It is beautiful in this quiet outpost in the Pacific Northwest. Days are getting noticeably shorter; blossoms are fading; fewer swimmers in front of my house and much less children’s laughter and chatter. The tourists and summer cottagers are winding down and packing up. It is back-to-school time and the tempo of life changes. I have pleasing reveries of my child-raising years as I see the school supplies on the drugstore shelves. I am deeply grateful to be here, of all places, in our troubled world.

But wait! There is no back-to-school for the local children. Their teachers are STILL on strike. WHAT? A months- long negotiation between the teachers union and the BC government has gone no-where.? How can this be? Continue Reading ->

Ever since blogging was invented I have thought about having one of my own. I garner a great deal of fun and information from blogs and it appeals to me to have an outlet for my over-active and opinionated mind. Now that I have the technology, there is the writing challenge – learning how to let go of the imperfectly formed words in the interest of instant communication. Here goes:

In a matter of days Robin Williams has died, been cremated and his ashes scattered into the winds on the San Francisco Bay; his body moving as quickly into the afterlife as in life. Like millions the world over I felt temporarily bereft by the loss of this genius of light and humour. And then saddened by the manner of his death. For all he gave to us – and it was a lot – we, collectively, had failed to give back enough to make it comfortable for him to stay with us.

And that brought me around to thinking of a subject that often occurs to me – our contemporary and invasive zeal for sobriety. As far as I know, in the history of the world, absolute sobriety was a non-starter. From birds and animals getting jiggy with berries and saps, forest creatures nibbling mushrooms, ancestors on grog and mead, Jesus turning water into wine, ancients and artists seeking communion with the Divine, Aldous Huxley seeking doors of perception, modern pilgrims in search of Amazonian, Indian and other natural mood-altering substances, on and on and on, the evidence is that we are not, by nature, sober creatures.

I am not condoning excesses that are harmful to other people. I was raised by a father who abused alcohol and then his wife and children and I have zero tolerance for drunks. The Ireland of my childhood was filled with them and they left a trail of pain. That my father was a talented and sensitive man did not lessen the grief he caused, but there is a long path between sobriety and troublesome drunkenness . I think we have also erased the evidence of history that functioning alcoholism and drug dependency has been the backbone of the Arts and Politics of the world since time began.

– It has been told by many of his professional colleagues that Robin Williams could extemporaneously riff at length, weaving in world affairs, pop culture, politic, philosophy, subjects too numerous to mention – off the top of his head and sufficiently  funny to bring people to tears of laughter. If all of that was at the top of his head, imagine how much cacophony there was in the rest of it?. Is it surprising that he tried to dull some of it with alcohol and other drugs?

People with much thicker skins and less sensitive nervous systems than his are having a hard time coping with the relentless mans inhumanity to man that is the subject of most American news. Half of that nation is on prescription drugs that alter their natural moods, making bearable things that one reasonably should find depressing. We spend a lot of energy judging and criticizing our neighbours  personal habits but allow our governments to war and destroy the planet in our name. This we find tolerable but we want Robin Williams to go to rehab because he cannot stop seeing things as they really are and his sensitive soul cannot bear it. Surely we can find a more broad-minded approach.  Reality…Wow what a Concept!