Mom and Three Islands

You left one island for another
To become a wife and mother
From Dublin to Red Island a new life to embrace
Day by day the goal was for the betterment
Through island life and then resettlement
Standing tall, friend to all, child of hope and grace

It wasn’t always easy living
Life in the new land could be unforgiving
And different from the one you’d lived in the city you left behind
Courage, love and hope sustained
You worked through hardship and through pain
To became the constant guiding light as through life our paths did wind

And the summers we got to spend
Back with you in Ireland
Built for my sister and me whole new world to explore
Bay to city; children transformed
And a part of Dublin in us reborn
Three homes, three lives three islands that reside within us evermore

But then your parents passed away
So tragically, on the same day
A trip had to be made to settle affairs of life and heart
A legacy stolen, treachery
You took the high road so easily
And unselfishly you moved on; another brand new start

Mom, Me and Sis taken Aug 12, 1988 (my wedding day)

As time moved on and your health failed
That love and grace it never paled
A smile and thoughts for others until the end it came
To us left here you’re never gone
Your gentle hand and heart live on
That smile and then your laughter when someone says your name

The songs and music still remain
Ave Maria and La Boheme
Opera never was for me but your music’s in my bones
Each time my fingers touch the strings
I think of you and my heart sings
A song for three island places that through you became our homes

Catherine T. Hayes-McCormack-Barry,
1923-1991
“Mudder”
Always missed

Welcome to Cancerland

Reblogged from FEC-THis:

A year ago today I suspected all was not as well as it should be with my health. My suspicions proved more accurate than I imagined. Life has been an endless stream of hospital appointments, blood draws, infusions, procedures, drugs, side effects and more drugs ever since. The experience has changed my life beyond imagination.

I'd been wondering about my health for a while.

Read more… 1,752 more words

A friend has just had an unwelcome anniversary. She's been battling breast cancer for one year now. In this blog post she powerfully expresses what this has meant to her and to those close to her.

A Little Quiet Please?

They’re all heading more or less towards the west right now. It so happens that Newfoundland is right along the path of most transatlantic flights between North America and Europe. There are a lot of them. All day long, no matter where you are in our sparsely-populated place all you have to do is look up. Chances are you will spot at least one flight and generally three to five are visible at any given times, assuming there’s no cloud cover, of course. But you always hear them.

Screen grab taken from image generated by flightradar24.com around 2pm on May 7, 2013. Image shows current air traffic over Newfoundland Canada.

Another screen grab from flightradar24 showing info on the Airbus that overflew–and which also inspired this post.

As I type this, sitting on my back deck a somewhat noisy Airbus 330 just overflew St. John’s making its way from Manchester to Orlando, the passengers no doubt eagerly anticipating a few days in the hot sunshine. I checked: it’s currently 21 C in Manchester and 24 C in Orlando so maybe the change will not be as pronounced as expected but, I suppose there’s always the great Craft Beer Festival on the 11^th, something I’d even consider hitchhiking down to see…after all it wouldn’t do to drive, it being a BEER festival and all. Here’s another, this time a Delta 767 from Paris heading to NY. That one was fairly quiet; I barely heard it.  It never stops.

It’s a Tuesday afternoon and the temperature here is 19 C and, yes, I’m out on the deck and, yes, it’s supposed to be a work day. So why am I here? Retired? No, not until after August. Sick? Yes, sort of. It’s a cold. Not a man-cold, mind you, just one with enough symptoms to make me heed the same admonition I give to co-workers who insist on martyring themselves, “Why didn’t you just stay home and keep your germs to yourself?” Well I did. There’s nothing much stopping me from working—I am in eLearning after all—except for a general disposition not to do so today.

So out here on the deck it is just me, this laptop, Two and his book.

And the sounds! There’s a bit of a breeze; there always is. It’s stirring the trees behind the house. Spruce and fir mostly so they always present a barrier and the resulting turbulence gives an ever present swish; the background noise to my life here. It being mid-day the birds are relatively quiet, only the odd one here and there. You should hear them in the mornings and evenings, though! No squirrels right now. I’m thankful that those “rats with cute little tails” are not so plentiful as they have this thing about my shed, the contents within it and, of course the recycling. But then again, this is their planet too and they wouldn’t be this close if the developer was not on the other side of the hill busily putting houses everywhere he can cram them in.

Those sounds too: hammers, saws, excavators, trucks. Fortunately the trees and the hill do a decent job of muffling them. Not entirely though.

And the road; a few hundred metres away, through the trees and down the hill lies the always-busy Kenmount Road. Lots of traffic now; it’s constant, so much so that all you really hear when you listen are the punctuation marks: sirens, Jake Brakes and, my least favourite, Crotch Rockets. On days when the road is wet it gets louder, of course.

Sometimes it gets annoying. The sounds of nature are always welcome but the other ones, the sounds of industry/civilization, not always so.

But this is Newfoundland and Labrador after all. We are sparsely populated—three times the size of Great Britain and less than one present of the population. It’s not hard at all to get away from the normal sights of civilization. I could, for example, just enter the woods behind my house or, better still, climb into the forest on Kenmount Hill. There I might even spy one of those moose or maybe even those elusive loons I’ve been looking for.

There would still be the unwanted sounds, though. The construction and the cars—there’s no escaping them within the confines of the city.

Fine. I could instead just go in the car and maybe take one of the many side roads that wind for kilometres into the country, maybe even the old railway bed.

Still sounds. The old roads are a haven for the many off-road enthusiasts who love tearing through the back-roads on their quads, dirt-bikes, expensive four-wheel-drive trucks and, in the winter, snowmobiles. And the builders—there’s scarcely a road where they can’t be found building a cabin (you probably refer to them as cottages) for someone.

We still have an out, though. This province is immense and, yes, under-developed. I can easily just take one of those quads or a boat and head out there to where there’s nobody at all. How’s that? From there you can get the birds, the animals the wind and, if you want, the ocean sounds too.

But wait—the airplanes! Right now there’s a giant Air France Airbus 380 heading from Paris to New York. When it’s gone there’ll be another, and then another. It never ends.

What has ended is the existence of true quiet spaces in my province. And, no, the sounds are not always that bad—modern high-bypass jet engines are much quieter than the ones they’ve replaced. It’s just that they all serve as a constant reminder that there are very few places of true solitude left on our planet.

This evening there will be a lull then slowly the traffic will build again. All night long they will be heading east, back to Europe.

Young and Old: Skills, Tools and Points of View

Load just about any game on an electronic tablet and hand it off to a three- or four-year-old. Chances are they will easily learn how to play the game. In fact, you will likely find that they play the game at least as well as you do, perhaps even better. What marvels our modern children must be! Far better than their slower, less advanced elders, right?

Take a look at typical teenagers. Most of them carry mobile ‘smartphones’ and just about all of them have access to the Internet. They are all adept at using devices to socialize online. But it’s not just social networking and gaming. Most of their reading and shopping is also done electronically as is their research, fact checking, and navigation. Many of their ‘get-togethers’ take place online, probably in immersive gaming environments. If not, chances are that some online tools were used to arrange for the face-to-face ones.

Not much like us older people, huh? Unlike our younger counterparts, for whom the online environment is an integral part of their daily lives, for so many of my (older) generation, it’s an add-on; a place we go to from time-to-time—maybe even frequently—to bring some added value to our lives.

Here it comes. You probably know this but let’s just state it anyway:

While the younger people love and respect, very much, us older people that intersect their lives, they are generally of the mind that we are not in touch with what they consider today’s world. They find our efforts at using technology to be crude and clumsy. Yes, they appreciate the fact that we do try and keep up with their world but they ‘know’ deep inside that us poor backward fuddy-duddies are far too stunned (colloquial—means somewhat stupid but in a lighthearted way) to really keep up. While in many respects we are to be taken seriously, it still remains that for most of the things that matter to them we’re really a part of the past, maybe the present, but not really the future.

There’s a companion to this. We, the older generation, are aware of this contention. Not only do we acknowledge that it’s at least partly true but we go so far as to try and adjust ourselves to this new world while trying to prepare them for a world we know will be much different. Well, at least some of us do. Yes, I know there are many who refuse to acknowledge that there may be change ahead, refuse to try and deal with it and yes, there are those who actively try to block it…for all sorts of reasons that may seem justified to them but which, to me, sound just plain nutty. Not that a sober sense of skepticism isn’t a good idea, mind you! But yes, most of us to try and adapt and accept that the next generation’s world will be a different one.

Through all of that, we are still at some level or other viewed as a bit out of touch, and will never be able to fully engage as they do.

Perhaps that deserves a closer look.

From time to time I find it useful to revisit my grade-school-aged self, after first encountering the tools and implements used by my grandparents and great-grandparents. For grandfather: hand tools for woodworking, sails and oars for fishing boats, hand-lines for catching cod. For grandmother: washboard and tub, gardening tools, a coal-fired stove for heating and cooking. The list is, of course longer, but those suffice. They seemed, at the time, so crude and those who used them, well, they had to be so deprived; so backward! How good it felt to be living in the modern age. How…superior! Poor things; they never got to be great and enlightened like those of my generation.

Time, has a way of changing your perspective. You gather more information, make comparisons, run “What if’s.” Time has done its work and it’s become increasingly evident just how much skill want into making those tools that seemed so crude. More importantly, it’s now so clear how much skill went into using those tools well. Today, wooden planks are made in sawmills designed for just that purpose. Because the tools do that one job, you don’t need to be that skilled to make a long straight plank; not today.

The planks that were used to make “The Mystical Rose,” my great-grandfather’s Western Boat (colloquial, two-masted fishing schooner, around 30 tonnes 10-15 m in length and 4-5 m width), though, were made by hand using a pit saw. You try it! Not only is it hard work, requiring considerable strength and endurance, but it takes enormous skill just keeping that beast of a tool running straight so the planks come out even.

And that only gives you the planks for your boat.

You also have to: cut the timbers for the keel then the ribs and then shape them, attach the planks, caulk the hull with oakum and pitch to keep the water out. And, after all, it’s a working boat, used in the cold, windy northwest Atlantic so it had better be made well because it will take a beating. Fine; that gives you the boat. Now you have to sail it out and back. To say the least, sailing is a highly skilled activity.

You also have to know how to fish. That involves launching a small rowboat out there on the open ocean where the swells are generally much higher than you are. Oh, and you are using a hand line—something that’s not easy to do under those conditions. The fish you catch have to be cleaned, salted, cured in the sun and then packed away.

You’re also a businessperson. The boat has to be built and managed. You have to maintain a crew and, of course you have to buy bait and supplies and sell your product.

Years ago visitors to my home province used to love laughing at the ‘dumb fishermen.’ It stung, but, to be honest, perhaps, deep inside, my teenaged self also assumed there was truth in that story. After all, many of them could not read and they certainly could not do the kind of math I’d been taught. That was then. In time I came to see and appreciate all the skills and abilities they had and so, came to appreciate the differences that existed in our needs and approaches. There’s no way I could ever do the things my grandfather did. That is, not unless I’d had the benefit of the particular form of intensive education he had experienced. His education did not take place in a typical school. It was more of an apprenticeship; he worked under the care and guidance of his father and fellow crewmates and, in time, became a highly skilled master at many crafts.

The thing to note in all of this is that his skills were for his particular time, his particular situation.

Likewise, my grandmother, using only hand tools that seem so crude by today’s standards, she was able to make clothing from…sheep (mostly—come on, they did have access to cotton and linen), wash it by hand and prepare food using materials obtained almost exclusively from the local area, the only exceptions being flour and molasses. Molasses has a particularly interesting back-story but that’s for another time.

Now, of course, their time and their situation have passed and while we may mourn the loss of the widespread knowledge of woodworking, of sailing, of fishing and of managing the business we all have lives to live in our own time. We can’t dwell on the past too much. Yes, it’s worth preserving if, for nothing else, to serve as a reminder to all of us down the road that it has, indeed been a long journey and those who came before us deserve respect and gratitude.

But there’s more; far more.

This post is not about fishing or making your own food and clothes.

Granted it’s unlikely that our own children will need to build boats by hand any time in the foreseeable future so let’s not talk about that or, in fact any of the ancient skills now doomed to eternal obsolescence. Let’s think, instead of one part of the back story behind those skills.

What do all the ones mentioned have in common?

Let’s go back to the tablet-based game mentioned at the top of this piece, the one that the three-year-old could master so easily. Do you think it would be possible to build an autonomous device that could play that game? Well of course! The game has some rules that are easily understood, especially by any computer.

How about the act of starting with some hand tools and some trees and ending up with a two-masted western boat? How about the automaton that does that?

Not a chance, because it’s far too complicated to be carried out by a single machine.

Let’s back it off a bit, then. How about just catching a softball batted out from a toss-up pitch from home plate? Most kids in my day could do that reasonably well. How about the automaton? Not so well.

Same reason each time. The act of sensing and selecting sensing the raw objects (trees) and eventually crafting them into a workable sailing vessel, while doable for a highly-skilled person is, for now, an impossible thing for us to do artificially. Even the act of catching a somewhat unpredictable toss is similarly unachievable—although, in fairness, the latter task is getting considerable attention from those who wish to make autonomous cars and killing machines.

Playing the computer game and reading text are, by comparison, rather straightforward things. They are ‘bounded’ in that there’s not a whole lot of uncertainty, and, as such, can be reduced to a set of procedures that a cheap machine can be made to do.

So why are the latter tasks the ones that we make all the fuss about? Perhaps it’s because those are the ones that ‘everyone’ is talking about. You know how it is, when a large group of people start talking about the same thing then that thing, whatever it is, takes on a life of its own. After a while that thing becomes the most important thing. Sometimes the attention is warranted. Sometimes, though, it’s not; it’s just a case of everyone going along with the herd thinking that the collective must be right.

Sometimes the collective is not right. This is one of those times.

Don’t misunderstand the message. This is not to suggest that reading and writing are unimportant and simple. Furthermore, this is not to insist that the skills associated with modern communications technology are unimportant. Reading, writing and, in fact, all forms of receiving, processing and representing information are vital in our time. What’s more, the evidence shows, without any room for doubt, that if we want brains to develop in such a way that these ‘higher level’ processes are done well then we need to start early when those same brains are still at maximum plasticity.

This is not saying at all that we should not work on those skills. Got it?

But that’s not the point here. What is the point? In a word: balance.

The skills that young people are developing when they are running around grabbing and manipulating objects are much more important than we think. We’re busy adults who seek some degree of order and familiarity in our lives. We therefore see the activities as random, wanton acts of physical destruction so we interpret them to be things to be curbed entirely. “Those kids need to learn discipline!” we exclaim as we do whatever it takes to make them stop, whether that is glaring at the parents, passing laws that says they must be on a leash (figuratively speaking of course) or…handing them a shiny tablet to make them stop.

And the last one is easy to justify because we figure we’re giving them something ‘educational.’

Well, in my opinion we are and we aren’t.

How about this as a different way to frame it all up? Yes, young people can’t be permitted to ‘run wild.’ While they do need quite a long time and quite a lot of experience to develop those exceedingly complex physical sensing and manipulative skills there’s no doubt that they also need to learn the social mores that keep us all in a more-or-less functional society. This means that we should expect them to spend considerable time interacting with the physical world but in a social environment that also stresses the adoption of reasonable limits. While it’s always okay to question authority, they also need to know where the limits are—that there are things they simply should and should not do ‘just because.’ Yes, feel free to run around and explore in your backyard, at home at friends’ houses (subject to the owners’ rules) but not at the restaurant, museum or concert. At those places, different rules apply.

And the books, tablets, computers and such? They, too, have a valuable place; a place that is also visited frequently, not just when people need the kids to ‘be quiet.’

They should learn when those quiet times are too, and not have to ‘fake it’ by being distracted by shiny electronic toys instead of learning to become thoughtful and reflective.

Youth: Not all Tarred with the One Brush

Confirmation bias is one of those flawed modes of thinking in which you let your existing opinions and attitudes have too strong an influence on what information you choose to notice and what you choose to ignore. When we have an opinion there’s a natural tendency to spot examples form our lives that lend credence to it, and it alone. Fair enough. There’s also, unfortunately, a tendency to reject or ignore examples to the contrary. If, for example, you believe that everyone is selfish then you will clearly recall examples of when you witnessed or otherwise experienced it. You will also fail to notice the times when people were selfless and generous. Only the parts that support your view point will be remembered.

As an educator I get to see numerous examples of people interacting with one another, and often under circumstances that can be best described as trying or stressful. School is one of the places where you get to see people at their best and at their worst. You get to choose what you wish to see: only the good, only the bad or all of it.

It is somewhat socially acceptable for adults when talking about youth to say that they are now living in a culture of entitlement. In polite conversation an adult can remark that young people today increasingly expect to have things handed to them. As an educator those ‘things’ may be grades and the conversation may be about how students today expect to receive good ones without putting in the requisite effort. As employers the conversation may be about how the young people expect high pay but are not prepared to develop the specialized skills that merit it. It may be more general than that, just adults talking among themselves and noting that the young people want all the things we older people have—whether it may be a home, a vehicle or financial security—but seem unwilling to make the sacrifices and devote the vast amounts of time and effort needed to get those things or achieve those goals.

It’s also easy to rationalize why it may be that way. In most of the first- and second-world a certain baseline of social justice exists (as an aside it should be noted that there are valid arguments that that this is increasingly not the case but let’s shelf that thought for now) so young people can be assumed to take the level of civility and, for that matter, affluence that exists in society as a given; something that does not come at great cost.

Families are much smaller than has historically been the case and numerous time-savers exist that spare young and old alike from much of the drudgery that has traditionally been part of daily life. So, with more ‘free’ time available and fewer children to spend it with today’s young people receive more attention from parents than ever before.

Parents appear much more supportive too. They are expected to be present for, or at least view the recording of, their child’s every single achievement. “Oh, look his/her first ___!” has been taken way beyond the point of absurdity. Every single positive achievement must be rewarded and celebrated lest the child’s self-esteem suffer irreparable loss. The corollary to this, though, is not true. While everything positive is reinforced, the negatives are not necessarily curbed. Worse, parents are quick to come to the child’s defense when that same child is at the centre of something negative in nature. Don’t believe this? Just you try saying something, however gently and politely to the parent or guardian when a child is misbehaving in a way is clearly annoying not just you but others. Rather than deal with the behavior they will, in all likelihood, defend the child’s actions. Worse, they will likely attack you instead, accusing you of being intolerant, out of touch, or just plain mean-spirited.

But is this really all true? Is it, instead, just one point of view based on selected bits of experience with the numerous counterexamples conveniently ignored or forgotten?

On the home front, this week was a rather busy one. The two older sons have just finished the winter academic terms at University and are preparing for summer work. “Two” was squared away easily enough. His part time job which provides him with pocket money for most of the year is now, for the next four months, ramped up to full time. As has previously been the case he will save at least enough for one terms tuition as well as his own spending money. All I will have to do is provide taxi service. It’s worth mentioning that this job—obtaining it and juggling his time between it and his studies—has been solely his own doing. No parental influence; no favours from friends.

“One” is engaged in a professional engineering co-op program that alternates academic terms with work terms where he is placed, at a junior level, in an engineering position at some company. He has successfully obtained his summer work term with a company engaged in the offshore oil and gas. These positions are competitive in nature and the students are expected to take the initiative to find and apply for them. He’s done it and, like his brother he will use the money to fund his next academic term. All I have to do is provide the aforementioned taxi service along with, of course, the roof over his head.

Now on to Three and Daughter.

Daughter, now fifteen, has been enrolled in dance school since age three. Without doubt, dance is her single greatest love. This year her ‘dance recital’ (I’ve never gotten used to the term ‘recital’ as it is used here. To me, recital is something that is associated with sound—speech, singing or music—and not movement, but, once again, I digress.) was held over three separate nights. The preparation for these events has been intense and extensive. Last Saturday, for example, she was at the Arts and Culture centre from 7:30AM until 11PM, Sunday was an easy day, only 12 noon until 10:30 PM. The recitals were a success both in terms of attendance and performance. I attended the second performance and, not only found it entertaining but, more importantly, was buoyed by the sheer joy and enthusiasm of the performers—all of them.

More to the point, Daughter, who performed in six of the routines per night, clearly put her all into the shows. Not only did she work hard at the performances but, more to the point here, she worked equally hard behind the scenes, serving as one of the stage managers charged with getting performers ready for each subsequent routine. After attending the performance it was impossible not to notice the dedication put into the events on behalf of the young people. They clearly worked hard on their routines, but, more to the point, worked as a very large team. The end result was a large cooperative community.

Cynic says: Think about it for a minute. The performance arts are all about the egotistical self-absorbed stars. My, my, my! Three whole days of that, paid for by parents and grandparents.

Response: At any performance there are a handful of stars but the event is really done by a much larger cast of supporting individuals. More to the point here, dance recitals, are not about the stars at all. The routines are not solos and the teams tend to be very mutually supportive. Simply put, when you look at a dance recital you do not see single, self-absorbed narcissists. No, you see a cooperative community dedicated to a common cause.

And then there was son number three, henceforth referred to as Three. This is his final year in high school and, since Canada borders with the US, we are not immune to its influence. US-style spring proms (sometimes inappropriately referred to as ‘grads’) have been as popular here since the mid-seventies as they have been over there for far longer. Cleaned up, hairstyled, tanned and decked off in the finest that parents can (or perhaps ‘cannot’ would be more appropriate here) afford they step out into the spring evening showing to all that they have ‘arrived.’ Sometimes we even get spring weather for the spring prom.

Since the mid-eighties, in response to increasing concern around widespread alcohol and drug use associated with proms parents and teachers alike have worked together to find ways of eliminating this. I’m happy to say that, in my province at least, those efforts have been successful in that prom nights are now almost completely ‘dry.’ And, yes, taking the rose-coloured glasses off for just a second, it needs to be stated that many students to devote the following night to the things we do try to reduce. For now, we’ll leave that one be and turn instead to Safegrad. This was an idea that took root in my province in the early eighties. Safegrad is a night-long celebration sponsored by parents and teachers for the students.

Even Paddy the patriot made an appearance, thanks to Chef Steve Watson’s donation.

Three’s Safegrad, as was the case with One and Two, took place at the school from 11:30 PM on the evening after the prom (The prom was, by the way, was a very pleasant affair. It’s worth mentioning that the formal attire and attitude brings out the best in the young people and offers an optimistic glimpse at the beautiful young adults they are rapidly becoming.) and lasts until 6 AM the following morning. Yes, it’s an all-nighter.

It’s completely ‘dry,’ and once in, the participants must remain until either its over or a parent/guardian signs them out for good. The gym was converted to an eatery/entertainment area. “Bouncy Castles”, a Velcro wall (yes, no kidding) and other diversions were set up at one and along the sides of the other end, food area were set up providing all of the foods teenagers crave (nachos, pizza, etc.). The middle of the gym was a night-long dance floor. Other rooms were converted to: a regular maze, a haunted hike, a Vegas-style casino which included a little chapel where ‘Elvis’ would be happy to perform a ‘Wedding ceremony,” a café, a photo booth replete with costumes. The night ended with awards and a hypnotist show.

It was a hoot!  And I was a parent volunteer, not a participant.

Cynic says: So what’s your point? You started by noting that parents were going way too far supporting your kids’ indulgences and here you just pointed out one great big fat example of that!

Response: Recall I started by saying that one of the primary objectives here was to show our young people how to have fun on their special night without resorting to recreational drugs and we did just that. This is just one very special night—we do this once in a lifetime! But there’s more. My ‘assignment’ was to the gym. This is my third time there (did it for One and Two also) and my primary responsibility was around the food. Rather than serving it, as there’s enough to do that, I go around the gym all night making sure that the place stays clean from the food-related mess. Around two hundred senior class members and their dates can go through a lot of food and that means a lot of mess—paper napkins, recycling, uneaten food (not much of that) and the scattered spill. It adds up. It keeps me busy and I like it that way. Here’s what I observed: grateful, cooperative young men and women who, all night long, went out of their way NOT to leave a mess. All I got were smiles and pleasant conversation and lots of offers to help each time I picked up a few things or emptied the receptacles.

Cynic says: Fine. They’ll just turn around and have that big party the following night so all your efforts will have been for nothing.

Response: Yes, in all likelihood there will be a party the following night but actions speak loudly. Those young people we shown, powerfully, that recreational drugs are something we do not wish in their lives and that they are not required. Sure, some of the young people will do the things we wish they would not, but there will be far less of it than there would otherwise be and, even when it does, we have helped instill a culture that says, “show moderation if you have to do it at all and don’t involve vehicles under any circumstance.” What I saw was this: young people who were treated to quite a party but who also appreciated it very much.

So, there it is. Make what you want of it: overindulgence or confirmation bias; your choice. Based on a sample size of two older sons, a dance troupe of 300-400 and a Safegrad attendance list of around 300-350 I’m going with choice number two for now. Sure, there are many exceptions, there are, without doubt, lots of young self-centered narcissists but I’m not going to tar the whole population with the brush that was used on those few exceptions.

Questions from Today’s Quiet Moments

For most of us, nine-tenths (or so) of the time our minds are occupied with the affairs of the moment. It may be about the current project or issue at work, the current piece of work we are currently doing, whether it is personal or occupational, or maybe even the distracted sort of thinking that happens when we are trying to do the above while dealing simultaneously with an intensely important personal issue. You know—working through a personal issue while trying to keep everything else more-or-less together. The mind is in pursuit of some goal and everything else, for the moment, becomes just secondary.

But then there are the other moments. Perhaps they are the increasingly rare quiet times when we are able to shut out the surrounding unwanted noise and just be in the moment, observing what is before us and more importantly not letting our experiential lenses be clouded by those other urgent issues fighting for our attention. Perhaps they are the ones when something so momentous happens that we have no choice but to shut out everything else and just focus on the one thing before us.

Perhaps, though, they are none of the above. Fog like, sometimes those times just creep in on Sandberg’s aptly described “little cats’ feet.” Like that waiting animal, they just sit there, for a time, caring little if they are noticed, but ready to respond if you are willing to make the effort required to move them from the periphery to the conscious. The prize for the revelation is not necessarily large—just a tiny portion of insight, or maybe a question that bears further consideration. Still, it’s something that one can consider to be of real value in a world so filled with generally meaningless noise.

This was the trigger for today.

Youngest child is in the middle of dance recital week and, last evening at rehearsal, she’d experienced something of a wardrobe malfunction—a broken heel on one of the boots used in a hip-hop number. Rather than get them repaired, since they were worn out anyway, my wife and I had decided to meet lunch time and get her another pair.

We found them easily enough. Other half has something of a knack for that. What’s more she managed to get them at 30% off. It’s her superpower. As we were pressed for time we decided to grab something quick at a nearby fast food joint. Hey—food police—I had a salad. Well, um, not exactly but the item I had DID have lettuce. That counts, right? While there, it was impossible not to notice the group of schoolchildren at a nearby table. Grade nine or ten, I’d guess. Clad in designer clothes, waving expensive mobile phones about and talking in that halting low-pitched twang that so many young people consider cool, they were poster children for what is often seen as typical ‘popular’ school kids. Loud chatter, the kind intended to draw attention from those nearby, was punctuated by frequent flits to and from nearby tables and to the soda fountain. I just tuned it out and concentrated on spending a few minutes with my wife.

Silence. It’s generally relative, of course. In our technology-obsessed world there are so few quiet places left. Even in my sparsely populated corner of the planet there are hardly any places that are left truly untouched by the sounds of technology. That’s partly due to the fact that the airspace above my home is a mustering area for eastbound trans-Atlantic flights. I digress as usual. Fortunately, though, our hearing works on a logarithmic, not linear, scale so we can respond to huge variances in sound level with ease. When it drops significantly we relax just as if a huge load has been lifted. That’s what it was like. One minute: chaos; minutes later: not so bad at all. I looked up and then around. Of course, ‘they’ were gone, and with their exit a relative peace had settled over the place. The four other school-aged people seated at the next table to me were conversing in low tones, as was everyone else. No mobiles out either. The four were clearly enjoying one another’s company; no need for theatrics or distractions.

Then I spied it—the place where the loud four had been seated. Disgraceful. On the way out I discretely snapped a picture with the mobile. Back at the car I had to take another look. Still disgraceful.

In fairness to the restaurant chain, this is not a reflection on it, just a few of its patrons. The fact is that the place in question is always, in my experience, spotless, despite the efforts of some of its customers.

I told a friend. “Perhaps they didn’t know better?” she offered. But they were not that young—probably 15 or 16, certainly old enough to have been exposed to some examples of basic social norms associated with eating at joints like this one.

Through the afternoon the thoughts of this minor careless act played on my mind. I returned to my office at the university. At one point I want down the hall to confer with a colleague. It was just a short visit as she was busily grading final papers from her two grad classes. When I arrived at her office she was just in the process of sending an email. I quietly waited for her to finish and when she did, she turned around and sat at the table, shaking her head. “That was the third reply to a student from one of my two undergrad classes who is still insisting that I reread her paper because she feels that she deserved more than a B. What do you think?” I read the paper—it was only a 5 pager. My colleague was, in my estimation, generous. Shallow, hastily written and almost completely lacking in references it was clearly something done ‘off the cuff.’ Barely worth a passing grade, it was by no means deserving of anything like an A. “She figures she can brow-beat me into giving her her own way.” All I could do was shake my head too.

Perhaps, by then I was in something of a hyper-vigilant mode. Thinking back I must report that the vast majority of the many people I interacted with that day, thus far, had been decent; reasonable. Now, though, I’d experienced two occasions where that was not the case. Yes, perhaps it was confirmation bias—the unskilled thought process that leads one to only recognize events and examples that support the particular thought or conclusion they are currently having. Who knows?

Suppertime. Just a brief rest-stop. Piles of housework left to do and, besides, youngest daughter did have the first of three dance recitals ahead. No time for anything fancy and, with the temperature at a balmy—for my home this time of the year anyway—nine degrees it made sense to light up the barby and burn up a few burgers and veggies.

No buns.

With the burners set to low off I went to the corner store for them. Aside from the school-aged clerk who was busily engrossed in texting (or whatever) on her mobile the place was empty. I passed the clerk, got the buns and placed them on the counter. On a whim I turned around went back to the fridge and got a bottle of that carbonated, artificially-flavoured sugar water that probably takes years off your life. Go big or go home. If you’re going to eat something bad you might as well be good at it. I plunked it on the counter too.

And waited.

The clerk continued texting.

“How’s it going?” I said gently, as a polite way of really saying, “Will you please put down that mobile and do your job so I can get home! I only have about 45 minutes to prepare supper and get on the go again so, no, I can’t really wait until you are good and ready. You are being paid to do this, after all.”

“&%$!&$#!” said the clerk as she jumped back to awareness. I’d certainly startled her.

She was clearly annoyed with me and curtly mumbled something about sneaking up on her.

I decided to stop time. It’s my superpower.

The number was not made up! Source–worldometers.info ( a very cool site)

So, with time frozen, I proceeded to tell her that we, the remaining 7,112,257,922 people currently existing on this planet were not put there for her convenience. I want on to point out that I had not been sneaking around but had dropped two packs of buns and one bottle of junk on the counter, right under her nose, after letting the ‘fridge door slam. I then pointed out that she was in the employ of the store and, as such was expected to keep a close eye on the comings and goings of all visitors. Some might be inclined not to pay for items and some, heaven helps us all, might need help. I was just getting to pointing out that “&%$!&$#!” was an inappropriate was to greet customers when I noticed that she, too, must be able to stop time. A cartoon thought bubble was appearing above her head and a word, currently faint, was slowly materializing as I continued. With my vocals set to automatic I watched as the word “Arsehole” became clearer and clearer.

The jig was up; she was on to me. I restarted time.

“Debit.” I said and inserted the card into the machine. There followed the most painful 2.5 seconds as I waited for the transaction to complete. “No bag,” I said and left the store. No odds, she was already buried in her mobile anyway.

So now, with the supper dishes cleaned and put away, the place tidied up somewhat and youngest daughter at dance recital, once again, quiet has returned and, with it, a few moments to reflect on the questions of the day. How is it that so many can be that badly wrapped up in their own noisy little bubbles that they become oblivious to those around them? How is it that we, the so-called elders in our society, have seemingly cultivated so many that are incapable of seeing any viewpoint but their own?

And the biggest question of all; the one that matters most to me right now: Those other four young people who, unlike their counterparts, were obviously present for one another. Did they clean up their table before leaving?

You know how it is with questions: sometimes it’s the asking that counts; it’s not always important to get the answer. This time, though, I do hope, so very much, that the answer to the last one is ‘yes.’

Hope, Love and, perhaps, Justice

The news—everywhere—and suddenly I was back on Talbot Street, summer of 1974. We, my sister and I, were in Killester. Grandmother brought us to Dublin one or two times a week on the train. We were used to the city. We knew the beauty but we also knew of other things, other places; things to avoid.

This time, it was with a family friend. We accompanied her as she went about doing her errands for the day. The trip took us past both Barry’s store (no relation) and Guiney’s. It was late June and the clean-up was well underway—a month had passed—but even now I recall the horror in Maura’s voice as she told my sister and me what had happened.

We knew already, of course. Our grandparents sent bi-weekly bundles of papers back to Newfoundland so we knew the facts. It’s different, though, we you experience it first-hand. The horror, the fear, the anger and in the end, the grief—all become so intense; so immediate.

Who could have done this? It is so easy to resort to racial, ideological or religious labels to name the foe that lacks the courage and respect to stand before you. Even the slightest analysis, though, reveals the flaws in that reasoning. You just have to look at the victims. Bombs are indiscriminate. On Talbot Street the victims came from all walks of life. Not soldiers, just everyday people pursuing their hopes and needs.

So, too, this time: the victims are again innocents; not combatants. The aggressors, once again, invisible; hiding behind some unnamed cause that, in the end, can only be revealed as hatred for oneself and lack of concern for others.

What is it that drives people far beyond the loosely-defined borders that try and define humanity? How can some kill in the name of a cause they consider just? Most of all, how can people be so confused that randomly-chosen souls can be used as a proxy for ‘the enemy?’

Sometime during that awful, cold, dark summer the voices of the Just started coming together. The song was of love and forgiveness. It took years but, in the end, hatred was overcome and a people began to heal again. Justice, not revenge, became the goal.

Those voices are stirring already. May they be strong enough, once again, to claim the victory.