"Hey Malarek"

A beautiful day today, some snow melt so it was above freezing and felt almost summery (compared to what we are used to anyway). Summer better come soon because I just noticed that with all this winter inertia, I've put on a couple pounds. I NEED to get outside and work in my garden and the woods! I can't wait and I think that I'm finally feeling a bit of cabin fever when the end is in sight and it made me feel awfully cranky today. I admit to having to apologize to Don a couple times for that and it has weighed on my mind through the day. But tomorrow is a new day and a fresh start right.

So Don has been reading a book called "Hey Malarek" by Victor Malarek. That name might be familiar to you if you've every watched "The Fifth Estate" on tv as he is one of the program's hosts. Why did Don want to read this book you might ask. Well, you see, Victor Malarek was in the Weredalel Boys Home in Montreal at the same time that Don and his brother Bob were. He had to do a bit of searching on the internet, looking for a copy of the book, finally found one and it arrived earlier in the week. As he was reading it, it brought back all kinds of memories for him, mostly all bad, lots of sad, and as he said several times, just left him feeling wrung out from the emotional impact of it all.

Weredale Home For Boys was sort of like an orphanage except most of the kids weren't orphans. Just kids, who in the lottery of life had chanced to get stuck with families that were so disfuncional that at times they either could not, due to illness, or would not, due to choice, take care of their own kids. And if there weren't enough foster homes to go around, Weredale was where they ended up. But as bad as home might be, "the boys home" was worse. In the best of environments, children can be difficult, some violent, and often unhappy. Imagine then, a group of 160 (approximately) boys under one roof day in and day out, with only a minimal number of adults to supervise and each one bringing a load of baggage that children should not have to carry. But while this is a book about the destructive forces that impacted this group of boys in the early 60's, it's also a story about one of them who overcame a rotten start and in many ways is similar to the story of at least two others, who also overcame, Don and Bob McCabe. Despite growing up without loving, involved parents and in spite of the years in Weredale and foster homes, both Don and Bod became good husbands and good fathers as did Victor Malarek.

I haven't read the book yet myself but I will and reading it will give me a glimpse into the life that gave me the generous and loving husband that I have. I may be truly amazed and it will be interesting to say the least I think.

Signs of Spring - On My Windowsill!

The day before yesterday was lovely in Nova Scotia. Temperature 9 degrees - ABOVE zero. I'm telling you it t was amazing and wonderful. Despite the piles of dirty snow, sitting like small mountains everywhere, the warmth lifted the spirits of everyone. Coats unbuttoned, smiling faces, everyone reveling in the promise of a soon coming spring. And if you stood still and listened, you could hear the sound of water trickling and running as the sun warmed and melted it.

And on my window sill, spring is springing. I've got some miniature alliums going and some miniature irises. Not that I am in the habit of forcing bulbs normally, but I'll tell you what I tried to do here. Last year, my dear husband saw a picture of a mass of blooming flowers in a photo and went on the hunt for the best deal he could find on flowering bulbs. And he found it! Don't remember how much the cost but that isn't the point anyway. What is important is that he found 400 bulbs of all sorts. Now that is very nice, unless you don't have flower beds ready for planting them into. I've done quite a bit as far a planting things around the house, but realistically we had so many things going on last year, and the fall before, that I didn't get as much done as I wanted to.

So here I am, 400 bulbs, and really no where to plant them and minimal time to get any kind of bed ready. I couldn't even think of a place that I would have liked to put them. And it got later and later and finally we came to a moment where in all likelihood, snow would be flying any day and we picked a place.....and got them into the ground. Man it was cold! Winter wind blowing (probably bringing snow with it) and we couldn't get it done fast enough. Eventually we got most of them in and just quit although there were two packages left, the alliums and iris's. After searching the internet for suggestions on how to overwinter the remaining bulbs, and finding little that was helpful, I decided to "plant" the bulbs in rubbermaid containers in some potting soil and then tuck them into the back of the fridge. And about two weeks ago I pulled them out and scrounged around for containers that would fit on my window sill. I came up with several bread pans, filled them with fresh soil and then very gently pulled the tangled, tender roots apart and then set them into the pans. So now I've got flowers coming along and when the blooms are done, and the ground has warmed up, then I will put them out in the garden. How much better than tossing out the left over bulbs as most of the internet advice suggested. Where there is a will, there's a way. Sometimes it pays to think outside the gardening box.

Spring is on its way folks! It will be here soon hooray, hooray, hooray! My window sill today, our gardens tomorrow----well maybe not exactly tomorrow, but you know what I mean. It's coming.

Lump of Coal....

Yesterday, Don and I sat listening to a car phone salesman and I was absolutely moved to tears and left speechless!!! Paul Potts from Cardiff, England has a voice that you would never expect. Quiet, unassuming in appearance, he shared the gift of his voice that literally had the audience on it's feet in awe. I watched it again this morning before I came here, just to make sure it wasn't a strange quirk in my mood yesterday and I have to tell you that the same thing happened. As he sang Nessun Dorma, I felt my chest tighten, and the tears began to well up in my eyes and then spilled over.

This is the link ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k08yxu57NA ) and if you have a good set of headphones, even better and listen to this rising star. He will take you to the heavens with him as he sings and leave you breathless. You just can't imagine!

The World's Weight

I am disheartened today. The weight of the world and the tragedies that abound lay across my soul, an unbearable burden that I fear will not be lifted - ever. That is not to say that I am not learning to push these things to the back of my awareness, focusing instead on the moment that I exist in now. But they lurk, waiting for that briefest instant when I'm not paying attention, to sneak back and steal away the peace that I seek.

Todays economy around the world, the result of a few whose greed and avarice knows no bounds apparently. Their riches and lifestyles at the expense of the majority. People losing their homes, their jobs. The suffering women in middle eastern countries. Today I read that a seventy-five year old Saudi woman has been sentenced to 40 lashes because a child that she'd helped raise although he was not her birth son, now a grown man, came with his friend, to bring her bread. Her crime - she sat in her home with a man that she is not related to. Yesterday, Don found a video where a man was talking about plastic bottle caps and the destruction that they cause in the natural world. Those things find their way into the oceans of the world, get caught up in the currents and sea birds mistake them for food and feed them to their chicks. And then the chicks grow and begin to forage on their own and they eat the bottle caps. He showed pictures of the dead chicks and their heads and wings and legs surrounded piles of bottle caps that they had consumed. He showed a picture of one of those rings that hold the bottle caps onto the juice jugs and a baby sea turtle had swum into one and it had stuck on it's little shell and the turtle had continue to grow. Only now the photo showed it only slightly smaller than dinner plate size, and the ring was still around the middle of its shell but the ring had not grown or stretched because after all those things are indestructible. You can imagine how it looked. Next week HBO will air a program called Death on a Factory Farm. I will not watch because I've seen, thanks to the internet, what happens to the animals who spend their short lives on factory farms. I think that is why I try to take very good care of Ambra and Sierra and Max and Diesel, to make up for the hurt of the others somehow. This is why Holly treats her little lovebirds like little feathered children even though Cricket can be a little brightly colored hag.
And Andy (our friend in Surrey), told Don last week, that the gang problem in the Lower Mainland of BC is an exploding problem and people are dying, innocent people who aren't even in the gangs but were in the wrong place at the wrong time, if it is to be believed that being in your own home behind closed doors is the wrong place!

How can we do this to our beautiful world? How can any man or woman believe that it is their right to rape and pillage this world and every living thing in it? Where is the tenderness and the compassion for all life? Where is the sense of responsibility that comes with being the so-called superior creature on this blue planet? Where is that duty to not take more than you need for living, so that others may take care of their families? I know that some feel that there will be a day of reckoning, others believe that history is doomed to an endless repetition, and others look towards a silent darkness. But in the meantime, the world is wrapped in a layer of misery....and we all pay the price in one way or another. Years ago, when Rodney King was beaten by L.A.'s police, the plea, "can't we all just get along", became the catch-phrase of the day. But I think that a more apt saying would be "can't we please all care"? Expand your hearts and minds and envelop the world with empathy and love.
Albert Schweitzer once said "Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace."

Crystal blue mornings...

A couple days ago we had a minor ice storm here, rain falling down but cold enough that the droplets froze on the trees and buildings. No power yesterday as a result of lines becoming too heavy, but we were warm in the family room around the woodstove. Coffee pot on top of it, not too bad really. So today, the clouds finally cleared and the icicles that decorate everything gleam like the finest crystal and I just thought that I would share a few pictures. These are the days that make winter not so bad in Nova Scotia!!!

Beautiful gardens and March mornings....

Today is an ugly day. Minus 2 degrees and it is raining. As I drove to the yoga class that wasn't on today, I could see the coat of ice building up on the branches and trees along the road. Peoples driveways glistened like hockey rinks and front yards, still covered with snow, gleamed like fine china. It is supposed to warm up in the afternoon and then the rain will just collect in hollows and pot-holes so that when it drops in temperature tonight, it can freeze and make everything just a little more treacherous. This must be the part of winter people warn you about when you say you are moving to the East Coast. When the snow falls softly and quietly and lays gently on the land, it is so pretty and here they do such an excellent job of keeping roads clear. But there is little that can be done about the ice. The roads can be salted, but the driveways and barnyards are a bit more problematic. Must remember to take my calcium and do some weight-lifting this afternoon to keep my bones strong.

I spend a fair bit of time on the internet lately, lately dividing my time between a spiritual forum and a vegetarian forum. For a while I was also looking at one about the environment. The problem with these kind of arenas (forums) is that you can't discern body language or tone of voice so misunderstandings are frequent and in some instances these devolve into heated arguments. I've made a point of learning to be respectful and only offer opinion that is supported by the testimony of "experts" on the issue by linking to other websights in the body of my replies. For example, I recently was on the spiritual forum and someone started a thread about vegetarianism and spirituality, and I made a remark and included a link to an article that discussed a study recently put out by Dalhouse University on the subject of the environment and meat consumption. And while I've given this as an example of how one might back up a viewpoint with outside legitimate information, I'm not speaking of this discussion specifically. But the thing that I notice, regardless of what the subject is, that all to often, people don't even read the supporting information but instead are satisfied to just use "in my opinion" like that counts for anything in a discussion on the environment or health or....

The internet is a universe of information on any subject you can think of and it just boggles the mind that so many of its users don't take advantage of those who are experts and have put the information out there, apparently choosing instead to display their lack of understanding and insight on whatever the issue is. It always reminds of when I see the media do man on the street kind of interviews and they'll ask some person a question and the answer is so goofy that you are just speechless. Personally, I make a point of not responding if I don't know the subject, if all I can comeback with is "well in my opinion...." You're asking to get shot down if you do that.

But soon the weather will change and the garden will call out to me, "Debby, come out, I need to be dug/planted/moved!", and then the forums and annoying people will take a back seat to real life. Thank goodness for gardens! By the way, the picture is not my garden, but you needed something beautiful to take your mind off the drabness outside, so accept this offering of beauty and maybe one day the garden photo will be mine and it will be as lovely. Peace and joy to you on this March morning.