The Best Thing About Winter is . . .

I have decided that the best thing about winter in Canada is flannelette sheets.  After a cold winter day, they feel so warm and comforting to climb into at night.  They seem warm even when you first get into bed, unlike cotton or silk sheets in summer.  They welcome you into their comfort as if to say, “Come and let me snuggle you for the night”.  As you may guess from that admission, I’m not much of a winter person.  I don’t ski and I don’t skate any more.  After walking a couple of blocks to get to work on the coldest days in Ottawa, I no longer relish walking anywhere.  I no longer get any satisfaction from shoveling snow which is why I pay a snow clearing service to do it for me.  Even my dog does not like to go for a walk on a winter’s day.  My wife and I don’t travel south in winter.  After a couple of weeks of warmth, it is just too horrific to return to the snow and cold. I’m an indoor person.  I do get a lot of writing and projects done in the winter, but it is no substitute for being able to get outside.

Summer, on the other hand, is the time when we thrive.  We get the gazebo put up and move the patio furniture out.  The gazebo is like another room in our house.  We talk and read in our glider rockers.  We eat out there as much as we can.  I barbeque. We watch our dog running around looking alive or basking in the sun on her outdoor bed. Even when it rains, we have clear curtains to keep us dry.  And all the while, we soak up the heat.  Neither of us minds the heat.  We’ve lived in the US south where heat and humidity are much worse than here. 

My favourite activity in summer is golf.  My father introduced me to the game when I was thirteen at a par three course and driving range. My father had learned the game in Scotland in the 1920s and had even played in Shanghai, China when he lived and worked out there in the 1930s.  By fourteen I was playing on a regular course and before I went to college at eighteen, I was scoring in the low eighties.  College and the early years in the Navy and family life kind of slowed down my regular play, but I still golfed whenever I could.  I played in many interesting places.  I played in the fog at the military course, Hartland Point, in Halifax.  I played at a course in Charleston, South Carolina where the signs on the edge of the fairway admonished you to beware of the snakes and alligators.  That sure made you keep your shots going straight.  I played on a US Navy course in Panama when it was so humid a club slipped out of the hands of one of my playing partners and lodged in a tree.  I played on a course high above Monte Carlo where if you hooked your ball on one hole, it was liable to land on the casino.  I played in Scotland where I borrowed the pro’s clubs, but they didn’t make my play any better.  I have played in five of Canada’s provinces where one of my favourite courses is an out-of-the-way place outside New Glasgow, Nova Scotia.  I even played golf in San Francisco . . . on my honeymoon.  I’ve played well and I’ve played badly. But it doesn’t matter; I’ve enjoyed myself no matter what. 

Now that children have left home and we are retired, we usually don’t travel in summer.  We much prefer to travel in May or June, or September of early October when the weather is still good and places are quieter.  We don’t usually travel far.  Visits to our children, who all live away from Ottawa, or to favourite hotels and resorts within less than a day’s drive are the limit of our adventures.  As long as it is warm, it is good.  We do have some dream trips we hope to make.  We both love train travel, and we want to take the Rocky Mountaineer between Banff and Vancouver since we have children that live at both ends.  We would also like to take the train to Halifax to visit old friends and old haunts.  We would like to visit Scotland since we both have roots there.  These things will come but in the meantime, we’ll enjoy our summer living around home.

As the days are getting longer and warmer, those summer days are getting closer.  In the meantime, I’ll go to bed at night and bury myself in those warm, cozy flannelette sheets.

The Culture of Paranoia

My wife was looking thorough a trunk we keep in the basement the other day and came upon four newspapers that told of a tragic event that would change things for many years to come.  The newspapers were dated September 12^th, 13^th, 14^th and 15^th 2001 and of course told of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11^th.  It was the beginning of a period where paranoia became part of our culture.  We have been suffering from it ever since.  The progression of the headlines is interesting in themselves:

 - September 12^th – “An Evil Act”

 - September 13^th – “We Are at War”

 - September 14^th – “We Will Rip Them Up”, subtitled “U.S. Vows Revenge ‘in the first war of the 21^st Century’”

 - September 15^th – “Our Closest Friends” recounting the mass rally on Parliament Hill as Canada mourns those killed in the attack.  A subtitle in this edition said, “Bush promises to ‘rid the world of evil’.

And so started the war on terrorism, and as in all wars, the U.S. in particular, and the rest of the western world to a lesser extent, became afraid of the ‘enemy’, just like we had become afraid of the Germans and Japanese during World War 2.  Or just as we had become afraid of the Russians during the Cold War.  Except we could not truly identify the enemy by country, but only by ethnicity and religion.  Nonetheless, the U.S. thereafter entered into two wars against two countries.  Against Afghanistan it was triggered by the intelligence that the man who had instigated the attack lived in hiding in that country.  It also seemed to be justified on the basis that the Taliban government of Afghanistan was not friendly to the U.S.  In Iraq, the justification was the false premise that the leader of that country had weapons of mass destruction.  But the fact that most of the perpetrators of 9/11 were from neither country did not enter into the equation. There was a war to be fought, and now we were at war, so we must be fighting terrorism.  The fact that both of these wars created more terrorists, who resented foreign powers coming into their countries, than had ever been seen before again did not enter the thoughts of the western leaders who waged these wars.  A tragic spiral of violence and counter-violence entered our lives and inevitably our culture.

“I have never heard anyone state what the objective of the Afghan war was or is other than to punish someone for the 9/11 attacks.”

Me

"The objective of the Iraq War was to change the regime of Saddam Hussein.  This was achieved within days of the initial attack.  The war went on for years."

Me (again)

One of the side effects of this terrorist-induced paranoia in the U.S. was a growing feeling that, thanks to the Second Amendment, they had to have more guns to fight off terrorists whoever they may be.  Since 2001, there has been a huge increase in the number of guns that have been bought by private citizens.  Another wave of buying came about more recently when rumours circulated that somehow, President Obama was going to take their guns away, or at least stop them from being sold.  This was another sign of the paranoia that was gripping the nation.  Guns plus paranoia means that bad things are going to happen.  And so we have evidence through such things as the shootings of black people at a prayer meeting in Charleston, South Carolina.  Closer to home, we have the recent shooting at a mosque in Quebec City.  We have no way of tabulating the number of shootings that have been perpetrated because of misidentification or fear of break-ins.  But one story in Saturday’s newspaper brings it into stark reality.  A Canadian veterinarian living in the northern part of Florida with her husband was returning to her gated community one night.  She followed a pick-up truck through the community gate and proceeded to her home.  On the way she was accosted by a man and his wife with an assault rifle and accused of being “the Killer”.  She eventually identified herself to the satisfaction of the man with the gun.  He told her that his daughters had been followed through the gate into the community by “a killer” and had called their father for help.  He responded with his assault rifle.  The paranoia that was displayed during this one incident that could have got the veterinarian shot is amazing, but symptomatic of the culture the U.S., and as a result, the rest of the western world now lives in.  And to a large extent, we can thank 9/11 for that.

“To the wicked, everything serves as a pretext.”

Voltaire

Quebec City, 2017

At least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity: idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political ideas.
  - Aldous Huxley

What a horrible, tragic thing that happened this past weekend.  Six Canadians, all respectable members of the community, are shot to death because they had the temerity to be praying at their mosque.  What did the killer think he would accomplish with this act?  Did he want to start an ethnic war like the young man in South Carolina wanted to start a race war?  Did he think that the rising right wing movements gave him licence to carry out this act?  Or did he just want to play with guns?  We may never know the whole story.  If other factors point to his obvious guilt, then his motivation may never be questioned.

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
  - Bertrand Russell

And then there was the totally stupid response from President Trump’s press secretary when he stated that this was proof that the order to stop all immigration from seven Muslim countries was the right move.  Did he not realize that the Muslims in this shooting were the victims, not the perpetrators?  Or was he saying that if there were no Muslims in the country, they could not be shot?  It is not that I can blame Mr. Trump for the tragedy, but I can certainly fault him and his staff for their reaction. 

The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.
  - John Ciardi

 

And following on after the US reaction, there was our own version in Kellie Lietch trying to bolster her leadership campaign by pretty much saying that if we test people for “Canadian values” when they try and enter the country, this would never have happened.  Huh?  I am sure that if she ever did become PM and got to carry out her promise, the “values” she will espouse will be conservative values (consisting of what?).  In this case, as an immigrant myself, my parents might never have made it here.  My father was not a conservative in any way, shape or form.  Among other things, after spending over five years in China in the late 1930s, he thought that the Communist take-over could be the best thing that happened to the average Chinese.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
  - Voltaire

As has been pointed out by various commentators, there has never been an incident of a Muslim refugee or immigrant ever carrying out shootings or terrorists attacks in Canada.  A few have tried, mainly disaffected young men.  And we have seen our share of “converts” go off to the Middle East to fight with terrorist organizations over there.  Many of them are dead or returned home disillusioned. But all of the “terrorist” type actions in Canada have been carried out by Canadians.  In large part, it is the same in the United States.

It raises once again the conflict between what is called the right and the left.  Although it is common practice to blame those on the left for many of the ills of the world or at least western society, it has almost exclusively been those on the right who have pulled the trigger or detonated the bomb.  The right are the most adamant about going to war, and with the rise of right wing governments, this is very troubling.  We already have China saying that war with the United States is almost inevitable. 

I'm glad I didn't have to fight in any war. I'm glad I didn't have to pick up a gun. I'm glad I didn't get killed or kill somebody. I hope my kids enjoy the same lack of manhood.
  - Tom Hanks

So what role should Canada play as still one of the most liberal governments of the day?  I think that we should continue to welcome refugees and immigrants from anywhere in the world (including the United States), and make them feel as welcome as possible.  Most of them could well end up as professors, professionals and shop owners just like the men who were taken from our society this past Sunday night.  We must work hard to maintain our sense of inclusiveness that made these men valued members of our community.  

 You can't shake hands with a clenched fist.
Mahatma Gandhi

I may get some negative reaction to this blog, but it is my blog wherein I express my ideas and opinions.  If you disagree with me, write your own reasoned arguments and ideas.

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
  - Flannery O'Connor