Holiday State of Mind

When you live at your former vacation destination,

you can start to see things differently.

And not in a good way.

For example, you might look at this picture and say,

"Hmm, time to get out the mower and take care of that grass."

Well, YOU might not get that way. But others might.

So, although today is not a holiday in this country,

and school is not out for another month,

and the calendar summer doesn't start for another three weeks,

the holiday season has started.

Time to get it going in my mind.

Time to slow down. To re-frame. To notice different things.

Like the roadmap in the rock.

Raindrop footprints in the sand.

Balsam fingers.

Two inviting chairs on a late-May morning.

Ahhhh.

In Praise of Technology, Science, and Mathematics

I love nuance and shades of meaning. Really, I do. But sometimes, all that chiaroscuro gets to me. I like a world in which problems have solutions, not just "well, this might be the least bad option." I like it when I can figure out a scientific solution to a problem and dredge up the technology to implement it. I like it when I can find out information that helps me make decisions. I like when I can map out other factors in that decision. And if I can't do any of those things myself, I like being married to someone who can.

So today I am loving me some technology, science, and math. Here are the specific whys.

1. Problems can suggest their own solutions. The water in the lake is low, and that magnifies the effect of weather patterns (high-pressure systems, low-pressure systems) on the water level. High-pressure systems mean water is pushed down here and goes to another part of the lake. Low pressure here allows water levels to rise here. It's all really cool and beautiful to watch--until the fluctuation causes the water level to fall below the intake valve, which causes the pump to lose its prime, which in turn messes up the water system at the camp property, and that's important because someone is staying there and wants to flush toilets and take showers.

So, to isolate the water intake from the fluctuations in the lake level that are caused by atmospheric pressure, Roy upended a container of water over the intake. The container is long enough that it creates a little world of plentiful water over the intake. Now, regardless of the vicissitudes in water level around the intake, the intake is essentially "underwater." The same properties of water that allow you to suck it up through a straw (or juice in a turkey baster)--the same ones that make the intake vulnerable to atmospheric pressure in the first place--make this all possible. I'd draw a picture but this is all too much like work. It's a genius technological solution, trust me.

2. The scientific method lets you find out stuff. Take my car (please). It's a 1994 Camry. For the past three years (at least), I have struggled with whether to buy a new one or fix the "whatever is making that sound" on this one. So far, I have fixed it, but now it's leaking oil. This might be a deal-breaker. But part of the information we need to know is how much oil it's leaking. So there's a plastic tray under the car. When it's been there 24 hours, we'll go check it out. And then we'll know. And that will be useful information for #3.

3. Mathematics helps you make decisions. I don't just mean arithmetic, though knowing that $15,000 is greater than $1500 is also helpful. It's the analytical part, the decision-making part, the part that lets you know when exactly you're at the point of diminishing returns. Sure, $1500 is always less than $15,000, but is $1500 this month plus another $2000 next month plus another $3000 four months down the road, for a total of $6500 in a six-month period, a wise investment? Or is it time to put that $6500 toward a $15,000 car that won't require any serious outlay of fixing $$ until the day after the warranty expires?

Some of the factors in that decision are human and thus squishy. But some aren't. And the mathematics (okay, and the arithmetic) stops me from deciding to buy a new car just because it's spring (okay, almost summer) and I'm a sucker for clean and shiny in the spring. Mathematics lets me create a decision tree that weighs my financing options vs. my income (should there be any). And sure, I probably don't need those random semesters of calculus to figure out that income is good when you're thinking about buying something. But it's comforting to be able to look at the numbers.

The fact that not one of these solutions was my idea doesn't diminish my satisfaction in them, either. To be fair, the decision analysis is mostly my bailiwick, Roy being susceptible to the shiny himself. And that's okay, too, because science, technology, and mathematics are all about teamwork.

So go, mathletes, engineers, and techno-nerds--especially the ones working to fix BP's mess. We are grateful for you, the people who use the physical principles of this world and who explain them to us, even when we try your patience because we should have learned some of this in grammar school. Today is your day, and today we say "thank you!"

Same, Change

One of the most fabulous things about this time of year is the rate at which things change. Like the "bunchberry" blossoms. Saturday, I cleared out some gardens and raked leaves. These suckers were harldy recognizable as buds. And today, hello!

And then there's the stuff that doesn't change, not really. Like this.

So the water's a little lower, the sky today is moody, the lake is undecided as yet. But (a) this is still beautiful, and (2) this is also a typical scene--I have lots of similar shots.

And, I will just say, thank goodness for the unchanging

in the midst of the ever-changing.

In Real Life

At this time of year, everything is greening (and releasing pollen, bleah), which means that we're surrounded by beautiful photos. We snap our fair share of them, but I am also making a conscious choice to enjoy the view instead of taking (or missing) the picture.

This morning, this view sent me to find the camera and snap some shots. And now? Meh.

What can I say? It looks better in real life. The birch is green and fresh in a way that even cropping can't show.

See? It's fine. Not special. It's interesting to me because I live here. But it doesn't communicate what I want it to.

There's a lesson in here, too. Maybe the same one: some experiences just can't be captured. Maybe none can--maybe experiences can be only interpreted in a different medium. And some media work better than others. Some experiences translate better than others.

So, real life is different. In some cases, better. In others, just different.

As someone who spends a lot of time in her head, and who spends much of the rest of her time trying to capture experiences in words, this is another good lesson.

Real life is always different, and that's the point. That's why they call it "art" or "writing" or "photography" instead. Duh. Sometimes I'm a little slow to the party.

But I will keep taking pictures--not so much to see if I succeeded in a particular goal, but out of curiosity: what picture will this turn out to be, really?

There is no "After"

Oops, I did it again.

In spite of my best resolutions, I again forgot to take a "before" picture, so any "after" picture I were to post now wouldn't show the true results of my hard work.

Which is okay, since I don't happen to have an "after" picture. I could go take one, but it's not really "after" yet. I'm not sure when "after" is going to be.

I've been making our larger camp ("cottage" in southern Ontario, "cabin" in Manitoba) habitable for relative strangers who have been warned about the virtue of approaching this experiment with a sense of adventure. One of the group is expected tomorrow. And, in a near-miracle, we seem to be ready. Even the water seems to be okay, for now. (That sound is me madly knocking wood.)

All this "strangers at camp" stuff is new territory for my siblings and me. Until our parents retired in the late 1980s, our family always stayed at the other place, the "it may be a shack but it's our shack." This other, larger camp had been built by my grandfather so that he and my grandmother would have a "nice" place to stay and dote on grandchildren from afar. However, they were incapacitated around 1960 and stopped using the place.

Because my mother preferred the shack and our time was always limited in the summer, the "nice" camp lay fallow for about ten years. Then a math colleague of my mother's mentioned that he and his wife were finding it too difficult to paddle Quetico in their retirement. My mother said they were welcome to stay in this place--and issued the warning to them I mentioned earlier, about the virtue of approaching this experiment with a sense of adventure.

For some fifteen years, the Mendenhalls stayed in this camp. They were a treasure. They brought it back from edge of ruin. They cleaned and painted, fixed and fiddled and futzed about, and generally made do with the quirks of the place. Every year when we arrived for our three weeks in the summer, my mother would comment about a new piece of furniture (an end table made from a painted wooden spool, a lawn chair with new webbing and a grafted-on wooden arm), and Dr. Mendenhall would allow, "Picked it up cheap." Which meant, "at the dump."

The Crapture delivered the "nice" camp from many vestiges of his, ahem, ingenuity, and that of my parents. (The four of them could have given those Hoarders shows guaranteed syndication.) A few last bits are stored in an outbuilding until we have another full load. I think of it as a form of reincarnation: from the dump it came, and to the dump it shall return. Er, landfill. Ashes to ashes, dump to.... never mind.

So tomorrow is a new beginning. And as Green Day says, "every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." Which is as close, I guess, to an "after" as I am going to get here.

And that's okay. Because the "before" was "now," and the "after" will be its own "now," and I know that the "now" I'm living in is pretty darn good. (But, that wish list.)

Angel in a Beat-Up Van

Sometimes I know I am Heard.

See? (Lots of heavenly pictures around here in the morning.)

Yesterday, my husband's solution to the water issue seemed promising. Today, I plucked a few moments from the rest of my to-do list to go see how I could help. Then I heard an old van full of handy-guy stuff lumbering up the path. (Similar to a percussion ensemble.)

Yippee! the guy who knows all about our water system, who had been taken out of commission by a wrenched knee and painkillers, showed up just in time to coach Roy through the pump stuff and confirm information about the (sadly, apparently useless) well.

Is everything resolved? No.
Do I still have a wish list? Yes. In spite of all the blessings.
Absolutely, I do.

But I do have hope, and I have a new appreciation
for the divine nature of relationships.

Because, baby, that lake
is big
and cold
and wide
(if not deep).

And,
like it or not,
darkness does gather--

And we have each other.

And yes--that is enough.

Wanted

I wouldn't post this to Craig's or anyone else's list, but just in case the Universe is listening, here are a few things we could use around here.

1. Fewer side effects. My brother (and the rest of us [his family], plus every other person touched by cancer)--we appreciate the whole existence of chemotherapy and all, but the drugs are difficult to tolerate. Please help researchers figure out better cures that hurt less.

2. More water. Thanks so much for the five inches of water in the bay in front of us. By Wednesday or so, we really really need a foot. Actually, a foot on top of the five inches would be better. We're looking at an old well as an alternative. We're contemplating other solutions that will allow us to meet our commitment to the people who are spending their holiday in the house that requires the water. But more water would be really really nice.

3. Inspiration. Also known as mental and physical energy, problem-solving skills, the fortitude to be persistent, the resources for the long haul. This is not for me, it's for all those fighting illness, the researchers, and those water-problem-solving people. Also, allergy sufferers, who are a significant subset of the water group. Although it's also for me because I know that being around inspired people inspires me. So sure, I'll cop to self-interest here.

It seems unfair to ask for anything when I already have so much. However, is anyone in the world so blessed as to be without a wish list?

Thanks in advance.

Re-Learning Again

You heard it here first: knowing and doing are two different things.

Or maybe you just hear it here often. We tend to be slow that way.

Case in point:

"Where the Fox Was"

This fox.


I didn't happen to take the first shot of the fox, but I have several like it--of loons, mostly. Also a few deer.

The phrase "wasted film" loses more meaning every day. So the lesson--just let it go, will ya?--might be difficult to learn. What's the harm in trying for the shot, even if you fail? I mean, if you get it, what a great shot!!

Unless you're trying so hard for the shot that you never see the fox/loon/deer.

Oh. That lesson.

Eternal Verities

1. Boys like to throw things. Rocks, for example. Often at each other,

but sometimes just into the water.

They will also build dams at any opportunity.

No matter the futility of holding back Lake Superior.

2. Boys (of many ages) like to go wading.

OK OK girls, too, about all of it: throwing rocks

(except for the "at each other" part),

building dams, holding an astounding disregard for futility,

and wading.

It's just that they're hardly ever caught on camera doing so.

3. It's harder to wade to Caribou than it looks.

But not as hard as it should be.

(Roy didn't get beyond mid-shin, and he could have gone another hundred feet out.)

And here's today's "it's a heartbreakingly beautiful morning" shot.

(That, too, is always true--for me, anyway, which is why I live here.)

Before and After: Dates of Ending

Yesterday marked the 65th anniversary of VE-Day. It was also the 10th anniversary of my mother's death--she died near midnight between the 7th and the 8th.

Nazi Germany decided, by surrendering, the date of VE-Day. The coroner, who in Oklahoma is always summoned to a death that occurs outside a private home, decided my mother's death day.

But when did the war--for either of them--really end?

War historians can mark turning points of the war in Europe. I suppose a physician, or possibly my father, could pinpoint the dates when my mother lost significant abilities.

And yet. There are dates. And I have to say, it's nice to have a specific date to hang an event on.

That may sound odd, given that one doesn't "celebrate" death anniversaries in the same way one celebrates birthdays or the end of a war. And having a set day of remembrance doesn't mean you don't miss someone on another (or, say, EVERY OTHER) day, or that on May 9 everyone in Europe yawned and said, "What's next?"

My point is that it's nice to have before-and-afters. I still enjoy shades of gray, I remain leery of black-and-white thinking--but some boundaries and borders are useful. Even when they don't take the form of a line, but of a point. Like a date on a calendar. Like yesterday. Or today, Mother's Day.

Happy celebration, whatever it is you're celebrating.

Harsh Spotlight

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Canadian Navy. This week, parades, pageants, and celebrations have been staged at bases across the country.

On Monday, a Canadian sailor was killed in Afghanistan. The first sailor (an explosives expert) to die in this war. That makes, officially, 143 Canadian forces personnel, and two civilians (diplomat and journalist). Plus how many Afghan citizens?

Ouch. Just ouch.

Life Imitates Art

This is "Sea Monster Descending." I can see better how Woodland Artists visualize their paintings.

I call this "Still Life with Bird Poop."

This is "Abstract #2, Scat-Free." (Whatever is doing this has got to be something bigger than a bird, but no tracks and no scat...so far as we can see.)

This, of course, is very Group of Seven. Call it "Dying Spruce at Conmee Point, Mid-Morning."



This is just your "look how low the lake still is" picture for today.



And today would be my mother's 93rd birthday. When I was off at university, I received a letter from her (she wrote a note to one of us kids every morning) that said, "Today is Mother's birthday. She would be 113."

I guess that means I'll be eating scones and thinking of my mother every May 3 for another ten years, at least.

The Shiny: Not The Important

Grrr.

A few weeks ago, a cabinet minister got booted out of cabinet and out of the Conservative Party. Lots of hoopla. Lots of hearings, mostly about her husband, did he have a contract to lobby for a green business, blah blah blah.

Meanwhile, no discussion about the torture of prisoners in Afghanistan and what the Canadian government knew when. No talk about what we expect our soldiers to do and how we expect them to survive psychologically.

Why the attention on the "scandal"? Because everyone--opposition parties, media, the public--responds to the shiny. As in, "I'm paying attention to something important, I'm about to take action and Ooooh! Something shiny over there! I'm going over there." A person who is tap-dancing is pointing to something shiny. Over there.

A kerfluffle. Gossip. It's a slippery slope from letters on parliamentary letterhead, official BlackBerrys, text messages from the Hill, is-it-lobbying-or-is-it-a-social-call to the wide-eyed "news" tidbits read by Mary Hart on Entertainment Tonight.

Then whoa! The question of Afghan detainees comes back into the spotlight. PM Harper has been stalling Parliament's previous brief attention on the topic--its demands to know what the government knew about detainees and torture, and when it knew it--by dumping banker boxes full of papers with all the words redacted.

Parliament went to Daddy--er, complained to the Speaker. He deliberated and then made a 45-minute-speech last week that is the equivalent of saying "You kids have two weeks to work it out or else." Or else what?

But, I thought, at least we're getting somewhere. Once they get the administrivia figured out (for which there are precedents that do work, south of the border, y'all), we'll talk about detainees, about Canadian policies in Afghanistan, about how exactly Canada will get out of Afghanistan in 2011....You know, the important stuff.

Alas, it has become apparent that the Speaker's affirmation that Canadian politicians are expected to behave like adults--that is, to find a solution to this "problem" that allows elected representatives of Canadians to see material while still protecting the "safety of our troops"--is not about either the detainees or the troops. It's not even about sensitive information.

It's again about the shiny, the power. Does Parliament have the power to force the Prime Minister to cough up information that the public has a right to know? Or does the Prime Minister have the power to hide indefinitely behind "security," because he knows that nobody, but nobody, will stand up to him if it means an election?

Power: Does the Prime Minister have too much power? Are Parliamentarians irrelevant?

Important: Are young people killing other young people, and children, and old people, in horrific ways, for questionable gain?

Power. The ultimate shiny object. Too bad important isn't so shiny.