I took this photo last night after we went to our local pub for supper. It's in an old ironworks mill located on the river between two sets of falls. We had just had our first big snowfall; the pub's Christmas tree was decorated and lit (you can see it in the window). We both had their fish and chips which come with a very tasty coleslaw made from red cabbage with a lemon dressing. The food is very good here. Mike often sees the chef/owner at the butcher shop. Other favourites on the menu are: hamburger with maple-infused crispy bacon (Lanark County being the maple syrup capital of Ontario), steak, mixed green salad with crispy leeks, quesadillas, sweet-potato fries, roasted chicken, chili...
How nice to come back from working in the city to a cozy meal by the window at the water with a view of the town Christmas lights reflected many times, have good food and wine, for $50 including taxes and a 20% tip.
I once had a crush on the puppet - or more properly, the marionette - 'Alan' from the Thunderbirds TV show. I think he piloted some underwater thingamajig. He seemed soft-spoken and sweet, more my type. My daughter confessed to having had a crush on the fox in the cartoon version of Robin Hood. Apparently many of her friends shared this. At least mine was an object in real life, resembling a human being!
When the kid was a teenager, we would watch old reruns of the Thunderbirds, mute the sound, and make up voices for them. ONe time, two of them were trying to get out of some kind of structure that looked basically like a hydro tower. They were frantic, and called for help: "Help! Help! Our strings are hopelessly tangled!"
Now I live in a town that has a puppet festival, marked by a puppet parade down the main street. All the local businesses have puppets on display. The event was marred this year by the theft of a puppet image of a local/semi-national celebrity, from a restaurant. My friend used to date him. I just admired the puppet from afar.
OK, here he is.
This was taken three years later, and he has a beard, but it gives the idea.
I like the beard.
Developed a thing for beards, as you can probably guess.
A poem he wrote:
the pale winter moonlight still shines
on the matchbox houses
and the powerful mustangs
especially during power failures
but is most at home
on the empty stubble fields
given up for dead
by the corporate agricultural technicians.
- WHH, 1972
Guess what he grew up to be? Yup, agricultural technician.
He used to make me laugh until my sides ached.
Pierre Trudeau was Prime Minister. Richard Nixon was President of the US -- as I recall, the cover story on National Lampoon that year was "Four More Years of Nixon Jokes!" I was in high school: Brandon Collegiate Institute (BCI - same initials as the Brandon Correctional Institute).
In this picture of the newspaper staff, I am seated in front, far left, looking up at the guy standing in the middle who had just said something. Hans is standing behind me. Next to him is Janice Whitley, one of my friends back then.
Seated on the far right is my younger brother Mark's "fave rave", Cindy. He admired her from afar.
In the summer of 1972, I fell in love with a guy that I detested the first few times I met him. An older man in University! Then I came upon him chopping wood one time, shirtless and wearing cut-offs. He made me feel funny in new places. Gee, I feel funny now just remembering it...
Last night, by accident, I came across a web site that had pictures of two old "boyfriends" - well, not exactly boyfriends. One was my very first kiss at the age of two (captured on film somewhere) and the other was a guy I sort of went out with in Grade Nine, before I met my first long-term boyfriend (Hans). It was a web page with pictures from a golf tournament.They haven't exactly aged well. I was pleased to see that I have done very well in the aging man department, comparatively!
The things that brighten your day. Not always nice things!
This is Mike.
He's an INTJ, for those into Meyer Briggs stuff.
He's a walking encyclopaedia of certain histories...except sometimes his own.
Napoleonic battles. Both World Wars (Commonwealth perspectives). Now he's learning about the American civil war. He's visited an empty Gettysberg when it was wrapped in a ghostly fog that muted any sound and we had the place to ourselves. He liked drivng around Virginia, visiting various sites such as Harper's Ferry, Mananassas, Williamsburg, Yorktown.
I'd like him to read Russell Banks, but I think it scares him.
I act out his emotions for him (being an INFP myself). I think it scares him.
He is 51.
He has prostate cancer. He was diagnosed at 50, in February 2004. It was a very bad week.
He had surgery for it in July 2004. And a second surgery to stop massive blood loss the next day. He's fought back from all the awful side effects of the treatment. And now it looks like his PSA levels are starting to rise. Which probably means it has come back and he will need radiation. Probably more side effects. But probably early enough to haed it off. Men with prostate cancer usually die of something else, unless it's untreated, and it goes to their bones. Pierre Trudeau died from it.
If you have any healing thoughts or prayers to spare, please send them out to Mike on the (Canadian) Mississippi.
Both of my parents were veterans of WW II. Mom in the Canadian Women's Army Corps, and Dad in the Royal Canadian Navy. They met after the war, when my Mom was in Deer Lodge Hospital in Winnipeg for her smashed knee, and my Dad was apparently in getting circumcised! War injuries, you know!
My uncles on both sides were all in the forces. Mom's brother Bruce ("Sonny") was in the Italian and German campaigns, I think as a motorcycle messenger. Others were in the air force and army. Dad was on a minesweeper and a frigate (the HMCS Cap de la Madeleine). He also had a parrot for a short time.
My former boss, Jack Stagg, is the Deputy Minister of Veterans Affairs in Canada. He is ill right now, so I am thinking of him today as well as of my family members. I am proud of all of them.
In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place, and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe
To you, from failing hands we throw
The Torch! Be yours to hold it high
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
- Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army
That war and the one after were NOT about oil.
I took this photo last night after we went to our local pub for supper. It's in an old ironworks mill located on the river between two sets of falls. We had just had our first big snowfall; the pub's Christmas tree was decorated and lit (you can see it in the window). We both had their fish and chips which come with a very tasty coleslaw made from red cabbage with a lemon dressing. The food is very good here. Mike often sees the chef/owner at the butcher shop. Other favourites on the menu are: hamburger with maple-infused crispy bacon (Lanark County being the maple syrup capital of Ontario), steak, mixed green salad with crispy leeks, quesadillas, sweet-potato fries, roasted chicken, chili...
