On New Year's Eve

Courage, my friends, 'tis not too late to build a better world.

These words, originally uttered by Thomas Clement Douglas, a Canadian idealist who lived from 1904 to 1986, are transcribed in Braille with LED lights, permanently left on, high up on the wall of the condo building at the corner of Beechwood Avenue and Crichton Street, near us in Ottawa. They seem appropriate for the end of this disturbing year. 

Chris and I went into the park this afternoon to see the sun go down on the last day of 2020, under small clouds tinged with pink. Goodbye, old year.

A walk among the lights

A gloriously clear day today, followed by a clear night. We deserved that, after the damp, grey week we've had. The drawback was a bitterly cold wind. Not wearing enough and not having eaten enough for lunch, my extremities got chilled; at one point I could hardly feel my toes as I walked along, a strange sensation. This evening I was more sensible, donned an extra, fleecy layer, and had two helpings of the vegetable curry I'd left slow-cooking all day.

Every Christmas in Ottawa, the trees and buildings are beautified with a colourful "Pathway of Lights", this year, until January 7th. Elva, Laurie, Carol, Don, Chris and I met on our street this evening for the sake of a government-recommended, 7.5 km walk along the main streets, via Parliament Hill, to see them. Carol and I took photos; Carol tells me she drove her very elderly aunt along this route from her nursing home, the other day, and the old lady had been thrilled by the illuminations.

The reflective disks on sticks are supposed to represent wheat fields in Quebec, waving in the wind; the installation's entitled Entre les Rangs. Crossing the Portage Bridge to the Gatineau side of the river we also passed an artistic structure representing a dream-catcher, near Victoria Island, the spot where the First Nations gather. That one is called The Gather-Ring:

It is spotlit from below with changing colours.

The brightest and most striking light of all was not supplied by the National Capital Commission. It was the moon, almost full, shining on the ice that's forming in the Ottawa River.

 

In the afternoon we'd been flying as well, landing (first for a touch-and-go in Gatineau and then for a full-stop at Rockcliffe) when the sun was setting right ahead, so Chris had trouble seeing the runways for the dazzle. Driving home from the airport it was even more dazzling. 

"I'm not complaining"

"Ich grolle nicht, und wenn das Herz auch bricht ..." Actually the singer of that song is complaining, a good deal. The thumping repeated chords in the right hand of the accompaniment assert his misery, after the girl in the poem has married another chap who has made her "radiant with the magnificence of diamonds". The poet was Heinrich Heine, in real life hopelessly in love with his unobtainable cousin. 

Amelie Heine

The composer was Robert Schumann, who did get his girl, a long story that didn't finish very well, because after a few years of happiness with her, he threw himself in the Rhine feeling inferior, and after being fished out, he survived, only to be taken into an asylum, where he died. The link in that last sentence takes you to a website in German, but look at the pictures of her. She was devoted to her husband, but probably ought to have married Brahms instead, who did most of the housework in their shared ménage (especially when Clara went abroad on concert tours as a much sought-after pianist, to make ends meet) and looked after the children. 

Clara Schumann, aged 59

Clara Wieck-Schumann was born 100 years before my mother, by the way.

We have just tried singing  / playing Robert Schumann's famous song in two unfamiliar keys. The top note is psychological; Chris' voice collapses if he attempts top G. However, if you transpose the piece into A, you have to deal with double sharps. Played in A-flat, another option, it doesn't lie under the fingers very well, and the piano keyboard runs out of notes for the left hand; there's no bottom A-flat at that end. We have been singing and playing Ich grolle nicht in B-flat for a good 30 years, though the original key was C, with a top A, heaven forbid. The late tenor Fritz Wunderlich [in the YouTube video above] could sing that note effortlessly. It seems to me we'll have a better chance of mastering the song transposed down, but in which key?

When our son was a sensitive teenager, he used to put his hands over his ears while his parents practised this song. One day when we were out, he took a pencil and wrote ppp over the first bar of the sheet music as a broad hint to us to tone it down. I have never erased that suggestion.

We're currently working on Schumann's Dicherliebe once more, encouraged online, on Tuesdays, by our singing / piano teacher Gavan, who made a special study of this song cycle while working on his Master's music degree, analysing the harmonic modulations and performing it himself, so we gather, at the original pitch. I too studied this music in my youth, in my case in high school aged 15 or 16, for the British GCE exam, taught by my father who was the music master. My father could play all the accompaniments without much of a struggle. I wish I could.

So when the poet wrote "Ich sah, mein' Lieb', wie sehr du elend bist ..." (= I saw, my love, how wretched you are!), did he feel heart-broken sympathy for someone forced into marriage against her will, or was he being ironic and bitter, angry with her? The music seems to imply the latter interpretation, but I have never been sure.

Getting rid of single-use plastics

Environmental Defence, based in Toronto, has been running a series of Webinars this year, that they called The Recovery Series. On April 30th — The New Battle in Single-Use Plastics —this organisation presented some solutions to the problem of too much plastic in the Canadian environment. I watched in a YouTube recording of that Webinar, and took some notes on the ideas put forward.

In Canada, at present, less than 11% of plastic is recycled. Governments must ban toxic or tough-to-recycle products. By 2025 this should be a national strategy. Environmental laws should aim to reduce waste by banning all throwaway plastic, and to increase recycling. Businesses should be obliged to commit to reducing the packaging they use and individual citizens should adopt reduce-reuse-recycle habits*. Above all, we need to put a price on plastic water bottles. Coca Cola (the biggest culprit), Nestlé and Pepsi should be obliged to support a deposit-return program for the bottles they produce. Sobeys (food retailers) have banned plastic bags recently.

Canada generates 29,000 tonnes of plastic waste each year, only 9% of which is recycled! 47% of Canadian packaging consists of single-use plastic, made from fossil fuels. It seems that is worth almost $8 billion, per year, so if plastics were reused, this would be of huge economic as well as environmental worth. In any case, recycling isn’t a bad idea, since recycling initiatives create tens of thousands of new jobs.

A presenter in the Webinar, Clarissa Morawski, lives in Europe, along with about 450 million other people. Among other responsibilities, she is Managing Director of the Reloop Platform. The EU has issued a directive re. single-use plastics, so she informed us. (Frans Timmermans, a VP of the EU Commission, is the man behind Europe’s New Green Deal.) The amount of plastic going to landfills there has been capped to 10% by 2035. Cottonbud sticks, plastic cutlery, cups and plates, plastic straws, balloon sticks and the like are all banned now, along with polystyrene containers. Plastic bottles must henceforth be made of at least 30% recycled material, with their lids tethered to them, so that the lids too may be properly disposed of. Producers must pay for the collection and disposal of the packaging they generate! Europe is planning for a 90% return of these items; deposit return programs are already in operation in most European countries.

An Environmental Defence report entitled No Time To Waste contains a plan including the following recommendations for Canada:

• Ban unnecessary or hard-to-recycle plastic.
• Enable easy reuse of this material by initiating deposit-return systems.
• Support innovative, reusable products and schemes, such as coffee cups that can be used at different branches of a coffee shop chain.
• Give people incentives for bringing their own bags to the shops.
• Set aggressive targets for the recycled content of new products.

Money is needed to get the job done, but the financial burden should lie on producers rather than taxpayers! Manufacturers need to have an Extended Producer Responsibility imposed upon them and be held accountable by enforcement of the relevant laws.

* Plastic products are normally labelled: look out for the labels 3, 6, and 7. They are the “bad kinds.”

This month's "parties"

Written on Christmas Day

The only Christmas gatherings we went to this month were the unreal ones. 

From their individual living rooms, on December 7th, more than 100 CFUW-Ottawa women came to an online Holiday Party: "the most unique venue ever!" Lasting a couple of hours, the event was quite skillfully executed and very well received. Catherine acting as the MC did a particularly fine job. Alice auctioned a basket of wines and cookies for the Scholarship Fund for which the bidding went above $300. Heather entertained us with a funny story about a goldfish and Gouhar told an anecdote about black rat snakes invading her family cottage in the country. Ilse and Käti read out poems they'd written and Elizabeth, the director of the Club's choir, presented its theme song, We are the MadriGals, the singers having prerecorded this in parts to new, Covid-relevant words. In normal years, the "MadriGals" would be giving concerts at local retirement homes; just now that is out of the question. Elizabeth had some of us standing up and waving our arms about for "warm-up" exercises in the privacy of our own homes. In addition there were musical interludes from the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and children's choir (an arrangement of Pachelbel's Canon) and from a Carleton University graduate whom our Club had sponsored, Anita Pari, played Chopin's Arpeggio Étude:

I liked the moment when Hope, a Jewish member of the Club, gave us some insights into Hanukkah traditions, such as spinning a Dreydl, and then when we watched the (USA) National Children's Chorus charmingly singing about this game!

Natalie talked about her memories of Christmas in Hong Kong. Diane, who has published a 100-year history of the CFUW, read us an extract describing Club parties in the 1950s, elaborate and stylish affairs. Toward the end of the current one, Barbara told us a story of her father's recollection of wartime Christmases and and advised us to persuade the older generations of our families to tell their stories too, before those precious narratives are lost. Pat brought the party to a close with a final poem, leaving us with the message that we should approach 2021 "with a glad and hopeful heart." 

We were allotted to "breakout rooms" at one point where we were encouraged to talk to one another in groups of eight, for ten minutes. Otherwise the majority of the party-goers, me included, were passive listeners. I posted some screenshots on the Club's private Facebook page and, soon, I have to complete a report of this surprisingly happy event, for the Club's next newsletter, that I'll probably base on the first half of this blogpost.

Later that week, I hosted a special meeting of my conversation group at which each participant told the others in German of her particular memories of Christmases experienced in diverse parts of the world (Brazil, New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland, Cuba, the Netherlands, Bangkok, Helsinki, Canada).

Family parties went online as well. Yesterday we had a Zoom call with Debbie, David and Robert who were staying at a house in Eastbourne, Sussex, and then we celebrated Christmas in advance with George and company in Australia, who had already opened all their presents. Today, Christmas Day, was another marathon of phoning and video-chatting with friends and family, asking what they were all up to. My sister called from Wales before we were dressed, here; we returned her call and the video link kept breaking up, but it was so good to see one another with our respective Christmas decorations in the background. Chris spent half an hour talking to his sister too, in Grantham, Mrs Thatcher's home town. Then we had a prearranged Zoom meeting with Emma and Peter and their sons in London (whom we'd also seen on Christmas Eve) and Peter's parents and brothers in Essex. After a local phone call with Elva, who with Laurie would usually share a Christmas Dinner with us, Rob called Chris from York, while I dozed off. 

We are flagging. Chris says he doesn't have the energy to go to bed so will sleep on the settee*. He ran on his treadmill again this afternoon, and we've been for two 3km walks, under dark grey skies, along the wet pavements. There seem to be many more Christmas lights in porches and round windows, in the branches of what our city's "distinctive trees" and round the tree trunks, this year. Our neighbours on the front of Cathcart Street had a sort of in-person street party in progress with Sandra handing out cups of mulled wine from her porch. 

We enjoyed our meals today.  I enjoyed the preparing of them too. Roast turkey breast with ham and stuffing, sprouts and carrots with mushrooms and almonds, roast potatoes, cranberry sauce, gravy. We had some merlot with that. I'd baked a couple of mini Christmas cakes previously. Supper was a multi-ingredient potato salad, inspired by a German recipe for a Czech salad, and a sausage filled omelette.

Chris is moving around very slowly, saying Ow! because his legs hurt. He gave me the present of a machine that makes tap water fizzy. I shall have some now and retire to bed again.

* He did make it upstairs in the end.

Christmas continued

Christmas Eve now, and we're enjoying a log fire tonight. It's raining instead of snowing, as would be more usual, but nothing's normal this year, and 8°C outside, as predicted. Another abnormality was my forgetting to listen in the service of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College Cambridge, but in any case that wouldn't have been the same because no congregation was admitted, due to the British lock downs.

In London and Sydney our grandsons are showing signs of excitement. The Australians are already in the afternoon, so we had Eddie showing us the presents he'd opened, the chocolates he was eating and the paper hats he was colouring-in. He was glad to tell us that Santa had not only taken the snacks left out for him and his "reindeers," but had even left a thank-you note. On the other side of the world, in London, we watched Alex, the 14-year-old, stretching up to show us how he could touch the ceiling these days, and Thomas putting the unopened Christmas presents into individual piles, so that the family would know whose were whose. We'll see them again tomorrow.

Emma bought me a baobab sapling, hoping that it will grow to maturity once out of its nursery near the village of Matsangoni, in Kenya, and sequester a good deal of carbon. I was delighted with this gift, which my daughter has called "Canadian Hope". I can find the place where it grows on Google Earth and perhaps watch its progress. Emma bought another such tree for herself. We're encouraged to buy a forest!

For Chris, we have acquired a treadmill today.  He bribed the delivery men quite generously to ensure that this heavy, bulky object reached our basement safely. It said in the installation manual that it would take 40 minutes to erect. More like two hours actually. I refrained from taking a blood pressure reading either during or after the construction process. It was a success at last, however, and he ran on it, so that's good.

Not too bad a Christmastime

It's peaceful to stay at home without visitors. The small tree is decorated and lit; there's a small pile of gifts under it. The fire's going to blaze in the hearth. We have been listening to Beethoven and Schubert recordings and I'm accompanying Schumann's Dichterliebe songs at the piano. More music: Frank Gruska made a video of us singing in parts as a substitute for the usual carol-singing party we attend at Jennie's and Bill's place on Kensington Avenue. It's called Christmas at Kensington, and shows us performing E. Poston's Jesus Christ, The Apple Tree in which the women's voices divide into four parts. I took the top line, prerecording it at home for Frank to add to the mix. Chris sang the bass part, likewise.

Snow fell today, briefly, not much of it, and the temperature's currently at -6 and rising. Tomorrow and on Christmas Day a deluge of rain is expected, in warmer air, +8. A green Christmas, then. 

Multiple emails have to be written, this week, but these are end-of-the-year greetings to friends rather than work. I'm attaching copies of our Christmas letter, which didn't have as much travel news in it as previously. Our only travelling is on foot round the neighbourhood, each day: through Bordeleau Park and past the Chinese Embassy, across the St. Patrick's Street bridge to the other side of the Rideau River then through New Edinburgh to the Minto Bridges, and so back across the river and home again. Three kilometres. We've seen sun, sunsets, moon and stars on this walk, and last week the near conjunction of the planets. We missed the once-in-800-years moment due to a cloudy, foggy night; it can't be helped.

This evening I gave Chris a warm foot bath, so that he's sure to sleep well. We have plenty of food in the fridge and cupboards. We are the lucky ones of this world.

Reflected in steel balls

Our group has made a couple of attempts to meet out of doors during the pandemic, because we're missing one another. The snag is that several of our group are in the vulnerable category and don't feel like taking the risk, even in a relatively safe environment. This week, instead of meeting on a Zoom call, a few of us met in the parking lot of Strathcona Park for a face-to-face encounter instead, wearing masks of course, and warm clothes, because it was a chilly day. We did a lap of the park, setting off beside the Rideau River; its water level was very low and the ducks appeared to be wading rather than swimming in it. 

Then we crossed the bridge that connects Somerset Street to the eastern bank of the river, named the Adàwe Crossing, admiring the sculpture half-way across, two large steel balls reflecting us, the river and the sky, with the title, A View From Two Sides. This was created by the artist Kenneth Emig who knows our friend Jill (now living in Victoria, BC). Jill informs me that he made the sculpture at the new, Ottawa University Campus, light rail station, as well. That one is similar, featuring another steel sphere; he calls it Sphere Field.

The conversation in German didn't last all that long, due to the shortness of our walk, but we enjoyed one another's company and hope to meet in this way again. Ute extended her walk by arriving and returning home on foot; the rest of us used our cars.

Only short flights

"We can't fly anywhere!" Chris complains, meaning that this year we've been thwarted from undertaking a trip by air to stay overnight in a place that's new to us, or to land somewhere like Ithaca, say, in New York State, to revisit its attractions on the ground. Instead, we've only been for short flights, "round the block", usually up above the Gatineau River to the Wakefield area and back, which we can do in under an hour. Once, at the end of October, we extended that loop and overflew the dam at Low. We have memories of the "log-driver" canoeing trips that used to be offered by Aventures Radisson in the 1990s, on that stretch of the river, through spectacular scenery. 

Scenery near Low, QC

Nostalgia trips. On another afternoon, at the end of May, flying through bands of rain visibly falling from grey clouds as we approached them, where squalls of wind blew into us, we had a there-and-back outing by air to Whitewater Village on the banks of the Ottawa River, via the Luskville and Shawville areas, so that I could take aerial shots of Barbara's cottage where we'd stayed last November (in 2019). Barbara was there at the time of our flight, and came out on her deck to wave to us, even. Chris repeated that ride with Chuck, later, who takes better photos than I.

Whitewater Village

A similar ride was the one when, during the pumpkin harvest season in mid-October, we took the plane (without stopping) down to Cornwall airport (CYCC) and back, one Saturday afternoon, doing a "touch-and-go" landing on the runway and getting fine views of the St. Lawrence from the circuit there, with the international border very close. On the way there and back we overflew the farm where I'd been for a wagon ride through the pumpkin fields the previous day, with people in the Diplomatic Hospitality Group.

Pumpkin farm from the air

St. Lawrence River, near CYCC

Twice this year, we did land somewhere else and got out for a walk, again just repeating short trips we'd had many times in the past. It's almost exactly an hour between Rockcliffe airport and Kingston (CYGK), so that's a popular excursion for members of the Rockcliffe aviation fraternity; it's traditionally one's first solo cross-country flight when working towards one's Private Pilot Licence. Chris and I walked through the conservation area to the edge of Lake Ontario, that day. Another walk in the woods that we relished was on the day we flew north in September, also for about an hour, to Mont-Laurier airport (CSD4), our walk after lunch at the nearby roadside café following the ATV trails part way around the airport fence, on the outside, that is, through some wild-looking shrubland.

All worth doing, and we appreciate how extraordinarily lucky we are to have those experiences, and to be able to afford what it costs to use our little private plane, but none of the above is the same as a real flying adventure, such as we've boasted of in most previous years.

The Riverkeeper Meeting

I hosted the second of my guest-speaker meetings (Webinars, in effect) for my Environment Action group on November 9th. After the previous speaker (my daughter!) had described how scientists can assess the damage to our planet from outer space, by means of satellite technology, I said, making a bad pun, we were now "Zooming-in" to something closer to home, the state of our local rivers. Our speaker this time was Elizabeth Logue, "Riverkeeper". On Twitter, she calls herself @nibilogue. She is the policy developer and spokesperson for the Ottawa Riverkeeper organisation.

The Waterkeeper Alliance, soliciting the help of citizen scientists to keep waterways healthy,  is an international network of about 300 organisations, Ottawa Riverkeeper being one such. Its team of 12 organisers, plus their dedicated friends and assistants, are "the eyes and the ears of our watershed", monitoring the quality of the water we play in, swim in, fish in, and drink. Next year is its 20th Anniversary. 

Elizabeth loves the rivers, especially the Gatineau River on whose nearby banks she grew up. She still puts its rocks in her pockets, she said. At the start of her presentation she acknowledged her Indigenous heritage, the first guardians of this region being the Algonquin-Ashinabeg nation. She herself has Indigenous blood; her Irish grandfather married an Algonquin girl, and Elizabeth uses words from the native language. 'Thank you', in Algonquin, is Miigwetch.

The Ottawa or Kitchissippi River rises (not far from the source of the Gatineau River) in the Val d'Or region, meandering for about 1300 kilometres to Montreal where it merges with the St. Lawrence seaway. The Ottawa Riverkeeper sells maps of that watershed, an area that supplies drinking water to some two million people. The Ottawa River needs to be swimmable and fishable, in other words, safe. That means that sewage overflow must not go directly into it. The Riverkeeper team has been working with the municipalities of Ottawa and Gatineau to ensure that it doesn't, or that as little sewage seeps in as possible, so during these last few years a new sewer overflow pipe has been constructed beneath the city. (In fact it runs through our neighbourhood and we could hear the pile-drivers across the river from us making the hole for the tunnel in New Edinburgh park). When the construction was officially completed, on November 20th, Elizabeth Logue was standing alongside the Mayor and MP Catherine McKenna ("Climate Advocate" and Canada's Minister of Infrastructure and Communities). The Combined Sewage Storage Tunnel (CSST project) has been a $232.3 million investment, was constructed by the Tomlinson Group and is part of the Ottawa River Action Plan.

Other pollutants that ought to stay out of the river are the fertilizers and herbicides that kill the fish in it and are harmful to humans. Patches of algae blooms indicate where these contaminants are. Road salt is another problem, leaking into the drains through any small crack. After her presentation, in answer to a question about this, Elizabeth pointed out that it would be better to tackle the ice on city surfaces with urea rather than salt. 

At 58 sample sites where sediment had been investigated, micro-plastics have been detected. Nuclear waste is another huge hazard to health and biodiversity, from the reactors at Chalk River and Rolphton, near Renfrew (the latter was Canada's first nuclear reactor).

Other concerns of the Riverkeeper are the changing shoreline of the local rivers and the endangered species of flora and fauna. 50 (hydro) dams that have been constructed and / or decommissioned: the dams on the Lièvre are out of date; the Carillon dam is being reconstructed to include fish ladders. In collaboration with the Museum of Nature, the interaction of different species is closely observed. Zebra mussels are invasive. At risk are the American eel, the Lake Sturgeon carrying the embryos of hickory nut mussels, and the turtles. 

Groups of young people aged between 17 and 25 help with Watershed Health Assessment and Monitoring (WHAM) investigations, taking part in the Youth Water Leaders program. A recent initiative of the Federal Government is the Indigenous Guardians project. One Aboriginal community in our vicinity collaborates with scientists to help them understand the threats to fish, investigating mercury levels, for example, and there's a similar collaboration with people at the First Nations Reserve near Lake Timiskaming, upriver. 

Goal 6 of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals is the one about Clean Water and Sanitation. The UN declared this a Water Action Decade, so the Riverkeepers' work is very à propos. Canada's representative at the UN, Stéphane Dion, stated that "our future depends on a water-secure world," adding that "Canada is here to contribute, to be part of the solution."

Elizabeth left us with a hotline number to call if we have something to report concerning the rivers:

1-888-9KEEPER

For the record, a historic moment

 Screenshot taken this afternoon:

At this moment of tremendous relief, Shakespeare, as often, springs to mind, with Feste's remark in Twelfth Night, Act V, Scene I:

And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

... as does this line by Goethe:

Denn alle Schuld rächt sich auf Erde.

Emma's two talks

This year my daughter Emma Woolliams, a metrologist who works with climate change scientists, has given a good few online lectures and I had the good fortune to be virtually present at two of them. I and 15 people from Maryland were at the first one, back in June, her American friend Laura (an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Sustainability) hosting that meeting. At the end, one of the students in Laura's class paid Emma a compliment, saying "This has been one of the greatest hours I've ever spent thinking about climate change!" 

Emma began her talk by quoting the 'Apollo 8' astronauts who'd said "We went to the moon and we discovered the Earth." When the photos were published the realisation also dawned for others that no political borders are visible from up there, and that our earth is fragile and precious.

The science of climate change starts with light, she said, describing her youthful enthusiasm for exploring light-waves. The earth is a thermal body, emitting at wavelengths that we can't see. Infrared cameras in satellites look at this part of the spectrum, detecting the heat radiated from earth. Its temperature is stable when the energy taken in = the energy given out. Visible and "near infrared" light from the sun can easily penetrate the atmosphere; it's the infrared radiation not getting out again that causes the warming.

99.9% of the earth's atmosphere is composed of nitrogen, oxygen and argon. If that were 100%, then a stable temperature of -18°C could be maintained, as on the moon. For more warmth on earth we need the "greenhouse effect". H₂O, CO₂ and methane molecules vibrate in the atmosphere when the thermal radiation excites them, thus balancing earth's temperature. Water is the most prominent of these greenhouse gases. Warmer air holds more water, which makes more energy, causing more / bigger storms. The planet seems to breathe, its temperature rising and falling.

The super-computers used by meteorologists analyse atmospheric models, and from these models, predictions can be made. The Global Observation System — thousands of computers working together — processes the data concerning the Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) measured from satellites, from balloons, from weather stations, by robots in the oceans, and so on. She mentioned masts erected in the Namibian desert that measure the reflectance of the ground and the transmittance of the atmosphere. Emma and her colleagues can use such data (and from sensors elsewhere on the earth's surface) to check the performance of the Earth Observation Satellites. She also showed us pictures of a device monitoring the leafy canopy in Oxfordshire woodlands.

Satellite cameras themselves are sophisticated enough to detect the Leaf Area Index (LAI) of our planet's forests and allow scientists to draw conclusions about the ocean water from measuring its colour, affected by the amount of phytoplankton, sediments and so on. Half of the CO₂ in the ocean is absorbed by   phytoplankton floating in it. (The rest is absorbed by the water itself and acidity monitors on buoys can measure that.) The satellites observe changing sea levels, too, and can even provide supportive information in disaster relief situations.

We're seeing retreating glaciers, the destruction of coral reefs. The reduction in sea ice is closely watched; a 2° rise in temperature would submerge some of the world's populated islands.

From 8000 BCE to around 1900 the earth had a fairly stable climate. Things have changed since then. The evidence of man-made global warming is overwhelming. 

She said it was time for feminist thinking. Men prefer to tackle one thing at a time. Women are more capable of considering lots of input together. Humanity is making progress and partnerships are crucial. Since the United Nations created its Sustainable Development Goals, every country on earth is making progress towards them. Emma quoted her heroines, Mary Robinson and Christiana Figueres, both of whom have injected "stubborn optimism" into the climate change conversation, and she spoke of Project Drawdown, which suggests 100 solutions for lowering the carbon dioxide we emit. Because of Covid-19, people are beginning to think locally and globally rather than nationally. We have been obliged to listen to scientists this year; it's a good habit to acquire.

Emma left her audience with the words Courage - Hope - Trust - Solidarity.

For the Environment Action meeting I hosted in Ottawa on October 19th, I had asked if Emma would repeat this presentation. To my delight she was very willing to do so, but she added and subtracted some slides, to suit the audience I'd mustered. We had 29 participants at this first guest-speaker meeting on our program, mostly CFUW people, though we had a couple of extra people along as well.

Again, Emma stated that global atmospheric models predict an increase in temperature. She said that islands were bound to disappear and it would be better if their inhabitants would be able to leave with dignity than as helpless refugees, so the world should start thinking about how to manage this. She also mentioned people who currently live on mainland coasts and near rivers. Many will be displaced. Canada is likely to become one of the havens for climate refugees, and with warming temperatures, this country could become as the food basket of the world. 

She described how governments are competing in their pledges to achieve 'net zero' carbon by the mid-century. Can it be done? There was a fall in CO₂ emissions during Covid shutdowns, worth noting. Again, she mentioned Project Drawdown and the 100 solutions that could save us. We need to get organised to tackle our problems; the effectiveness of our action depends upon whom we can influence.

Scientific observations play a crucial role in finding ways forward, being powerful motivators for change. Measurements ensure that everyone can see the impact of global warming. Metrology fixes the broken links in the chain of information, she said. Again, she listed the different kinds of metrology taking place around the world — satellites, radar, planes, weather stations, etc., all contributing. Emma's own job is to look at composite measurements, correcting for differences between measurements past and present, and to calibrate new satellites before they are launched. She also chairs a European Metrology Network whose purpose is collaboration between scientists and between these scientists and the "stakeholders" with whom they communicate.

Aerial views north of Ottawa

We saw these views from C-FPTN during a half hour flight over the Gatineau Park on Thanksgiving Monday. So much to be thankful for! If you look carefully at the last two photos here you can see a mysterious Bird in the landscape. It's part of the water maze at Éco-Odyssée, near Wakefield.

Alarms and Excursions

Never mind the misery of the pre-election excitement in the USA or the resurgence of COVID-19, this is a verbal snapshot of our personal lives at the moment. 

Here, in Ottawa, at least one drug addict spent the night on our doorstep, last weekend. Her voice woke Chris up, but I, still half-asleep, assumed he was dreaming. He wasn't dreaming. She (they?) left a crumpled tarpaulin, two pairs of women's black underpants and a syringe wrapper outside our front door and strewn over our front garden; we found these things when we opened the door to go out in the morning. Police and neighbours have been told about it and our porch is now lit throughout the night. This was a disturbing incident in more senses than one, reminding me of the wild animals that take shelter round about our house. Only this time it was humans.

On Monday, still thinking about vulnerabilities, I went to a lecture about Long Term Care Homes and how they are going to be "transformed" into something less institutional than at present. Chris and I like the possibility that there might be more interactions between elderly residents and young people, in the care homes of the future. Meanwhile we have COVID-19 to contend with and all our local care homes are in lockdown again, due to the Second Wave. My friend Sue, for example, is once again forbidden to visit her 98 year old mother.

News from London this week; our daughter Emma thought it possible she was catching the virus again, came down with the symptoms of a cold brought home from school by one of our grandsons, but her COVID test result turned out negative. All four of her family have been stuck at home again. 

Emma is preparing a talk about satellite metrology for me and my new CFUW-Ottawa Environment Action group. She'll give the talk later this month. I have been recruiting people for this group since July, as well as soliciting help from other guest speakers near and far, and now have over thirty people on my contact list and a 6-part speaker series ready for our Programme. I'm proud of the plans, but nervous of what might thwart them. I created a website for the group last weekend, as a substitute for sending constant messages that get lost, haven't had the Club's permission to make it public yet. Many emails back and forth about that, and about the fact that one of my group members wants to invite another thirty external people to attend these meetings. 

The Environment is very much on people's minds these days, a political hot topic. Even Prince William, the Queen's grandson, is getting involved, so I read today. I don't think he'll attend my Environment Action meetings, though.

Yesterday (Wednesday) I attended an online public lecture Zoomed from McGill University about Facilitating the Transition to Sustainable Water Resources Management via Participatory Systems Modeling. The title seemed off-putting, but the content was so interesting that Chris stopped what he was doing to come and listen with me to the Prof's description of feedback loops in his models of water consumption in Cyprus, Guatemala, etc. and the co-option of different water management stakeholders.

 

I've also been concentrating on the November issue of the newsletter I edit, now that the October issue is out.

At the end of last week Chris drafted a formal "I am retiring" announcement and handed it in on September 24th. A colleague commented, did Chris actually mean he was retiring or was he resigning from his job? That was a thought-provoking question, as was the question he got from another department at work this Tuesday: did he really want to leave, or would he be interested in a change of scene? Even though the insurance benefits company had been notified of his date of departure, it wouldn't be too late to reverse the process. So after a flurry of communications, among which someone advised him to practise "mindfulness" for the sake of inner peace and equilibrium, Chris has now decided to stay with his company indefinitely, for the time being, instead of resigning / retiring. He will be 71 next month.

This morning my German conversation group talked about the German artist Gabriele Münter and her circle of fellow expressionist artists in Murnau, Bavaria. The other one we focused on was Marianne von Werefkin who grew up in Lithuania and died as a Swiss citizen in Ascona. I had seen paintings by both of these famous women and by the men they lived with (Kandinsky and Jawlenski) at the Lenbachhaus in Munich last January. Much to talk about, so we'll continue with that topic next week.

We are in the midst of "Fall" with coloured leaves falling everywhere, especially in the strong winds and showers of rain. Chris has been singing Der Stürmische Morgen from Schubert's Winterreise to my accompaniment (our online music teacher, Gavan, led us through a thorough practice of this one on Tuesday) and I have been scooping up the maple leaves in our garden into leaf bags. Our walks are lovely, at any time of day. We walked home from town under a limpid sky this evening (it had cleared up) after supper on the Khao Thai restaurant, I wrapped in a fleece supplied at the patio table.

Twelve Bishops

I have once again been discussing family history with my cousin Wendy, who sent me this photo of our grandfather (on the left) with five of his brothers. 

The brother missing from the photo is Charlie, who emigrated to Canada as a Methodist minister (a missionary) and  in 1912 married a girl called May Wilson, who had followed him to Toronto. They later moved to Alberta and in 1996 I met a few of their descendants in British Columbia.

Because I tend to mix them up and get the names wrong, below is the correct list of names and dates-of-birth for this remarkable family whose parents were married in December 1873. My great-grandfather Benjamin spotted his wife Catherine Willis (whose ancestors were another interesting family) singing in a Darlington Methodist chapel choir during a long walk north from Somerset, and to judge by the frequency of their children's births, it was obviously a love-match. Benjamin senior, whose family were iron-foundry engineers, died in 1904 and his son Benjamin (my grandfather) died in 1940.

The Bishop siblings, as recorded in the "Family Register" and "Family Events" pages of the Bible they kept at home:

Will, b. October 1874 (musical director of a theatre company)

Ben, b. March 1876 (choirmaster at the Chapel, and a painter-decorator by trade)

Kate, b. September 1877 (she never married, became a formidable nurse instead)

Alice, b. March 1879 (did not marry either; lived to the age of 99)

George, b. August 1880 (see below)

Charles, b. November 1881 (see above)

Nell (Helen), b. March 1885 (directed a Secretarial College which employed her brother Walter)

John, b. July 1886 (his son is still alive in his late 90s)

Lil (Lily), b. June 1888, a teacher, married name Hardy

Ethel, b. September 1889 (a milliner), married name Blaylock 

Fred, b. July 1891 (a stationer), father of my aunt Ruth who married her cousin, my uncle Frank

Walter, b. 1896 (the only one of the brothers to go to university)

This is the whole family in a photo taken around 1901:

Left to right, back row—Ben, Lily, George, Helen, Charles, John; middle row—Kate, Benjamin Senior, Walter, Catherine, Will, Alice; front row—Ethel, Fred.

George was imprisoned during the 1st World War for being a Conscientious Objector. In spite of this he had a tremendous sense of humour (he was my mother's favourite uncle). At one point in his life he tutored Aldous and Julian Huxley when they were boys, I forget why and for how long.

Lily had one child, Douglas, who died as a young, pacifist member of the Friends' Ambulance Brigade in China during the 2nd World War. I wrote a blogpost about Douglas in November 2010.

Un peu de de flânage

The municipality has made several streets in Ottawa traffic-free again, this summer, so that you can stroll around without fear of being knocked over by any vehicle other than those pesky electric scooters (that's another story). What surprised and puzzled me was the use of the French verb "flâner" on this notice. According to linguee.fr, it means "stroll" or "wander", giving the example: Elle flânait le long de la plage. " The definition continues, "plus rare: roam · loiter · dawdle · amble." 

Elsewhere in downtown Ottawa (a couple of blocks further on, for example!) notices say "Pas de flânage!" in no uncertain terms. "Flânage" seems to be a euphemism for homeless street people. I'm not the only one wondering about this.

We mustn't have vagabonds lingering in the streets, although they do, of course, and always did. 

In Bright is the Ring of Words by R L Stevenson, in his Songs of Travel (the cycle of poems or songs that begins with The Vagabond), you can read these two lines:

[...] The lover lingers and sings
And the maid remembers!

Heinrich Heine's Der Doppelgänger, published 1827, (Chris enjoys singing Schubert's setting of this poem) is also about a strange man (and his double) loitering with intent, you might say:

Le Flâneur, Paul Gavarni, 1842.

Still ist die Nacht, es ruhen die Gassen,
In diesem Hause wohnte mein Schatz;
Sie hat schon längst die Stadt verlassen,
Doch steht noch das Haus auf demselben Platz. 

Da steht auch ein Mensch und starrt in die Höhe,
Und ringt die Hände, vor Schmerzensgewalt;
Mir graust es, wenn ich sein Antlitz sehe -
Der Mond zeigt mir meine eigne Gestalt. 

Du Doppelgänger! du bleicher Geselle!
Was äffst du nach mein Liebesleid,
Das mich gequält auf dieser Stelle,
So manche Nacht, in alter Zeit?

In the nineteenth century it was probably the fashion among artistic types to dawdle or wander aimlessly through small towns or cities. Baudelaire, in Paris, was the architypal flâneur:

Observateur, flâneur, philosophe, appelez-le comme vous voudrez ... Quelquefois il est poète ...
[...] Pour le parfait flâneur, pour l'observateur passionné, c'est une immense jouissance que d'élire domicile dans le nombre, dans l'ondoyant, dans le mouvement, dans le fugitif et l'infini. Être hors de chez soi, et pourtant se sentir partout chez soi ; voir le monde, être au centre du monde et rester caché au monde, tels sont quelques-uns des moindres plaisirs de ces esprits indépendants, passionnés, impartiaux, que la langue ne peut que maladroitement définir. L'observateur est un prince qui jouit partout de son incognito. L'amateur de la vie fait du monde sa famille ...

After I posted some of the above on Facebook, a friend sent me the link to a nice essay by another blogger In Praise of the Flâneur, also mentioning Baudelaire.

Can we choose to be happy?

Chris and I were arguing about this yesterday evening. Chris shocked me by saying he couldn't imagine how anyone could make such a deliberate choice, arguing that happiness was more likely an “emergent property” of lucky circumstances. I, on the other hand, have believed otherwise for most of my adult life, and today I discover that, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong in awfully good company. 

Here are some quotations I found:

“Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

Abraham Lincoln

“Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.”
Spinoza

“The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude.”
“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”
William James (1842-1910)

“Seek to know an inward stillness, even amid the activities of daily life. …. Live adventurously. …. Approach old age with courage and hope. … Consider which of the ways to happiness offered by society are truly fulfilling [...] Be discriminating when choosing means of entertainment and information ... A simple lifestyle freely chosen is a source of strength. … Rejoice in the splendour of God’s continuing creation ...  then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one.”
― Quaker Advices and Queries

“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”
Proverbs 17, v. 22

That quotation reminds me of Beatrice in Act 2, Scene 1 of Shakespeare's 'Much Ado About Nothing'.

“DON PEDRO: Truly, lady, you have a merry heart.
 BEATRICE: Yea, my lord. I thank it, poor fool, it keeps on the windy side of care.”

“Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
Phillippians 4, v. 8

“Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.”
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
 “The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.”
“Let us endeavor so to live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”
Mark Twain

“The greatest honour we can give Almighty God is to live gladly."
“You shall see for yourself that all manner of things shall be well. [...] Pay attention to this now, faithfully and confidently, and at the end of time you will truly see it in the fullness of joy.”
Julian of Norwich (14th century British anchoress)

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
G.K. Chesterton

“Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”
Charles Dickens

“This a wonderful day. I've never seen this one before.”
Maya Angelou

“Adventurous men enjoy shipwrecks, mutinies, earthquakes, conflagrations, and all kinds of unpleasant experiences, provided they do not go so far as to impair health. They say to themselves in an earthquake, for example, ‘So that is what an earthquake is like,‘ and it gives them pleasure to have their knowledge of the world increased by this new item.”
Bertrand Russell: Conquest of Happiness

“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.”
“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”
“Although you may not always be able to avoid difficult situations, you can modify the extent to which you can suffer by how you choose to respond to the situation.
“Happiness is determined more by one's state of mind than by external events.”
“The purpose of our life needs to be positive. We weren't born with the purpose of causing trouble, harming others. For our life to be of value, I think we must develop basic good human qualities—warmth, kindness, compassion. Then our life becomes meaningful and more peaceful—happier.”
Dalai Lama XIV: The Art of Happiness

“Non s'efforcer vers le plaisir mais trouver son plaisir dans l'effort même, c'est le secret de mon bonheur.”
“Ne peut rien pour le bonheur d'autrui celui qui ne sait être heureux lui-même.”
André Gide

I too have learned that we cannot nudge the people with whom we interact towards happiness unless we first contrive to be happy ourselves. The artist I met a few years ago at Ste. Flavie in Quebec said exactly that in one of his poems:

“Pour rendre les autres heureux, je dois l'être d'abord.”
Marcel Gagnon

“A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?”
“All that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.”
“Learn to be happy through the good fortunes and joys of your friends and not through senseless quarrels. If you allow these natural feelings to blossom within you, your every burden will seem lighter or more bearable to you, you will find your own way through patience, and you will spread joy everywhere.”
“If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.”
“I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves - such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine. The ideals that have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face live cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness and Beauty.”
Albert Einstein

“I've spent my life observing the universe, mostly in my mind's eye. It's been a tremendously rewarding life, a wonderful life. I've been able to explore the origins of time and space with some of the great living thinkers. But I wish I were a poet. [...] It's a shame we live on different continents. [...] It's so beautiful at this hour. The sun is low, the shadows are long, the air is cold and clean. You won't be awake for another five hours, but I can't help feeling that we're sharing this clear and beautiful morning.
Your friend,
Stephen Hawking”

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
“A man is but a product of his thoughts. What he thinks he becomes.”
“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”
Gandhi

Seeing with new eyes

I had back-to-back cataract operations on Monday and Tuesday, at the Herzig Eye Institute clinic on St. Laurent Blvd. I jumped the usual waiting time for surgery by paying a fee to have the surgery done promptly, at this private clinic. We've been debating with our friends whether or not it's hypocritical / immoral to take such a step while claiming to be in favour of universal, free healthcare. The rather poor defence is to say that our taking advantage of private medicare frees up spaces for people who can't afford to avoid the slowly moving hospital queue.

The staff at the clinic say that their clients get better than average treatment there, because of their superior diagnostic and surgical tools, super clean facilities, etc. I chose to pay an extra $1000 or so for each eye to have a preliminary procedure whereby a laser beam made the first few cuts, thus causing less bruising to the eye and minimizing the risk of imprecise surgery. This would speed up my recovery from the operation.

The clinic is doing very good business just now; because of the Covid-19 scare, people are willing to pay large amounts of money to stay away from hospitals.

Since I opted for a long-sighted lens in both eyes, my distance and middle-distance vision is already excellent; by Wednesday afternoon I already had 20-20 vision in both eyes, according to Dr. Bhargava who checked the state of my recovery that day, and I could have legally driven home from that appointment, although Chris was the one who drove.

From now on, I'll be needing reading glasses for computer work and for playing the piano, shall have to wait three or four weeks to let my eyes settle before I can get the prescription for those, but have bought a $15 pair from the drugstore in the meantime that are digging into the top of my nose.

I'm lucky to have all this happen at a time when I'm not too busy and not expecting to travel; Chris is also going to have cataract surgery (just in one eye) next month.

I can honestly report that the procedure on both days was painless. I was nervous, of course, and had to put up with a lot of waiting around, but they gave me a mild sedative so I relaxed during the actual operation. Recovery from the sedative took about 10 minutes. The colours and patterns that I saw while the surgeon was working on my eyes were amazing, quite the psychedelic light show!

For the record, this is the email I sent to some friends and relations on the night of the first operation:

I am managing to write this using my untreated eye. I can see some of the views in the distance through the new lens in the other eye, but nothing on the screen yet, apart from blurred outlines. I'm writing this now on the assumption I shan't be able to send a similar email this time tomorrow because by then my vision in both eyes will be blurred. 

Today's surgery was really not at all bad. No pain or discomfort worth mentioning. I felt a slight pressure on the eyeball at one point and one of the multiple eye-drops they gave me stung slightly, otherwise an amazingly tolerable experience. I was right when I anticipated that the worst of it would be not being allowed a cup of coffee or anything to eat beforehand. (I made up for that when I got home.) They had promised me a post-op snack but it came as a take-out. No eating or drinking on the premises because I'd have had to take my mask off. I even had to keep the mask on during the surgery. They taped it to my cheek so that it wouldn't slip. Anyhow I'm not in the least bit anxious about the repeat procedure (on the other eye) tomorrow.  

The experience so far went like this ... A very late 2nd supper, last night, and a drink just before going to bed. This morning, I slept in till after Chris had got up; I hadn't slept so well the previous night. No breakfast. Chris put eye-drops in and went to the pharmacy to get a top-up bottle because the Moxifloxacin was already nearly all gone! Drank two large mugs full of hot water flavoured with lemon juice and ginger and nothing more. I was allowed no liquids beyond 10 a.m. Went for a short walk to the Minto Bridges and back. More eye-drops. No lunch, no drinking.  

Chris drove me to the clinic, said goodbye and drove off at about 12:50. After having my temperature taken and signing a form saying I did not have any COVID symptoms, I spent another 15 minutes on my feet answering more questions and signing consent forms at the reception desk. Paid the bill for the first eye. Waited for about 40 minutes in a comfy chair. 

Accompanied into a 2nd waiting room in the surgery area where I waited some more. A nurse took my blood-pressure and oximeter readings, asking the same questions the receptionist had asked. More waiting. The nurse kept coming over to put in one more eye-drop (I lost count). She also put a sticker on my forehead above my right eye, so that everyone would know which eye was going to be dealt with. A robed chap (a second nurse) came across to tell me his name is David and that he'd be accompanying me to the operating table. He then went away again. It was now about an hour and a half since I arrived at the clinic—still fasting, of course—I was trying not to think about my rumbling stomach. More eye-drops. The nurse had a good aim. She then took me to a consultation room and told me the anaesthetist would be along in a minute. More waiting. I had time to read another chapter of the Maigret book I'd brought along. David poked his head round the door to tell me the anaestheseologist [sic] was coming over soon.  

Eventually, circa 2:30, I met the anaestheseologist, very courteous; he was East-Indian-Canadian, like the surgeon. He asked me most of the questions I'd answered before, including what was my name and my date of birth and which eye was going to be done today? He explained what he was going to be doing in the op. theatre and why. Then he went away. More waiting. Then Dr. Bhargava (the surgeon) came in. We recognised one another and said hello. I like this chap. He took a last look at my right eye in the diagnostic machine, gave me the chance to ask any last minute questions, explained the procedure again and said he'd see me in the operating theatre shortly.  

Not too much more waiting before David reappeared to accompany me to the first operating theatre. This is where the initial laser cut would be done. I needed to lie flat on the bed with my head on the support and have straps tied round my head to keep it still. A soft, rubbery ring was put over the eye to prevent me from blinking; it wasn't at all uncomfortable. The surgeon and some assistants were behind me but I couldn't see them. He seemed to be giving them (students, new colleagues?) a demonstration, with me as the experiment. A machine was positioned over my right eye and I was told to hold very still while the laser beam was being operated. At one point the doc. said "this will take 25 seconds" which I counted, but nothing new seemed to happen afterwards. I was told to keep watching the red light. I saw a lot of bright flashing lights and interesting shapes and colours. When I saw a brilliant display of green wiggles like lightning strikes, I imagine that's when the laser was functioning. I was then told that part was over and that I was doing very well. A whole lot more eye-drops followed. I sat up and couldn't see anything out of the treated eye, just a bright blur. 

David or the anaestheseologist (not sure) then guided me to a second operating theatre where there was a similar bed. This was where they were going to remove the debris from the cataract-lens and insert the artificial lens in my eye. Lay down, got strapped in, blood-pressure monitor tied on my arm, intravenous drip inserted in my arm. This was for the "I don't care" drug (ketamine, I think), which was fast-working. I soon felt more relaxed and rather sleepy. I was told to keep my eyes open and keep looking at the lights. For the operation, I once again had a machine to stare into for about 15 minutes (I had no way of measuring the time) while the surgeon worked on me. I decided to concentrate on the pretty colours and patterns I was seeing, quite fascinating really. I decided to think of them as interesting white clouds in a blue sky. Occasionally I saw sliding and intermeshing disc shapes—was that the new lens?—or decorative patterns. Occasionally the surgeon told me I was doing very well. After a while he stopped saying that and started telling me that we were nearly done. Excellent.  

To my surprise, as soon as the machine was put away and the blood pressure monitor removed from my arm, I was asked to get up, no recovery time granted! I was allowed to stand still for a moment before moving on. "Are you feeling dizzy?" —no. David took me back to the nearby waiting room where I was given a reclining chair to sit in. The nurse came straight over and said I'd be able to leave in about 10 minutes, so I phoned Chris, asking him to come and pick me up. Apart from the blur and the dazzle I felt pretty normal by then. I could see well enough to recognise my husband, anyhow. 

The nurse had let me choose an energy bar and a carton of apple juice, but I had to wait till I was in the car to consume this snack. I was also given a pair of large, all-surround sunglasses to wear for two weeks, every time I go out of doors. I also had a lecture about not getting dust or soap in my eyes. On the way out I stopped at the reception desk to pick up my receipt for the payment. Then I escaped, and Chris was on the landing by the lifts, already waiting for me. Chris, very relieved to see me so cheerful, had brought me a delicious croissant filled with smoked salmon and a bar of chocolate, which cheered me up even more.

The second day of surgery was much the same, but faster, since my appointment was three hours earlier this time.

I went for a very short walk in the park on Wednesday evening (Chris walking alongside and being attentive) and noticed an after-effect I had not expected. I felt like Alice-in-Wonderland when she shrank, i.e. the ground I was walking on seemed about half a metre closer than before.; I seem to be shorter than ever! The garden plants looked huge too so I thought I'd better try to find some of that magic mushroom to nibble on the other side. Looking upwards, though, the trees with all their individual leaves looked spectacular.

Chris has been looking after me ever so well, driving me back and forth, doing the shopping, cooking our meals, administering the multiple eye-drops and making sure I behave myself properly 😉. I am not allowed to do any gardening (no soil on hands) or swimming till next month, and have to wear sunglasses with protective sides for at least a week, whenever I go outside.

Interracial harmony

Through our windows today, Chris and I have been entertained by the antics of two young squirrels chasing one another round the base of a tree in our garden, up and down the trunk and along the branches. Apart from their small size, we can tell these squirrels are young by the way they leap erratically into the air, turn somersaults on the ground or roll around in one another's arms. I saw one tag the tail of the other to get him to race around some more. They remind me of my grandsons and their friends engaged in blissful rough-and-tumble play in a park*, or gambolling lambs.

The interesting thing about this is that one of the squirrels is grey and the other one is black. They are about the same size and both are in perfect, glossy condition.

If squirrels don't care what colour their equals are, why should we humans?

*Not having played with his school friends or the neighbours' kids since March, during the lock-down, my grandson Thomas finally got the chance to spend a couple of hours running around with a friend of his age yesterday when their mums arranged for them to meet in the open air, in Bushy Park, Teddington. It did Thomas the world of good. He'd been showing signs of depression, which is abnormal for a nine-year-old. In other words, he'd been grieving.

What we didn't foresee

I'm recording my observations at random here, because in ten years from now this period of our history will be worth remembering. What didn't we foresee, when the Covid-19 Pandemic was first announced?

Calmer households. Not everyone would agree, but that's my impression (of the middle-class families I know, at least). Die Hektik, as the Germans call it, has gone. Having to juggle career work, housework and full time parenting still causes enormous stress, agreed, but at least everyone is together, available; the frantic to-ing and fro-ing and the absences from one another have come to a halt. Daily routines are more straightforward, mealtimes more regular events, to such an extent that we have to concentrate to remember which day of the week it is. Family members are learning to compromise and to share their resources; surely all of this was important to learn in any case.

We are more inventive than we knew. Having to think of so many ways to keep children productively occupied at home is something in which modern society hasn't had much practice, but it's no bad thing that we're learning how, and getting that practice. Maybe there'll be a greater sympathy for teachers when this is over, but there again, maybe not. Lazy teachers are taking advantage of the enforced break and doing the bare minimum to keep their classes ticking over; other teachers, the imaginative, dedicated, empathetic ones, are working night and day at the preparation, reassessments and documentation of their work. Actually it was ever thus, even in the normal old days.

Worldwide acceptance of, and obedience to, new rules. What makes the headlines is the occasional exception. I've been flabbergasted by people's docility in this regard, especially in such populous countries as India or China. There's nothing like a death threat to make people do as they're told—I have never before observed or experienced anything like this before, although my parents' generation who lived through the 2nd World War, were used to such discipline. They were also familiar with stretching out their rations, with planning ahead, with make-do-and-mend, with bartering, with keeping one another's morale up, with growing their own vegetables and so on, as well, all of which is seeing a resurgence, this year. Worldwide, it seems, there's an overwhelming, sudden interest in small scale gardening. Everybody's doing it. To have to slow down to the natural rhythm of the growing season has to be good for us, surely, and besides, it smells good, to be out there.

A general lack of interest in travelling or planning journeys abroad, especially on jet planes and big ships. Even the keenest of frequent flyers (like me) now feel wary of booking a flight. Airlines and cruise lines are going out of business. This is going to impact coastal places usually visited by tourists from the ships, such as Gaspé, in Quebec. Iceland, desperate for contact with the rest of the world now, is going to be the first country to open its borders to tourism, in mid-June. They are hoping for incoming flights from Oslo, Copenhagen, Frankfurt and Berlin. Travel in the other direction may be more questionable.

We have seen incredibly blue skies with no contrails: a purity that had been missing from our lives. How we appreciate it when it comes! A photographer living in Kathmandu reported that, from the edges of that now smog-free city, he had been able to spot Everest behind the nearer Himalayan peaks, for the first time in years.

So much birdsong noticed this spring! So many wild creatures making their presence felt!

We're witnessing a widespread cycling mania. Ottawa has closed some of its parkways to motor traffic so that the numerous cyclists, many of them novices, may spread out, not breathe upon, nor collide with each other! The Dutch would be amused by this trend, having always used bikes en masse in their towns.

People are starting to prefer working at home. My husband and his colleagues had not expected to like this at all, but are not missing their commutes, and, more to the point, are discovering that just as much work, if not more, gets done from home as at the office. His company conducted a poll recently: about a third of the employees are likely to continue to work from home beyond the end of the crisis. There'll be no stigma in doing this. The ones with young children are in two minds about it. Chris says he misses being able to stroll over to somebody's desk to ask them a quick question; he now has to do this by email instead, which generates too many messages back and forth. He misses lunch break conversations too; although his usual companions from the workplace indulge in a short, online get-together at midday, once a week, it is hardly the same.

Birthdays without company are bitter-sweet occasions. Happy Birthday messages still come in, but the carefree fun's not there.

Grandparents not being allowed to visit their grandchildren or vice versa. This is one of the sad things, although personally I have noticed very little difference, geographically distanced from my children and their families in any case. Three months seem a long time in the life of a young child, though, and every grandparent is now experiencing the longing with which I'm so familiar. The hardest part is when things go wrong at the other end and one can't do anything to help. It's the same story if one has aged parents who have to cope alone or reside in a care home, or need to move into one. Worst of all are the cases where elderly relatives die from the virus in hospital with no familiar faces at their bedside, and where even the doctors and nurses are masked. This must be very terrible, inhumane for the dying, and traumatic for the medical staff and for relatives prevented from saying a proper goodbye. (Two people we know have had bereavements of this kind.) Again, reminiscent of wartime. The poorly-run nursing homes that have seen so many fatalities and have needed intervention from military units are horrific places, akin to gulags.

A Bolivian pan-pipes orchestra has been stranded in a German castle for weeks on end. Young people are remarkably adaptable in such situations. The secret of survival is to think of such a mishap as the adventure of a lifetime. My niece and her partner got stranded too, during a trip to Panama, back in March, and their account of their three-day escape home to Wales came across like an action movie, full of suspense at the checkpoints and secret scrambles at the dead of night. They'll be telling that story with relish for the rest of their lives.

Vagrants in Ottawa are being allowed to live in tents, an unprecedented phenomenon. They pitch their tents or construct their shelters in fairly visible places and the police seem to be turning a blind eye, probably because officially designated sheltered accommodation is so crowded it has become a health hazard, and a hazard to mental health, besides. I for one wouldn't dream of reporting illegal campers to the police because I sympathise with their dilemma. It's no longer too cold to sleep out of doors; their solitude in the fresh air may seem relatively pleasant, but the mosquito bites must be hard to bear, and it's an uncomfortable, unsanitary way to live.

Are you in casual clothes all week, the same clothes for days on end? Nobody sees us up close, so why worry? Many of us are no longer bothering to keep our hair cut. Some women have dispensed with wearing bras and the men-in-suits don't need suits any more, or dress shirts. All this means less use of the washing machine. It's a new world. We're supposed to wash our cloth shopping bags and our masks every day, but I haven't touched an iron for weeks. Make-up is only for when there's a Zoom call coming up or a presentation to give. Even then, one has the option of switching off one's webcam and activating voice only. "Unmute." Is that the trendiest word, this season?

Ubiquitous Zoom calls! (One of the CFUW ladies took it upon herself to teach the local membership to zoom, an uphill struggle. I helped edit her Instructions document.) Seeing my own face as well as the other person's / persons' while talking to them is a novelty that takes some getting used to. In the Gallery View window, it's like being at a dinner party in a hall of mirrors! In the circumstances, most of us find Zoom a reasonable substitute for meeting face-to-face, but exhausting, even though as hostess one doesn't have to provide refreshments. A double session (40 minutes x 2) is more than long enough. Online piano / singing lessons are also fairly intense. Chris positions the webcam so that his singing teacher spends the whole session observing my hands on the keyboard—I've had a few criticisms of my fingering technique, lately! Gavan can't see what I'm doing with the pedals, but he comments on that too, because he has good quality speakers and a sharp ear.

As musicians and other artistic performers are feeling the pinch from a loss of gigs, there has been a resurgence of demand for what they do. Pierre Brault, our best-known and brilliant local actor, is giving a series of solo performances online, from the empty Gladstone Theatre this month. Music is discovered to be one of the things by which we live. Online concerts take place every day in every community and there's usually the chance to make an online donation to the performer. Families are also discovering the joys of making music themselves; wonderful examples of this have gone viral on YouTube and Facebook.

Use of social media increased dramatically during March. Many newcomers to Facebook don't think much of it, though. They are especially put off by emailed notifications of other people's posts, not realizing that they could have adjusted their Settings to get rid of that annoyance.

Haircuts, eye tests, teeth cleaning appointments and the like have become less essential than we thought. We think twice before asking to see a doctor, too. I had twinges of pain that I couldn't identify the other day, so decided to call the medical helpline. It didn't seem I would ever get to speak to the nurse, so I gave up waiting in line, which probably saved me a lot of grief. The pain has since disappeared. My wise old mother used to say that most pains disappear eventually; you just have to be patient and trust your body to right itself. Emergency wards in hospitals are empty. Was that expected, at the start of the pandemic? Are people too scared to go for medical help, or were they going to hospitals too unnecessarily, before? People aren't taking so many risks just now and the roads are quiet. Apparently scheduled organ transplants have become more of a challenge because fewer people are dying in car crashes.

Having to choose and prepare three meals a day is a chore that palls from time to time, but I reckon it's better nutritionally and for our bank balance not to eat out (impossible at present) or order takeaways (not impossible but a nuisance, and I disapprove of the plastic containers). I try to make a fair proportion of our meals vegetarian, but I've also been ordering meat from Saslove's in the Byward Market, paying a $5 home delivery charge; they subcontract the work to a delivery company. Our weekly order costs more than I anticipated, but then, I never did this before, and when I calculate how many meals it covers and how much we're spending per meal, I'm surprised again. Because I spin out the meat, it works out at only around $2.50 per person on average for each meal, not so pricey after all. I intend to make a habit of this way of shopping because it saves me time, too, and forces me to be better at menu planning. Like the parents struggling to keep their children educated, I have become more inventive or adventurous recently, when preparing food. On the kitchen windowsill I have been growing micro greens, onions and basil, shall see what can be done with lettuce hearts next.

Like Prisoners of War, we are learning the crucial importance of good memories. Lock-down, like solitary confinement, leaves you to your own devices. If you don't have the inner resources to deal with it, you go crazy. I keep thinking of the extraordinary Canadian book / film called Room, in which a young mother trapped by her abusive partner in a shed with her young son, manages, against the odds, to keep herself and the child mentally and physically fit ... for seven years. Ironically they find it harder to cope when they're freed, released into the outside world. That has parallels with the POW experience too. My father was confined in a German POW camp for four years.

I have just read a sentence in a novel I'm reading, by V.S. Naipaul (Magic Seeds), that seems applicable. The narrator is in jail in this chapter:

There was no need for rush. Every everyday thing had to be stretched out now: a new form of yoga.

No more swimming for a while, I guess, unless I go in the river. All changing rooms in town are closed. Health clubs and gyms are closed for the foreseeable future. I don't miss the changing rooms exactly but I do miss the chance to move around in deep water.

Something else I am missing is the chance to sit, read and write in coffee shops. Standing in line with a mask on to pick up a take-out coffee in a paper cup from the counter and walk off with it is no substitute for those relaxing half hours (or more) that I used to spend at Bridgehead and other such places.

Having to cover our faces! In the lead up to the Canadian election in 2014 there was a whole lot of fuss about Muslim women who concealed their faces with niqabs. They shouldn't be allowed to take part in citizenship ceremonies, some felt. By contrast, in 2020, we all have to wear masks that hide just as much of our faces, whenever we are standing around in public spaces. There's a certain irony here.

Another turnaround is that until lately it would have seemed worthy of a badge of honour to turn up at work or at school with a bad cold; people used to boast that they had "never missed a day". From now on, such attitudes are going to be greatly frowned upon.

Calls for a Global Ceasefire are being taken seriously.

More of us are understanding the importance of simplicity.

For the sake of comic relief, a "Jurisdiction of the Mininstry of Silly Walks" has been marked with flags on the sidewalk outside the vicarage on MacKay Street.