Sunday, December 11, 2016
Europe jumped out of the wee bag that holds my swim access card today. My first time in the local pool since before my summer, 2016 trip to Europe, I found in my wee bag a receipt for cookies, from the Tesco grocery store in Hove, beside Brighton. I also found a one-cent Euro coin, from Germany.
I remember paying 40 British cents for those cookies on the sunny early-September day I walked through Hove, where we house sat for two weeks, to a Medieval church, in whose by-donation book box I found a 2009 English translation of Celestina, Rojas' 1499 picaresque novel, a century before Cervantes' Don Quixote. I read and gave away Cervantes' decades ago, and Rojas this fall, before I gave it to the local recreation centre for the person who teaches conversational Spanish.
The recreation centre, two rinks, a concert hall, and the pool, is halfway through a two-year expansion which will result in two pools and a water slide. The wading pool, hot tub, steam room, and sauna are gone; in their place the lane pool goes up, across a temporary wall from the current lane pool. When the new lane pool's done, the current lane pool will close, for the building of the leisure pool and water slide in its site.
England, the mother of parliaments, votes, as did Williams Lake in the October, 2015 municipal election referendum to approve the borrowing of ten million dollars for the recreation upgrade.
While I upgraded my own recreation this morning, I thought of Hamburg, Luneburg, Cuxhaven, Berlin, and Rostok, the German cities I saw this summer, courtesy of my generous sister. I know not where the one-cent coin came from, but I am glad I kept a few European and British coins as souvenirs.
"Was I in Europe this summer?" I marveled. "Did I spend four weeks at a Hamburg house-sit? Three nights in Berlin, the farthest east I ever was? Day train trips to Cuxhaven and Luneberg, on the North and Baltic Seas, respectively?" My generous younger sister was why.
"Did we walk the Brighton beach many times during our two-week house sit in adjacent Hove? Did we eat great fish and chips in a London restaurant, after a day in renown art galleries? Did we house sit for two weeks in Manchester, ride its funky street cars, and see the canals still plied in this Industrial Revolution epicentre? Did I watch 75 000 pour out of the Manchester United stadium after a soccer game?
As I swam along, back crawl, this morning, I thought, "My, what a generous younger sister I have! She bought me a plane ticket from Edmonton to Hamburg, and another from London to Edmonton. She fed, sheltered, and entertained me. She translated for me in Germany. We spent eight weeks together, our longest time together in more than 25 years."
We flew together to Canada, her first time out of Europe in more than two years. She plans to return to Europe in early 2017. Why not, eh? I'm glad she got me there, this time, and two times before: 2015 to Britain and Ireland, 2011 to France.
The Tesco receipt and European one-cent coin, sitting on the desk beside this laptop, remind me that I was in Europe this summer. What memories!
Sunday, December 11, 2016
Sunday, December 4, 2016
First Ice Skate of the Winter
Sunday, December 4, 2016
"Don't know much about history," minor hockey, frozen tobacco smoke, the Rideau Canal, Joe the sport reporter, the Fort Providence snye of the Mackenzie River, and reverse direction came to mind, and feet, as I went for my first skate of the winter. It was free, one of the monthly skates sponsored by this or that local business or charity. It was in the smaller of the two indoor rinks here. My old legs, on my 40-year-old skates, did 100 laps in 55 minutes. The biggest challenge was dodging the 100+ other skaters, perhaps all of them younger than I, some using plastic walkers to learn to skate, many going in unpredictable directions, including down. This is good agility practice, although skating backwards is not allowed this year, unlike last year.
First on skates at age seven or so, I sometimes brought them to my Grade 1-3 school because it had an outdoor rink. It was easier then that it would be now to sit atop snow, such as surrounded the boards of that rink, and put on and take off my skates.
At that time, decades ago, for 25 cents a person could public skate on Friday night in the local indoor rink in the town where I grew up, about 700 kilometres east of where I live now. The music today was Christmas carols, mostly old, sung by Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, and Mahalia Jackson, among others. I distinctly remember childhood skating nights with "What a Wonderful World," by Louis Armstrong on the rink speakers.
Minor hockey, which I played from age 9-14, was all boys; but today's skate saw many girls, 10-12 years old or so, bigger and stronger than boys at that age, in hockey skates, flying around the rink as I did at that age. Today I used the skates I got at age 14, during my last minor hockey year, in 1975-76.
The youngest players played the earliest on Saturday mornings. I remember getting to the rink for a 6:00 A.M. game, Dad tightening my skates. He would watch from the stands. Like others, he smoked in the arena. Frozen tobacco smoke was a smelly feature of the Edson rink and lobby, as was hot chocolate. When I was a bit older, my games sometimes had freshly-flooded ice. Today's hoard on the rink snowed and scratched the ice pretty thoroughly.
Later, at 20, I first skated on Ottawa's Rideau Canal, the world's longest rink. It winds seven kilometres from near Carleton University, where I finished my Bachelor of Arts in English that year, north through Ottawa, past Parliament Hill, and into the Ottawa River.
The next winter I was 21 and a newspaper reporter in Whitecourt, Alberta. The sports reporter, Joe, from St. Catherines, Ontario, did not skate well, but he signed up for a fundraising skate-athon. Several times, before the event, he and I went to the local indoor rink so Joe could practice skating. During the event, Joe did not fall, and he did skate the required distance, 200 laps, I think.
A few years later, in the winter of 1986-87, I worked for the Hudson's Bay Company in the Western Northwest Territories. I began in Fort Simpson, spent the winter in Fort Providence, and filled in for a week in Fort Resolution and a month in Fort Liard for managers who were away. The Mackenzie River flows past Fort Providence. Just downstream from the dock for barges, a snye, perhaps against flooding, opens perpendicularly from the river along the edge of this village of several hundred. This waterway was about 20 m wide and 80 m long. When it froze over, it was as clear and smooth as glass, until snow covered it. That made for joyful skating. The village had an outdoor rink, too.
Today's skate, overseen by three "Skate Patrol" teenage girls, two on the ice at any one time, did not go only counterclockwise, as Edson public skates went. Every 45 minutes, a patrol person announced on the arena speakers that everyone was to skate in the opposite direction. Thus, 53 of my 100 laps were counterclockwise and the other 47 were clockwise. I was there for about an hour, but this free skate lasted three hours. Staying longer might have pained my left knee, which hurts a few days per month, but only mildly.
At 55, seniors age for the local recreation complex, currently amid renovations that will replace the existing 45-year-old 25m, 6-lane pool with the like, and add a leisure pool, which will include a water slide, I am happy that my health is realtively good. Before today's skate, I'd walked five kilomtres for various errands. I'll walk farther tomorrow, twice to and from my part-time job at the local Loomis Express courier office, and on various errands around town.
"What a wonderful world it would be...."
"Don't know much about history," minor hockey, frozen tobacco smoke, the Rideau Canal, Joe the sport reporter, the Fort Providence snye of the Mackenzie River, and reverse direction came to mind, and feet, as I went for my first skate of the winter. It was free, one of the monthly skates sponsored by this or that local business or charity. It was in the smaller of the two indoor rinks here. My old legs, on my 40-year-old skates, did 100 laps in 55 minutes. The biggest challenge was dodging the 100+ other skaters, perhaps all of them younger than I, some using plastic walkers to learn to skate, many going in unpredictable directions, including down. This is good agility practice, although skating backwards is not allowed this year, unlike last year.
First on skates at age seven or so, I sometimes brought them to my Grade 1-3 school because it had an outdoor rink. It was easier then that it would be now to sit atop snow, such as surrounded the boards of that rink, and put on and take off my skates.
At that time, decades ago, for 25 cents a person could public skate on Friday night in the local indoor rink in the town where I grew up, about 700 kilometres east of where I live now. The music today was Christmas carols, mostly old, sung by Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, and Mahalia Jackson, among others. I distinctly remember childhood skating nights with "What a Wonderful World," by Louis Armstrong on the rink speakers.
Minor hockey, which I played from age 9-14, was all boys; but today's skate saw many girls, 10-12 years old or so, bigger and stronger than boys at that age, in hockey skates, flying around the rink as I did at that age. Today I used the skates I got at age 14, during my last minor hockey year, in 1975-76.
The youngest players played the earliest on Saturday mornings. I remember getting to the rink for a 6:00 A.M. game, Dad tightening my skates. He would watch from the stands. Like others, he smoked in the arena. Frozen tobacco smoke was a smelly feature of the Edson rink and lobby, as was hot chocolate. When I was a bit older, my games sometimes had freshly-flooded ice. Today's hoard on the rink snowed and scratched the ice pretty thoroughly.
Later, at 20, I first skated on Ottawa's Rideau Canal, the world's longest rink. It winds seven kilometres from near Carleton University, where I finished my Bachelor of Arts in English that year, north through Ottawa, past Parliament Hill, and into the Ottawa River.
The next winter I was 21 and a newspaper reporter in Whitecourt, Alberta. The sports reporter, Joe, from St. Catherines, Ontario, did not skate well, but he signed up for a fundraising skate-athon. Several times, before the event, he and I went to the local indoor rink so Joe could practice skating. During the event, Joe did not fall, and he did skate the required distance, 200 laps, I think.
A few years later, in the winter of 1986-87, I worked for the Hudson's Bay Company in the Western Northwest Territories. I began in Fort Simpson, spent the winter in Fort Providence, and filled in for a week in Fort Resolution and a month in Fort Liard for managers who were away. The Mackenzie River flows past Fort Providence. Just downstream from the dock for barges, a snye, perhaps against flooding, opens perpendicularly from the river along the edge of this village of several hundred. This waterway was about 20 m wide and 80 m long. When it froze over, it was as clear and smooth as glass, until snow covered it. That made for joyful skating. The village had an outdoor rink, too.
Today's skate, overseen by three "Skate Patrol" teenage girls, two on the ice at any one time, did not go only counterclockwise, as Edson public skates went. Every 45 minutes, a patrol person announced on the arena speakers that everyone was to skate in the opposite direction. Thus, 53 of my 100 laps were counterclockwise and the other 47 were clockwise. I was there for about an hour, but this free skate lasted three hours. Staying longer might have pained my left knee, which hurts a few days per month, but only mildly.
At 55, seniors age for the local recreation complex, currently amid renovations that will replace the existing 45-year-old 25m, 6-lane pool with the like, and add a leisure pool, which will include a water slide, I am happy that my health is realtively good. Before today's skate, I'd walked five kilomtres for various errands. I'll walk farther tomorrow, twice to and from my part-time job at the local Loomis Express courier office, and on various errands around town.
"What a wonderful world it would be...."
Tuesday, October 4, 2016
Dirt, Sushi, Guitar, and Lilacs
October 4, 2016
Shakespeare "yokes by violence together" images that do not belong together, mid-1700s English writer Samuel Johnson complained in his Preface to Shakespeare. Below, I yoke together dirt, sushi, a guitar, llilacs, and other images. I invite your complaints.
I have dirt from a graveyard in Brookeborough, Northern Ireland. My sister mailed it to me from Ireland soon after she acquired Irish citizenship due to our dad's mom's Irish birth, and went to Ireland. In 1916, 100 years ago, Granny Mary Irvine left Ireland for Canada. About two years after her arrival in Central Canada, Granny married Grandpa, Harry Wynne, born in Quebec to Irish immigrants. They soon migrated thousands of kilometres west.
In 1919, Granny bore our dad in Quesnel, in the Cariboo Region, a region I have lived in since 1991. Doctor G.R. Baker delivered Dad. Quesnel now boasts G.R. Baker Hospital. Years ago, I found and photocopied, from a Quesnel newspaper in the archives, Dad's birth announcement.
My next relative born in the Cariboo would be my daughter Chelsea, born in 1992 here in Williams Lake, about 120 kilometres south of Quesnel.
GENOCIDE IN CANADA
Perhaps you know that, in 1864, closer to 1919 than 1919 is to 1992, Quesnel was where Judge Matthew Begbie tried and hanged five Tsilhqot'in leaders. They had defended their land against disease intentionally brought by settlers from Victoria, the colonial capital city of British Columbia. British Columbia is one of ten provinces and three territories that comprise Canada, the settler-colonial country where I was born and raised, and where I still live.
In 1864, the Cariboo Gold Rush was in progress. In 1867, the country Canada was created on Indigenous land. Many leading settlers along the Pacific Coast soon threatened to invite annexation by the United States if Canada did not extend a railway to the Pacific. In 1846, the United States had wrested the lower Columbia River valley from English control, resulting in the states of Washington and Oregon. In the 1850s, a Fraser River gold rush inspired many USians to agitate to annex all of the Pacific Coast; the US took a large northern section of that coast, from Alaska to Prince Rupert, near the Skeena River Delta. The new province of British Columbia joined Canada in 1871. Rails reached the Pacific in 1885.
Remember that the entire New World, the Americas, are lands stolen from Indigenous people. In the early 1860s, the Tsilhqot'in resisted efforts to dispossess them of their land by exterminating them. Quesnel lawyer and author Tom Swanky has detailed this genocidal history in The True Story of Canada's War of Extermination on the Pacific:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMiyMxhfFEs
I met Swanky many times. The first time, when he presented his research to a packed concert hall here, I wrote an article about his presentation. I sent the article to my friend who taught at Grande Prairie Regional College. He added it to his curriculum. I bought Swanky's book. I lent the book to a relative of my daughter's, on her Tsilhqot'in mother's side. That relative's last name is Lee, the maiden name of my granny's mother. Perhaps my spouse and I are distant relatives; there is only one race, the human race.
The Cariboo Lees are descendants of Norman Lee, who came from the British Isles to the Cariboo in the 1890s, bound for the Klondike Gold Rush, in Yukon, almost 2000 kilometres to the north. Lee tried to herd cattle north from the Cariboo to feed the miners, but weather and terrain stopped him and his cows. The cows, and some of the cowboys, died before reaching Yukon. Lee returned to the Cariboo, ranched for awhile, and had children by a Tsilhqot'in woman. He brought some children back to the British Isles and left one in the Cariboo. He later returned to the Cariboo, with a spouse from England. Lee's Corner, 90 km west of Williams Lake, is named after Lee.
The child whom Norman Lee left in the Cariboo is the ancestor of many, including the Lee to whom I lent the Swanky book. That Lee child is my spouse's paternal grandmother. Mabel Lee was an old woman when Carla and I got together. She lived until our daughter was four; our daughter remembers her "?etsu cho."
The attempted genocide of the Tsilhqot'in people, which claimed more than 75% of them, was more recent, and relatively deadlier than the English-induced famine that killed or caused the exile of half of the people of Ireland in the 1840s. I have heard of Irish psychologists who say that effects of "The Hunger" endure in Irish people to this day. Imagine what effects endure in Tsilhqot'in people, not to mention in other Indigenous people of the Americas. Rather than throw guilt at one another, or ignore such liberating history, may we all come to know and respect the other, to reduce racism, and increase dignity and respect and the equality that can flow from them.
TRAVEL TROUBLES AND DISCOVERIES
My spouse and I each have a dad who each had an interesting mom, each woman worth more words than I gave them; but there is still sushi, a guitar, and lilacs to discuss.
There is also someone to discover: Mary Irvine, whom we met this summer, not the Mary Irvine, our late grandmother from Ireland. We were on our way to Liverpool for my 55th birthday. We were fresh off the streetcar in downtown Manchester, and walking to the train that would take us to Liverpool, 60 kilometres down the Mersey River. We met two Irish women, one over 60, the other in her 30s. They were mother and daughter. They asked us how to reach the Manchester airport.
Someone mentioned Enniskillen, the Irish town near our granny's home village. My sister or I said that Granny was an Irvine. "I'm an Irvine, too," the mother said. "My name is Mary." "Our granny was Mary Irvine," my sister or I replied, agog at the coincidence. "There are lots of Irvines in Enniskillen," the mother said before she and her daughter left us.
This summer, my sister bought me a plane ticket from Edmonton to Hamburg, to visit her. She was house sitting near there in August. She had house sat in Europe since July, 2014. I joined her in suburban Neugraben until late August. We migrated to September house sits in Brighton and Manchester, England. On September 26, we flew from London to Edmonton. Having paid most of my European expenses, she also bought my plane ticket back to Edmonton. I have giving siblings.
The plane was four hours late leaving London's Gatwick Airport. The airline offered passengers gift certificates worth ten English pounds, about 17 Canadian dollars, to spend in the airport. We spent ours in a sushi restaurant.
We were to leave London at around 11:00 A.M. local time and reach Edmonton at around 1:00 P.M. local time. Instead, we left London near 4:00 P.M. and reached Edmonton near 5:30 PM. We rode a the city bus that plies the 30-kilometre route from the airport to the south end of the light rail transit system in Edmonton. We rode a train a couple stops, to a station from which a bus brought us north, through the University of Alberta, and east a couple kilometres. From there, we walked, four wheeled bags in tow, three blocks to Royal Pizza. We were to meet and eat with our older brother and sister and their spouses at 7:00 P.M., after dropping my younger sister's bags at the MacEwan University residence room she booked, and my bag at the Greyhound bus station. Instead, we got there with our bags at 7:30 P.M.
The day was long and tiring but not over yet.
Sitting down across from my older sister, I happily drank the glass of draft beer she poured me. Between us, over the next two hours, she and I drank two pitchers of beer. When our brother and his spouse packed my younger sister and our four bags into their sports utility vehicle, I carried a full box of leftover pizza. My brother had brought the larger bag from his place near Calmar, where it spent my vacation. Each of my two bags was on wheels. I had brought the smaller, Europe-bound bag inside the larger bag, gifts for Alberta kin and friends in Alberta packed between the bags. Greyhound riders get to check one bag, weighing up to 75 pounds, for free: my bag within a bag weighed about 72 pounds when I left home. Outside the pizza restaurant, as the sun went down, I put the smaller in the larger bag, and stuffed both back into his truck.
By 9:30 P.M., we reached MacEwan University, where we dropped off our younger sister and her three bags. By 10:05 P.M.,we reached Southgate shopping mall, where I and my bags got out.
DEATH AND A SPEEDING TICKET
I mentioned that I had brought, from home, gifts for Alberta kin and friends. Among those kin were our mom's sister, 87 the last survivor of our parents' generation, who lived in Beiseker with her husband of 67years,age 91, their younger son, and a couple grandsons.
That is, she lived with her husband of 67 years, until his death in late September. That sad event makes me happier than I was at the time to rent a car to visit them overnight, August 2-3. I got the car in Edmonton, drove it to meet my brother and his spouse near Calmar, where they live, about 40 kilometres southwest of Edmonton, left them gifts and picked up a credit card for our European sister. My brother gave me $100 toward the car rental; my siblings are so generous with me.
Driving 300 kilometres south southeast from Edmonton to Beiseker under cloudy skies, I wished my spouse and daughter were with me. My Beiseker relatives always give them a warm welcome. I thought about going to Beiseker months later with them, and wondered why I made this rushed trip alone. That my uncle died within two months of my visit made me very thankful that I made this trip. I liked my uncle, and I hope my aunt bears widowhood well. I'm glad my cousin, their youngest child, lives there to help. It was very nice to see them and stay overnight in their house. A flashing, rumbling thunderstorm helped put me to sleep that night.
I commended my cousin for staying near his aging parents. My spouse, the second-youngest in her family, the youngest by 10 minutes being her twin brother, was the main caregiver for their parents during their declining years. Their mom died in November, 2011, their dad in November, 2014.
Last but not least in the death theme is my own dad. He died on September 29, 1989, the night before he would have turned 70. He might snicker at my speeding ticket, due 27 years later to the day. I paid it by credit card.
What speeding ticket, you ask?
A $158 speeding ticket I got via photo radar in Edmonton the next day, while I drove the car back to the rental place. waited at home during my European vacation. I was doing 66 in a 50 zone, northbound on 106 Street near 34 Avenue. That ticket came by mail before I got home. Payment was due September 29, two days after I got home.
GLORIOUS GUITAR
Return to the lively challenge of getting from London to Williams Lake. I found myself, and found my friend Doug, in the Southgate shopping centre parking lot when my brother and sister-in-law dropped me there at 10:05 P.M. on Monday, September 26. I had to get to the Greyhound bus station, several kilometres to the north, at least an hour before my 12:15 A.M. bus, to get my reserved ticket.
With Doug, however, there is always time for what Catholic Worker activist Dorothy Day called "the corporal works of mercy." We loaded my bag-in-bag into the trunk of his Buick, and I climbed into the front seat, the leftover pizza on my lap. Doug gave me another edible, a foot-long ham and cheese submarine sandwich. Then we drove, under the speed limit, to his daughter's place nearby, for he had something for her, as had I.
She is a recent university graduate who shares a basement suite. Students and former students like pizza. I therefore added the pizza to the European souvenirs I gave her. She gave me a boxed drink and a disposable plastic container of grapes. Doug gave her what he had to give.
We then drove north in the Edmonton night to the bus station, and reached it by 10:55 P.M., an hour and 20 minutes before the scheduled bus departure. I had made the hour deadline for ticket pickup with 20 minutes to spare. Many times that day I did not think I would be on time for this last leg of a many-legged day.
At 10:55 P.M. on Thursday, December 24, 1992, my daughter arrived at British Columbia Children's Hospital, after a traumatic birth in Williams Lake, evacuation by medical jet to Vancouver, and short flight by helicopter from the Vancouver airport to the hospital. Her admission form said 10:55 P.M., a little more than an hour before Christmas Day began. I remembered that when I looked at my watch, at 10:55 P.M., in the bus station, so many years later.
I showed the bus ticket agent my identification and booking number. Within seconds she printed my ticket. I excavated, from my bag within a bag, some European gifts for Doug. I thanked him for all his help during my time going through Edmonton toward Europe, and back through Edmonton toward home.
I then waited for the bus, in this busy new station which is also a VIA Rail train station.
I heard an accoustic guitar, such a welcome, relaxing sound after what had been a very long day. Was a passenger playing? No. A VIA Rail ticket agent was strumming. The crowd in the station visibly relaxed/ I certainly relaxed.
DIRT, DISTANCE, AND LILACS
A series of four buses, with me enjoying a double seat on each bus, and sleeping for several hours until Valemount, brought me 900 kilomtres from Edmonton, through Kamloops, to Williams Lake. This is much longer than distances we traveled within Europe.
Imagine Norman Lee, coming from the British Isles to Canada, going several thousand kilometres by train to Ashcroft, and several hundred north from Ashcroft, more than 100 years ago.
Imagine Granny coming from Ireland to Canada 100 years ago, going several thousand kilometres by train to the Cariboo, and bearing Dad.
Dad liked lilacs. He grew a lilac bushes on the acreage where he and Mom raised their five children near Edson, a couple hundred kilometres west of Edmonton.
More than 10 years ago, I planted a lilac bush in the yard behind the apartment building where I live with my spouse and our daughter.
More than a year ago, my sister sent dirt from the Enniskillen Catholic church yard. Remember the dirt from the start of this story? I will put that dirt around the base of that lilac bush I planted. It was less than a metre tall when I planted it. Now it is about four metres tall.
My granny bore my dad in the Cariboo almost 100 years ago. My Tsilhqot'in spouse bore our daughter in the Cariboo almost 25 years ago. I consider our daughter to have the strongest roots in this land of anyone in my family. The Irish dirt on the lilac bush completes a circle that began in Ireland and passed through Canada, and joined diverse people, as Shakespeare joined diverse images.
Shakespeare "yokes by violence together" images that do not belong together, mid-1700s English writer Samuel Johnson complained in his Preface to Shakespeare. Below, I yoke together dirt, sushi, a guitar, llilacs, and other images. I invite your complaints.
I have dirt from a graveyard in Brookeborough, Northern Ireland. My sister mailed it to me from Ireland soon after she acquired Irish citizenship due to our dad's mom's Irish birth, and went to Ireland. In 1916, 100 years ago, Granny Mary Irvine left Ireland for Canada. About two years after her arrival in Central Canada, Granny married Grandpa, Harry Wynne, born in Quebec to Irish immigrants. They soon migrated thousands of kilometres west.
In 1919, Granny bore our dad in Quesnel, in the Cariboo Region, a region I have lived in since 1991. Doctor G.R. Baker delivered Dad. Quesnel now boasts G.R. Baker Hospital. Years ago, I found and photocopied, from a Quesnel newspaper in the archives, Dad's birth announcement.
My next relative born in the Cariboo would be my daughter Chelsea, born in 1992 here in Williams Lake, about 120 kilometres south of Quesnel.
GENOCIDE IN CANADA
Perhaps you know that, in 1864, closer to 1919 than 1919 is to 1992, Quesnel was where Judge Matthew Begbie tried and hanged five Tsilhqot'in leaders. They had defended their land against disease intentionally brought by settlers from Victoria, the colonial capital city of British Columbia. British Columbia is one of ten provinces and three territories that comprise Canada, the settler-colonial country where I was born and raised, and where I still live.
In 1864, the Cariboo Gold Rush was in progress. In 1867, the country Canada was created on Indigenous land. Many leading settlers along the Pacific Coast soon threatened to invite annexation by the United States if Canada did not extend a railway to the Pacific. In 1846, the United States had wrested the lower Columbia River valley from English control, resulting in the states of Washington and Oregon. In the 1850s, a Fraser River gold rush inspired many USians to agitate to annex all of the Pacific Coast; the US took a large northern section of that coast, from Alaska to Prince Rupert, near the Skeena River Delta. The new province of British Columbia joined Canada in 1871. Rails reached the Pacific in 1885.
Remember that the entire New World, the Americas, are lands stolen from Indigenous people. In the early 1860s, the Tsilhqot'in resisted efforts to dispossess them of their land by exterminating them. Quesnel lawyer and author Tom Swanky has detailed this genocidal history in The True Story of Canada's War of Extermination on the Pacific:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMiyMxhfFEs
I met Swanky many times. The first time, when he presented his research to a packed concert hall here, I wrote an article about his presentation. I sent the article to my friend who taught at Grande Prairie Regional College. He added it to his curriculum. I bought Swanky's book. I lent the book to a relative of my daughter's, on her Tsilhqot'in mother's side. That relative's last name is Lee, the maiden name of my granny's mother. Perhaps my spouse and I are distant relatives; there is only one race, the human race.
The Cariboo Lees are descendants of Norman Lee, who came from the British Isles to the Cariboo in the 1890s, bound for the Klondike Gold Rush, in Yukon, almost 2000 kilometres to the north. Lee tried to herd cattle north from the Cariboo to feed the miners, but weather and terrain stopped him and his cows. The cows, and some of the cowboys, died before reaching Yukon. Lee returned to the Cariboo, ranched for awhile, and had children by a Tsilhqot'in woman. He brought some children back to the British Isles and left one in the Cariboo. He later returned to the Cariboo, with a spouse from England. Lee's Corner, 90 km west of Williams Lake, is named after Lee.
The child whom Norman Lee left in the Cariboo is the ancestor of many, including the Lee to whom I lent the Swanky book. That Lee child is my spouse's paternal grandmother. Mabel Lee was an old woman when Carla and I got together. She lived until our daughter was four; our daughter remembers her "?etsu cho."
The attempted genocide of the Tsilhqot'in people, which claimed more than 75% of them, was more recent, and relatively deadlier than the English-induced famine that killed or caused the exile of half of the people of Ireland in the 1840s. I have heard of Irish psychologists who say that effects of "The Hunger" endure in Irish people to this day. Imagine what effects endure in Tsilhqot'in people, not to mention in other Indigenous people of the Americas. Rather than throw guilt at one another, or ignore such liberating history, may we all come to know and respect the other, to reduce racism, and increase dignity and respect and the equality that can flow from them.
TRAVEL TROUBLES AND DISCOVERIES
My spouse and I each have a dad who each had an interesting mom, each woman worth more words than I gave them; but there is still sushi, a guitar, and lilacs to discuss.
There is also someone to discover: Mary Irvine, whom we met this summer, not the Mary Irvine, our late grandmother from Ireland. We were on our way to Liverpool for my 55th birthday. We were fresh off the streetcar in downtown Manchester, and walking to the train that would take us to Liverpool, 60 kilometres down the Mersey River. We met two Irish women, one over 60, the other in her 30s. They were mother and daughter. They asked us how to reach the Manchester airport.
Someone mentioned Enniskillen, the Irish town near our granny's home village. My sister or I said that Granny was an Irvine. "I'm an Irvine, too," the mother said. "My name is Mary." "Our granny was Mary Irvine," my sister or I replied, agog at the coincidence. "There are lots of Irvines in Enniskillen," the mother said before she and her daughter left us.
This summer, my sister bought me a plane ticket from Edmonton to Hamburg, to visit her. She was house sitting near there in August. She had house sat in Europe since July, 2014. I joined her in suburban Neugraben until late August. We migrated to September house sits in Brighton and Manchester, England. On September 26, we flew from London to Edmonton. Having paid most of my European expenses, she also bought my plane ticket back to Edmonton. I have giving siblings.
The plane was four hours late leaving London's Gatwick Airport. The airline offered passengers gift certificates worth ten English pounds, about 17 Canadian dollars, to spend in the airport. We spent ours in a sushi restaurant.
We were to leave London at around 11:00 A.M. local time and reach Edmonton at around 1:00 P.M. local time. Instead, we left London near 4:00 P.M. and reached Edmonton near 5:30 PM. We rode a the city bus that plies the 30-kilometre route from the airport to the south end of the light rail transit system in Edmonton. We rode a train a couple stops, to a station from which a bus brought us north, through the University of Alberta, and east a couple kilometres. From there, we walked, four wheeled bags in tow, three blocks to Royal Pizza. We were to meet and eat with our older brother and sister and their spouses at 7:00 P.M., after dropping my younger sister's bags at the MacEwan University residence room she booked, and my bag at the Greyhound bus station. Instead, we got there with our bags at 7:30 P.M.
The day was long and tiring but not over yet.
Sitting down across from my older sister, I happily drank the glass of draft beer she poured me. Between us, over the next two hours, she and I drank two pitchers of beer. When our brother and his spouse packed my younger sister and our four bags into their sports utility vehicle, I carried a full box of leftover pizza. My brother had brought the larger bag from his place near Calmar, where it spent my vacation. Each of my two bags was on wheels. I had brought the smaller, Europe-bound bag inside the larger bag, gifts for Alberta kin and friends in Alberta packed between the bags. Greyhound riders get to check one bag, weighing up to 75 pounds, for free: my bag within a bag weighed about 72 pounds when I left home. Outside the pizza restaurant, as the sun went down, I put the smaller in the larger bag, and stuffed both back into his truck.
By 9:30 P.M., we reached MacEwan University, where we dropped off our younger sister and her three bags. By 10:05 P.M.,we reached Southgate shopping mall, where I and my bags got out.
DEATH AND A SPEEDING TICKET
I mentioned that I had brought, from home, gifts for Alberta kin and friends. Among those kin were our mom's sister, 87 the last survivor of our parents' generation, who lived in Beiseker with her husband of 67years,age 91, their younger son, and a couple grandsons.
That is, she lived with her husband of 67 years, until his death in late September. That sad event makes me happier than I was at the time to rent a car to visit them overnight, August 2-3. I got the car in Edmonton, drove it to meet my brother and his spouse near Calmar, where they live, about 40 kilometres southwest of Edmonton, left them gifts and picked up a credit card for our European sister. My brother gave me $100 toward the car rental; my siblings are so generous with me.
Driving 300 kilometres south southeast from Edmonton to Beiseker under cloudy skies, I wished my spouse and daughter were with me. My Beiseker relatives always give them a warm welcome. I thought about going to Beiseker months later with them, and wondered why I made this rushed trip alone. That my uncle died within two months of my visit made me very thankful that I made this trip. I liked my uncle, and I hope my aunt bears widowhood well. I'm glad my cousin, their youngest child, lives there to help. It was very nice to see them and stay overnight in their house. A flashing, rumbling thunderstorm helped put me to sleep that night.
I commended my cousin for staying near his aging parents. My spouse, the second-youngest in her family, the youngest by 10 minutes being her twin brother, was the main caregiver for their parents during their declining years. Their mom died in November, 2011, their dad in November, 2014.
Last but not least in the death theme is my own dad. He died on September 29, 1989, the night before he would have turned 70. He might snicker at my speeding ticket, due 27 years later to the day. I paid it by credit card.
What speeding ticket, you ask?
A $158 speeding ticket I got via photo radar in Edmonton the next day, while I drove the car back to the rental place. waited at home during my European vacation. I was doing 66 in a 50 zone, northbound on 106 Street near 34 Avenue. That ticket came by mail before I got home. Payment was due September 29, two days after I got home.
GLORIOUS GUITAR
Return to the lively challenge of getting from London to Williams Lake. I found myself, and found my friend Doug, in the Southgate shopping centre parking lot when my brother and sister-in-law dropped me there at 10:05 P.M. on Monday, September 26. I had to get to the Greyhound bus station, several kilometres to the north, at least an hour before my 12:15 A.M. bus, to get my reserved ticket.
With Doug, however, there is always time for what Catholic Worker activist Dorothy Day called "the corporal works of mercy." We loaded my bag-in-bag into the trunk of his Buick, and I climbed into the front seat, the leftover pizza on my lap. Doug gave me another edible, a foot-long ham and cheese submarine sandwich. Then we drove, under the speed limit, to his daughter's place nearby, for he had something for her, as had I.
She is a recent university graduate who shares a basement suite. Students and former students like pizza. I therefore added the pizza to the European souvenirs I gave her. She gave me a boxed drink and a disposable plastic container of grapes. Doug gave her what he had to give.
We then drove north in the Edmonton night to the bus station, and reached it by 10:55 P.M., an hour and 20 minutes before the scheduled bus departure. I had made the hour deadline for ticket pickup with 20 minutes to spare. Many times that day I did not think I would be on time for this last leg of a many-legged day.
At 10:55 P.M. on Thursday, December 24, 1992, my daughter arrived at British Columbia Children's Hospital, after a traumatic birth in Williams Lake, evacuation by medical jet to Vancouver, and short flight by helicopter from the Vancouver airport to the hospital. Her admission form said 10:55 P.M., a little more than an hour before Christmas Day began. I remembered that when I looked at my watch, at 10:55 P.M., in the bus station, so many years later.
I showed the bus ticket agent my identification and booking number. Within seconds she printed my ticket. I excavated, from my bag within a bag, some European gifts for Doug. I thanked him for all his help during my time going through Edmonton toward Europe, and back through Edmonton toward home.
I then waited for the bus, in this busy new station which is also a VIA Rail train station.
I heard an accoustic guitar, such a welcome, relaxing sound after what had been a very long day. Was a passenger playing? No. A VIA Rail ticket agent was strumming. The crowd in the station visibly relaxed/ I certainly relaxed.
DIRT, DISTANCE, AND LILACS
A series of four buses, with me enjoying a double seat on each bus, and sleeping for several hours until Valemount, brought me 900 kilomtres from Edmonton, through Kamloops, to Williams Lake. This is much longer than distances we traveled within Europe.
Imagine Norman Lee, coming from the British Isles to Canada, going several thousand kilometres by train to Ashcroft, and several hundred north from Ashcroft, more than 100 years ago.
Imagine Granny coming from Ireland to Canada 100 years ago, going several thousand kilometres by train to the Cariboo, and bearing Dad.
Dad liked lilacs. He grew a lilac bushes on the acreage where he and Mom raised their five children near Edson, a couple hundred kilometres west of Edmonton.
More than 10 years ago, I planted a lilac bush in the yard behind the apartment building where I live with my spouse and our daughter.
More than a year ago, my sister sent dirt from the Enniskillen Catholic church yard. Remember the dirt from the start of this story? I will put that dirt around the base of that lilac bush I planted. It was less than a metre tall when I planted it. Now it is about four metres tall.
My granny bore my dad in the Cariboo almost 100 years ago. My Tsilhqot'in spouse bore our daughter in the Cariboo almost 25 years ago. I consider our daughter to have the strongest roots in this land of anyone in my family. The Irish dirt on the lilac bush completes a circle that began in Ireland and passed through Canada, and joined diverse people, as Shakespeare joined diverse images.
Saturday, September 24, 2016
Land of Wasps and Glory
"They have no queen this time of year. That's why they sting you," said one of two men working at the grocery store. The English, like their wasps, seem to know about monarchy.
They spoke of wasps, and much else. This fine autumn morning, wasps swarmed to and through our bathroom window here in Manchester. I went to buy a fly swatter, and toilet paper and beer. The day before we leave this house, we want it well stocked with toilet paper, a few courteous bottles of beer although we drank no beer of its owners, but no wasps; they lack courtesy.
Off I went, before 7:00 A.M., on a weekend tram and bus pass, to a grocery store one tram stop down the line. The place was opening for business, and one man was wheeling onto the sidewalk various displays. Another man, inside, was by a trolley of boxes of items he meant to unpack.
The outside man said the line that opened this little tale, and I wanted no wasp tail in my body, so I listened.
"My brother got stung in the fall when we were small. The nurse at the hospital told us that in the fall, after the queen leaves, wasps sting more often. He really swelled up. It was funny."
"For you," I said.
"Yeah."
By now, Inside Man had walked into the conversation, which hurts less than walking into a wasp.
"Do we sell fly swatters?" he asked Outside Man, having heard from me that I wanted a swatter.
"No," Outside Man replied. Wait until eight, when the Poundland near here opens. They might have swatters." Back at the house, we would later kill and dispose of more than ten wasps, and reclaim our bathroom.
Back I went with Inside Man to his cart of boxes awaiting unpacking. I was happy these two had time to talk, for I have seen many retail workers who did not have time, even if they wanted to talk. Who knows how many working people, in Manchester or elsewhere, know wasp habits? Perhaps these men's union agreement has, a clause about talk, or about wasps. The wasps seemed organized, unionized.
"I also need toilet paper and beer," I said. He not only told me where to find them and even walked me to the toilet paper. He said something funny enough to make me write this story.
"You might be drinking a beer, your head wrapped in toilet paper, and swatting wasps."
My time in England has often stung me with surprises, as I learned some of the land's quaint customs.
They spoke of wasps, and much else. This fine autumn morning, wasps swarmed to and through our bathroom window here in Manchester. I went to buy a fly swatter, and toilet paper and beer. The day before we leave this house, we want it well stocked with toilet paper, a few courteous bottles of beer although we drank no beer of its owners, but no wasps; they lack courtesy.
Off I went, before 7:00 A.M., on a weekend tram and bus pass, to a grocery store one tram stop down the line. The place was opening for business, and one man was wheeling onto the sidewalk various displays. Another man, inside, was by a trolley of boxes of items he meant to unpack.
The outside man said the line that opened this little tale, and I wanted no wasp tail in my body, so I listened.
"My brother got stung in the fall when we were small. The nurse at the hospital told us that in the fall, after the queen leaves, wasps sting more often. He really swelled up. It was funny."
"For you," I said.
"Yeah."
By now, Inside Man had walked into the conversation, which hurts less than walking into a wasp.
"Do we sell fly swatters?" he asked Outside Man, having heard from me that I wanted a swatter.
"No," Outside Man replied. Wait until eight, when the Poundland near here opens. They might have swatters." Back at the house, we would later kill and dispose of more than ten wasps, and reclaim our bathroom.
Back I went with Inside Man to his cart of boxes awaiting unpacking. I was happy these two had time to talk, for I have seen many retail workers who did not have time, even if they wanted to talk. Who knows how many working people, in Manchester or elsewhere, know wasp habits? Perhaps these men's union agreement has, a clause about talk, or about wasps. The wasps seemed organized, unionized.
"I also need toilet paper and beer," I said. He not only told me where to find them and even walked me to the toilet paper. He said something funny enough to make me write this story.
"You might be drinking a beer, your head wrapped in toilet paper, and swatting wasps."
My time in England has often stung me with surprises, as I learned some of the land's quaint customs.
Thursday, September 15, 2016
Leningrad Blockade Anniversary in Manchester
Thursday, September 15, 2016 Manchester, England
"It seems we haven't learned very much."
Manchester Metropolitan University Senior Lecturer Catherine Banks said that to a crowd of 50 yesterday, in Manchester Central Library:
http://www.mmu.ac.uk/news/news-items/4612/
Banks was explaining why she chose some items and not others for a library display marking the 75th anniversary of the September 8, 1941 start of the Leningrad Blockade.
"I was looking at a photograph of a bombed hospital in Leningrad," she said. "That day I saw on the news a bombed hospital in Syria. It seems we haven't learned very much."
Fascist Nazi Germany besieged Leningrad from 1941-44. Other fascists besiege Syria now. The Soviet Union freed Leningrad. Russia supports Syria today.
World War Two, which the Soviet Union called The Great Patriotic War, killed more Soviets than it killed in all major allied nations combined: England, France, Canada, the United States, Australia.
Late Harvard English Professor Paul Fussell was among United States soldiers who landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944, to open a second front long demanded by the Soviets, who had faced the brunt of the Nazi attack for almost three years.
The film Saving Private Ryan is not historically accurate, Fussell said when asked about his experience on Omaha Beach, the US landing spot in Normandy. The only part he called accurate was the first 20 minutes, when soldiers storming the beach faced fierce Nazi resistance.
"They should cut that film to 20 minutes and change its title to Omaha Beach: Aren't You Glad You Weren't There," Fussell concluded.
The Soviets' allies did not win the war, Fussell said. "The Soviets won World War Two, with some help from their allies."
Oh, how the people of Leningrad suffered, after the September 4, 1941 attack by Germany and its ally Finland. German leader Hitler vowed to erase the city, as he vowed to erase Belgrade, near the other end of what English leader Churchill would, shortly after the war, call "The Iron Curtain." The cigar-chomping racist who instigated the Bengal Famine during the war, killing millions, quickly forgot that the Soviets helped save his country from famine or worse during the war. True, England and its former colonies fought Hitler from 1939-45, while Russia fought from 1941-45, after Germany broke a 1939 non-aggression pact between the countries; but without Soviet help, England would have fallen into Nazi German hands. England came closer to defeat than it admitted at the time, archives released decades later show.
Leningrad came close to extinction. Professor Banks said that Hitler ordered the city of about three million demolished and wanted no prisoners taken.
The city evacuated thousands of children north, across Lake Lagoda, in the fall of 1941; but as the above photo shows, many died, and fewer and fewer were born as the siege continued. Germany and Finland had cut rail and road access in other directions. An ice road, The Road of Life, across the lake became the only supply line during the hungry winter of 1941-42.
Below, we see remaining children, and women, pressed into non-traditional work. Children made bombs, put out fires from Nazi bombs, and risked being bombed themselves while they weeded the many gardens the city planted, on every piece of available land.
Still, hundreds of thousands of people died from starvation or diseases related to starvation and related to a destroyed water and sewer system. The destruction which Canada helped bring to Bosnia, Afghanistan, Libya, and Haiti in more recent years differs in degree but not in kind from the destruction that Nazi Germany brought to Leningrad.
Culture continued despite the fascist onslaught, as the two photos below show. People moved more than 500 000 artworks from the Hermitage Museum to safer places, as Parisians had moved artworks from the Louvre Museum before German occupation. Leningrad, unlike Paris, was never occupied.
The composer Dmitry Shostakovich was in Leningrad when the siege started. He got out before the worst of the siege, and composed The Leningrad Symphony. Orchestras in Moscow, England, and the United States performed it. Bloodied but unbowed, Leningrad gathered enough musicians, half starved, almost too weak to play, and performed the symphony there on August 9, 1942.
That was my mother's fourteenth birthday. When I was growing up, she told me of wartime rationing of sugar, gasoline, and other items. Dad, nine year older, was in the Royal Canadian Navy during the war, in North Atlantic convoys bringing supplies to Europe. He told me that in Glasgow he met seamen from ships that would bring the supplies north to Murmansk. I suspect these northbound ships faced at least as much danger of attack at sea as Dad faced.
Before the symphony performance, heavy bombardment by Soviet guns that surrounded the city quieted the German lines, for the duration of the performance. The Soviets used large speakers to broadcast the music toward the Germans. Imagine if those Germans, from the country that produced Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, had listened, put down their weapons, and gone home.
Soldiers in 1917 left World War One, called an by the Soviets an imperialist war, returned to Russia, and overthrew Tsarist tyranny. After the unauthorized Christmas, 1915 ceasefire agreed between the Germans and French in World War One trenches, commanders from each side punished the organizers, and moved the troops up or down the line, so they could resume shooting, this time at strangers. People's natural urge is more to create than to destroy.
Sports also helped morale, as the photo to the left below shows. The besieged Leningrad people organized a soccer match between Dynamo, a league team, and a team made of factory workers. The halves were 30 minutes, not the regulation 45, because the players were weak from starvation and/or disease. Still, like the saving of the Hermitage artworks, like the Leningrad Symphony performance, this event told the besieging fascist armies that this city's people would do cultured, beautiful, fun things despite the siege.
Below, right, are wartime Soviet cartoons, one showing the allies surrounding fascism. How many words is a picture worth?
In the years after the war, western-organized coups overthrew socialist governments in Greece twice, subverted socialism in Italy at least as many times, and in France, and in Iran, and in many Arab countries. The United States and its stooges have been on the wrong side of liberation struggles, Arab and other, ever since. One might think they resume Hitler's work, as they encircle Russia, and enlist Japan to help encircle China. Italian partisans had already rid Northern Italy of German soldiers and organized a socialist government before the United States and Canadian troops got there, coming from Southern Italy. The U.S. Office of Strategic Services, which later became the Central Intelligence Agency, began during wartime, partly to subvert socialism in Europe.
Now, Europe is farther from socialism than it was even 20 years ago, let alone at the end of the war. I have seen many people begging and/or sleeping on the street in Germany and England since I came in early August from Canada for a European vacation. Still, there is hope. In 1962, a frosty year that the Cold War almost became hot enough to kill us all during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Manchester and Leningrad became sister cities, which they remain.
The Soviets under Stalin were little better than the United States and their war poodle England, as millions of subjugated people in Russia and elsewhere knew. In Yugoslavia, partisans had already swept German soldiers out of their country when the Soviets showed up, and agreed not to run over the victorious partisans, as they had run over Polish partisans. The Yugoslavs were stronger than the Poles, and Stalin didn't want to risk war with them, lest he endanger his own grip on power, his main concern. Postwar oppression in East Germany and other Soviet vassal states harmed people and hampered socialism.
United States General Patton, upon meeting his Soviet counterpart in Berlin in 1945, apparently asked his political superiors if he should continue east, that is, attack the Soviets. He, like Napoleon and Hitler, would have gotten into Russia, but not conquered it. Perhaps a war then would have prevented the decades of cold war militarism that followed, on both sides of Churchill's Iron Curtain.
The United States might have used nuclear weapons against the Soviets, as the U.S. used them against Japan that same year, 1945. Leningrad musicians performed their namesake symphony on my mom's fourteenth birthday. A United States plane dropped a nuclear bomb on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, Mom's seventeenth birthday. She grew up in wartime and survived, or I would not exist to tell you this tale.
How many people, each of them special, each loved by someone, died in heroic Leningrad resisting occupation? More than a million. How many died in wars and occupations past and present? How many die daily in the poverty and violence our system breeds? The Leningrad Blockade is long over, and we who heed history can learn from it: war never again, between nations, between individuals.
We can learn much. Professor Banks hopes so.
Sunday, September 11, 2016
U Boat, The Blitz, Ice Cream, and Dome Poem
Sunday, September 11, 2016 Brighton, England
A U Boat, the Blitz, ice cream, and a dome,
Are memories I put into this poem,
Two weeks before my roam brings me home.
U-234 sat in Hamburg's harbor,
A floating chunk of the second world war.
No submarine hat I bought on that score.
Across the channel, by a church, locked,
A woman, 90, told Blitz tales that shocked
Me, lifelong in peace happily docked.
Europe's craze, ice cream, Curator Loske told,
Rose two centuries past, in King George's bold
Brighton Pavilion, under a dome now old.
The shore raged under moving clouds last night.
Now the sun shines under waves rippling bright.
Past and future exist now, in the mind's sight.
A U Boat, the Blitz, ice cream, and a dome,
Are memories I put into this poem,
Two weeks before my roam brings me home.
U-234 sat in Hamburg's harbor,
A floating chunk of the second world war.
No submarine hat I bought on that score.
Across the channel, by a church, locked,
A woman, 90, told Blitz tales that shocked
Me, lifelong in peace happily docked.
Europe's craze, ice cream, Curator Loske told,
Rose two centuries past, in King George's bold
Brighton Pavilion, under a dome now old.
The shore raged under moving clouds last night.
Now the sun shines under waves rippling bright.
Past and future exist now, in the mind's sight.
My First Catholic Masses in England
Sunday, September 11, 2016 Brighton, England
My parents raised their children Roman Catholic in Canada, where that religion has more adherents than any other religion. I married in the church in 1993, the first Catholic wedding in my family since our parents married in 1950.
Like most "cradle Catholics," I rarely go to mass. In the past three days, however, I went twice in England, my first masses outside Canada; but the masses differed from each other, and from masses I recall in Canada.
St. Mary Magdalen Church, about a kilometre from where my sister and I stayed in Brighton, is a brick church built in the 1800s. It has masses in English, Polish, and Latin.
What was there in 1830, when England, after almost 300 years, reduced restrictions on Catholics and others who would not swear to faith in the Church of England?
Quakers I met at a Saturday open house at their church told me of restrictions their church faced from a few decades after their mid-1600s beginnings until the late-1820s "emancipation act" of parliament.
Before emancipation, instead of ministry, many Quakers went into business. Quakers started the Cadbury and Rowntree candy firms, and Barclay's Bank, for example. Quakers also famously opposed slavery decades earlier than a mass movement rose against slavery. Even before their own emancipation, Quakers emancipated others.
The Quaker women I met were happy to hear that United States folk music singer Joan Baez grew up Quaker.
After the English government rescinded laws requiring non-Church of England people to swear to the church in order to advance in certain areas of society, Catholics, Quakers, Baptists, and other "dissenters" were allowed to attend and teach in universities, to sit in legislatures, and freely to practice their religions.
A Baptist church near where we stay had a cornerstone dated 1834, less than a decade after emancipation. The Baptists got busy quickly, I thought when I saw that brick church. They are among the "dissenters," people with religions neither Catholic nor Church of England, which we Canadians call Anglicans. Two Anglican churches I was in here had crucifixes behind their altars the first time I saw that. I suppose these are High Anglican, unlike the Low Anglican church, which has no crucifix, in my hometown of Williams Lake.
The dissenting churches suffered in England, and elsewhere, and still do in parts of the world. Dissent can prevent or reduce tyranny, so tyrants, whether religious or secular, don't like dissent.
Getting back to mass so to speak, I sensed a different spirit of dissent in each of the two masses I attended here in England.
The first was a Traditional Latin mass, not to be confused with a Tridentine mass, the standard mass form before the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s changed the content of the mass and approved it for use in languages other than Latin. I was a child when this change came, and I do not remember the Tridentine Latin mass.
At age 20, when I lived in Ottawa to finish my Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature at Carleton University, I went to a Traditional Latin mass. Almost 35 years later, last Friday night, I went to a Traditional Latin mass at St. Mary Magdalen Church here in Brighton.
Most of the 20 or so participants, some of them children, knew more of the words than I knew. A girl of 10 or 12 sitting in front of me seemed fluent, including singing the Latin hymn that ended the mass, the first music in this mass.
The priest and his assistant faced the small altar to the right of the large altar. They did not face the congregation, but this was a modern mass in Latin, not a Latin mass using words common before the Second Vatican Council. That is, this was not a schismatic event, such as some theologians critical of the council began, to revert to the old forms.
This mass merely served people who wanted a modern mass in Latin. This dissent strengthens the church and perhaps the faith, by expanding the range of people it welcomes.
Perhaps the church should expand its offerings more, but past a certain point, it would lose unity; this is a delicate balance, as it is in all areas of society where dissent exists. Each person accepts a different level of disagreement from those around him or her.
Incidentally, the First Vatican Council, in the mid-1800s, was, like the second council a century later, an effort to make the church more relevant, without discarding what makes the church endure. Unlike the Counter-Reformation of the 1600s, these councils, especially the second, were less efforts against Protestantism than efforts for Catholicism.
Catholic with a small c means inclusive. John Milton, the 1600s English poet and republican, wrote for inclusion, and against Puritans and Anglicans and Dissenters and Catholics who saw their way as the only way to salvation. He infuriated both the monarchists and the republicans, during that era that largely formed the Christian traditions that continue to this day, in varying degrees, in Europe, America, and the rest of the world.
The Friday Latin mass felt inspiring, and inclusive by virtue of its linguistic echo of centuries-old traditions followed by many; but the Sunday English mass felt inspiring and inclusive, too. On Sunday, we said more of the mass in Latin than I ever said in an English mass: the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Apostle's Creed, and the Our Father. People also used the communion rail, something removed from churches in the late-1960s but returning in the past decade.
Most inspiring on Sunday was the singing; the priest and people sang the whole mass. The last time I was at a mass that was all sung was in the mid-1980s in Edmonton, at St. Alphonsus Church, the one my dad attended during his early adulthood. "When you sing, you pray twice," St. Augustine's words, were on the church bulletin.
The same priest said both the Friday and the Sunday masses; versatile priest. He invited people for refreshments after the Sunday mass. As people left, he stood at the door and shook each hand.
"Hello from Canada," I said, a greeting I use here to alert people to my Canadian accent.
"It's good to have you," he replied, with his English accent.
In a complex world, which was always complex in different ways in different eras, people seek help, answers, inspiration, meaning, and hope, from religion, nature, work, play, learning, love, and many other sources.
"We're all going the same place on different roads," Mom said more than once. She converted to Roman Catholicism before she married Dad, who grew up Catholic; but she converted from choice, not compulsion, Mom and Dad both said. Others her age in our hometown were in mixed marriages and wed in the church.
"What's your religion?'" Dad used to quote himself from their courtship days.
"'I have none,' Mom replied."
"'Want mine?'"
"'OK.'"
This is less a theological debate than a proof of the devotion of two people to each other.
Like most Catholics, I rarely go to mass. The church I go to mass in the most is in my spouse's community in the Cariboo Region of Western Canada. That mass has almost no Latin, some singing, and a sermon that sometimes inspires and sometimes infuriates me.
I have been to other religious services, mostly for funerals: Jehovah's Witness, United. I have been to a Lutheran service and various fundamentalist and revivalist services.
The United States folk singer Woody Guthrie once mused that he did not know which religion was right, which wrong, and whether any of them was any good. He concluded that love matters most, echoing the Ancient Roman poet Virgil: amor vincit omnia, "love conquers all."
My parents raised their children Roman Catholic in Canada, where that religion has more adherents than any other religion. I married in the church in 1993, the first Catholic wedding in my family since our parents married in 1950.
Like most "cradle Catholics," I rarely go to mass. In the past three days, however, I went twice in England, my first masses outside Canada; but the masses differed from each other, and from masses I recall in Canada.
St. Mary Magdalen Church, about a kilometre from where my sister and I stayed in Brighton, is a brick church built in the 1800s. It has masses in English, Polish, and Latin.
What was there in 1830, when England, after almost 300 years, reduced restrictions on Catholics and others who would not swear to faith in the Church of England?
Quakers I met at a Saturday open house at their church told me of restrictions their church faced from a few decades after their mid-1600s beginnings until the late-1820s "emancipation act" of parliament.
Before emancipation, instead of ministry, many Quakers went into business. Quakers started the Cadbury and Rowntree candy firms, and Barclay's Bank, for example. Quakers also famously opposed slavery decades earlier than a mass movement rose against slavery. Even before their own emancipation, Quakers emancipated others.
The Quaker women I met were happy to hear that United States folk music singer Joan Baez grew up Quaker.
After the English government rescinded laws requiring non-Church of England people to swear to the church in order to advance in certain areas of society, Catholics, Quakers, Baptists, and other "dissenters" were allowed to attend and teach in universities, to sit in legislatures, and freely to practice their religions.
A Baptist church near where we stay had a cornerstone dated 1834, less than a decade after emancipation. The Baptists got busy quickly, I thought when I saw that brick church. They are among the "dissenters," people with religions neither Catholic nor Church of England, which we Canadians call Anglicans. Two Anglican churches I was in here had crucifixes behind their altars the first time I saw that. I suppose these are High Anglican, unlike the Low Anglican church, which has no crucifix, in my hometown of Williams Lake.
The dissenting churches suffered in England, and elsewhere, and still do in parts of the world. Dissent can prevent or reduce tyranny, so tyrants, whether religious or secular, don't like dissent.
Getting back to mass so to speak, I sensed a different spirit of dissent in each of the two masses I attended here in England.
The first was a Traditional Latin mass, not to be confused with a Tridentine mass, the standard mass form before the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s changed the content of the mass and approved it for use in languages other than Latin. I was a child when this change came, and I do not remember the Tridentine Latin mass.
At age 20, when I lived in Ottawa to finish my Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature at Carleton University, I went to a Traditional Latin mass. Almost 35 years later, last Friday night, I went to a Traditional Latin mass at St. Mary Magdalen Church here in Brighton.
Most of the 20 or so participants, some of them children, knew more of the words than I knew. A girl of 10 or 12 sitting in front of me seemed fluent, including singing the Latin hymn that ended the mass, the first music in this mass.
The priest and his assistant faced the small altar to the right of the large altar. They did not face the congregation, but this was a modern mass in Latin, not a Latin mass using words common before the Second Vatican Council. That is, this was not a schismatic event, such as some theologians critical of the council began, to revert to the old forms.
This mass merely served people who wanted a modern mass in Latin. This dissent strengthens the church and perhaps the faith, by expanding the range of people it welcomes.
Perhaps the church should expand its offerings more, but past a certain point, it would lose unity; this is a delicate balance, as it is in all areas of society where dissent exists. Each person accepts a different level of disagreement from those around him or her.
Incidentally, the First Vatican Council, in the mid-1800s, was, like the second council a century later, an effort to make the church more relevant, without discarding what makes the church endure. Unlike the Counter-Reformation of the 1600s, these councils, especially the second, were less efforts against Protestantism than efforts for Catholicism.
Catholic with a small c means inclusive. John Milton, the 1600s English poet and republican, wrote for inclusion, and against Puritans and Anglicans and Dissenters and Catholics who saw their way as the only way to salvation. He infuriated both the monarchists and the republicans, during that era that largely formed the Christian traditions that continue to this day, in varying degrees, in Europe, America, and the rest of the world.
The Friday Latin mass felt inspiring, and inclusive by virtue of its linguistic echo of centuries-old traditions followed by many; but the Sunday English mass felt inspiring and inclusive, too. On Sunday, we said more of the mass in Latin than I ever said in an English mass: the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Apostle's Creed, and the Our Father. People also used the communion rail, something removed from churches in the late-1960s but returning in the past decade.
Most inspiring on Sunday was the singing; the priest and people sang the whole mass. The last time I was at a mass that was all sung was in the mid-1980s in Edmonton, at St. Alphonsus Church, the one my dad attended during his early adulthood. "When you sing, you pray twice," St. Augustine's words, were on the church bulletin.
The same priest said both the Friday and the Sunday masses; versatile priest. He invited people for refreshments after the Sunday mass. As people left, he stood at the door and shook each hand.
"Hello from Canada," I said, a greeting I use here to alert people to my Canadian accent.
"It's good to have you," he replied, with his English accent.
In a complex world, which was always complex in different ways in different eras, people seek help, answers, inspiration, meaning, and hope, from religion, nature, work, play, learning, love, and many other sources.
"We're all going the same place on different roads," Mom said more than once. She converted to Roman Catholicism before she married Dad, who grew up Catholic; but she converted from choice, not compulsion, Mom and Dad both said. Others her age in our hometown were in mixed marriages and wed in the church.
"What's your religion?'" Dad used to quote himself from their courtship days.
"'I have none,' Mom replied."
"'Want mine?'"
"'OK.'"
This is less a theological debate than a proof of the devotion of two people to each other.
Like most Catholics, I rarely go to mass. The church I go to mass in the most is in my spouse's community in the Cariboo Region of Western Canada. That mass has almost no Latin, some singing, and a sermon that sometimes inspires and sometimes infuriates me.
I have been to other religious services, mostly for funerals: Jehovah's Witness, United. I have been to a Lutheran service and various fundamentalist and revivalist services.
The United States folk singer Woody Guthrie once mused that he did not know which religion was right, which wrong, and whether any of them was any good. He concluded that love matters most, echoing the Ancient Roman poet Virgil: amor vincit omnia, "love conquers all."
Friday, September 9, 2016
"England is Milk Chocolate"
Friday, September 9, 2016 Brighton, England (200 000 people, short of dark chocolate)
"England is milk chocolate. Europe is dark chocolate," a man in the Boots drugstore in Brighton told me this morning.
Watching him put bags of potato chips on the rack in the drugstore, I said, "I wish I'd eaten something easier to replace."
He joked that I could take a train through the English Channel tunnel to France and find dark chocolate. I told him that, when I returned home to Canada, I would pass on his news that England is milk chocolate and the rest of Europe is dark chocolate.
Then I left this huge drugstore, unburdened by dark chocolate, and continued my quest, a quest born of accidental eating.
I accidentally ate the Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate which I found soon after my sister and I reached the Brighton place she agreed to watch during its owners' absence. They are house sitting in Seville, Spain. Perhaps they have Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate there, the rest of Europe apparently awash in dark chocolate, unlike England.
I found these treats, 20 or so, in a clear glass jar. I ate a couple, and later a couple more, and over the next few days I ate them all. Resolved to replace them, I went out to try to buy some. For two hours per day for two days, I failed to find Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate.
I looked in grocery stores, including the big ones, Tesco, Waitrose, Sainsburys, in the Co-op grocery store. I looked in corner stores, in gift shops, in specialty food shops, and in two health food stores, and found nothing.
In the department store Marks and Spencer (M + S), I found a shelf label advertising, for four pounds, about seven Canadian dollars, a 200g box of Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate, but no boxes. "We're out of stock," a clerk told me.
The M + S woman liked it when I called my search a quest, wished me well, and continued using her scanner to record what was in or out of stock in the candy section. The next closest M + S was miles away, "a bus ride," another clerk said, suggesting that I ask Customer Service to get another store to ship some to this store. I commended her enthusiasm but said I would continue looking.
The first M + S woman suggested a place that the Boots clerk suggested Choccywoccydoodah:
This place sells chocolate in the shape of a full-sized human skull, but no Brazil nuts covered in chocolate.
The Boots man also referred me to Thornton's, a high-end chocolate shop in Churchill Square, the downtown shopping mall. Thornton's had a wide variety of chocolates, most of them in gift boxes, and even a whirling post of melted chocolate about the size of the whirling post of meat in a place that makes donairs; but no Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate.
At the start of this third day of two-hour hunts for Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate, I had gone into Poundland, England's version of a dollar store, that Canadian oasis of party supplies, affordable snacks, and much else.
In Poundland, I had found Brazil nuts covered in milk chocolate. I decided that they would have to do if I found none covered in dark chocolate. For a pound I bought a 140g, that contained about as many as I ate. I plan to fill the jar before I leave Brighton on Monday, September 12.
Fox hunting would have been easier.
As I wandered, lonely as a cloud, on my quest, I thought about Carol, and Cardinal John Henry Newman's 1800s book The Idea of a University.
I met Carol, born in the 1930s, when my and my stellar spouse Carla's daughter Chelsea was an infant. We were at mass in Sacred Heart Church in Williams Lake, where I live. After mass, Carol came to me and said, "You sure were good with your little girl during mass. She had things to play with, and you interacted so happily and peacefully with her.".
Today, during my chocolate search, I saw a woman pushing a baby buggy, with one baby inside and another riding on the edge. She was talking back and forth with the infants, and the one on the edge seemed keen on all that was around him. A dog walked by and the little boy pointed and said "A woof!" I wish I had commended the woman for being such an indulgent parent. Next time, I'll flatter what good I see in people, and there is plenty to flatter.
Carol and I volunteered to catalogue the library in Williams Lake's Catholic school, which Chelsea attended. We and a third person, Trish, met one evening per week in the library to catalogue books, most of them donated. We taped their edges, found appropriate Dewey Decimal numbers in a cataloguing book the library had, wrote cards, and put them in card pockets we glued into the backs of the books.
This was the late-1990s, a few years before another volunteer and I computerized the library's book collection.
Carol, Trish, and I talked as we worked, for a few hours per week for two school year. I mentioned a book I had that I thought might interest Carol: John Henry Cardinal Newman's mid-1800s The Idea of a University. I read in a 1987-88 Carleton University Victorian non-fiction course. Carol was interested. The next time we met, I brought the book, a paperback I had bought used in Ottawa for a few dollars.
I neither expected nor wanted the book back, but a couple years later I asked Carol how she liked it.
"I lost it," she replied. I said not to worry because I did not want it back.
"Oh, I ordered another one," she said.
Like me searching for Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate to replace ones lost in my stomach, Carol searched out, and got, by special order from Williams Lake's book store, The Open Book, a replacement copy of the book she had lost:
9
She paid $50, I think, for this book, including shipping, she said. I gracefully accepted it. I still have it, more than ten years later.
I hope this entertained and enlightened you. I thought of the book as I looked for the chocolates. Many words came to mind as I pondered what to call this story: Catholics and Chocolate, John Henry Newman and Brazil Nuts, The Idea of a Universal, and you can think of other titles.
Dare I eat another Brazil nut covered in dark chocolate in England?
(Several hours later, on Friday night....)
I found Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate, an hour or so after I wrote the above searching tale of woe. Charlie's Sweets Emporium, at 28 Ship Street in Brighton, mere blocks from the English Channel, sold me about 200g in bulk for 2.50 pounds. The little bag, enough to fill the little jar whose nuts I ate, sits by the jar on the cupboard as I type.
This place was the closest to the English Channel of every place I checked for these chocolates. Get closer to the rest of Europe and get dark chocolate, perhaps?
"England is milk chocolate. Europe is dark chocolate," a man in the Boots drugstore in Brighton told me this morning.
Watching him put bags of potato chips on the rack in the drugstore, I said, "I wish I'd eaten something easier to replace."
He joked that I could take a train through the English Channel tunnel to France and find dark chocolate. I told him that, when I returned home to Canada, I would pass on his news that England is milk chocolate and the rest of Europe is dark chocolate.
Then I left this huge drugstore, unburdened by dark chocolate, and continued my quest, a quest born of accidental eating.
I accidentally ate the Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate which I found soon after my sister and I reached the Brighton place she agreed to watch during its owners' absence. They are house sitting in Seville, Spain. Perhaps they have Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate there, the rest of Europe apparently awash in dark chocolate, unlike England.
I found these treats, 20 or so, in a clear glass jar. I ate a couple, and later a couple more, and over the next few days I ate them all. Resolved to replace them, I went out to try to buy some. For two hours per day for two days, I failed to find Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate.
I looked in grocery stores, including the big ones, Tesco, Waitrose, Sainsburys, in the Co-op grocery store. I looked in corner stores, in gift shops, in specialty food shops, and in two health food stores, and found nothing.
In the department store Marks and Spencer (M + S), I found a shelf label advertising, for four pounds, about seven Canadian dollars, a 200g box of Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate, but no boxes. "We're out of stock," a clerk told me.
The M + S woman liked it when I called my search a quest, wished me well, and continued using her scanner to record what was in or out of stock in the candy section. The next closest M + S was miles away, "a bus ride," another clerk said, suggesting that I ask Customer Service to get another store to ship some to this store. I commended her enthusiasm but said I would continue looking.
The first M + S woman suggested a place that the Boots clerk suggested Choccywoccydoodah:
This place sells chocolate in the shape of a full-sized human skull, but no Brazil nuts covered in chocolate.
The Boots man also referred me to Thornton's, a high-end chocolate shop in Churchill Square, the downtown shopping mall. Thornton's had a wide variety of chocolates, most of them in gift boxes, and even a whirling post of melted chocolate about the size of the whirling post of meat in a place that makes donairs; but no Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate.
At the start of this third day of two-hour hunts for Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate, I had gone into Poundland, England's version of a dollar store, that Canadian oasis of party supplies, affordable snacks, and much else.
In Poundland, I had found Brazil nuts covered in milk chocolate. I decided that they would have to do if I found none covered in dark chocolate. For a pound I bought a 140g, that contained about as many as I ate. I plan to fill the jar before I leave Brighton on Monday, September 12.
Fox hunting would have been easier.
As I wandered, lonely as a cloud, on my quest, I thought about Carol, and Cardinal John Henry Newman's 1800s book The Idea of a University.
I met Carol, born in the 1930s, when my and my stellar spouse Carla's daughter Chelsea was an infant. We were at mass in Sacred Heart Church in Williams Lake, where I live. After mass, Carol came to me and said, "You sure were good with your little girl during mass. She had things to play with, and you interacted so happily and peacefully with her.".
Today, during my chocolate search, I saw a woman pushing a baby buggy, with one baby inside and another riding on the edge. She was talking back and forth with the infants, and the one on the edge seemed keen on all that was around him. A dog walked by and the little boy pointed and said "A woof!" I wish I had commended the woman for being such an indulgent parent. Next time, I'll flatter what good I see in people, and there is plenty to flatter.
Carol and I volunteered to catalogue the library in Williams Lake's Catholic school, which Chelsea attended. We and a third person, Trish, met one evening per week in the library to catalogue books, most of them donated. We taped their edges, found appropriate Dewey Decimal numbers in a cataloguing book the library had, wrote cards, and put them in card pockets we glued into the backs of the books.
This was the late-1990s, a few years before another volunteer and I computerized the library's book collection.
Carol, Trish, and I talked as we worked, for a few hours per week for two school year. I mentioned a book I had that I thought might interest Carol: John Henry Cardinal Newman's mid-1800s The Idea of a University. I read in a 1987-88 Carleton University Victorian non-fiction course. Carol was interested. The next time we met, I brought the book, a paperback I had bought used in Ottawa for a few dollars.
I neither expected nor wanted the book back, but a couple years later I asked Carol how she liked it.
"I lost it," she replied. I said not to worry because I did not want it back.
"Oh, I ordered another one," she said.
Like me searching for Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate to replace ones lost in my stomach, Carol searched out, and got, by special order from Williams Lake's book store, The Open Book, a replacement copy of the book she had lost:
She paid $50, I think, for this book, including shipping, she said. I gracefully accepted it. I still have it, more than ten years later.
I hope this entertained and enlightened you. I thought of the book as I looked for the chocolates. Many words came to mind as I pondered what to call this story: Catholics and Chocolate, John Henry Newman and Brazil Nuts, The Idea of a Universal, and you can think of other titles.
Dare I eat another Brazil nut covered in dark chocolate in England?
(Several hours later, on Friday night....)
I found Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate, an hour or so after I wrote the above searching tale of woe. Charlie's Sweets Emporium, at 28 Ship Street in Brighton, mere blocks from the English Channel, sold me about 200g in bulk for 2.50 pounds. The little bag, enough to fill the little jar whose nuts I ate, sits by the jar on the cupboard as I type.
This place was the closest to the English Channel of every place I checked for these chocolates. Get closer to the rest of Europe and get dark chocolate, perhaps?
Friday, September 2, 2016
Sunny, Historic Brighton
Friday, September 2, 2016 Brighton, England
Our first four days in Brighton were hot and sunny, an unusual welcome to the English Channel coast. One day was very hot, but the rocky beach deterred me from jumping into the sea: hard on the bare feet. A couple days later, I bought rubber-soled shoes with cloth uppers that tie, for about 12 dollars. Now I can join the waders, swimmers, kite surfers, and sail boaters in this wavy sea that reflects whatever color the sky is.
Where we house sit is a ten-minute walk from the waves, and the other day I walked in the other direction, to St. Nicholas Church, built in the 1200s. The nearby Chichester Cathedral is as old, but I did not see it. St. Nicholas began before 1100, not long after the Norman French conquest of England in 1066. History is steep here, but this resort city glitters with tourist shops and cafes to serve the Londoners who come for fun.
This week's highlight was a play version of Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen's early-1800s novel. The play was on an outdoor stage.
Alas, clouds have formed, not surprisingly; but our Saturday day trip to London will be mostly out of the weather, either in trains or in that city's fabulous, free art galleries and museums. Have photos from our Friday visit to an arts and craft and local history museum in Hove, the city where we are staying, beside Brighton, where barbed wire and anti-aircraft guns lined the beach during World War Two.
Our first four days in Brighton were hot and sunny, an unusual welcome to the English Channel coast. One day was very hot, but the rocky beach deterred me from jumping into the sea: hard on the bare feet. A couple days later, I bought rubber-soled shoes with cloth uppers that tie, for about 12 dollars. Now I can join the waders, swimmers, kite surfers, and sail boaters in this wavy sea that reflects whatever color the sky is.
Where we house sit is a ten-minute walk from the waves, and the other day I walked in the other direction, to St. Nicholas Church, built in the 1200s. The nearby Chichester Cathedral is as old, but I did not see it. St. Nicholas began before 1100, not long after the Norman French conquest of England in 1066. History is steep here, but this resort city glitters with tourist shops and cafes to serve the Londoners who come for fun.
This week's highlight was a play version of Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen's early-1800s novel. The play was on an outdoor stage.
Alas, clouds have formed, not surprisingly; but our Saturday day trip to London will be mostly out of the weather, either in trains or in that city's fabulous, free art galleries and museums. Have photos from our Friday visit to an arts and craft and local history museum in Hove, the city where we are staying, beside Brighton, where barbed wire and anti-aircraft guns lined the beach during World War Two.
Monday, August 29, 2016
Hamburg to Brighton
Monday, August 29, 2016 Brighton
We got from Hamburg to Brighton in one busy day. My sister is a great trip planner.
A Neugraben neighbor drove us two kilometres to the nearest city train station. We rode a train for several stops to the main Hamburg station. We rode another train more than 15 stops to the Hamburg airport.
A couple hours later, we were on a plane bound for London. Heathrow is a big airport. Our plane landed, then taxied past 20 or so planes parked to unload or load people. Customs clearance took mere minutes, after we walked many halls in the terminal. A train took us through more than 20 stops to downtown London. Another train took us to Brighton, where I type this.
We stayed Sunday night at a guest house, or bed and breakfast, after we met the owners of the place we will stay in during the owners' trip to Spain. They will house sit the Seville place for which my sister also applied. Brighton, cooler and by the sea, unlike Seville in hot southern Spain, is a preferable place for us to spend the next several days.
We got from Hamburg to Brighton in one busy day. My sister is a great trip planner.
A Neugraben neighbor drove us two kilometres to the nearest city train station. We rode a train for several stops to the main Hamburg station. We rode another train more than 15 stops to the Hamburg airport.
A couple hours later, we were on a plane bound for London. Heathrow is a big airport. Our plane landed, then taxied past 20 or so planes parked to unload or load people. Customs clearance took mere minutes, after we walked many halls in the terminal. A train took us through more than 20 stops to downtown London. Another train took us to Brighton, where I type this.
We stayed Sunday night at a guest house, or bed and breakfast, after we met the owners of the place we will stay in during the owners' trip to Spain. They will house sit the Seville place for which my sister also applied. Brighton, cooler and by the sea, unlike Seville in hot southern Spain, is a preferable place for us to spend the next several days.
Friday, August 26, 2016
Apples and Photos
I walked over many small apples in the back yard. Why not recycle the apples into the bush for the squirrels and other animals, some of which I saw there? I bagged the apples, most of them on the ground too long for human use.
The bags are by the compost bin, but the apples might go through some forest creatures before they become compost. I have seen many beetles, among nature's best composters. I will put the apples in the bike basket and ride from the hot sun to the shady woods. It is noon, soon lunch time for whatever animals find these meals on wheels.
You see that photos now endure on this blog, thanks mostly to my sister's determined efforts to find a way.
You see that photos now endure on this blog, thanks mostly to my sister's determined efforts to find a way.
Thursday, August 25, 2016
Rostock and the Woods
Thursday, August 25, 2016 Neugraben, Germany
On Wednesday we went by train to Rostock, the main Baltic Sea port of East Germany, a country from 1945-90. Today, we walked around the woods near Neugraben, this Hamburg suburb in which we have a few more days. Years ago, even months ago, I did not think I would see such sights as I saw these past two days.
Since West and East Germany merged in 1990 to become Germany, Rostock's population has declined from about 260 000 to about 200 000, due to its port becoming less busy; but there is still a port, and tourism seems to be a new and growing industry. The beautiful sandy beach several kilometres long, about 20 km north of the city, boasted many bathers, and many walked along the road of shops of many types, to the breakwater, rock-supported fingers that stretch into the sea for a kilometre to keep the waves down on shore.
Pleasure boats, yachts, ferries, and the biggest cruise ship I ever saw were floating, colorful sights on the warm, sunny day we visited.
The train station is modern and clean. The old city, whose university began in 1419, among Europe's oldest, is a maze of glamorous streets, some with names that reflect East Germany, the socialist country that was here: Rosa Luxemburg, Bebel, Gotha. There also remain statues that show the distant or recent past: a rowboat holding three people, a statue of a little girl holding flowers.
The railway from Hamburg to Rostock went through smaller places, the biggest of which was Schwerin. I noticed many empty buildings along the tracks, especially close to the train stations, but people getting on and off at the many stops call this or that place home. History is longer than the post-1945 era that dominated my youth: Danes, Swedes, and later the Renaissaince-era Hanseatic League ruled Rostock. This city, this country, can hold much history, and much life now.
Life near here includes the forest less than a kilometre from where I type this, in a Hamburg suburb after a relaxing day walking in the woods. One might imagine what humans have done over the centuries in those woods, but here I mostly note what they do there now, and what the woods do regardless of humans.
People live in these woods, along roads no bigger than wagon trails in the Canadian Cariboo, where I live. There are street signs, direction signs toward train stations, a museum, and other streets, and a burial mound more than 3 000 years old. People have lived here for a long time.
How long has the heather been here? Fields up to a kilometre long and half that wide are full of millions of small, light purple flowers topping plants up to 50 centimetres tall. Trees such as I do not see in Canada, this heather that is older than I care to guess, this shady forest in today's hot sun, made me peaceful, patient, and happy. All this will outlive me, but I was privileged to see it, to try to see myself as part of nature.
Trees, heather, and Rostock people consume something to survive, as did we, after our forest walk today: 1.20 Euro hot dogs from the kiosk in Kaufland, the main grocery store in this suburb. A hot dog, and a couple unpronounceable but delightful pastries on one of my last days in Germany sweetened my growing memories of here. I eat in German better than I read what I eat in German.
On Wednesday we went by train to Rostock, the main Baltic Sea port of East Germany, a country from 1945-90. Today, we walked around the woods near Neugraben, this Hamburg suburb in which we have a few more days. Years ago, even months ago, I did not think I would see such sights as I saw these past two days.
Since West and East Germany merged in 1990 to become Germany, Rostock's population has declined from about 260 000 to about 200 000, due to its port becoming less busy; but there is still a port, and tourism seems to be a new and growing industry. The beautiful sandy beach several kilometres long, about 20 km north of the city, boasted many bathers, and many walked along the road of shops of many types, to the breakwater, rock-supported fingers that stretch into the sea for a kilometre to keep the waves down on shore.
Pleasure boats, yachts, ferries, and the biggest cruise ship I ever saw were floating, colorful sights on the warm, sunny day we visited.
The railway from Hamburg to Rostock went through smaller places, the biggest of which was Schwerin. I noticed many empty buildings along the tracks, especially close to the train stations, but people getting on and off at the many stops call this or that place home. History is longer than the post-1945 era that dominated my youth: Danes, Swedes, and later the Renaissaince-era Hanseatic League ruled Rostock. This city, this country, can hold much history, and much life now.
Life near here includes the forest less than a kilometre from where I type this, in a Hamburg suburb after a relaxing day walking in the woods. One might imagine what humans have done over the centuries in those woods, but here I mostly note what they do there now, and what the woods do regardless of humans.
People live in these woods, along roads no bigger than wagon trails in the Canadian Cariboo, where I live. There are street signs, direction signs toward train stations, a museum, and other streets, and a burial mound more than 3 000 years old. People have lived here for a long time.
How long has the heather been here? Fields up to a kilometre long and half that wide are full of millions of small, light purple flowers topping plants up to 50 centimetres tall. Trees such as I do not see in Canada, this heather that is older than I care to guess, this shady forest in today's hot sun, made me peaceful, patient, and happy. All this will outlive me, but I was privileged to see it, to try to see myself as part of nature.
Trees, heather, and Rostock people consume something to survive, as did we, after our forest walk today: 1.20 Euro hot dogs from the kiosk in Kaufland, the main grocery store in this suburb. A hot dog, and a couple unpronounceable but delightful pastries on one of my last days in Germany sweetened my growing memories of here. I eat in German better than I read what I eat in German.
Tuesday, August 23, 2016
German Food Prices and Energy
Tuesday, August 23, 2016 Neugraben, Germany
Here in a Hamburg suburb, there is Kaufland, a big store of groceries, housewares, some clothes, hardware, liquor, and most memorably, a hot dog kiosk. The wieners are almost twice the length of the buns, and thicker than Canadian wieners, a good 1.20 Euro deal we have eaten more than once.
Multiply that by 1.5 to see an equivalent Canadian price.
Multiply these Euro grocery prices by 1.5 to make Canadian prices:
500g ground pork: 1.59
200g tilset cheese: 0.99
1 kg nectarines: 1.39
300g liverwurst: 1.49
12 rolls x 200 sheet
toilet paper: 1.95
Now go to the Portugese section of Hamburg, near the harbor, for a 9-Euro, thin-crust pizza about 30 cm across. Or go down the Elbe River, which we did by train, to Cuxhaven, for an even better pizza the same size for about 7.50 Euros.
In a Berlin cafe, my sweet tooth got three glazed, danish-shaped pastries covered in walnut pieces for 3 Euros. Each is a full snack, and I needed two days to eat the three.
Back here, the Turkish grocery store near Kaufman had a dozen kinds of Turkish delight, 200g per box of 30 or so cubes 1.5 cm on the side, for 1.99. Pop goes the pancreas. I also bought, for 3.49, a 750g jar of nutella, to give to the nutella-loving owner whose house we stay in until her return by month's end.
There is a 0.25-Euro deposit on most non-alcoholic beverage containers, and some alcohol containers. There are glass and plastic bins for them. I saw in Germany four-part garbage cans, one part for garbage, one for glass, one for paper and cardboard, and one for metal, I think.
One standout item is windmills, many, some alone, some in groups. Their three 8m blades describe an arc whose peak is more than 30m above the ground.
I learned months before I came here that Germany has more renewable energy than most countries. It is reducing its nuclear energy. A few months ago, its grid ran for two straight days on renewables alone.
I saw many bicycles here, and a still higher concentration of bicycles in Berlin. This country of more than 80 million, on a land mass many times smaller than Canada, which has fewer than half as many people, seems well fed and powered.
Here in a Hamburg suburb, there is Kaufland, a big store of groceries, housewares, some clothes, hardware, liquor, and most memorably, a hot dog kiosk. The wieners are almost twice the length of the buns, and thicker than Canadian wieners, a good 1.20 Euro deal we have eaten more than once.
Multiply that by 1.5 to see an equivalent Canadian price.
Multiply these Euro grocery prices by 1.5 to make Canadian prices:
500g ground pork: 1.59
200g tilset cheese: 0.99
1 kg nectarines: 1.39
300g liverwurst: 1.49
12 rolls x 200 sheet
toilet paper: 1.95
Now go to the Portugese section of Hamburg, near the harbor, for a 9-Euro, thin-crust pizza about 30 cm across. Or go down the Elbe River, which we did by train, to Cuxhaven, for an even better pizza the same size for about 7.50 Euros.
In a Berlin cafe, my sweet tooth got three glazed, danish-shaped pastries covered in walnut pieces for 3 Euros. Each is a full snack, and I needed two days to eat the three.
Back here, the Turkish grocery store near Kaufman had a dozen kinds of Turkish delight, 200g per box of 30 or so cubes 1.5 cm on the side, for 1.99. Pop goes the pancreas. I also bought, for 3.49, a 750g jar of nutella, to give to the nutella-loving owner whose house we stay in until her return by month's end.
There is a 0.25-Euro deposit on most non-alcoholic beverage containers, and some alcohol containers. There are glass and plastic bins for them. I saw in Germany four-part garbage cans, one part for garbage, one for glass, one for paper and cardboard, and one for metal, I think.
One standout item is windmills, many, some alone, some in groups. Their three 8m blades describe an arc whose peak is more than 30m above the ground.
I learned months before I came here that Germany has more renewable energy than most countries. It is reducing its nuclear energy. A few months ago, its grid ran for two straight days on renewables alone.
I saw many bicycles here, and a still higher concentration of bicycles in Berlin. This country of more than 80 million, on a land mass many times smaller than Canada, which has fewer than half as many people, seems well fed and powered.
Sunday, August 21, 2016
I Love Hamburg Rock and Roll, and Pizza
The Hamburg portside Sunday market today, more than 100 stalls selling vegetables, fruit, fast food, clothes, souvenirs, and much else, was almost over when we got there; but the music was still booming in the cavernous brick building nearby.
As we walked in, the band at one end was finishing "Knocking on Heaven's Door," as Guns 'n' Roses would sing this Bob Dylan song. Then they blistered through the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction" for an encore.
A few minutes later, an energetic trio at the other end of this building launched into older rock and roll, including "Peggy Sue," a Buddy Holly song. People, including children and elders, danced around. Adults drank beer, ate sausages, or waffles, and this last band of the day rocked through its encore as we left the building.
The blocks-long cardboard and food container mess of the street market faced us outside, but a clutch of garbage trucks and band of cleaners had the area clean within an hour. Seagulls flew in for the food scraps.
After we walked along the Elbe River, we had pizza in a Portugese place a few blocks away, in the place we had had great pizzas two Sundays before. This time we split a pizza, having discovered the previous time that a pizza each put us to sleep on the green space in front of a nearby church, among others sleeping off a pizza, or their Saturday night revels in the rock and roll brick cavern.
Soon, we took to the sea, or at least to the river, plied by a handful of ferry boats on fixed routes of several stops along 2-3 km of the river. Each ferry holds a couple hundred, some below, some on the uncovered deck above. Some ferries were packed; some had more room, especially toward the other end of the line, away from downtown.
One ferry stopped near a U-Boat, circa World War Two, now a museum; may war itself one day be a museum piece. We wondered if our dad chased this exact submarine during his war service with the Royal Canadian Navy in the North Atlantic Ocean. I declined to buy a hat that said U-Boat 234, although the hat fit my fat head. Wearing it in Canada might get me a fat lip.
Sun, rain, sometimes pouring rain, us happily finding shelter from it, and a train and bus ride back to the suburbs helped make a full, fascinating day in this city with the biggest port I ever saw, and I lived in Montreal and I know Vancouver.
Where go the ships? To the whole world. I hope the sailors get time for Hamburg music and pizza.
Friday, August 19, 2016
Public Transport, Germany and Canada
We went from Berlin to Hamburg, 280 kilometres or so, by bus, for seven
Euros each, less than 11 dollars Canadian. A bus ticket from Williams
Lake to Kamloops, about the same distance we traveled, costs more than
70 dollars Canadian, more than six times as much for the same distance.
Ours was no special ticket. The Berlin bus station advertised tickets to other cities for the same amount, or for a few Euros more, for example to Munich, farther away than Hamburg.
Berlin and Hamburg are bigger than Williams Lake and Kamloops. More people on a route makes each person cost less, and pay less, than on sparse routes. Still, public transportation seems more valued here than in Canada, even noting that Germany has more than twice Canada's population in a land much smaller than Canada.
A couple Sundays ago, we rode Hamburg buses, river ferries, and trains for 3.20 Euros each, about 5 Canadian, for up to two hours. This cost more than a Cdn $2.75 Edmonton bus and train ticket, and more than a Cdn $3.00 Vancouver bus, seabus, train ticket good only for one fare zone; a ticket to cover all three Greater Vancouver zones costs about Cdn $6.00.
Another comparable ticket, but we did not get one, is a 7.00 Euro (Cdn $10.50) one-day pass for Berlin buses and trains. A similar Hamburg pass costs 6.40 Euros, about Cdn $10.00 In Vancouver, one pays Cdn $9.00 for a one-day pass for buses, train, and the sea bus, but in only the one, core zone, not the adjacent second and third fare zones.
Trains here are as frequent as I found in the French Riviera in 2012, and buses go frequently to outlying neighborhoods and towns, as I found in Ireland in 2015. A few Euros got a train ride of up to 20 km on the French south coast, 25 or 30 got me from Ventemiglia to and from Turin, Italy, across the mountains to the north. Eight Euros bought an Irish bus ride from Dublin to Galway, across the island.
Canada had good passengers trains until I was a teenager in the mid-1970s. Economics and ecology will bring trains back, from their current use by the elite and the romantic, to their use by everyone. Remember what Canadian Pacific Railway builder William van Horn said in the 1880s as rails crossed Canada, "If I can't export the scenery, I'll import the tourists." For a century, trains carried tourists as well as people merely trying to get somewhere.
Mom and I went by train about 300 km from Drumheller to Edmonton around 1970. From the 1920s-50s, there were passenger trains from Edson, where I was born and raised, down the Coal Branch, a mining that stretched 100 km to the south.
Today I bicycled on paths in a forest a kilometre from Neugraben, the Hamburg suburb where we are staying. I rode past a horse-riding business. Sitting later at a shaded picnic table, I saw a horse-drawn wagon of ten or so tourists go by.
By foot, horse, bus, train, or bicycle, people get around.
Ours was no special ticket. The Berlin bus station advertised tickets to other cities for the same amount, or for a few Euros more, for example to Munich, farther away than Hamburg.
Berlin and Hamburg are bigger than Williams Lake and Kamloops. More people on a route makes each person cost less, and pay less, than on sparse routes. Still, public transportation seems more valued here than in Canada, even noting that Germany has more than twice Canada's population in a land much smaller than Canada.
A couple Sundays ago, we rode Hamburg buses, river ferries, and trains for 3.20 Euros each, about 5 Canadian, for up to two hours. This cost more than a Cdn $2.75 Edmonton bus and train ticket, and more than a Cdn $3.00 Vancouver bus, seabus, train ticket good only for one fare zone; a ticket to cover all three Greater Vancouver zones costs about Cdn $6.00.
Another comparable ticket, but we did not get one, is a 7.00 Euro (Cdn $10.50) one-day pass for Berlin buses and trains. A similar Hamburg pass costs 6.40 Euros, about Cdn $10.00 In Vancouver, one pays Cdn $9.00 for a one-day pass for buses, train, and the sea bus, but in only the one, core zone, not the adjacent second and third fare zones.
Trains here are as frequent as I found in the French Riviera in 2012, and buses go frequently to outlying neighborhoods and towns, as I found in Ireland in 2015. A few Euros got a train ride of up to 20 km on the French south coast, 25 or 30 got me from Ventemiglia to and from Turin, Italy, across the mountains to the north. Eight Euros bought an Irish bus ride from Dublin to Galway, across the island.
Canada had good passengers trains until I was a teenager in the mid-1970s. Economics and ecology will bring trains back, from their current use by the elite and the romantic, to their use by everyone. Remember what Canadian Pacific Railway builder William van Horn said in the 1880s as rails crossed Canada, "If I can't export the scenery, I'll import the tourists." For a century, trains carried tourists as well as people merely trying to get somewhere.
Mom and I went by train about 300 km from Drumheller to Edmonton around 1970. From the 1920s-50s, there were passenger trains from Edson, where I was born and raised, down the Coal Branch, a mining that stretched 100 km to the south.
Today I bicycled on paths in a forest a kilometre from Neugraben, the Hamburg suburb where we are staying. I rode past a horse-riding business. Sitting later at a shaded picnic table, I saw a horse-drawn wagon of ten or so tourists go by.
By foot, horse, bus, train, or bicycle, people get around.
Berlin, Old and New
Berlin, centuries old, millions strong, two cities become one in my lifetime, was three days of surprises.
We stayed two nights in a very nice, glassy, affordable hotel, in what was from 1945-90 East Berlin, the capital of the German Democratic Republic. Neither the country nor the capital remain, but many old buildings retain the contrast with West Berlin, a sprawl of big roads and new buildings.
There are streetcars, a subway, above-ground trains, buses, and many routes for bicycles and pedestrians, and many of both.
On the first day, we walked around the towering radio tower and its adjacent squares and old streets, and on Museum Island, some of whose museums we would visit on our third, last day.
On the second day, we walked to many historic sites based on the Berlin Wall, built in 1961 to strengthen the divide between the two Berlins. We saw plaques and artwork, some on pieces of the wall kept for display. We saw a graveyard, some of it moved to make a buffer on the east side of the wall.
We saw Checkpoint Charlie, a former gate between the Russian and United States sectors in this city divided in 1945 among them, France, and Britain. Again, there were pieces of the wall, vertical slabs of cement about a metre wide, three tall and 20 cm thick. Here played American rock and roll music, for the touristy area which displayed photographs show to have been a sombre place for decades.
Another part of the wall still up, covered in artwork on one side, exposed re-bar on the other, was by a bridge from the 1200s which once formed part of this barrier between the cities.
On this second day, we walked more than 33 000 paces, according to my sister's pedometer, more than 20 kilometres.
A trendy area in the south part of the city had a busy south Asian restaurant where we ate a memorable lunch on a sidewalk table.
A sunny area near the centre of the city had Rosa Luxemburg Place, with lines from her writing embedded in iron on the surrounding cement.
Day Two's long, fascinating walk almost over, we passed a concentration of army vehicles seemingly now used for Roma housing. A city election campaign is on, and one night online I found one possible reason for graffiti on a nearby wall telling one candidate to go away: there was a 2016 police raid on Berlin Roma, and perhaps this candidate helped bring about the police raid on these peaceful people.
Power poles along many streets sport party signs, from the ultra-left Communist Party, through The Left, the Social Democratic Party, the Green Party, the Christian Democratic Party, and the Free Democrats on the right.
On our third and last day, we left the recent past for the distant pass because we toured notable national museums, grouped together a ten-minute walk from our hotel. The two-hour line up to enter the Pergammon Museum was longer than I waited to enter the Louvre in Paris or the British Museum in London, each with neolithic and Babylonian artifacts at least as old as I found in the Pergammon; but this museum had whole stone gates, five m high and 7-10 metres wide, hinting at quite a feat of transportation from the Eastern Mediterranean to Berlin. Much from Ancient Egypt was in this and one other museum.
The national art gallery had many paintings by Germans from the Romantic Era, from the late-1700s to the mid-1800s, when industrialism and capitalism replaced cottage industry and feudalism in Europe. Much artwork celebrated military distinction then and after, for example victory against France in 1870; much ancient stonework sported armed Assyrians in chariots. A room of colorful paintings of peaceful scenes from the late-1800s and early 1900s contrasted sharply with this dark art.
One museum had ancient European artifacts, from the Celts and Germanic people, whose migratons some displays explained. One could press a button to blow a horn such as Celts used. One display, in about five minutes, traced the evolution of humans.
In my lifetime, this city has evolved from a military flashpoint between empires to a example of peace and multinational harmony. The West subjugated the East; displays brag about that, and vilify the East. Tyrants, from Assyria, Egypt, and Rome once crowed over their defeated foes. Where are those tyrants and empires now? In Berlin, I felt both change and permanence: fleeting martial glory and fulfilling human potential.
Monday, August 15, 2016
Photo Free Blog
Monday, August 15, 2016 Neugraben, Germany
Dear Blog Readers:
My blog lost its photos, I noticed a few hours after I posted many. Where photos were, only blank spots remain: Europe 2015, Europe 2016, Canada, almost all photos, except a few from Wales, 2015.
These photos were on the blog when I checked after I posted them. I uploaded them from my Android to Google Drive to relieve the Android's filling storage. To post each photo on the blog, I made a URL of it on Google Drive, which saved it to the clipboard of the computer I was using, whether my Android or my sister's Apple. I then opened the blog entry, and imported the photo via the blog's image link icon. Each photo appeared on the blog entry when I posted the photo, and later, after I logged off and then back onto the blog to check. Some photos I posted using the Android did not appear on the blog, so I posted them again using the Apple. I explain all this because some reader might offer a solution, note a step I missed, or propose another way to do this.
A few hours later, all the photos I put on the blog, whether by Android or Apple, are gone, except a few of Aberystwyth, Wales, May, 2015. My sister posted those, using her Apple, on which I type now. She figured out how to do this and showed me, but I seem to be doing something wrong.
Blogged photos are superior to blank spaces, but I don't fret over this, which has taken more of our time so far than I like. I am here to see things, not puzzle over computerizing them; but a person can do both. The computer, indeed the internet, are mere tools. People who use a tool better have always taught others to use a tool better. I am open to advice, readers.
If I do not blog another photo, from this trip or from any experience, I will not feel deprived: I will have had seen and perhaps photographed the sight, and that is worthwhile, away or at home. I'll work on this problem and probably solve it. For now, with a jaunty step, I'll continue this trip of a lifetime.
I take Android photos. I can email them to people who email me.
For now, my blog entries will be text only.
From Tuesday-Thursday, August 16-18, we will be in Berlin. I'll paint you word pictures about it.
Dear Blog Readers:
My blog lost its photos, I noticed a few hours after I posted many. Where photos were, only blank spots remain: Europe 2015, Europe 2016, Canada, almost all photos, except a few from Wales, 2015.
These photos were on the blog when I checked after I posted them. I uploaded them from my Android to Google Drive to relieve the Android's filling storage. To post each photo on the blog, I made a URL of it on Google Drive, which saved it to the clipboard of the computer I was using, whether my Android or my sister's Apple. I then opened the blog entry, and imported the photo via the blog's image link icon. Each photo appeared on the blog entry when I posted the photo, and later, after I logged off and then back onto the blog to check. Some photos I posted using the Android did not appear on the blog, so I posted them again using the Apple. I explain all this because some reader might offer a solution, note a step I missed, or propose another way to do this.
A few hours later, all the photos I put on the blog, whether by Android or Apple, are gone, except a few of Aberystwyth, Wales, May, 2015. My sister posted those, using her Apple, on which I type now. She figured out how to do this and showed me, but I seem to be doing something wrong.
Blogged photos are superior to blank spaces, but I don't fret over this, which has taken more of our time so far than I like. I am here to see things, not puzzle over computerizing them; but a person can do both. The computer, indeed the internet, are mere tools. People who use a tool better have always taught others to use a tool better. I am open to advice, readers.
If I do not blog another photo, from this trip or from any experience, I will not feel deprived: I will have had seen and perhaps photographed the sight, and that is worthwhile, away or at home. I'll work on this problem and probably solve it. For now, with a jaunty step, I'll continue this trip of a lifetime.
I take Android photos. I can email them to people who email me.
For now, my blog entries will be text only.
From Tuesday-Thursday, August 16-18, we will be in Berlin. I'll paint you word pictures about it.
Bicycling in the German Sunshine
On Monday, August 15, we rode downtown on two of the four bicycles stored in the shed behind this house my sister is watching during its owner's vacation. The bikes are heavy three speeds with coaster brakes, but they're bikes, and that's enough for me.
We got to downtown Neugraben, two kilometres away, locked the bikes to a bike stand, one of many in this land of many bikes, and bought no ordinary hot dogs from a kiosk in the big grocery store. For 1.20 Euros, one gets a boiled wiener bigger than in Canada, a wiener that sticks a few centimetres out each end of its bun. It's like a cartoon hot dog.
Dogs eaten on a street bench outside, we went grocery shopping, cloth bags in hand. Groceries later in the bags on a table outside a nearby bakery, my sister had coffee and I had a Danish-shaped, glazed bun with walnut pieces on it.
Groceries in their bags in the big baskets on the front of the bikes, we rode back to the house.
While my sister unpacked the grub, I loaded into a bike basket the 20-odd wine and beer bottles that were here when the homeowner left. I rode a kilometre or so to the recycle bin I saw near the graveyard yesterday. Tombstone and flower sellers are nearby, and a couple blocks away is a home business making tombstones, a dozen or so on display in the front yard. "Great place on Halloween," she said yesterday.
Still physically fit, years before I'm recycled to dust, I want to ride this bicycle again today, in no particular direction. "Not all who wander are lost," J.R.R. Tolkien wrote. I will soon ride toward the graveyard, which on a bushy hillside, and ride on some of the forest paths beyond. This is not the Great Beyond, but it is a great beyond.
Long live the bicycle.
Dogs eaten on a street bench outside, we went grocery shopping, cloth bags in hand. Groceries later in the bags on a table outside a nearby bakery, my sister had coffee and I had a Danish-shaped, glazed bun with walnut pieces on it.
Groceries in their bags in the big baskets on the front of the bikes, we rode back to the house.
Still physically fit, years before I'm recycled to dust, I want to ride this bicycle again today, in no particular direction. "Not all who wander are lost," J.R.R. Tolkien wrote. I will soon ride toward the graveyard, which on a bushy hillside, and ride on some of the forest paths beyond. This is not the Great Beyond, but it is a great beyond.
Long live the bicycle.
Sunday, August 14, 2016
Affordable Travel
Do you think travel is too expensive for you?
Do you worry that you will never see great places?
Do you fret that, if you reach great places, you won't have the means to get home, and be forced to wash dishes in another language for a long time, to buy passage home?
Your worries would be over if you contacted my sister, whom I call a genius at travel planning. In past times, she has showed genius in other areas, and if you want to pass time elsewhere, rest assured that her genius would help you do it. Alas, she plans only for herself, me and a few others. She does not make a business of travel planning. You might still end up washing foreign dishes.
I can help you, basking as I have been, here in Germany, in the glow of her planning skills, which shone on Sunday, August 14.
That day, she booked, online, our late-August flights from Hamburg to London, train from there to Brighton, where she is to house sit after this current house sit, and passage for us, on different days, north to Manchester, her next and last house sit of these two-plus years of house sitting in Europe. She also found easily-affordable train tickets, actually one-day train passes that cover one or two states, for our remaining time in Germany.
The north passage is different for each of us because she is to be in Manchester while she still has three days of Brighton house sitting, which I am to do. Always happy to help, I am confident that I, a travel babe in the woods, will get, alone, from Brighton, through big London, to Manchester.
"Staple your passport to your chest" is among the helpful travel hints she has given me. Britain voted in June to leave the European Union, but I do not think this break heralds a break of north from south Britain; I therefore will not need my passport. The staple marks on my chest from flying from Canada to Germany this month are almost healed, so I am ready to heed good advice.
Her Sunday booking session might have included more passages than I recall above, but one thing it did include was economy. She looked carefully for the best plane and train deals. The fares she found tell me to tell you that travel is within your budget. She also considered when the German home owner would return, which remains an uncertain day, and when the Brighton home owner would leave, a certain day she learned of which she learned only the night before the Sunday booking session.
"You get good at what you practice," is another one of her axioms, and her many axioms merit a book. This practiced traveler has lived rent-free in Europe for three quarters of the time since she arrived in mid-2014, more than two years ago. I am far from home, but in good hands.
A few brief years ago, I did not expect to see Europe. This is my third trip to Europe, each trip heavily subsidized by one or both of my sisters. After this trip, the longest of the three, I will have seen Europe enough.
In late September, we will return together to Canada. By early October, we will go our separate ways.
If you have not seen Europe enough, know from me, who saw my sister in action, that travel to and within Europe costs less than you might expect, even if you do not have generous siblings, such as I have.
As my late father-in-law said, you live only once, so go where you can and see what you can during that life.
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