Europe 2015 Aberystwyth

Aberystwyth (8,000), in northern Wales, has a long military and academic history.  Public places have Welsh and English signage.  The surrounding, rolling green pastures and the rocky beach made for a peaceful, memorable two days and nights.  I have only four remaining photos of Aberystwyth because before I figured out how to use Google Drive to store photos crowding the memory of my Android, my sister and I uploaded four from the Android to Drive, and I deleted the rest from the Android.  Rest assured there were photos of sheep, pastures, picturesque grassy roads on fields, and a lively town with a beautiful rocky beach.   Makes you want to see it, eh?

Michael Overseas for Second Time

In a couple hours, I will leave by bus for Edmonton.  Six hours after I reach Edmonton, I will board a plane for London, England.  My generous sister, who moved to Europe in 2014, bought me a plane ticket.   She will be my host and guide, in London and elsewhere on the British Isles.  Our dad's Ireland-born mother enabled my sister to get Irish citizenship.  That entitled her to an Irish passport.  She could live in the Eurozone for the rest of her life.  I'm tickled to see these historic islands, which I never thought I would do. She has lived on them for months.

This will be my second trip to Europe, a place I never thought I would see.  My first trip, to France in 2011, was courtesy of both my sisters.  Each sister contributed to this upcoming trip.  I admire people who remember their roots.

These donated trips make me want to return to Canada and find a job that pays more than most jobs I have had for the past 19 years.   For the past two years, my job has paid only a few hundred dollars per month.  Happily, my spouse, our daughter, and I live in inexpensive, nice social housing.  It will be interesting to see what  job I get upon returning to Canada.  Any job will pay more than my current job.  I'll think about that when I get home.

Now, aloft!

Follow this blog to read of my adventures in the United Kingdom and Ireland.  I'll spin a yarn of two.  Like my relatives, I "kissed the Blarney Stone," metaphorically speaking. 

The Dog "Happy" Dies

"He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast."
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (lines 612-613), 1798

Today I cried as I watched a beloved dog die at a veterinarian's hands.  Strong emotion bubbled up, as is did one spring day in 1980, by my dying mother's hospital bed.  I felt better after each cry.  I miss this dog, not three years old, more than I expected to miss him.  His name was Happy, and he almost always was happy.

"I can tell he's a good-natured dog," the vet said.  "Some dogs in this state try to bite when I pick tem up.  He didn't."  The vet said he was some kind of terrier, with a mixture of other dog genes.  "We call this a Chilcotin special." 

Happy was indeed a Chilcotin special, special to many Chilcotins.

"There's where the bullet went in," the vet said, pointing to the red spot on Happy's abdomen.  He found almost no feeling in Happy's back legs. 

"Partly-severed spine?" I asked.

"Yes."  The vet explained the heroic measures necessary to save Happy, who would still never control his bowels, nor walk again.  He recommended putting Happy down.  Happy's mistress sadly agreed.   
 
I was relieved that Happy felt no pain in the 24 or more hours since someone shot him.  Bob Dylan has a line in the song "Joey:" "I know the men who shot him down will get what they deserve."  I bear no grudge against Happy's attackers, however; but I admit some comfort from the fact that such demented people never experience the depth of joy that normal people experience.   Their perverse upbringing and pathological habits drive them to such remorseless deeds.  That's punishment enough for them.   

There but for the grace of God go I, as my siblings and parents used to say upon learning of another's sorry state. 

One needle put Happy to sleep in a few minutes.  I lay four fingertips on his shaggy, light brown side.  Another needle put him to death.  I lay those fingertips on his side again.  I was glad that his face, lolling tongue, and open eyes were turned away from me.  My daughter saw them.

In life, Happy's big brown eyes, behind wisps of blond and brown hair, were so expressive.  They looked up at me from the back seat of the car a few times, as I drove him and his already-grieving mistress to the vet today.

It was a bright, sunny, warm day, like spring, a spring that Happy will not see.

His family acquired Happy a few months after his mistress's mother died in November, 2011.  Her father named him Happy.  Her father died in November, 2014. 

Two weeks ago, her sister brought her aging, ailing, likely-blind and pained dog Mandy, 13, to that same veterinary office for mercy killing.  A different vet helped Mandy past her pain, past her life.     

We are less surprised by death in the sick or old, whether person or dog, than by death in the young.

Mom was young but sick; her death was therefore no surprise.  One of my two older sisters died young, suddenly.  That was a surprise. I am older than Mom was when she died, and more than twice the age my sister was when she died.  Those deaths were decades ago, but today's death overwhelmed me more than any death since my dad's death, also decades ago.

I am not angry.  I am only sad, very sad.  I grieve the young, dead dog.  I sympathize with the dog's mistress and her twin brother, in their house now more lonely than it was after their dad's death three months ago.  May they find comfort and joy in the future, as I found after my parents' and sister's deaths.

This writing began with a quote from an English poem more than 200 years old.  More than 2000 years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle said that catharsis, the exhibition of strong emotions, was healthy.   Some of you readers know the poem, the poet, and the philosopher.  Draw what parallels you will.   All my adult life, I have found solace and inspiration in words, whether from others or from myself.

I wrote for a beautiful, friendly dog.  I also write for myself, "like one that hath been stunned/And is in a sense forlorn.... (Coleridge, lines 622-623) 

Goodbye, Happy. You were a good dog. 

Readers, be kind to one another, to other animals, and to yourselves, as Happy reminded me to be. 

"Wolves Don't Live By the Rules"

Biologist Sadie Parr, of Wolf Awareness, a pro-wolf outfit based in

Golden, spoke last night at the Scout Island Nature Centre.  I'm

glad I joined the "pack" of more than 50 to listen.  The British Columbia

(BC) regime plans to kill wolves to save cariboo, whose decline is due to 

habitat loss, not wolves, Parr's research proves. 

Top carnivores keep ecosystems diverse and healthy, Yellowstone

National Park brass learned this after killing that park's wolves in the 1920s. 

Deer and elk numbers boomed.  They ate seedlings and other

plants that shelter birds and small animals, and grow into trees

that beavers use for dams, increasing wetlands. Biodiversity plummeted.  

The 1990s reintroduction of wolves, from the Canadian provinces of

Alberta and BC, increased diversity, on land and in water.

Oregon and Idaho studies proved that livestock decrease when

wolves decrease, because killing pack leaders splinters packs, which

then hunt more livestock.   Rising wolf numbers raise livestock

numbers, surprisingly.  Disease, theft, and transportation take more livestock than

wolves take, which is never more than 0.02% of losses.  Range

riding leaves a human scent that keeps wolves away.  Large,

unattended herds attract predators.

A retired forester who writes a column in the local paper told me 

before Parr's presentation, "Some people never learn.  When one 

species declines, they kill another, which doesn't help.  It's about

habitat loss, not predation."

 

Parr concluded that humans threaten caribou more than wolves do.

BC has Canada's greatest biodiversity.  Almost unique in North

America, BC has healthy top carnivore populations and the required

intact ranges.  Hibernation and high elevation feeding helps protect 

bears, but wolves, awake year round and feeding in valleys, 

encounter people more, and therefore suffer more.  Each has a right to

live, as we have.

Will we share the world, with other species and with the rising

fraction of poor humans, or will we exploit nature and

one another and hasten extinctions, including our own? 

Here is a link to Parr's group's website:

http://www.wolfawarenessinc.org/

Here is a link to the song "Wolves Don't Live By the Rules," which I

found in McGill University's music library during my teacher training:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP2g70zS36k

This song went through my head as I walked home last night, and

again as I typed this morning.  

Have you seen a wolf in the wild?  Few have.  I remember seeing three

wolves.

 

First, in the 1980s, walking up Pyramid Mountain near Jasper, Canada,

I rounded a corner and saw a wolf standing on the trail, about 10

metres away.  It looked at me.  I looked at it.  Then we went our separate ways. 

Second, driving south, south of High Level, Alberta in August, 2005,

I saw two wolves, one on each side of the highway, about 500 m

apart.  I guessed they were hunting, and I thought they were smart.

 

Parr mentioned the theory that primitive humans learned to hunt better

by watching wolves hunt.  

 

"It's all connected," as a Carleton University professor told one of my

graduate school classes long ago, far away.    

"Jackrabbit" Johanssen Lived How Long?

     "Act your age!"  adults tell children who misbehave.
     Snoopy the Peanuts dog sometimes groaned after exertion.  Speech bubbles coming from his feet, head, legs, and other stressed body parts would say "*&#!" and other complaints.
     Today I did not act my age, and speech bubbles complained from various body parts; but I managed to cross-country ski six kilometres, the last three mostly up a gentle but relentless grade.  I wonder if I would make the grade of Ingemar "Jackrabbit" Johanssen, an idol still gliding along when I first cross-country skied as a mid-1970s teenager.  He didn't act his age, and he lived a long life.
     Now "I feel good," as James Brown sang, but I doubt that he skied.  A little soak, steam, sauna, and float in the local public pool complex will reward my aging muscles.  They stopped speech-bubble complaining, but I want to be able to get out of bed tomorrow.  I'll therefore indulge my durable body today.
     Readers!  Get off this blog and go exercise!  You'll be healthier and happier.
     "Oy oy oy," as my Norwegian ancestors said, or didn't say.  I don't know.  Grandpa said he used to hunt moose on skis.  That I'd like to see:  a moose on skis.   

Michael Wynne's 2014 Reading Journal

I post this because an old friend, who telephones a couple times per year, and I talked

on the phone last night about books, among other things. As we age, I for one try to 

read and discard my books.  I hope that many will inspire young people, among whom I counted myself decades ago.  I rejoice that many inspire me after all these years, some more,

some less than when I acquired them.  Anyway, here's the email I sent to my friend after

last night's conversation, in which he asked me how many books I read in 2014. 

Tom,

Thanks for last night's phone call.  When I said that I have

kept a journal since 2000 to describe what I read, you asked

how many books I read in 2014.  Up a bit early for work today,

I listen to the podcast of "Radio EcoShock," a superb, wide-

ranging ecology show I listen to online weekly, from Vancouver

Coop Radio.  I also have before me the list of what readings I

described since January 1, 2014:

9 long poems (200-2000 lines)

24 plays

7 novels

10 biographies

5 autobiographies

5 histories

1 law

7 philosophy

1 literary criticism

2 science history

1 biology

3 economics

2 anthropology

1 geography

You might classify these works differently.  I might have mis-classified

them here, given that they are from a chronological, not a genre list. 

I also list each work in one or more category, which lets me look up

a certain work without wading through 14 years of the chronological list. 

I write a looseleaf page or so about each work I read.  I started this in

the fall of 2000, when I last taught school in Anaham.  Then I vowed

to read and discard my books, a page about each taking less space, and

giving me a record of books I read, how they affected me, and perhaps

contributing to some future literary effort.  My subconscious probably

wanted to preserve what's left of my academic pretensions.  Who knows?

As I listed 2014 above, I noticed the small number of novels and large number of social

science books.  The plays are numerous because in December, 2013,

I gathered all my Ancient Greek and Roman plays, then read most

of them during the winter.  I also read a couple Shakespeare plays in 2014.

The Ancient plays, long dear to me, were in a big box of books I spread on

a shelf in a student common room at the University of Northern

BC during a spring, 2014 overnight trip to Prince George. 

Giving away such precious books, I hope to someone as young and eager as I once was,

conditioned me to give away almost all my books after reading them.

I'm still eager; just older.  This seems miraculous given my life since I

met Carla and we had Chelsea, us all immersed in a culture that little values

book learning, or learning generally. 

This winter, I plan to read my 1800s English novels, mostly George Eliot

and Thomas Hardy; but I have one Charlotte Bronte novel left.  I

started reading it this month:  "Shirley," about early-1800s resistance

to job loss due to rising industrialism.  Her "Jane Eyre," which I read in

2012, was spellbinding.  Several years ago I read a bundle of Charles Dickens.

Dickens "Bleak House" was a monotony, like Somerset Maugham's "Of Human

Bondage."   I read the latter during my 2002 time teaching high school in Manning.

Every time I went away to teach, I brought, read, and discarded many

books.  I don't go away to teach anymore.

Edward Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," a 2014

reading then given away, was comprehensive, modern in a secular way for

the 1770s, and full of parallels to the US empire's current decline.

Gilbert Highet's "Man's Unconquerable Mind," my latest reading, which I described to you last

night, argues that some people will keep thinking despite political and cultural

obstacles; but also that since the Renaissance, it is impossible to master

all subjects.  This tells me to use my time wisely, neither despairing of

learning at all because I cannot learn all, nor burying myself in books and

neglecting nature, which Highet is not the first in my experience to call edifying, which he

also calls music, as Nietzsche does in "The Birth of Tragedy" and

"Geneology of Morals," other 2014 readings.

So, blog readers, who wants this growing journal after I'm gone?  Any takers for the

remaining books, in case I die before I can discard them all. I intend to leave no trace that

I ever walked this earth.  Honor me by keeping your minds working, your hearts reaching

out to one another. 

Prokofiev Aquacise Music?

     Must aquacise music be booming, thumping, electronic dreck?

     Why not Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf?"  Why not Handel's "Water Music?"

     I thought of this the other afternoon in the local public swimming pool complex's hot tub.
My water was steamy wonderful, but the aquacise class in the nearby pool was splashing to
"music to weld by," "fascist disco music," as I have called such ear abuse before.

     Even Australian Mrs. Thompson in her tight red track suit wouldn't bop to that beat.  My Grade 3 teacher played for us Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf," the version in which the conductor explains various instruments standing for various characters.   The oboe stood for the duck, I recall.

     Aquacisers could listen to that, splash their way to fitness, and go home humming a great tune.  Instead, a 20-something scrawn commands over the loudspeaker, which sadly has enough room for dance music from hell, too.  I'm not surprised that the ranted at, musically-mugged women left the pool with a shuffle, not a lilt, in their steps.  You can't lilt to that music, in water or on land.

    By contrast, Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" or Handel's "Water Music" might make people enjoy aquacises.  They might skip home, and hop eagerly to the next aquacise class:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kuw8YjSbKd4

That's Handel above.  Makes you wanna twinkle your toes, eh?

     While I'm on about music, Frederich Nietzsche's art form best able to narrate the human spirit, I'll mention Wynton Marsalis and Willie Nelson on the recycling dumpster behind the public library.  "How did I get here?"  they might ask, as the Talkings Heads did in a song, a song better for aquacises than what I heard this week.   The duo are safe, even if Nelson is dead; but their compact disk was atop the recycle dumpster, I noticed when I dropped in my own recycling.

    I borrowed and returned this disk months ago:  "Two Men with the Blues."   The library people said it did not rejoin the collection, but I convinced them that I returned it.  They never found it, but they believed me and did not make me pay for it.

     Imagine my surprise when I found this disk on the recycle dumpster.  The library shares a building with the regional district government offices.  Someone threw out this disk.  It seems I did get the disk back into the building, whose tenants later discarded it.

     The library clerk was happy to have it back.  "Did you find the case, too?  Now we can re-order."
It was miracle enough to find the disk, albeit too scratched to play again.  Perhaps she was trying to be funny.  Perhaps she just came from aquacises, and was therefore unable to be funny, let alone musical.

     Handel's link is above.  Have Prokofiev and the Talking Heads below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydOO91xQBH4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7pVjl4Rrtc

     When next you swim, think of oboes, ducks, Prokofiev, Handel, and anything but typical, terrible aquacise music.  Booma booma in a pig's eye.