twist in one's way of thinking about what was happening there. Another was the sophistication of the Underground Railroad. I rather had the impression that this was somehow the work of idealistic do-gooder whites but it wasn't. It was a widespread movement of both free and enslaved African people who worked behind the scenes to help any freedom seekers find their way. While slave owners permitted some slaves to learn to read, allowing them to learn to write was strictly forbidden for fear that slaves would use that knowledge to escape.

The first thing Cecelia did after attaining her own freedom was to learn to write (she could already read). She used that skill to write to her former owner to negotiate the release of her mother and brother. There was an extensive written exchange between them, a few of those letters still survive and are probably the only letters extant between an owner and a former slave. In any case the letters were couched in affectionate terms but the owner insisted on an exorbitant price for the release of Cecelia's remaining family (her father had been literally "sold down the river" as retaliation for her escape).

I also learned a lot about black history both in Canada and in the United States. It's not the same as what is taught in schools, or at least what was taught when I was in school. The evening was definitely an eye opener. History is in the eye of the beholder, depending on who is telling it the story can be quite different.