Blessings

What historical event fascinates you the most?

Daily writing prompt
What historical event fascinates you the most?
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What historical event fascinates you the most?

First, let us define ‘historical’. Here’s what I found – (1) of or concerning history. (2) concerning past events. (3) The historical background to such studies. (4) Belonging to the past, not the present. (5) Famous historical figures.

Now let us think of the number of times we hear on the TV sports shows that such and such an event is making history “right before our eyes”. Wow! In a boxing match, almost ever punch thrown is “an historical event”. Ditto rugby – with every try scored, every penalty missed, and every tackle made. Ditto soccer, basketball, baseball, athletics. So, from the battery of past events that adorn my life, I am being asked to choose “which historical event fascinates me most”. Double wow.

My answer – the day of my birth, about which I know absolutely nothing. Or, to be more specific, the actual action of being born, about which I know even less. So, how do I study the historical background, when no eye witnesses are left alive to assist me? More important, nobody in my family wanted to talk about such an important – for me at any rate – event.

I do have some factual memories – tales told to me later. I was born at exactly 8:00 pm. I know this because my parents’ dog had been left at a neighbor’s house while my home-birth was taking place. As the clock struck eight, Paddy, the dog, jumped straight through their window, and ran up the road towards the house that was now to be our house, barking. “Ah,” said our wise neighbor, “there goes the dog. That means the baby’s been born.”

That is one version of the tale. My own version is the squawking of the stork who carried me, a sudden screech as he dropped me, a slow descent from a bright blue sky, a tumble down the chimney into the fireplace. And there I was. All covered in soot and ashes. I needed washing, of course. But baby, just look at me now. [See self-portrait above – Face in a Mirror].

My maternal grandfather swore that I had not been born at all, but found under a gooseberry bush. That would account for the green tinges in the painting. Apparently, all babies in South Wales were found under gooseberry bushes at that time. Unless they were delivered by the milkman.

And there’s many a tale about merry milkmen for, as they say in Wales, “It’s a wise man who knows his own father.” And I guess that is also a hysterical historical event about which I know nothing. But perhaps that’s why when the milkman who delivered the morning milk used to say “Good morning, son” when I met him at the the doorstep.

Come to think of it, the mailman also used to call me “Son” when he delivered the mail. Hmmmm – so did the butcher, the baker, and the candle-stick maker. Oh dear, so many historical events to choose from.

What are you most proud of in your life?

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What are you most proud of in your life?
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What are you most proud of in your life?

The young lady in the photograph above. We met, at a boarding school dance, in England, when we were both seventeen years old. We have been together ever since. Why am I so proud of her? Let me count the ways.

When she discovered my love of Spain and the Spanish language, she took time out from her own career in order to learn Spanish. When I asked her why she was learning the language, she replied ‘because if I am going to be with you, I want to share your life, and that means loving the things you love.’ We became engaged in Santander, Spain, on her 21st birthday. Then, the following year, when I received an offer to study and teach at the University of Toronto, she promised me that if I called her, she would come out and join me.

I called her as a Thanksgiving Gift from my Canadian family. She packed up her clothes and her career, bought a wedding dress, and travelled to Toronto that December. We got married on Christmas Eve. We had very little money. We didn’t have a wedding photographer. Nor did we have a honeymoon. I guess we never needed one. We had just enough money put by to last us until the end of January. So, First week of the New Year, she set out in search of a job. A qualified Diagnostic Radiographer, she was hired by the Doctor’s Hospital in Toronto, and she financed my graduate studies for the next three years.

Our next adventure was a Canada Council (as it was back then) Doctoral Fellowship that took us back to Spain where I completed the research for my thesis at the local library, with its trove of manuscript documents. We returned to Canada after two years, and took up residence in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where we still live. Her adventurous life led her to a certificate in accountancy, taken via a correspondence course. Then, she presented me with our daughter. We bought an American Cocker Spaniel and she started showing and grooming dogs, becoming Show Secretary of the Fredericton Kennel Club. She trained and groomed two Canadian Champions, an ASCOB (Willy) and a Parti-color (Smudge).

Our daughter decided she wanted to be a gymnast. Parents were requested to ‘get involved’ with the local club and my beloved became a gymnastics judge. She rose in the gym circles and became first provincial judging chairperson and then a nationally qualified judge, officiating at the National Gymnastics Championships and also at the Jeux du Canada Games.

She travelled with me to Oaxaca, Mexico, and fell in love with the Pre-Colombian Mexican Codices that we found there in abundance. She studied them carefully and then taught me all about them. I, in my turn, introduced them to my own students. When I took my first Multi-Media Courses at the University of New Brunswick, she followed them with me. The result was two-fold – our first web page which she built with with HTML, no templates in those early days, followed by our online Quevedo Bibliography. This, about ten years later, morphed into the online searchable data base that she built with the assistance of the technicians at the Digital Library in Harriet Irving Library.

Now, we are growing old together – such sweet sorrow. this Christmas we will celebrate 57 years of marriage. And yes, my beloved is still my most valuable Christmas present – and the person of whom I am most proud. I remember the old Worthington beer advertisement. “Behind every good man, there’s a good woman.” The cartoon shows a lady carrying a bottle of Worthington.

My beloved has stood behind me all my life. She has carried for me, not a bottle of Worthington, but the burden of assisting, helping, encouraging, supporting, carrying the load when it became too heavy for me. She has been a silent partner in so many ways, but one without whom I would be nothing.

The Dying of the Light

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The world has become such a dark place over the last three weeks or so. At times, I have despaired, lost hope, lost my faith, lost my creativity. Words have not come knocking on at my door. The eyes in my head have seen nothing to paint. Darkness, bleakness everywhere. And yet, light breaks where no light shines, as Dylan Thomas once wrote, and last night I started a painting. This morning I finished it and gave it a title: Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Yesterday I managed to complete a couple of poems. I attribute this new found creativity to moving my muse out of my office and placing it in my bedroom where it can inspire me at night. It seems to have worked. My muse is a small carving placed between four pyramids. Pyramid power and the muse’s inspiration have brought light back into my world, the light of creativity.

We must band together, we creatives. We must inspire ourselves and then go on to inspire others. We must let the light of our creativity, our faith, our belief spill out into the darkness that surrounds us. Together we must stand united and our light will be a lantern that will enlighten the world, not with chants, slogans, and cults, but with the inner faith and the total belief that genuine creativity brings to the world.

Creatives of the world, unite. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. United together, we can, and will, restore that light.

When you think of the word “successful,” who’s the first person that comes to mind and why?

Daily writing prompt
When you think of the word “successful,” who’s the first person that comes to mind and why?
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When you think of the word “successful,” who’s the first person that comes to mind and why?

What exactly does “successful” mean? I googled it and here are some of the answers – successful – well that’s a good answer. Successful means successful. It reminds me of my geography master in school – “The earth is geoidal, i.e., earth-shaped.” The earth is earth- shaped – I guess that leads to a successful education. Slightly better alternative meanings are – effective and productive. Taken literally, both have their problems, of course. The spud-bashers of WWI, sitting, peeling their potatoes at the cookhouse door, they were productive, but were they successful? Did they even survive the war? Do any names spring to mind? I am not so sure about that. But how about efficacious, another proffered meaning? Well, that certainly turns me on.

Basil, the Teddy Bear in the photo above, is embracing a can of Molson’s Lager. I didn’t know Teddy Bears liked lager until I saw him doing this. Caught in the act, all sticky-pawed. I asked him what he was doing and he replied that he was taking his medicinal compounds. When I asked him why, he started singing “most efficacious in every case.” “Who do you associate that with?” I asked. He started whistling the tune of Lily the Pink. “And was she successful?” I asked. “Of course she was,” Basil replied. “She’s the Savior of the the Human Race.” Wow!

So, I hereby nominate Lily the Pink, the Savior of the Human Race as both successful and nameable. And remember – “when Lily died, she went up to heaven. You could hear the church bells ring. She took with her, her medicinal compounds, hark the herald angels sing.” Now that’s a true life success story. And what an ending!

Rites of Passage

Rites of Passage

Summer slid silently away. Autumn’s
harvest is upon us. Slowly the mountain ash
is stripped of its fruit, from top to bottom.

Robins flit from branch to branch until
the whole tree shakes with bouncing birds
pouncing on the few remaining berries.

Berries gone now. Leaves will soon follow.
The Farmer’s Almanac forecasts a long, cold
winter, filled with wind, ice, and snow.

All too soon, the deer will appear, ghosting
their silent steps at wood’s edge. They’ll arrive
at dusk and wander all night, just to keep warm.

At dawn, they’ll leave, having exercised their
ancient rites of passage, the routes engraved
in their racial memory since the dawn of time.

When my time is up, I too shall follow them
into the lonely silence of that long, wintry night.
Restless, or at peace, I’ll hope for dawn’s light.

If you had a million dollars to give away, who would you give it to?

Daily writing prompt
If you had a million dollars to give away, who would you give it to?
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If you had a million dollars to give away, who would you give it to?

The key word here is “who”. Who suggests an individual – children (just choose one and make the rest jealous), grandchildren (copy the above), a friend (wow, that would make the family happy). So, let us choose another set of words – If you had a million dollars to give away – what would you do with it? Now that’s a better question.

Look at the painting above. Bas Bleu was the name given to French women intellectuals who often wore dark blue stockings to show their difference. But check out Moo’s bas bleu – she has blue stockings, but not shoes. No shoes is a sign of poverty (or extreme holiness). I’ll go for the former. I would give that bas bleu and all her colleagues and lookalikes a chance at some security and a more secure intellectual future.

How? I would set up a needs-based scholarship fund for female students with special needs – indigenous women from the first nations, single mothers who need help, support, and encouragement, older women returning to the university, some of them with little or no financial support. This, I believe, is one of the most important things we need to do to improve our university system. A million dollars at invested at 5% would return $50,000 a year. That would provide five scholarships at $10,000 for five financially deserving women.

Can it be done? Of course it can. I know. I have already set the wheels in motion for such a fund to be established when my beloved and I have had our last twitch and fallen off the perch. Alas, the sum invested is a lot less than $1,000,000. I wish I had more to give. But every good thought counts and every dollar, to a person in need, is a step along the way.

What was the hardest personal goal you’ve set for yourself?

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What was the hardest personal goal you’ve set for yourself?
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What was the hardest personal goal you’ve set for yourself?

Oscar Wilde once wrote – “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.” The Ancient Greeks had a similar phrase – “Know thyself.” Well, to know myself, and then to be myself, are two of the hardest personal goals I have ever undertaken.

Why? Because I was educated in a system that wanted young people, boys and girls, to look alike, and think alike, and dress alike. That’s why school uniforms were designed. That’s why we marched into chapel at the same time every day, and sang the same hymns every day, and said the same prayers every day. Rote learning was a key element in this. I remember, age four, chorusing my two times table: “1 x 2 is 2. 2 x 2 is 4. 3 x 2 is 6. 4 x 2 is 8.” Very little room for thinking. Nobody would ever answer the question “Why is 2 x 2 4?” “What makes this so important?” “Why do we have to learn it?” The stock answer: “Little boys should be seen and not heard.” Or “Shut up and just do it.” Or “Why can’t you be like other children?”

This type of early school life, with anyone who stepped out of line, getting punished, often physically, was not conducive to lateral thinking or freedom of thought. Anyone who moved aside from the prescribed patterns was moved back into them, very quickly. The WWII convoy theory – the class moves at the speed of the slowest ship. No stragglers permitted. This later morphed into the slogan “No child left behind.”

But they were. And they were left outside, looking in. And if they didn’t buckle down, they suffered the shame of expulsion from the herd or the flock or the convoy. And once expelled, and branded as stupid or a trouble-maker, it was very difficult to get back in.

At what stage did I become myself? I am not really sure. First there was the phase of knowing I didn’t belong. Then there was the phase of realizing that my mind didn’t react like the minds of other people. Why not? Well, for one reason, on IQ tests, even the simple ones, I often saw multiple answers. But there was only ever one correct answer. Say what the Inquisitor wanted to hear and it was “Good dog, have a biscuit”. Give an answer other than the one he (or she) was looking for, and it was “Bad dog.” Then your nose was rubbed in the dirt.

Here’s a simple example from this year’s Farmer’s Almanac. Which is the odd one out? Tennis, pickle ball, badminton, squash… ” Oh dear, I think there were five, but I have forgotten the fifth. The correct answer – pickle ball, – it’s the only one played with a paddle not a racquet. GOOD DOG. How about badminton – it’s the only one played with a shuttlecock. BAD DOG. Or squash – its the only one played without a net between the players. BAD DOG. The Farmer’s Almanac was fun, but being judged sub-standard at age 11, and again at age 15, for coming up with creative, and perfectly logical alternative answers, was not much fun.

So – the most difficult personal goals – 1. to know yourself. 2. to grow into yourself. 3. to appreciate the wonderful, unique nature of who and what you truly are. 4. to then rejoice in the creativity of your own individuality.

What would you do if you lost all your possessions?

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What would you do if you lost all your possessions?
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What would you do if you lost all your possessions?

When I look at the growing number of refugees across the world, I wonder what would happen if such a disaster fell upon me. Then I look at the forest fires, out in Western Canada, in BC and Alberta, and wonder what we would do, what we would we pack, how would we manage, if the order to evacuate our home came suddenly upon us. When the Bocabec fires burned in New Brunswick, I felt the stress and distress of several of our close friends who were forced to evacuate. Then I thought that, really, it’s not a question of if, but of when. And this was my dream.

            … with my angel … face to face … the one I have carried within me since the day I was born … the black-one … winged like a crow … the one that hovers over me as I lie asleep … the one who wraps me in his feathered wings when I am alone and chilled by the world around me … the one who flaps with me on his back when I can walk no further and who creates the single set of footprints that plod their path through the badlands when I can walk no more …
            … ‘the truth’ my black angel says to me … I say ‘he’ but he is a powerful spirit, not sexed in any way I know it … and yet I think of him as ‘he’ …awesome in the tiny reflection he sometimes allows me to glimpse of his power and glory … for, like Rilke, I could not bear meeting his whole angelic being face to face … as I cannot bear the sun, not by day, and not in eclipse … not even with smoked glass … when earthly values turn upside down and earth takes on a new reality … wild birds and bank swallows roosting at three in the afternoon … and that fierce heat draining from the summer sky … I remember it well … and the dog whimpering as a portion of the angel’s wing erased the sun until an umber midnight ruled … a simple phenomenon, the papers said … the moon coming between the earth and the sun …but magic … pure magic … to we who stood on the shore at Skinner’s Pond and sensed the majesty of the universe … more powerful than anything we could imagine … and the dog … taking no comfort from its human gods … whimpering at our feet …
            … I saw a single feather floating down and knew my angel had placed himself between me and all that glory … to protect me … to save me from myself … and I saw that snowflake of an angel feather bleached from black to white by some small trick of the sunlight … and knowledge filled me … and for a moment I felt the glory … the magnificence … and there are no words for that slow filling up with want and desire as light filters from the sky and the body fills with darkness … and I was so afraid … afraid of myself … of where I had been … of where I was … of what I might return to … of my lost shadow … snipped from my heels …
            … I don’t know how I heard my angel’s words … ‘the time of truth is upon you’ … ‘all you have ever been is behind you now’ … ‘naked you stand here on this shore … like the grains of sand on this beach … your days are numbered by the only one who counts’ … I heard the sound of roosting wings … but I heard and saw nothing more … I felt only midnight’s cold when the chill enters the body and the soul is sore afraid …
            … ‘it is the law’ my angel said … I saw a second feather fall … ‘and the law says man must fail … his spirit must leave its mortal shell and fly back to the light’ … ‘blood will cease to flow … the heart will no longer beat … the spirit must accept and go’ … ‘do not assume… nobody knows what lies in wait’ … ‘blind acceptance … the only way … now …  in this twilight hour …  now when you are blind … only the blind shall receive the gift of sight’ … ‘all you have … your wife … your house … your car … your child … everything you think of as yours I own … and on that day … I will claim it from you and take it for my own … now I can say no more’ …
            … the sea-wind rose with a sigh and one by one night’s shadows fled … the moon’s brief circle sped from the sun … light returned, a drop at a time, sunshine flowing from a heavenly clepsydra filled with light …
            … birds ceased to circle … a stray dog saw a sea-gull and chased it back to sea … and the sun … source of all goodness … was once again a golden coin floating in the sky …
            … on my shoulder a feather perched … a whisper of warmth wrapped its protective cloak around my shoulders … for a moment, just a moment, I knew I was the apple of my angel’s eye … and I hoped and still hope that one day I might meet him again and understand …

What details of your life could you pay more attention to?

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What details of your life could you pay more attention to?
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What details of your life could you pay more attention to?

I will be eighty next birthday. Sadly, I am aware that my life is moving slowly towards its endgame. The major pieces have left the chessboard and I, the King, shuffle forward, a step at a time, then one to the side, and sometimes one back, as my two faithful pawns age with me. The end is never far away at this stage of the game. One slip, one misjudgment, and it’s checkmate, mate. So – how to respond to today’s prompt?

Quite simply, I am now paying more attention to my death than to my life. I have already updated my will, and I have given power of attorney to a person I trust. I have spoken with my financial adviser, and he has given me a Will Companion. It contains a whole series of details to fill in – bank accounts, passwords, online contacts, clubs, societies, social media, precious objects, and, last of all, a page of funeral instructions. That was an eye-opener – everything from funeral home, instructions for service, cremation of burial, plot number or scattering, church, financial arrangements – well, I didn’t panic, but wow, it made me feel very uncomfortable.

In the first 24 hours after my death, someone will have to make between 40 and 70 decisions, all impacting the manner of my departure. If I want things done the way I want, versus the way they might happen, and if I want to choose burial vs cremation, order of service, hymns, obituary, family friends, acknowledgements, then – according to those who know – I should be doing it now. So, big decision, I went online and studied the recommendations of my local funeral home.

I have already filled in several online pages of forms and I have asked them to contact me, which they will do soon. Then we will talk over all those details that I so desperately want to avoid. But death is inevitable. To face it and accept it and to prepare for it while I am still alive is the bravest and the best and the most sensible thing I can do. So, here I go, paying attention, while still alive, to the little details that will surround my death.

The inevitable? Yes. Above, in the opening photo, you can see a Mexican Death Mask. The small pearl at the centre is the seed from which the baby will grow. The seed is the round spot beneath youthful beauty’s nose. then comes wrinkled old age, and wrapped around is the white skull, the final beauty, which I will never see, but others may. Writing these words, I do not feel sad or gloomy. I have lived in Oaxaca, Mexico, and know the powerful, loving emotions that surround the Day of the Dead. I feel grateful that I have good friends to advise me and to stand by me and my family. And when, not if, the inevitable happens, I will have done my best to be prepared. Pax amorque.

What brands do you associate with?

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What brands do you associate with?
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What brands do you associate with?

I have been thinking about my parents a great deal recently. Earlier this week it was my my mother’s birthday. She would have been 110 years old. Funny how, as we age, our own minds turn back to the past. So, today’s prompt – What brands do you associate with? – gets an instant answer – none really.

And yet, and yet, there is one. A long, long time ago, my father let me into a big secret: all the shops in our little sea-side town had signs that announced – Jones and Son, or Roberts and Son, or Edwards and Son. “Well, son,” he said, “I have a son, and it’s you. It is time I showed you my little secret.” He took out his pen, unscrewed the cap, and carefully drew an M. Then he drew a W beneath it, taking care that the ends joined neatly. Finally he drew the letter J. It bisected the letters so that the drawing in my painting above was produced: blue-black ink on white paper. “What is it dad?” I asked. “It’s my brand,” he proudly said. “Those are my initials. “I would love to establish something, use this as a brand name, and have ‘and Son‘ written beneath it.”

I didn’t understand. I can’t remember how old I was, but it was in the days when Shorty the Deputy [I pronounced it De-Putty, much to the amusement of my elders] Sherriff ruled the range in my colored comic books. “A brand? Why do you want a brand? Are you going to own a ranch and brand your cattle?” That ended the conversation. The brand was never mentioned again, until, now, but I have never forgotten it.

So, there is one brand with which I associate myself, my father’s brand. I entitled the painting remeMBEr in honour of my father, of his failed dreams, and of the dreams he achieved, including the initials MBE [Member of the British Empire]. The medal itself, together with the letter from King George VI is included among my family treasures. So, there we go – that’s the brand I associate with, my father’s brand.