Versatile Blogger Award

Back in December just before the Christmas rush (excuses, excuses), I received a magical message from Mary Chase, Ph.D. I had been graced with the Versatile Blogger Award.

I am now notifying you that I have accepted this award, which qualifies me to pass it on to each of you. You are in random order with at least one of your blogs:

Leticia Austria
http://spectrumofperspectives.blogspot.com

Jennifer Jilks
http://mymuskoka.blogspot.com/

Karen Harbaugh
http://pollyannaofkaren.blogspot.com/

Nancy O’Carroll
http://www.femininepowerplay.blogspot.com/

Monika Aebischer
http://theolivesparrow.typepad.com/

Justice Bartlett
http://justice-bartlett.blogspot.com/

There are a few rules, below, if you like. You will find them by scrolling down in Mary's email. I am adding my perspective to them here:

Thank you, Mary, for this delightful honor. In your honor I have even used American spelling, at least in this paragraph. I may backslide later. For the information of the other recipients your blog is: http://nulla-mary.blogspot.com/

You dedicated your blog with tongue in cheek to one of your (and my) anti-heroes. I dedicate mine and my websites to all who are prepared to read at least one page of them and who actually do so. I love to be read, don't you all? Some of mine are: http://itllcometome.blogspot.com/, http://cometothegravenhurstoperahouse.blogspot.com/, http://greenwoodsongs.blogspot.com/, http://alongwoodlandpaths.blogspot.com/. My websites: http://intoverse.com/, http://eccolibrium.com/,
http://pro-coaching.ca/

My request: if you are not in touch with each other yet, please do write each other welcoming emails, and let us know all your blogs and websites.

Seven things about me:

I. I look forward to Isaac Tigrett's unveiling of his new project on the Mystic Inn of the Seventh Ray on 1 February 2012. We are into sevens here. His website is: http://www.mysticinnofthe7thray.org/

2. I have just finished re-reading Jeoffrey Kendal's autobiography, The Shakespeare Wallah, and feel like starting it all over from page one.

3. I'm thrilled that I've been able to create three websites with an obsolete version of RapidWeaver on my 2005 Mac mini with the now obsolete Tiger OS. Obsolete or not, the effect can be immediate. If I want to change a comma, I can go right in there and do it myself. Sometimes with the very obliging customer service help of FatCow.

4. About great singers, I went backstage to say hello and goodbye to Elisabeth Schwarzkopf after her farewell concert in Toronto. We established that we were both going to live in Switzerland and would yodel to each other from one mountaintop to another. What a great lady with a swift sense of humour. From her sotto voce discussion with her husband as I drifted up to be first in line I gathered she did not appreciate the "bravo man" in the gallery, who effectively destroyed every pin drop silence that she should have had at the end of a particularly moving piece. So, I wish to all singers and other musicians many perfect pin drops to come.

5. My funniest backstage encounter was after a concert by Lois Marshall in Barrie, Ontario. Her accompanist, Weldon Kilbourne, introduced me as one of his pupils, and we all broke out in raucous laughter at the sight of both me and Lois wearing a leg cast each. I had fallen down some stairs and she in her bathtub. That looked as if I were carrying hero worship a little too far. A great lady, fine musician and superb singer she was.

6. Mary believes in reincarnation. Even before I was sure I did I used to take people back into possible past lives. Now I do, and still do after further research and training, I have learned that with Past Life Regression (PLR) - you never know what's going to happen. The tour guide into the past has to be totally on the alert and ready for anything. I love it.

7. It's OK for the Facilitator in a PLR to go partly into trance as the time traveller does completely. What a relief to learn this from a top level PLR guide. And, yes, it is not only possible but quite desireable to be both in trance and highly alert.

Thank you all for delighting with your writing. Be reading you soon.

Cheers,
Helen


This is what Mary Chase wrote to me:
Sunday, December 11, 2011
The Versatile Blogger Award
How nice is this? Fellow blogger and writer extraordinaire, J.D. Mader, has made me a recipient of the very distinguished Versatile Blogger Award. For a very good read, check his blog, Avoiding the Stairs. I can only say that I am humbled and would like to dedicate my award to Newt Gingerich, in hopes that he will pass along his lead in the Republican race to another more worthy than he (but still beatable) -- as I am doing in  accordance with the rules of this reward.

Yes, there are rules.

1. Thank the blogger who honored you and be sure to link to his or her blog, as I have above. Thank you, J.D. You are a gem.
2. Share seven things about yourself.
3. Pass the award on to five deserving bloggers.

So seven things... I am advised these ought to be witty, but will hope readers will settle for succinct.

1. I am currently reading Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie. Next on the bedside table is Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James.
2. My favorite line from a movie: "Are you a good witch or a bad witch?"
3. It took me nine years to get a B.A. because I kept changing my major (classical studies, French, drama, folklore, English).
4. I love opera. When I was twelve I sneaked backstage and got Joan Sutherland's autograph.
5. I also love Willie Nelson. He hugged me once in Augusta, Maine.
6. I believe in reincarnation.
7. Last time, I didn't.


And now, the next recipients of the Versatile Blogger Award are:
Helen Heubi
Bill Woolum
Tish Jett
Tom Kepler
Peter Pappas

So, newly honored writers, enjoy your moment in the sun. Speak only the truth. Go forth and enlighten.

Caregivers

Having just turned 81 two days ago, I still have much to learn. Today, I listened to a free session on colds, flu and the like, and tapped along with the EFT expert invited by Jessica Ortner, who first learned about EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques's Tapping Solution) when she was deep in bed with a nasty flu. I got some insights that I want to note, although I am already free of some of the beliefs addressed on Nick and Jessica Ortner's site.

For example, I no longer believe I have to get the Christmas Cold. I haven’t had a headache worth mentioning in years, or even much of a cold - with a couple of exceptions, as when I was briefly at Friends’ House in Toronto a few years ago to take some course or other and Judith Amundsen looked after me so beautifully. Rita Woods came to my rescue on another Toronto visit. Both loving, smart homeopaths.

Now I have to remember next time I go to the Big Smoke to cloak myself with Light when diving into a large bowl of a few million beings radiating all kinds of vibes. I wish I had known about that when teaching in large high schools, but I had no idea then.

Up here in Muskoka, a place with a heritage of healing, I do not pay attention to all those tv ads that assume we are going to get sick. And there are a lot of them for me to close my eyes to. I don’t take the flu shot because after the confusion a couple of years ago it wasn’t clear how beneficial or how harmful it might be.

Patterns of Illness
The EFT expert on the Ortner recording did bring out the question of patterns of illness from childhood. When I was seriously ill, very young, I picked up on my mother’s anxiety a lot. There was something positive in the air too - probably my angels and guides and God, that brought me, and her, through.

When of school age I had chronic colds. This could have been through allergies to coal dust, milk, who knows. It got so I felt punished more than cherished because of Mom’s repressed resentment of having to look after me, as her mother had looked after her younger sister Amy, who was “always ill”. As a young widow, Grandma had a lot of anxiety because of the death of little Henry at two, of diphtheria. She didn’t want to lose any more children. Mom resented Amy, who she thought was a sissy and a spoiled brat hypochondriac.

Sadly, after her marriage Mom developed asthma, and had severe attacks. The steroids prescribed for that may have affected her heart. She died in her early sixties. Amy died younger than that of cancer, probably contracted when painting airplane dials with radioactive chemicals during WWII. Several of the women on that job gave their lives, years later, for the war effort, although it was never proved, that I know of. Mom’s and Amy’s father died young of cancer, so it was also in their background. Two of their brothers also died of cancer, perhaps the third one too.

Now that I look back at my own childhood pattern of illness, I felt partly punished, partly cared for when ill. I kept myself busy with Book of Knowledge, building with toy logs or minibricks or Orphan Annie’s student flying kit, or dolls. Tried not to be a nuisance. I eventually lost the ability to know for sure whether I was sick or not, or to tune in accurately to my body. I kind of took over my mother’s questioning attitude: “Are you really sick or are you just imagining or pretending?” It became more and more difficult to know as I grew into adulthood.

During my first year of  teaching I was living in Midland and coming back to Toronto on weekends. I still had a room in my parents’ house. One weekend it became evident that I had caught the measles - again. Mom expressed quite frankly how she felt about nursing me and bringing me my meals for a whole week. “Your home is not a place to come to when you’re sick.” Huh? I covered up the deep hurt feeling at hearing this with a hardened, cynical decision to re-wonder how welcome I was in my parents’ house. Not. Less and less over the next few years until after my marriage to Paul, when I became kind of acceptable.

Going through a session of tapping (Emotional Freedom Technique) can bring out all kinds of old stuff that it is high time to address. What was I to think about the remarks Mom used to throw me while I was at university, like, “This is not a hotel”? “Everything was fine until you came home.” I heard that more than once when arriving right after classes at the university - late or early afternoon. This could have been the kind of refrain that kept me away a lot too, and reinforced the other criticism often thrown my way that “Home is not just a place to hang your hat”. In my final year, when I had to get decent marks, I had to study in the library, and came home in the evening after it closed, because otherwise I would have been yanked from my books to do household tasks regardless of essay and exam deadlines.

Now every time that sort of memory floats up to the surface like a dead body, thanks to the power of EFT, I can also use the mantra of Ho’onoponopono for healing and cleansing. I don’t know what I did to arouse all that family anger, and it doesn’t matter. I just say, “I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.” I’m saying that with compassion to me and everyone involved in the memory, no matter where they are now.

Before I married Paul in 1964, I was really ill with pneumonia, with repeated colds and flu and from that typhoid shot that left me feeling I was going to die. I arrived on my first visit to Europe, skin and bones. Paul took over as my care-giver. I got a lot better over the years of my marriage, but still got lots of colds and flu and migraines. I would wake up at night to find him standing over me with a remedy for coughing, which had awoken him (a light sleeper with apnea that was never diagnosed).

After Paul died in 2005 at the age of 87, I was on my own, and it was my turn to look after me. Thanks to his loving memory, I got better and better! Less worry about him, about me. Headaches disappeared. Colds and flu had less power. I could picture him coming and caring about me, and that was an enormous comfort. I no longer feared punishment if I did fall ill. I accepted myself when I did. EFT is a great help there with, “Even though .... , I love and accept myself.”

Right now I have a cold that I had put on the back burner and tried to ignore. Doesn’t make it go away, just disguises it. I realized it was interfering with my treatment for sleep apnea, recently diagnosed. Thanks to a session of EFT to point out that this a good time to face any buried resentments and fears and also to apply tried and true self-healing approaches to enhance the effect of CPAP treatment for sleep apnea.

I have tools for health: my own wise mind or higher consciousness, my guides in spirit - Sai Baba, my spirit guides, angels, archangels. I know something of EFT and can practice Ho’onoponopono, to sweep away dark, clinging junk from the past and from others, and to clear the house or temple that is my body, mind and spirit letting in more and more Light and Love.

http://www.thetappingsolution.com/
http://www.self-i-dentity-through-hooponopono.com

A Twenty-Eleven Christmas Verse

Twenty-eleven had me fooled  -
barely begun, it suddenly Yuled
leaving me wondering, “Why, why, why
did the Year of the Rabbit so swiftly fly?
Nothing much happened to me, myself.”

In contrast, it seemed the world outside
was ripped apart. Jack Layton died
right after he captured the position
of Leader of Canada’s Opposition.
A media feast of stunning events
of which we had no time to make sense
was dinned in our ears out of Tahrir Square,
Norway, Libya and elsewhere.
Earthquakes, tusnamis - what next was coming?
The total effect added up to: numbing.

“I’m thinking of doing a Christmas letter,”
I mentioned to a passing elf.
“A poem,” he said, would be much better!”
explicitly dreading a tedious dose
of proudly pompous purple prose
all about boring family biz,
and just how amazing everyone is.
This verse has thus been commissioned for you
by the elf, a.k.a. my brother Hugh.

I find I quite like family news
from families much like mine, or Hugh’s.
The Christmas letters in my mailbox
have spared me from earth-shaking shocks.
This year I’ve noticed welcome trends
by relatives and by bardical friends,
who present their year, without undue chatter,
like simple fare on a homemade platter.

Patterns apply, but experiences vary,
from Linda and Gary to Eric and Mary.
Entrances, exits by near and dear
mark the passing of every year.
We cannot remain in the selfsame grooves
as life brings changes, and many moves.

Peter sold his house, but I didn’t sell mine.
I was glad it was there, all cleared of clutter,
its walls renewed with a sunny shine,
when I moved back in without a mutter
after a stay in Springdale Park,
with its glorious canopy after dark
when the stars reveal their far-flung lights,
and the daylit woods abound in delights -
like the deer skull Eloïse “showed and told”
and mushrooms worth their weight in gold.

While I was admiring a northern sky,
Peter and Carol found, close by,
their Toronto condo, and moved right in.
Eric survived a scary spin
into an icy Muskoka lake,
and now he’s learning how to bake
batches of cookies, as Dad-at-home,
while I concoct this rambling pome.

He lost, too early, his dear Aunt Tina,
whom everyone loved who’d ever seen her,
while Carol’s mother passed away
in Virginia, I am sad to say.

Newly arrived at Mary’s place
is Cadmon, a doguess with bouncy grace,
and a delicate way of dismantling Lego,
selectively deaf to commands of, “Let go!”

Young Kate Allen is bound to go far,
newly recruited by the Star,
while Mary in Markham immerses Grade Two
in her trademark French. At a “petting zoo”
her own kids found instruments fun to play.
Christmas will be a crazy day
of multiple music and rafts and rafts
of colourful presents, created as crafts.

Linda’s been living her Thoreau thing
on a ten-acre chunk of Adirondack.
She and Gary winter in town till spring.
When wild flowers bloom, they will be back
in their rustic rural greenery base
with squads of squirrels for Sadie to chase.

I’ve run out of fuel, and so will close
this bulletin, where snows are no-shows.
Never mind! I wish you a fabulous Fête,
and a New Year more blessed than ever yet.

Love,
Helen

First Christmas for a child born in May

Christmas Pitfalls and Pleasures

God bless the master of this house,

Likewise the mistress too,
And all the little children
That round the table go.
Love and joy come to you ...
Old English Carol

Children, elders and Christmas went together like pancakes, butter and maple syrup. No one was allowed to be lonely. What a privilege it was to live among several generations, and find ways to celebrate love despite our differing creeds.

There were a few pitfalls, easier for us kids to skim over than for some adults. Like Santa Claus. When my parents were very new at the job, thus vulnerable to expert opinions, a particularly vocal Toronto child psychologist was frightening anyone who would listen with dire theories of the dangers of letting children believe in  Santa Claus, or, more fearful still - fairies. Fairies can be brushed away like cobwebs, or left in ill-lit corners, seemingly forgotten like religions older than Christianity, where they had pride of place.

Santa Claus, on the other hand, loomed up every Christmas, entering Toronto in triumph on the final float in a big parade. From early November a jolly man in a red suit and a long white beard sat on a throne in the toy department at Eaton’s department store, asking kids what they wanted for Christmas.

We were different, but not so different that my parents dared to deny us the same thrill that all our neighbours and cousins took for granted. We got to watch the Santa Claus parade, and go down and see Santa himself at Eaton’s. My mother must have been very worried because she tried to explain to me on the way back from one such visit that Santa Claus wasn’t real. For years afterward she repeated with relish her story of streetcar passengers around us convulsed with laughter when I chimed out in a penetrating four-year-old voice, “But, Mommy, Santa Claus is so real. I sat on his knee and I felt him!”

By the age of nine I had sorted the wheat from the chaff of the Santa Claus mystique. I remember explaining gently to my mother that she need not worry about my little brothers believing in the Jolly Old Elf, who was just a way of teaching people the spirit of giving and of kindness. “We have it in our house all the time, and especially at Christmas,” I assured her. “That’s what Santa Claus stands for. I’ve come to understand that gradually;  it didn’t hurt at all!”

In our own household Christmas was orchestrated with precision and style. There was no severity, just the serene assumption that we would go along with the rules. After we hung up our stockings on Christmas Eve, the living room door was closed, and it stayed closed until five minutes after eight on the following morning.

No question of wildly tearing downstairs in pyjamas, long before parents were awake, the better to open all the presents around the tree, leaving wrappings strewn and ribbons festooned over the floor. Only once, when I was about ten years old, did I see such undisciplined joy when invited to celebrate Christmas Eve and morning in another household; I was not impressed. Their joy was not my idea of fun, either. Where were the gentle rituals attended by all generations? Where were the trays to display each person’s gifts? And where were the cardboard boxes? (One for recyclable wrappings and ribbons, and the other for twisted paper to kindle a fire in the fireplace or furnace.)

On Davisville Avenue, we could not help waking up before first light, all excited, but our parents were ready for that. We were not to get out of bed until called around seven, but there would be plenty to do there, all cosy while Dad shoveled another load of coal into the furnace.

In the grey light of dawn I could feel an unaccustomed weight at the foot of my bed, and glimpse a row of dim shapes that were not there when I said “Goodnight.” Turning on the light, I would find all my dolls in their best bib and tucker, organdie dresses freshly washed and ironed, velvet cloaks mended, face paint renewed. Until I outgrew my dolls and my brothers their stuffed animals, our mother somehow managed to get all this refurbishing done on Christmas Eve in addition to stuffing stockings, wrapping gifts and getting Christmas dinner all ready to cook the next day. When we were older, we would find one present - a game or a book at the end of the bed, to keep us busy until breakfast.

Christmas breakfast, timed for 7:30 sharp, was an exceptional one. No porridge. No healthy whole grain cereal. On that one morning of the year we were allowed our choice from a tiny box in a variety package of what now would be called junk breakfast food. We could revel in frosted flakes and other nutritionally hollow treats.

At five minutes to eight, we telephoned to the aunts next door, who came over wearing their Christmas corsages on their coats. At eight we were all lined up, in front of our closed living room door, in order of our ages, youngest first, with Aunt Anne at the rear, looking over most of our heads. My father opened the door, and we all filed in to find the tree lit up, in a sea of gifts, and stockings hanging from the mantle-piece above a cheerful fire.

We children emptied our stockings first, under the sentimental gaze of our elders. Then each of us, adult and child in turn, opened one present, watched by all the others, and so on around the room. The idea was to make them last all day, off and on, and the next, right up to my birthday, on the 28th.

At ten o’clock all these frivolities were suspended so that we could hear the King, or Queen, give the royal Christmas address that went out around the world. After the royal speech, my father would take us children out for a walk, not too far or too long, but just to get some fresh air and get out of my mother’s way while she finished cooking the dinner. We would want to be back in time to receive our dinner guests.

My mother’s relatives predominated at Christmas dinner. Uncle Matthew and Aunt Ethel, whose children lived away out west, were often honoured guests. Grandma and Aunt Tillie’s eyes twinkled above pursed lips, as we rationed the youngest member of the family to “only three more questions”, one of which was inevitably, “How many more questions do I have left?”

Evenings were spent with the Allen clan and the Oxford Book of Carols. The first such gathering that I remember was up on Hillhurst Boulevard, at Uncle Elliott’s. Aunt Ruby had chosen to dress her tree in blue lights and silver ornaments.

Uncle Berk Chadwick (cousin Mary’s father) had brought a whole battery of rhythm band instruments from Montreal. We children were grouped as an orchestra between the tree and the piano, where Aunt Jessie provided the tune and the harmony. The rest of us supplied the percussion. Each of us had to choose a favourite piece, and then conduct it.

Swing had just burst upon the music scene. While the rest of us crowded around the buffet, the teenaged cousins were down in the basement recreation room, listening to Benny Goodman. Over the ensuing years cousin Bill, our star conductor of the rhythm band, would join our cousin Jim and his friends as they “jammed” in that basement with clarinet, flute and guitar.

Our Christmas evenings  alternated over the years between two houses. At my next-door aunts’, Jessie’s thinly sliced molasses and porridge bread melted away, platter after platter, but before the refreshments, we usually managed to persuade her to play her “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”, or “Sheep May Safely Graze” - Bach chorales arranged by her for piano.

As our numbers grew, with friends, fiancés and fiancées joining us, we gathered at Uncle Jack and Aunt Helen’s grand and gracious Russell Hill Road home. By this time, the von Trapp Family were promoting family singing all over the Americas, and later, the world, by doing it themselves. Uncle Jack played some of their recorded music before the carol singing. The beautifully blended sound of this famous family inspired some of us to attempt more Bach Christmas chorales, and continue over the years to add more new carols to our repertoire. Somehow, Rudolph never got his red nose in.

The more popular Christmas music, dinned into shoppers’ ears in downtown department stores from early November throughout December can become wearing, especially since the standard repertoire consists of only a dozen or so pieces. Hearing “When Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night” a zillion times by loud-speaker, incited our family carol singers into inventing a new game: find a new tune.

And so the shepherds invoked at our carol evenings watched their flocks to “The Flight of the Earls”, “The Vicar of Bray” or even “Forest Green”, which is usually an alternative tune for “O Little Town of Bethlehem”. The Oxford Book of Carols was not only for Christmas.. We caroled about spring, summer, harvest, Easter and Mothering Sunday.

As the years went by, we had to stretch our time together to fit our expanding repertoire of carols. One year it took us three separate evenings to sing through our all the “must sings”,  and allow the various instrumentalists, soloists and smaller part-singing ensembles to perform.

Then, along came the babies, and often half of each couple remained home. The voices that were left grew less robust, ceasing one by one.

Yet, I wonder if they are truly stilled. Perhaps somewhere Uncle Berk is leading little angels in a rhythm band, as he did us one Christmas. Each angel will get to choose a favourite tune, as we did. Then it will have to get up and conduct the band.

Uncle Matthew may very well be guiding newcomers from inside the pearly gates to their long-awaited heavenly homes on divinely designated Golden Streets.

Among Green Pastures there could be a sunlit house with open windows that let out the inimitable sounds that Aunt Jessie could coax out of a piano when she played Bach’s “Sheep May Safely Graze”. I can hear her still practising for accompaniments. With those rippling fingers as backup, she could have made a gazoo-player feel like an artist, and even play like one.

In some realm of Paradise, where “hearts are brave again, and arms are strong”, I see Uncle Jack on a clear blue lake, making a canoe almost fly over the waves, double-blade paddle flashing in the sunlight.

I can imagine him organizing a flotilla of canoes, rowboats and sailboats for a sunset singsong, as his parents and their friends used to do on the St. Lawrence River. Ringing from rocky shores I can hear again that magnificent baritone voice, leading Jack’s favourite hymn: “For All the Saints” - the Vaughan Williams tune, of course.

Geneva, Switzerland, as seen by Bill Bryson, and me

The American author, Bill Bryson, spent two days in Geneva, wandering around longing to be somewhere else. That could have been easier than he guessed, had he happened on a sign pointing to a local beauty spot called Le Bout du Monde, and had he had someone with him to translate the sign into End of the World. He must have been there the wrong day. Le Bout du Monde boasts a large stadium where the Americans of Geneva go to celebrate the Fourth of July after the biggest, splashiest parade outside the US.  They bring bands all the way from California, complete with majorettes twirling batons with abandon.

He must have hit town on a Sunday when everything except the cathedral is closed tight and all you can do is window shop. Many restaurants are closed too but the one at the Bourg-du-Four isn't. (Great fondue, coffee and steaks too.) Guess he didn't like the atmosphere of Calvinism leashed. Unleashed, as in the days of the Escalade, or any other day, it can be colourful.

Obviously he wasn't there in early December, at the time of the Escalade, when kids go around shouting the first three verses of the Genevese National Anthem in 17th century Genevese, all about beating the pants off the Savoyards who tried to invade but were beaten off by getting sloshed by cauldrons of hot soup over the battlements. I love the Escalade, when people smash huge cauldrons of chocolate with marzipan veggies inside and shout, "So perish the enemies of the Republic."

Bill couldn't have been there for the Fetes de Geneve fireworks either with all kinds of food from all over the world along the quais.

He says everyone walked hunched, not looking anybody in the eye. There he's right. I soon learned not to look anybody in the eye in downtown Geneva because if you do they know you've seen them and expect you to get out of their way. And so I soon perfected a half-focused gaze, enough to see where I was going. That way I melted through the unseeing crowds like butter, because they could see me not seeing them. This peculiar gaze allowed me to recognize people I knew, and there were quite a few of those, or to make contact with anyone I didn't know if I wanted to. And sometimes I did, as when listening to buskers or interviewing them.

Bill goes on to say money is everything in Switzerland. He confuses Geneva, which is not Switzerland, with Switzerland as a whole. Geneva happens to be a republic within the Helvetic Confederation, as well as a City, a State and a Canton and contains many ethnic communities including English, American, Portuguese, Spanish and Scottish, and is the Canton least inclined to vote against being nice to foreigners.  If he could understand French, the official language there, the odd time you hear it spoken, he would hear lots of talk about money, and be proven right.

As for the squeaky cleanliness of the sidewalks, I don't recognize the place from his description. People keep lots of dogs in all those apartments, but do not scoop ...

He probably never had to visit a doctor's office, where he would have been greeted with a polite Bonjour on entering from everybody in the waiting room, whether you know them or not.

Then he speaks of declining the advance of "Geneva's only prostitute". Rosemary is a very nice woman, who used to keep an eye on the little shop of an unworldly Indian lady I knew. ("She's not there today, and last time she forgot to lock her door" ...) I know Rosemary's not the only one, because in broad daylight I heard this dialogue in French shouted across a street over my head between a woman in an elegant pink suit and two colleagues on the other side:  "Hey, you don't look like a whore! All dressed up like a lady," and her cheeky reply with a proud toss of her head, "No, I don't, but I am one." I couldn't help chuckling, and I could see they were trying to shock prim-looking me. We shared a hearty laugh as I passed by. To me Geneva rhymes with the unexpected.

Hey, Bill, learn at least one other language, and see how the world opens up in technicolour.

And try for some less tasteless humour while you're at it. OK, sometimes you surprise me into laughing, but I find you too cynical for comfort.

Still, since Ken and Phil speak highly of  your walk in the woods, I look forward to its return from its wanderings back to our local library, where my name is down for it.

It didn't last long in my hands. Bill's and my woods bear no resemblance to each other.

Canadians March on Washington in August, 1963

Indelible Impressions Fresh After Nearly 50 Years

In the summer of 1963 I signed up for a ten-day Quaker Institute on Non-violence, organized on an island in Lake Rideau. One of the leaders told us he was heading to Washington, DC, immediately after training us, to take part in a civil rights march headed by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Two of us middle-aged ladies decided to drive down in my Austin Mini. We sent out an appeal for an additional driver and anyone else wanting to come.

Just before we left  Toronto, I cautioned the three young men who joined us not to tell anyone where this carload of white people was heading. At a gas station stop in Ohio, our destination was somehow leaked to an attendant.

“Hey,  whose side are you on anyway?” he snarled, spoiling for a confrontation. Surprisingly, he accepted the reply that came out of my mouth, “The human side.” We drove away, as he stood there with his mouth still open.

As Marches on Washington went, the one of August, 1963 was exempt from ugly incidents. Few false notes marred it, not even a couple of women preaching hatred on a street corner to non-responsive passers-by. The Kennedy administration had given most government employees a holiday, leaving the whole centre of the city at our disposal.  We later learned that the Washington police arrested fewer clients on 28 August 1963 than on a "normal" day in the full heat of the summer.

The crowd itself was so huge that even the marshals assigned to control it had to go along with its flow.  Luckily, it was a good-humoured, friendly flow.  We had started marching a little too early along a route too short to accommodate all of us.  Many of those who reached the Lincoln Memorial first had to turn back, so as not to be crushed by the sheer numbers following them.  We eddied about, finding spaces where we could, until everyone had had her or his "march". I saw a State Trooper pass on the movement of this vast multitude, as helpless as a leaf on a mighty river.

We eventually found some place to settle down, many of us on the grass quite far from the Memorial and its reflecting pool. King's address came well in mid-afternoon, after the wonderful singing of Joan Baez and Mahalia Jackson. (Marion Anderson, originally scheduled to perform, had not been able to get through the crowd to start the proceedings with the "Star-spangled Banner, and had wept bitterly.)

In spite of such deep disappointments and many smaller discomforts and difficulties, it was a blessed occasion. We saw and experienced much sisterly and brotherly love among the crowds that day under the burning sun of Washington. A black nurse had taken charge of me when I was about to faint from heat exhaustion.  Earlier, I had seen a Jewish gentleman look after a black girl who was also suffering from the heat and the strain. A black lad had offered to climb a small tree with my camera to get a historic shot of the crowd.

The crowd had been restless during the many speeches, and barely attentive to the singers.  Then Martin Luther King came to the microphone, and a hush fell over lawns, as the sun slanted gently from the west. King first evoked the wider issues, the promises of the U.S. Constitution. He went on to express the hope that his own "four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."  Then he said:

“I have a dream that right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and while girls as sisters and brothers.”
And finally his voice echoed out across the silent crowd:

“When we allow freedom to ring - when we let it ring from every city and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last, Free at last, Great God a-mighty. We are free at last."

The bountiful spirit of harmony, like a giant umbrella as wide as the sky, would give us the courage of our convictions.  But there would be big trouble further down a rocky road.

"Go back," King exhorted.  "Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, so back to the slums and ghettos of our Northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed."

I could sense the opening out of cracks in the apparent calm and tolerance in the north of the United States, and that when trouble did erupt it would be more violent than ever. I felt that, as the single mother of a small girl, I had too much at stake to get involved in what was bound to be a dangerous undertaking. This would be my first and last intervention in the United States of America.

Back in Canada, I concentrated on the Peace Movement, another deep concern of Quakers, until one day during a visit to Europe to see my future husband. On the top of the Salève, that long mountain overlooking Geneva, we had a fierce argument about my involvement in the Peace Movement.

That was the day I resigned from any further effort to tell anyone else how to achieve peace. If I could not have peace with the man I loved, then I was in no position to preach. Time to concentrate on peace of mind within myself and in my home.

Nearly fifty years later, I am convinced that it’s more vital than ever to feel safe inside, no matter what is going on out there. For a while it seemed like work to cultivate peace within. Now it’s getting more and more like fun. Believe it or not.

MULDREW LAKE REGATTAS AND SING SONGS

Mist curls white on  tranquil lake,

Clouds grow rosy; birds awake,

Cold dew twinkles in rainbow light,

Whip-poor-will ceases his song of the night.

The mist curtain thins on the water still,

The sun peeps over a hazy hill,

A loon laughs loudly to greet the morn,

A breeze stirs the pines - a new day is born.

HCH, 1943

We started going up to Muldrew Lake as a family in 1941, when my uncles could not always leave the city for their cottages. They were happy to have them occupied by appreciative - and responsible - family members.

There was a war on, but in the summer it all seemed very far away. Some of the young women were away in the  armed services, and many of the young men, including my cousin Fred. We all looked up to Fred, who left Canada as a sergeant and was rapidly promoted, as much for his own merit as from the death toll among Canadians overseas.

My father took a weekend off from the office, where he normally worked Saturday mornings, to help my mother set up her household in Muskoka. A street car took us from the stop at Davisville and Mt. Pleasant to St. Clair Avenue, and along to the end of the line near one of the foulest-smelling factories in Toronto. (Dad and Uncle Elliott worked there as youths.)

We and our baggage full of clothing, sheets and household supplies toiled as speedily as possible up a long flight of wooden steps to St. Clair station. The train from Union Station had plenty of cars for all of us holidayers heading for waters too numerous to count, once north of the large twin lakes Simcoe and Couchiching.

In Gravenhurst we took a taxi to Indian Landing on Muldrew Lake, where cousin Jim met us with a small motor boat to escort us in the pouring rain to his father’s second cottage on Silver Island. The following summer we spent July at Uncle Jack and Aunt Helen’s place on Pine Island, and August on Silver Island.

Less than five minutes by canoe separates the two islands. No record exists  of the time it took  twelve-year-old Peter to swim that distance on a dare. Not long, I imagine.

We had no telephones or electricity yet on Muldrew Lake. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday I rowed the “Queenie”, the elderly skiff that my mother had patched, to Indian Landing to meet the truck that brought our grocery order, the mail and the newspapers from town.

Gasoline was rationed, but few cottagers ran outboard motors anyway. One enterprising youth delivered groceries with his motorboat “for a slight fee”. The rest of us paddled or rowed to the landing just for the sociability of meeting each other three times a week. Families used this occasion to invite each other to sing songs, picnics and wholesome parties designed for cottagers of all ages.

On Sundays there was always a clergyman or professor or lay person on holiday to lead the church service at Memorial Pines on Middle Lake. Granite cliffs embraced the clearing in the grove on two sides, making a natural amphitheatre. Behind the birchbark lectern, past the pine-needles and the rocky shore, sparkled the waters of the bay.

When the wind died down and the moon came up, groves of slender white birches would gleam out on the  island slopes, like the sylphides in my favourite ballet.  From  the  thickets, a whip-poor-will would call, as if saying, "All is well.  Time to put out the oil lamp and go to sleep."

Yet the war was not so far away after all. The old hospital on Lake Muskoka had been turned into a prison camp for German officers. We could see the barbed-wire fencing  around the beach of this “gilded cage”. Once in a while we met parties of prisoners at roadwork under guard. As far as I recall the solders were unarmed. 

The Norwegian Air Force set up a camp nearby at Little Norway, apparently feeling at home among our pines, birches and granite. A few of these Germans and Norwegians returned to Muskoka after the war as immigrants.

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Our train for Toronto at the end of the summer of 1942 was made up in Gravenhurst, so that there was plenty of room when we boarded. Our family of five were able to turn two seats facing each other, while a uniformed man did the same for his smartly tailored wife and bright-eyed little son. From his shoulder flashes, this native Canadian was one of those guarding the German officers at the prisoner-of-war camp.

In Orillia a contingent of nuns wearing the habit of the order of St. Joseph came in, and the Indian family man gave up three of his four places to make room for Sisters. 

At Barrie, near Camp Borden,  a boisterous crowd of young men and women - probably military personnel on leave - cheerfully filled the aisles. They stood up all the way to Toronto, singing and urging the rest of us to join in. One of their favourite numbers was the saga of a man who went into a restaurant to see “What fifteen cents would do”, since that was all he had:

“The waiter’s call rang down the hall: ‘This here gent wants one fish ball!’” they belted out, and they continued to entertain us all the way to St. Clair Station, where our small family group detrained. All very jolly. I counted more than a dozen passenger cars continuing their merry way down to Toronto Union Station. 

Summer, 1944

We still had plenty of teen-agers under military age at Muldrew Lake for the annual regatta that remains freshest in my memory. We had mainly canoe races, no sailing events, and only one rowboat race.

I liked best the gunwale race. Balancing with one foot on each side of the canoe takes a certain skill, and practice, whether you paddle or simply bend your knees to send the canoe forward in rabbity leaps. I practiced, when I thought nobody was looking, for a whole week before the regatta, which was held on a Saturday afternoon in Middle Muldrew Lake.

On the Friday before the regatta, all the young people from Middle Lake crossed the Middle Portage to the north side of the Peninsula to help ferry all available craft from North Lake around the end of the Peninsula and back east again to the site of the regatta on Middle Lake.

We made the rounding of the peninsula into a day-long expedition with a picnic halfway along. People from North Lake crossed the portage homeward well after dark.

On Saturday, Uncle Jack and Mr. Dickson ran the regatta, and awarded inscribed paddles to the junior and senior boy and girl who had racked up the most points in all the races. After the evening picnic at Memorial Pines, no one felt like going right home.

The young people, still full of energy, crossed the portage to North Lake and poured ourselves into the few craft left there - the emergency rowboats and the leakiest canoes. At Indian Landing we piled into a couple of cars and drove the three and a half miles into town to see what was on at the movies in Gravenhurst.

Nothing was on! The manager had closed his theatre, exceptionally, because of a close family bereavement. The streets were thronged with tourists, cottagers and Norwegian airmen at loose ends. Men in blue-grey were draped here and there on the lawn in front of the Opera House, which also served as City Hall in those days. Music coming from open windows on the second floor prompted some of our more enterprising crowd to crash the local dance. 

No such shenanigans for me at my young age, or for older cousins Jean and Jane, who felt responsible for me. After kindly Jane wiped our table at the Chinese restaurant for the wilting elderly waiter, we ordered milk shakes to fortify us for the walk back to the lake under the stars. The rest of our crowd merely sampled the dance, then returned to the lake for a midnight marshmallow roast on the top of the Peak.

At 2.00 a.m. they had to put out their bonfire and hurry down to take John, bleeding copiously from a scalp wound, to the doctor’s cottage on the western end of Pine Island. An over-enthusiastic hewer of wood had dropped a sizeable dead tree trunk on my cousin’s head. He appeared the following day neatly stitched and bandaged, ate a good lunch and crossed Middle Portage in time for church.

After the service and a swim from the high cliffs nearby, we ferried back the North Lake boats, stopping to picnic just before sunset. More jumping from even higher cliffs on the wilder south side near the western end of the Peninsula.

Roosting on sloping rock, we sang a few current hits like “Sentimental Journey” and “Chattanooga Choo-choo”, both about trains, come to think of it. Someone pointed out a gull on the calm sunset water, calling out, “Look at the sun shining on its stern!” The gull remained placid, unaware that it had set off a burst of laughter. 

We set out on our journey east along North Lake as the sky took on that special green glow above the horizon. In the Swiss mountains it is known as Le Rayon Vert (the Green Ray). I call it “a Muskoka sky” and look for it in summer.