Sunday, June 28/2009

Don and Patty have spent the night on the way up to their cabin for the season. The weather has been horrible - rainy and not warm - but it has given us a little longer to chat and to play with their new puppy, Maggi, as we wait for it to clear enough to take the ATV in to the cabin.

Advertisements on the BBC news home page look amazingly tailored to have been designed for a general audience. For example:

Winnipeg Downtown. Competent therapists a short walk from the office - help is close by.

This is the international version of the page, but it seems rather close to home. Do the same messages appear on the screens of viewers in South Africa of Finland? Even worse, have "they" been observing my viewing history and concluding that therapy is in order? But if that is the case, they have failed to note that I am retired and not at the office. Perhaps it is random after all.

Monday, June 22/2009

Dinner at Skip and Caryl's. Their son Kurt is up visiting for a few days' fishing so we get to visit with him as well. We eat on their porch facing the lake - and see a beaver swimming purposefully toward our house - where he has already felled a tree, damaging the roof of the pump house.

Saturday, June 21/2009

Awake early to watch qualifying for the British Grand Prix. This year, of course, the political juggling as the series threatens to split in two (so some sportscasters put it, though the reality is more like a hijacking than a split, as the majority of teams are threatening to leave, with some justification).

Stop in town at the drugstore to pick up some tinned salmon, on sale in this week's flyers. No, none left. And the sale was last week. I protest that I'm certain I saw them earlier this week. But it turns out that the fiscal cum flyer week begins on Saturday. So it's now next week. J is waiting outside in the car, chatting with friends. A young man joins the group and admires our car. The car, though, is only an excuse to begin conversation. What he really wants to tell us, his speech a little slurred, is that he has been learning the art of sell-leb-acy. Accent on the second syllable. Tough going, it seems, as he adds "but I still want a woman."

Friday, July 19/2009

We have a second free dump pass, so off with the half ton loaded with everything from the old kitchen stove from the rental (from which J has carefully removed everything of value from burners to fuses) to broken window glass and miscellaneous packing foam. It was all covered with a large blue tarp tied down tightly yesterday to protect it from rain, so today all we have to do is drive off - after stopping for coffee at Robin's with Caryl and Skip. The ten mile drive from town is usually not busy but there's fairly steady traffic today as the free passes end tomorrow. Strange smell in the truck - did some small animal die in the ventilation system? Ugly thought.

Dump, of course, is not what it's called as I've noted before. Nor tip, nor garbage disposal. It does appear in the town directory under waste management, fairly enough I suppose. The actual place itself being Hidden Lake Landfill Site. In the age of politically correct wording, it's become almost impossible to look up facilities. And sometimes there doesn't seem to be much actual change. Thus the term "retarded" has become so thoroughly offensive to many people that I haven't heard it in years. Yet literally all that it means is slow or delayed. As in the French "en retard." Which sounds a great deal like the currently acceptable "developmentally delayed." Both of them implying an optimistic assumption that the development will eventually occur. Then there's the replacement of disabled with "differently abled." That makes a fair point, perhaps, but at the cost of a fair bit of awkwardness.

But I digress. We reach the dump, and the expected queue is down to one small truck. There's a spectator gallery of gulls lining the peak of the roof of a storage garage, hoping, no doubt, for smellier and more interesting goods than one is allowed to bring here on the free pass. On the left is an enormous collection of blue and clear bags full of recycling. All the containers that we put out on alternate Wednesdays cheerfully assuming that they are being reprocessed for a guilt free existence. And some year this may happen. The centre mountain is "general," with a separate, slightly smaller white mountain of appliances. And spots for wood, used batteries, etc. The cathartic effect of disposing of a truckful of refuse somewhat diminished by seeing it added to the enormity of everyone else's grubby mattresses, dented fridges, broken bicycles and plastic toys.

June 8/2009

Funeral of M.E. today, and exactly what a small town funeral should be. Standing room only, which in Sacred Heart Church means well over 300 people. A wife, four children, seven grandchildren, and dozens of friends, relatives, and former colleagues. Interesting that a former conservation officer (read game warden) should be beloved of so many people. But then he wore many other hats - from volunteer fireman to credit union board member, and at the reception after the service the hats themselves with their various logos are on a table next to the photographs recording a lifetime.

Cremation had taken place before the memorial Mass, and the priest uses, more than once, the term cremains. The meaning is obvious enough, but the word itself unfamiliar. At home I check it on the internet and find, as well as the expected definition, the following:

Carbon copies: Pencils made from the carbon of human cremains. 240 pencils can be made from an average body of ash - a lifetime supply of pencils for those left behind.

It seems it's a bit more than waste not, want not. More of a memento, or even memento mori, with the name of the deceased stamped on each pencil.