Anything normal lifts the spirits. 

Life in the time of Covid 19 is going to be hard on weeds. If I'm normal, and I've always thought I could at least pass for that, yards are going to be better weeded than ever before. I guess Covid 19 is the devil; it certainly is finding work for idle hands. 

Zen also seems to be entering the picture. Years ago when I read parts of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", I had a vague notion of what was being said, but I've always been more of a sprinter than a long distance runner, not the least bit inclined to do art or crafts, so much of the meaning of that book escaped me. I usually wanted something to be done minutes after I had thought of doing it. Old age has slowed me down. Now I'm willing, or should I say have, to devote a bit more time to 'gettin' 'er done'.  And Covid 19 has added another dimension. The purpose of a day used to be imposed from outside by the need to do this and that. Even in retirement, there always seemed to be things that had to be done. I never believed my fellow retirees who went on and on about how much busier they were than when they were working, but I did have or find things to do to give my life meaning. Now all that is off and meaning has to be found from within, in fewer tasks closer to home. Consequently I do each activity in a more contemplative way, which gets me back to Zen. And reminds me of Camus' novel, "L' Étranger", in which the protagonist at first sees nothing in his prison cell but discovers more and more there as the days pass, if I remember correctly, which I often don't. Stories change with each telling. At any rate, careful weeding and the meticulous removal of rust from the bumper hitch of my car before installing my bike rack have helped to give meaning to the last couple of days. The latter may have been a futile effort because although I was able to drop my bike off to get a spring check up and have a flat tire repaired, it's looking increasingly likely that bike repair shops will not be on the list of essential services and will hence be shut down with my bike inside one of them, a minor inconvenience these days. Especially as weeding is such an engrossing alternative to biking. 

Miriam and I did walk to the Black Rock yesterday, following the rules of physical ( the adjective that now seems to be preferred over 'social') distancing. There was a father at the top with two kids and a dog. The girl, about five, gave me a laugh. I could hear her earnestly trying to get her father to allow her to pick up the dog poop by explaining exactly how it's done, "First you inside out the bag ..."

I'd have given her permission to pick it up right away. That expression deserves to be rewarded. Imagine being that eager to do a job. Work does give meaning to life, but picking up dog poop??  No wonder the owners of Blake's "dark Satanic Mills" were so keen on child labour. 

My spirits were lifted this morning as I weeded in the front yard. A guy I've had a 'You have a very good day' acquaintance with for years walked by as he often does. Until today, that's about all he's said. He's a tall thin man with long grey hair tied at the back of his neck. He walks with a cane and a bit of a stoop but at a good pace. We exchanged names ages ago but have both forgotten. I remember he told me he was from a farm in Saskatchewan, so I think of him as Saskatchewan. Today he stopped to chat, and I discovered that his only regular contact with the internet is a game he plays. He said that one of the guys who plays is younger and only plays at night but this morning he came on and said:

"Hi buddies. Are you surviving the toilet paper Apocalypse? I'm unemployed now."  I laughed and laughed. 

I decided to check my emails before getting out of bed this morning. 

I won't do that again. 

The first one was from Sovereign Lake announcing that they have had to close operations completely as of today. Given the present state of the world, that's a very small thing, but if I remember correctly, Ivan Denisovich said that people don't drown in the ocean; they drown in teacups. And that news was my teacup. I didn't even want to get out of bed. Fortunately I did and went on the CFUW social distancing walk along the rail trail. It was a beautiful day and a good walk. As we were spaced quite far apart, there wasn't much talking. I kept looking around and seeing how vegetation loses its colour and withers over the winter. It was all around me until I came upon a bright little yellow flower surrounded by some shiny green leaves. What a hopeful sign. It will keep me from drowning for a while. 

I hope we all keep on truckin'. 

Today is the first day of spring 

And it's a beauty. We have had warm, sunny weather for about the last ten days, and I've gone up to Sovereign to ski most of them. It had been cold in the hills and springlike in town. I was beginning to think of things to do in the yard, but fortunately I have a couple of friends who often pull me out of my shell. And of course once I'm out I never shut up so now I can't stop saying what a great place Sovereign is to socially distance. Silver Star closed down a week ago and Sovereign asks you to stay outside except to buy a ticket or use the bathroom. I have a membership and my belief that most of the time I go to the bathroom just because I can seems to be true. Jane, Lynne and I were discussing this matter on Tuesday and again today as we stood the correct distance from each other in the parking lot after skiing. Social distancing has not kept us from considering matters of urgency. 

Aside from noticing that the shelves where toilet paper, hand sanitizer and chicken were supposed to be were empty, there hasn't been much change in my shopping in Vernon. Fortunately for me, my Korean friend Lucia gave me some of the sanitizer she finally found at Super Store last week and I have two bottles of rubbing alcohol that May left me. I heard on CBC Radio this morning that there's a recipe on line for making hand sanitizer from rubbing alcohol. Of course if you really want to sanitize to the bone you could apply it straight from the bottle. CBC is certainly taking on the role of covering the 🦠. It's laudable but can get a bit irritating. When it does, I put on an old CD, turn up the volume and dance as much as my left knee can tolerate then I downloaded the CBC Listen app, connect my iPhone to the Bluetooth speaker Jay gave me and do physio  exercises while I listen to past 'Ideas' programs. Like an old car, I'm under repair more than I'm on the road. Talking about old, I think we are appropriating the indigenous term 'elders.' I like that. Lately I've heard many talking heads referring to us as elders. "We have to look after our elders", sounds better to me than the elderly or senior citizens. There's a connotation of wisdom that accompanies the word elder. And I was touched last evening when I looked out the window and saw four young men getting out of their trucks and cars in the church parking lot across the road and standing around for quite a while talking at quite a distance apart. They are not the age group most seriously affected by Covid-19, but they were doing their part. Jay says South Koreans certainly are taking it seriously. His school reopened this week, but they only have about half their students and are not sure they will stay open. The subways are still not crowded, May decided not to return to her school because she has three transfers to make and Jay says there are a few new hot spots in Seoul, so the military is being called in. All schools are closed in BC for an unspecified time. Today for the first time there were no cars on my street because the church and its daycare seem to be closed. 

This thing is real and the end is not in sight. 

Blue sky and banks of snow at Sovereign. Not much sign of Spring there. 

Jay's last day of classes was Tuesday, February 25

Since then I have been getting the covid 19 log every evening instead of the Seoul subway report. He was of two minds about the closure and so was the owner of the hagwon until it was discovered that the father of one of the students, who also lives in the same apartment block as the owner, had tested positive for the virus. At that point the government went into action, completely disinfecting the school and closing its doors. May's schools had already closed the week before, so now they spend most of their time at home. Jay went to the nearby park for a rousing three hours of solo basketball the other day, which was good except that it aggravated the ankle that he broke so seriously while he was living in Montreal. It still has a plate in it. The throbbing is slowly diminishing. They aren't even seeing May's brother and family now because the latter want to make sure that Jay shows no signs of the virus before exposing their two young boys to him. So life is fairly uneventful for Jay and his crew. 

On Wednesday, March 11 it will be ten years since Jim died, ten years and so many changes for Jay and me.  Jim was a powerful presence, and I feel his absence intensely at times. But our lives go on. Jay has married, lived and worked in South Korea, Vernon and South Korea again and I have moved to and lived in the little house in Vernon that Jim and I bought before he died. I have made new friends, travelled to visit old friends and family and seen places I hadn't been to before. We have carried on and discovered that we are quite good at that. It's the element of the unknown in life that keeps me in it. That's easier for me to say than it is for many people. But then I'm happily surprised by the fact that the sun is pouring into this room as I write. 

The sunroom

May has been going through old family pictures during their confinement. She came upon one of her dad that reminded her of one of Jim that I have on the fridge. I took it when we were in Rome. He had just had his hair cut, the best cut of his life, I thought. May's dad and Jim had similar builds and both loved tennis. Jay's comment on the pictures was, "They are both styling their coolest haircut ever. May's dad is the Filipino Elvis." Both men died young.  

Mo and John are away, so I stopped by to check on their house yesterday. When I picked up the mail I was struck by the cover of John's latest copy of 'The Economist'. Two men who got old and angry. 

Monday, February 17

It's Family Day in BC and Alberta, so we old locals aren't going up to the hills because they'll be crowded. But it's a beautiful sunny day, so I had to get outside. As I ate breakfast I listened to an interview on CBC with Erling Kagge, a Norwegian explorer I had never heard of. He's a walker, the only person to have walked to the North Pole, South Pole and the top of Everest. He's in his late fifties now and has done other things, but he still firmly believes that walking, usually alone, is the best. This gave me an idea. I hadn't walked to the Black Rock in about a year. So I did, and it was great. I took two puffs on my new puffer before leaving the house and for the first time since I started using it about a week ago I think it helped my breathing. It also might be the fact that I was not walking at 6,000feet, which is the approximate elevation of Sovereign and Silver Star, but I don't care. I agree with Erling that walking, often alone, and always unplugged is mentally and physically stimulating. 

Part of an interview with Erling Kagge

Casper the Friendly Ghost with a bit of weed to help him through a hard winter on the wall at the top of the Black Rock

Jay, as usual, gave me my laugh for the week via Kakaotalk. Although, also as usual, there's a bit of black in the laugh. It's a selfie of him on the subway on the way to school. He titled it, "Teaching in the time of coronavirus."

The number of cases of Covid 19 is rising in South Korea and some of them are in Song Do, the area where Jay's last school is. Things are being shut down there and he's concerned for the two men who own the school because they are still his friends. They've worked hard to build up the school and it might be closed, at least temporarily. 

This is the picture Jay sent me today of him on the subway. 

Whistle Blowers

The first sound I heard as I lay in bed this morning after I had reached up to turn on the radio was that of whistles being blown in many parts of China.  When the newscaster  explained why, I felt exhilarated. The term whistle blower has almost been worn out, but to actually hear the sound of whistles, each one being blown by a real human being in memory of a fellow human being who died of the disease that he had had the courage to declare to exist and then been forced to recant in a written statement gave me a thrill such as I haven't felt in a long time. I think I was especially moved because last evening as I continued my feeble effort not to lose the little Spanish I have by reading some news in Spanish I had read a report on the death of Dr. Li Wenliang that included a quotation from him that appeared on a Chinese portal, Caixin, on January 30,

"A healthy society must have more than one voice."

Dr. Li's comments could also be applied to the Republican Party in the USA. 

It may be debatable who is "the most powerful man in the world"; I for one would like to see a Xi Jinping and Donald Trump 'duke it out'. But one thing is sure; neither the US nor the Chinese society is in very good health at the moment.

Keep blowing those whistles.  

The Great Outdoors

As exhilarating as the sound of whistles in the morning is the sight of Montane Spruce at the top of Silver Star. This is a picture of Lynne among the ghosts. These trees spend their first winters bent over like fiddleheads by the weight of the snow at the top of the hills. For the rest of their lives they are as upright as minarets even though huge blobs of snow build up on their branches. 

02,02,2020

Today is the first global palindrome day in 909 years. The only thing it makes me think of is the Monty Python skit about the dead parrot but I don't even know why. I looked up famous palindromes. Given that bats have been mentioned as a likely first cause of the coronavirus that is currently occupying the top spot on all news reports, this one struck me as the most apt:

EVA, CAN I STAB BATS IN A CAVE

The biggest laugh I've had at my own expense lately concerns my house and my tendency to make do. I've always been that way which explains why my favourite Newfoundland expression is, "Leave 'er lay where Jesus flang 'er" 

My New Years resolution to leave a bit more space between stimulus and response might be encouraging this trait although I only meant it to keep me from rushing in too quickly to fill every void in a conversation. I rarely rush into action. At any rate, just as the cold weather began my back door lock system showed serious signs of failing. It had been giving hints of doing so for about two years. Jay can attest to that. The key had to be carefully manipulated from the outside but from the inside there was no problem, so I did nothing. But one day in late fall I had trouble unlocking the door from the inside. I finally responded to the situation in a way that was as extreme as my ignoring of it had been. I stopped trying to unlock the door and found some green painters' tape Jay had left. I stuck that over the lock itself lest I forget and try to open the door some time later. Then I taped all around the inside of the door to keep out winter drafts.  I had decided not to touch that door again until spring. It's been a bit inconvenient living with only a front door, especially as the car is parked behind the house and the garbage and recycle are there too, but I'm used to it now. Then two weeks ago the upstairs toilet would not stop running. I looked in the tank and tried the few things I've done before to fix flushers, none of which worked. So I drained it and went to the garage to get the box of parts I knew was there but had forgotten why. I was going to fix it myself until I started reading the instructions. When I Kakaoed with Jay that evening, he was relieved that I had stopped at that point and reminded me of the fact that it was a burst pipe in that bathroom that had caused so much flood damage to the basement room that he had carefully built. That switched me from action to default mode, leave 'er lay. I began using the new bathroom in the basement and set up a potty system in the upstairs bathroom for nighttime. I was laughing with a friend at one point about how I might just keep on making do as the house and I grew older together and various of our parts ceased working. But then I snapped into action, did my physio and found a plumber. My Immigrant Services student's husband is starting up a plumbing and heating company. The back door remains taped shut but that will be fixed in the spring

Moose junction in January after the Christmas decorations were removed and a big snow fell