what a week and weekend
I hope this week isn’t as busy as last week. We started with the 100th anniversary of the
sinking of the Titanic, which I know was an emotional time for all of us. Who can forget
where they were the night we heard the news?
Then Tuesday was federal tax day in the U.S. and Thursday was Bicycle Day. Sunday had
both the hope of Earth Day and the crushing elimination of the Canucks from the NHL
playoffs. Obama had dual scandals: Secret Service agents protecting him from hookers
in Colombia by throwing their bodies on them; and the GSA, what with its profligate
spending and surly clown.
Fortunately, the two disgraces didn’t intersect. A whiff of surly clown sex, and the main-
stream media would have covered nothing else until the end of the Mayan calendar.
Amongst all this, we lost Dick Clark, the inventor of adolescence; Levon Helm, a co-founder
of The Band; Charles Colson, the GOP geek/Jesus freak; and Tiago Klimeck, a Brazilian actor
who was accidentally hung during a play.
Helm’s death was particularly jarring to me. I saw it on CNN as I was channel hopping. I had
just flipped from the scene in Easy Rider that features “The Weight”.
Jude and I kept it low key. Saturday she drove to Nanaimo to take a nursing test. I worked
on an expansion of the chicken coop. Sunday, after some creative dish stacking on her part,
we went to Granite Bay
at low tide to clean up the beach as part of Earth Day. Here’s our haul:
We weren’t sure if these boats qualified as debris, or if they just got semi-dry docked.
We were sure that this one was toast, but no way would it fit on the bed of the truck.
We decided to leave this chair. It was in good
condition except for its colouring.
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Anchor Struck 
L.O.L. but would love to hear more about Tiago Klimeck’s demise. That could be a blog unto itself. We just don’t get decent Brazilian news coverage over this way.
The CNN website has an article on it this morning, but you heard it here first.
Allen: Thanks for the entertaining stories. My Mom, were she around, might remember where she was when the Titanic went down. She was cuddled up in her mother’s arms taking one of her first drinks of boobie milk. She would have been about 5 days old.
Possibly those boobies would have been very appealing then. By the time I knew Mom’s mom many years later, she was really old and fragile. We do owe a lot to the pioneers like her, who left her family in a different country, came to inhospitable Saskatchewan with its winters from hell, and had a bazillion babies, some of them dying in childhood.
My older sister likes to tell me how Mom’s mom wanted her to stay unmarried and look after her parents fulltime as they aged. But Mom said hell no and married my dad. I like thinking of Mom that way, defying parental wishes and doing what she wanted.
Julie
Hi, Julie. I’m sure that your grandmother’s boobs were lovely back in the day. But I’m glad that your mom was able to disengage and go her own way. If she hadn’t done that and then met your dad, you would have been born to strangers. Has your hellish winter gone away yet? We had to crank up the woodstove yesterday, but at least it’s greening up here.
Hey, Allen,
Our “winter” here was so mild, we barely got out our boots and toques. I was out your way recently and had a taste of Victoria spring. We’re probably several weeks behind where you are, and right now it’s raining, for the week. Soon I’ll be digging around in flower beds.
I’m glad I didn’t have to grow up with strangers. You have a unique way of expressing some of the lucky turns of fate we don’t always notice.
Julie
Well, shoot. You were on island and you didn’t drop by? Please let us know next time. This Sunday we hope to rototill garden beds, if it stops raining. I’m happy for you that you had loving parents. It’s the most important advantage we’ll ever get.
Allen, it’s true, I’m thankful to Mom and Dad, they worked hard for us and showed us patience and care.
My trip to Victoria turned out to be mostly a work holiday with my sister, as we were preparing her house for sale. I always thought you lived on Saltspring or one of the other islands.
Also, I like the photos of your clean-up. I mainly pick up old Tim Horton’s cups around my neighbourhood. Most of the litter here is from fast food packaging.
Julie
We considered Salt Spring, but, like Gabriola, it’s getting crowded. Thank you for picking up Tim cups. I wish they’d stop running that wasteful roll-up game.