Category: Mountains

Mice and Snow

7/2/2017

Christmas Tree Farm on our Road

I think Houdini, the escape-artist mouse whom I caught and set free somewhat less than two miles from our trailer, has made it back to our abode. (See Blog 63: “Houdini” ).

Why do I think this? Because the damn mice are now entering the foyer of our ‘live mouse trap’, finishing off the peanut butter and then vacating our sure-fire trap in an orderly fashion. We haven’t caught a single mouse.

Live Mouse Trap

Hell, I’ve even seen them, late at night, inside the live trap. However, in the morning, when I went outside to warm up the truck and then returned to collect the mouse and escort him to the warm vehicle in order to taxi him or her to a new home, he or she had slipped away into some dark and mysterious trailer place.
You know what else I think? I think Houdini is a gifted instructor. I think he’s teaching late night and early morning courses. Giving mice instructions on how to escape from our variety of traps. Escapology One, Two and Three.

I’ll also tell you why I’m thinking this and it’s not just because the mice are pigging out on our peanut butter and not worrying a whit about getting caught.

You see, last night, around two am, while I was stumbling around the kitchen, trying to find the outdoor light switch, so I could turn it on and look outside to see amazing weather phenomena and any of the night creatures who might be sneaking around our trailer while we’re in la-la land, I heard a squeaky mouse voice.

Mouse-hunting Fox in our Yard

I heard the voice just after I’d stubbed my toe on the kitchen chair. His utterances drifted up from the bowels of the trailer’s internal workings. And the lecture seemed to be about our traps and how to escape from them.

I specifically heard this bit of scholarly conversation: “Squeaky, let’s say you’re eating a meal in what you assumed was a mouse greasy-spoon diner. And let’s say you’ve just finished your peanut butter meal and you’re ready to leave a tip and be gone. You get to the exit and my gosh, there’s a metal barrier in front of you and you can’t find a way out. What do you do?”

“Don’t panic, Sir Houdini.”

“That’s the very first thing you do. You don’t panic. You sit down and assess the situation. Then what do you do? Anybody else? Nobody? Okay, what we’re going to do is go visit a live trap which has been conveniently set up for our instruction and edification. And when we’re finished, you’re going to know it from head to stern. You’ll all be able to take one apart and put it back together with your eyes closed and you’ll all be able to weasel your way out of the traps as if there were no tomorrow. Just think how much this will improve your quality of life!

“Follow me, please and don’t forget to pray for our comrades who have been forced to emigrate from our home-sweet-home.”

And my, oh my! I could hear such a scurrying and a sliding in our walls and under our floor. I thought, “My god, how many of them are there?”

I wished I hadn’t watched the movie, ‘Willard’ earlier in the evening.

Later on, when I was back in bed, I could hear the sound of those unescapable hinges and doors opening and closing. Which, I assumed, were caused by the mice practising their escape skills.

***

ICE GLISTENING ON MOUNTAIN

A few days ago, I went searching for a Houdini-escape-proof live trap. I visited the local hardware store, but they didn’t have any other live traps.

They did have a rather intriguing death trap. I didn’t buy it. It was a deadly trap that looked like a live trap, but wasn’t.

It was a contraption that had a foyer, as does my now-useless-after-Houdini-returned-live-easy-to-escape-trap. However, inside the peanut butter room, it had some kind of killing machine. When the mouse entered, it zapped the mouse into infinity before the poor mouse had a chance to chow down on one morsel. Theoretically, one only had to remove the trap’s roof and remove the dead mouse. Hopefully, completely dead and not suffering.

Icy Mountain Dwarfs My Truck

***

Are there any other reasons, besides the reasons I gave in Blog 63, for my not buying traps which kill mice? Yes, there are.

You see, last summer, I purposely let a wasp nest be. This experiment is also described in an earlier blog post. The nest thrived under my step-ladder for the whole summer until it was blown away by a hurricane.

The experiment, in my mind, was a success, except of course for the hurricane disaster. Because, in spite of all the chitter-chatter about how mean wasps are, those wasps and I thrived. And in spite of the fact that the nest was only around the corner beside the wood-shed, where I often ate and drank, we got along splendidly.

Only a few, maybe ten wasps, came close to me. Cross my heart! And I believe it was only out of curiosity and maybe to make sure the terms of our treaty were being followed. Why, they gave me less trouble than a neighbour dropping around to borrow some sugar or to drop off religious pamphlets.

I do, however, worry about the cold weather and other hazards the mice must face, but these are genuine field mice and they know how to survive.

Plus, I did some research and learned that the fairly radical animal rights organization called PETA has declared that releasing them into the wild is the most humane way of treating your wild field mice intruders.

“The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit,—-not fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic.”
Henry Thoreau, "Walden"

Ice Art

Winter Wonderland

I don’t want to state that my mouse and wasp handling techniques could be applied to the situation the world is finding itself in, but I will. Because there is an elephant charging around in our only earth’s very large foyer and this elephantoid creature’s name isn’t Jumbo.

So, I think that my experiment might be applied to some governments and might be an alternative approach to how they perceive and treat foreigners and strangers. Because I think there are all kinds of ways of being a good Samaritan.

Plus, when I see our ‘AS-WE-MOVE-FORWARD’ society relentlessly and thoughtlessly injuring, destroying, or being unaware of the infinite number of living organisms that are part of our world, well, I think my experiment was worthwhile.

“It is only when the gods finally begin to die completely out of the land and when many human beings begin to live totally divorced from nature -at the beginning, that is, of the modern age-that landscape painting, picturesque architecture and landscape description——become the obsessive themes of art.”
Vincent Scully

***

Too Much Snow For Buster

My Old Truck

I think the mystery of why all our Evening Grosbeaks have disappeared has been solved. We usually have about forty-to-sixty of them in the winter. A hardware store employee told me that an agile hawk will scare them away.

We’d had an agile hawk hunting around our bird feeders just before the grosbeaks disappeared. The grosbeaks, apparently, got out of town and are now supping at our friend’s bird feeder, which is situated in downtown Baddeck.

We hope they come back next year.

Sue and Buster on their daily walk down our road

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Houdini

20/1/2017

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Mountains on Warren Lake Hike

On Saturday, four of us tried to hike around Warren Lake, a gorgeous trail located in the Highlands National Park, not far from Ingonish.

Did you note the phrase, ‘tried to hike’? Please consider this blog introduction to be a brief reminder to self and to others to always read the sign-board, located at the trail-head, before you begin hiking the trail. We didn’t.

I didn’t because I expected to read the same warnings that are on all the sign boards, like: Don’t run if confronted by a coyote. Make yourself look big. Play dead if you are attacked by a bear. Make a loud noise. Fight back if attacked. If charged by a moose, say five Hail Marys and find a big tree to dive behind or find a big tree to dive behind and say five Hail Marys.

Anyway, not one of us did more than turbo eye-ball the sign before we all cluelessly ventured forth and found out, after covering half the trail’s distance, that we couldn’t get over the fast flowing, very cold river which separated us from the rest of the trail. BECAUSE THE *$%^& BRIDGE WAS GONE!

The sign we didn’t read was this one:

***

I have decided to change my behaviour towards another of God’s wee creatures. Mice. It is one mouse in particular who got me to change my ways. I call him, 'Wee Houdini'. This little mouse is escape talented.

Now, I want to declare, right off the top, that the mice around here have been troublesome. Take, for example, the year I stored my spanking new snowblower in the tool shed and the mice, during the summer, chewed, twisted and bent the rubber gas line into something more amenable to a mouse’s needs. First time I needed the blower, for snow-blowing purposes, guess what? It wouldn’t start and it was off to a small engine shop where they replaced the gas line. The next winter, when I wanted to use the snow-blower, the belt broke. It was off, once again, to a small engine shop to fetch a belt. I’d decided I’d be the man and install it myself.

So, there we were. Me putting on the belt and Sue, using needle-nosed pliers to surgically pick wee mouse faces, feet and other sundry pieces of mouse body parts out of the belt housing.

Apparently, when I’d started the snowblower, the belt had torn the crap out of the mouse nest and the poor mice. Very sad and most disturbing, if you let your imagination run freely.

Oh, and by the way, no matter how many people tell you that moth balls keep mice away, all I can say is they haven’t worked for us. Maybe our mice wore gas masks. Who knows? But when I placed moth balls around the snow-blower motor and other parts, all I got was mice construction.

Once I sprinkled moth balls around in my hockey bag, before I stored it in the tool shed over the summer. When the next hockey season began, I received some cute remarks from a couple of hockey players after unzipping my hockey bag in the locker room let the sweet, delicious odour of moth balls escape.

One guy, who sat beside me, said, as he was breathing in the moth ball scent, “I love the smell of moth balls.”

Another fella said, “The smell reminds me of my grandmother.” Now isn’t that cute? And he was one heck of a big hockey player.

So, I can imagine a mouse saying, “Moth balls remind me of the old Christmas cake I munched on in grandma’s cupboard.”

BUSTER WATCHING CNN AND WORRYING ABOUT THE FUTURE

One year I decided to rid the tool shed of mice. So, I got the traps, baited them with peanut butter and set them in different locations in the tool shed.

Every morning I’d check to see how many mouse pelts I’d captured. I’d find dead mice in traps, traps that hadn’t been touched, traps with live mice in them or a missing trap. The last scenario was the most worrisome. Where was the trap? Was there a mouse caught in it? Was it suffering or dead? Quite an existential dread would often overcome me.

I did this for a few weeks, but because of the above worries I decided to let the mice enjoy the tool shed. In order to do this, I made sure all our valuables were in sealed plastic containers. Of course, this disappointed the crows, who’d quickly learned that mouse steaks were appearing on the lawn like clock-work. Every morning a row of crows would perch along the telephone wires waiting for the morning breakfast bell.

Sorry crows. Life is complicated. All nuanced up to its ass. You help one species at the cost of another.

The crows settled for the seeds dropped from our bird feeders

This year, when we knew there were mice in our trailer, I bought some simple and cheap wooden traps. I used peanut butter as bait and put a few traps inside the cupboards. These little traps were hair triggered. A light touch with a feather would cause them to viciously snap their jaws shut. But not, apparently, fast enough.

This one mouse was good. Really good. A Houdini. Because in the morning when I checked to see if I’d caught a mouse, I’d find a fat nothing. Always a big fat nothing. The peanut butter licked away as neatly as if done by a professional safe-cracker. No snap, snap, dead for this critter.

This happened three times. So, I bought another trap. A plastic one.

What you do is load the peanut butter bait inside a little compartment which has a hole in it. Then you place it under the sink, where you know they’re congregating for meals.
What should happen is that Houdini would smell the peanut butter, his addiction would kick in, and he’d carefully and stupidly stick his head into the little hole, causing the box to lift up, which would release the jaws of death and BAM!! Houdini is floating with his harp through his own personal heavenly portal.

The next morning there was the trap. It’s jaws had gone, chomp chomp, as per instructions and by the blood staining the area around the trap, the chomping had been down on a mouse. However, there was no mouse. Houdini had escaped again. What a guy! What a mouse!

That’s when I changed my tactics. I went to the hardware store and bought a live trap. It doesn’t kill. What happens is the mouse enters the trap through a cute little foyer, walks up a ramp, steps off the ramp and is face to face with a tantalizingly delicious dollop of peanut butter. However, when he is finished chowing down he is trapped. Because the exit is sealed.

The next morning, there he was. Inside the trap. Now, do you know how far you’re supposed to take the little fella before you release him. Two miles. Two friggen miles!

The other problem was that we were trapped in the trailer. Because we live in a snow belt, and by the way, for all those who think they are getting accurate weather reports about our area, forget it. For an accurate forecast of our weather conditions you will have to go to: www.twilightzonegrabursnowhoes.com!

THIS GUY DIDN’T GET THE CORRECT SNOW FORECAST!

It was very hard to walk two miles, since our road was basically closed. Plus it was very cold and I didn’t want poor Houdini to freeze his little ass off. So, I got a box and cut a door-hole in it. Duct taped down the top, put toilet paper, tissue, and newspaper inside the box along with some bread, peanuts and cheese. I put this box in a bag, along with Houdini and the cage. Strapped on a pair of snowshoes and merrily flip-flopped through the snow, which was in some places up to my waist. Trudged on for maybe half a kilometre.

Took wee Houdini to a nice little place, which I won’t describe, but I will say it wasn’t a place that was owned by anybody I liked.

Houdini's New Home

Struggled to the back of the little building, put the portable home under the structure, covered it with some snow, so as to weigh it down and then opened the cage. Houdini popped his head out and then ran like hell.

The problem is, I didn’t take him two miles from our place and, NEWS FLASH! NEWS FLASH! I caught another mouse last night and this morning I found the cage, empty and with the peanut butter all licked away.

Is Houdini back? Has he held escape workshops and do we now have a whole crapload of intelligent mice who have escape diplomas? Are we, although living in a forty-five foot trailer in the woods, actually witnessing Darwin’s theory of evolution speeding up?

Why, last night, I said to Sue, “Write it all down, my love. We’re going to be more famous than Darwin.”

“Write it down yourself, my love. I’ll edit it. That’s my job.”

Evolution. Houdini...and sometimes I wonder which way I’m evolving.

                         Where has he gone, my meadow mouse,
                         My thumb of a child that nuzzled in my palm? --
                         To run under the hawk's wing,
                         Under the eye of the great owl watching from the elm-tree,
                         To live by courtesy of the shrike, the snake, the tom-cat.

                         I think of the nestling fallen into the deep grass,
                         The turtle gasping in the dusty rubble of the highway,
                         The paralytic stunned in the tub, and the water rising,--
                         All things innocent, hapless, forsaken.

                                                                                    Theodore Roethke, The Field Mouse

Enormous Waves in Green Cove in Cape Breton Highland National Park

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Where's My Shovel?

24/12/2016

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View From Our Kitchen

John Muir wrote: “The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”

True enough Mr. Muir, but don’t forget to carry a pair of snowshoes. Because it has been snow, snow, snow. Day after day, snow. Shovelling, shovelling, shovelling. Day after day, shovelling.

Running out of Room for Snow

Our Deck

But so gorgeous! Beautiful snow sculptures, which I think, make up for the hard work and the isolation. We were trapped in the woods over two days before the last storm cleared out and made way for the next snow and freezing rain parade.

Snow-covered Trees

Dancing Snow Fairy

                                   “When the wind works against us in the dark,
                                    And pelts with snow
                                    The lower chamber window on the east,
                                    And whispers with a sort of stifled bark,
                                    The beast,
                                    ‘Come out! Come out!’-
                                     It costs no inward struggle not to go,
                                     Ah, no!
                                     I count our strength,
   Two and a child,
                                     Those of us not asleep subdued to mark
                                     How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,-
                                     How drifts are piled,
                                     Dooryard and road ungraded,
                                     Till even the comforting barn grows far away,
                                     And my heart owns a doubt
                                     Whether 'tis in us to arise with day
                                     And save ourselves unaided.”

                                                                                                      Robert Frost, Storm Fear

Buster Waiting out the Storm

Old Blue Jay, Who Hangs Around Our Feeder

When our television satellite stops working, I know what to do. I don’t have to phone a help-line. I grab a broom and swim my way through the snow to the step-ladder which is leaning against the satellite dish pole. I climb the ladder and, using a witch’s broom, I sweep the snow off the satellite dish and onto my head. Great fun.

Note the clothes line, which has now become a snow life-line, because it is darn deep, folks.

Sue's Car Buried in Driveway

An Old Van Buried in Snow Down Our Road

                         “Perplexing forest
                                              where God lives without money.
                                                                          The walls were shining.”

                                                                         Tomas Transtromer, The Great Enigma

And then on Sunday, after I’d finished writing this blog, a warm front moved in, bringing rain and heavy fog, so by the next morning we’d lost about a third of our snow. Still have a pile left, but I was surprised at how much snow had melted in only a few hours of rain. Heavy rain, yes, but still!

Until I ran into a fella who told me that fog is a Mr. Snow Destructo. It demolishes snow and is much more effective at removing the white stuff than only rain and warmth.

Always learning something new on Cape Breton Island.

Snow-Covered Hay Field Across the Road

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life and death themes

7/7/2016

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Baby Evening Grosbeak on our Deck

A few weeks ago, a good friend of mine passed away. Terry Phliger, who lived in Michigan, died only days from his 69th birthday and only hours before his scheduled resettlement in Ontario.

Terry Phliger--R.I.P.

Terry was an artist, professor, humourist, practical joker, story-teller and a compassionate and highly intelligent human being. His mind and spirit were powerful, which was obvious in all he did and said. He was also a person who continually encouraged me, whether in my personal life or in my creative one. His humour and laser-sharp, insightful responses would usually leave me chuckling and encouraged, while sending my problems fleeing to some decrepit corner, where, safe from Terry’s iron-clad diagnosis, they could sulk and suck their miserable thumbs away.

I’ll miss Terry. As astute a man as I have ever known and one who, I’m sure, if there is an afterlife, is already planning some heavenly prank or is busily becoming a pain in the devil’s ass.

“On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend’s life also, in our own, to the world.”
H.D. Thoreau, Thoreau On Man & Nature

Larry, Grace and Sue on our Knotty Pines Patio in Ingonish

Maritime Mac, who likes to hang around train stations, was hanging around the front door of the Truro train station one grey, humid day . He was there because he had to drive a friend to the station.

While hanging out by the heavy doors he also enjoyed the delicious odour of Murphy’s Sea Food which drifted around the corner and into Maritime’s nose.

Three young lads approached on their bicycles. The oldest boy might have been twelve while the other two were younger. Maritime only heard part of the conversation and he didn’t hear the names of these characters, nor that of the character they were talking about, but what he did hear made his loitering worthwhile.

I’m going to make up the names, all for the sake of security and quality, so you can enjoy the conversation.

“Tod kissed Rebecca,” one boy said.

“I’m going to kiss her,” said the second little boy.

“You already kissed her. It’s my turn to get one,” responded the third little fella.

Then the three cycling smooch bandits rolled on down the concrete plaza sidewalk and out of Maritime’s life. Leaving Maritime Mac chuckling and with a wee story he knew he’d just have to tell to some Cape Bretoner when he got back to the mountains.

Sue, Grace and Buster enjoying a morning walk in Ingonish

***

And now a brief note to Marianne. Never fear, I have been keeping my eyes open for the angelica plant and have already filled two big plastic bags with their shrivelled up bodies. I think, however, now that I recognize what they look like in their infancy, that next year, I’ll walk my grounds in the early spring and pull them up when they’re in their babyhood.

Thought you’d like to know.

***

I think comments on the language in my book, ‘White Eyes’ are a good example of democracy at work. For every person who doesn’t like the swear words in my book, there is at least one other who doesn’t mind those nasty words or may even find them cathartic.

I’ve mentioned this profanity issue in another blog, but because it has been brought up again and because I try to respond to comments from folks who read my blog, I’m discussing it here, once again.

I think profanity can make the dialogue in a story more authentic and not too sugary sweet, when used appropriately. However, the longer I continue to write, the more careful I am about when and when not to use these big-bad-wolf words.

The strange thing is, I don’t, for the most part, swear. However, when I’m writing, and I have the dialogue bouncing around in my mind, the words are there and I simply type them out. Later on I may edit out some of the little buggers.

My hope is that folks who don’t swear, can read through, over or under the words and still enjoy the stories.

Like the fella who read my book and then congratulated me on capturing the insanity in this world. I appreciated his kind words. He’d apparently found this theme in my stories and as in many stories in many books, the messages aren’t always so easy to discover.

Moon Peering Through the Trees

“The voice of fable has in it somewhat divine. It comes from thought above the will of the writer. That is the best part of each writer which has nothing private in it: that which he does not know; that which flowed out of his constitution and not from his too active invention; that which is the study of a single artist you might not easily find, but in the study of many you would abstract as the spirit of them all.”

Emerson, Selected Essays

One thing I’m trying to say through my stories, is that we aren’t as important as we think we are. Our actions, philosophy and status on this small, rotating, egg-shaped ball of immense diversity, aren’t as solid, momentous, or as superior to ‘the others’ as we believe they are. Intrinsically believing that an idea or opinion is rock solid does not prove anything.

HOWEVER, BEWARE! Our creative muses, like wind or spirit, once tamed or fully understood, lose their power. Sort of like when Delilah cut off Samson’s long hair. He couldn’t pull down a pillar, a post or a two-by-four and maybe that’s why, in the original Hebrew, the word God was written without vowels. Impossible to utter and therefore out of our taming and diminishment-of-awe reach.

Heavy Mist at Ingonish

Anyway, no matter how I try to convey it, I’m really not very good at verbally expressing what touches and affects my soul. That’s why I write stories.

***

When ‘White Eyes’ first came out, I found myself walking around town with my head down as I waited for the criticism - negative and/or positive - to begin. I found that both kinds of appraisals filled me with all kinds of emotions and often not the feelings I expected.

Not too long after ‘White Eyes’ was published, I was walking along the lake shore in Baddeck. It was only a few days until Christmas and the snow hadn’t yet come to Baddeck with any vengeance. While hiking along the shoreline I came upon a friend who was sitting in his vehicle, looking out over the lake, teary-eyed. Not because of having read my book, but because the memories Christmas brought to him were stirring his heart.

We chatted and, at one point, he told me he’d read one of my stories.

Then he said, “I didn’t like it.”

He apologized for not liking it.

I told him not to apologize, because I took negative criticism better than positive. Maybe I’m more used to it, I don’t know. But funnily enough, he has since become one of my best ‘White Eyes’ promoters. However, I found his negative criticism easier to handle coming from a non-Aboriginal than the accolades coming from non-Aboriginals. At least during the first year.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I genuinely appreciated receiving positive comments from non-Aboriginal folks. However, what I really needed was to hear the Aboriginals respond positively to ‘White Eyes’ and therefore, being congratulated by non-Aboriginals would often cause me to feel, at some level, emotions of guilt and sadness, even though I appreciated their kind, supportive words.

I think it was because I knew that the stories only existed because I’d had the chance to spend time with the Aboriginals. Therefore, I needed to know what the Aboriginals thought about my book. Because, if I didn’t hear positives from them, then I knew I’d feel like just another exploiter, as so many White people were before me.

‘White Eyes’ wouldn’t have existed had I not been able to live in their community, taste their food, drink their drinks, experience their customs, share in their joy, feel their pain, be sad when they were sad, laugh at their humour and a whole lot more that I will probably never be able to properly represent. That’s why, on the first page of ‘White Eyes’, you can find an appropriate verse which is taken from the Bible. “I was a stranger and you took me in.” Matthew 25:35

One cold night, a Native fella and his daughter dropped around to pick up some toilet paper. Notice I didn’t say borrow toilet paper, for obvious reasons.

It was after midnight. The Aboriginal fella’s daughter, about twelve years of age or so, picked up a copy of my book from the coffee table. She opened it, quietly read a little bit, looked up and then told me she liked the book, specially when it talked about eagles and she told me all her friends were passing the book around and enjoying it.

That was the best critique I could hear. And then as time went on and other Aboriginals commented on White Eyes, I came to realize that the Aboriginal folks around here enjoyed the fact these stories were written about them. They found the stories funny and ‘White Eyes’ had also allowed the non-Aboriginal world to take notice.

Also, many of them visualized me as being the main character in most of the stories. One fella talked about when I fell under a truck in the story called, ‘Mountain Iris Spirits’. It wasn’t really me and that specific incident never happened to anybody I knew. It was made up. However, I did get my thumb wrapped up in a rope as a load of logs shifted on the back of a wagon.

I may, from time to time, include in my blog the beginning of one of my stories. Just a page or two, in the hope that it may whet the appetite of some blog readers to read ‘White Eyes’.

Oh, and many of you might be wondering what bits of Busterness Buster is up to. A lot, so stay tuned. I’m sure you’ll hear more about Buster, but for now, please read the first very small section from one of my stories in ‘White Eyes’.

MOUNTAIN IRIS SPIRITS
We were up on Owl Mountain. Both of us frustrated up to our yin yangs with Denise’s extended family. We live with them, on the reserve, in the family home. Three bedrooms and fourteen people. Us sleeping on the living room floor. Everybody else sleeping in bedrooms, except for Uncle Charlie who, with his fat tabby cat, slumbers half his day away in a tent on the front porch. Denise’s ex moved in last month and Denise gave him our small basement bedroom. A piss-off but she felt sorry for him. Red alert to our relationship, as we couldn’t sleep or do anything personal until the last member of the family had decided to turn off the television. Phony anger fits and antics were on almost the whole goddamn night, and in the morning we’d awaken, our eyes swollen from lack of sleep, to find the kids dripping their breakfast all over our bed sheets while they watched cartoons, or tiny Tod-alias Batman during the day-soaking us in everything from thirty-five S.P.F. sunscreen lotion to his cereal milk.

According to Denise, this mountain we had retreated to is also the home of spirits. She said they were everywhere, but today it was quiet and peaceful, as a bald eagle circled over the spruce forest. I hadn’t seen many eagles in Ontario but there sure were a lot of them in this part of Cape Breton.

“My stomach’s all jittery. Means there’s spirits hanging around,” Denise said.

“I get that with a hangover.” I laughed. She didn’t.

“Yeah, right. Most of you white people couldn’t see the spirits if they were plastered to your nose.” She swept her long black hair up into the mountain air, looking like an ancient mountain fairy queen.

“Maybe I can. I’m just not around people who talk about them all the time. You’ve been drenched in ghost talk. People always going on about spirits. Everywhere. Cripes, your sister ties her blankets down so the ghost won’t yank them off her bed, and you’re always hearing about somebody finding Mary or Jesus or some saint on a window or somebody’s toilet seat.”

I was sounding skeptical. Denise didn’t care for skepticism.———-

***

There, that wasn’t so painful, was it?

Thanks for reading my blog and you all take care.

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The Miracles of Spring

11/6/2016

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Buster Exploring Spring's Gifts

Well, damn it!! I should have used my mouse. You see, yesterday I had, on my little computer, written two blogs. Sometimes this happens. The blog gets very long and then I realize, hey, I have two blogs here and like a squirrel, I squirrel part of the blog away.

Well, this morning, (a gray, dreary morning, I must add), I sat in the living room and began to work on Blog 55. I usually leave my mouse in the office and move things around on my computer by using my finger on the computer’s built-in mouse-pad.

This drab am, I tried to highlight the part of the blog I was going to cut and copy and turn into blog 56. However, I had trouble getting the highlighting to halt where I wanted it to halt so I could cut and copy. So——I decided to hit a key to un-highlight it. Then I planned to fetch little Mickey Mouse from the office and highlight the blog 56 segment by using the mouse.

Well, one big F)(*&^%$ DUH! What key did I hit? No need to tell you, but only to say that the word rhymes with "BEAT".

This is the new Blog 55. Enjoy. I hope!

One evening recently, around ten pm, I stepped out onto our deck. Oh, the sounds, scents and furious busyness that greeted me! It was as if I’d entered a busy perfume department. The trees budding, flowers blooming, wet grass growing, cool mountain breeze blowing, the sound of the swollen, freshly rain-filled river flowing and the riotous mayhem of the peepers hooting it up in our pond. “Oh joy! Hallelujah! Spring has broken out!”

NEW GROWTH IN A TWO-YEAR-OLD CLEAR-CUT

Why it even made me think of the hymn, ‘How Great Thou Art’, I used to hear sung by George Beverly Shea. It also got me thinking about what a co-worker once said to me. ”Being born is like winning the lottery.” Some folks might not agree, but I think most would.

And speaking of the peepers, which I’m sure I had spoken about in my first, now vanished attempt at Blog 55, they were emanating a riot of sound. When Sue, Buster and I were hiking on the road one evening, and the moon had just begun to stick its head up from the top of the basement stairs, the peepers were so loud that I suggested we all wear ear protection the next time we take this walk. Well, maybe not Buster. We all know how Buster reacts to his ears being frigged around with.

Moon Rising Over Mountain

To me, the fact that spring comes every year is a gigantic, in-your-face miracle. So magnificently huge, and yet a large number of people barely give it a thought. Except for the part about it being warmer. Therefore, I sometimes think, because I’m part of the human race, that it's an undeserved miracle. But then again, that’s a rather human-centrist thought. There are more beings than us living on the earth.

Luckily, Spring is gracious in her giving. Even though the human race seems to work so hard to remove the spring from Spring. Economic babble guff goes on and on while the peepers riotously shout, “Bull ship. Bull ship.” Cutting to the chase as our civilization chases the almighty dollar.

                            “There is a glory in the world;
                                        The morning is like wine,
                              And pale ascension lilies lean
                              Like gods who late in heaven have been,
                                         Half flowerlike, half divine.

                             O sweet revival of the grass!
           O sweeter songs that rise,
                             When jocund April leads her train
                             Through the gold sunlight and the rain,
                                         And earth is paradise."

                                                         Charles Hanson Towne, AN APRIL SONG

The Pond Beside Our Driveway

When I see spring ravishing the earth, I think of some of those folks who see life in a dreary, bunker sort of way. Spring must be, in some scrap of their minds, connected to sin. So much colour, scent and noise. With much of this gorgeous spectacle bursting forth because of some previous plant and animal orgy of sordid lustful copulations.

Riotous Dandelions

Oh, they must have some pretty kinky styles, I’d think. But effective. Like the maple trees I planted a few years ago. I think I planted five. I placed them in a field that gets plenty of sun. I’ve since heard that’s not recommended. I was ignorant.

Anyway, this year I walked over to the crowd of growth and located the trees. I saw four. Figured that’s a good result. However, yesterday I made a more careful inspection. I was surprised to see that I’d missed one maple tree. I’d thought that tree had died, but there it was. Except, where I’d planted one maple tree, there were now three small maple trees. Kinky.

A few days ago, Buster jumped up on me. He wanted to go for a drive with us and that’s one of his ways of asking. I looked at his eager, trusting, brown eyes, his little moustache, comically curved paws, his teeth, which stick out over his wee red chin and I said to Sue, “Buster is so cute that maybe we’re committing a sin by enjoying him so much.”

Maritime Mac once said, “When I look at my dog, Buster, I get to thinking that I’m so happy whistling so copiously that I’m going to have to go to confession.” Thus sayeth Maritime.

Maritime Mac sometimes uses big words.

Back from popular demand. The Buster show. See how Buster manipulates his surrogates. It’s all about meals and who is training whom. Our persistent philosophical Buster puzzle. The Buster mealtime conundrum.

This is how it works.

First off, we now realize the our meals have to be tailored, not only to us, but also to Buster.

It all begins with Sue laying the meal out on my plate. It is presented to me, under the watchful eyes of Lord Buster. We usually sit on the couch when we eat. I sit closest to Buster so he gets a better view of my plate and what I’m eating.

I eat my meal. Buster watches. Buster watches. I eat. Buster watches. I break a tiny piece off my meat or fried potato or slice of bread. I offer it to Buster. He eats it or doesn’t. Not eating it is a bad sign. He’s not liking our meal. Eating it is a good omen. He likes our meal.

                         “You gonna eat that?
                                       You gonna eat that?
                                       You gonna eat that?

                                        I’ll eat that.”

                       Karen Shepard, BIRCH

I eat some more. Buster watches while I break off little pieces of carrot, potato, meat, pickle, (Buster likes ketchup), and put them on the side of my plate. When I’ve cleaned off the part of the plate that was ordained for me to eat, I take my plate to his dog dish. His dog dish has dog kibble already poured into it. It is dog food. Buster knows dog food isn’t human food. That’s the rub.

I take my fork and I scrape the remaining bits off my plate and into his dish and then I tap his dish with the fork. I always wondered when my psychology course about Pavlov’s dogs would come in handy. Now I know.

Buster will usually check out his dish after I tap his dish. Then he may drool or not drool. He may eat or not eat. Depends on how hungry he is, I guess.

He may, instead of eating, watch me make my tea. Watch me spread my toast with honey or jam or peanut butter. After which he watches me eat it. I will break off some pieces, like a dutiful master. He watches. When I’m finished, I take the few pieces I've set aside, and I dump them into Buster’s bowl. I tap his bowl with a fork or spoon or knife. He may drool or he may not. He may eat or he may not.

He may, instead, sit on the floor and stare at Sue. Give her a careful scrutiny. Surveying her whole food/eating situation as he looks to see if she has any more food to cough up.

If satisfied that we have both totally finished our meals, Buster will, most likely, not always, but most likely, eat.

He will remove some of the pieces from his bowl and carry them to the rug. Because he is a delicate eater. Some might say a picky eater. And then he’ll eat them like a right proper gentleman.

However, I’ll be damned if I’m going to lay a place for him at the table. Not doing the plate, knife, fork, spoon, maybe a dessert spoon and the napkin thing. Not going to happen.

Besides, we have no room at the table. Sue’s office is spread out all over the table, along with hats, gloves, papers, poop catcher bags, collars, grooming brushes, dog leash snaps, and three or four of Buster’s leashes, in colours of red, green and blue.

No Room for Buster at the Table

Anyway, at one of those three stages, he will usually commence to eat his meal while we hold our communal breath. It is truly pathetic. Isn’t it?

After he finishes eating, do you know what happens? You may have guessed it. I won’t give you the word, but I’ll give you a hint. Buster gets something or two somethings that rhyme with DELETE.

Who runs this forty-five-foot trailer anyway? The whole thing is a pitiable sin.

Lake o' Law...Just down the Road from Middle River

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Zip It Up

16/5/2016

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You know Spring has sprung when you see the coltsfoot blooming. Coltsfoot is a perennial plant that looks similar to a dandelion when it blooms in spring. This wild edible plant is unusual in that the flowers bloom and die before the appearance of any leaves, which earned coltsfoot the name of "son before the father" in earlier times. A decoction is made of 1 oz. of leaves, in 1 quart of water boiled down to a pint, sweetened with honey or liquorice, and taken in teacupful doses frequently. This is good for both colds and asthma. Coltsfoot tea is also made for the same purpose.

Colts Foot

Barry and Larry
were walkin’ down the street.
Barry say, “Larry——--
Look at the dead bird.”
       Larry looks up—                      “Where?”
                          "Larry Sez (...again)" by Glotheri

It was a sunny, but cold Cape Breton day. Not unusual for these here parts. Maritime Mac is getting dressed to go to the grocery store. See Maritime Mac put on his nifty black pants. His cool, brand new, Walmart tee shirt. His hiking boots with two differently coloured laces.

See Buster, Maritime Mac’s pet dog, dance. See him jump. He wants to go with Maritime Mac. So bad!! So friggen bad!!

Maritime snaps on Buster’s fashionable red leash and off they go to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Lake O’Law. Actually, there is no wizard in Lake O’Law, but I couldn’t resist the flow of words.

See the truck bounce through the pot holes and over the bumps. See Buster, Mac’s favourite dog and confidant, enjoying the exciting adventure. Go Bear, Go.

Bear is the name of Maritime Mac’s truck. Bear’s front licence plate has a picture of a polar bear.

Maritime Mac parks Bear next to the pole he usually parks next too. He jumps out of the truck. Tells Buster he’ll be right back.

Maritime Mac marches proudly across the paved parking lot. Smells the Cape Breton Mountain and salty ocean air as he parades forth in his snazzy black attire. Whistles a merry tune as he walks through the automatic doors, grabs a small cart and begins his shopping. A bag of apples, loaf of bread, a pound of butter, shower gel, soup, two big dog bones for Buster Boy and of course Maritime’s two cans of Bud Light.

Last Year's Apple

But, oh my, he can’t get into the cooler. A woman who works in the store, is leaning on her cart, blocking Maritime’s access to the magic cans. She’s gossiping with another employee.

Maritime Mac sniffs. Coughs. Clears his throat. The woman finally spots him. Maritime Mac is surprised at the colour of her face. Maybe she’d visited the tropics or has high blood pressure. Her face is really quite red.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says, as she backs up, so Maritime can get into the cooler.

“That’s quite all right, ma'am”, Maritime says. He feels that his clothing decor is best accented by his super polite response to this red-faced woman.

See Maritime Mac put the beer cans into the cart. See him wheel the cart to the check-out counter where he enters the line-up, and then is happily surprised to hear another check-out lady say, “I can help you over here, sir.”

Maritime Mac pushes his cart to the other cashier.

“Thank-you very much, my dear,” he says. Words to go with his spiffy clothes.

This woman’s face is also extremely red.

“Maybe they all went on a group tour to the tropics,” Maritime thinks. “Maybe the lighting has been changed in here and that’s why their faces look all rouged up,” he also thinks.

Maritime Mac raises his head and looks up at the ceiling. The lights are a yellowish-white colour. No red luminescence shines down from on high.

Maritime Mac pays with cash. The cashier bags his supplies. He thanks her in as dignified a way as he can.

Maritime Mac walks proudly across the parking lot, bags of groceries in hand. The highlands are still as misty and beautiful as ever as Maritime Mac marches towards a patiently waiting Buster.

Maritime wonders why the breeze feels so cold, so intimate and personal as he saunters across the concrete parking lot. Is curious why the wind feels like it’s blowing down his legs. Inside his pants. To the very tips of his toes. To provinces best left unspoken.

See Maritime Mac look down. See the uncool, not spiffy nor fashionable shock of brilliant red, light up his face as he spots the gaping hole, outlined by the gleaming zipper, shining forth from his cold crotch. Oh, god! All that time in a public space and he’s been flying half-mast to a cold north wind.

Why the hell didn’t some kind, compassionate and empathetic soul not do what they used to do when Maritime Mac was a kid? You ask a person, who is sucking wind in all the wrong places, this important question: “What do airplanes do?”

The answer, which every kid knew, was to say, “They fly.” Then you tell the poor chap, that his fly was down. Yuk, yuk, yuk.

See Maritime Mac zip up and then run like an embarrassed dingo. See him fling his groceries into the back of the truck. See him start his truck and drive hell-bent for home. See Buster’s tail waving wildly in the wind. See his treat treasure wiggling and waggling out of his mouth like an unlit cigar.

Maritime is not happy that he solved the red-faces-in-the-grocery-store puzzle.

Not only that, but Maritime Mac later learned that his careless firing of the groceries into the back of Bear, in his effort to escape to a place where he could erase the red from his face, had broken one of the cans of beer.

See Maritime Mac, wiping the beer off Bear’s floor. Poor, spiffy dressed, embarrassed, Maritime Mac.

“Woof, woof,” Buster says. Which, translated from Canine, means, “Thank-you, thank-you, oh great red-faced master.”

***

Speaking of a dog named Buster, we also have a dog named Buster. What a coincidence, eh?

Anyway, last week we took Buster to the vet to get his ears treated and his buster shots. I’m sorry, I mean booster shots.

Buster has learned a few lessons since the last time he was at the vet's. He now wants out of the waiting room and not into the waiting room. That is a big change.

Anyway, they weighed Buster and the huge scales showed he’d gained a few pounds. Hard to see why unless he is getting too many treats. Very possible.

You see, Buster has a recurring yeast infection in his ears. Sue can relate very well to Buster’s problem, so she is quite keen to get Buster to the vet when he has this ailment.

The situation is this. Buster hates us touching his ears. He hates anybody touching his ears. So, he bites and he bites mighty hard. He also chomps mighty enthusiastically when somebody fools around with his arse end or tries to clip his nails. Buster has a very solid set of personal boundaries that you cross at your peril.

So, we waited for the vet in a tiny room with a shiny table. We waited about ten minute. All this time, Buster, poor Buster, was shaking.

Then the vet walked in, wearing his long white coat. I picked Buster up and plopped him down on the table.

After we all gave our polite salutations, which is what most people do, the vet looked at Buster and said, and I quote, “I remember you.”

Now we have Buster shaking and the vet shaking.

Well, I won’t go into much more detail but for two points.

Point one: We were quite nervous about having to treat Buster for the yeast infection because it meant we were going to have to daily try to apply the prescribed drops to Buster’s ears. Why, the very thought was enough to send us into involuntary jitterbugging spasms.

However, the vet had some really, really super great news. He informed us that they now have a new medication which only involves two treatments, a week apart. And the vet does the treatments! This is really, really joyous news. Because we don’t have to try to treat Buster’s ears any more. Just two trips to the vet and that will be it.

And point two: When I held Buster down so the vet could look into his ears, we all learned together that Buster doesn’t necessarily growl before he attacks. It was a Buster surgical biting blitzkrieg and he did manage to get a microscopic piece of the vet's finger. A wee treat, so to speak.

In summary, Buster was muzzled, and he got his ears de-yeasted, his three booster pokes and another appointment for next Wednesday.

I might phone in sick from a yeast infection.

Interesting Fungus on One of our Trees

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Maritime Mac

24/4/2016

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Misty Morning Mountains

Once upon a time, an old, white-haired fella by the name of Maritime Mac, entered a coffee shop. Now, he knew that coffee shops taxed his mind and his nerves, but he went into the coffee shop anyway.

Maritime Mac in Person

Where he ordered a tea. Which didn’t go so well because he was on the wrong side of the tea purveyor who had a dead ear.

Maritime Mac shifted his position and ordered again.

“One tea, please,” he shouted.

The nice server, his hair all bunned up, grabbed a tea bag and a tricky brown tea jug. He dropped the tea bag into the little jug and poured steaming hot water over the crinkled up bag. Maritime Mac watched him screw the complicated plastic lid onto the jug as he felt the beginning of the jingling and jangling of his nerves.

The server handed Maritime Mac the jug, a tea cup with a spoon in it, and a saucer.
Maritime walked to the counter where they kept the tea and coffee additives. He set down the cup and saucer and the brown tea jug.

His nerves began to further unsettle as his mind switched to auto-dumb mode. He searched for the milk container. He felt the coffee shop customers watching him as his mind slid to other nerve-wracking times. To places with polished wooden tables, formally set with forks, spoons, knives, plates, tea cups, saucers and napkins or serviettes. And who the hell knows what those mouth wipers are supposed to be called? These eating objects all placed on the table, in their correct places, as decreed by the Department of Correct Positioning of Consuming This and Thats. Rules thought up by the powerful cabinet of etiquette-crowned heads ruling from the great city of Oz. Not to ignore those fellas behind the curtain.

He pictured the intelligent folks in other coffee shops, scrunched up around tiny wobbly tables, many with wireless ear buds hanging out of their ear holes, some reading books or papers or conversing with each other about urban topics that were super important for people to know in order to converse in such establishments. And most importantly, all of them knowing exactly how to load, pour and carry their teas and coffees.

Birds at our Coffee Shop during a Recent Snowstorm

Before him were three imposing shiny metal jugs. Like three doors, but only one that would lead to milk. Must it not? But where the hell was the label? Tea a la Russian Roulette. His friggen’ hands began to shake and to make it worse, a couple, looking wealthy, healthy, well-dressed and wise, was checking him out.

He picked up a jug. Tipped his glasses down and searched the container from stem to stern. It was on the handle. The word, ‘milk’, written in ancient Greek script.

Maritime Mac tried to pour the milk. Nothing came out. He spotted what looked like a bear spray can trigger. He pressed it. A little milk peed out.

He pressed harder. Too much milk poured out.

Someone behind him had surely consumed too much coffee, for a stink bomb was now wrapping itself around Maritime Mac’s taste for tea. His tea was paler than he had planned, but he didn’t want to hang around the counter much longer or his tea would have a Flint City tang.

He looked for the sugar. No sugar, but instead a shiny honey container. It had a wee, bear spray trigger. He pressed the trigger. The thick honey crept out of the little honey pot so slowly that he’d have to be fumigated before he got a teaspoonful.

He thought he heard the well-dressed couple chuckling.

He tried to pour the tea. Nothing came out. He spotted an arrow on the plastic top so he aligned the arrow with the spout. Good thinking, Maritime. But nothing came out. He loosened the lid. A pathetic bit of tea wee-wee’d out. He loosened it some more. He poured. The top fell off and into the cup.

He grabbed some paper mop-ups and wiped up the spilled tea. Threw the mop-ups at the garbage can under the counter. Half-point for the effort.

He snatched up a long wooden stir stick that looked like what he should use to stir his tea, drop of honey and abundance of cow milk.

The couple had escalated from chuckling to laughing. Maritime Mac didn’t look up.

He stirred with the wooden stir stick. Was irritated by the spoon that got in the way. The metal spoon which had been in his cup the whole time. He put two and two together as he heard more chuckling. As he had feared, the aroma was sticking to his new winter coat.

“Lord god almighty,” he whispered. He tossed the stir stick at the garbage can. Half point for the effort.

He then slunk to a quiet table in a section far away from the toxic table. He was so relieved that he hadn’t tripped and spilled anything. So happy that he could settle down with his dripping cup of tea, his spoon, his tricky jug, his saucer and ten or more paper slop suckers.

He sat and watched other folks work for their tea. He smiled and chuckled from time to time, just for the effect.

When he’d finished his tea and was heading for the large, darkly burnished front door, he stopped to ask the nice server about the arrow on the tea jug top. Asked, if he lined the arrow with the spout, wasn't the tea supposed to pour out? That rhymed and he damn well knew he’d just made poetry, but the server was a professional coffee shop employee, or maybe he couldn’t hear the full rhyming cadence and so he ignored Maritime Mac’s great poetry and explained to him, in a deafening voice, that the arrows do not work anymore.

                  And there was a poet I used to know,
          Who built a balloon and let it blow
                  On the curving track of the Southern Trades
                  That caress the breasts of Samoan maids,
                  And brush like a lover’s hand across
                  The great grey wings of the albatross.
                  And that poet, in his balloon, still flies.
      —-And the earth has lost him until he dies.
                                                  Farley Mowat, BALLOON SONG

Buster by our Pond

“So screw the arrows, the bear spray milk and the anal retentive honey containers,” he mumbled to himself as he opened the door of his truck. There he was greeted by the ecstatic tail-wagging whirligig of a little dog. Who had been told he was to stay at home, but had, by some sleight of mind, been able to connive his way into this epic trip to a Cape Breton coffee shop.

Our Home Sweet Home

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Buster's Buddy Burger

26/11/2015

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I am not going to say that I am even a tad closer to understanding all of what I have read, but I can say that I have just finished reading the Qur’an. Front page to back. However, I know this does not make me an Islamic person.

Nevertheless, I think it’s a relevant book to read, as some people, due to the world’s tragic events, are beginning to retreat into their black and white certainty doghouses. Where they feel free to bark out for all to hear, “We aren’t like those folks who follow that book. They are all bad if they aren’t like us. Every last one of them. Big or small.” Or something like that.

***

“Woof, growl, snarl and there’s another strange looking water hydrant. Let’s piss on it.”—Buster.

“Ignorance,” says Ajax, “is a painless evil.”-"So, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.”—-George Eliot

***

                   “Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
                      The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
                      Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
          The furious Bandersnatch!”
                                                            Lewis Carrol, Jabberwocky

***

Buster has been bored the last few days. Why? Because he hasn’t been getting the attention nor the stimulation that he feels he deserves and that he received while he was in Kingston.

Buster Back in the Woods

Like in the Peachtree Inn. Come on, if dogs wore hats I’d be afraid that Buster’s head would be too big for his hat.

For example, we’d be walking down the hallway. I’d be minding my own p’s and q’s while Buster would be sniffing out raucous-night-before-debauchery scents under the doors of room numbers this and that.

Then, I’d hear the familiar sound, “Buster! Oh, Buster!” Usually in a woman’s voice. Coming from a stranger we’d met before, but who is now, at least for Buster, a stranger no more. Sounding like she’d spotted a long lost lover. So, what could I do, but stop and let the middle- aged woman practically make love to Buster?

“Oh, Buster! How are you, Buster? How old is he? You out for a walk? Were you?”

“Yes for %^&* sake and now it’s breakfast time for this homely hunk of flesh that just happens to be hanging onto the other end of this blue-coloured leash which runs from your beloved’s neck to that thing just down the hall, which is me.”

Oh, not really. I rather enjoy it myself and for all you single men out there, find yourself a Buster. He’s to women like apples are to deer.

These encounters happened outside and inside, because, you see, there are more people in the city. There are more dogs in the city too. Out our way in Cape Breton, the folks that stop to talk to us are often men, wearing orange clothing and carrying big guns. When I often say, quietly, “Buster, behave.”

In Kingston, the walks were full of excitement for Buster. Our usual route was along the side of the inn, where we would come to a small exit in the fence. The same place, where one morning walk, Buster and I helped a man who was hurriedly trying to pull a bicycle and what looked like a souped-up walker on wheels through said exit. Which left me wondering, but didn’t work up Buster’s dander a tad.

This exit led to a high-brow subdivision, where we sometimes ran into a little white Scotty dog whose name was Lucy. She and Buster liked each other and when Lucy got dragged one way and Buster the other way, well their necks were stretched out to as close as they could get to a one hundred and eighty degree angle.

Just a little way down the street was a tiny park. It ran behind big expensive houses which could easily suck in our little trailer with lots of room left over.

At the other end of this narrow section of the park was a tiny stream with plenty of flat, slippery, moss-covered rocks. I would gingerly cross this brook. Buster would run and leap over the rocks as if they were covered in slip-proof matting.

On the other side of this tiny border stream was a big, grey brick house. With a solid, high, black, wrought iron fence. And behind the fence was a tall, light-coloured, wrought iron, bull-faced dog. Who would barrel out of whatever he was barrelled up in. He’d roar to the fence and bother Buster not a tittle. With Buster’s head so full of how great and wonderful he was, why would Buster worry about this monster? As for me, I would be frantically searching the fence line for any weaknesses apparent.

Meanwhile, Buster would snarl and growl on the other side. Oh thank god for the other side. Being on the other side was what Buster should have been thanking his doggie god for. But no, Buster would be snarling and growling and snapping at the fence. Totally into the occasion. It was an almost battle between David and Goliath and not a sling shot in sight.

I would then pull Buster away. Well, drag Buster away, and as Buster’s belly smoothed out the grass for other park visitors, Buster would be viciously growling and snarling. Then once he saw it was hopeless, he’d turn around and do his macho doggy thing.

Which is, lift his tail, turn his back on the big coward, (which is a form of doggie shunning), scratch the ground vigorously with his two back feet, take one final look back at the big wimp, and snarl, “The next time you won’t get off so easy.”

One morning Sue returned from walking Buster. She said it seemed to her that the big dog was getting friendlier towards Buster. She said that Buster was quieter too and it was almost like the two dogs wanted to be friends.

I asked her if she’d seen any thing different in the big dog’s backyard? Like bottles of mustard, ketchup and relish?

Oh yeah, and one afternoon two of our friends came to our room and it was all, “You two were so lucky to get a dog like Buster!” “What a well behaved dog!” “Oh, what a sweet dog!” “His fur is so soft!” On and on and on until I was beginning to feel just a small tad of jealousy.

And really, my hair is soft too and what the hell is the difference between fur and hair anyway?

But look at the pictures. See how Buster is reacting. In one photo, Buster is setting up for me to take a picture of the friends. In another one, they are talking to each other and Buster is so involved. And notice when they are looking relaxed. Why Buster is two levels above the usual accepted in-the-zone measure.

Oh, and now here come the cleaning people. Lots of petting and stroking and hugging going to be coming Buster’s way.

But I’ll admit I’m no better. Some folks could say that I’m like onto an enabler.
For example: Buster decided he wasn’t going to eat his regular dog food when he was at the inn. I can understand that.

But really, I was quite stumped when I was asked by the nice woman behind the A&W counter, what I wanted on my Buddy Burger. I had to think for a few seconds. I finally said, “Make it the works.” Because I knew, deep inside, that nothing less than the works would work.

***

        “Sir, I’ve got to urinate.
                 I’ve got to pee.
                           I’m going to piss like an open hydrant-please!

        Oh, bless you, sir. Oh bless you, bless you, bless you--
                   and please don’t let the screen door spank my bottom.”

                                                             Andrew Hudgins, Buddy

***

Last year, I was interviewed on CBC. It was for the radio show, Main Street Cape Breton. I blew the interview. I know I did. Mainly because I had lots of time to think about the fact that I was going to be interviewed at a book launch of an anthology of speculative stories. One of my stories was in the book, so when she asked me the questions, I answered in the way that only I could.

Oh, and I was on the same show last Tuesday afternoon. I’m a sucker for punishment, but this time it was only to read part of my story and I didn’t find that so difficult. Plus there was a microphone. This made it easier for my throat. And there is also the possibility that I was talking into a radio-disconnected mic, because I haven’t been able to verify that my reading was actually being broadcast.

Anyway, back to the first interview. One question I was asked was, “Do you read much speculative fiction?”

I answered, “NO.” This was not smart. This was not great. This answer was not in the spirit of the occasion.

Now, in retrospect, taking into account all the experiences I have been through in my life, most of which I have written nothing about, I should have answered, “My life is speculative.”

View of Middle River yesterday. Note the snow!

Buster breaking the boredom at home.

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Creativity, Crocks and Rejection

30/6/2015

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There are two new realities and achievements in the world that weren’t in the world last year.

In alphabetical order, we have a book authored by Jennifer Bain. The book is called, “HILDEGARD OF BINGEN and Musical Reception, The Modern Revival of a Medieval Composer”.

The book is an achievement for sure. Jennifer said she tried to write the book in such a way that both academics and non-academics would find it enjoyable and instructive and Sue thinks she's accomplished that goal very nicely. (Pic of book)

Then there’s Suzi Hübler’s achievement: a brand new business she has opened up in Toronto and it’s aerobically friendly. The business is called, “HIGH JUNCTION GYMNASTICS”. This is a place where young people can skin cats, do the splits, go to parallel bars, somersault themselves silly and become proficient at gymnastics, because Suzi is an expert at teaching gymnastics. You can check out her colourful website here: http://highjunction.ca/

(Jennifer is Sue’s daughter, and Suzi is Sue’s daughter-in-law, so you can see why we are excited about both of these accomplishments!)

High Junction

***

Supposedly, if you’re a writer you’re creative. Which in some ways probably involves a high level of daydreaming and the imagining of scenarios which haven’t happened, have happened or might happen.

Writers write a lot about feelings. Usually, if the story is going to have some punch and power, then the author feels and empathizes with the characters he’s creating or writing about.
So it’s no surprise that writers are filled with strong emotions. In many cases they’re not buried far below the surface. From time to time they even seep out like oil out of the ground.
At the same time, writers deal with the fickle world of fashion, pop culture, political correctness, social perceptions, changing rules, high and low grammar and lots and lots and lots of rejection.

If you write, you get to know about rejection. And most writers aren’t cold stone stoics, so it affects them. Sometimes a rejection makes no sense. And for many writers, the rejection slips/emails reinforce their deep feelings that they aren’t any damn good. The proof is there to see.

But, writers write anyway. Now, what I do is write and duck. Like the old duck and cover procedure they used to teach students to follow if an incoming atomic bomb was heading their way. Incoming rejection coming soon to your mail box. What an attitude, eh?

I heard a story about a fella who submitted some short stories to a national short story competition. They were stories written by the likes of Ernest Hemingway. These stories didn’t even make the long list.

I once had a story on the long list, but not on the short list. Ironically, I didn’t come up short and did. Now that’s a riddle for you. Anyway, I sent the story out to three other publishers. They all rejected it and yet I’m pretty sure that stories which would most likely not have made the long list, were published in their magazines.

J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” was rejected twelve times and then bought by the thirteenth publisher, not an unlucky number in this case. You want to know the reason why the thirteenth publisher bought it? I’ll tell you. Because the publisher’s CEO’s daughter loved it. How was poor Ms. Rowling supposed to know that she should have addressed her manuscript to the big honcho’s daughter?

The classic, "Lord of the Flies", was rejected twenty-one times. And you can damn well tell it was a classic because they made me read it in high school. One publisher wrote that it was “an absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull.”

Do you know what one publisher told F. Scott Fitzgerald when he read "The Great Gatsby"? He said, “You’d have a decent book if you’d get rid of that Gatsby character.” So funny!

Stephen King filled a spike with impaled rejection slips by the age of fourteen. Wow! He was prolific for sure.

My feeling is that if you are going to be rejected, at least have your writing as polished as it can be. That’s why I have an editor. Her name is Sue and she can spy a rogue, “I’ve went...” a mile away. Which, apparently, is one of my favourite illiterate-oral weaknesses. At least in a Jane Austen type of world.

Stephen King wrote, “To write is human, to edit is divine.”

***

View from our Place on Middle River, Cape Breton

I’ve started reading some poetry and short stories by Alden Nowlan. He was a mostly self-taught man, who was born in Nova Scotia. One of my favourite poems is called, “The Bull Moose”.

Here’s another one of his poems.

                                 “This is the amazing thing
                               that it is so easy
                               to fool them—-
                               the sane bastards.

                               I can talk about weather,
                               eat, preside at meetings
                               of the PTA.
                               They don’t know.

                               Me foreign as a Martian
                               With the third eye in my forehead!
                                   But I comb my hair
                               cleverly so it doesn’t show

                                   except a little
                                   sometimes when the wind blows.

                                                                    Alden Nowlan, “Disguise”

***

                                             “If you can sniff out danger and keep barking
                                     When those around you seem to doubt the cause
                                     And all they find to do is keep remarking
                                     Don’t track up the carpet with your paws!
                                     If you can lick the hand who needs you
                                     and realize it’s really no mistake
                                     When that hand that somehow failed to feed you
                                     Feeds itself the whole darn sirloin steak.”

                                                                       Lily Tuck, “Sniff”

Sue says I think like a dog. I’ve been telling her that for years. You see, I can be walking down a busy street and on the opposite side of the street can be, and has been, a man walking his dog.

The dog will stare at me like I’m wearing a tracking device. The dog’s eyeballs will hone in on me and not get his peepers off my moving form until we’re way beyond the human encounter distance of seventeen feet. (Apparently this has been measured by people who like to measure things.)

In some ways I think this places me at the dog's level of the food chain. Which could be way above the human's. This theory comes from watching too much news.

Which might be why I’m more comfortable on a log, inside or outside, rather than on a beautiful couch. A not so expensive, not so beautiful couch, doesn’t bother me quite as much. I guess my mind won’t stop reminding me that there’s a whole lot of social voo-doo comes with sitting on a beautiful couch in a living room.

Oh, and before you let your creative minds run wild, I have not yet had the desire to lift my leg and piddle on said log, nor on said less beautiful couch.

So, this Sunday, while I was in the washroom brushing my teeth, Buster was in the hallway barking. Sue, (who now barks back, but that’s another story), could not decipher from Buster’s barks, what the heck he wanted.

I stepped out of the washroom. Sue said, “What does he want?”

I said, thinking I was just guessing, that he was looking for his slipper so he could play “Fetch the Slipper”. So I found the slipper and sure enough, that’s what he wanted to do. Fetch the slipper.

Which goes like this. I throw the slipper or toss it, if you prefer that word. Buster runs and fetches the slipper. He returns with the slipper, which, for accuracy’s sake, is actually an old croc. He lets me pull the croc, thinking that I don’t know that he’s not really jawing down on it as hard as he would like me to think. Because he really wants me to wrench the croc out of his mouth, so the croc can glide through the air like an eagle and land on the kitchen floor in front of the fridge. So Buster can burst out of the starting gate, slide and slam into the fridge door, return the slipper and his drool to me and start the process all over again.

The whole game is a Buster diplomatic exercise in pretending he doesn’t want me to have the croc while wanting me to have the croc. Which I know is all a crock.

Buster Tuckered Out From Playing "Fetch the Croc"

                                             “A living room, the catholic area you
                                    (Thou rather) and I may enter
                                    without knocking, leave without a bow, confronts
                                    each visitor with a style,

                                    a secular faith: he compares its dogmas
                                    with his, and decides whether
                                    he would like to see more of us. Spotless rooms
                                    where nothing’s left lying about

                                    chill me, so do cups used for ashtrays or smeared
                                    with lipstick: the homes I warm to,
                                    though seldom wealthy, always convey a feeling
                                    of bills being promptly settled”

                                                                                            W.H. Auden, “The Common Life”

Our Pond in Spring

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Awe is a Reflex of Spirit

13/5/2015

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“Awe is a reflex of spirit.”
Elpenor

Last fall, and again a few weeks ago, a friend and I hiked and snowshoed on the Skyline Trail. This trail is located in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park. The path is mostly flat, being on a plateau, and it winds its way through stunted, moose-chewed trees and bushes, ending at a long boardwalk which snakes down to near the edge of the mountain.

What a view! Gorgeous. Fantastic in the fall with the sun setting in the west, turning the sky and ocean into a curtain of brilliant colours.

And what about in the early spring, when we last snowshoed the trail? I’d give it a totally wonderful grade. The ground and trees draped in snow, the ocean covered in scattered white puzzle pieces with sugar-coated mountains floating along the edges.

View from Skyline Trail in April

My friend and I felt this was a very special place. A sacred pathway. We felt at home and safe, even though we knew there were plenty of moose roaming around in these here parts.

Matter of fact, we passed a moose as we headed back to the vehicle. It was dark by this time, because we had stayed to bid the sun farewell and bon nuit. So we were forced to use flashlights to illuminate our way. The moose was huge.

I stopped and tried to get a picture of the moose. However, my camera was new and still unfamiliar and I couldn’t get the shutter to snap to. Meanwhile, the moose stood thirty or forty feet away, watching us excited ninnies getting all hot and bothered.

My hiking buddy kept saying, “It’s big, Larry. It’s really big, Larry. Really big.” I finally gave up, partly because I kept hearing this ‘really big’ alert and partly because my damn camera was being as stubborn as the proverbial ass. And as we walked away from the night-time forest monster, my friend said, “It really was really big, Larry.”

How could we not feel awe? How could we not experience the chill of wonder? Reverence? Fear, but in a good way. My friend and I felt this was a very special place. A sacred pathway. We felt at home and safe, even though we knew there were plenty of moose roaming around in these here parts.

But, do you know what I’ve heard? I’ve heard that wonder and awe are not among the main emotions of the majority of us western world, scientific homo sapiens. Maybe being able to feel the natural fear that comes with the majesty so obviously permeating everything around us, can help us be less fearful about what we tend to get all neurotic about.

“After several thousand years, we have advanced to the point where we bolt our doors and windows and turn on our burglar alarms - while the jungle natives sleep in open-door huts.”
Morris Mandel

Maybe, when we see everything as a resource, that also helps to remove the sense of awe and fear we feel when we look at the world around us. Heck, we even see ourselves as a resource to exploit. I think a tendency to see through things, so we can better manipulate them for our needs, is a mystery/majesty blinder.

“You can’t go on seeing through things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. To see through all things is the same as not to see.”
C.S. Lewis

***

I may gripe about there being too much snow, but I have to admit, I love snow. However, when spring comes, I’m ready for it to melt away and not come back until another winter’s day.

Folks from other, more populated parts, sometimes say to us or hint to us, that they wonder why the hell we would choose to live in such a tough environment. I say, see above. Reading the first part of this blog should give those folks some understanding of the why.

Some tourists from a big city passed through our island two summers ago. They drove through the forests and mountains. Through the out-ports and towns. Stopped in the mom and pop stores and observed the lack of big box monstrosities, mile-long subdivisions, clogged streets and roads, and noticed miles of empty places to park and think, and then they declared that Cape Breton was mainly uninhabitable. How can we battle against such unarguable wisdom?

But actually, I’m thinking, “Yes. Keep thinking that way.”

When I told a local that this fella had declared Cape Breton to be uninhabitable, he said, “Good, that will keep those )(*& away.”

What an attitude, eh? If he had only a little bit of that asphalt sophistication, then he might not so easily discount this fella’s declaration of wisdom that came from afar.

***

Buster

Once, a long time ago when the sun was blue, I was told by a rather logical and rationalistic person, that animals have no or next to no memory. It’s all instinct. I assume he would place our dog Buster in this memory-less category.
What a crock of shipwrecks. What a wad of Buster doo-doo. Buster has a memory like a snapping turtle clamped onto a big toe. Why, his memory is so good that Sue and I are worried that he may actually not be our pet but our care-giver. Our fire alarm. Our defender against big bad men and wild animals. Our reminder of where we left our plate of toast and other goodies. Our trainer. Our organizer. Well, I guess you get the point.

Example: We let him out one night. He encountered a raccoon. Whom he barked at and treed. Thank god. I mean, thank god that the raccoon climbed a tree and didn’t, instead, decide to whip Buster’s ass.

Anyway, the next evening, at around the same time as the night before, we let wee Buster out and he was off like an Arctic winter streaker toward the tree. No memory? Instinct? Bull chips.

Example: Recently we took our little man to the beauty parlour, where they bathed and clipped him. And by the way, we’re still trying to figure out if we picked up the right dog. He looked so different. They clipped him near bald, but I guess that will be good for Buster in the hot weather. Anyway, we think he’s Buster. One of the reasons we think this is that the groomer told us she didn’t do his nails because, well, he made a fuss. I can imagine the fuss.

So, back to the memory thing. As we were paying the bill, Buster was given a dog treat. He was so excited about getting the hell out of there, that he didn’t pay the purple coloured artificial dog bone biscuit much mind. So Sue put the treat in her coat pocket.

After we got home, Buster kept going to the closet. He’d scratch the door. Whine at the door and at us until we finally figured out what he wanted. He was after the treat in Sue’s coat pocket. No memory?

Buster’s bear-trap memory, his brain fartless memory, has led to my beginning to worry about something. You see, I’m beginning to think that all the time Buster and I are going for walks, he is mentally making a bucket list. A bucket list of places to dash to if he ever gets off his leash. Because at each place, Buster will stop and sniff around. Then he gives a little tug on the leash. I’m assuming this is to see if by some miracle, I’ve had a brain fart and have forgotten I’m walking him. That maybe I’ve dropped the leash and am sitting down on a snow bank so I can have a little drool and a wee confab with my lonesome.

Then Buster would be off, running through forest, fields and over the mountains, checking off his Buster bucket list the things he’d sniffed, whizzed on and pooped over.

Buster Sees All

Note from Sue: My apologies for the late arrival of this blog post. I'm the technician who posts Larry's work, and an injury to my hand put me out of commission for a while.

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Mice and Snow

Houdini

Where's My Shovel?

life and death themes

The Miracles of Spring

Zip It Up

Maritime Mac

Buster's Buddy Burger

Creativity, Crocks and Rejection

Awe is a Reflex of Spirit

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