I'm still here!

I've been busy. I take my granddaughter to the park just about every week night, and she still calls me "Dad", though we've all been working pretty hard to call me "Grampa" in front of her. She just won't!

I've played two weddings in the last little while. I bought a piano, which is something I've long wanted. My parents generously offered to buy me this really nice set of pickups for my Fender Telecaster. I had some trouble with them, however.

When the store put them in, only one of the pickups was good. He had to put the guitar back together twice, because I found a problem with how it sounded in the middle blade. Then last night, the pickup collapsed through the pick guard, as one of the screws holding it on had not been set properly. I took the guitar apart myself (something I have not done in twenty years), and fixed it.

I recorded this song to test it out, afterwards. This piece is notable for also featuring my new piano. :)

Dad

Yes, checking in for June... making sure I don't completely abandon this blog.

For the last many months, my little granddaughter has been picking up lots of words here and there. She mastered "HERE!" very early, and can say "Dora", and "oh maaan!" (Swiper the Fox's line from Dora.) She calls grapes "apes", and will repeat most words for things she finds interesting. She knows her food is "hot" and that her aunt is "AERRIE!"

In the last couple of weeks she's found a name for me too. She calls me "Dad." Coming down the stairs late last night after I flew home from Toronto, her eyes went wide and she said, "Dad!" clear as a bell. There was no more denying it. Guess she hears the kids call me that.

To tell you the truth, flattered as I am, I'm a bit disappointed. I was so looking forward to "Grampa."

Spring

The "unofficial" start to Summer in Canada is usually Victoria Day long weekend, which just passed. That is the day when you open up cottages and fight off the bugs. Well we certainly fought off the bugs when we visited my brother in law this last weekend. I have never seen so many mosquitoes - I spent the whole weekend in a bug net, and still have arms full of bites.

But I am happy about the impending arrival of summer. Happy enough to appreciate the sentiment of this old hymn.

Joyful, joyful, we adore thee,
God of glory, Lord of love;
hearts unfold like flowers before thee,
opening to the sun above.
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness;
drive the dark of doubt away.
Giver of immortal gladness,
fill us with the light of day!

Henry Van Dyke

Mount Snowdump

Well, the days are starting to warm up. Near where I work, however, are the giant snow hills created by the past year's snow removal efforts. They don't usually use this area as a snow dump, but the record snowfall necessitated it.

While some of the snow hills are shrinking, one particularly large snow hill, nearly 150 feet in height I suspect, has become the neighbourhood Mount Kilimanjaro. I usually take a great delight in the spring at seeing the last pile of snow. However, with the size of Mount Snowdump, I fear I may be saying goodbye to the snow in September instead.

Happy Flight Suit Day!

You'll remember I snarked on this last year too. This is perhaps the last time we'll be able to observe flight suit day, as this is the last year of the current President's term. Perhaps the next President (whichever party wins) will be a more serious President, less inclined to playing dressup!
I have never worn a flight suit, but I have worn lots of wool khaki uniforms. They're not comfortable. Fatigues are somewhat less uncomfortable. Still, someday someone will design a military uniform that actually doesn't feel like a bag of sauna rocks. :)

Guitar Hero

This is the weirdest case of shoplifting ever. A man stole a Fender Stratocaster from a Lewiston, Maine music store.... by concealing it in his pants.

I hope he cleaned the strings after that!

The surge is working! The surge is working!

The diminished violence in Iraq did correspond in time with the increased troop strength of American forces. And so the US media did portray the surge as a success.

But was it? Because the decrease in violence also corresponded with something else - Sadr taking the most powerful force in Iraq, the Mahdi army - out of the civil war. Even at the time, I was surprised by the faulty analysis on CNN. If violence suddenly decreased, and not gradually, Sadr's announcement would make the better candidate for a reason than a slow draw-up of American forces.

And indeed that turns out now to have been true.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article3635838.ece

So what has this out of play army kept itself busy with? Inserting thousands of Manchurian cops into Basra's military and political infrastructure.

The surge has been a mirage and now Basra is lost.

Remember Me

I started Lent on a low note this year. One of the lowest notes ever. As I've alluded to in the past, my daughter moved home just before Christmas, granddaughter in tow. I cannot say that I was looking forward to this, even though I love them both. I knew my daughter had a tendency to let other people watch the baby (at two, I suppose I can't call her that anymore.) And I did not want to lose our comfortable and quiet life to this.

I really had no idea.

My daughter, you see, had become a video game addict. Her entire life was invested in World of Warcraft, in the friends she had made in this game, and in the group activities in the game she took part in. So when she moved in, she had no plans to better herself, to get a job or an education. Her world was and is Warcraft. Period.

But that was still not the half of it. Not at all. What made my blood boil and rage was the absolute and complete inattention to my granddaughter. My daughter had little interest in her when she was on that game, and to say that is to be charitable. She did not know what she got into, or what she would be doing at any given moment. So by osmosis, by default... whatever, my wife and I were slowly dragged into parenting roles. So much for the loose idea of the occasional weekend visit, spoiling her, sending her home. Our granddaughter at nearly two did not know how to speak, did not know how to play, did not know how to do anything other than to go at the computer, and mimic a computer user. My wife and I had to become engaged quite vividly in teaching her how to be a little girl.

And there was the loss of our daily routine to the chaos.

My younger daughter would come home from school and find her things destroyed. Eventually, everything in our living room of any value at all would move higher than five feet. And my daughter would be completely oblivious to the fact that the little girl had been into anything, let alone everything. My wife would come home and find a load of clothes already in the dryer, which she would end up being forced to fold. Dinner would not be made. Diapers would be full. And then I would come home and find the living room a shambles with bits of food strewn everywhere, a filthy baby running around the room wearing nothing but a diaper, and my daughter on the computer talking into a headset about gold or pixelated monsters. I could vacuum - but what was the point? It would look just as bad the next day. I would tell my wife that it was all I could do not to call Children's Aid on my own daughter!

My mother, who is estranged from my daughter, would recommend harsh tactics to deal with it, and I would feel caught in the middle. Yes, I was angry. But was I really ready to give up on my family? Most of all, my life had been completely coloured in darkness: whenever I was not angry, I was despondent. What did we do wrong?

I poured over my memories. Was this "Cats in the Cradle" syndrome? It couldn't be! My daughter's life was completely unlike my granddaughter's. We filled her life with activity: my wife would sit and teach her to do crafts, play board games and card games with her, and ferry her around to activities like Dance class and Brownies. Every day I took her to the park - for years, without fail, every day was a day of me running around chasing her on the play structures, pushing her on the swings, hide and seek, and jumping from the highest heights we could find to jump from. I would hoist her up over my head, talk to her about the meaning of life, and we would walk miles with her up on my shoulders. Every day we did this!

"Don't kids learn how to parent from their parents?" I asked my wife on the verge of tears one night in the car. "Didn't we more or less get it right?"

This is how Lent began for me. Dark. Angry. Despairing. Did I have the Holy Spirit? No.

This was my Dark Night of the Soul. The truth, the way, and the life had been crushed out of me.

The darkness did not begin to end for me until Palm Sunday. If not quite an epiphany, the awareness that God really does do things on his own time returned to me. Everything will be alright, that still yet powerful voice had once said to me. Would it not be true? It might just take a while. What I really needed to do was my part. Faith is not a spectator sport, and I've spent months asking for things from God without giving him anything in return. It was time for me to give him my repentance: repentance for my months of anger. That Sunday, I remembered there was to be a reconciliation service the next night, and I would go.

On Sunday evening, the music director asked me to sing a song I had written, that I had played for him months before. The song itself was a sort of confession, and that I was asked to do this I consider a gentle irony. God gave me my music as a tool to witness. Now he was giving me my music to witness against myself. So before I could go to confession, I would have to sing a confession.

How far I've fallen,
I'll never know
I've lived in the darkness
That reigns below
The power of your mercy
The strength of your grace
Lifts me up
To see your face

And so it is I've fallen down
To let all my sorrows drown

The rivers of tears I'll cry for your feet
I'll dry with my hair for the times I've been weak
Let me love much Lord, let me love deep
Abundant forgiveness for the tears that I weep

After the music was done, I scrambled for one of the last priests still taking penitent people for reconciliation.

"I've been angry all the time for months. I can't feel anything anymore, not one positive thing," I told him.

"Do you remember the homily?" He said, "where Father said you must ask for forgiveness from those you wrong? And how you must forgive to be forgiven? God is Love. And love's distinguishing quality is forgiveness. Remember this."

The weight began to lift. On the way home, my wife told me my daughter was upset with me. I had left the Internet blocked all day. When I got home. I cracked open the Magnificat, and the recommended penance was to ask someone for forgiveness. I get the message, Lord, I whispered.

I went downstairs, and for the first time since my granddaughter was born, I kissed my daughter on the head, and felt real compassion for her. Addiction is not easy for anyone to defeat. It wouldn't be for her.

"I'm sorry I left you stranded without the Internet today my little one," I said. And in a way, I meant it; I really am sorry. When she's older, when I am gone, when she is not addicted to video games anymore... she will know that I truly did not want to be an ogre. These are not the memories I want her to have of me. I want her to remember the Dad who hoisted her up over his head, talked to her about the meaning of life. I want her to know that there was a Father who carried her, just as there is a Heavenly Father who carries us all.


"These holy days reawaken a great hope in us. Christ was crucified, yet he rose again and conquered the world. Love is stronger than hate, it has triumphed and we should affiliate ourselves with this victory of love. We should therefore start again from Christ and work together with him for a world founded on peace, justice and love."

Benedict XVI

My US Election Spam

It strikes me that the US election is frying a few brain cells among the truly devoted campaigners. Even here in Canada I am getting anti-Obama spam. (something about him being a Muslim and his pastor ranting about 9/11.) Such a crude and unsophisticated attack on a candidate seems kind of ridiculous to me, a parody of a real attack ad.

One observation I'd make about media coverage -  with all of the drama in the Democratic nomination process, poor John McCain is getting ignored. That could be a good thing or a band thing for him.

Passion Sunday

I think I've finally spiritually reached (or am getting close to reaching) where I should be during Lent. I have not really had any trouble keeping the disciplines I took on, but there was no real feeling or emotion behind it - I was just giving up stuff.

Now on the last day of Lent, I think I finally get it.

Last night, just before bed, I was reading a meditation about how God does things on his own schedule. The author was pointing out how Jesus was never far from danger - in the temple, people attempted to seize him a few times but the crowds and confusion always prevented it. In Nazareth his own people tried to run him off a hill, but until the evening before Passover, nobody could get hold of him. And in the garden of Gethsemane, he walked towards the guards who sought him, not the other way around.

You can seek, and you will find. But you have to be patient. For really, it is He that finds you.

Chaldean (Iraqi) archbishop found dead

His grace, Paulos Faraj Rahho, has been found dead a month after being kidnapped. Even though we Catholics regard martyrs for the faith as saints in Heaven, it still seems fitting for me to offer a prayer for him.

Now, Master, you let your servant go in peace.
You have fulfilled your promise.
My own eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the sight of all peoples.
A light to bring the Gentiles from darkness;
the glory of your people Israel.

(From the night Vespers, the canticle of Simeon, Luke 2:29-32)

Simon Reisman

With all the stuff in the news about NAFTA, today comes of an obituary worth noting. Simon Reisman, the man who was one of the principle architects of its predecessor has passed away.

When I was a young man around the time the negotiations were taking place, I worked at a Deli. And every day, Simon Reisman came in and ordered the same thing. I don't remember the particulars of what he ordered, but I do remember that he wanted his sandwich a certain way, and watched like a hawk to make sure that was the way you made it.

But he did so in a jocular and friendly manner. I only called him by name once, as if to say, "Is it really you?" He just smiled and nodded, without saying a thing.

People in space? Not for a while

When I was fifteen, I went to Cape Canaveral and saw Columbia on the launch pad in late March of 1981, two weeks before she soared into space for the first time. It looked just the same on that pad as I had seen it, as I watched the countdown on CNN. And then the vapour started spewing, the excited countdown I remembered from being a very little boy, that countdown that sent men to the moon... and she was off.

I've seen the space shuttle a few times since. I saw the Enterprise fly over Parliament hill on the back of her transport, a 747 or other large plane. And I always caught the launches on CNN, even the sad ill-fated launch of the Challenger carrying the first school teacher to go to space. The space shuttle has been part of the fabric of life, from the heroic (the daring space walk that fixed the Hubble telescope) to the ridiculous (diaper-clad stalker space cadets!)

But sadly this part the shuttle has played in my life and all our lives is coming to an end. In 2010, the last space shuttle will fly, and those craft will be consigned to history. On January 21 of that year, flight STS-132 by the Endeavor shuttle will end the Orbiter era.

I don't think many people are aware of this. The regular transit of people into space seems commonplace to us now. But it won't be soon; the Orion vehicle that will replace the shuttle will not be ready until 2015 at the earliest - NASA will not be sending people into space for five years or more!

Who does stuff like this?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7282948.stm

Unbelievable. Leave aside the issue that blowing up a religious school devoted to God is risking any eternal capital one hopes to have: anyone who does something like this, in my view, forfeits membership in the human race, if not the entire animal kingdom.

I get that Palestinians have problems with settlers, I do. But if this idiot thought that going all Hannibal Lecter on a bunch of kids can even be remotely considered a political action, he was gravely mistaken, just as he may be surprised by the fate eternity has in store for him.

I want the entire world to be married

...but for very selfish reasons. You see, if the entire world were attached and not single, then eHarmony.com would have to go out of business, and stop running those obnoxious ads!

Elections that are more interesting

I recently read about Canadians who are heading down to Iowa and Texas to volunteer for the Obama and Clinton campaigns. I think I understand why without having to think too hard about it - US politics are definitely more exciting right  now.

You wouldn't think so; after all, since Canada has a minority government, we are never more than sixty days to an election. If the government loses a confidence motion, the Governor General calls an election, and within sixty new days we go to the polls.

But fortunately for the smooth operation of Canada, our politicians are all acting like grownups. No angry posturing or heated words - instead the four main parties of Canada are mostly collaborating where they can; and where they are not, the parties are strategically voting in ways so as not to precipitate an election.

As I said, this is fortunate for the smooth operation of the government, but very, very boring! No shocking exposés about politicians dallying with attractive lobbyists, no angry leadership candidates exchanging attack ads and parading about with Oprah in tow. No Youtube-fed slogans about hope or experience.

In short, dull... dull... dull.

America, please lend us your politicians for a while? Just a couple of weeks?

The end of instant film

Polaroid's instant film is being phased out I'm sorry to say.

I have a lot of fond memories of Polaroid film, some of them even recent. A few years ago, we gave my youngest daughter, who is a talented photographer, a polaroid camera. On the way back from a trip to British Columbia, she accidentally smacked the picture button, and out came a photo of a man behind us who I don't think we had ever even looked at.

I think she still has that photo, a peculiar souvenir of a now bygone era.

Lame

Can't people think up their own stuff? http://www.obamaorchimp.com/

On the subject of Obama, when I was in Florida recently, I bought his book, just out of curiosity regarding all the hype. While it isn't an exceptionally provocative book by normal-person standards, it has a remarkable amount of candour for a politician whose best years are ahead of him. It is when he describes his interactions with people - meeting his wife, his prospective father in law,  or meeting Senator Robert Byrd - that the book gets really interesting, and you get that rare feeling (where politicians go) that you can actually tell what makes him tick.

That said, I was still kind of hoping, frankly, that Hillary Clinton might get the nomination. Not that I'm any sort of fan of her husband, really, but she should not be blamed for his baggage. It is just that, from the larger philosophical perspective, I feel males really have too much say in the world already, to be honest.

My country has only had a female Prime Minister once, and that was for only a scant seventy days. The US has had forty three male Presidents and appears to be well on its way to a forty fourth, with no other viable women candidates that I can see coming along for yet another generation.

I find that quite depressing personally. Perhaps where change goes, gender resonates more with me as a Canadian than ethnicity, as our largest minority (the Francophone population)  has held the Prime Ministerial office many times.

Checking in for January

Just so I don't have to say I skipped over January entirely!  How is it going?

Life has been incredibly busy. We have a baby at home, and circumstances find us looking after as often as not. I feel a lot older than I did the first go round.

Having passed over Christmas, I managed to miss doing any sort of meditation for that time period. Ash Wednesday is coming up next week, but I haven't put myself in that frame of mind yet either.

The US election is heating up.... the Canadian election, as always, is always imminent and never comes. That's what political life is like up here. The US contest is infinitely more interesting at the moment. It has all been compelling reading, and I've been devouring political web sites like candy.