Old Friends

Winter forest dawn. It’s not the cold, it’s the damp. My old bones ache for southern latitudes.

Now then, where was I? Oh yeah. I’d had a long telephone chat with a dear old buddy and then gone and refilled my big coffee mug. I reached for some paperwork on the back of my desk and sploosh! How does one mug of coffee suddenly become what seems like more than a litre? What else can run everywhere and cover everything like hot coffee? (I sometimes refer to it as the hot oil laxative) Laptop, cellphone, note pads, an important e-mail I’d printed. I grabbed every piece of cloth and paper towel within range and began mopping; hauling my desk out to sponge up beneath and trying to save the phone and computer from catastrophic collateral damage. “Oh gosh” I thought. Yeah right! Of course in the middle of that there is the overwhelming urge to rush to the bathroom as the hot oil kicks in, and in the middle of that, Old Jack came to remind me that he was plenty ready to go for a walk. Then the phone rings again.

Dad! You sonofabitch!
He used to love the snow, but the look in his eyes this morning says it all.
Pretty? Not! YOU sleep in the bushes.
Yeah! Right here will do.
At least with Covid they don’t have to worry about where to hang the mistletoe. This is a housing reality for many.
Remember this? Booted from the back porch of the old food bank, a tent was set up in the soggy back yard. Now the tent is gone. Booted again?
The new old box. Leaks and interior repairs complete, my old camper looks pretty luxurious compared to an old pallet and a scrap of building paper.
The rebar rooster. a little beauty in the gloom.
Then there’s this. He seemed like a nice sensible older fellow. but with gloves, a zipped-up winter parka and shorts?? I don’t understand the costume of choice. I’ve blanked the fellow’s face for obvious reasons. It wasn’t something he was wearing. Well, these ARE strange days.
More geezer jocks. Can someone explain this? A rite of passage used to be when boys started wearing long pants. My knees ache just to see this. I’m not saying it’s wrong, I just don’t understand. Flash we now our fluorescent shanks.
Cold and fuzzy.

Well now that I’ve buried the dead, I can see how funny it all is. Where’s the hidden camera? And, I’ve been meaning to give the desk a good cleaning! I smugly thought that the laptop had been spared and my mobile phone as well. Driving toward where we would walk my mobile phone began to ring. This old recluse sometimes doesn’t receive a call for weeks. This morning the thing wouldn’t stop. I could answer but no-one could hear me nor could I call out. Later I’d take it apart tiny screw by screw. Out came a few drips of coffee. I rinsed it in clean water and now it sits in front of a small electric heater. Are we having fun yet?

The Garage, Duncan. One of the first car dealers on Vancouver Island it is now a cafe, health food store, bookshop and a favourite place for me. A sunny winter day to savour.
Behind the garage. There’s a bit of beauty everywhere…if you care to look.

At the hatchery where we walked the streams were full of bright red sockeye. I can’t recall a spawn this late in the season but I’m sure that it is not unknown and has nothing to do with covid nor global warming. Not much in nature happens by any human calendar no matter how arrogant we chose to be about our role in the natural scheme of things. Fish happen and I, for one, rejoice to see them. One dufus with two lovely brown dobermans allowed them to charge freely into the stream and chase the spawners. He thought it was hilarious. I flung out a few harsh words and realized what a good thing it is that Canadians are not allowed to carry hand guns. I really want to be tolerant of my fellows but how do you accept wilful stupidity. A quick look in the mirror works well for me. Dufus I said? Yep.

What’s behind that door? Actually, there sits a Baldwin steam locomotive, stored in its original shed.
Not far away sits a logger’s steam donkey. This one was built by Tyee in Vancouver.

A short e-mail appeared in my morning bin a few days ago. It inquired if I was the same Fred this lady had known fifty years ago. It turns out that I was. (Well no actually, I’m an old fart now)I was amazed and flattered that she had sought me out and the reminiscing has been sweet indeed. How the hell did half-a goddamned century go by? Here’s a YouTube link to Guy Clark’s song, “Old Friends.”       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0OmFK38_ZU

Screaming Meemee
A young bald eagle watches the salmon and protests first rights on his fishing hole.
Fishing for jumpers
There’s one! It’s darned hard to catch one in mid-air, even when picking it from a video clip like this.
Oy you! Get to the front of the pool, or is that school? It’s an amazing congestion of fish, eventually they turn back downstream a bit to find a place to spawn. One coming in and one trying to get out.
Smells like fish, tastes like fish.

Well it is our first Covid Christmas and what more is there to say? We’d never heard that word a year ago and now we’ll never forget it. Hopefully in another year it will be spoken in the past tense and we’ll have other lesser challenges to face. Meanwhile it’s Bumhug and deck the halls with coloured face masks. Take it easy on the gagnog, turn your face to cough and hug a turkey for me.

By the way, that cellphone…I’ve got it working again. There IS a Santa Claus!

Christmas.

The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn’t for any religious reasons. (or because of covid) They couldn’t find three wise men and a virgin.

Jay Leno

Turn Your Head To Cough

A December covid morning. Sure is a nice looking day despite the doom and gloom.

I found myself beginning this blog with yet another account of more Covid bad behaviour. But one of the mantras which I claim to aspire toward is to take nothing personally. So…End of rant, delete, start again. We’re all under some degree of duress and perhaps the best relief is to cut a little slack for our fellows in their determination to satisfy a sense of entitlement. It is what we’ve been taught to expect for decades! We are all bent out of shape with the direct and also the obscure long-term effects of this ongoing pandemic. It is appalling that so many folks are determined to demand their personal whims come before a few weeks of self-discipline in consideration of the common good. Let’s get together and beat this thing.

Just wear a mask damnit!

Social Isolation. A cabin in the mists behind local blueberry fields
A dough puppy named Pillsbury. Just another fungus.

Personally I hate face masks and rip them off each time I emerge from an “enclosed public place” but even I, master loner and contrarian, wear one without protest. I get it and don’t understand what it is that some others don’t. At the same time, from a different view I continue to find great amusement at those I see driving around alone in December gloom, wearing sunglasses, surgical gloves and face mask. Oh! You like dressing like that! OK fine, it’s not hurting anyone. So sorry.

Eagle eyes
and Seagulls watching, the last of the salmon run
Dog sushi. Various creatures drag the dead salmon up from the stream. Dogs love to roll on them, the hummier the better. “There’s nothing friendlier than a wet dog that’s rolled on a dead fish.”
We emerge unscathed and smelling like a rose, old Jack is down to a slow shuffle these days.
At the hatchery office. Even though shooting into the morning light it was so dull that the camera insisted on using flash. I love this panel and could build a whole house around it.
Mucho amigos
The portal. Another world awaits.

The following note just arrived in my morning bulletin board from La Manzanilla.

Covid news from the interior of MexicoPosted by Stephanie on November 30, 2020, 12:59 p

My last customer at the bookstore today happened to be a phlebotomist Dr. who works at a hospital in Guanajuato! She is here visiting with mask on for a much needed break from all the cases they are seeing at her hospital!

I wanted to question her more but she had an emotional breakdown when describing how the whole first floor of the hospital has now been turned into a morgue and her stress was apparent,

I think she was surprised at the lack of masks seen on the streets here given we have many buses coming from all parts.

Just saying! Be safe!

Nah, you don’t need to wear a mask, it’s your right! Dead right!

And now a little colour:
Arbutus berries
December weeds hanging on.
We’ll take all the brightness we can find.
December mauve

I was reading the latest edition of Hakaii Magazine. An excellent article about toxic effluent which washes off our highways into the ocean (you can google it up) made a profound comment. It suggests that Covid has taught us that to survive, we can change our behaviour rapidly. (Well, some of us anyway.) Now if only we would apply that same thinking to other environmental issues…. There’s something to chew on!

Once upon a bridge
The rusty rails tell the sad story.
“Doc I think I’ve got rail fungus.”
Mid drip. The old train station roof. Nothing lasts forever.
We need all the colour we can get.
Pommes Noel

Meanwhile as I write this line another December day dawns here with a clear sky. The world still looks like a fine place to be. And maybe that’s part of the problem, we can’t see the ghost riders in the sky. The millions of Thanksgiving travellers south of the border have returned home to complete their Christmas consumerism. But some of them will not see Christmas, having died a horrible death in result of their stupidity. Worse yet, so will some of those they’ve contacted along the way. Being an individual and a free-thinker is grand, I endorse that but “think” is the root word here. Stepping off a bridge will do little to defy the law of gravity but it sure will confirm a few things. Others who survive their infection will endure miserable, mysterious and debilitating long-term effects.

Bungee! This is where folks pay money to jump off a perfectly good bridge with a rubber band tied to their ankle. Leave your glasses, false teeth, glass eyes and wallets in the basket.

It ain’t pretty Dorothy and when you wake up tomorrow, this nightmare will still be upon us. Meanwhile the politicians have got to get their beaks out of the medical world and let the professionals do their work. Even when everyone has had their vaccines the virus will still be out there. Vaccines are not magic bullets, the plague won’t simply vanish because we’ve cooked up a potion. Forget the personal agendas! There are names for folks who try to gain profits and power from other’s misery. Yeah that’s the one, the orifice lodged within the inter-gluteal cleft. See, I can be polite and anatomically correct.

Winter nest
Know the feeling?
Next summer?

No message of Christmas joy and hope here, but it is one of consideration for others. We’ve essentially put the horrible US election behind us, let’s live to enjoy the free air. Now we have to take care of ourselves. That is best done simply by respecting our fellows even when they don’t reciprocate. We don’t know the pressures they may be enduring. Masks don’t protect us from others, they do help protect others from us; it’s the least we can do. If nothing else, wearing a mask appropriately is a sign of that respect. Thus saith the Fred.

Now I’ll go get back into my box….and Bumhug to you!

December noon
December moon.

if physical world can affect mind but mind cannot affect physical world, then its the only one-way interaction known in science !!!

Dossey, Larry M.D. (1982, p 206) Space, Time and Medicine. New Science Library, Shambhala, Boston, MA.

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Universal Mind -“…there is one all uniting, universal Mind, one all-pervading Intelligence…these are no totally separate minds…waves in an ocean – a wave cannot separate itself…bucket of water poured into a pool – affects every other particle of water within the pool, whether it knows it or not

Jampolsky, Gerold G. M.D. (1983) Teach Only Love. NY Bantom Books, p 78