A Lovely Late October Day

Warm golden sunshine beams through the tall glass doors that lead to
my balcony, reminding me they need to be cleaned. A large tree
branch adds pattern, and nothing could be more beautiful, I tell
myself, as I gaze out on the woodland beyond. Truly, what is more
lovely than this late October day in the mid-latitudes?



My world -- alright, our world -- is tilted to the sun so that its
hot rays must pass through quite a slice of atmosphere, with its
pollution and dust, favouring the golden rays of my October day.
Of course, the intense colours fade as the sun rises, but this
means the day will warm up. And as for colour, frosty nights
are not far away, and the trees over there are aglow with beautiful
dying hues as the leaves prepare to fall off. This seeming decay
protects the trees from sucking up too much water to service leaves
which could not do their job in the cold weather in any case.
Nature knows what she is doing.



Events in the fall do seem to be intelligent, and what is
intelligence if it is not survival in changing circumstances?
As I bask in this lovely morning, I know it will not last; it will
be followed by snow on ground and trees, and by ice that will
glitter in the branches on bright, cold mornings. I know winter
can be stunning in its own way, to be followed by spring with its
return of bursting life.



Eventually, outside my kitchen glass doors, I know too that
lovely late October days will come again, and again.

"In The Bowels Of Christ"

The quotation is, of course, from the well-known remark of
Oliver Cromwell,
urging the mule-headed General Assembly of the
Church of Scotland
to repudiate their allegiance to the crown, i.e., to
Charles II.
Cromwell, mule-headed himself, made his famous plea:
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken".



History is full of those who were wrongly sure of themselves,
to the point where we suspect that anyone who is completely sure
is never quite right. Many religious groups have been "sure"
that "others" were wrong, and have used force to convert them.
Within Christianity, Roman Catholics have burned heretical
Protestants at the stake, and vice versa, and so on.



Not only in religion do we find this, but in political life as well.
Communists
have forced their ways on society, as did the
Nazis.
None of all this made many true converts, or proved who was right.
Sports and styles offer more examples, without the violence, mostly.



If we search for reasons for all this, we find ourselves considering,
again, the biological need to belong, preferably to those whose
appearance, language or geographical origins are similar to ours.
We are uneasy being alone. It all seems as simple as that.
So much for freedom.

What's Your Herd?

As I was going over the newspapers, very fat on the weekend, I
couldn't help marvelling at the fashion sections. Spots are "in",
as in those of the
leopard,
a creature becoming scarcer as hunters pursue its skin. Coats, bags,
skirts, boots are to have spots, but also stripes and swirls in spots.
These patterns will indeed be everywhere, from $20 to $1000 or so,
depending on what store you patronize, which is an odd word when you
reflect on how very much they patronize you. You are,
of course, being herded once again, depending on your age, wealth,
where you live, and so on and on. You belong to many herds.



At the centre of this issue is the need to belong. First at home,
then in the schoolyard, in
Tim Hortons or
McDonald's,
in your church of choice, we must belong, and belong to the right
grouping. On a larger level, wars are fought and "enemy" identities
exterminated. And still, we believe in free will and intelligent
choice. We look with scorn or pity on flocks of sheep or herds
of cattle, following anything but freedom or any choice of their
own, either as individuals or groups. Really, what is the difference
between us and them?



This is not all bad, of course. We have the comfort, the security,
of not being exposed. We have our philanthropists, our hospitals,
our jails for our support and protection. It is natural to identify
(and to identify with) your herd. As for myself,
God Save the Queen, I say!

Salt Shaker And Casket

My title indicates that table
salt kills people.
Of course it does --there is no mystery about it.
In the past, traditional
African
people living in the wild did not get
heart attacks,
at least not at any significant rate, but if the same people
took jobs among the white people and ate a "good" Western diet,
they experienced heart disease at the same rate as in the West.



You see, in the bush their diet was mostly plants, along with
whatever animals, large and small, they could catch or kill.
Plant juice is high in
potassium
and animal blood is high in
sodium,
minerals that we need in the right quantities.
But in the Western world, a bit more salt for cooking and a bit
more at eating time makes things tastier. The purveyors of dried,
preserved and pickled foods know this, and so with "progress" comes
tasty, salty food.



You can draw logarithmic lines for amounts of salt and potassium
intake versus time in years, and you pretty well get a diagram of
incidence of heart attacks over the same period. All this
is well known, and the medical people and the "health nuts" agree
in urging us to eat our veggies and to avoid dousing everything
with salt.



As more of us eat out, and as
fast foods
increase, so do heart problems. This can't be ignorance, so it must be
stupidity, or is it perhaps a modern form of
death wish?
Certainly, the old saloon motto in German-American bars is "dead" on:
"Too soon we get oldt, too late we get schmardt".

Half? Or Half?

There is something fascinating in what we reveal about ourselves when
we give an opinion. Two people can see the same thing as quite
different, opposite in fact. One sees that the glass is half full,
while to the other it is clearly half empty. Both are right. It is
simply that they are different people, probably seeing every situation
as either reassuring or as very much to be watched.



Unsettled weather is threatening to one and hopeful to the other.
To one, a thousand dollars is very much alright, to the other far
from being security. A healing broken leg is great to one,
crippling to the other. A hamburger is junk food to one,
but very satisfying to the other. I could go on and on, but we
all know this. Why this difference?



Staying with our either/or hypothesis, the answer could be in-born
or acquired. I suppose it could be both, and I think it is. We
are conditioned by our surroundings as soon as, or perhaps before,
we are born, so our behaviours, including our attitudes and opinions,
are indeed both from heredity (DNA if you like) and from environment
(of all sorts). I don't think we can fully pin this down, but in
any case there are these two sorts of people we must deal with, the
optimists and the pessimists, and I proclaim myself to be the
half-full type. "I know and know full well" that I am right, and yet
I know that "they" are right too. Collectively, we are all on the edge
of being sane, with all the problems that accompany this state of
being. And musing on these things doesn't do much to change the world
around me, but it sure is fun.

I Wish I Loved The Human Race

Long, long ago I learned a mean little rhyme, and there are days
when it comes back. I have a head full of these gems, some
of which are handy bits of wisdom that make up for my lack. Others,
like this one, are reactions to times when people seem to cooperate
to make my time irritating, frustrating, or simply boring.
The full version
(by Sir Walter Raleigh) is:



     I wish I loved the Human Race;

     I wish I loved its silly face;

     I wish I liked the way it walks;

     I wish I liked the way it talks;

     And when I’m introduced to one,

     I wish I thought "What Jolly Fun!"




This is the flip side of the
herd instinct,
which keeps us together, collectively and individually. I suppose
we have to have crowds to make us value being alone sometimes, and
certainly when we have been alone too long, we value company.



Occasionally, I believe, we agree with the sentiment behind this
rhyme. We do not always need company, at least not necessarily
human company. Certainly, cats, budgies, puppies, big dogs or
little ones for hiking or hunting, are company. The don't argue;
indeed, they seem to agree. My oldest daughter has snakes longer
than herself which almost seem to purr when she wraps them around
her neck. If they could talk to you, I'm sure they would say
they love her.



I suppose if you exercised requited love with some other friendly
species, you might believe you did not like our own species, and
there is plenty to dislike. For myself, I'm frequently partial to
certain humans, but I am very choosy about it.

My Experience With Lung Cancer And TB

Once upon a time, over 50 years ago, I was a member of the Council of the
American Association of Museums,
and was to be away for three weeks at their Annual Meeting in the U.S.
I was working evenings to get ahead of my responsibilities in
Halifax, Nova Scotia. So I was tired, and had a lame feeling in my
side, and foolishly consulted a medical doctor. He took X-rays
and put me in hospital, where he and a very good surgeon
(whom I had taught to cut up cats in Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy),
took out two-thirds of my left lung in a nine-hour operation that
left a 25-inch scar. The lung was supposed to be cancerous,
but in fact had a lump of healed
tuberculosis,
and should, of course, have been left alone.



Following that, I told them to put it back, but they said it had
been thrown away. As I had had tuberculosis, I was put into the
TB sanitarium, where I stayed for six months.



Afterwards, I was short of breath for a couple of years, and
of course avoided doctors like grim death, and pondered what
I had learned. High on the list is "If it ain't broke, don't
fix it", and "Doctors have to get experience". Also, "Don't
ask so many questions", and "Well, we don't have to do that
again". Or, as Thomas Edison must have so often remarked:
"We know that doesn't work". I must say, it cured me of smoking,
a habit that consisted of one cigarette around a campfire or
a pipe of tobacco at university reunions. So all is not lost, yet.
I've cheered up, and so should you.

Time To Get Rich!

Given enough time, and doing some very simple things, you can hardly
avoid becoming rich, maybe very rich. For example, if the
$24 paid by the Dutch for
Manhattan Island to the natives had
been put out at 10%
compound interest, it would be worth over
12,000 trillion dollars by now, more than North and
South America are worth by any accounting.
So what are you waiting for?



We do not have that sort of time, of course, and there are taxes to
contend with,
but the principle is the same, if you will pardon the pun. Do not
put off until tomorrow what you can do today. As our wants will
always exceed our earned income, this means you do not wait until
you have some left over, but put your 10% away first and
live on the rest. Time is, indeed, of the essence. The future
never arrives, and the present is always sliding into the past.
So do it now, quickly, before it too becomes the past.



I have talked one family member into putting money away daily,
never to be spent, but instead to be put to earning. It seems
as if that were just last week, but already this person is
wondering how to do better than a savings account at the bank,
which pays 2% for money that it then lends out at 14% or so.



When I worked in Buffalo, there was a sign in a tavern which said
"Too soon we get oldt, too late we get schmardt". There is a principle
that if you force yourself to do something every day at the same
time, you will find it difficult not to do it in two to
three weeks.



Habits can help us or hurt us, so right away, put the same amount
aside every day, so its earnings can sooner look after you.
Time to act!