Job 6:8-9

"Oh, that I might have my request, that God would grant what I hope for, that God would be willing to crush me, to let loose his hand and cut off my life!

MGG - 6.17 - Gloria - Gloria's Hoodie

As possibly mentioned elsewhere, my wardrobe, these days, consists principally of free clothing provided by vendors, trade shows, and conferences at which I have spoken.  This is the reason that my wardrobe is predominantly black: vendors have been in love with black for the past two decades, at the very least.  I have lots of black t-shirts, black hoodies, black jackets, and even black socks.

One of the conferences where I got swag was at CanSecWest.  However, I don't have very much of it, because Dragos (or whoever did his ordering), ordered from Malaysia, Indonesia, and other places where men are much smaller than they are in North America.  An awful lot of the swag clothing provided by CanSecWest, even when it was marked as 3XL (three times extra large) would be a medium, at best.  So, I didn't bring home an awful lot of that swag.

One hoodie that I did bring home was, in fact, too small for me at the time.  But it fit Gloria just fine.  And so she took to wearing it, and wore it quite a bit.  It was interesting when people would ask her where she got the hoodie, and what the logo was, and we then had to explain that it was clothing from a conference to which I had proposed a presentation, but it was too small for me, so Gloria wore it.

As also noted elsewhere, after Gloria died, I found that I had lost weight over her period of illness and death.  And then continued to lose weight, over the weeks that followed.  So, having been overweight for pretty much all of our married life, I figured that I should use this head start, and the fact that I was walking everywhere, to try and diet, and lose a bit more.

Shortly, therefore, I was down to a size where I could wear the hoodie again.  So I did.  I still have it, and, mostly because Gloria wore it so much, it could be one piece of my wardrobe that I would have trouble throwing away.  There were also a number of the t-shirts that I had, and still have, that Gloria would wear.  There were a number that were not big enough for me at my highest weight, but which Gloria could wear just fine.  They are now mixed in with my t-shirts, and there are only a few of them that I can specifically identify as being t-shirts that were Gloria's amongst all of mine, as I am now small enough to wear all of them, with some of them being exceptionally large.  But, as Gloria frequently noted, I never care what I wear so the fact that it's oversized isn't a particular issue for me.

I did finally get to speak at CanSecWest, six months after Gloria died.  (It was, in fact, six months to the *day* after Gloria died.)  And I was given another jacket, by CanSecWest, at that particular conference.  By that time, the largest jacket that they had available was, in fact, big enough to fit me.  So, I do have two pieces of CanSecWest swag that I can wear.  And do.

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Review of "Wicked"

This is a review of "Wicked."  The musical, not the book.  The movie, not the stage version.  Part one.  (Of the movie, not the review.)

I read the book.  I appreciated the conceit of taking a known story, and looking at it from the other side, but, overall, I found the book to be disjointed, and lacking a central point or theme.  I was somewhat interested in what was added to, and dropped from, the movie version of "The Wizard of Oz."  (I've never actually read the book of "The Wizard of Oz," although I do know some of the changes that the movie made.)  (I must admit that I'm starting to get lost in the derivative nature of this work.)

I saw the musical.  In a rather problematic situation, but I noted the changes made from the "Wicked" book, and I liked some of the songs.  So I was actually rather eager to see the movie version.

The movie version, as spectacle, is impressive.  It is worth watching, as a movie.  However, I find it odd that, with a runtime close to three hours, the character development falters, and is more alluded to than demonstrated.  If you know all the versions (and can keep them straight in your head) you can see where things are headed.  But the spectacle and production does take away from other aspects of the story.  The theme has been narrowed (and, in some places, cleaned up), but is now simply a weak version of "you shouldn't dislike different people simply because they are different," and has lost some of the depth of the "Wicked" book.  The songs have, almost all, been turned into production numbers so lavish that you are a few minutes into them before you realize "oh, yeah, I remember that song, but it's not a song anymore."

I'm still interested in seeing Part Two, whenever it comes out, but I'm not so eager anymore ...

Death Cafe

OK, *that* was marginally disappointing.

The one thing our society refuses to talk about is death.  At a Death Cafe, we can.  I attended a few Death Cafes in Delta, and found them very useful.  So I have been trying to get one going in Port Alberni ever since I got here.  A Death Cafe is not (intended to be) grief support or counselling, just a safe space to talk about death and related issues.  At a Death Cafe people drink tea, eat cake and discuss death.  The aim is to increase awareness of death to help people make the most of their (finite) lives.

So, finally, the United Church offered me monthly space for six months.  Actually, I thought that was a bit much.  I figured that people might *maybe* want to meet quarterly.  To my astonishment, the people who showed up for the first one wanted to meet *weekly*!

So I scrambled around for the entire weekend, and finally got the hospice society to open up on a bi-weekly basis.  And got the word around to all those who showed up for the first.  And got a co-facilitator, in case I couldn't make it some time.  And we had our first meeting tonight.

And precisely zero people showed up.

Well, at least the co-facilitator and I had a nice chat.

But we will still try it again at the Alberni Valley Hospice Office, 2579 10th Ave, Thursday, February 27th, 7-9 PM.  Bi-weekly, so the next meetings will be on Mar. 13 and 27.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5p1or6CMY1Xj6pQtEPoKHw

https://x.com/DeathCafe

https://deathcafe.com/

http://www.facebook.com/deathcafe

Job 24:1

Why does the Almighty not set times for judgment?  Why must those who know him look in vain for such days?

MGG - 6.16 - Gloria - Monopoly

Gloria's Dad required a big Christmas dinner, and then a, basically identical, New Year's Day dinner.  He wanted to be able to have turkey sandwiches, from the leftovers from Christmas, for the entire period between Christmas and New Years, and then to do it all over again on New Year's.  As noted, except for Christmas presents, the two events were pretty much identical.

Including the fact that, after dinner, there was a game of Monopoly.  It was a tradition.  It was also vicious and cut throat.  Not everyone participated.  Gloria didn't like it.  Her Mum didn't like it.  But the Christmas and New Year's after-dinner Monopoly games were an absolute fixture.

I do not like games.  I do not play games.  I always have an awful lot of work to do, and ideas to develop.  I find games, even solitary games in isolation, to be a waste of time.  

I have a competitive streak, which I do not like.  I do not like the competitive nature which playing games against other people awakens in me.  So I don't play games.  Of pretty much any kind.

When I joined the family, I was encouraged to participate in the Monopoly game.  *Strongly* encouraged.  Basically, they bugged me to join the Monopoly game on every Christmas and New Year's occasion.  They urged me repeatedly that this was a requirement in the family.

Finally, one year I gave in.  I played the Monopoly game.

I won. 

I was never asked to play Monopoly again.  As far as I was concerned, this was a major win.  Not necessarily winning at Monopoly, but the fact that it meant that I was no longer urged to join the Monopoly game.

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MGG - 6.15 - Gloria - Infamous Pink Binder

The Infamous Pink Binder was Gloria's wedding planner for our wedding.  Unlike most brides, she had been a wedding hostess, and so had plenty of experience and knew what to do for a wedding.  She didn't need to buy one.  She made her own, just using an ordinary three-ring binder.  Pink, of course, was her favorite color.

I still have The Infamous Pink Binder.  It's front cover has come off, and it's very tattered.  This is because it was not only the planner for our wedding, but was used, as a template and guide, for both of Gloria's daughters, and all of their friends.  It has been read and reread, and used and reused, so much that it is coming apart.  It's an excellent guide.

Gloria was an excellent event planner.  She did a fantastic job with our wedding.  I didn't think so at the time, because I wanted to help, and Gloria couldn't think of anything that I could actually do.  She had done it all.  But she was the most amazing event planner.  I have, subsequently, known people whose jobs it was to do event planning, professionally.  None of them could have held a candle to Gloria.

A lot of people thought that Gloria's crowning achievement was her parents fiftieth wedding anniversary.  She actually started planning it a little over two years in advance.  At one point during that time, she "assisted" her mother with Christmas card addressing, thus collecting their entire Christmas card list, and therefore the addresses of all their friends.  She was then able to contact all of their friends, without her parents knowing.  (Although, when it actually came down to it, she had to confess that she had done this, when she started to receive so many pieces of important mail, with news of deaths and so forth, and had to pass along those items to her parents, and let them know how she had obtained them.)

The anniversary was a fairly complicated arrangement, involving a dinner for close family, twenty-five people, and then the larger group of friends and relations.  The program for the evening, for the larger gathering, was divided into three sections, with space between for chat and socializing.  The program involved not only the traditional readings of letters and telegrams, (in this case mostly email), but also a history of the period when her parents got married, a brief recounting of the story of how they met, fell in love, and married, and a series of small plays or vignettes, for which Gloria wrote the scripts, outlining different family stories from their marriage which had been recounted over the years.  All of this was not made any easier perforce by a change of actor for the part of her father, which was required by the fact that the person originally intended to play her father suddenly could not do it.  Parts had to be replaced and rehearsed.

When Gloria arranged her parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary, we had access to one of their wedding photos which showed Sulla, Gloria's Mum, holding her wedding bouquet.  We knew what the flowers were (the species of flower was part of family legend.)  However, there was a lot of greenery involved in the bouquet, and we weren't too sure about that.  Gloria went to various florists to see if they could figure out what it was, so that we could match the greenery in recreating the bouquet.  None of them could identify it.  The picture was old, black and white, and not particularly high resolution.  As was the case with photography in those days, it was only a snapshot in any case.

I looked at the picture, and felt that the greenery looked an awful lot like sword fern.  So, since nobody could tell us what the greenery actually was, I asked Gloria if I should just go and get some sword fern out of the forest, so that we could have some greenery that, at least, looked similar to that in her Mum's wedding bouquet.  Gloria felt that this was an okay idea.

Out of idle curiosity, I went and looked up sword fern in a guide to local plants.  In the description in this book (which was written quite a while ago), it mentioned that, during the years around the Second World War, sword fern was harvested in BC and shipped, as floral greenery to florists across Canada, and particularly to the Prairies, in much the same way that salal is harvested and sold as greenery today.  So it seems very likely that we did recreate the bouquet perfectly.  It is very probable that the greenery in Sulla's wedding bouquet was, in fact, BC harvested sword fern.

In planning the evening, and the program, and structure, it was intended that the event should last until 10:00 PM. As the final part of the program for the evening, I was allowed to thank the various participants. As I was doing so, the girls yelled out from the back, "What time is it, Rob?"  I looked at my watch.  It was exactly 10:00 PM.

However, this was not what *Gloria* felt was her crowning achievement in event planning.  As the secretary to the principal of Regent College, she was there on the day when Billy Graham, and entourage, visited the college.  Billy Graham's time is was scripted almost as tightly as that of the President of the United States, and the college had been told that they had another appointment, and would not be able to stay for lunch.  During the morning, something changed their minds.  At 11:40 AM, Gloria was told that Billy Graham, and entourage, would be staying for lunch.  Gloria ordered food from a nearby cafeteria, sent some of the college staff over to get it and bring it back, found representatives of the faculty, the Board, and the student body, and arranged all of the lunch in one of the libraries at the college.  By noon.  Billy Graham's team was mightily impressed.

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