Posted on August 13, 2020 under Thursday Tidbits with one comment

With gratitude and thanks for the birthday greetings

 

 

A tale of two birthdays.

After writing and publishing 1,132 posts on my website, I often struggle to come up with a new story idea. Yes, I realize that as long as there are seven billion people in the world, one shouldn’t ever fear of running out of material from which to draw. My readers have come to expect me to deliver a fresh story every Monday and Thursday, something I have managed to do without fail for close to nine years now.

Every now and then a story falls into your lap. It’s like a baseball pitcher throwing a lob ball to a home run hitter. These are the ones that I dream of because they are either compelling or ridiculous. When this happens, I can scarcely wait to get at my computer. The words come easily. I’m usually shaking my head or laughing while I write these pieces, often both at the same time.

Bear with me as I try and articulate the first day of my 69^th year on the planet earth.

“It was the best of birthdays. It was the worst of birthdays. It was the morning of light and mirth. It was the afternoon of darkness and despair. It was the epoch of calm. It was the age of chaos.” With serious apologies to Chuck Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities).

On what could have been one of the loneliest and most depressing birthdays of my life, I was overcome with a sense of joy and gratitude. Like most people my age, birthdays no longer mean a whole lot other than the fact that we realize that we are hurtling towards eternity at an alarming rate. It’s still fun to get together with family and friends to share some food, a glass of vino, and some well-aimed barbs. Presence is much more meaningful than presents.

In the lead up to my birthday this past Monday, I realized that I would be spending it utterly alone for the first time ever. This did not distress me in the least. I have learned how to tolerate myself over the years and especially during the pandemic when many of us have been forced to spend extended periods of time alone. Because I had agreed to return to the north for a second year of teaching, I knew that I would have to do another 14- day self-isolation stint as part of the re-entry plan into my community. I also realized that this would coincide with my birthday. Other than a chance encounter with a caribou on the tundra (we were given permission to go for solitary walks on the land), I knew I would be singing “Happy Birthday To Me.” By the way, there was only one reader who took note of my P.S. on Monday’s post where I wrote the initials HBTM. Congrats I.C. She deciphered the secret code… hardly the stuff of Bletchley Park in WW11.

Part 1 – The Morning

I am blessed with a large group of friends. This happens organically if you live long enough. Even if you’re a curmudgeon, you will accidentally inherit a few friends! I have also acquired a number of new friends through travel and my writing.

I know many people don’t put much stock in social media and are leery about reading too much into what gets posted on these platforms. On Monday, while I was writing Chapter 2 of my next book (isolation has some benefits), I was watching the birthday greetings coming in. Please don’t misinterpret this as egotistical but I was flabbergasted as hundreds and hundreds, and hundreds …and hundreds more messages came pouring in. Yeah, yeah, I know that this only takes people a few clicks and maybe 10 seconds on their phone or laptop but as they say, it’s the thought that counts. I also received a few phone calls from family and friends. Not actual phone calls as you will see later in this piece. N.B. You might want to put the kettle on. This is going to be a long one.

The brain is quite amazing when you stop and think about it. This small mass, residing under your skull, (mine is particularly small) is primarily composed of neurons, glial cells (you know damn well I’m Googling this part), neural stem cells, and blood vessels. As the names of well-wishers came pouring in, my brain was able to process in a nanosecond, an image of your face and some encounter we might have had over the years, some of them dating back 50 years. It’s quite staggering what the brain remembers.

I know some of you very well. There are many whom I know but don’t know well and there are a handful of you who really don’t know me at all. You have stumbled across my website and become regular readers. Those in the latter group might consider themselves fortunate. I don’t know you well enough to poke fun at you.  If you ever write anything critical about me or take a cheap shot or say something sassy, be forewarned. I’m always looking for fresh meat!

In short, the morning was memorable. I was alone but I certainly didn’t feel lonely. I simply couldn’t respond to every message, but I can tell you honestly, that I really appreciated every single one of them.

1. I know what you really want to hear about is the afternoon. Enough of this sentimentality crap.

Part 2 – The Afternoon (Subtitled A Shit Show)

Those of you who have been following my stories recently know that my apartment building, a fourplex, has been undergoing extensive renovations. This forms the backdrop of what follows. Most of the construction workers are from “the south”. The crew working on my building are from Quebec City. I have gotten to know them…intimately. They show up religiously at 7:00 a.m and most days don’t leave until at least 8:00 p.m. One night they were here until 9:30. I can’t and won’t say anything untoward about these people. They were brought up here to do a job. They are ferocious workers. They seemed surprised when they found out that one of the tenants was living in the building. Me. Not as surprised as I was.

For the first few days, the work was on the exterior of the building. I’m not sure exactly what they were doing but I swear to god that, in addition to the hammering and screeching electric saws, I was convinced they were using jackhammers. Much of this work was going on a few feet from my bedroom wall. I recognized early hints of tinnitus. (ringing in the ears). Several days ago, they moved inside, and they are now replacing all the floors in the other three apartments. I will get to know these guys even more intimately when they come to do my apartment. They are tearing the place apart, literally bringing the floors down to the studs. In recent days, they have had a crew working in the apartment directly above me and another crew across the hall. I have two speakers on my desk and when angled properly I get this Dolby sound effect. I think they call it “surround sound”. I want you imagine what this is like while self-isolating. “Len. You must be losing your mind. “Sorry. That train left a long time ago.”

I decided that I would use the afternoon to check off a few things on my “to do” list. The most important of these was to get a landline telephone. Most people don’t have a landline and our children would be amused to know that such an archaic thing still exists. Bell is the primary carrier in this part of the world. Because I didn’t have a landline (!), I couldn’t call and speak to a customer service representative (CSR), still my preferred choice as an aging senior citizen. My internet service is spotty and questionable, and this is on good days. I decided to do a Live Chat. If you’ve done a Live Chat before, you know that the name of the CSR appears on the screen with the usual cheery opener “How may I help you?” My suspicions were immediately raised when I saw the name of my problem solver: EZ52678. I was half expecting to see Maxwell Smart and Agent 99 to appear next.

“I want to get a landline.” Agent EZ. “ Please enter your address and postal code.” For the next 20 minutes we did a slow dance as the CSR tried to pinpoint my location in Northern Quebec. And then something funny happened although I didn’t seem funny at the time. The conversation ended abruptly. My first instinct, as always, is that I had hit a button and screwed things up. When you have four thumbs this is a common occurrence. Bell’s system had crashed. A message came across my screen, the very same message that appeared when I first started the Live Chat. “All of our agents are busy. Please stay on the line and the next …blah, blah, blah…”. I waited patiently (?) in the queue and I was reconnected to my new best friend. I will not mention his name for fear of reprisals from his family. “How may I help you?” “I want to get a landline.” ” Please enter your address and postal code.” Remember my previous comments about the power of the human brain? I could see the face of Bill Murray as clearly as if he was sitting in my living room. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, watch Groundhog Day. Hint: Every day that Murry wakes up, it is an exact replica of the previous day.

Is there something slower than a slow dance? It became abundantly clear that my northern location was an impediment. My new CSR spent the next 40 minutes trying to find exactly where I lived. We reached a stalemate. We agreed that any further clicks of the mouse would be futile. My only saving grace during this wasted hour of my life, was that I was able to have a Messenger call with my brother on my cell phone while I was waiting to find out where I lived. You have probably already deduced this. There is no cell service in my village. There’s nothing quite like having your Bell rung.

 

I then moved on to the next item on my to do list. When I first accepted a contract to teach up north, I had to apply for a Quebec Teachers License. That made sense. Miraculously, after a 40 -year hiatus, my Nova Scotia license was still valid. “Old teachers never die. They just lose their class!” I started the paperwork last November. I realize that these things take time but lord god, my life expectancy is only 82. The months passed. Progress was slow. I’m being charitable. I have this visual of a worm trying to climb a mountain. I digress. I expected the worst as Covid descended upon the bureaucracy like fog over my village. As spring turned into summer, a glimmer of hope appeared. My contact person at the Ministry responsible for issuing licenses, e-mailed me with the good news that my documents were in order and that the coveted license would be issue within a few months. A few months? Even factoring in Covid and summer vacations, I didn’t think it would take that long to get the documents into the hands of my School Board. I thought wrong.

I decided to send my friend an e-mail requesting an update. In a heartbeat, I received an autoreply. My friend indicated that she was on vacation and would not be returning until the end of the first week in September. In what can only be construed as pure irony (or treachery) she suggested that I call her work colleague. Hmm. If I had a landline, I would do just that. There was no e-mail address for her workmate. I put a carry forward to request an update on September 9^th. If I die before the license arrives, will somebody notify my executor and go looking for back pay?

The din above me and beside me continued unabated which added to my ever increasing, shall we say, angst. I don’t think that’s the correct word. It is far too genteel. At one point I screamed “f..k off!” Not at anyone in particular. It just needed to be said.  What a complete waste of oxygen that was. No one besides a lip reader could have heard what I uttered. But, dammit, it sure felt good.

Cue the music: “They’re coming to take me away ha, ha, they’re coming to take me away ho ho , he he, ha, ha, to the funny farm where life is beautiful all the time…”

I mentioned tinnitus earlier in this piece. I didn’t notice something the first few days that I was back in my old stomping grounds. Stomping grounds indeed. The other thing I’ve noticed when carpenters work on the floor above you is that you hear every footstep. During a 14- hour shift, that’s a lot of steps. I’m threatening to purchase a Fitbit and give it to one of the workers just to quantify. Hey. Who’s counting? Actually, I could turn this into a game during quarantine. I could lie on the couch (or alternatively curl up in a ball in a corner sucking my thumb) and count the number of footsteps in an hour. I could practice my math skills and extrapolate the number of steps in a 14- hour shift. Who in the hell needs a Fitbit!

(I will let you hit pause and go for a bathroom break. I’m actually going to get my third cup of coffee to keep me going for the next 1000 words)

It took me a while to realize that I actually didn’t have tinnitus. What I did realize while lying in bed one night that there was another noise in my apartment. During the day, I didn’t notice it (I wonder why?) but in the still of the night, I detected a sound coming from behind the wall in my bedroom, the wall at the head of my bed. It was a low, rumbling sound. The wall was actually vibrating. The room next to my bedroom houses the water tank for my building. This water is used for the toilet, shower, dishes, laundry and is drinkable too. The water is delivered by a tanker truck every few days. Of course, a pump is required to move the water through the pipes.

I made a few calls on this joyous birthday afternoon (Not on a landline. Jeez, Len, will you get over this landline thing. It might turn into a landmine) and our affable maintenance man from school dropped by and confirmed my suspicions. The pump was in need of repair. He hoped that this would be done the next day. You know when your stress level is pushing you into dangerous and cynical territory. “What exactly do you mean by next day?” was on the tip of my tongue. I decided to bite my tongue.

I realized that if I didn’t get out of the house for a walk, I might not live to be 69+ one day.

I walked through the tundra and went to the water plant to refill my water jug. The water at the plant is potable and there is a spigot on the exterior of the building where you can go to get very good drinking water. It becomes a dangerous place in the winter when the temperature dip into the -40s and -50s. The water tends to splash when filling water containers. The excess water ends up on the ground. It gets very icy underfoot.

I returned to my apartment to drop off the water. The carpenters next door were doing some very serious steel cutting. I’m not sure exactly what they were cutting or why. NOMB. All I know is that it was piercingly loud, and the work was generating a faint smell of smoke. I decided that my walk to the water plant was insufficient exercise and under the present circumstances, a walk was not only desirable but necessary.

I was feeling infinitely better as I made my way across the tundra towards home. Even though I was still a kilometer away, I thought I detected the sound of an alarm of some kind. When you’re on the tundra, sound carries a long way. As I neared home, I narrowed down the possibilities. My school is literally 50 feet from my apartment. There is a major renovation going on there too. I suspected that the alarm was coming from the school. Wrong again.

The fire alarm for my apartment complex is located on an exterior wall of the building about 4 feet from my living room. Can I put it nicely? The sound is quite shrill. I put two and two together (Remember, I’m pretty good at counting steps) and deduced that the alarm was not at the school but in my building. I entered and found a few of the workers trying to turn off the alarm. You guessed it. Steel cutting indoors creates smoke and smoke is one of those things that triggers a fire alarm. This was a minor distraction. The workers on the floor above were moving furniture around. I could hear them quite clearly. I took several deep breaths. Earlier this summer, I had taken an online course on Trauma Informed Mindfulness. Little did I know that I would begin this newly found practice on the afternoon of my birthday. After 30 minutes of unrelenting, mind-numbing siren wailing, I called my principal. No. I messaged her. Our trusty maintenance man came by and disabled the system. I felt like hugging him but that is a no no in Covid world.

It was now 6:00 p.m. I thought the fire alarm episode might dampen their enthusiasm and curtail the construction work for the day. Len, how can you be so stupid? Of course, they had no intention of stopping their quest to drive me mad. The last two hours consisted of drilling and grinding.

At precisely 8:01, they ceased operations and departed. I stretched out on the couch and reveled in the silence. No. I wasn’t stretched out at all. I was in the fetal position.

Just before going to bed, I received a lovely call from a friend. Her voice was soothing and comforting.

If Bill Murray shows up today, he might just get attacked by a maniacal Maritimer wielding walking sticks.

It turned out to be one of the most memorable birthdays ever, a case of “the good, the bad and the ugly”.

It’s not every day you get to celebrate your birthday with dear friends and a gaggle of carpenters!

Have a great weekend.

 

 

 

Posted on August 10, 2020 under Monday Morning Musings with one comment

The tundra bathed in golden light

 

Going through round 2 of self-isolation gives a person a lot of time to think. Too much apparently as lately I have been pondering a number of serious questions: Who am I? What is the meaning of life? What is love? Is there life after death? And throw in a bonus head shaker… how do they get the caramel into a Caramilk chocolate bar?

Whoa. Back up the bus, Len. You’re losing it.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who has spent more time with themselves recently than they have ever done before because of the pandemic. We’re a culture that’s not steeped in solitude. We have social media, books, movies and our cats and dogs to keep us amused and distracted but there are times when things fall silent and he have time to ponder our place in the universe.

Please, Len. Covid-19 is tough enough without you going all philosophical on us.

You will be relieved to know that I’m not going to give you my take on these weighty questions, but I will admit that I have been particularly reflective lately. It doesn’t hurt, as scary as it might seem, to look in the mirror every once in a while, to take stock. I try not to look in the mirror for too long. Even mirrors have feelings!

Before I left for the north, I had lunch with a woman that I have greatly admired for years. She’s in her 80s and has lived a rich, interesting life. She has made a significant contribution in many ways. Like many of her generation in our part of the world, she grew in a large Catholic family and her faith has been her bedrock. After lunch, I asked her what her feelings were about the afterlife. It is safe to say that her faith comforts her that there is something to look forward to when “I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, and danced the skies on laughter silver wings.” (John Magee – High Flight). I must confess that I don’t have the same degree of conviction as my friend. I continue to feel that heaven is all around us. And so is hell. The world is in a mess these days.

I remember clearly the first time I was asked as a child about the meaning of love. It was in elementary school. I don’t know why the teacher posed this question to a bunch of 9 year-olds when many of us north of 60 still can’t articulate the notion of love in any meaningful way. I can hear you all shouting, “Speak for yourself, Len.” If you have it figured out, congratulations. I explored this topic recently with a friend and she sent me two video links. A pair of rabbis give some interesting insights into love. Thanks to my friend for these links.

Back in the 70s (I now clarify that I’m talking about the 1970s and not the 1870s!), Roger Whittaker, the Kenyan born, British raised singer, sang the song “What Love Is”. I like his description as much as any that I’ve heard:

“Love is a morning sunrise, love is the rain that falls;

Love is an evening sunset, a stranger that calls.

Love is an April shower, the warmth of a summer day,

Love is the hidden sunshine, that chases tears away.

Green as the grass that’s growing, blue as the sky above,

Soft as the wind that’s blowing, all these things are love.

Love is a bolt of lightning, slashing across the sky,

Love is the tender warmth, I see within your eye.”

This was a popular wedding song decades ago. Over the years, I sang at quite a few weddings. I don’t want to tell you the percentage of these marriages that survived. Maybe my singing was the first sour note!

I’m into my second week of self-isolation and mercifully I am allowed to go for walks on “the land”. The tundra is conveniently located a few footsteps from my front door. The landscape is quite different than the winter. At first, it appears rather drab and uninteresting, but every time I walk, I notice something different and beautiful. The light changes often. The picture at the top of the page is a great illustration. As the sun started its slow descent, it bathed the tundra in a blanket of gold. Minutes later, it changed and looked completely different.

The Inuit have a strong attachment to the land. In my short time here, I am starting to understand why.

I try to walk daily to the large inukshuk on the outskirts of town. It is a popular place to meet and watch the northern lights. I go there because it is peaceful. I often touch the massive stones hoping for some inspiration and insights into life’s most haunting questions.

How they get the caramel inside a Caramilk bar is still one of life’s great mysteries!

Have a great week.

 

P.S. HBTM

Posted on August 6, 2020 under Thursday Tidbits with no comments yet

 

Free! Free at last.

 

Self-isolation: Round 2

Have you ever had dreams about becoming really good at something, maybe even an expert? Gardening, sewing, music, sports, an artist? The list is endless. We’re not talking about perfection here but merely striving for excellence. Perfectionists are not much fun to be around in my experience.

For the second time in 4 months, I am doing the self-isolation thing, having left the comfortable confines of my pandemic pound inducing apartment to my other home away from home in Northern Quebec. I arrived here last weekend and have settled into another routine in order to fulfill my 14-day isolation obligation.

So far, I have managed quite nicely. I’m doing a lot of reading. I am completing a 1000-piece puzzle that I started last March but had to abandon in mid -stream when Covid forced us to leave the community rather abruptly. I have done a bit of baking but am trying to scale back on my sugar consumption. I plan to start doing the P90X workouts soon. I had my cable and internet reconnected. Unfortunately, my internet signal is not strong enough to stream Netflix and Crave so I’ll probably cancel these services. I am taking part in daily online orientation sessions with my school board. I feel like a grizzled veteran after my 5- month stint this past winter. I have also taken this opportunity to start writing my 7^th book which will chronicle events of my life in the north. Similar to my previous confinement (it wasn’t a pregnancy!), I plan to write 1,000 words a day for the month of August.

This where the similarities end.

Back home, I live at the end of a dead-end street. It is uncommonly quiet most of the time. Many university students live in the neighborhood and a handful of times each year, things can get a wee bit crazy. Stands of very large trees encircle our buildings providing a natural sound barrier. You get the picture. It’s very peaceful.

Pretty well everyone in our village up north gets around on 4 wheelers in the summer and skidoos in the winter. When you’re buried under snow and ice and it’s -50, most people go outside only when necessary. I have discovered that summer has a much different vibe. New York is known as the city that never sleeps. Move aside, Big Apple – I have a worthy opponent for this title. In the land of the midnight sun, people are out and about seemingly around the clock. Because of my location, only a handful of yards from the tundra, on a road that might be considered a circumferential highway, I see and hear a lot of traffic. Without the buffer of winter’s deep silence, the 4-wheelers are quite loud. I’m being polite. One other observation (not a criticism) but there doesn’t appear to be any speed limits as far as I can tell. When you’re in isolation 24 hours a day, you notice these types of things. At my age, everything seems to go too fast… especially time.

Like many school jurisdictions, summer is a time for renovations and construction. Our board has embarked on several ambitious projects this summer. Some of it is Covid related, some due to an increase in student population (portable classrooms) and regularly scheduled maintenance to Board owned properties, including my apartment building, an aging four-plex. This has resulted in an influx of construction workers. It is a perfect time of the year to get this work done with endless hours of sunlight. Unless of course, these workers are doing a major renovation to YOUR building while you are self-isolating.

The work crew arrived bright and early on Monday (7:00 a.m.). I’m an early riser so that wasn’t an issue. Scaffolding was erected outside my bedroom window and the work commenced. At first, I was charmed by the incessant pounding of hammers and the whir of saws… for the first few hours. When you can’t leave your apartment, the noise has a way of compounding. Actually, it’s exponential. These guys mean business and other than a few short breaks for meals, they work 14 hours a day… 14.5 last evening but who’s counting! For some reason, probably my imagination, the hammering and sawing seem to be getting louder by the day. Having wielded a jackhammer during a summer job in my youth, I am familiar with the sound and the vibration it causes. I swear to god that they were jackhammering the exterior wall of my building, as ridiculous as this may sound. One summer, I worked in a sawmill in Victoria. The sound of massive saws ripping into large Douglas fir trees is a sound I’ve never forgotten. Working close to these saws, I had to wear high grade ear protection. I don’t know if they were trying to cut my building in half yesterday, but the howl of the saws brought back pleasant memories! I wanted badly to go to bed at 9:30 p.m. but one keen worker was still pounding away inches from my bed as the staging was right outside my window. He was close enough to hear me breathe if he had stopped hammering.

I don’t want to be a pessimist, but something tells me that this may not be my last self-isolation. The question of Christmas was brought up at one of our orientation sessions. Will we be allowed to leave the community while the pandemic persists? A definitive answer was not forthcoming which was hardly surprising.

So, I’ve been mulling this over. Self-isolation gives you ample opportunity to think about imponderables. If I fly home for Christmas, I may have to spend the holidays in quarantine. Ho! Ho! Ho!. Upon my return to the north, I would have to self-isolate again. Ditto for spring break and the end of the school year.

I have tried to achieve excellence in everything I do.

I don’t seek to become an expert in self-isolation… unless it’s on a quiet island somewhere in the South Pacific.

Have a great weekend.

P.S. As you read this, I will be walking out on the tundra (pictured above). We have the blessings of the community to go for solitary walks on the land. I might pack a lunch and walk for 14 hours!