Hamburg Arrival

I am about to go to bed in Hamburg, in a time zone eight hours ahead of Beiseker, the last place I slept, about 36 hours ago.  My sister Maryanne is house sitting here until near the end of August, and the house owner and her adult niece and a neighbor were here tonight.  Owner and niece like Maryanne so much that they let her stay, although the owner will be here for a few days, and the niece for Maryanne's whole stay, I think.

Today, my likeable sister brought me by commuter train, and bus, from the Hamburg airport to this cozy suburban house.  All here except me speak German as well as English, but they spoke more English than German for my sake.

Supper was scrumptious and you can see that I have internet access, but I cannot sign onto my Yahoo email account.  When I tried, I got a message asking me to verify my identity before it would let me sign on.  I got on that account in Iceland, but I cannot in Germany.  The places I am to find the verification code that Yahoo sent were my daughter Chelsea's Gmail and her phone.  I managed to sign onto my Gmail account or I would not be typing to you now.  I hope Chelsea checks her Gmail, whose password I forgot, gets the access code, and sends it to my Gmail, michaeljosephwynne@gmail.com.  I suspect there's a time limit for doing this, and I've passed it.  I will therefore call Chelsea's phone on Skype on Friday, August 5 at noon her time, which is 9 PM my time here, if I have internet access at that hour.   

In other news, Hamburg seems clean and its downtown was full of pedestrians, buses, and bicycles this afternoon.  This suburb has good buses and seems more like a town than a suburb.

I will add to my arrival story after I sleep off my jet lag.  Good night.

Gotta Fly Now

Boarding pass in hand, I found wifi and a plug in for the Android, two and a half hours before a plane flies me away.  This blog entry title is from the Rocky films.  I left Beiseker at ten this morning, returned the rented car by its 2 PM deadline in Edmonton, and the car folks drove me to Belgravia LRT Station.  I rode a train to Century Park, the end of steel, and I rode a city bus to the airport.  Today is part bus, train, car, and plane.  Harold gave me stuff for Maryanne when I stopped the rented car to meet him en route to Beiseker yesterday.  Baldersons were great, and Dorothy packed me two sandwiches and a banana for the road.  Lorraine fed me Tuesday lunch before I got the car.  I bought trail mix for the plane, on which they fed nobody last time. Eight hours to Iceland, two to Hamburg, and I will see Maryanne. 

The car my brother helped rent got me from Edmonton to Beiseker to visit our aunt, 87, and our uncle, 91, before I flew to Germany the next day.

The Edmonton Heritage Festival and World Peace

Who doesn't want world peace?

Meet people from different cultures, trade ideas and dreams and nonsense with them, and come to respect them enough never to fight them, nor to let your leaders fight them in your name, be those people from Israel, Romania, Iran, Wales, Ireland, or Syria.  I spoke to people from each of these countries today.  They, and people representing dozens of other cultures, set up pavilion tents and stages in Edmonton's Hawrelek Park for the Heritage Festival, the biggest annual event in this city of a million people.  More than 300 000 attend.

At the entrance to the Israel tent, behind a stage where Israelis danced for the public, beside a tent selling Israeli food, I met an 18-year-old man from Israel.  In Edmonton for a few months to help with this festival, he told me he is from Nazareth.  I diplomatically did not mention that Nazareth is in Palestine, not Israel.  Indeed, all of Israel is in Palestine.  When I asked him if he would do his mandatory military service soon, he said he would, said he was not worried, and said he wanted to be in combat situations, in his country or elsewhere in the world.  "This Canada of yours is so big; it has so much room and so few people," he observed.  He was a nice young man and I wished him well, then walked away thinking that he has a different view of land than I have, or does he?  He lives in a settler colonial state, as I do, on land taken from others.  In each state, the settlers want more control over the stolen land.

This was my second encounter with this young man, my first having been interrupted by a fellow visitor who pointed to a mistake on a map displayed inside the Israeli tent.  I'd meant to read more of the text with the maps, especially post-1917; but instead I went to the Romanian tent.  This second time, I did read the Lord Balfour, British Mandate Palestine map and blurb, after telling the young Israeli my reason to return.  I quipped, "Maps are important in your country."  I think of the David Rovics song "Israel Geography:"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujfaaD-UpqY

Romania?

Ah, you were thinking, as I was when he accosted me, that this map man was a Palestinian, Arab, or someone else from one of many places opposed to Israeli acts near and far.  But he was a Romanian, showing me a mistake on a map of the Ottoman Empire, which for centuries controlled vaster land than Israel now controls.

Not all of Romania, though.  

"The Ottomans never conquered all of Romania, but this map says they did," he explained.  "They only conquered the south," he continued, narrating a province-by-province tale of Ottomans here, Austrians there, and Russians elsewhere, but never Romania's entire land subjugated at one time.  We chatted about the Roman Empire, Romania's military support of it, the 1453 Muslim conquest of Constantinople and therefore the Roman Empire's end in the east, a millenium after the western empire fell.  "Go see the maps in the Romania pavilion," he advised me. 

I traipsed the kilometre to the other end of the festival site, and read my way through the Romanian history display.  Sure enough, at no time in its history was all of Romania under foreign control at one time.  

Iran, another country with a long, proud history, had a tent full of beautiful carpets, poetry, art objects, and clothing, including a stunning dress on a stunning woman.  She let me take her photograph, after a man from Istafan, an old city in Iran, showed me a glossy book of photos of amazingly-detailed artwork on mosques and other buildings.

Next door, however, the Welsh were waiting for the Iranian stage music and dance to subside so they could re-enact, on the grass in front of their tent, jousts connected to some Welsh war, probably with the English, who had no tent this year.  Neither had the Scots.  Did the Welsh and Irish drive off the English, or did they vote themselves out of the Heritage Festival as they had voted themselves out of the European Union?  

As the armored men milled around, medieval weapons in hand, I moseyed up to an organizer and said, "Perhaps your men should invade the Iranian pavilion and quiet the dancers and music so you can get on with your war.  You're better armed."  But he and his battlers patiently waited for the end of the Iranian performance.  One warrior should have waited through the war because another poked him in the face with a sword, blunted but still with a pointy metal end.  Can there be too much cultural authenticity?  I've little proof one way or the other, for my Android battery died just after I started photographing this battle:  collateral damage?

The twinkly-eyed Welsh-speaking man, 65 or so, manning a display table within the tent, was born in Swansea and seemed an encyclopedia of all things Welsh, including my Welsh last name.  "Wynne means white, and it can be Gwynne or Wynne."  He gave me a sheet of last names, mine the last on it, and told me that an internet search would show the density of population with that name in various times and places.

Across the park, a twinkly-eyed Irish man, 65 or so, born in Dublin but not back in 40 years, rejoiced when I told him of the peaceful country I found when I was there in 2015.  As we yammered away, his table mate, a woman descended from Irish people born north of Dublin, interrupted us to get him to help detach a large lacework from the tent wall behind.  Someone wanted to buy it.  "You're here to sell, not talk," I ended our natterings as he leapt into service.

Natterings by people suspicious of those from far away might fade to welcome silence if xenophobes heard the Syrians drum and dance in the Centre for Newcomers, a pavilion tent that held them, and people from Togo and Barbados.  This was my second visit to this tent; on my first, a Syrian sitting at a table in the tent gave me a bookmark on which he wrote my first name in Arabic.  

This second visit, I sat in the shade of trees on a hillside behind the tent, eating two pakoras and a samosa from the nearby Bangladeshi tent.  The back of the tent was open, covering a 3m wide circle of 8 or so chairs, on which sat Syrians, including the mother of the bookmark giver.  Notice those Arabic numerals in the last sentence.  

As I chewed in the shade, and Somalis gathered around me for some rendezvous they planned, and I moved out of its way, drum music and singing and dancing broke out in that small circle of Syrians.

What a joyful noise they made.  These seem like people happy to be in Canada.  

I thought, "How lucky Canada is, to have these lively, cultured people move to it."

We are one species in one world.

  

        

Prince George Harry Potter, then Edmonton

     This, the second day of two months away from home for me, finds me in my Edmonton friend Doug's welcoming place, but there were wizards on the way.

     Books and Company, in Prince George, where I waited for a connecting bus from 7 PM until Midnight on July 30, was open from 10 PM to 1 AM.  Why?  The new JK Rowling book, for sale after midnight.  Staff wore wizard togs, a crowd filled the store, people formed teams for a trivia contest, and it was a magical way to wait for my bus.

     A bus brought nine passengers from Prince George to Valemount, where a second bus, from Vancouver arrived a few minutes later, around 4 AM today.  We nine joined that almost-full bus and continued toward Edmonton, which we reached at 12:20 PM today.

    Diligent Doug picked me up at the new bus station on 121 Street, we dropped my stuff at his southeast Edmonton apartment, and went to the Heritage Festival.  More on that tomorrow.  Night all.

     

Williams Lake Stampede 2016 Lawn Music

The Williams Lake Stampede campers play music on the lawn, 2016.

Sequel Ideas for Canadian Generations: Confluence of Civilizations

Have some sequel and series ideas I thought of, as I read and revised my historical novel Generations in Canada:  Confluence of Civilizations in January and February, 2016, and added the Foreword and Afterword:  

1918

-Jennifer and Sean live in Lethbridge with Adeline and Henry, who wed on November 11, 1918, then move to Winnipeg;

1919

-Jennifer and Sean move to Edmonton, where they stay in the rooming house;

-a letter from an English lawyer to Ray discusses his dad's death and invites Ray back to help his ailing mother Emily with legalities; Emily is Jennifer's second cousin, Ray discovers;

     -Ray, Elise, and Emile go to England after WW1, find Ray's mother, she dies within two months, and they return to Canada after four;

     -Ray and Elise divide Ray's inheritance between activists in England and Canada trying to improve Home Children conditions;

-Adeline and Henry are in the Winnipeg General Strike, Adeline on mobile first aid, Henry driving a milk truck "by permission of the strike committee" (remember that famous sign?);  they face blacklisting after the strike, but join Northern Ontario radical Finns who need a nurse and an engineer;

-Yvonne and Emile Sr die in the 1918-19 flu epidemic,  Yvonne two days after signing over the rooming house to Gisele and Louis; George, heartbroken again, burying a his second wife, and  Yvonne's grandson Pierre acutely feel the loss;

    -widow Marie moves to the rooming house, perks up Pierre, and becomes like a second mother to Gisele;
  

1920

-Jennifer and Sean help Pat's business stay afloat in the postwar depression, until, amicably, Pat, Ray, Elise, Emile Jr., Louis, Gisele, Sandra and John acquire 50% equity among them;

-Brigid in Edmonton, from County Donegal like Pat's parents, some of whose relatives she knows, details the ongoing Irish war of liberation (1919-22) from letters from republicans in Ireland, the US, and Canada;

     -Mary gets Brigid a teaching job,  and accepts Brigid's and Gloria's love, both having waited so long;  Brigid and Gloria share Gloria's new house near the university;

 -Henry's sister Greta, unlike her friend Rosa Luxemberg in Spartacus, part of the failed 1919 German Revolution, survives the counterrevolution and flees to Canada, joining Adeline and Henry in Northern Ontario;  Greta, with printing experience, who speaks German, Polish, Ukrainian, and English, moves among the Northern Ontario Red Finns, learns some Finnish, and begins a German-language paper on their press, funding it by helping them print their paper and contract work;

1921

-Adeline, pregnant, and Greta go to the 1921 Guelph founding meeting of the Communist Party of Canada, but they don't join, but they meet a young Tim Buck from Alberta's Blairmore coal district, who will one day lead the Party;

   -Adeline, Henry, and Greta return to Edmonton; Henry gets a city engineering job, Adeline a nursing job at the university hospital, and Greta works for university and government printing departments, and for local German and Ukrainian organizations. such as the pro-Soviet Ukrainian Farm Labor Temple;

1922

-Jennifer sees Adeline's daughter Emily born, tickled like Ray that she's named after Ray's mom, Jennifer's second cousin , but Jennifer dies eight days later; Sean moves from Mary's house to Gisele's rooming house;

-Red Scare through 1920s touches Adeline and Greta; Gloria  helps Adeline into U of A medical school, and helps Greta keep her university printing jobs and get language teaching work; but the United Farmers of Alberta government isn't as anti-red as the federal government and keeps Greta on;

1923

-widow Marie and widowers Sean  and George keep flirtatious company in Gisele's rooming house;

-Pierre with Marie when she dies, peacefully;  Louis more heartbroken than when his dad died; George and Sean great comfort to each other, like brothers now, Greta a frequent visitor jawing politics and German current events (embryonic Nazi party) with George;

1925

-Adeline graduates from medicine;

-1930s

-coal mine strikers build Miette Hot Springs Pool (when?), Pierre among them;

1932

-Sandra and John sell equity in the business of the struggling business and emigrate to Scotland; Emile Jr sells out and moves to Wells, BC's mining boom; Ray, Elise, Pat, Mary, Louis, and Gisele own business, Pat still 50%; but Louis and Gisele buy him out through the decade, as the Victoria group bought out Sean and Jennifer; some government construction projects, but little else; rooming house busier with migrant laborers; Adeline and Henry move to Estevan, for medical and mining;

-Estevan 1932 coal strike; Dr. Adeline bandages wounded after police charge of women and children, meets Slim Evans, CPC organizer;

-Drumheller, Evans and Dr. Adeline again,  trying to get closer to Mary and Pat;

-Dustbowl; prairie shantytowns for Dustbowlers, like WW1 internment; critique of "cold hand of charity" and "mean means test" relief system, Bennett buggies;

-Calgary CCF founding meeting, Adeline and George expelled, George dies after they meet Dorise Neilson;  Gisele and Louis start soup kitchen in rooming house;

1933-34

-northward migration off prairies continues; rooming house busy; construction company ekes along;
 -Adeline and Henry move to Calgary;

1935

- BC internment camps, On to Ottawa Trek;  Mary and Adeline feed and treat trekkers in Calgary, Emily in tow, eager and insightful like young Adeline was; all move back to Edmonton that fall;

-Alberta elects Aberhart's Social Credit; 

1936-37

-Social Credit fascist, anti-semitic tendencies surface; Emily and Pierre heckle Major Douglas, get roughed up, give it back; Louis versus church over fascist collaboration in Spanish Civil War;

1938

- Edmonton Hunger March:  bystander Pat  killed by horse in police charge; Emile Jr assumes more of shrinking business duties as older generation semi-retires; meets and weds Quebec refugee from Adrian Arcand's fascists, Madeleine, with tales to tell;  Elise and Madeleine soon fast friends, shun Alberta Socred Francophones as too much like Arcand;    Adeline and Madeline prickly at first, but get on later, refereed by Gisele, chip off old Yvonne block of inclusiveness and feminist solidarity;

-Pierre joins CPC, sneaks to Spain to join Republicans, fights in Catalonia, retreats across Pyranees;  stays on in French underground during war; some narrow escapes; decorated after war by British on way home;

1939

- war; Henry avoids internment;

-war-induced boom, including construction, money to fund dying that couldn't fund  living for the past several years;
-Molotov-Ribbentrop pact great source of debate among Adeline, Henry, Emily, and Greta;
 

1940

-Adeline and Emily help Dorise Neilson win federal election in Saskatchewan,  Emily goes to Ottawa as her assistant, stays on after Neilson comes out as CPC, disillusioning Emily, who trains as nurse aid and joins WRENS in Halifax and England for the war; rattled by disfigured and shell-shocked soldiers;  Neilson will lose 1945 election, despite CPC-Liberal alliance against CCF;
-Battle of Britain, John killed in air attack of Glasgow shipyard, where he was retired from, but visiting that day; Sandra returns to Edmonton and lives with Brigid and Gloria;

1941

-Operation Barbarosa pits Germany against Russia, which makes Russia switch to Allied side, much mental gymnastics among CPC, CCF, and debate among characters;

1942

- Japanese internment;  Ray dies in Elise's arms by Lac Ste. Anne, visiting homestead; Elise alone in Edmonton house until Sandra, Greta and Gloria move in due to wartime housing shortage, barracks and training and Alaska Highway people taking up university and city space; Emile Jr plans postwar construction while very busy with wartime construction, and rationing challenges;

1943

-Henry, Adeline, and widow Mary, company sold to Emile Jr and Madeleine, return to Lethbridge

1945

-Adeline welcomes Emily, under cloud for CPC associations, vilified by CCF; Henry and Adeline stare down Red-baiting and arm twist Emily a nursing job in hospital;  Emily starts postwar unionization drive in anti-labor Alberta in anti-labor Canada, helps pension off Louis, Elise, and Gisele; but public pension advocacy rising, too;

-Adeline, Henry, Emily, and Mary, they help interned Japanese resettle in Lethbridge after war, after BC government refuses to have them back on coast;

1946

 -Pierre returns to Emile Jr. and Madeleine in company; Pierre's war hero status dissuades RCMP and CCF from vilifying Pierre for Spanish war service; Pierre leaves CPC after Igor Gouzenko fiasco;

1947

-Imperial Leduc Number 1 oil well gushes, changing some things but not everything; Emile, Madeleine, and Pierre frozen out of oilfield construction, beset by arrogant Yanks and comprador Alberta elite and toadying government; but find governmental and cultural welcome in Gravelbourg area of CCF Saskatchewan; wrangle with reactionary Catholic Athol Murray during construction job at his Notre Dame school; Madeleine sees another Arcand in Murray;

-Mary dies in sleep on bench amid the flowers in Lethbridge Japanese garden, the day Elise dies in sleep visiting in Morinville, church bells ringing, while children play around the statue on  main street;

-Emile Jr. and Adeline walk along Lac Ste. Anne shore, by Elise's and Ray's graves, looking to past and future, discussing how their lives might have been had they married, but their times and places did not fit that; end glad they found wonderful mates, both of whom are refugees from tyranny

Perhaps these notes would make more than one book.  The novel whose sequel's notes these are spanned 1871-1917.  These sequel notes span about 30 years.  Each of the six novels in Howard Fast's "Immigrant" series spans fewer than 20 years and is at least twice the size of my first novel.  James  Joyce's Ulysses and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway each span a day, and Joyce's book is more than three times longer than Woolf's, implying that there is not a direct link between the length of a novel and the length of time the novel spans.  Ponder the length of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace and the time period it covers.

You have endured many of my words, and the time theme in that last paragraph reminded me of lines from William Blake (1757-1827).   One might also recall the metaphysical poets of the mid-1600s, and their "conceits," that is, metaphors or similes spun into whole poems; but let's conclude with Blake's     

                                              Auguries of Innocence    

TO see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
A robin redbreast in a cage	5
Puts all heaven in a rage.
A dove-house fill’d with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell thro’ all its regions.
A dog starv’d at his master’s gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.	10
A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.
A skylark wounded in the wing,	15
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipt and arm’d for fight
Does the rising sun affright.
Every wolf’s and lion’s howl
Raises from hell a human soul.	20
The wild deer, wand’ring here and there,
Keeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misus’d breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher’s knife.
The bat that flits at close of eve	25
Has left the brain that won’t believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever’s fright.
He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be belov’d by men.	30
He who the ox to wrath has mov’d
Shall never be by woman lov’d.
The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider’s enmity.
He who torments the chafer’s sprite	35
Weaves a bower in endless night.
The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother’s grief.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the last judgment draweth nigh.	40
He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar’s dog and widow’s cat,
Feed them and thou wilt grow fat.
The gnat that sings his summer’s song	45
Poison gets from slander’s tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of envy’s foot.
The poison of the honey bee
Is the artist’s jealousy.	50
The prince’s robes and beggar’s rags
Are toadstools on the miser’s bags.
A truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
It is right it should be so;	55
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro’ the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.	60
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
The babe is more than swaddling bands;
Throughout all these human lands
Tools were made, and born were hands,	65
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;
This is caught by females bright,
And return’d to its own delight.	70
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar,
Are waves that beat on heaven’s shore.
The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes revenge in realms of death.
The beggar’s rags, fluttering in air,	75
Does to rags the heavens tear.
The soldier, arm’d with sword and gun,
Palsied strikes the summer’s sun.
The poor man’s farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric’s shore.	80
One mite wrung from the lab’rer’s hands
Shall buy and sell the miser’s lands;
Or, if protected from on high,
Does that whole nation sell and buy.
He who mocks the infant’s faith	85
Shall be mock’d in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne’er get out.
He who respects the infant’s faith
Triumphs over hell and death.	90
The child’s toys and the old man’s reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.
The questioner, who sits so sly,
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt	95
Doth put the light of knowledge out.
The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar’s laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour’s iron brace.	100
When gold and gems adorn the plow,
To peaceful arts shall envy bow.
A riddle, or the cricket’s cry,
Is to doubt a fit reply.
The emmet’s inch and eagle’s mile	105
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne’er believe, do what you please.
If the sun and moon should doubt,
They’d immediately go out.	110
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.
The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation’s fate.
The harlot’s cry from street to street	115
Shall weave old England’s winding-sheet.
The winner’s shout, the loser’s curse,
Dance before dead England’s hearse.
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,	120
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
We are led to believe a lie	125
When we see not thro’ the eye,
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.
God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;	130
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

    Couldn't say it better myself.

   

    

      

Death Makes Life More Enjoyable

   I might die this year, as you might; but noticing that might cause more joy than grief.  Life's brevity makes life more precious, and it could make us likelier to enjoy life.

   When I looked online for 1700s English writer Samuel Johnson's line about the prospect of hanging in the morning concentrating the mind the night before, I found a website of his quotes on mortality:

http://www.samueljohnson.com/mortalit.html

In the first quote, written in Johnson's fifty-fifth year, Johnson urges himself to resolve better, after having resolved poorly for years.  He prays for time to enact better resolutions.  I'm in my fifty-fifth year.  I resolve to value time more, as it diminishes.  Today is January 5, early in the year, when people make New Year's resolutions.

Today would have been my parents' sixty-sixth wedding anniversary, which spurred me to the liquor store.  I drink little, but I wanted to drink in their memory.  I found the $10 St. Remy French brandy,  which I bought in 2014 for my daughter to give to the nurse, now retired, who baptised her the day she was born, Christmas Eve, 1992.  The two exchange Christmas gifts less often than they used to; no exchange in 2015.

In the local liquor store, succumbing to incremental privatization, I also found Cuban rum, for my socialist hackles, whiskey for Dad's rusty nail, and a shrinking variety of wine.  Mighty labors brought forth a can of  Kelowna beer, for $2.00.  It cools in my fridge as I type.

I remember going with Dad to the Edson, Alberta liquor store when I was a young boy, decades ago.  He bought a case of a dozen stubby bottles of beer for $3.10.  The liquor store was in the government building where Dad worked.  In my early twenties, I paid $8.50 for a dozen no-name stubby beer in an Edmonton liquor store.  Stubby beer bottles are no more.  Canadian beer now comes in taller, U.S.-style bottles, but luckily it doesn't yet taste as revolting as U.S. beer, but Budweiser is Canada's best selling beer.  I suppose it could clean a window or wash a dog.  Don't drink it.  Today, the cheapest beer dozen was a four-variety pack of twelve cans from Bowen Island, reduced to $15 from $17.

"We have a champagne taste and a beer income," Mom used to say.  I have less than a beer income, but today I had $2.00 for a beer.  Drunks, druggies, and gamblers seem to find money to feed their habits, I know, from knowing many addicts.  I'm too cheap to overindulge in anything but food, a reduction target this year. You'll see less of me, but I'm still here.

Getting back to death and joy, I recalled, as I walked back from the liquor store, snow fluffy on evergreens, that my daughter, looking in one of my poetry anthologies a few months ago, found a poem that said that, each year, one lives through the day on which one will die in a future year.  I've had that book since 1979 and this was the first I heard of that poem.  Perhaps, like Emily Dickinson, I should stop and look for that poem of death, before death stops for me, to paraphrase Emily.  


Walking home in a postcard winter scene, it occurred to me that each year one's death is likelier.  Each year, each day, each hour is one less to come.  This could depress a  person.  It depressed Samuel Johnson.  Time's passage inspires rather than depresses me, though.  It inspires me to use time well, which means to learn, laugh, and love, as my blog profile says.

Enjoy life.  Burn in with a gemlike flame.  Perhaps you know that famous "gemlike flame" phrase from 1800s English writer Walter Pater.   I first learned it half my life ago in an Ottawa university English literature course.  Pater advises us to find ecstasy in life, such as he finds in art and song:

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/pater/renaissance/conclusion.html

If you want me, you'll find me on fire for life, burning as long as possible.