Garden Gnome

Deltassist was garden number five.  Of course, I am only a very minor cog in the whole system.  There are a ton of volunteers, all of whom know more about gardening than I do, and some of whom specialize in various areas.  (I have apparently become known among the volunteer crew as "Rob, the watering guy," since, with the hot weather the plants need more watering, and also because you don't need to know a heck of a lot about plants to do the watering.)

Sandra doesn't have any particular title, but she is, without any doubt, the lead volunteer.  We, as volunteers, are lucky to have her, and Deltassist is even more fortunate to have her.  She runs the WhatsApp group that we all use to communicate with each other, she plans the harvests (a non-trivial task, what with having to ensure that harvested food doesn't go to waste), she schedules the gardening days, she plans what to pull out, and what to plant next.  I have already learned an awful lot about gardening from her.  She inventories the food, she is concerned about our hydration and welfare as volunteers, and advocates for equipment and facilities that will make our work easier and more productive.

(For some reason, she gets very embarrassed when I refer to her as The Boss.)

On the WhatsApp group, she posts pictures of various plots of the garden, and of us working in it.  The other day, she wanted to know what was happening with some potato plants that were dying.  So I was deputized to dig them up, and, lo and behold, they had produced some actual potatoes.  So I bagged up two bags of baby/nugget/"new" potatoes, and three bags of potatoes.  But first she took a picture:

and posted it on the WhatsApp group.

As soon as I saw it, my immediate reaction was, "I look like a garden gnome."

So, a couple of days later, Sandra asked me to start digging up/pulling out the garlic.  (She's been concerned about it for a while, and worried it might be getting too late.  It's also got to cure for about three weeks before we start actually distributing it.)  So, I got a good start on the first bed.  (It's interesting: as soon as you pull it up, it smells like dirt.  But, laying it out in the racks to cure, the racks *really* start to smell like garlic!  I also found, in that bed, some potatoes that were obviously left over from a previous year.  Interestingly, none of them had sprouted.  I wonder if there is something antagonistic about garlic that prevents potatoes from sprouting?  And, if so, where do restaurants get garlic mashed potatoes from?)  And she took another picture:

And I *still* look like a garden gnome.

Sandra says it's the camera.  And, yes, I know that the wide-angle lenses on cell phones can give you all kinds of weird effects.  But I suspect it's the little short arms, and the little short legs, and the beard, and the belly as much as anything else.

Farmer Rob, or Rob, the Garden Gnome?  Or Rob, the Garden Watering Gnome?

And you thought I couldn't talk about Gloria, because this is about gardening?  Well, too bad, because I can talk about Gloria because it's about gnomes.  You see, when I was doing the seminars, I never got to do any touristy type stuff because the tourist stuff was only open while I was actually doing the seminars.  So, the only sightseeing I got to do was when I couldn't sleep, and would wander around places at three in the morning.  So I would, sometimes, be in a place where it was appropriate to take a picture of some great public monument.  And I had a camera, at the time, with a self-timer.  So I could set up a shot, and then place myself in the shot, to prove I had actually been there.  Of course, I wouldn't want to get too far into the shot, because that would block whatever I was taking a picture of.  So, I'd usually be just poking my head and shoulders into a bottom corner of the shot.

Gloria figured I looked like a gnome in these shots ...

Please reframe

Well, I've told you about my gardens. Plural.

(And the need.  And, maybe, the reason.  And some other things.)

The first of the gardens was the patio garden.  Or, rather, the huge planter that divides my patio from the unit (still unoccupied) to the west.  It's right outside my office window, and the landscapers left a huge chunk of it unplanted.  There was nothing growing there and a great big blank space right outside the window that I looked at most of the time.  So, I started planting stuff there.  (As I tell my neighbours, forgiveness is easier to obtain than permission, and, besides, one of the landscapers told me that there were no plans to plant anything, and gave me permission [which was probably not hers to give] to plant there.)

It's terrible soil.  You can tell that most of the stuff here was done on the cheap, and the soil fill was obviously obtained from the cheapest source, is barely composted, and is full of plastic.  The carrots absolutely refused to even sprout, and everything else has had trouble, although the snow peas did give me a bit of a crop.  But I did manage to get some greenery going in there.  One of my neighbours referred to my "forest" a couple of days ago.

(Most of which I don't see anymore.  Now that it is getting hotter, the folly of getting an apartment on the sunny side of the building is coming home to roost.  Despite the fact that heat and hot water is provided by a heat pump, and all the units have vents that are supposed to be for fixed air conditioning, no air conditioning was ever put in, the vents are useless, and I have to keep all the blinds closed against the sun and heat.)

So, yesterday afternoon, someone pushed a letter under my door.  The Powers-That-Be don't won't me to garden in the planters.  They've had six months to get used to the idea, and the office looks out onto my patio, so it's not as if this must be any surprise to them.

I suppose I should be mildly offended.  And, I suppose it would be provocative if I were to reply and say that I have no intention of struggling to plant anything more in the wretched soil of the planters, after all the trouble it has been to get *anything* to grow in them so far.  (Actually, since I've put some broad beans into that area, I've improved the soil in that planter, probably by a considerable amount.)

But, instead I am giggling about the letter.  Because they have asked me to "Please reframe" from planting in the landscape areas.  Gloria would have had a hoot over such a letter.

Would it be churlish of me to inform them that I have already "reframed" the patio by providing some greenery?

I hope they don't come and pull it all out.  The sunflowers, which were attacked in so many ways so many times, have finally grown five stalks in the patio garden, and are just about ready to flower.  (It may be the sunflowers that have prompted the complaint, since one of them, aided by the fact that the planter is about a foot and a half high, is now about eight feet tall.  This is probably the origin of the "forest" comment.)  I also hope that they don't pull out the corm under the sunflowers.  I've got six stocks that have survived, and a number of them are to the point of producing the tassels on top, so I have high hope that they might even produce some ears of corn!

Sleep, or the lack thereof

I've only had five hours sleep tonight.  And I guess that's all I'm going to get.

Partly it's because of the heat.  Although others will laugh, we are having a heat wave in Vancouver.  The authorities are putting out heat warnings.  The temperatures are lower than across Europe and a good deal of the US, but we aren't prepared for heat in Vancouver.  Air conditioning is not common in residences.  I'm dealing with it OK during the day (with multiple fans), but it's not very comfortable at night.  Not excessive, yet, but uncomfortable, and so, not conducive to sleep.

(Partly it's because, due to the heat, we've got to do more watering in the Deltassist garden.  And, at the same time, the cobbled together system of hoses and valves that we worked out to both water the garden *and* run the misting station is starting to break down as various pieces of it break. And, due to the heat, Deltassist is insisting that the misting station [which I've never seen anyone using] run during business hours, so we can't water the garden during business hours, so today's garden time is set for 6:30 AM.  So, even though I'm up way early, there's no point in trying to get any more sleep before I *do* have to get up.)

Partly it's because I'm getting older.  As you get older, any minor sleep disturbances become more significant.  It's harder to get regular sleep.

Partly it's because I've always had problems with sleep.  I could never sleep when out teaching, and away from Gloria.  Most times out teaching, I was running on two hours sleep a night.  There was more than once that I only got a couple of measurable hours of sleep in a week (although I did get into bed every night, and possibly dozed a bit).  About the only "tourist" type stuff I could do was walking around in the wee hours of the morning.  I can walk all over North head, in Sydney, in the dark, because that's how I explored it.  I caused a bit of a furor with the RCMP security detail one time at 4:30 AM by taking a flash picture of the frontage at 24 Sussex Drive (which is no longer identified as such, with the stone pillars  only fronted by a stone maple leaf).

It's not as bad as just after Gloria died.  Most of the time I can get enough sleep.  But it's annoying, all the same.

Morning walk

My morning routine has become rather lengthy.  For one thing I am composing these pieces for you, oh my brothers and only friends, as well as checking email, deleting spam, and checking the news.  So my morning routine is taking up time.

This morning I woke up early.  It happens.  Sometimes I just get up and start to work on the computer.  That's mostly what I've been doing.  However, with the move, I am doing purging, which has also thrown off my routine.  In particular the time that I am spending purging is interfering with the time that I have usually been doing walking.  So, today, getting up early, I decided to get in my walking early. 

There are some benefits.  It's heating up right now so, walking in the heat of the day can get pretty uncomfortable.  Walking in the morning it's much cooler.

There are other benefits.  Such as the not completely spectacular, but still pretty impressive, sunrise this morning.  I think I will have to give morning walks more consideration.

Larry

In the later years of his life, Larry, Gloria's baby brother, seemed to take a vow of curmudgeonliness.  He seemed to see it as a moral failure to laugh with anyone.

He also had decided that he was a bit of a computer hacker.

I'm converting the tape of Gloria's 60th birthday.  It was a big party, and we took a lot of pictures.  I was fairly determined to get Larry to smile for the picture he was in, because it had been a long time since we had had one of him smiling.  So, once everyone was in place and I was ready to snap the shot, instead of calling out, "Say 'cheese!'" I said, "Say 25 gigahertz CPU!"  And it worked!  Larry smiled, and I snapped, and you can hear me say, on the tape, "I got it!"

Only I didn't got it.  Remember, I told you about film?  The film on that particular roll had't "caught" on the spool, and none of the pictures I took on that roll were actually taken, which I didn't find out until later.

I really regret not having that shot ...

Choir concert

Tried out another church, yesterday.  Mostly because they have both an 8 AM and 10 AM service, and I was up early.  So I walked up for the 8 AM service.

A couple of neighbours go there, and they invited me to join them (and a regular group of friends) for breakfast at iHOP.  Since this was the first time anyone at any church in Delta had invited me for a meal after a service, it seemed churlish to refuse.

It's a regular event for them, with a regular table at the iHOP.  After breakfast most of them return for the 10 AM service, so I went, too.

The 10 AM service was the windup concert for a choir camp that had been running the previous week.  In addition, they had lots of real hymns.  So, I was thinking how much Gloria would have enjoyed it, and, therefore, was a complete mess by the end of the service.

Possibly not the best service to choose for a visit to a new church ...

Google Fit

I have two, identical, Samsung Galaxy phones.  Same make, same model. Bought at the same time.

I have Google Fit installed on both of them.  I turned them on at the same time this morning, and put both of them in the same pocket.  Now one of them is showing that I have 88 heart points, 10,775 steps, have burned 674 calories, went 7.14 km, and moved for 98 minutes.  The other shows 85 heart points, 10,509 steps, 667 calories burned, and 6.78 km walked.  Oh, and 98 minutes moved.

Identical phones.  Identical programs.  Identical pocket.  Identical walk.

You've got to question the accuracy of these things.

Senior level grandparent rules

Over the weekend the family had Number One Great-grandchild's first birthday party.  This makes me his great grandfather, and, therefore, a senior level grandparent, in regard to family party rules.

For those unaware of it, there are certain rules regarding the participation of senior level grandparents at family parties. 

Senior level grandparents are not required to move during a family party.  Actually it is illegal to require a senior level grandparent to move more than once during a family party.

By extension, senior little grandparents are allowed to sit in one location, not move to obtain food and drink, are allowed to expect other people to check on them and see if they require anything, and don't have to speak to anyone or mingle with other guests. 

Senior level grandparents are allowed to wear long pants, at a backyard party, on the hottest day of the year so far, without being ragged about it.

Senior level grandparents are allowed to, when some party guest (in pursuit of party games), brings underinflated water balloons for other children to throw at each other (which of course being underinflated do not burst), say to said party guest, "Hey, you could put someone's eye out with that!"

Senior level grandparents are, now that they are extremely old, allowed to say any outrageous thing they want.  (To which the correct response is, "So, something has changed?")

Size, capital, and risk

I was at a church meeting recently.  The church wanted feedback from the congregation as to what kind of new building they wanted.  In order to address this issue they broke it down into a number of different questions.  One question that I noticed that they did not ask was that of what size of church do you want.

Size is a continuum.  It starts at one, and goes to who knows where.  But there are breakpoints in the continuum, which allow you to describe businesses and churches in terms of their size.

Concentrating on the business end of things, we'll start at the beginning.  The beginning, from about one employee to about thirty-five, is the startup phase.  In the startup phase, the boss knows everyone.  Everyone talks to the boss.  Everyone gets their orders from the boss.  There is no management structure, and it's difficult to form any kind of management, because everyone talks to the boss.  There are other characteristics at this size.  For example there is a very high risk tolerance.  As a matter of fact one even might say that startups are risk seeking.  After all, what have they got to lose?  They have very little in the way of capital.  Lots of enthusiasm, lots of agility, lots of ideas, but very little in the way of capital.

The next level is the small business, starting at about thirty-five and going up to around two hundred.  At this stage it is necessary to have a management structure, and that is probably the first problem that the business runs into.  The boss can no longer speak directly to everyone.  And the boss should not speak directly to everyone.  The boss has to delegate to a management layer and allow the managers to talk directly to the line workers.  At this point the business probably has some capital.  It may be investors, it may be that good business has put some money into the bank, it may be that the company has been able to afford to buy their own land and build their own building.  But they have some capital.  Therefore they have something to risk.  And, now that they have something to risk, they become more risk-averse.  Risk mitigation, and risk transfer, become more important to the business at this point, and management starts to think in these terms.

(It's also at this point that the business should start thinking in terms of security, and risk management.  But it's highly likely that they won't.)

If the business survives, and thrives, and grows, it eventually reaches the next stage, which is the medium size business.  This starts when you get to about two hundred, and goes to about a thousand employees.  At this stage the business very definitely does have capital to risk.  Again, risk management becomes more important and the business is more risk-averse.  The boss, at this point, is talking to a layer of senior management, who are, themselves, talking to a layer of lower management, who are talking to the line workers.  Management structures, and communications, and the assurance of communications, become more important at this point.  Auditing of management functions also becomes important at this point.  The management structure itself becomes more complex.  So does the business.  That's just the cost of growth.

Finally, when you reach about a thousand employees, you get to the large or corporate level.  The business has capital, and is protected from a number of problems that could have killed it at an earlier stage.  However, the business is now even more risk-averse.  It is hard to innovate at this size.  Centers of innovation, within the company, must be created, and protected, in order for any innovation to take place.  And innovation must take place, or, inevitably, the business will eventually fail, regardless of how much capital it has at this point.  At the corporate level communication must be structured, management must be structured, auditing of various functions must be structured.

All groups, even churches, even non-businesses, go through these size changes, and the characteristics at each level are remarkably similar.  Small churches tend to be evangelical, and run on a shoestring.  They do not have much capital.  If you think I mean capital merely in monetary terms you are only partially correct.  There is, of course, human capital.  Small churches mostly get by on human capital.  People do the work.  People find the space.  People spread the word.  New things are tried.  New ideas.  New ways to reach out.  New ways to meet.  Small churches run on new ideas, and very little money, and very little capital of any kind.

Of course, human capital, in churches, is directly tied to monetary capital as well.  The more people you have, the more likely you are to have rich people in attendance, or people who are generous to a sacrificial level, and who are willing to give more than most.  The more people that you have, over a long-term, the more people are likely to leave you some money in their wills when they die.  So, yes, human capital does, somewhat, translate into monetary capital.

Most churches fall into the small church size, that is, up to 200 members.  At this point, the church probably has some capital in property, and a regular, if small, donor base.  It also has a regular fund of human capital, people who can be called upon for specific work functions for volunteer functions for technical functions to support the church or other such needs.  And, at this point, new ideas are less important, and they might even be considered dangerous.

Medium size churches, those with over a thousand members, are not common.  There might be a couple of dozen in any large city.  They they will have large ministerial teams at the top, taking the place of senior management, and structures of small study groups, or project groups, reaching down to the masses.  The church will probably have an important and valuable piece of property in the city, which it may have made an agreement with the developer to develop while still giving the church access rights in perpetuity.  Offerings will be regular, and so will be quests.  The church will have capital to risk, and a reputation to risk, and will be conservative in actuality, even if not in theological terms.  Actual innovation and programs will be rare, although in some cases, some such churches will develop some kind of innovation structure and protect it.

Large churches are the rarest, unless you are watching Sunday morning television.  These churches will have donor bases possibly in the millions, will have significant physical plant, and probably have investments bringing in a fairly regular income.  They have the most to risk and will do very little in terms of innovation.

As you can see, there is a pretty direct correlation between size, and capital, and risk tolerance.  Smaller organizations have less capital, and are much more tolerant of risk.  They might even go looking for risk, since they don't have anything to risk.  Larger organizations have more capital.  This allows them to withstand variations in the marketplace that would sweep away smaller enterprises.  On the other hand, some smaller enterprises may be taking risks that address the new market conditions.  It's always a bit of a gamble.  But larger organizations, with more capital, are more risk averse, and are also innovation averse. Change is bad.

Watching Gloria

It's kind of weird, watching the VHS tapes.  I do not have any particular drive to watch through, and rewatch clips of Gloria again and again.  But when I do see her, or hear her talking or laughing or singing, sometimes I just recognize everything, and seeing Gloria seems (briefly?) more real than the life around me.  It's not that I think she's alive.  It's more that I think, "this is my wife and I'm spending my whole life with her," and, at the same time, "she is dead and no longer has any part in my life."  Both thoughts at the same time ...

From the hump of the bridge ...

For all the problems that the Alex Fraser bridge presents when walking over it, at the crest, it does provide a pretty good view of much of the lower mainland.  Despite the fact that it's only 200 feet high, you do get a pretty good view.  (This does indicate how much of the lower mainland is pretty low.

From the crest you can see from Coquitlam (where it was raining at about six this morning) to White Rock to West Vancouver.  (You can't see much of Surrey, but then, who'd want to?)

It's an interesting perspective.  You can see clusters of high-rise towers, and you've got a rough idea of direction, but without a real good idea of distance it's hard to tell exactly what it is that you're looking at.  That cluster I'm pretty sure is Metrotown.  But the one over there?  Could that be the buildings around Oakridge?  Or is there another development, somewhere in southeastern Vancouver, that's gone up while I wasn't paying attention?

Since I woke up, and got up, and got out for a walk, early this morning, I was hoping for a bit of a sunrise as I was crossing the bridge.  Didn't happen, since there was a lot of cloud up the Fraser Valley.  And West Vancouver was rather misted in.  I wonder if they were having a pretty solid drizzle this morning.  Most of the rest of the lower mainland seems to be reasonably expecting a rather clear day today: even Coquitlam seem to have cleared up by the time I reached the end of the bridge.

Bicycles

I hesitate to say anything bad about bicycles, and cyclists, because I used to be one. 

I used to ride to school.  Seven miles to school.  I used to ride to work.  And this was back in the days before bike lanes became a thing.  I got knocked off my bike, by cars, at least three times.  This was in the days before bicycle helmets.  I actually went out and bought a motorcycle helmet to protect myself.  One time a truck quite deliberately ran me off the road.  (I don't know why: I expect he thought I had impeded him in some way.  He ended up on the boulevard.  Whatever delay he thought I had caused him must have been rather small in comparison to how much he delayed himself that day.)

So, I know all about cycling on a regular basis.  Cycling, not just for sport, or recreation, but as a means of transport.  To get somewhere.  As I say, this was before there were bike lanes.  When I rode, you had a choice between riding on the sidewalk, and riding on the road.  I always rode on the road.

I don't see too many bicycles on the road anymore.  Generally speaking I see them on the sidewalk.  That's when I'm walking on the sidewalk.  I don't see them too much around town.  I do see them, quite a lot, on the sidewalks beside Nordel Way, and over the Alex Fraser bridge.

I'm also seeing different types of bikes.  Bikes with huge fat tires, and, generally somewhere on the bike, some big black box that contains the battery.  Yes, electric bikes.  From my perspective, that's cheating.  A bit, anyway.  I mean, these aren't so much bicycles, as somewhat underpowered motorcycles.  Okay, yes, I can see that it might be a cheaper form of transportation than a car.  (Although, given the price that I've noted for some of these electric bicycles, I don't know how much cheaper.)  But if you think you're getting your exercise by cycling, I don't think you're getting as much exercise as you think you are.

And then there's bicycle etiquette.  As noted, in my day you had a choice between the road and the sidewalk.  These days everybody seems to choose the sidewalk.  They are not in contention with the cars.  They are in contention with me, and other pedestrians like me. (Okay, yes, there aren't too many pedestrians like me.)

So, these days, when cyclists overtake pedestrians, they call out as they approach.  Generally from about 50 feet away.  Whatever it is that they call out is completely incomprehensible at that distance.  (If you can even hear them.) Sometimes they ring their bell.  From about 50 feet away.  It's hard to tell where the sound of the bell is coming from at that distance.  So, basically, calling out, or ringing a bell, from that distance away is just startling, without providing any real information or morning to the pedestrian.

If you think you are going to be calling out specific instructions to the pedestrian, such as "I am coming up on your left and would like you to stay where you are," then unless you are within about five or ten feet, the pedestrian is not going to hear all of that message.  And, of course, if you are traveling at about 30 miles an hour you cannot compress that entire message into a short enough time, that you can get it all out before you have actually passed the pedestrian.

Now yes, it is nice that you are calling out some kind of warning.  Maybe.  If you can think of some effective way to get across the message of where you are, and where you expect the pedestrian to be, and what you expect the pedestrian to do, and do it in a manner that is close enough that this message can be effectively delivered, and early enough that the pedestrian can do something about it, then go for it.  But that seems unlikely, given your speed and the amount of time that is available.

Somebody passed me on the bridge this morning.  Without saying anything.  He didn't hit me, and although I was a little startled, it wasn't as disturbing as somebody ringing their bell at me for several seconds, while I frantically tried to figure out where the heck they are.

Really, what you want to do, is slow down.  Yes, I know, you don't want to slow down.  It has taken you time and energy to build up speed.  You want to maintain that speed.  I know.  I've done it.  For years.  I know that coming to a stop and starting up again requires as much energy as traveling for about a mile.  So yes, I know.  You don't want to slow down.  But, in reality, that is the only courteous thing to do.

Pen knife

I lost my pen knife.

I had lost it years ago, and then found it again while when moving while Gloria was dying, so it was a minor, and totally disproportionate, comfort after Gloria died.  I carry it everywhere, partly because grandfathers are supposed to be ready, at all times, with a pocket knife (generally for opening difficult presents at family birthday parties).  But partly, I suspect, it's because of it's totemic comfort value.

I lost it again this morning.  And then I *really* lost it. 

I lost my wife, I lost my home, I am losing a whole bunch of things because I am purging in preparation for moving again, and now I lost my pen knife.  I had a panic/meltdown/grief burst like you wouldn't believe.  Admittedly, losing a pen knife and losing a wife are not in the same league.  But losing the pen knife seemed to trigger a whole bunch of grief, and loss, and tears, because of all the other losses.  It just seemed like I was losing absolutely everything in life.  So today started out with a huge grief burst, totally out of proportion to the actual loss.  Not a great start to the day.

Grief is weird.

(Later, while I was out volunteering, I did recall where I had used it last, and where I had left it.  And, when I got back, it was still where I had left it, so I haven't lost it after all.  But, by that time I had gotten a little perspective back, anyway ...)

Summer cold

I've got a cold.  I've had a sore throat, and been coughing a bit (a "productive" cough, so not an indication of CoVID).  The girls insisted that I get a rapid antigen test, so I did, and it's negative.

So, it's not CoVID, but it might as well be.  I have pretty much zero energy.  I tried to push it at one point, and didn't almost collapse, I *did* collapse.  (Well, I fell down, briefly, anyway.)  When I make it into the chair, it's almost impossible to get out.  The only thing I *want* to do, is go back to bed.

Even though I have (for a wonder) no appointments in the next few days, I won't be doing much in the way of purging or packing.

I needed to get some cold meds, yesterday.  The nearest pharmacy (right in the building, although you have to go outside to get to it) didn't have it.  I thought I was going to have to walk two miles to the Save-On, but passed the Pharmasave which is only a kilometre way, so I checked, and they had it.  But that was a 45 minute round trip, and, when I got back, I had to take a half hour rest before I could do anything else.

Summer colds are no fun.

Morning

It's very much nicer to walk across the Alex Fraser Bridge at 2:00 in the morning, than at rush hour.  It's even nicer to walk across the bridge at 4:30 in the morning, when the sky is starting to lighten, enough so that you don't have to worry about dead street lamps and dark shadows, and possible holes in the pavement, and you can see the light along the edge of the sky to the northeast that indicates where the sun is going to come up.

It's also nice to know that, even after the pandemic, which closed everything, that there is at least one Tim Hortons that is still open all night.

And, this morning, I finally got a great sunrise.  Just as I got to the crest of the bridge, the sun was not *quite* ready to come up behind Golden Ears, and the sun's rays and shadows formed a gorgeous pattern through the various peaks.  The sun wasn't quite over the horizon, and it wasn't even touching the tops of the pylons (which are about 500 feet high), but I could see it already reflecting off Delta Rise from about the 25th to the 30th floors.  And then, in what seemed like an instant, the sun was up, and I was in sun, and the full height of the pylons was illuminated.

Gloria called?

I may have mentioned (probably more than once) that I have not had Gloria "come to me."  Many of the bereaved, and certainly a significant number of those in the various grief groups I've been in, have mentioned seeing their loved one on the street, had the loved one talk to them, heard the loved one's voice, or had a dream about the loved one.  I haven't.  I generally don't make a big deal about *NOT* having had a visit in the groups, because those who *do* report visits (and, as I say, they are definitely in the majority) are so positive and so happy about them.

OK, I've had one.

Gloria called my name.

I woke up, out of a sound sleep, because my name, "Rob," was called.  I woke up "knowing" it was Gloria: who else would it be?  Then I woke up, and knew that Gloria was dead, so it couldn't be her, and it couldn't be anyone else, so it was probably just a dream.

Looking back on it, immediately after I woke up, I couldn't say, for sure, that it was Gloria's voice.  (It's hard, trying to think back on dreams, to be sure of *any* details, in any case.)  Gloria had a very distinctive voice.  This was just an elderly female voice.  And that's all it was.  I can't remember anything else about the dream, if it was part of a dream.  Just the voice, calling my name, once.

As visitations go, it was pretty mingy.

It was also inconvenient.  I didn't feel joy, or sadness, but I'm definitely up.  And I only got three hours sleep Monday night, and was hoping for a solid sleep last night, because I have to be off to two medical appointments in Horseshoe Bay (fortunately, I was able to make them back to back) this morning.  I did get a solid sleep until the "call," but only for seven hours.

I guess I was primed for the "call," because I've been doing the VHS to DVD conversions.  Sometimes I put a tape on and go out (I'll do that now, because I probably won't have time for a walk later today), but sometimes I'm doing stuff around the house while the tape is running, and Gloria will be talking or laughing or singing on the tape.

Anyway, whatever the reality, and whatever the cause, I'm up.  I'll put in a tape and a disk, and set up a conversion run, and then go for a walk, and come back and get started on the day a bit later.

I also have a bit of a sore throat, and suspect I may be coming down with a summer cold, so I suppose I can expect to be fairly miserable for the next week or so.  Oh, joy.

Purging

I am moving.  Again.

I am not looking forward to moving again.  I would not, unlike Gloria, rather die than move, but not not looking forward to it.

So I'm purging.  Again.

I've already done this once.  I've already given away more than $100,000 worth of books.  I've already given away forty years' accumulation of ancient computer technology.  I've already purged pretty thoroughly, because when I moved the first time, I got rid of all of my stuff, rather than Gloria's stuff.

But, I'm moving again, so I'm purging again.

I'm going through what remains of my stuff. I'm looking at what I've got, and what remains, and what I can reduce even further.  There is of course Gloria's stuff.  I've already gotten rid of most of her clothes, and now I have to deal with her specialty items.  I have, for example, pretty much a container full of her sewing room.  There is a lot of fabric.  Most of it is quilting fabric.  All color matched and beautifully sorted.  Gloria would not have had it any other way.  There are also a number of quilting, and embroidery, kits.  What am I going to do with that?  There are the quilt guilds.  I'm sure that they would be willing to take it off my hands, but it does seem a bit of a shame not to recoup any of the costs that went into purchasing it in the first place.

Then there's our wedding china.  That is a bit more emotionally fraught.  For one thing, it's our wedding china.  It's not just china.

Gloria had a couple of pieces when we got married, because she liked it.  Partly because it was gorgeous in and of itself, but also because it was a petitpoint design, and of course she loved embroidery too.  So, that became our wedding china.  And through wedding gifts we managed to build a twelve place setting set of the china.  That was added to on anniversaries, and occasionally birthdays and Christmases.  The total replacement cost for what we have (sorry, what *I* have, I will keep doing that probably for some time yet), anyway there's $70,000 worth of Royal Albert PetitPoint china in the china cabinet.

What am I going to do with fine china?  I'm not sure that I could actually get twelve people into my new place, let alone seat them all for a formal dinner.  For one thing the only table I've got now seats four, and that would be at a bit of a push.

So, what am I going to do with $70,000 worth of Royal Albert fine bone china?  It isn't actually all that big: I could pack it up and take it with me.  It wouldn't be terribly heavy; not in comparison to my books; so it isn't completely unreasonable.  And then I could see if anyone in a logging and mill town of 27,000 people is desperately desiring to purchase a whole lot of Royal Albert fine bone china.  No, that's probably not going to happen.

But I have tried all kinds of different ways to deal with it.  There are stores that deal with second hand fine china, but at the moment they seem to be overstocked and in need of buyers themselves.  They don't seem to be purchasing.  I have contacted churches, and other institutions but, even before I did so I figured that I was rather unlikely.  And, I was right.  Nobody wants it.

Well, that would not be completely true.  I am sure that there are some collectors who would really like to have it, but I'm not sure how to contact them.  I have tried Facebook, and it's infamous Marketplace, but so far that has been pretty much a dud.

Speaking of duds, I am also working on the VHS tapes.  (I figured that I could reduce the bulk by doing the conversion of VHS to DVD, since DVDs are an awful lot smaller to transport.)  I have previously mentioned the VHS tapes. ( https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2022/02/why-vhs-you-ask.html ) Starting with one of our first meetings about Gloria's memorial service, and the comment, gee, wouldn't it be great if Mum could sing at her own service?  Of course I had lots of video of Gloria singing, and had even collected it on to compilation tapes.  And then we found the tapes!  And they were VHS tapes.  And then I remembered that I had converted some of the tapes to DVD!  And then we found that none of the compilation tapes had been part of that conversion.  And so it went.

Well, at someone's suggestion (you know who you are), I contacted Trusty Electronics of Texas.  For $100, they sent me a combination VHS and DVR machine!  Except that it wasn't a DVR machine, it was just a DVD machine.  And it wasn't $100, it was $150.  And then it was another $50 or more as prices and duties and taxes piled on top.  Well, since I had had to deal with the VHS compilation tapes in another way, that machine has been sitting around untested.  So I have finally gotten around to testing it.

And it turns out this $200 plus machine doesn't work.  At all.  It ate my cleaning tape!  My only VHS cleaning tape!  And it won't do anything.  Well, that means a slight lightning of my load because, of course, I've just purged that machine.  Oh, and Trusty Electronics of Texas?  Apparently it no longer exists.  A few months after I bought this they seem to have gone out of business so thoroughly that when you go to their website, Shopify is trying to sell you the domain name!  (It *would* be Texas ...)

However, through the kindness of friends, I do actually have now a working VHS machine!  And, wonder of wonders, it actually works!  It actually connects to my dubbing machine!  (The dubbing machine that had the VHS side go dead, just when I needed it most.)

So my conversion project is back underway.  This is nice, and it may be handy in reducing the volume of VHS tapes to a stack of DVDs, but it is somewhat emotionally fraught, since the way to copy these tapes is to play them, and every once in a while, of course, Gloria is laughing at the antics of the grandkids.  Gloria had a very beautiful, and distinctive, laugh.

(The guy who ended up doing the emergency conversion that let us [at some considerable trouble] play Gloria's singing at her own service also seriously messed up.  One of the conversions was almost unusable, with extremely poor sound quality.  And, in an attempt at redundant backup, when I converted [or attempted to convert] the VHS tapes to DVD now that I can do it, I found that he had OVERWRITTEN almost all of one tape.  Do NOT use the services of Everlasting Studios.)

There are some other things that I can do in terms of purging.  There's a box, just labeled pictures.  I should find out what they are.  I know that there are boxes, probably of family photographs, in the storage room in the basement.  I should get to, and go through, those.  I could go through my kitchen stuff.  I've got a set of eight plates: I probably don't need all eight.  I could pack the plates, possibly in a set of four, that I will use in Port Alberni and have that ready to go, and just use plates that I'm going to be throwing away anyway in my cupboard.  There are three boxes that the girls have labelled "Mementos" down in the storage container.  I should get those back to the apartment and go through them.  I suspect most of the mementos are Gloria's: I don't keep many.

I've already gone through the bathrooms.  I'm not completely finished, but I've done the bulk of that.  I have dealt with stacks of cleansers and laundry products that Gloria knew how to use, and I don't.  I have had a first pass through the fridge, throwing away stuff then I'm pretty sure I'm never going to eat.  I have gone through my books again.  That didn't result in a great reduction.  I am packing, very slowly, and piece meal, hardware and technical items, and trying to determine if any of them can go in the garbage.  *It's* not producing any great reductions at this point either.  I've gone through my t-shirts.  I'm quite a few t-shirts, pretty much all of them giveaways from presentations at conferences and trade shows.  Again, that didn't result in any great reduction, although I have sorted my t-shirts into heavy, for cold weather, light, for summer, and brightly colored.

I suppose that I should have a look at the towels and linens, which, for some reason, the girls put into the china cabinet.  I have also gone through assorted knick knacks keeping a rather small set and making a rather larger, but still not terribly significant, pile of stuff that can go, since it doesn't have any particular meaning for me.

I figure that a lot of the sorting of mementos, pictures, and other assorted paraphernalia can be gone through while I am doing transcribing from VHS tapes onto DVDs.  Although, I would just as soon go out walking while the conversion process is going on.  A tape is running, even as I am dictating, back at the apartment, while I am walking around the parking lot of the McDonald's over on Annacis Island, using their Wi-Fi for the dictation.  I have already gone through the filing cabinet for a slight reduction in scrap paper.  I suppose I should go through Gloria's tax forms, and my own, and some of the accounts in our accounts folder, to get rid of whole sections of papers that are older than I need to keep.

Someone, in suggesting that I purge, noted that purging was a way to clean up space, and give you more room available for sorting and packing.  This does not appear to be true.  My apartment is now much more cluttered than it was before I started purging.  For one thing, I've got boxes lying around waiting to be packed.  For another, I have things like the racking that I needed to set up to test the various VHS machines in order to try and see if the conversion project was going to work.  I also have partly unpacked boxes that I am going through, and items, such as papers, spread out for examination.  So, no, purging doesn't give you more space to work in.

Salmonberries

I had salmonberries for breakfast this morning.  I even got a few that were ripe.  That's rather rare, since you have to fight the squirrels and the birds for them.

I like berries.  I guess cherries aren't considered berries but I like them too.  I like blueberries.  I like strawberries, although I despair of getting any that I grow, since the squirrels definitely seem to attack them just before they get ripe.  I think this is quite unfair: I even put ClearGuard(TM) around the pot with the strawberries in it, but they still attack the berries.  On the other hand, somebody in the lower part of the development, who has strawberries randomly placed outside their fence alongside the path, have lovely ripe berries.  It's not fair.  (But I still haven't raided their berries.)

I rather overdosed on blackberries when I was a kid.  Of course, because they were free (for her), Mom made sure that we had lots of blackberry pies, and lots of blackberry jam.  My favorite was the blackberry jelly.  Fewer seeds.  But Mom didn't make that as much.  It may be the overdosing, or it may be the fact that I shed my blood getting them, but blackberries, while great, aren't my favorite. 

Pretty much everybody in BC knows blackberries.  Blackberries grow wild.  In proliferation. Actually, what everybody probably knows as blackberries, aren't the native species.  There are at least five species of blackberry, that I know of, in BC.  There are the native, wild blackberries, with their small sweet berries, and I know of one rather odd species that has really jagged pointed leaves.  But the ones that grow along the highways and byways, and in every patch of bare ground that you do not cultivate and assiduously weed, are, I suspect, Himalayan blackberries.  They are an invasive species.  They are prolific, and productive, and even delicious, but they aren't native.

My favorites are raspberries.  Partly because they are available for such a short time.  Or, rather, they were.  One of the definite benefits of globalization is the greater availability of raspberries for a longer period of time, as we get them from other places in the world where they are in season.

But I definitely love salmonberries.  You can almost never get them.  For one thing, they're shy.  Salmonberry bushes grow in the midst of other bushes.  They sort of hide themselves.  You have to know what you're looking for.  The smaller, but slightly blackberry shaped leaves, are one indication, as are the red stems and twigs.  But the definite giveaway are the bright yellow berries as they are developing.  Before they get ripe.  Look for those yellow berries, and you know what to look for a bit later on as the berries start to ripen.  You can eat them (and, given the contention with squirrels and birds, possibly should eat them) as they start to turn red.  They are delicious at that point, but if you can wait, if you can protect them, if you can find some other berries buried deep in the cover of other bushes, when they are fully dark red, that is when they are at their best.

Review of "The Grieving Brain," by Mary-Frances O'Connor

The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss

Mary-Frances O'Connor https://twitter.com/doctormfo https://thegrievingbrain.com https://www.maryfrancesoconnor.com/ mfoconnor@email.arizona.edu

978-0-06-294623-2

I am experiencing grief.  Therefore, as a systems analyst, and a lifelong learner, I am studying grief.  I am grieving.

According to O'Connor, the grief, and the grieving, are not the same thing.  Grief is the feeling, possibly the emotion, possibly a syndrome of emotions, experienced when you have had a loss.  Grieving is not the experience of grief, but rather an adaptation.  It is the learning, or the relearning (or even the unlearning), of the difference between the world as you knew it with the loved one and the new world without the loved one in it.

I am finding the book extremely interesting.  As a teacher, and as a lifelong learner, anything to do with learning is of interest to me.  And so, looking at grief, or to use O'Connor's terminology, grieving, as a form of learning is an interesting speculation.

We build mental models of the world around us.  When you have a close relationship with someone, be that a parent, a spouse, a partner, or any other close relationship, our map of the world includes that person and that relationship.  When we lose that relationship our map of the world becomes flawed.  That map is still there, and that person is still there in our mental map.  But the map no longer corresponds to reality.  The disparity, discontinuity, or difference, between the two causes confusion, which we feel, in a variety of ways, as grief.

For thirty-five years, my mental map of the world had Gloria in it.  Latterly, that mental map was determined, and many aspects of my timetable, meal schedules, actions, and behaviors were determined by Gloria and to a certain extent her increasing medical needs.  Gloria is no longer here, and her medical needs are no longer here.  The determinants of my life have changed very significantly.

O'Connor speaks of cue learning and place learning, in discussing grieving.  Cue learning is the type of learning that learns a particular procedure, step by step.  Place learning learns a situation, as a whole.  Thus cue learning is less useful, in some ways, since a slight change in the situation may render the procedure inappropriate.  Place learning is more useful because it is able to adapt to some changes in situation.

This idea is interesting to me, as a teacher, because we have similar concepts in education known as field dependent, and field independent, learning.  Field dependent learning is the type that learns a procedure.  Field independent learning learns the requirements and the whole situation.  Field independent learning takes longer, but is able to adapt to slight changes in circumstance.  However, in education we know that while these two types of learning coexist in the learner, certain learners have a predilection for field dependence, as opposed to field independence.  That is, some people tend to learn, for the most part, in the procedural manner, while others tend to learn in the field independent manner.  Therefore, some people learn procedures.  They learn the procedures fairly quickly.  They make excellent line workers, because you teach them the procedure and they will follow it, exactly, again and again.  Field independent learners will have trouble with these repetitive tasks, and with learning the procedures, until they have learned the entire situation and requirements and understand why a procedure is being done this way.  Thus they take longer to learn line work.  But, by the same token, understanding the situation in a field independent manner, they are able to adapt when anything changes on the line, which field dependent learners generally do not.  Because of the difference in grief and the reaction to grief in O'Connor's definitions of cue learning and place learning, could it be that the different types of learners go through the grieving process in different ways?  Could it be that field dependent learners are the ones who grieve for a long time, while field independent learners are the ones who are able to adapt and get on with their lives?

I am experiencing grief.  I am a systems analyst so I am studying grief.  Actually, I am more studying grieving then grief, to use O'Connor's distinction. (No, don't worry.  Neither you nor I are stuck in a loop.)  I am not studying my feelings, as much as I am studying the process, and the grieving industry.

Is the fact that I am studying it helping?

I am a lifelong learner.  Gloria was always curious about things.  One of the things that we did together was to watch the Great Courses series.  Our mining engineer grandson was very impressed that we studied Geology 101 in order to better understand his field.  We learned new things all the time.

I am learning gardening.  My baby brother asks me why I am learning gardening, since Mom made sure that we all hated gardening.  I am learning by trial and error.  (Mostly error.)  During one of my early errors I had a couple of experiences that indicated that I did have a strong emotional need to do the gardening.  I couldn't figure out why (and neither could any of the grief counsellors), but I did have a need to do it.  A strong emotional need.

Maybe it's not the gardening.  Maybe it's the learning.  The neuroplasticity involved in learning new things may assist with the learning that is necessary in the grieving, as O'Connor would put it.

When Gloria was in hospital the plan was to move so she would have a safer place to live after she came out.  Therefore, after Gloria died, I had to learn a new community, new streets, new shops, new churches, new social circles.  New volunteer work.  Did the learning that I was forced into provide me with the neuroplasticity and the new neural pathways that I needed (and will need), to assist me in the process of grieving?

It may be that the melange of emotions that we see as grief boils down to one emotion: confusion.  We are not grieving the loss of the loved one, or the loss of relationship, but of certainty.  It may be that we are angry, not at the loved one who has left us, or at the doctors who did not save her, but at the confusion: our loss of a correct and definitive mental map.  Our extreme loneliness may not simply be because of the loss of one relationship, but because we are afraid of approaching others because our mental map of relationship, and relationships, and how people can and will interact with us, has been damaged.

I like learning.  I am a proponent of lifelong learning.  I like to learn new things.  But I feel pretty strongly that I am in the minority in this.  Most human beings do not like to learn, at least not very much.  We have a saying: "learning experience."  This is what we say of a particularly nasty or unpleasant experience.  People will say to you, "Well it's a learning experience."  To which my usual response is, "I hate learning experiences."  And, it's true.  As much as I love learning, I hate learning experiences.

But many people don't just hate learning experiences, but learning itself.  Change is bad, and learning tends to indicate a change.  Maybe it's a change in your situation which is forcing you to learn something new, or maybe it's simply that when you learn something new you change, and change how you relate to the world around you.  Which tends to make a problem for somebody.  So, overall, human beings don't think too kindly of learning.

In regard to my move, the common wisdom has it that you should avoid making significant decisions for the first year after being bereaved.  While this is generally sound advice, particularly in regard to the degraded ability to make decisions during a time of "bereavement brain," moving, and being forced to learn a bunch of new things, may assist with the neuroplasticity needed to unlearn the presence, behaviors, and thoughts associated with the presence of the loved one, and relearn new schedules and behaviors in the absence of the loved one.

O'Connor notes the importance of being grief adjacent in regard to empathy.  This is the ability of others to mirror, not just our actions, behaviors, and possibly speech, but the way that we are feeling.  I found this interesting, particularly in view of what I have observed in my own social circle, of people withdrawing from me, or babbling when in personal conversation are on the phone, lest I should bring up the topic of Gloria.  At first I thought that this showed a weakness in O'Connor's analysis.  However O'Connor does make a distinction between empathy (feeling what we feel), and compassion (caring how we feel).  The empathy part does explain why people move away, or try to avoid or prevent situations where I might talk about Gloria and my grief.  (They don't want to feel any part of that pain.)  What is lacking here, apparently, is compassion.

The need to relearn (or unlearn) the absence of the loved one may explain the prevalence of anger as a component of grief.  Anger is very common in grief, even among those, such as women, who have been trained that they are not supposed to be angry.  Often we are most angry when we are wrong, and are demonstrated to be wrong.  We do not like to be wrong.  The strength of this dislike, and the anger that it produces, may be an evolutionary adaptation to ensure that we correct mistakes, so that our beliefs and understandings do correspond with reality.  To be a variance with reality could lead to disastrous consequences.  So, when our mental maps insist on the presence of a loved one, and there is demonstrable evidence that the loved one is not present any longer, we are wrong.  Our mental map is defective.  It must be repaired.  But we are angry at being wrong, and therefore anger is a major part of our grief.

O'Connor's book, and the major thesis, are both very interesting, but the book spends relatively little time on the supposed topic of neural imaging.  Most of the speculation on the topic of grief, and grieving, relies upon anecdotes from clinical practice. This is interesting (although the plural of anecdote is not data), but it doesn't address the central thesis on the basis of neural imaging.  The thesis of having to learn new things is supported by the anecdotes, but mention of neural imaging happens only occasionally, and then doesn't necessarily, or directly, support the thesis of grieving being a relearning of the world map without the loved one in it.

Chapter one introduces the thesis of relearning.  But it then goes on to talk of a number of other issues.  Some of these issues, such as the dimension of closeness, and the attachment bond and its strength, will be raised in later chapters, and in more detail.  However the text does feel somewhat disjointed, jumping from topic to topic, and from neural studies to clinical anecdotes.

Closeness (the reason for the strength of the attachment bond), the use of closeness as a dimension, and other factors are addressed in chapter two.  Chapter two is probably the most consistent in terms of topic, although the section at the end on empathy turns in a different, and slightly weird, direction.

The title of chapter three mentions magical thinking.  The topic really addresses the remnance, persistence, and error in believing that our loved one is still in the world, as expressed by our old world map.  The issue, when you think about it, is not difficult: the jump from an error in remembering an old situation, as compared to magical thinking, or superstitious learning.  However O'Connor could make this connection more directly and specifically.

Neural imaging does re-emerge in chapter four, which deals with adaptation over time.  However, the process of adaptation is not really addressed until O'Connor deals with the problems of the five stages model and introduces, instead, the useful dual process model.  However, once again, this leads to very disjointed text and makes it difficult to know what the central thesis of the chapter actually is.

Chapter five deals with prolonged grief disorder, as it is described in the DSM, but which O'Connor prefers to refer to as complicated grief.  Unfortunately, while this chapter is longer than some of the previous ones, it does not provide much in the way of useful direction.  Certainly it doesn't help necessarily help with aids that might assist clinicians in directing counseling for those who are grieving for an extended period of time.  It does raise a number of questions that those interested in studying neuroimaging of grief may wish to attempt to work on.

Chapter six gives us much more detail on how attachment bonds form, what chemicals are involved, and where in the brain this happens.  Much of this work relies on small animal studies.  However, while all of this is interesting, it doesn't actually support the central thesis of the need to relearn, and reform the world map, after the death of the loved one.

Chapter seven is, again, somewhat disjointed.  It talks about the different ways that you can think about the loved one who has died.  However, it has relatively little to say on the topic of which types of thinking about the person are helpful, and which types are not.

Part two (of the book) turns from a description of grief and grieving, to a prescription of topics that may be helpful in getting the bereaved through the period of grief.  Unfortunately, these following chapters are rather mixed bags, more collections of random thoughts, than of definite and helpful direction.

Chapter eight talks about the past: remembering the past, ruminating on the past, dwelling on the past.  Again, there is relatively little specific prescription in this material.  Questions are raised about which types of rumination are helpful in grieving, but little in the way of answers are provided.  I did find interesting the observation that women do more ruminating than men.  This is consistent with the intuitive versus instrumental hypothesis in regard to grief, and the grieving process, and that men are more instrumental, involving more planning and listening to the future, while women do more remembering and recounting of the past.  O'Connor does not seem to be aware of this research, and it is not mentioned in this chapter.  At the same time, O'Connor does raise issues of avoidance, and accepting (as opposed to acceptance, which she sees as a more permanent state of mind).  Are men, looking to the future and planning, simply avoiding issues of grief?  Or, in planning for the future, are men accepting what has happened, and planning for what is to come without the loved one?

Being in the present, chapter nine, follows, and possibly also promotes, the current interest in the practice called mindfulness.  This material, while lyrical, is of questionable utility.  Possibly the most interesting part of this section deals with the neural research on avoidance of thoughts of the deceased, and the fact that unconscious thoughts of the deceased increase when such avoidance is practiced.  However, as O'Connor admits, the ability to increase unconscious thoughts of the deceased, and therefore process grief with less pain to the bereaved, is not something we know how to promote.  (I will say that I entirely agree with her comments on sleeplessness, insomnia, and drugs.)

Chapter ten then turns to the future.  It is wisely said that you should never make predictions, particularly about the future.  The book doesn't say very much about it, in any definitive way.

Chapter eleven talks about teaching and learning.

I have noted problems with the material in the book and with O'Connor's writing.  However, overall the book is fascinating, and raises a number of questions that can and should lead to much more research and exploration.  While this may not be a helpful tome for all of those who are, themselves, grieving, it should be required study for grief counsellors, and for any and all who are interested in the study of grief itself.

Need anything?

 

*SO* true. *SO* often. *SO* unhelpful.

Argh.

Banking security

The banks care a lot about security.  Their security.  Not necessarily your security.

News flash people: when there is a situation where somebody will lose money, and the options are that the bank will lose money or you will lose money, the banks make very sure that they do not lose money.  They also ensure that their security is protected even then when that interferes with providing customer service. 

Interviewer: We're here with a farmer to talk about banking!  Farmer, what does service mean to you?

Farmer: Service?  Well that's what the bull does to the cow.

Interviewer: And that's what banking is all about!  Servicing the customer!

(Okay, it's an old joke.  But I'm an old security maven.)

The girls wanted to settle up by sending an e-transfer.  I had no objection to trying it out.  I had even sent an e-transfer in payment of a bill sometime earlier.  For not too terribly large amounts of money, the security, while pretty rudimentary, does seem to be reasonably adequate.  I do note that most people are still choosing pretty stupid passwords to protect the transfer.

So, they sent the e-transfer.  I received the email.  I opened the email.  I clicked on the "Deposit your money" button.  I chose my bank from the list available.  It opened up a screen with my banking information and my accounts.  And then ... nothing.  No option to deposit.  No instructions.  So I clicked on the transfers button on the  bank's menu.  It told me I could send money.  It told me how to request money from somebody.  It didn't provide any options to deposit the money that had opened this screen in the first place.  I clicked on an account to see if that would transfer the money.  Nope.

So I went to the bank.  I figured that it would be easy enough for them to show me how this was supposed to work.  And immediately ran into a problem.  It was easy, they said.  I just had to open the app.  Thing is, I don't do any banking on my phone.  Smartphones are the least secure platform for doing online banking.  That pretty much stymied them.

I talked to the assistant manager.  We talked about using a computer to do e-transfers.  He didn't know how it worked either.  I figured that I could show him using my email, my e-transfer, and my bank account.  Second problem.  The bank's security policy, which they probably explain on the basis of preventing infection from malware, but which is probably in reality preventing bank employees from doing non-work stuff on work time and work computers, is that bank employees cannot access their own email.  In order to enforce this policy, sites like Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and others, are blocked by the bank's firewall.  So, no, it is not possible to demonstrate what is happening, or what I am seeing, in regard to the e-transfer that I'm trying to do.

So, the assistant manager spent 40 minutes on the phone with Scotiabank's technical support.  (I'm glad that I wasn't the one spending 40 minutes on the phone with Scotiabank's technical support.)  He described to them everything I had told him, and, in the end, they said that this was a known problem, had affected at least 6,000 customers, and they hope they would have it fixed by Tuesday.

So we waited.  And, after the stated time, I tried again.  With exactly the same result.  Open the email.  Click the button.  Select the bank.  My banking information displays.  And there is absolutely no option to deposit the money.

So I went back to the bank.  Today, neither the manager, nor the assistant manager, nor the cashier supervisor, was available.  Another bank employee did offer to give me all of five minutes to try and address my problem.  Knowing that the bank's computers were of no use, I had brought my own.  However, this Scotiabank does not provide wifi.  So there's no way to connect to the internet and demonstrate any of this.

By this time I was not only enraged by yet another example of poor design and policy on the part of the bank, but I was into full systems analyst mode.  I tried three more browsers.  Choice of browser didn't make any difference.  I poked and prodded at various options.  To no avail.  Then I recalled what somebody had said about, "usually it asks for your password."  So I made sure that I was completely signed out of any windows looking at the bank account.  And, voila!  That was it.  The transfer won't happen, at least on Scotiabank, if you are signed on to the bank at the time you try it out.  It does nothing.  It doesn't give you an error message, it doesn't attempt anything, it doesn't explain that it needs to sign on for any reason, it just does nothing.

So, yes, e-transfers do work.  If you do it exactly the way the bank expects it to be done.  If you are trying to keep an eye on things, and see if, in fact, money does go into your account, you're out of luck.

I'm really not too thrilled with Scotiabank right now.  Not only are their e-transfers rather bizarre, but they've lost me some money recently.  In addition, their provision of information for my accounts is lacking, to say the very least.  Their Momentum savings account, for example, displays in a way that makes no logical or accounting sense.  I've been having to do some transfers of money and I have just spent about an hour doing hand calculations proving to myself that, yes, the total amounts are still there, in various parts, of various accounts.  See it all at once?  Well, maybe.  And sometimes, maybe not.  It probably depends on the phases of the moon.

I'm going to send the bank the bill for my pantoprazole.

Flats

Once upon a time, I was a wedding photographer.  I only did it for a while, about a decade, and mostly I did it for friends.  The last time I did it was for my little brother, and that was a few years back, and that was a whole, other, different story.

In those days, my children, cameras used something called film.  Cameras did not come free with every cell phone.  You had to buy the film, and you had to load it into the cameras, and when the film ran out, you had to stop taking pictures.  Film came in different formats, or sizes.  You had to buy the right film for the right camera.  I used to use two, or sometimes three, cameras in those days when I was doing a wedding.  (As well as the number of different lenses, but that's another story too and we won't go into that right now.)  One of the cameras that I used was called a large format camera, because it used a large frame of film.  This gave it an advantage in that the pictures were higher resolution and higher quality.  Unfortunately it came at the cost of 1) a higher price for the film, and 2) fewer pictures that could be taken on a roll of film.

The camera that this film went into was called Mamiya.  It was a twin lens reflex camera, with an iris diaphragm shutter. This technical detail, of the iris diaphragm shutter, is important to this story.  I used this camera for more formal, rather than informal (casual, candid), shots.  For this particular couple, we were shooting late in the day, towards sunset.  The sunset was rather beautiful, and so I set the camera to the highest shutter speed that it would do, and set it up with a flash.  This is where the iris diaphragm comes in.  On ordinary, or rather the more common 35 mm cameras of the day, when you use flash you had to use a rather slow shutter speed because focal plane shutters couldn't move across the entire picture frame in a faster time frame.  But the iris diaphragm shutter could take flash pictures at very high speeds.  This meant that I was able to shoot directly into the sun, and use the flash to fill (as we called it) the faces with light, to account for the fact that the camera was shooting directly into a very bright light source (that is, the sun).

The pictures turned out very well.  Particularly that one, with the couple facing the camera with the sun between them.  It was an impressive, and very beautiful shot.  When I took the pictures to be processed, at a professional lab, the clerk was very impressed with the final results.  She called one of the owners, all of whom were professional photographers.  He was also very impressed with the pictures, and asked me where do you get your flats done?  He didn't believe that I was able to take this picture in a natural setting and thought that I had posed a couple against some kind of painted or photographed backdrop. 

I was reminded of this story last night on the ferry.  As we were getting off, Number One Granddaughter noticed the sunset, which was, indeed, gorgeous.  It was a gorgeous mix of oranges and pinks, and her grandmother would have loved it.  So, Number Two daughter took a picture of the twins and myself against the sunset, with the flash, from her cell phone, filling in our faces.  It too is a gorgeous shot.  And a lot easier to take.

Participaction and bus passes

 I went ten kilometres to old guys coffee morning today.  As I did I passed a number of students at bus stops.

At the same time, Participaction is trying to get us all to be more active, and to get more exercise in our lives. 

Well, I have a suggestion.  Take away bus passes.  All of these kids were within two and a half kilometers of their high school.  It wouldn't have taken them more than half an hour to get to school.

I can legitimately say that I walked 2 miles, through the snow, to school everyday.  (Of course, I don't have to mention that this was not while I was *going* to school, but while I was teaching.)  It wasn't uphill both ways, but it was a fairly stiff climb at the end of a trying day of trying to expunge ignorance.  However, I did walk over a mile to elementary school, and more than three miles to high school everyday.  It didn't do me any harm.

(OK, maybe not *all* bus passes.  Maybe have a distance test?)

Grief burst over soap dish

I haven't started to purge the bathroom yet.  I will.  But, just the thought of getting rid of one, filthy, soap spatter and dust covered Clinique soap dish, containing possibly the dried up remains of a Clinique soap bar that has to be at least a decade old, gave me the worst grief burst that I've had in a long time.  I had a pang using up the various bottles of body wash, which Gloria had not used in at least eight years, earlier, but nothing like this.  I was howling out loud in the shower, and, even as I am dictating this, I am breaking down occasionally, and Gboard is giving up and quitting.  Repeatedly.

Yeah, that was a bad one.

Telling the story

Most of the grief counsellors are fond of starting and/or ending sessions with very newage-y grief poetry.  Not my cup of tea, but relatively harmless, and possibly less dangerous than having them do their own assessment of what the bereaved need to hear.  One of the poems talked about listening (which is good), and (rather unclearly) about (possibly looking forward to?) a time when you were so tired of the story that you didn't need to tell it any more.  (The poem wasn't too clear about whether the story was of your loved one, or about your own grief.)  I'm not too sure that there will ever come a time when you *can't* tell the story anymore (either one), or don't want to, but I do realize that the need to tell it does lessen over time, and with the telling.

During grief walking group (walking grief group?) today, through the random interactions that tend to happen, I was involved with three people, at different times, for the walk.  I realized that 1) I was in danger of dominating the conversations, and 2) I definitely haven't told Gloria's story enough.  (The story of my grief generally only gets one telling: here.)