I want to revisit a post I wrote in November 2016 about the link between education and a liberal political view. I have said in the past that the link extends to intelligence, not just education, but in hindsight I think that’s a little presumptuous. The fact is, at least as far as regions go, the average IQ of a population is going to be 100, whether persons in that region are marrying cousins, eating possums or launching satellites. The lack of education is also sometimes a lack of opportunity, not lack of ability. And this link between education and left-leaning politics is only a link, and many very intelligent people are conservative by nature. However…
I sought out lists of the US states ranked in order of education. I compared two lists I found and saw the rankings were nearly identical – for example the top 10 on each list was the same states but arranged slightly differently. Anyway, the numbers I am quoting are from WalletHub.com which arrived at its ranking by using 18 key indicators like attainment of degrees, quality of schools, national scholastic rankings, that sort of thing. I correlated this list with the recently ended 2024 US election. Kamala Harris only won 19 states, but of the 19 most educated states, she won 17, including the entire top 10. #11, Utah and #14 Montana were the only exceptions. Harris won two outliers: #29 California (no surprise) and #42 New Mexico, otherwise every state ranked 20 or lower voted for Donald Trump. The average Harris state was ranked 12.4, the average Trump state, 33.5.
When Covid was going on, I did a similar cross reference of education with levels of vaccinations and found the same thing. Poorly educated areas had very low rates of vaccinations. Death rates from covid sadly followed along, as you might expect. The five states with the lowest death rates had an average education rank of 9.2, and the five states with the highest death rates had an average of 45.4! This is a very strong link, more than I was anticipating to be honest. But when you think of the political climate of anti-vaxxers and the distrust of science that was being peddled by the right wing government of the time, the link makes sense and is correlated to the political points of view.
When I first brought this topic up, and at various times since, I think I may have pissed some people off by saying offhandedly that this was about intelligence, but I don’t apologize for saying it’s about education.
Christmas has come and gone again, and now it’s New Year’s Eve. I hope your big holiday for the year was a stand alone success. It probably doesn’t compare to the Xmas magic on Full House or some other saccharine family TV comedy, but as long as it holds its own as a fairly good day, you’re doing fine. I found this holiday fairly boring, and I have slept too much, eaten too much, drank too much and been trapped in the house because of shitty weather too much. Oh well, it still beats getting up at 5 am and doing things in the rain all day. Hard to believe that at the end of the coming year this century will already be a quarter over.
Something I’ve noticed – and you probably have too – is that when things are about to run out or die, they often go out with a bang. In physics, stars that reach the end of their lives often flare up to thousands of times their usual brightness before they die – a supernova. Lightbulbs usually flash as they expire too, making a very tiny little supernova. When I’m pouring syrup on my morning waffles and the bottle is running out, typically there’s more left than I need, so I pour the last of it on and get a supernova syrup puddle. Many things end with an all-consuming increase in intensity. This is all well and good, but the other day I came across a very interesting supernova I didn’t know about. It’s called Terminal Surge, or Terminal Lucidity, and it specifically relates to people who are about to die. Apparently, people who are bedridden, mentally crippled with dementia and/or debilitated in some way, often spring back to clarity and energy right before they die. They will sit up and recognize people, start eating again, and anyone visiting thinks the person has turned the corner and is getting better. Then of course, they die. Sometimes it’s in the final hours, but there are cases of it going on for days prior to dying, and for a short supernova they are their old selves again. Not everyone who is slipping away suddenly sits up and regains focus, but when they do, often it is very confusing and upsetting for family and friends. I was talking to a nurse friend of mine, and she says they call it “rallying.” She knew all about the process but had never heard the fancy Terminal Surge label.
A star using the last of its syrup all at once
Usually on New Years I gush about world peace and the need for someone sane and intelligent to take a leadership role in some countries who can control global goings on, and usually my pleas are in vain. Trump will be back in power in three weeks as I write this, and he seems more bonkers than ever. First, he thinks he’s going to save Americans money by putting huge tariffs on imports, but his tiny little brain doesn’t realize that the tariffs get paid by his consumers, not the country of origin. Canada can escape this tariff hell by beefing up our border security so that less fentanyl gets through to the US. Get a load of this fact: supposing our local fentanyl producer wants to ruin some good, clean American lives – he will need to pass his product through American border security, not Canadian! Maybe Trump could use some better advice. Also, he seems to be looking for a new Age of Empires, as he has expressed interest in annexing Canada, Panama and Greenland. Ice and tropical fruit. It’s like he’s been looking at a Mar-A-Lago cocktail. I haven’t looked at the news yet today, so maybe he’s thought of more places he’d like to conquer. Maybe a country with tiny bamboo umbrellas. I heard them say on the radio that around 40% of Canadians under the age of 30 would be fine with joining the US. The older the age group in the poll, the less the support for joining there was. Anyone older would be a little worried about our health care system and pensions getting taken away, or I would hope they are. The US isn’t big on wasting its tax income helping people, not when there is so much military equipment to buy.
Not long ago a friend of mine made me an offer. He purchases books for the Surrey Library system and he told me if I wrote a book, even if it was a single copy and self published, he would purchase it and stock it on the shelf. I thought that was a great offer, but I have nothing in the pipeline. In fact, between work and chess I don’t have all that much free time to dedicate to writing a book. On top of that, my first writing goals were writing for prestigious contests like the CBC Fiction contest and the Bronwen Wallace prize. Ha! Who has the time to do it all?
Today I was in the kitchen doing not much at all when I got a notification on my cell phone. It was a weekly report on my usage and it said I had averaged 5 hours and 13 minutes per day on my phone. There are 168 hours in a week: 40 hours working, 36 hours on my phone (evidently) and about 50 sleeping. That’s still 42 hours left. I spend about 5 hours a week commuting these days, with so much road construction underway, and another 5 disappear on chess night. The Canucks play about three times per week for another 9 hours wasted. That’s still 23 hours a week unaccounted for.
Where does the time go?
Let’s say I cut my phone usage back to 3 hours a day, giving me another 15 hours a week. Add to that the 23 hours that evaporate each week and I have 38 hours I could have spent writing my book. In a year that would be 1900 hours. A typical novel is about 50,000 words, so to complete a novel in a year, I would need to settle on around 26 words an hour. That is crazy few words. And that still leaves me chess, hockey, and 3 hours of empty-calorie gawking at my device per day. And my god! If I could complete 50 words per hour I could polish off two books a year.
How much time does the average person spend on a device these days? I don’t see myself as excessive when it comes to looking at my phone. I check sports scores, watch Keno draws once in a while, look at emails, and sometimes (the horror!) I actually speak to someone. If my usage is typical, and the Outlier theory says you will be a master at something if you spend 10,000 hours at it, a person dedicating the amount of time on a skill that I have at my disposal, would be world class at it in five years. Low income teens in the USA average over nine hours a day on their phones! They could be fabulously skilled at something in a few years if they cut back to three hours a day and invested the time wisely. A quick Google search – not on my phone – says the average American spends over four hours every day on their cell, a whopping 1.4 billion hours a day collectively. Although we can’t assume it is fully wasted time, I imagine the majority of it is.
Going back to the offer to have a book on the shelf of the library, the federal government does a survey every year of library books written by Canadian authors. The author has to register a book on the database first. Then there is a list of libraries they look at, but the gist of it is the government has a formula by which they calculate how many books the author didn’t sell because his or her book was available for free at the library. It looks at how many books the author has, and in how many of the surveyed libraries, and they send the author a cheque. If I did write a book or two, I would be mailing a copy of each book to all the libraries on the survey list, and maybe I would find some of my tax money in my mailbox once a year. If this ever happens, I promise to rush back here and tell you how much it paid.
It seems every year now we go on a road trip. While most people our age are flying to Europe or Hawaii, we continue to act like college age kids and drive around. At least we were ambitious this year.
First day we made the grueling ten hour drive to Calgary where we stayed overnight at my lovely niece Lyndy’s house. We were drooling idiots on arrival so not much to discuss about that night.
Good hygiene advice from Calgary
The next day we drove to Medicine Hat and picked up my wife’s sister, Marie, and her husband Russell. Originally we planned on going to Saskatoon and attending a pow wow, but as we drove north through Saskatchewan we collectively decided against it. So we stayed overnight at our nephew Tyler’s house, and found out they are due to become parents in January. The original plan also was to stay two nights with Tyler, but we let him off the hook with only one night.
Day three saw us drive south to Estevan, which is near the border. My wife and her sister were born in the area and lived on a farm in a little settlement called Roche Percee. The name is a French reference to sandstone caves in the area which have ancient native writing in them. And they also have a lot of graffiti, but they are cool anyway. They found the location of their old farm, but it was abandoned as the local river flooded a couple times and washed away everyone’s enthusiasm for living there.
Roche Percee. Cool cave formations that look like nothing in a photo
The fourth day we crossed the border in North Dakota. We thought we’d go for breakfast once across the line, but then we found the nearest diner was hours away. Fun fact: ND has the fewest McDonald’s restaurants of any state. Not that we wanted McMuffins, but it might be an indicator of the scarcity of eateries. We finally found a Dairy Queen and were loading up on fries and burgers when Russell got to talking with one of his “native brothers.” Apparently there were Indian Relay horse races going on that afternoon nearby, so we headed over and watched. The sport consists of three riders racing horses bareback. After each lap they jump off their horse and onto the back of another bareback horse and gallop another dusty lap. The racers each do three laps. Some races were razor thin wins and everyone was cheering. Other races the rider fell off and the horse ran off without him, or once a guy jumped on a horse that wouldn’t run. It was great fun and I’d go to another event if I knew of one around here. That night, after the races, we gave up trying to get to South Dakota and stayed the night in Bowman. It isn’t far from SD, and it proclaims itself to be “God’s Country,” as seen on signs around town.
Sign that goes well with all the Trump ’24 signs
After a sad breakfast of white toast and jam with yogurt, we took off again for the most exciting day of the trip. First we drove south to the partially done giant sculpture of Crazy Horse. We got in for free because of Russell’s heritage, but we did pay a little extra to take a bus trip to the base of the sculpture. They’ve been carving at that hill since 1947 and they are maybe 1/3 done, refusing any help from the government that is offered. They think they will soon have computer-guided drills doing the precision work much quicker than humans and are willing to work in the cold and the dark. So maybe it will be done in our lifetime, who knows? We left Crazy Horse and went to Mt Rushmore. None of us was very excited about the four presidents as we are Canadian after all, and we’ve seen pictures of it ad nauseum. Still we parked, took a few pictures and left again, heading for Sturgis. The biker mecca was quiet, but there were signs of the annual rally everywhere in town. It seemed like every business had a skull or flames in their logo, and who can blame them? And we continued on to Deadwood.
World’s largest in-progress sculpture, Crazy Horse
We booked a cheap room in Deadwood, only to find it was like a 5 star hotel only not expensive. Downstairs in the hotel was a casino where they serve you free beer if you’re playing. Marie and Russell won hundreds of dollars right away so we went for dinner. The diner we ate at has been in business since 1877 at that location. We strolled around after and found most buildings had casinos in them and there was music and fake gun fights in the streets. They had several tours you could take, and there was even a stage coach that took you around town. I went shopping for a t-shirt and the boutique gave you beer while you shopped. My kinda town! If there was a major airport anywhere nearby this would be a destination. Since we never had time to take any tours or visit the graveyard to see Wild Bill Hickok’s grave, (or Seth Bullock’s), I will seriously consider returning here one day with a little more time on my hands.
Deadwood, South DakotaThe building Wild Bill Hickok got killed in, holding a winning hand
The next day we headed to Devil’s Tower, Wyoming, where Close Encounters of the Third Kind was filmed. There was a couple gift shops full of alien stuff and mementos of the tower itself. There was also a lot of Sturgis mentions there as it turns out the Sturgis rally has a run to Devil’s Tower every year. Then off we drove, through the waving grass of the ranchlands, speckled with cows and buffalo. We reached the Battle of the Little Bighorn memorial in Montana not long before it closed for the night, so we did a hit and run tour of the place. The battle took place over a huge area several miles long and wide. It also turns out that 350 of Custer’s troops survived the battle, so it wasn’t the total massacre it was made out to be. Custer’s body was dragged away and buried in West Point, but most of the fallen troops were buried in a mass grave with a big monument on it. The place was eerie and sad. There was a stone ring with inscriptions inside it where it told the events from the Indian point of view. The most chilling one for me was Custer smoking a peace pipe with the Cheyenne leader Stone Forehead where Custer promised never to kill another Indian, and Stone Forehead told him if he ever broke that promise he and all his men “would go to dust.” That night we drove to Billings.
Devil’s Tower without any aliensLittle Bighorn cemeteryMass grave marker at Little Bighorn memorial
Billings may be a nice town, full of beauty and fun, but our hotel room was terrible. The sign said there was a restaurant, a casino and a pool, but it turns out each of those things was not open. Our room was laid out crazily with the bathroom sink in the hall beside the door, and the door to the bathroom wouldn’t close. Our mattress had some kind of plastic liner that crinkled loudly every time you moved. Marie and Russell’s mattress had a big blood stain on it from the last murdered guest. Why we didn’t demand a refund and leave, I don’t know. That evening we went shopping at a Ross store and a Walmart, but the atmosphere in both places was bleak and empty. After midnight when we were all through crinkling our mattresses, the smoke alarm went off and woke us all up with a jolt. The next morning we tried to turn on a lamp but it started flashing and sizzling with electric danger so we left it off. After Deadwood, this was hell.
The next morning we created our own grand slams over at Denny’s then headed home. The border crossing north of Havre, Montana is called the Wild Horse crossing. The American side is a businesslike brick affair, bristling with flags and gates. The Canadian side is an Atco trailer with the lonely Maytag repairman of border guards in it. It took him a few minutes to come over and check us out, but when he did he joked around, looked at our passports and sent us off. I think as we were finishing another car pulled up behind us, but I could see there wasn’t much traffic there, and the crossing is only open from 8 until 5. It poured rain all the way back to Medicine Hat where we bid farewell to our in-laws. We pushed ourselves as far as Calgary that night and drove home the next day. Our trip home was going well when suddenly the highway stopped and we had to reroute through Kelowna, adding a few hours and plenty of snarled traffic to our drive.
5800 km and a week later, our holidays, like summer itself, are over.
I don’t know what’s going on, but the statistics say some people have been reading my blog. If you’re reading this, then the answer is at least partially you! Thanks, it’s reassuring.
In earlier posts I made mention of some 100 word stories I had written for a contest. I sure did like the one I wrote for Round 2! Oh boy, it was going to launch me into the final round where all the glittering prizes are. So… it failed. It didn’t even get an honourable mention. The genre was Historical Fiction, the action I had to include was shoving someone, and the word I had to use was ‘establish.’ Unless your house is currently on fire, or your dog is barfing up a newspaper, you will have time to read it.
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Coronation Day
Napoleon’s glorious moment had arrived! The cream of European society packed Notre Dame, while at the altar, Napoleon radiated power in silk robes embroidered with golden bees. The Pope walked slowly toward him, holding the Charlemagne crown above his head.
The Pope lowered the crown to place it on his head, but Napoleon snatched it out of his hands and shoved the pontiff, to the gasps and shrieks of the crowd. He put the crown on himself. “I hereby establish a Monarchy based on my greatness, not your Church,” he told the stunned Pope.
Napoleon rose, “France! Behold your Emperor!”
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The feedback from the judges was mostly positive. Their main complaint was that the point of view seemed to be off. One judge concluded his feedback with “please keep writing!,” as though I may be discouraged and ready to toss my laptop in the recycling bin. I thought they might scold me for using three exclamation points in a tiny story.
As for the story itself, Napoleon really did grab the crown away from the pope at the ceremony, but there are two versions of it. One group says Napoleon had arranged for the pope to hand the crown over, and it was agreed upon, so there was no tussle and everything was good. The other version is that the coronation was like what went down in my story where he pulled the crown away from the very surprised pope and gave him a short lecture about his greatness vs the Church. Sadly, no one had thought far enough ahead that wintery day in 1804 to bring a camera, and eyewitnesses never fail to see different versions of the same event.
Meanwhile, back in camera-mad 2024, I have now completed my third of four norms toward getting my FIDE Arbiter title. Someone suggested I should do a blog series about the journey to getting this title. Can you imagine how un-riveting that would be? I mean unless you’re captivated by chess lingo and long periods of observing people playing a board game, I think it would be sleepy time for anyone who tried to read it. I could publish pamphlets about it and have them available for use at sleep clinics.
Falling asleep on the board is usually a forfeit loss, especially if you have inhaled any pieces
Well it’s coming up to mid-August and time for my annual rant about fall. We’ve gone past mid-summer and the days are already noticeably shorter. Pretty soon everyone will be bundled in sweaters drinking hot, overpriced, pumpkin flavoured coffees and the Christmas shit will be in all the stores. The exits from those stores will be blocked by panhandling packs of snotty kids with fundraising crap of all manner. At least hockey will come along and provide us with a sane diversion to the declining atmospheric conditions and public begging. Almost enough to make you want to shove the Pope, right? I’m talking to you, Francis!
Recently I entered a new NYC Midnight writing contest. This one I find quite hard – the 100 word microfiction challenge. I got my assignment, and I banged off my tiny story and sent it off into the great Void, and then I forgot all about it. So the other day I got an email with results of Round 1, and to my very great amazement I came in 4th (out of 50) in my group. A couple days later I got sent a new assignment for the second round, which I just completed last night. Because they ask you not to publish your story until they have had first crack at it, I never put my first story on here, but I will now. I remember the genre was Thriller/Horror (which my story barely qualifies for, in my opinion), and the action was hiding money. I can’t remember the specific word I had to use, but it was something commonplace like “without.” If you have 30 seconds to spare you can read this little 4th place story of mine.
The thugs were thorough. They had ripped open walls, dug up the yard, and even torn down his newly-constructed brick barbecue, all without finding the missing money.
“Are you satisfied?” Julius peevishly asked the mobsters.
“Yeah, looks like you might be telling the truth, but five million dollars doesn’t just vanish. If we ever find it was you, YOU will be the mess.”
When the thugs had left, Julius surveyed the destruction. He picked up a hammer and smashed a random barbecue brick. Inside the masonry was a plastic bag with $1000 in it. Might as well go to dinner.
The feedback I got was terrific. They mostly liked the story, but they said I should have cut out the word “had,” which I used twice. Without that word the story unfolds in sequence as you read it, not as a past event. I’ll try to use that advice going forward.
The next story is Historical Fiction, with the action being shoving someone and the word “establish.” I was quite pleased with the Round 2 story, but that might be the kiss of death. When I was in high school I realized I was really bad at guessing how I did on tests. There were some tests I aced but thought I failed and vice versa. We shall see. I’ll post it when the coast is clear.
Today is Father’s Day. I went out golfing and then to lunch with my father and uncle. I saw my son and three of my grandkids, and got a text from another kid, so I got my pat on the head for this year. My dad and uncle are getting old and frail. They both had great long runs of good health and mental well being, but it becomes sad on days like this, as my preference would be to have all the kids, grandkids, father, uncle, brother in law together somewhere for a gathering. My brother in law had his knees (yes, plural) replaced, so he isn’t getting around quickly either. We are becoming scattered and downwardly mobile, and frankly it stinks. My poor bro in law is so immobile my sister is calling him Brian Wilson for all his lying in bed. He made it to lunch with us, but he is walking with a cane and doing some hobbling. I am pausing to knock on wood as I write this, as this could easily be me or anyone else. All the people mentioned were all strong and active for decades, not a weakling in the lot.
Father’s Day started in 1910 by a woman who was raised, along with five siblings, by a single father. In the UK, USA and Canada it falls on the third Sunday in June. It’s celebrated in 111 countries, and in some it is a national holiday. And around the world it falls on lots of different days of the year, but the biggest group is the third Sunday in June group. Yay us!
My dad was a good father, in my opinion. My sister and I grew up in a beautiful place, and our parents made a happy home for us. We always had enough to eat and went on nice holidays, had great pets, and we knew our connections to our past by knowing our grandparents and quite a few of the great aunts and uncles. We were taught to question things. At most family suppers someone had to run for the encyclopedias to answer something someone was wondering about. I noted once before that we rarely ever said “I love you” to each other, but I don’t believe anyone ever questioned it. I became a father very young, so I think I was kind of a half ass dad most of the time. When my boy was young I worked a lot of low paying jobs, and we bounced around a lot and had pretty boring holidays. Then I got with a mother who had four kids, and I have tried to treat them as my own as much as possible. It is they who have shown me the way to say “I love you” because they say it all the time. My son has three sons and I think he’s a better dad than I ever was. His boys are always the #1 priority and he does a lot of it on his own. I am proud of him, and his boys are turning into very nice young men. Boy do I feel old writing that!
It was a memorable week. First we hopped on the Amtrak train and went down to Seattle to see the Rolling Stones at cavernous Lumens Field, home of the Seattle Seahawks. We met up with my sister and niece there, and they had an Airbnb rented near the venue. I was always of the opinion that the Stones were crappy in concert. Every so often you would hear a live version of one of their songs, and it would not sound good at all. So my expectations weren’t high for musical quality. It turned out that they were actually pretty damn good! And no band on the planet can come near them for the depth of their catalogue of tunes. They played around 20 songs and without using Google I could probably name 100 more they didn’t play, and many of those would have been great to hear too. They did a “vote a song” promo for the concert, and Seattle voted to hear Wild Horses which, it turns out, they rarely play live. Mick had tons of energy for a guy of 80, and Keith looked pretty spry as well, possibly aided by the fact he quit smoking a few years ago. Mick took a little break and let Keith sing a couple songs – You Got the Silver, and Little T&A – which was my favourite part of the show. For some reason I’ve always loved Keith’s singing voice. It’s sort of flat and atonal, but in a good way. I wished he had picked Happy as one of his songs to do, but hey, you can’t always get what you want.
A great vantage point to see a concert if you happen to have a Hubble telescope
By the way, despite the testy caption, the seats were just fine! Who wrote that?
The train trip down was a throwback to an older time, sort of a nod to the Mt Rushmore of rock oldsters we were going to see. It’s a beautiful part of the world to go clickety clacking past the window. There were conductors and little towns’ stations and the wooded corridors into every town, and then endless miles of beaches and boats and trees. We only got a couple hours of sleep the night of the concert, so staring blankly out the window was infinitely safer than having our hungover asses careening toward home down the crowded I-5.
After the trip south I worked as an arbiter at the Keres Memorial chess tournament, Paul Keres was from Estonia, and he is a national hero there. He is widely regarded as one of – if not the – best chess player who never became world champion. He came close five times to being world champion, but got thwarted by the outbreak of WWII and by coming second four times in tournaments that would have given him a shot at the world title. In Estonia, he is sometimes referred to as Paul the Second. In 2000 he was named Estonia’s Sportsman of the Century. In 1975 he came to Vancouver and played in the Vancouver International chess tournament, which he won. On the way home he died of a heart attack, aged 59, and the tournament was renamed in his honour. Every year it is the biggest tournament in BC, and this year I got to be an arbiter which gives me my second of four required FIDE arbiter norms. There were 205 players, of which we had a Grandmaster from Romania and several masters.
2024 Keres Memorial underway in Surrey, BC
The next week I had a gruelling two days of work, then I attended a retirement seminar Thursday and Friday. I knew of the existence of the seminar, but I sort of thought it would be like two hours one Tuesday night, not 16 hours of info packed into two long days. There were 14 of us there, grey haired and ready to take the plunge into obsolescence. The guy doing the seminar was 80 and an aged-spot speckled old fellow who knew more about the ins and outs of paperwork and legal matters than anyone should almost be allowed to know. In fact they say a person should take the seminar twice: once about five years before retirement and once again when you are near enough to peer into the abyss – that’s how much info was jammed into the subject. Well, I got my pre-emptive seminar out of the way, and the real goodbye one is about six years off. I expect those six years to go streaking by.
Welcome to Post #100! It’s been a little over eight years – 99 months in fact – since I started this blog. It doesn’t seem like I’ve written one post per month, but I guess I have. The first month or two was a few per week, so soon it will be less than one per month unless I get motivated.
Spring is in full bloom now, and the days are warm and bright, but a couple months ago I was depressed. I feel as though I was misled about some things at work, my writing had completely dried up, my biggest hobby – chess – had become more work than fun, and frankly I think the lack of sun was affecting me. I remember thinking once or twice, that it would be cool if someone asked me how I was doing, or observed that maybe I wasn’t my chipper self, but no one did. I am no better. When I come across people who look sad or pissy, I often steer clear of them. I direct my little parade away from the rain clouds whenever possible. I guess this is how others feel, too, so I certainly don’t blame anyone. It’s hard enough keeping yourself happy without exerting a lot of energy trying to cheer other people up, especially ones you don’t have any tangible connection with. So I pulled through it all in the end, not that things were all that dark. I wrote a little bit, chess has brightened up again, and the weather has helped. At work, I still feel underappreciated and misled, but I’m not stewing over it night and day. As for anyone who had to bear the brunt of one of my many whiny tirades: I am sorry.
Next week we’re taking the train down to see the Rolling Stones in Seattle, followed by a few days off in which I hope to golf at least once. This is the sort of therapeutic week I need to charge up the batteries! The weekend after that I am being the arbiter at a huge chess tournament where I will get my second (of four) norms toward getting my FIDE Arbiter title. In June I am going to arbiter the BC Seniors Chess Championship for the second time. Last year I had a lot of fun doing it, as the oldsters are well behaved and friendly. If you happen to see me coming, you needn’t dash the other way, you can engage me in conversation, knowing I will (probably) be my self again.
*Note: I wrote this, then didn’t feel great about talking about being depressed, so I put off publishing it for a while. In fact, some of the things I wrote about coming up have already happened, and they will be the subject of much more upbeat post soon.
Happy St Patrick’s Day! I was just reading about the man, the myth, the legend that is St Paddy. I used to think I was mostly Irish, but my sister got into genealogy and found we are more Scottish than Irish, and we have a muttly blend of a variety of northern European nationalities. Anyways, St Patrick. I always just thought of him as the guy who was credited with driving the snakes off the Emerald Isle, but I found a story about him I like better. It’s also one that explains a wee bit of the Irish identity. He was moving about the country and came to an inn where the hostess was being rude and uncharitable to her guests. He told her there was a devil in her cellar that got fatter every time she was cheap and nasty. He came back to that inn some time later and the innkeeper was filling everyone’s glasses to the brim with whiskey. He took her down to her cellar and the devil was wasting away from her kindness. After that it became tradition to drink whiskey on his feast day, March 17, the alleged anniversary of his death. By the way, some early accounts of his life have him living to the age of 120, which would be amazing in modern times, but absolutely stunning in the 400’s AD when everyone was slogging around in shit and living until 35. Must be the whiskey! Bottoms up!
Not that I’m picking on the health obsessed among us, but it’s worth noting St Patrick rarely visited the gym, nor did he advocate a morning ritual of protein smoothies.
In fact, rarely do I read an obituary or any account of an abnormally long life that advocates going to the gym or eating macrobiotic super food. The common threads among the super aged, if there are any, is that they stay mentally active, have a positive world view, have a social circle they interact regularly with, and a whole friggin bunch of them drink socially and even smoke sometimes. I will adjust my world view accordingly when I come across a 100 year old guy who is pumping weights with his “bros” and has an alarming pair of gym tits. There, I said it. And gyms have been around long enough to become a longevity factor to someone – there was a gym on the Titanic.
Sadly, rowing was about to become a highly sought-after skill.
Another thing old St Pat did that makes a lot of sense is he used the three-leafed shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity to the people. Most stained glass renditions of him have him holding a clover leaf and also what looks like a lacrosse stick. I’m not sure what the lacrosse stick thing is about, but hopefully it wasn’t around after the whiskey got flowing. In the Surrey of my youth, that’s about the last thing you’d want to see some drunk carrying.
Another odd fact: St Patrick was never officially canonized, although he is recognized as a saint. And judging from other drawings it looks like the thing in his hands might be what he chased the snakes away with, but that’s only a guess.
Hello and Happy New Year! 2024 is here, and if I can manage it, this will be the end of Teflon Ghost the blog. Not that I intend to stop, I just want to make it what it should have been from the start: Six Beer Shakespeare. (or Eight Beer Shaksespeare?) The catch is, I want to make it so all the stuff I’ve written over the last almost 8 years is still attached in some way so it can be found. I hope I’m not talking to myself here, as I haven’t had any feedback for months and my statistics say nearly no one is going to my site. It’s ok, I enjoy writing in here, whether or not there is an audience. It’s my version of singing in the shower.
A funny thing about the recently departed 2023 is that I intended it to be a year full of writing. I had won a prize late in 2022 in a writing contest, so I wanted to build on that, submit to some larger contests with bigger prizes, freelance for the local paper a little. Maybe make a few bucks, maybe get long listed somewhere prestigious. So what happened? I got sucked into two major distractions. One was I took courses and tests for work, and the other was I got pulled deeper into the local chess scene, becoming a National Arbiter along the way. How did your plans for last year work out? Did you find yourself accomplishing all your goals or did you also find yourself going down some side road? Comments are welcome.
I found out today that we got tickets to see the Rolling Stones this May in Seattle! Our early plan is to take the Amtrak train down and get an airbnb somewhere near the stadium. I think the four fares on the train, plus room, plus a few meals and the tickets will cost about the same as one ticket in Vancouver on the secondary market. I know the people who resell those tickets are “providing a service” in that they have a way for you to get in the concert. But what makes them vultures and parasites is the fact they don’t create extra seats or extra opportunities for you to go, they just get between you and the promoters and jack the ticket prices way the fuck up so normal fans can’t even afford to go. There won’t be too many more chances to see the Stones, as the clock is ticking when all the members are 80+. Luckily the Seattle show didn’t sell out too quickly and didn’t get bought up by blood sucking low lifes.
Same douchebag who made the Hip’s last tour a rich man’s affair
Hopefully this will be the year that the wars in the Ukraine and the Middle East end. People only get one fleeting chance at life – to feel purpose, to fall in love, to have dreams – and no one should die for an imaginary line on a map or because their neighbour reads a slightly different religious text. At least the Russians won’t be invited to the Olympics in Paris this summer. Their athletes may not be to blame, as the cheating is sanctioned by the people in charge, but you aren’t usually in a fair race with a Russian these days, and even their judges have been known to be corrupt. This year’s special Olympic event will be peddling your bicycle with a baguette in the basket, ringing a little bell that goes “bring, bring!” France is favoured to sweep the medals in that competition.
World Champion Jean Crumbier training hard, and frankly showing off a bit
I have written in the past about how I hope this and that for various years, hoping for peace or whatever. But the fact is, you and I are the people alive in this moment, and we can all make the world a little warmer by being kind and creating happy little ripples in whatever pond we are treading water in. It sounds corny and like some ridiculed dogma from hippy days gone by, but love is the answer.
We have been invited to dinner this first evening of the year, so I’m going to quit rambling nonsense and go. I will try to set up some sort of alert when my blog changes names, if it does. Hopefully, it won’t just be me echoing in the shower.
