I am a 72-year-old retired journalist, busy recovering from a lifelong career as an unretired journalist. This year marks a half century of my scratching out little fables about life. My interests include genealogy, humour and music. I live in a little blue shack in Canada and spend most of my time trying to stay out of trouble. I am not that good at it. I also spent years teaching journalism. Poor state of journalism today: My fault. I have a family I don't deserve, a dog that adores me, and two cars the junk yard refuses to accept. My prized possessions include my old guitar and a razor my Dad gave me when I was 14 and which I still use when I bother to shave. Oh, and my great-great-grandfather's blackthorn stick he brought from Ireland in the 1850s. I have only one opinion but it is a good one: People take too many showers.
There was a little thing going around on Facebook asking users what we would say if we had a chance to talk to our younger selves. What advice would we offer that young whippersnapper who grew into the old guy we are today?
I can think of many things I might say but the most important piece of wisdom I would offer young Jim would be career-related. I would tell my younger self to legally change his name to Gordon. Why my parents never had the good sense to do that in the first place, I don’t know, but for someone destined for a working life putting himself before the public through artistic and entertainment endeavours, Gordon is the only and best name for any Canadian boy.
All the greats in this big country are named Gordon. Gordon Howe, greatest hockey player ever, Gordon Lightfoot, greatest folk musician the country has ever produced, and Gordon Pinsent, one of the finest actors anywhere. Also Gordon Downie, lead singer of The Tragically Hip rock band.
And I grew up watching a crabby old TV journalist/broadcaster named Gordon Sinclair, a character if there ever was one, and a guy I almost ran over one day as I nervously chartered the insane Yonge Street in downtown Toronto. As I managed to screech to a halt just in time, he turned, inches from the hood of my car, and gave me a look I imagine only an upset Gordon could give. After all, I once saw Gordon Lightfoot quit playing one of his hits on stage because the audience wouldn’t stop clapping along to it.
“This is not a clap-along song,” he yelled at us, before refusing to return to it.
Seems to me, the given name Gordon is almost a ticket to success in Canada.
Instead, Jim. What am I supposed to do with that? Even the proper form for it, James, hasn’t got the same Gordian touch.
There has never been a Gordon in my family going back hundreds of years. I think this explains the mediocrity of our contributions to the world of sports and entertainment. There is no Stanley Cup, Grammy or Oscar on my mantle or the mantles of any of my relatives.
People get all bent out of shape over the smallest things. A woman going through a fast-food drivethrough in Michigan ordered bacon on her burger. It came with no bacon. So, she complained.
The servers at the window apologized and gave her a free meal. The second burger had no bacon.
Now some would say that for a place to screw up like this twice in a row is no big deal but to those people I say, “Bacon! They forgot the BACON!” It isn’t as though they failed to toss in some extra relish, mustard or ketchup. They forgot the bacon. TWICE.
Now, what would you do? So would I. And so would our heroine who was so grievously denied her bacon. She pulled out her gun and fired a bullet into the restaurant.
Please, if you are a bleeding heart, please stop reading. Because this is the proper use of a firearm. When a restaurant fails to come across with the bacon, it’s time to go all Yosemite Sam on it. I am woman, hear me roar! Guns are made to straighten out situations just such as these.
Unfortunately, for our modern-day Annie Oakley, a pinko, commie, woke, liberal judge in Michigan thought differently. Hopefully, all the burgers in the prison for the next few years will be served up with lots of bacon.
I am just about finished building a wooden wagon on wheels that can be used to haul speakers and monitors around for jam sessions my musician friends and I hold on Friday nights. I have never built anything like this and didn’t know that I could. But a fellow musician showed up at my house with four wheels that he had bought and he asked me to build it because I told him I had some space and a few tools.
I took on the job, pretty sure I’d make a total mess of it because I enjoy rough carpentry but I am far from a fine craftsman. But my buddy had such confidence in me, that somehow, I found the know-how to smack the thing together.
He also kept a bit of pressure on, calling to find out how it was coming along. So, the friendly timeline combined with his total confidence in me, has produced this little vehicle which I will paint today.
Being a perfectionist, I put more lumber into it than an old sailing ship the pirates travelled in and it’s so heavy, we will need another wagon to carry it to the place we want it to be.
I am pretty proud of my creation, however, and know that it only came about because of my friend’s belief that I could do it.
Sometimes, it seems, trying to live up to someone else’s expectations is not such a bad thing.
I have no plans to hang around with Dylan McWilliams. Three years ago, the Colorado resident was out hiking in Utah when he was bit by a rattlesnake. A year later, he was attacked by a 300-pound black bear when he was camping in his home state. The bear grabbed his head and started pulling him away from his friends but they raised a fuss and Dylan was freed.
And last week, the poor man was bit in the leg by a shark while he was boogie-boarding (whatever that is) near Hawaii. He kicked the seven-foot-long tiger shark as hard as he could then swam to shore.
If all this happened to me, I would be downright negative. I would lock myself in my bedroom and never come out again. I would nail boards over the windows. And wear an impenetrable metal suit.
But that’s not how old Dylan rolls.
“I don’t blame the shark, I don’t blame the bear, and I don’t blame the rattlesnake,” he said. “I’m just mad that I can’t get back in the water for a couple days.”
Dylan is welcome to think what he wants. As for me, I blame the shark, the bear and the rattlesnake. They are a bunch of nasty critters and I have lost all respect for them.
The technology apparently exists which will allow dead recording artists to go back into their studios. The long-gone Elvis Presleys, Janis Joplins, Roy Orbisons and Frank Sinatras of the entertainment world could, theoretically, release new recordings of songs they never sang while they were alive nor even ever heard. The Beatles, it seems, could be getting back together after all one of these days.
“Imagine” an album by John Lennon of new songs written by his sons. Or by Paul McCartney.
This follows on the prospects of dead actors appearing in new movies. James Dean, dead for 70 years, was to appear in a fresh movie a couple of years ago, though that seemed to be a sort of flash-in-the-pan news story that went away fairly quickly. But there have been at least a couple of movies made featuring older actors appearing alongside their younger selves, hardly confusing at all.
And then there are live performances by dead music stars via holographic imagery who appear on stage backed up by very alive, live orchestras. A few years ago, one of the biggest rock stars in Japan was a hologram of a totally made-up female singer who has never existed in real life.
This is not even to get into robots who will likely make all of the above seem like mere child’s play. As far as I am aware, which isn’t very far, China is already experimenting with robot TV news presenters.
If any of this seems strange to us in 2021, it is probably no more mysterious than our ancestors when they first saw “horseless” carriages driving down the street on their own power. Or when they turned the buttons on a little box and heard voices and music coming out of a speaker. Not to mention advances such as movies, airplanes, and TVs, let alone space exploration.
It’s a fast-moving world now and the timeline for the development of new technologies is shrinking every day. Now, instead of it taking years to move from one mode to another – wax records to compact discs, for example – it is taking mere months in some cases for one “new” device to replaced by a more advanced one. Or for something entirely new to be created.
But the concept of keeping dead artists’ careers going is not a totally new one. How many Agatha Christies have there been since the original mystery novelist died?
Having done a little recording myself a few decades ago, I wonder how good my news songs, written by talented robots, will sound when I lay them down a hundred years from now. And then sing them as a hologram down at the local pub.
Think tanks are all the rage these days. Politicians, business leaders and professionals are always hiking off to these multi-day events, where everyone of like mind gets together to help them learn from each other and from experts what it is they should know about their endeavours.
I think these projects are great and I love think tanks. In fact, I spend every single day at a think tank, sometimes the one upstairs and sometimes the one downstairs. In fact, I just spent some quality time at a think tank where I did a lot of cogitating (look it up, it isn’t anything inappropriate.)
I think about a lot of things while attending my think tanks. And, as usual I came away from my most recent session having thought a lot and feeling much lighter.
In fact, I find my daily attendance at my think tanks are really great pauses that refresh without filling. I maybe don’t learn a lot, but I don’t believe I leave my think tanks any dumber than when I arrived.
My favourite think tank is almond coloured and about three feet high. It has a wooden seat which is nice because it doesn’t get cold, an important attribute on frosty mornings, which, in Canada, there are a lot of.
If you have a chance to attend a think tank or two sometime, I highly recommend the experience. It is where I have come up with some of my best ideas over the years and those who have encountered the results of some of my best ideas fully agree that they could only have come from my own personal think tank.
I gave a ride to some young people to another town to visit their friends, except for one young guy in that town who was working and couldn’t meet them.
I don’t go to this town very often and rarely eat there. I have probably darkened the doors of a few of the 20 or 30 restaurants there less than half a dozen times in my life.
This day, supper time rolled around and I still had a few hours to kill so I looked around for somewhere to eat. I drove by a pizza place, a chain restaurant that I don’t normally like to go to, but I didn’t see any other pizza places in my travels so I decided to stop in. The young man who came to the counter to serve me looked familiar. He was the friend that couldn’t be with the young people I had brought to town because he was working.
That’s funny, I thought. I could have picked any restaurant yet chose this one. And even if I had picked the young man’s restaurant, he could have been working in the back and not on the front counter and we would have missed each other completely.
Strange.
What impressed me about it was how unimpressed he seemed to be at the chance meeting and how unimpressed the young folk were later when I gave them a ride home and told them about it.
The impression I got from it all is that I am easily impressed.
I have been thinking lately that I would like to live a long life. At 73, I can’t really complain about the length of my life so far but I would like to live longer because I still have things I want to do. I am still hoping for a multi-million-dollar recording contract, also a long sought after date with either Sandra Bullock or Julia Roberts, or both, given that I have to wait for the restraining orders to expire, and my ultimate goal, is to win a hot-dog eating contest.
So, funny the timing of things. Just as I was doing all this wishing, along comes an article on the Internet today entitled The Best Foods To Eat For A Long Life, According To Longevity Experts. If anybody would know about this, it would be longevity experts and, in fact, I would like to live long enough to someday become a longevity expert. Or, failing that, an expert in anything. Anything at all.
So, of course, I dove right into the article on my laptop. But my excitement and my smile both vanished in record time when I read the details of what I will have to eat to live longer. I can only say, it’s not looking good for me, as, with the exception of one or two of the listed items, I don’t want to eat anything the longevity experts recommend.
Get a load of this. The experts want me to eat foods in their natural state, like whole grains, vegetables, fruits, fish, eggs and nuts.
“All vegetables are packed with nutrition, but cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts and cabbage are powerhouses at helping you live longer.” I don’t know what cruciferous even means but the word starts off with the same three letters as “cruel” and that puts me off, I have to say.
“There’s really no upper limit on how many cruciferous vegetables you can eat, but a good rule is to cover about three-quarters of your plate with them,” one of the experts suggested. Especially good in this category are dark, leafy greens. Strike two for me as the only green stuff I like are green jelly beans. At least I think they are beans, so that should count for something.
I am also expected to snarf down a lot of fatty fish like wild salmon, sardines, anchovies, herring and mackerel. I prefer skinny fish, myself, and will only choke down a salmon sandwich if the salmon is spread on the bread so thin it is almost invisible.
Another expert is all hot and bothered about eating whole grains and I realize now that this War on White Bread and Buns will never end.
Instead of dousing the food I do eat with sugar, the many extra years I desire would have to be spent putting “extra virgin olive oil” on everything. Reading further, I see only a half a teaspoon of the stuff a day will do the trick but I am gagging at the thought of even that much.
The experts start to lighten up as the article progresses, and recommend berries. I will admit, I can handle a few berries now and then, especially doused in cream and sugar. But then they drop the ball entirely advising me to start eating “fermented foods,” leading me to wonder if these rascals are “demented fools.” They recommend I eat kimchi, kombucha, tempeh, miso, and sauerkraut that are laced with “beneficial bugs that help you maintain a healthy gut.” I ate a few bugs while singing on the tractor as a kid when the odd one would fly right into my wide open mouth in the middle of a Beatles song. No thanks.
Tree nuts and seeds. Maybe. Almonds, brazil nuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, cashews and walnuts.
Plain yogurt. I will get right on that.
It is recommended I eat lots of legumes such as lentils, peas, chickpeas and peanuts. Peanuts I can handle especially if they are whipped into a butter and sold in a plastic jar.
Tomatoes, yes, though no mention of potatoes, and even a larger oversight, in my opinion, potato chips.
But finally, and almost too late, the experts recommend I eat dark chocolate. As it happens, I eat chocolate, both dark and whatever the opposite is, several times a day, and have eaten large quantities of it since before I could talk. When I read that, I started to cheer up a bit. Especially at the news that dark chocolate is good for brain health. I could probably make use of a healthier brain.
Come to think of it, I think all this advice is paying off, as I have already lived longer than the time it took me to read this article.
But I am cautious and I worry. I just hope I live long enough to finish writing this story. If it ends in mid-sentence, do me a favour, please, and call an ambulance.
I got a text message at 4:50 p.m. When are you getting home with the pizzas? I knew the family had to leave by 5:30. I will be there by 5:10, I promised, although I had just pulled up to the pizza shop.
I ran in and placed my order and sat down at a table to await our supper. I could see right into the kitchen and kept looking to see how things were going. Things were going well.
All of a sudden, there was a scream as two of the pizza makers in the crowded kitchen collided and then looked sorrowfully at the floor, eventually bending over to clean up what was obviously a spill. Also obvious was the fact that these were my pizzas that had taken a dive.
The pizza makers quickly started putting together more pizzas and I knew I was in for a wait. They kept shooting me furtive glances, which confirmed the fact that my original pizzas were gone.
I arrived home, new pizzas in tow, too late. My family was just pulling out of the driveway, intent on getting to a show on time.
“They dropped my pizzas,” I yelled. And the dog ate your homework, their skeptical looks suggested.
Our family lives in a modest bungalow. We like it. It could be spruced up and made even nicer but we have a few “imPETiments” standing in our way. Our dog and two cats pretty much rule the roost and we humbly comply with their demands. It shouldn’t be this way. It is.
We have had these creatures a dozen years now and they have left their mark. Often, literally, their mark. The screen door on the rear entrance to the house needs replacing, but while the cats are above ground, it never will be. They discovered, a few years ago, that the rickety old door can be opened with one great push of a paw and will stay open long enough for a fat kitty to run through to the glorious outside. And because it doesn’t fit right in the frame anymore, they can reach their paws underneath it to let themselves back in. Last year was a banner one for them and the door. A portion of the bottom screen came away from its wooden frame so they just walk in and out of the door now, no pushing required. We fully expect to wake up some morning to the sight of a skunk that has discovered the screen door flaw and taken advantage of it to come inside. So far, no skunk. The point of all this is, if we get a new door, all this cat access will disappear. And we can’t do that.
And so many other features of our house are the same. Our insulated, heated garage still has the two 60-year-old windows it has always had. A couple of new, insulated windows would look just great there, but instead, we prop open the screenless windows for easy access by the cats. They jump onto the air conditioner, then run through a window, scratch on the kitchen door and in they come. If we called Fantastic Windows and Doors to come and do a replacement, the cats would be scuppered. Cat scuppering seems like a worthwhile goal some days but we have found if you make their lives harder with one action, they will make your lives harder by another. Often much harder.
There is a big suitcase lying flat on the floor in our rec room downstairs. No one dares move it. Because one day, one of the cats crawled up on it and went to sleep. Now both cats take turns napping on it, so we don’t have the heart to remove it.
In front of one of our sheds outside, the paving bricks have sunk to form a hollow, a result of years of our going in and out of the building. In a rainstorm, this hollow fills up to form a small pond. The bricks need to be taken up and the sand and gravel base below them built up again. But they won’t be. The hollow holds our dog’s body perfectly and he lies in it and sunbathes all summer.
A few years ago, we had our rec room re-carpeted. It looked spectacular. We put up two big fancy scratching posts for the cats. They looked at them and laughed and proceeded to use the entire room as one big post. We tried for a while to discourage them. Our efforts were as successful as commanding the wind to stop blowing. As of today, our actual scratching posts look pretty good. Our carpet, yuck. Especially the stairs. And when they need variety, they toil away on our furniture. When company comes, we cover it all up with sheets, giving it the look of a crime scene, which it is. Declaw the critters, you say. Right. Not going to happen.
Our doggie is getting old and has trouble now jumping onto our bed. So a while back, in the dark, I reached down and picked him up and placed him on the mattress. Now it’s become pretty much routine. In the dark, I lean down with my hands open near the floor though I can’t see where he is and wait for him to walk between them, which he does with precision.
There is a gate between the hallway and our laundry. It is there for one purpose. Without it, the doggie will run into the covered cat litter pan and emerge with some tasty goodies. Nothing better than predigested food. Unlike me, he is not picky with his menu choices.
We have a couch pushed up against our picture window in the living room. We think of rearranging the furniture in that room, now and then, but moving that couch is off the roster of choices open to us. All three pets sit up on the back of it to look at the world going by. Doggie lies there and peeks through the curtains for hours, awaiting the return of whatever family member isn’t home. The cats watch the birds and squirrels.
Some day, maybe, our house will be fixed up and glowing. Country Homes magazine (though we don’t live in the country) will phone up and ask to do a feature on our place.
I dread that day. A great part of our joy in living is measured by the imperfections in our house. And even when the day comes when there no longer is a reason to not fix things up, I know us all well enough to know, we’ll probably leave things as they are. Memories can often be good stand-ins for realities.
That doesn’t mean I enjoy fighting Luigi the cat for my computer chair every day, or chasing him off the printer where he lies to watch the birds in their feeder attached to the kitchen window. I also don’t enjoy getting down on my knees to mop up the water spilled from the communal waterbowl by Mario’s Water Redistribution Service. Luigi’s weird brother prefers to drink water off the floor so he hauls that dish around till he has several puddles to choose from. Tape it to the floor? Nope. Also with water, we keep one shower door open. That’s where Luigi laps up his supply.
But who am I kidding? Protest as I might and do, I enjoy every last bit of it.
