Xty's Lighthouse

Happy Birthday to Me!

Well, maybe that was a mistake … I kind of miss that me. But one of my brothers once famously said on someone’s advanced birthday, “Think of the alternative.” And yes, it is fabulous to be alive.

My blessings far outweigh my thorns and high on that list is the fact that our furniture got delivered in the St. Nick of time by the reupholsterer [on Monday, and my octogenarian in-laws arrived on Tuesday]. We had been living without it for almost three months because of a fabric procurement issue and the thought that we would pick a difference one after the insane process of getting agreement on what to do in a house resistant to change, that lets the dog on the couch, and has what one might consider strong opinions, was not on the table.

The couch and chair came from my father’s office at Emmanuel College, in a beautiful old stone building with marble stairs that were actually worn down by a century of scholarly and not so scholarly [mine] footsteps.

Dad’s office was actually two offices, and the one that housed the Mill Project was a massive hall on the second floor. My parents would give me the keys and let me go down there and work on essays because they got a very early word-processor [a Wang – what a name!] and I lucked out and was able to do all of my university essays on computers, a huge advantage I now realise. It was both creepy and awesome to be in there at night and have the whole building to myself. There was even a basketball court that doubled as an auditorium. They have definitely filmed a bunch of horror movies there and in the quads behind. They even filmed Chicago in Toronto!

But back to the real heroes of the story, the couch and chair.

When the Mill project was over, unfortunately the office had to be given up, and there was a corner with this beat up old couch and chair and nobody knew what to do with the furniture. I remember calling my hubby-to-be or hubby [the timeline is foggy] and him coming over and double-checking the astonishing fact that he could lie comfortably on it full length. It has wing arms that are just right to support your head.

When I was first going to get it recovered I remember a sister-in-law questioning my judgement and mentioning horse hair or something and it not being worth it. Well, there was horse hair, and that was twenty-odd [and I mean odd] years ago, and now here we are, three grown children, a third dog, and the same couch and chair, just rebuilt to last another generation, or three, if you are a canine. [And if you are a canine, I would really like to congratulate you on your reading skills!]

And so while I miss that beautiful younger me, I could not be happier to get to be this somewhat rumpled older me. A lot like the couch and chair, except I am not off to the reupholsterer. Age is a victory really, and why should one hide those well-earned lines? Let’s just hope they are mostly laugh lines, and sometimes that is a matter of choice and perspective, I remind myself most sternly today of all days.

And speaking of well-learned lines, don’t forget to watch A Christmas Carol today [but only the version with Alistair Sim].  I have been lucky enough to watch that every birthday of my life, well, not the first, and many of them from this same old couch that I am sitting on writing this now, fifty-two years later. That is incredibly lucky!

Thank you very much for putting up with me. Like Ebenezer, I don’t deserve to be so happy.

I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a most excellent my birthday. Here’s to us indeed!

Good Morning.

Putting the “novel” on hold while we hunker down for a happy sentimental week, and by hunker I mean frantically clean and search for bedding as we are ground zero this yero, and eldest is home from the Rock today and grand-parents are imminent. Even the youngest had to find his floor.

That said, I think it is a lovely time to get back to our two terrifying children, ignorance and want

because I am a confused person who wouldn’t give money to a World Vision outreach thingee at the Newfoundland airport, even though it seemed very well-meaning on first glance, because they are an overtly Christian charity.

I got into a discussion with a very nice young lady who started out all wrong by saying she understood where I was coming from because she had thought the same thing too … and she was maybe 19. I had great discussions with a passionate niece when she was about the same age, and she actually told me, a mother of three children at the time [I hesitate to put it in quotation marks, because I will have it slightly wrong, but there was a witness, the father of all those three children] that “I needed to take control of my own clitoris”. In fairness, I think I was taunting youth by discussing starting a “Take Back the Rainbow” campaign to remove the growing association between rainbows and homosexuality. And I have managed to raise those three children and have had some very interesting discussions with them too.  I think there is a very natural tendency to be extremely socialist inclined when you are young and have no resources, and to be a little more of a capitalist once you are the one with the capital.

And it was one of those discussions where youth was strong in its arguments that has lent backbone to my being uncharitable because of my atheism, but not of course with any consistency. I do find missionary religions creepy in the extreme and am often the first to cry cult when anyone comes through the door with a robe and a book, but close to home I am much more open to the wonderful effects of charity, no matter which religion spawned it. But why should religion spawn charity? And can one move past supernatural superstitious religions and find charity from within? And how to satisfy ignorance when everyone has an axe to grind, but satisfying only want is insufficient?

Ha! You thought I was going to answer those questions, but no … my only answer really is that charity should start close to home. Don’t go saving the distant world by pretending to buy a goat somewhere … look around and see who is feeding the hungry in your neighbourhood … dang but it often all comes back to Dr. Stephen Covey and his 7 irritatingly effective habits. Own of his most effective visual metaphors is the circle of concern versus the circle of influence

People have used this in many ways, and I think my favourite is to think of the circle of influence being the one where you make choices [and we make many more choices than we realise once we start imaging things in terms of a re-action where we choose how to respond and don’t get to say “I have to” nearly as much as “I am choosing to”] and the circle of concern being the one where you can’t make choices but still worry. And when you let your circle of concern swamp your circle of influence you drown in panic. Trust me …

The reason Dr. Covey is so loathsome of course is that he is right. You can slowly rebuild your circle of influence one choice at a time. I don’t mean this in a monster way like that fellow who used to tell you late at night that you could be just as rich as him, just day-to-day proving that it actually might be possible to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, as my parents used to recommend. I am not sure how old I was when I realised that this was technically impossible … but it was too late, the proof was in the pudding and for once theory met practice and whacked it down. 1 for ∞.

But back to those two children, lets just hope that what we are feeding the boy is truly nourishing, and not secretly divisive. I love Christmas [or better, Xmas, if you get my drift like the snow storm said to the highway] but because of the reminder to be loving and to be lovely.

Perhaps we might start calling it Saturnalia again, after all, we still name a day after Saturn, which is 1 out of 7, where as Christ only gets 1 out of 365, and he even had to borrow his from Saturn, who so graciously stepped aside for the renaming of the winter feast. Or at least I hope it was gracious and there isn’t going to be some WFW matchup with Saturn in red in one corner and Jesus in white in the other.

But today is most definitely Saturn’s day and I hope you can make the best of, unless of course you have made better plans!

last day of escapism … well, let’s hope not!

May your Monday be mundane, but in the best of ways.

Now I didn’t make yummy apple butter last night but I did make some yummy herb butter which made me think of dill which made me remember that I am tasked with getting the salmon for my father-in-law’s gravalox for Saturnalia, currently referred to as Christmas, although I believe we are now meant to refer to CE, the Common Error, rather than AD, Anno Domini which is sort of exclusionary as Wikipedia attempts to explain.

Terminology that is viewed by some as being more neutral and inclusive of non-Christian people is to call this the Christian, Current, or Common Era (abbreviated as CE or C.E.), with the preceding years referred to as Before the Common, Christian, or Current Era (BCE or B.C.E.)

And of course Jesus was born in the springtime so the whole thing is a confused mess. But we still celebrate his putative birth by putting a tree in the living room

which we have yet to trim like Who’s, and I am all for traditions that involve family, friends, fabulous food and balsam fir smelling up the joint, no matter what you call them. But I know what you will call Bobbi’s gravalox: the one food you would pick if you could only eat one food for the rest of your life. Here is the recipe, as presented to the generation below me:

The sauce alone is ambrosia … now to go and harpoon that salmon!

Have a tasty Thursday …

but as John Handey [who knew? not me!] points out,  that “way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes.”

But I find as I get older I am much more able to imagine the fit of other people’s shoes than when I was younger. And when I remember to do that, I find the fit of my own shoes very comfortable, almost too comfortable. As I pick which UGG’s to wear I cannot help but think of the Chinese proverb, “when there is food on the table there are many problems, when there is no food there is one problem.”

That dreadful scene from a Christmas Carol comes to mind, with the souls who want to intervene in the affairs of man but no longer can, wailing as they watch people starve. We have watched that classic, with Alistair Sim, on Christmas Eve [more importantly known as Xty’s birthday] since I was a baby, so initially for me it was a horror movie. The animatronic toys in the toy store window

the happy jolly Father Christmas figure who turned out to harbour two starving children, one want and the other ignorance, whom I was to dread more than anything.

I can’t find a cheerful way out of this … Dickens often strikes close to the heart and he nails this one. The movie is very true to the book:

“They are Man’s and they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance and this girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”

Wait, I do see a light out there … while we find ourselves in polemical times, ignorance is taking a beating [sorry lad] with the internet proving a remarkable levelling field for access to information as smart phones put a computer into the hands of literally billions. Maybe there is hope …

If only it were so simple … and we could all make Fred so very happy.

Best of luck on this wintry Friday.

Eighty-three today, and not a vegetable or standing prescription in thirty years. Beautiful as always …

and sorry for being such a pest …

Who’s like us? Damn few, but we’re nay dead yet … and you made it to another year of Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, and I think I am up for a few hundred views …

starting this afternoon. Thanks mum.