1491 and all that

I just finished reading 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann and I can't recommend it enough as a thought-provoking and enthralling read. I was sorry to come to the end of the book, I wanted the author to go on and on. He says in his preface that he kept waiting for someone to write this book, and when his own son was in elementary school and the book still had not been written, he realized he would have to write it himself. He was appalled at the distortions and untruths his kid was learning in school, thanks to the conventional teaching of the history of the Americas.

As one might expect, a history of the indigenous peoples of the Americas includes a lot of atrocities at the hands of European "invaders", and of course the huge tragedy of the introduction of Eurasian diseases onto the American continents, but this book also provides a fascinating account of the uniquely American (as in the continents, not the nation) cultures, ideas and philosophies that were both lost and transmitted back to Eurasia. There is plenty of food for thought in this book!

One very thought-provoking idea discussed in this book is about Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) notions of personal liberty and democratic government. The Haudenosaunee Confederation was based on unique principles of governance particularly emphasizing gender equality (not total, but definitely way ahead of any other culture at the time), consensus, and respect for the personal liberty and equality of individuals. Mann suggests that the transmission of these ideas was almost immediate when Europeans first arrived on the shores of northeastern North America; European colonists defected to Indian settlements in large numbers, once they realized the profound differences in attitude. Colonists were expected to respect their "betters", Indians had no such concept and found that expectation quite bizarre.

It was inevitable that these subversive ideas would make there way back to Europe, and Mann suggests that the great revolutions of democracy, liberty and equality subsequently occurring in many European countries can be traced back to the introduction of those North American Indian traditions. Certainly they were incorporated into the American Constitution, and they were very likely the inspiration for the American Revolution in the first place. Whether you agree or disagree with this formulation of history, Mann's chapter on this interpretation is fascinating and provoking.

Another idea that I found personally fascinating was Mann's description of the huge impact of textile arts on Central and South American thought, technology and politics. Mann says that in feats of engineering, Eurasians emphasized the force of compression, Andean and Mesoamerican cultures emphasized compression. The archway, an architectural feature absent from American monumental architecture, is an example of how Europeans employ the force of compression. Andeans on the other hand built rope bridges that scared the pants off the Spanish conquistadors. Andeans solved basic engineering problems through the manipulation of fibres rather than creating and joining hard wooden or metal objects. There is controversial evidence that Andean cultures had an elaborate and sophisticated form of "writing" based on fibre, the Incan khipu or knotted strings. Agriculture may have first been invented in South America, about the same time as agriculture in Sumer, but it was for the culture of cotton, not food. The first intensively agricultural society in the Americas (the Norte Chico of Peru) had a diet based solely on food from the sea, they practiced irrigation, terracing and all the other techniques of farming for the production of cotton.

Indian civilization was unique. On the Eurasian continent, there were a very few centres of innovation where agriculture and urban living were first invented, the rest of that vast continent begged, borrowed or stole the results. Over thousands of years Eurasians and Africans traded ideas and inventions, philosophies and religious traditions. the American continents were isolated, there was no trade of ideas with other continents until the arrival of Columbus and other Europeans, and unfortunately they brought diseases which so devastated American civilizations that any fruitful trade in ideas was abruptly and almost permanently cut off.

We like to think that European technologies, particularly the technologies of warfare, were so superior to American indigenous technologies that it was inevitable that Europeans would defeat any defense by the locals. Mann shows that actually this might not be the case at all. He cites accounts of the early conquistadors in South America quickly realizing that the cotton armour of the Inkans was superior to their own metal armour, and that an Inkan with a slingshot could outperform a conquistador with a gun. What the conquistadors had on their side was bizarre Inkan politics (from a European perspective of course), the diseases that preceded their arrival, and the initial surprise and shock of horse-mounted warriors. The Inkan warriors could have survived that last one, they quickly developed techniques for dealing with horses, but in combination with their vulnerability to devastating epidemics and their own political infighting (this may seem outrageous, but they were ruled by mummies, the mummies were kept and treated as if alive, and the destruction of a mummy king could devastate an entire Inkan faction) the conquistadors quickly overran and destroyed their centuries-old civilization.

Mann suggests that what we moderns think of as wilderness is actually not. He proposes that huge swathes of the two American continents were actually vast ranches and gardens developed and maintained over thousands of years by indigenous peoples. When Europeans settled eastern North America, the land had only recently been abandoned by native people killed off by disease. The forests were actually relatively new rebound vegetation after native peoples abandoned their farms and villages. What the first arrivals on the northeastern coasts saw was a vast cemetery, but they did not recognize it as such, they thought it was pristine wilderness. The Amazon basin was intensively farmed and settled, Amazonians practiced agrofrestry and a methodology for soil creation and augmentation unmatched anywhere in the world, now or ever. So-called traditional slash-and-burn subsistence (swidden) farming was never traditional, rather it was a survivor's response to the destruction of their once-productive way of life. Further, it could not have been practiced at all with stone tools, only the introduction of European steel tools allowed swidden farming to be practiced.

Mann laments the devastation of disease and conquest on American civilization. Not only was it a huge loss of human life, but a huge loss of cultural treasures that could have been shared with the rest of the world. He talks about the cross-fertilization of different societies around the world and the enrichment of human life and culture resulting from that process. The Americas were unique, civilizations developed in isolation based on principles quite different in some ways and very similar in other ways to civilizations on other continents. Much of that was destroyed and lost forever, and we all could have benefitted so much from those lost lifeways and knowledge. Whatever can be done to restore and preserve what remains can still add to the quality of human life and the array of potential solutions for modern environmental, social and political challenges.

Filler

I think I need a Guest Blogger. You know, someone who will write a blog post here instead of me. Like Ronni has at Time Goes By. Someone to fill in for me when I am running a blank.
Sigh...

A weekend of nothing

Weaving and woodcarving classes at Mimico Adult Ed end on the 19th, I have two more classes left. I didn't think my weaving project would be done by then and our instructor wants everything off the looms because there are no classes in the summer and she wants everything to be ready for new students in September. So she let me take the loom---it's a collapsible table loom---home this week to try to get my project finished. It is not completed but it's on target.


My woodcarving is progressing, but I am at a point where I need to be referring to my plasticine model for direction. I haven't actually completed the model, I left parts of it rather vague. So I brought it home to work on as well. My subject is the Emily Carr painting, Big Raven. It's interesting, she translated a three-dimensional object into a two-dimensional painting, and now I am trying to translate her two-dimensional painting into a three-dimensional carving. Not as easy or as simple as it might sound!


The blob in the upper right corner is intended to become a tree. I may or may not finish that, I have already blocked the tree into my carving so I am not too worried about that part. The area that really needs work though is the bottom, particularly on the right hand side. I have a set of small carving tools that are not very sharp, but they are perfect for working the plasticine.

Also, I am knitting another beret, this one without a brim. I am knitting it for a friend in Nova Scotia, I promised it to her last year. The pattern is complicated, I have been working on designing it all weekend, and now there are bits of coloured graph paper everywhere. I think I have it worked out though, I just have to knit it. It will have waves and little fishing boats and Cape Split as seen from Baxter's Harbour, and an Acadian stella maris (gold star on blue background) on the top.


The stella maris is both the Star of the Sea and the Star of the Virgin Mary, the Acadian patron saint. I am not Catholic (or Acadian) but I have a bit of a fondness for the Virgin Mary. She has many titles, one of them is Queen of Heaven. Some say that this harks back to her previous incarnation as the Goddess. She is not all that she seems. The Catholic Church only reluctantly admitted her to their pantheon of saints, she came to be there by popular demand.


And in my spare time I am reading Aging Well by George Vaillant, a very interesting book. He's a doctor who spent a lifetime working on a project to follow several hundred men and women through their lifetimes, from the teen years well into their eighties, to study adult development. He says, "And so whenever ... I write pedantically of successful aging---think joy. The heart speaks with so much more vitality than the head."

My only quibble so far with this book is that it seems very skewed toward the masculine experience. Women are included in the project, but I sense a distinct masculine filter, even though he tries very hard to be non-sexist.

I have not been outdoors except for some grocery shopping, a trip to the library and a couple of trips to the dogpark. When I don't get outdoors I feel like I am not doing much. Somehow I equate going outside with doing things, doing stuff indoors doesn't count. So even though I actually have been quite busy, I feel like I haven't done a thing all weekend, except drink seemingly endless cups of tea.

We had a cold low pressure pass through yesterday, it brought strong winds and snow! Well, I didn't actually see the snow, it was late at night and Isaac says he saw it on his way home from work (he's working very late with the Hot Docs film festival). We actually had to turn the furnace back on, it's so cold.

Last weekend I took Dobby to the dogpark with a new toy, a kind of sausage-shaped ball on a rope tether. I would swing it around over my head and let Dobby jump for it, then throw it as far as I could. Well, on one particular throw, I was swinging the thing over my head and Dobby was leaping up trying to get it. He leapt up behind my back and missed, but as he came down one of his legs caught on my shoulder bag strap and he lost his balance. He fell backwards, with his leg still tangled in the shoulder bag strap, which of course brought me down backwards on top of him. I smacked my head hard against the ground.

I was OK, as was Dobby, but a bit shaken up. The next day my neck hurt and I didn't make the connection until a couple of days later when a neighbour suggested it might be whiplash from the fall. My neck still hurts and now I have a headache as well. There's no bruise or tender spot, just the headache and neck stiffness. What with all the other health issues I am reluctant to take aspirin or any other pain killer, so by evening I am just tired of the headache. I hope it clears up soon.

Needless to say, I am not playing with that dog toy anymore.

Floppy beret with brim, not shown

I finished a knitted cap yesterday. I am not showing a picture of it because it would not photograph well. I did it in a dark green chenille yarn which doesn't show the stitches well, and the shape is basically circular. So what you would see would be a fuzzy green circle.

I could wear it and photograph my reflection, but that just sounds like too much work. It's a winter cap, so I won't be wearing it any time soon, and I haven't decided yet whether I like it or not. I may end up ripping it out after a couple of wearings, not sure yet.

It is basically a very large floppy beret with a brim on the front. I like the look of floppiness but I think it might not stay on my head very well because of its floppiness. Also, I was trying for a hat with a brim to protect my glasses from falling snow, and had a hard time finding a pattern for a cap with a brim that I liked. I finally decided to combine two patterns, the floppy beret and a kind of knitted baseball cap.

After several goes at it, involving much ripping out and reknitting, I think I finally got the hang of how to knit a brim on a cap. The instructions I was following were overly complicated, I followed them anyway because I thought there might be a good reason for the complications, but it turns out there wasn't.

So in the future, here is what I would do.

Start the cap or beret with a provisional cast-on, using a crocheted chain in scrap yarn. When the cap is done, remove the crocheted chain and transfer all of the stitches to a circular needle one size smaller than the size you used for the cap. Bind off half the cast-on stitches in the following way: *k2tog, k1, move the stitches back to the left needle*, repeat until all desired stitches are bound off.

With the remaining stitches you will start the brim. Essentially you are knitting a very large sock toe in the toe-up short row method; you knit progressively shorter rows with wrap & turns (W&T) each time you turn a row. When the brim is the desired length (i.e., distance from the cap outward), you knit progressively longer rows until you have a brim-shaped pocket attached to the cap along one side. Cut out a piece of flexible plastic (a cheap plastic kid's placemat is perfect for this) to fit the pocket. Cut the yarn leaving a 20" tail. Insert the plastic stiffener into the pocket and sew up the pocket opening with the 20" tail.

This is not how I did my cap, the instructions I followed left me with two holes to sew up and a little more length on the cap at the brim than I really wanted. I am not sure what the purpose of that was.

Why I don't support war in Afghanistan, and neither should you

Here's a really good explanation of what is going on in Afghanistan (video), it takes 17 minutes to watch.

It's probably a good explanation of what is going on anywhere in the world that we have war going on.

I'm reading a book called Constant Battles: Why We Fight by Steven Le Blanc, about humanity's violent past. Basically the author is saying that warfare has always been with us and was probably more prevalent in the distant past than it is today. Mortality due to warfare was routinely as much as 25% of all males among our distant ancestors.

The author suggests that we come by this warlike propensity "honestly", that our ape-ish forebears were probably doing the same with possibly even higher mortality rates. He also proposes that there is a link between big game hunting and warfare; apes that hunt (such as chimpanzees) are more likely to also attack and kill each other. Apes that do not hunt (such as gorillas and bonobo chimps) also do not attack and kill each other.

I haven't finished reading the book but Le Blanc appears to suggest that the good news is that we are actually getting better, we practice warfare far less and are far more horrified by the idea than we ever used to be.

If we don't kill each other all off---either by warfare or by environmental destruction---then we may actually humanize into something pretty decent.

Here's hoping.

What I saw

I went for a walk up to the Annex yesterday, I wanted to buy some shampoo at a store that sells non-toxic cleaning products in bulk (bring your own container). It was a gorgeous day, the sidewalks were full, the sidewalk patios busy and all the fruit and vegetable stands full of mouth-watering produce and flowers.

I'm on a no (or almost no) sugar diet so it pained me to walk by the Korean bakery that sells those delightful little walnut cakes (shaped like walnuts, filled with sweetened bean paste). I stopped to read all the blown-up newspaper ads on the walls of Honest Ed's.

On my way I walked along several tree-lined residential streets, it was wonderful to see and smell the gardens full of flowers and experience the green shade of lovely old maples. There were cherry blossoms and lilacs too. It must be summer already!

I saw a man sitting on his stoop with his little girl, reading a book to her in the sunshine. He had a lovely accent, I think he might have been South Asian, via the UK.

I saw a cyclist towing a huge trailer full of heavy plastic bins of stuff. The trailer was maybe 6' long and 4' wide, and piled up at least 3' high. Behind was another guy, on his skateboard, pushing and steering the unwieldy trailer. They were moving along at a fair clip, it looked like such an efficient way to move a cart full of stuff around city streets! And fun too!

The store didn't have the shampoo in bulk, the clerk said they were in the midst of negotiating a new source for it, so I bought a small bottle of shampoo instead.

More textile arts

The other exhibit we went to see at the Textile Museum was called People Place and Thing, it consisted of three mini-exhibits. I am not sure why they called it that, but the names of the mini-exhibits made a little more sense.

The first one is called Skin and Bone. The artist, David Halper, has applied some very interesting embroidery to various furs and skins.

The most striking is a large embroidery of a woman on the flank of a full-sized horse. The horse looks real, but it is a model of a horse covered in cowskin, complete with fur.


Then there is a series of embroideries of shadow creatures on animal hides. For example a shadow eagle with the two hands held up to create the shadow. The embroidery is accurate enough to be able to follow it to create your own shadow eagle.


A little bizarre was the set of faces embroidered onto the cross-sections of deer lying on the floor. Each "deer" was a full-sized model of the front half of a deer. Something just a little macabre about that display.


But the embroidery was amazing, the level of detail and shading in the portraits very impressive.


The second mini-exhibit was Faces and Mazes. Here, the artist Lia Cook has executed woven hangings that look like photographs in the level of detail. She used computer software to translate pictures into weaving instructions. The close-up detail of how it was done has a maze-like quality to it, and one hanging actually looks like a maze. Then it looks like a close-up of the weave structure, but when you look at it closely, it is essentially patches of black and white woven in very fine detail. Her work is fascinating, you can get lost in it. Most of the faces were doll faces, but some were actual baby faces.


The third exhibit was called Stumble, it consisted of outsized male heads and figures put together with bits of fabric sewn together and then inflated to form three dimensional figures. The technique was interesting; apparently the artist (Stephen Schofield) wets down the fabric with sugar water and then inflates it, the sugar in the water stiffens the fabric as the water evaporates so that the figure holds its three dimensional shape. To take it down, it is sprayed with ordinary water which washes out the sugar and deflates the figure. The figures are remarkably well done, you can see the musculature reproduced in the fabric.


Of the three exhibits, the last one interested me the least, but only because I have a personal interest in embroidery and weaving; I might be more interested in Stumble if I was a quilter.

The last special exhibit we saw was of Orenburg Shawls. Orenburg is a Russian town, they knit shawls there out of local wool. The shawls are uncommonly light and warm, they are knitted up in lacy patterns. When you see how fine the lace is, you wonder how such a shawl could keep you warm. The description of the display noted that when Russia became Communist, the production of the shawls was collectivized, but after the Communist era ended it went back to being a cottage industry as it was before 1917. Women are so resilient, they just keep on keeping on!

Fashionably wrapped

On Friday several of us from the weaving class went to the Textile Museum to see a couple of exhibits: People Place and Thing and the Kashmiri Shawls.


People Place and Thing was interesting, but the Kashmiri Shawls were enthralling.

In the Kashmir valley of northwest India they used to weave amazing shawls made from the hair of Himalayan goats, called pashmina, or cashmere. They were light, colourful and very finely woven. In the early 19th century they became very popular in Europe, ladies would pay a hundred guineas for a handwoven Kashmiri shawl.


A Kashmiri shawl could have 250 warp threads to the inch, and could be five feet or more in width. Some shawls were so wide that they had to be woven in pieces and handsewn together. The stitches joining the woven pieces into a single shawl were so tiny as to be invisible to the naked eye!

The shawls quickly became very fashionable, and agents would travel to Kashmir to direct the weaving of designs currently favoured by European fashions. Kashmiri weavers were initially resentful of this intrusion into their design process, but I guess the money talked and they began to weave to the dictates of European fashion.


As the shawls became ever more fashionable and in demand, there was strong pressure to learn to weave such shawls in Europe, to reduce the cost. The draw loom was invented, which allowed warp threads to be manipulated individually for the intricate shawl designs that were so popular. It took two people to operate a draw loom, one to weave and another to manipulate the draw strings and hooks to lift and lower the infinite combinations of warp threads for the intricate designs. The jacquard mechanism was added to the draw loom, this eliminated the need for "draw boys". Punch cards were made to specify the warp manipulation for each design, the cards were then fed into the jacquard mechanism which translated the holes in the cards into instructions to automatically raise or lower specific warp threads.

Very quickly the jacquard loom allowed far more intricate designs to be woven and the price of shawls dropped dramatically. By the late 19th century a shawl was selling for as little as 26 shillings. Europeans used sheep's wool (the weft) and silk (the warp), since pashmina was not strong enough for machine weaving. This made a heavier shawl, but apparently this was a small price to pay for the ability to weave the more intricate designs.


Original Kashmiri handwoven shawls remained expensive, and their designs were not as rich and complex as the newer jacquard loom weaves. By 1870 the Kashmiri weavers were pretty much put out of business. Unfortunately, there was an economic recession and famine at the same time, and in Hindu society weavers occupied a very low status. Very few of them earned enough to support a family at the best of times, and as a result of the collapse of demand for the shawls and the accompanying famine, many weavers died of starvation. Those that survived abandoned their looms to seek out other employment. Within a generation the skills of handweaving these beautiful shawls were lost forever.


European women wore their shawls as full-sized capes that draped attractively over the full hoop skirts also popular at the time.


The popular paisley design is named for the Scottish town of Paisley which is supposed to be the origin of this pattern, but it probably evolved from the traditional "Tree of Life" Kashmiri design. The Tree of Life was the palm, it was usually represented in a teardrop shape.


This is an unusual asymmetric shawl design. The idea for it was that a lady could fold it in such a way that only one quarter would show, and each quarter being different it would seem as if she had four different shawls depending on which quarter she displayed.

The four of us from the weaving class were completely in awe of these wonderful shawls. We are all amateur weavers, we know just enough to know how much we don't know. To see the work of master weavers like this was an amazing experience.

Thirty seconds

Yesterday I ran for thirty seconds. A really long thirty seconds.

I used to do the 10K Sun Run in Vancouver back in the '90s, which was pretty hard on my knees. However I did learn one thing from that, interval training. The Vancouver Sun used to promote training for the Sun Run by doing this interval training a few months in advance. You could start in January not being able to run at all, and by the time of the Sun Run in April you could do the full 10K without stopping. Pretty impressive, and it works. So I swear by the Sun Run training, and that's what I am trying to do now.

The way it works is, the first week you walk four and half minutes and run for thirty seconds, repeating for up to an hour. These days I set my limit at thirty minutes because I don't think my knees are up for the full hour. Repeat three times in one week. The next week you add thirty seconds so you are walking four minutes and running one minute. Each week you add thirty seconds till finally you are running the whole time. Pretty simple.

Simple, but not easy. Yesterday was my first go at it, out on the MacGregor track. I've been walking there with Fatima and Grace and the dogs, and I've improved significantly from being totally wasted by a forty minute walk to being able to complete the full forty minutes in reasonable shape. So now I want to up the ante and try running.

That first thirty seconds yesterday just about killed me. The second one I survived. By the eighth one I thought I could tack on a few seconds at the end, just to see how far I could go before running out of breath. Maybe an extra fifteen seconds. I am so out of shape!

But this morning, I woke up raring to go, I can't believe the energy I feel. That alone is motivation to do it again. Fatima was at the dogpark this morning, I told her what I was doing and she is reluctantly agreeing to try it. She is dead set against running. But how bad can thirty seconds be?

I didn't tell her how bad it can be.

Alex's vacation

"It was the last wish of the Icelandic economy that its ashes be spread over Europe." ~New York Times, April 19, 2010.

Alex had a 10-day vacation in Europe planned. With lots of European relatives, he made no hotel reservations, he wouldn't need them. Taiga, his dog, would be spending the ten days with a dog buddy just outside of town.

Alex's KLM flight to Amsterdam was to leave Toronto last Friday morning.

All weekend we speculated at the dogpark where Alex was, we were pretty sure he was not in Europe. And this morning Alex and Taiga were at the dogpark.

Alex said he didn't want to disturb Taiga's vacation with his dog buddy, so with no dog he didn't come to the dogpark.

Alex has rescheduled his flight to this coming Friday, KLM was happy to reschedule his flight to Amsterdam for the following week, but they did not want to reschedule his return flight. They expected him to curtail his vacation by seven days! Alex was having none of that, after some discussion he got his return flight rescheduled as appropriate.

I hear that the wind has changed, and now the Icelandic volcanic ash is headed to Canada, with flights out of Newfoundland already being cancelled, and the Toronto airport watching the situation closely.

Bets on Alex getting his European vacation this spring?

A little family history

My Aunt Corrinne (I have no idea if that is the correct spelling, I think maybe not) has a photo album with some photos of my grandparents and her husband and other family members. A lot of photos of her family as well, but I don't know any of them. Anyway, the photos of my grandparents were interesting.

There was a great one of Grandma when she was a young woman, in a swim dress standing in water and grinning like the notorious cat. She looks so gay! Very overdressed by modern standards though.

Another one showed Grandad and Grandma as a young couple, standing on the bow of a small sailboat (he is standing, she's sitting I think). He is tall and skinny with long-ish hair combed back, and this look on his face that reminds me of Isaac.

Whenever people would say Isaac looks like me---which isn't very often---I never quite saw it, to me he looks a lot more like his father than like me. But that photo of Grandad as a young man knocked me out, there's a look about him that is so Isaac. A kind of defiant half-smiling "I dare you" look.

There was another photo of Grandad in a top hat, looking very Churchillian. Every inch the successful businessman. Or successful cellist.

Grandad ran away from home at age 13/14 to join the circus. He went to Chicago where he learned a trade in the printing business and came back to Toronto some years later and immediately picked up a good job thanks to the his Chicago training. Although unschooled, he was smart and inventive. He was also an accomplished cellist, playing with a variety of bands and orchestras, and for Jewish weddings. During the depression he worked several jobs and his family fared quite well during those hard times, thanks to his many skills and likeability. He was even able to buy a small cottage on Balsam Lake, which all of his kids remembered fondly, and my parents met there.

Grandad worked at the same company that first hired him when he returned to Toronto until he retired at 65; he had plans for retirement vacations in Florida, but died suddenly in a drugstore only weeks after he retired. My own father took early retirement because he greatly feared the same early demise; he wanted to get in some retirement time before fate took him out. He managed a good 16 years in retirement, dying at age 76. Those 16 years were spent at Balsam Lake, just down the way from his father's old cottage, and I think they were among the very best years of his life.

Aunt Ruthe died this winter at age 82, so far she is the longest-lived of the family. When Peter and I were visiting Uncle Bill in the nursing home, I joked with him that he needed to live at least 2 more years to beat her record, he is now 80. I think he stands a good chance of doing that.

Bill had a stroke at age 70 that left him partially paralyzed. He cannot live at home because he and his wife cannot manage his care. It is kind of sad that he is mentally still very together, but his body just doesn't get him around as we would all like. He also needs to sleep a lot, he just doesn't have a lot of energy anymore. But he reads voraciously.

The nursing home he is in is a good one, and only a few minutes drive from his home where his wife, my Aunt Corrinne, still lives. She comes by every day, knows all the staff by first name and also many of the other residents. The home is set in a very pleasant rural location, and the atmosphere there is generally relaxed and friendly. There always seem to be plenty of staff bustling in the halls, and residents everywhere, in the large bright dining room, smaller gathering rooms and in the wide hallways. In the summer you see lots of people outdoors as well, the property is maintained in a park-like manner with many trees and benches.

Aunt Corrinne says she told their kids that when the time comes they are to put her in that nursing home, she is very happy with it.

The photos are of a pair of osprey nesting near Aunt Corrinne's home, she took us to see the nest. If you look closely at the fourth photo, the one of the osprey flying away from the nest, you can see it is holding something---probably a fish---in its talons. When a bald eagle carries a fish in its talons, it holds it at right angles to the direction of flight, but an osprey holds it in the same direction, making it more aerodynamic.

MIA

I'm still here, just don't have a lot to say. Been a busy week or two though.

Bought a loom and had a spring cold, no doubt brought on by dog lady pub crawl.


Whirlwind visit east by Western Brother, visited our parents' grave and various still-living relatives.



Acupuncturist highly disapproving of dietary disruptions, gave me a lecture on proper eating habits: no sugar no animal fat and *definitely* no birthday cake.

Probably no alcohol either, although I seem to have blocked that part of the lecture out.

Life goes on.

Good Friday at the fair

It was up to 25C today, Grace and I hit the Oneofakind craft show down at the Ex. We walked down early, stopping for coffee and toast and peanut butter at a little coffee shop en route.

Gretel gave me two Comp tickets for the show so we got in free, but there was a crowd of people lined up for the opening at 10am.

All told we spent about four and a half hours there, that's how long it took to see the whole thing and then go back and buy a few items that we liked and could afford.

Grace bought an outrageous salt and pepper shaker set ($300!!) and three silk screened tees. Two of them were silk screened with designs taken from crop circles in England. The third was a cartoon of a mad princess, Grace thought it looked like herself on a Bad Hair Day.

I bought some gorgeous handspun yarn from Newfoundland, and a turned wood fountain pen ($100, which was his cheapest price: his best pens sold for over $600!!)

We both bought little wooden trivets/cheese boards and jars of specialty mustard.

We stopped by Gretel's Fancy Pants Kids booth in the Rising Star section, she was doing a lot of business selling her dragon tails, capes and crowns. She was doing such good business that Isaac had to make a special delivery of more product, so we helped haul it in from the van to her booth and then Isaac gave us a lift home. Gretel is going to be thoroughly exhausted when this is over.

It was supposed to be sunny all day but it clouded over in the afternoon. Stayed warm though, we are having ridiculously warm weather this Easter long weekend. Kids are out playing in the street and some folks (the industrious ones) are cleaning up their gardens for spring planting.

Memorial

The other day I was Googling names of people I used to know but have for one reason or another lost track of, and I found the obituary for one of them. He died last year, of a cancer he had to deal with for most of his adult life. It finally got him.

This was a man I had known since my teen years, we met in high school and managed to keep in touch---off and on---over several decades. It was no accident that I lost track of him though, I simply stopped writing to him because I was offended by something he said in the last email I received from him (in reference to my previous email), to wit: "...postmenopausal grumpy old woman rant...".

I reacted rather strongly to that comment partly because it wasn't true, I thought I was being good-natured and humourous not ranting or grumpy. You know how email is, you can sometimes read into it a tone or emotion that isn't really there. But the part that really got to me was that I was just tired of men blaming women for their supposedly hormonal reactions to things. And to hear it from someone I counted as a friend and thought was fairly enlightened about such things, well, I didn't like it.

All my pre-menopausal adult life I was hearing men blame any kind of female reaction to things that they did not like on their rampant female hormones. Clearly, women are completely subject to their hormones and should not be taken seriously! And now, now that I am post-menopausal and have no hormones worth ranting about, now I am being castigated for my lack thereof? Damned if I have 'em, damned if I don't!

Even more ironically, this man who was accusing me of being a postmenopausal grumpy old woman was hopped up on testosterone injections as part of the treatment for his cancer. If anyone was being run by his/her hormones, it was him!

I debated writing back to him and explaining all that to him, but decided in the end not to; the misunderstanding in my view stemmed from trying to communicate by email so why would I think that yet another email would somehow resolve the problem?

I lived in Vancouver at the time and he lived in Toronto. A few years later I moved to Toronto and again debated getting in touch with him, but I'd go through the whole scenario in my head and then think that he was just as likely to respond negatively as positively to any effort on my part, so I didn't. You know how it is, the longer you leave that sort of thing go, the harder it is to follow up on it.

Now he is dead.

I feel regret, but I am not sure what exactly I regret. Not having sorted it all out? The lost years of contact? Having stopped a relationship for a petty reason? Sadness over his death? The finality of never having another chance? I don't know.

He wasn't a bad person, he certainly was an interesting person, and I knew he had little chance of living to great old age because his health was precarious. Reading his obituary, I understand that he had many good friends and he is sorely missed. He added good things to many people's lives, even to mine. What can I say.

The fishy wabbit diet

Between the acupuncture and some diet changes, I am way better than I was last week. At my last acupuncture session I told the doctor I was 50% better, but I think I am closer to 80% or 90% now.

I've started walking exercise at a local track with a fellow dog owner, I can barely keep up with her but I do manage to complete the entire 40 minute session without collapsing in exhaustion. The dogs love it.

The Chinese medicine doctor is saying he still has concerns about my kidneys and pancreas. Chinese medicine is very different from western medicine, I would never have associated my kidneys or pancreas with the symptoms I have been having.

The only dietary change the doctor has mentioned was to cut out refined sugar. I have to say that I have not been entirely successful in that, I still use sugar in my tea, albeit not as much.

I have tried to follow the conventional dietary changes recommended for acid reflux, but that is really hard to do. Basically, they recommend you cut out all the good stuff: coffee and black tea, alcohol, sugar, chocolate, cheese, fried food, dairy products, anything crunchy.

When I first read these restrictions, I thought, how on earth does one eat? There's no way I am going to turn into a herbal-tea-and-tofu nut!

But I have managed to make some significant changes. The trick has been to go looking for what I could eat rather than what I could not eat, and be experimental with it. The novelty factor got me through the first few days of deprivation.

I have cut back on cheese, so far I have had no chocolate (waah!), I've cut out coffee (but kept the black tea), and have pretty much stopped frying food.

I do keep a bag of potato chips and occasionally treat myself to a chip or two.

I read that what I need to do is reduce production of stomach acid and try to allow my esophagus to heal by avoiding anything that will irritate it (crunchy or scratchy food). One website I read said that if you can increase digestive enzymes in your stomach, that will tend to decrease the need for stomach acid. You can get digestive enzymes from supplements or from eating dark leafy greens and other foods that are high in those enzymes. So I have been eating a lot of rabbit food: chard, lettuce, spinach, that kind of stuff. One recommendation was for carrot soup to soothe the esophagus and add enzymes, I found a great recipe for ginger carrot soup (ginger is good for the stomach too).

To make the soup, chop up carrots and celery, and grate some ginger. I think the ratio is roughly 2 cups carrots, 1 cup celery, 1 tablespoon grated ginger. Cook together until soft in approximately three cups of water (or more, my first batch I boiled dry and had to throw out). Then run it through a blender. You can substitute broth for half the water if you need salt in it, I just add a bit of miso when it's done. Serve with a dollop of yogurt, maybe a sprinkle of parsley. You can also add other vegetables to the soup.

For the first week or two, all I ate was fruit, fish, leafy green salads and carrot soup, but now that I feel better I am adding other foods.

I started eating fish because cutting out all the cheese and dairy products pretty much eliminated my normal protein sources. But I have no skill in cooking fish, the first few meals were terrible. Then my neighbour Fatima gave me a fool-proof recipe for fish at the dogpark, so the quality of my meals has vastly improved.

Fatima covers a fish fillet in a sauce made of mustard, soy sauce and maple syrup (trust a Portuguese-Canadian to put maple syrup on fish!), I substitute miso for the soy sauce. Then you pop it into a toaster oven set at 400F for 10-12 minutes. Presto-pasto! Instant fish! Doesn't matter what kind of fish, the sauce works for them all.

An apple a day: eat a golden delicious apple at the end of each meal to ward off heartburn. Don't know why it works, but it does.

Drink lots of water, but not with food. Eat more smaller meals. This is hard to do, trying to fit in copious quantities of water between numerous meals is tricky and time-consuming. Plus you can never go anywhere: between eating, drinking, food preparation and bathroom breaks, that's pretty much a full day. Good luck with that.

Your stomach is the size of two open fists (make a fist, open it up so only your thumb and one finger are touching), each meal should be no bigger than that, otherwise you are putting needless pressure on the sphincter that keeps the stomach acid from going up the esophagus.

Restore your gut flora, eat foods with live good-bacteria cultures in them. Probiotic yogurt is an obvious source, but certain misos and sauerkrauts are too. That's why I use miso instead of soy sauce on the fish. These days, miso is just about my 'sole' (ha ha) source of salt (trying to keep the blood pressure down too), so I have become a big fan of the stuff. There's just no way I can cut out salt altogether, I am too much of a salt-lover. At least with miso, I am getting good nutrition along with the salt.

Miso that comes packaged in a soft plastic wrapper is probably pasteurized and therefore not a good source of good bacteria. Look for miso in yogurt tubs or jars with lids. I was told to use Tradition brand three-year-old rice miso (from your healthfood store refrigerator). Look for Eden brand organic sauerkraut, I can't eat the stuff because of the vinegar (I react rather strongly to that), but it's another good source of good bacteria.

I never gave up the yogurt but I did switch to skim milk probiotic yogurt. I continue to eat oatmeal and rice and a slice of wheat toast every day. I've switched my biggest meal to midday and I try to eat my last meal a good 3 hours before bedtime. No more chocolate macaroons for desert (waah!)! I grate ginger and carrot into my salad, and make up a vinaigrette and miso salad dressing. I don't drink my morning tea first thing, but have some food first so the tea is not going into an empty stomach. I continue to add milk to my tea, but I have switched from 2% to 1% (can't stand the taste of skim milk and apparently there is a big difference in fat content between 1% and 2%).

Tomatoes are supposed to be bad for acid reflux, but I read somewhere that it's only cooked tomatoes, fresh tomatoes are OK. So I have not cut out tomatoes altogether. If you are a big fan of pasta and tomato sauce, there is a fabulous uncooked tomato sauce in the Moosewood cookbook (or one of them, I don't remember which one). Gretel makes it and puts it on cooked spaghetti squash for a to-die-for meal. I think it has a fair bit of vinegar in it though, so it might depend on how you tolerate vinegar. It also has a fair bit of parmesan cheese in it, but apparently hard cheeses like parmesan are better tolerated than softer cheeses.

I have cut out citrus fruit though. Fresh pineapples, bananas and apples (golden delicious) are my staple fruits at the moment.

I read somewhere that I should try to sleep with the head of my bed raised 6-12" higher than the foot, and ideally on my left side. I did try this but the acid reflux went through the roof and all of a sudden I could not sleep through the night for the pain. I put the bed back to level and went back to my normal sleeping position (on my stomach) and the pain disappeared.

Moral of the story: everybody is different, you do what works for you.

I have tried eating cheese on occasion, I figure that at this point I can probably get away with small amounts. I have also had a glass of wine or two with little ill effect. I might try the sauerkraut again, although a life without sauerkraut is not nearly as dismal a prospect as a life without wine.

My mind is as big as the universe

I went to see the Chinese medicine doctor on Monday.

He has a tiny clinic above a store on Queen Street. The first little room is the waiting room/office/dispensary, and the second and third little rooms are the treatment rooms. They are subdivided into cubicles with laundry line and bedsheets, I think there are six cubicles in all. Each cubicle has a massage table in it.

When I arrived I was greeted by the doctor's wife/nurse/receptionist.

Ah, you must be Isaac's mother! She grinned and nodded at me.

The signs said to turn off my cell phone and take off my shoes, there were plastic sandals for me to wear in the treatment room. She led me to a cubicle and directed me to undress and lie down on the table, with a sheet to cover me.

Soon the doctor came in, with his intern.

He said, Tell me everything. Where does it hurt?

I told him about the chest pain and the shortness of breath. I told him about my numb foot. I told him about the sore spot on my arm and the other one down low in my belly. He took my arm to feel my pulse, and he saw the bruising and scar from the angiogram.

He looked shocked. What is this?

I tried to explain about the angiogram, how the cardiologist ran into a blockage in my arm and had to try again elsewhere. The Chinese doctor rolled my wrist in his hand, examining the bruise and the scar. The scar was right where he wanted to feel my pulse.

Energy is blocked there, that's why the doctor couldn't do the angiogram there, he said.

Then he looked at my foot, asked me to point to exactly where it was numb.

Ah, he said, That is your kidney and your liver.

Then he told me to think of my mind getting bigger and bigger. Imagine that your mind is as big as the whole universe. Your mind is expanding to fill the universe and the energy is coming into your mind and into your body. The energy is flowing from your mind through your body and down to your feet. As he said this, he waved his arms slowly over my body to illustrate the flow of the energy. Keep your attention on this, your mind is expanding to fill the universe. The energy is flowing through you.

Then his voice got very quiet, I couldn't hear the words, but he was talking faster. I don't know if he was talking to his intern or himself or if he was reciting some healing incantation. But I was getting very relaxed and my eyes were closed and my mind was getting bigger.

He started inserting the needles. He would tap hard where he wanted to put a needle, and then insert it in that spot. Sometimes I only felt the tap, sometimes the needle hurt. Sometimes he fiddled with the needle, inserting it deeper or sideways or something. I looked at them later, they were long and very very thin, they flopped over when they were inserted.

After he and the intern were finished inserting all the needles, they left me alone. I had needles on my face, in my hair, on my stomach and up and down my arms and legs. In the background was soft soothing music. I heard him talking to another patient in another cubicle, and then later another patient. I felt very relaxed and tried to think of my mind getting as big as the universe.

He came back to me in a while and took out the needles and directed me to lie on my stomach so he could insert some needles in my back. Again he left me alone for awhile, and then came back to remove the needles.

You can get dressed now.

I felt very relaxed, as if I'd just had a really good massage. I dressed and gathered up my things and came back out to the waiting room. The doctor's wife started to write the bill for me.

The doctor said, You like some pills?

I shrugged and said, Sure.

He picked two boxes with fancy Chinese writing on them and put them on the desk beside the bill.

You take 8 pills of each, 3 times a day.

Holy shmoly, he wants me to take 50 pills a day!

He said, Next time, I treat your skin condition (there's a small scaly patch under my hair, he wants to put a needle in it).

Next time? When should I come back?

You need lots of treatment, you a mess. You come twice a week, then once a week. He grinned at me.

He showed me some exercises he wanted me to do, and also how to stomach-breathe.

Next time, he said, I show you how to meditate.

I walked out of there feeling just about as high as I could be. For the first time in a very long time, I felt like I could get better.

Maybe acupuncture works, maybe it doesn't, I don't know. But all those doctors and nurses at the hospital could sure learn a thing or two from this guy about how to promote healing. He made me feel like getting better was very doable.

And when I was walking home I thought about all those things I told him about. About the breathing and the numb foot and the ache in my lower belly. I thought they were all unrelated, all different things. But they all started at the same time, and he made me see that they are all related. He made me feel like a whole person, nothing is unrelated, nothing is a coincidence.

And I can get better. My mind is as big as the universe.

Reading

Being somewhat grounded, I am doing a lot of reading lately. I seem to have an endless supply of books on hold at the Toronto Public Library, I may never buy another book again.

A couple of books that particularly grabbed my attention lately were Whole Earth Discipline: an ecopragmatist manifesto (2009) by Stewart Brand and Filthy Lucre: economics for people who hate capitalism (2009) by Joseph Heath.

Stewart Brand is of course that Stewart Brand, the one of Whole Earth Catalog fame, and Joseph Heath is a philosophy prof at the University of Toronto.

I love the title of Heath's book. As he says in his introduction, this is not an Economics 101 for all of us who avoided the course at college, or a even a diatribe against capitalism. Heath is no cheerleader for free markets and the capitalist way, but neither is he a blindly wholehearted supporter of environmentalist and leftist causes. He writes about why some favourite environmentalist or leftist policies are just as shortsighted and ill-conceived as the right-wing capitalist prevailing dogmas they oppose. I found the book refreshing and educational. He suggests that we may be stuck with capitalism in a Churchillian sense, as being the worst economic system except for all the others.

Heath goes through a number of examples of shortsighted thinking on environmental, social and libertarian issues. He also deals with the fact that we are not simply mindless consumers and entrepreneurs looking out for Number One, we are moral and social creatures with complex motivations. The assumptions by ultra-conservatives and neo-cons that "enlightened self-interest" (usually shortened to just plain self-interest) will bring health, wealth and happiness to us all have largely been exposed by recent events to be just another suit of the Emperor's clothes, but Heath explains that some of the antidotes proposed by well-meaning leftists are equally shortsighted and disastrous.

One example of this is the campaign for fair trade coffee. Paying higher prices for coffee encourages producers to produce more, but there is already a glut of coffee on the market, which is why prices were low in the first place. While raising coffee prices hasn't affected the rate of consumption, the risk is that if you pay producers more, they will naturally want to produce more. A similar campaign was conducted by The Body Shop a few years ago around the trade in Shea Butter, this resulted in a rather disastrous (for the producers) collapse of the trade due to overproduction. Perhaps a more useful thing to do would be to encourage producers to grow crops that people actually need, such as food.

I found Heath's explanations of how the market really works clear and understandable. He also explains some of the current economic theories, and how well they have worked (in explaining market behaviour) so far. I recommend this book as imminently readable, surprising, and thought-provoking.

Stewart Brand has always been on the bleeding edge of change and innovation. He sticks his neck out while others watch to see if he will be decapitated this time 'round. Whole Earth Discipline is pretty far out there. Brand suggests that we need to go beyond simply being green, we need to mix some blue (as in blue planet) in with that for turquoise ("Turqs" to supporters, "turquies" to detractors). He is pro-nuclear energy, pro-genetic engineering (genetic modification to others), pro-urbanization. He sees all of these as the ultimate "green" strategies.

Even before reading his book I was inclined to agree with Brand on nuclear energy, based on reading several years ago an absolutely fascinating book by Mary Mycio called Wormwood Forest: a natural history of Chernobyl (2005), not to mention books by James Lovelock of Gaia hypothesis fame. Brand supports Lovelock's perspective and provides interesting supporting evidence. He notes that while Nevada, the home of Yucca Mountain (the very controversial proposed site for burial of nuclear waste), is vehemently opposed to development of nuclear energy based on the issues surrounding the handling of radioactive waste materials, New Mexico is quietly accepting nuclear waste without protest. He suggests that there may be an historical reason for their opposed positions: Nevada was the state where most nuclear bomb testing occurred, New Mexico was the state where nuclear labs for developing the bombs were located. New Mexico benefitted from job creation in the nuclear industry, Nevada suffered the fallout, so to speak.

Brand suggests that we may not want to bury nuclear waste, we may actually want to hang onto it for future use. He writes about the state of nuclear energy development in other countries (France exports nuclear power, Japan is heavily invested in nuclear energy). It is interesting that Japan is so pro-nuclear, being the home of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One would think that if any country had a reason to fear or oppose nuclear energy, it would be Japan. While Lovelock supports nuclear energy as the best way to forestall climate change, Brand provides a number of other reasons to support it, including but not limited to safety and economics.

I don't care to argue the point here, I know this is very controversial to many people, but I would urge you to read Brand's book, he is a credible defender of the technology.

A few years back I did a fair bit of reading about genetic modification (Brand refers to it as genetic engineering), trying to determine for myself whether this was as evil as many environmentalists make it out to be. I never really came to a firm conclusion but my gut feel about it was that the most valid argument against it was around the issue of property and intellectual rights. This is a problem not only for GE organisms but for many other organisms, not to mention music, data and text. Brand argues that GE in combination with organic agricultural practices could be the best answer to our problems around global food supply and food quality. Genetic engineering is basically a fast-tracked and highly nuanced breeding program that allows specific characteristics of other varieties and even species to be incorporated into the target species, for example to improve drought-resistance, pest-resistance, and low nutrient requirements. A GE variety of rice can withstand prolonged periods of submersion in water, which allows farmers to use flooding of rice paddies for longer periods of time in order to drown potential pests of young rice plants.

The major problem is that GE technology is largely in the hands of corporations who are not necessarily trying to use it for the "good of humankind". As long as environmentalists are vehemently opposed to the use of GE at all, we cannot expect organic farmers to embrace it, and it will remain in the hands of corporations such as Monsanto, who will impose their own rules and limitations on how it can be used.

Brand associates the worldwide liberation of women with urbanization. He explains that the huge squatter slums surrounding fast-growing cities in developing nations are actually hotbeds of innovation, co-operation and liberation for women. As women move from small villages dominated by traditionally sexist elders to the free-for-all of urban squats, they have access to jobs and information, their paid labour gives them status, and the incentive or requirement to produce babies is significantly dampened. As the world urbanizes, population growth slows. A woman in a squatter town can build her own home, start her own business, and associate with other women doing the same. Authoritarian elders lose their grip on women's bodies and minds.

Urbanization is also, ironically, associated with the return to nature of vast tracts of land formerly occupied by small farms and villages. Wherever desertification has not already occurred due to overfarming, reforestation is taking hold. Eastern North America is a good example of that, the growth of mega-cities on the eastern seaboard has corresponded with the return of the Eastern Deciduous Forest over large parts of the eastern United States and southeastern Canada.

I have several other books on the go at the moment, including a book of poems by Mary Oliver (Thirst, 2006). I wish I was a poet, I wish I could express myself the way she can.

A good yarn

There's a great little blog post over at The Yarn Harlot today (actually, yesterday).
It's not what you think.

Oh, and Josh?
You need a new hovercraft.
Eels indeed...

OK off you go, I'm done here.

Winter?

It was a sunny warm day, and the sun now sets an hour later, so it was like spring. I did see some crocuses, and some trees starting to bloom the other day. And tonight our street was full of kids, shooting hoops, skateboarding, and just plain hanging out.





I went for an after-dinner stroll around the block (can't go much faster than a stroll these days), and Phelan decided to follow me on his Skuut bike in his stocking feet. He's quite fast on that little thing, I didn't even notice he didn't have any shoes on.





It was OK until we hit a broken patch in the sidewalk, filled with dirt. Then Phelan realized the down-side of being out in your stocking feet. I had to lift him, Skuut bike and all, over the dirt patch. But after that he was off and Skuuting, we soon ended up back at the house, where his Mom had left his shoes and helmet out on the porch steps for him.

(This picture is from last year when Phelan first got his Skuut bike. He's bigger now, and the weather is warmer.)

Can't believe it's officially still winter.

Words to live by

This is what you should do:
Love the earth and sun and animals,
despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy,
devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants,
argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence toward the people...
reexamine all you have been told in school or church or in any book,
dismiss what insults your very soul,
and your flesh shall become a great poem.

~ Walt Whitman ~

(Excert from Preface to 1855 edition, Leaves of Grass)

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Diagnosis

I saw my doctor today and while I was skeptical listening to her thoughts on what is wrong with me, I am now a bit more agreeable to the idea having done some research on the internet. She thinks I have acid reflux. She wants me to go do some test involving swallowing barium to confirm this diagnosis.

When I looked up acid reflux in combination with "shortness of breath", I found something called "silent reflux", which is another name for Laryngopharyngeal Reflux (LPR). LPR can cause something called a laryngospasm, which among other things, can cause shortness of breath. A number of other symptoms that I have but I thought were unrelated now look to be linked to this.

So my doctor is probably right, but I am not sure I want to do this barium swallow thing to confirm it. I am already convinced. If I do the barium swallow and the diagnosis is confirmed, then she can prescribe a bunch of drugs for the condition. I don't want to go that route unless I have to.

So I am now looking into alternative treatments. I have a couple of leads on possibilities, mostly involving dietary changes (give up coffee, cheese and chocolate! no more curry, no more burritos, no more milk! drink carrot juice! eat cabbage! omigod, the drugs are starting to sound good!), and a Chinese doctor (Chinese, and he practices Chinese medicine) that Isaac and Gretel like.

Here's another interesting thing about having universal healthcare: it only covers conventional medicine so one's inclination is to follow that since it is cheaper. But if all health practice costs were covered (or alternatively you had to pay for them all), then one might go the alternative route a little more readily. But at this point I know that whatever treatment I opt for, it's going to cost me and frankly, I'd rather spend my money on food and herbs and acupuncture treatments than on acid reflux drugs.

I am getting kind of bored with this endless description of my health problems, so I think I am going to try to lay off for awhile.

Waiting room hell

OK, so as a result of the angiogram I had on March 1st, I now have what's known as an AV fistula in my leg. That means that the femoral artery that supplies blood to my leg has joined with a nearby vein and is not delivering blood to my leg in quite the way that it is supposed to. Sounds bad, and it can be, but this morning a doctor at St. Mike's said that their vascular surgeon took a look at all the test results and symptoms and thinks that in my case it is not serious and can be left to heal on its own.

This is kind of a good news/bad news thing, on the one hand I avoid surgery and yet another stay in the hospital, on the other hand I have this sore lump in my groin that makes it difficult to walk. In addition to the already existing and as yet undiagnosed shortness of breath, dizziness and chest pain. The doctor says it will take time to heal by itself and I should still be vigilant for signs that it has worsened. But I can go about my life as usual. Such as it is.

This whole thing is frustrating in the extreme. I still have not got a diagnosis for the original problem, and I now have a complication as the result of one of the tests done to find a diagnosis (can we say "iatrogenic"?). On top of that, they wanted a CT scan to try to see if my problem was a fistula, and a CT scan involves way more radiation than an X-ray. The technician had to do it twice, because they have a recording that is supposed to tell you when you are to hold your breath for the procedure, but that recording malfunctioned. I kept breathing, so she had to run the CT scan twice, meaning double the radiation dose.

To be fair, I cannot see any point in the whole process where I can fault someone for having made a wrong decision. Every step of the way there was a good logical reason for the choices made. There were alternatives, but lacking 20/20 hindsight choices were made with the knowledge available.

I could possibly fault the intern who nicked my femoral artery, but that's what interns are there to do: learn from their mistakes under supervision in hopes of not making them twice and having someone die because of it.

This afternoon I got home from the hospital after not eating for almost 24 hours, Gretel made breakfast and coffee for me. In the course of discussing what has been going on, she pointed out that my frustration would have been so much worse if we did not have healthcare coverage, I would have the additional weight of the financial cost of all this on my mind.

If I lived in a country where I had no healthcare coverage, right now I would definitely be thinking about suing somebody, anybody. I would for sure be trying to make a case for malpractice or negligence. If all this had happened on my dime, you can bet I would want my dime back and then some, for all the aggravation (not to mention iatrogenic complications) involved.

I can understand why people might be trigger-happy about litigation in a country with no national healthcare program, and why malpractice insurance would be a very big deal.


It's still sunny and warm here, and today I have a temporary respite from medical waiting room hell, before starting in again tomorrow. So excuse me while I go off to enjoy it.


Can you see the robin?

Walking for tulips

The weather is just too nice to stay indoors, no matter how sick or tired.

Yesterday I walked all the way to Queen Street, caught the streetcar and rode to Romni Wool. I wanted to buy some circular knitting needles. I found what I was looking for, but of course it is impossible to visit a yarn store without looking around so I did end up buying a bit of yarn. Then I walked home.

That was a significant accomplishment, Romni is several kilometres from home. My first day home I couldn't even make it to the end of the block without stopping several times to catch my breath. Yesterday I started out walking extre-ee-emely slowly, but found that after a few minutes I could pick up the speed a bit, until by Queen Street I was actually managing a decent stroll.

Today Grace came by to go for a walk, I told her I could only go slowly but I don't think she quite got how slowly. She's used to power walking. But after a few minutes she managed to slow down and I to speed up, so we did not too badly.

We went down to a little grocery store on Queen that sells flowers and potted plants. She wanted to buy a rosemary plant, but the two rosemarys they had looked too scruffy. So we bought tulips instead.


Aren't they lovely?

My forest trail socks

In all the fuss over breathing, I forgot to mention that I finally finished my new pair of socks. The yarn is hand-dyed by Fleece Artist (Seastorm colourway), the design is my own.


It's a toe-up sock with a Magic Cast-on and a pattern called Spiral and Eyelet that I picked from a book of knitting patterns. Not a terribly imaginative name, but isn't the colour lovely?