Robert Paterson's Weblog

Ghosts of Christmas - Travelling Alone - Aged 9

This is a picture of Kano Airport in the good old days - when I was a boy who flew back and forth from England and School to Ghana in west Africa. For 2 Christmases I flew back to Ghana for the holidays. Like all the kids who did this, I flew alone. 

I can hardly tell you how exciting it was to fly unaccompanied then. I was a member of the Junior Jet Club - you got a kind of passport that the Captain would sign off on. Of course I often got an hour in the cockpit too.

Kano is in norther Nigeria just on the edge of the desert.

The man with the horn had a camel. His job was to wait by the phone until a flight came in. Then he would ride across the field blowing the horn to give warning to all to get off.

The plane is the Bristol Britannia - a 4 engine turbo prop designed for the Empire. It could endure very bad fields, high temperatures.

We had quite  along stop there. Kano was a mud city. It was so exotic. I bought a 12 inch dagger in the market which of course I wielded all through the flight - only to have it confiscated at school. 

How the world has changed in my own lifetime. 

BOAC did have a warning to passengers though. The "School Flight" was labelled as such and wise travelers avoided it. There might be 15 - 25 unruly 8- 13 year old boys and girls on the flight. Mayhem was normal. But I found the crew wonderful. We were naughty but now bad - they were very patient.

We got to know them quite well as they would have a few days off in Accra and spend the days on Labadi Beach where we all used to go as well.

And Christmas in Ghana? We used to have our Christmas dinner on the beach! Turkey in the Coleman! My mother was of course of the school that prohibited swimming for an hour after lunch - all Diana and I wanted was to get back in the water and to surf.

Here we are I am 9 - Diana 7 and Cindy 2

Sport is for wusses - Now being a Boy Chorister - that is where the real boys are!

Stephen Darlington and the Choristers talk about the demands of a choir boy’s life.

via usa2011.chchchoir.org

The highlight of 2011 for me was being part of the US and Canadian Christ Church Cathedral Choir tour last spring.

Here is their Gandalf - Dr Stephen Darlington - talking about the chorister's life - the boys add their 5 cents too.

As you listen to them and hear their story, you may wish that your son had been one - or that he could be.

I was one aged 8 -13. I still look back and wonder at how much I learned and recall the joy. Why I now work so hard to make this more possible for others.

If this video peaks your interest - wonder around the site and see and hear more. Next year our plan is to try a small test of whether we can reach out online and help other choirs and choristers hone their skills - watch this space!

The Ghost of Christmas Past - Thanks to Google

It's been a funny Christmas. The first since we were first married where Robin and I have been on our own. Our seriously adult children each have had their own Christmas with their own partners and their own children. 1,000 miles separate us all.

So for me this Christmas has been one of memories. Christmas as a marker of the stages of my life.

I have reached back to do my best to recall the first Christmas I can remember - 1953 - where I was - in an appartment in Montreal on Victoria Avenue. Close to where I have ripped this picture from Google Maps. I know I am close in this view towhere I lived because the old fire station is just down the road. The fire station is my memory marker.

I was 3 then and next year the family would move to England and our lives would be shaped by that event like no other.

Note the stair cases here. My mum used to tie me up in my snow suit with what now seems like a dog harness for an airing. It was a different time!

What I got for Christmas - a hammering bench. Funny - my grandson Alfie aged 9 months got one this year too!. I think that these have not changed at all.

Life has a circularity. 

In 1977, when we had just had our daughter Hope (mother of Alfie), we lived in an appartment on the next parallel street, Grosvenor.

I won't go on - this has been an experiment in memory aided by technology. It has been fun to go back and use the web to bring the memories to life. In particular I am enjoying how Google Street View can take me back to places that mean a lot to me.  

The Boomers and The Fiscal Crisis - What is your plan?

The Globe have an article today that talks about the debate at the PMO about OAS. Will they extend the age of eligibility from 65 to 67? Unlike the CPP - OAS is not funded. It comes from general revenues. With so many boomers it will cost more than $100 Billion a year.

OAS offers most seniors about $500 a month. For many here on PEI it is a life saver for few have corporate or government pensions. For a couple it is food and heat.

Part of me wants to protest and the other part of me has to start to plan for this reality. For the reality is this. There will be just too many of us old folks - ESPECIALLY in Atlantic Canada.

So what can we do? Surely first of all have a conversation about why we cannot expect government to pay for health care and our pension as we expected. Look at Europe and countries like Greece who are the early birds in what will have to happen given our demographics - the deal we all signed on for that government would look after us has to be broken.

I feel that the wrong use of my energy is only protest. My real need to is fill the gap that will take place.

This is why my first move has been to get control of my health. To go from a pre diabetic 60 year old weighing 205 with a lot of visceral fat, knees that are giving out and early arthritis to a 61 year old weighing 165 lbs. No visceral fat, knees back in good working or and no signs of arthritis. I am now set to be fit and active for the rest of my life. For as we all know - without our health we can do nothing. I also can avoid being a burden to Robin and my kids.

The next move is harder to pull off - but I think that many of us will have to go here. It is to live once more in a the full extended family setting. Where at the core there is a deal. we the old ones do most of the heavy lifting with our grand kids - maybe home-school - certainly carry a lot of the rearing part. Where we save by being able to share big ticket resources such as cars, appliances taxes etc. Where by having such a job, we remain actively employed with a real purpose and a need to care and get up every day.

This is hard because we have all placed independence so highly - we have lost the cultural norms of how to do this well - how to be close yet apart.

But I cannot see another way of getting through the next 25 years. I have no pension to speak of but decent savings - but not enough to make it on our own. Our kids are fully stretched just coping with work and kids as most young couples are. We have capital but less of a chance to earn an income. They have no capital but good earning power. The kids suck all their income up. There is a deal in here somewhere.

So what about you? Will you depend on the health care system to fix you when you are ill? Do they get you well today even when you are ill? Can you afford to have a chronic illness?

Do you have a pension? Can you really rely on this over the next 25 years? Look at the Nortel example. Look at what governments are being forced to do to pensioners.

Are you like me and have no pension? Do you have a lot of savings? If so good but what are they invested in? Is even money a safe bet over the next 25 years. Look at the many countries where the currency has collapsed in value.

What if you have small or no savings and no pension? What is your plan? Can you trust that government will look after you? Look at the numbers - they cannot. They will tell you that they can - if they told the truth, you would vote them out! but In your heart you know they cannot make up the gap.

Over the last 4 million years humans have developed a very good organization for coping with uncertain times. It is called the Family or the Tribe. 

I think that we can do well to explore how to bring this back for each of us - for I know no other way that I have any chance of making it without them. 

Tell me why I am wrong!

 

Why are governments so stupid?

The UK government is considering a 10% tax on soft drinks. They state that we all know that it is sugary drinks and saturated fat that is the cause of the obesity epidemic. And of course that we eat too many calories. Link here.

Another case of good intentions messed up by total stupidity and the avoidance of looking at the truth..

Yes soft drinks are terrible. Yes they do cause obesity. But so then is juice and milk. A 7 ounce shot of all three carry the same load of sugar. Skim milk is the largest contributor to the sugar load for kids today. But juice and milk are seen as being healthy alternatives. Simply not true and anyone who does a little research can see this. 

Saturated fats do not make us fat nor do they cause heart disease. We get fat by having elevated blood sugar. The most simple research will remind anyone that this is true. It is since we bought the fat makes us fat idea that the obesity epidemic took off.

Finally simply put more calories do not make us fat. It depends on what kind of calories. Back to blood sugar again. 

All governments are going to have to get behind helping us be more healthy and what we eat is the most leveraged part of this. So they are going to have to do their homework. For if they force the wrong action, they will get worse results and not be given a second chance.

Why should this matter on PEI? The new health deal is why. The Feds will pay for 6% increases until 2017. Then the provinces will get paid at a function of GPD. PEI's health care costs are already climbing at 11% so we are behind right now. What might the economy be like in 2017? I bet we will be lucky to have 3% growth. If we are unlucky 1% or less. We are going to be in big trouble.

We will have no choice but to start preventing illness. So we have the one chance - we have to get the science right.

Is there an after life? An experiment using dogs

A Ghost Dog. Many of us see them. Are they out there or in us? Why do they exist? Can Ghost Dogs tell us more about the after life?

When I go out for walks, I still feel Jay's presence after 8 months since his death. He is very real to me still. I can feel him. I can smell him. I can sense his presence. He talks to me. What is going on? 

Am I just a looney? Is he a ghost out there or is he part of me?

I suspect some kind of field effect. I suspect that he is inside of me. That he is emotionally part of me.

For I suspect that we live not only in a surface field of gravity etc also in an emotional field. Just as we now know a lot about the fields of electro magnetism, I bet that in the future, we will know a lot more about how our emotional fields work.We both give energy into the field and we also receive it. The more we love another, the more our own personal fields collapse into each other's. 

Why do so many people feel their dog's presence? Why does this happen so often with dogs and less with people that we love?

I think that dogs make this easier because their strategy as a species has been to make themselves loved and appreciated by us. At first this might have been confined to work - guarding hunting herding etc. but the dogs who could read our field best got the best treatment and evolution did its work. Their niche is in tuning into our field. They can melt the hardest human heart.

Look at Hitler and Blondie! In fact the hard human heart is the most susceptible: for people who have not known love as youngsters are starving for it as adults. 

Dogs have become the safest and most trustworthy love companion in modern life. Just as most of the rest of our life has become brittle and corporate and all about who wins, dogs remain true. They just love us.

So if I am right, then our emotional fields must blend. Part of us lives in them and part of them lives in us. Like a human couple lost in a oneness after loving sex, there is a unity.

So I think that this is why, when I am open, not busy, not preoccupied, not thinking too much, he comes back. I can also call on him and he comes. Not of course in body - but in his spirit. So he is here for as long as I don't lose myself in busyness.

And so then this must be true for those humans we love too. But the barrier might be love. The ideal dog gives his all to us but do we give our all to each other? Another lesson that dogs can give us - to love more. And if we do, we too may live on in the hearts of those that love us.

 

Been ill - sorry for the low posting

I have been very quiet recently here. Sorry to my regulars. I have some kind of tummy flu that is very debilitating. I have had no energy and sleep all the time, eat nothing and am listless. But it is day 5 now and I am much better - not well but better.

I will return!

EPIC Christopher Hitchens Closing Debate Speech

via youtube.com

No comment needed from me

The Future of Food Banks? - Urban Farming

How can food banks be more sustainable? Getting tinned food, KD etc after others have donated it surely just keeps us dependent - and think about the quality of the food.

But what about this? What about using Urban Farming as the centre for community?

 

Joel Salatin - The Moses of Food

"Let my people free" - Joel Salatin is now clearly the Moses of the new food revolution. Leading by example and leaving the bondage of the industrial system. If you what to knwo what this is all about - his books and his videos and his work will inform you like no other souce.