Beware of Mike Pence! (June 7)

DIARY

Hummingbirds calm down!

                        by Robert LaFrance

            This afternoon (I’m writing in the evening) I sat on a lawn chair on our porch and watched two hummingbirds fight it out over a bit of sugared water and thought about all the wars, battles, skirmishes and just plain bloodbaths that are occurring in the world as I sat there.

Did you ever watch a pair of hummingbirds fighting? One will go to the feeder and try to get a drink to give himself or herself enough energy to keep going, and before the sipping is finished the other bird will come along and attack.

It makes no sense – there’s lots of nectar for both – but they do it anyway, just like Sudan and South Sudan. If Greenland and Tasmania could find some way to go to war with each other they would. Remember the Falkland Islands war in the 1980s?

            On to a less violent subject, psychology. There is psychology in every aspect of our lives, even in grocery stores, and all the time I was thinking they just sold food. Two days ago I was near a certain store (not in Kincardine) at lunchtime and decided I wanted a snack. I bought a little package called Lunch-Mate Stackers, made by Schneiders, and figured that would do the trick for now. There were little round crackers, slices of alleged cheese, slices of ham and a very small Kit-Kat chocolate bar. Imagine my shock when I found there were 8 crackers, 8 pieces of alleged cheese, but only seven slices of ham.

            A lot of people reading this column probably think I’m going to complain, send a message to Schneider’s, sass the store manager, call in the riot police, etc. but I am not going to do any of that. In fact, I am rather pleased about the missing piece of ham. It gives me hope that somewhere in the world somebody else can make a mistake in spite of all the ‘smart’ technology that permeates our existence.

            Here in the neighbourhood where Flug and I have families and house pets, there is not much strife, except occasionally in the early morning hours in the club where we have canasta and auction 45 tournaments and allow lemonade to be served. It’s a weird community, half sane and you can guess the other half.

            One of the residents (he lives just down the road, beyond the big pine tree) resides a gent who is a prime example of the other half, the non-sane side (in my opinion). Fredson Blark is an antiques nut.

Born in the late 1960s, he’s not an antique himself, but I really think he sat too long in the sun in his younger years spent in Burma, what is now called Myanmar, full name Republic of the Union of Myanmar. He arrived here in the benighted Scotch Colony in the 1990 and promptly started collecting antiques, marrying 71-year-old Martha Grundge. (She calls HERSELF an antique, so don’t get mad at me.)

Within two years, he had their little cottage FULL of antiques. He would go to yard sales as far away as Arvida, Province of Quebec, and Halifax. Last week I decided to ask if I could visit and see his collection and it was true, the place was FULL of antiques (in case I hadn’t made that plain), but I didn’t realize just how full until I got ‘caught short’ as Aunt Ella used to say and asked to use the bathroom. I’m not kidding, he had no plumbing in the house. He directed me to his ‘washroom’, which turned out to be an outhouse, but with a difference. It was inside the house. How does he empty that? I soon decided I was in the company of a person who might be violent. I fled.

Speaking of nut cases, yesterday Flug came over and had a lemonade with me. When the subject changed to crabs, a topic I can take or leave, preferably leave, I was about to leave but remembered it was my house. He wanted me to go with him to Aleck  Gannon’s and see Aleck’s new crabs. It turned out that Alex had recently bought three crabapple trees, nothing serious. You never know about Flug – or Aleck for that matter.

            A lot of Americans are talking now about impeachment of their beloved president, and others are talking as if that gentleman may just decide to resign because he isn’t having any fun, but they had better think twice about what’s waiting in the wings.

            Mike Pence is their vice-president, and if people are uncomfortable with Donald Trump, they ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Pence would not only chop their health care and smile while he’s doing it, but he would probably ban income taxes on the rich – he’s a bit right-wing like that.
                                     -end-

Fishing licence hernia (May 31)

DIARY

A fresh pot of tea indeed

                        by Robert LaFrance

            A couple of months ago I renewed the registration on one of our many (two) vehicles and – I’m not kidding – I got a hernia lugging it out to the car.

Ten days ago I finally bought a fishing licence after catching a cod in Bubie Brook and got another hernia, just as the first one was healing up.

            Remember those days when the advent of computers meant a new paperless society? It is to laugh, even to guffaw. A few years ago our beloved New Brunswick decided that a neat little card was nowhere near a big enough object to carry around in our wallets or purses or glove compartments, so we started getting registrations etc. the size of a small softball field.

            While computer chips get small and smaller, the paper documents we all have to carry around get bigger and bigger. One DvD can contain the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica, but soon drivers’ licences will be the size of Canadian football fields. Soon the people will rebel.

                                                ***********************

            U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has told Haitian immigrants, refugees from the 2010 earthquake there, that they must leave the U.S. in six months because the Haitian economy has improved so much they can now seek their fortune back home.

            It was just over four months ago that the same government department clearly stated that the refugees from the earthquake that killed more than 150,000 should not be sent back for AT LEAST a year.

            The kicker of this news report was that Secretary Kelly said it was clear the Haitian economy was on the mend because the government was about to restore the heavily damaged presidential palace.

            Yeah, I am sure the cholera-ridden people are very pleased about that.

                                                ***********************

            Victoria Day, May 22. I find it curious that a national holiday – even Bert’s Takeout and Dairy Bar was closed – should be named after our area, Victoria County, New Brunswick. I would have thought it would have been the other way around in reverse, as Harold Green might have said.

            Another idle thought: Did you ever consider the relationship of Dagwood and Blondie? They don’t seem to have any, shall we say, lustful feelings toward each other. We should pay more attention to this kind of thing. They have two kids.

            A quick note to Aunt Bertina whom I was supposed to visit last evening. “Dear Auntie: I hope you haven’t taken me out of your will. I know I was supposed to drop by your cabin last evening, but something came up, so to speak.” I stopped at the club to use the washroom before I went to her place, and I had a little accident. The phrase ‘It’s not what it looks like’ would have been a lie, because it was exactly what it looked like.

            Sitting on my front porch yesterday afternoon, I pondered this question: what would I do if I were elected King of New Brunswick? That’s a bit of an oxymoron of course, because kings don’t get elected. The first thing I would do would be to enact a law enabling anyone born on May 11, 1948, to have a lifetime income in the 6-figure range. I could be home on that range. Then I would eliminate all diseases and potholes.

            I have often lived ‘beyond the pale’ which is to say that my behaviour was unacceptable. (The phrase comes from 18^th century Russia in case you wanted to know that.) Not enough to land in jail, but pretty bad, like my not visiting Aunt Bertina (see above) when I easily could have, or riding my lawn mower on the main road although it’s a push mower. Yesterday I was walking toward the henhouse, tripped over a bucket and landed on the ground. I swore. You might say my language was ‘beyond the pail’.

            Last week when I was over visiting Flug and his present wife, she asked me if I wanted her to make ‘a fresh pot of tea’. I said sure, that would be great, especially with  chocolate chip cookies, Melba toast and some grapenut ice cream. Just as I was leaving she put away the teapot into a cupboard that was already crammed with teapots. I couldn’t help but ask why. “Because Richard (Flug) likes a fresh pot of tea every evening,” she said. As a recent immigrant from Estonia, she wasn’t totally comfortable with the English language and thought that each time she had to brew the tea in a ‘fresh pot’, as opposed to brewing ‘a pot of fresh tea’. Did you ever notice, the English language is weird?

            “So are you, Bob,” said Flug, who had been reading over my shoulder as I typed.
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Is today Wensday? (May 24)

DIARY

Phony fakes and other revelations

                        by Robert LaFrance

            Good morning, afternoon and evening. Here are some major comments about this year’s occurrences. Make of them what you will:

            So many things are not as they appear and so many words are mispronounced. Let’s look at the days of the week. The one in the middle of every week, the one pronounced ‘Wensday’ or ‘Wensdee’ is an example of mispronounced words that we all utter. I am guilty as the rest of the population, though I’m perfect in everything else. How about the day before Sunday – Sair-dee? That’s how I usually pronounce it. And the second month of the year – Febuary? Yeah, there are supposed to be two r’s there.

            Last week I wanted to take a look at some flooding – as long as it’s not around here – so I drove down to Majorville whose name had often been mentioned on the radio news. I looked everywhere and the closest I saw was a place called Maugerville.

            In my never-ending quest for new and interesting books, I ran across a German  one about a young (red-haired) girl who went to rural Bavaria to live with an elderly couple there and help them on their farm. Perhaps you’ve heard of ‘Anne of Green Goebbels’? It wasn’t until later that Flug, who knows about these things, informed me that Joseph Goebbels was a Nazi murderer. Who knew? I’m sure his employer wasn’t too pleased about that.

            I am sure you have seen the recent headlines about a criminal who stole thousands of dollars from a Widows and Orphans Fund and then decided to give herself up to the police. People here were puzzled when she went into the Colony Police detachment and took a shower before confessing her felonies. Later on a reporter asked her about it and she said she wanted to make a clean breast of it. She was a bit confused, what with the cannabis sativa and all.

            The Americans seem to be on every newscast these days and I suppose that’s just a continuation of what has occurred in the past century, when Canadian news media took the easy and cheap way out and just reported on American stories, most of them bogus. Wyatt Earp and John Wayne are both American Male Cow Manure. The point I am  getting at is that so many things in Canada retain their American names. Come on now: Canadians can’t bake beans? They have to be baked in Boston? New York Style cheesecake can’t be that much different than Minto cheesecake, and Idaho potatoes are just potatoes. It is to laugh and be depressed. In fact, I think I’ll go out on the porch and sip on a Manhattan.

            Do you watch any detective shows on television? I watch a few, and in almost every show, the cop refers to a suspect as the last person to see the dead guy alive. Nobody seems to consider that only the murderer himself or herself can be the last one to see the victim alive. In other words, that detective is getting a little ahead of himself or herself.

            Last evening I read that a certain Shirley Gonereah had been named ‘A Fellow of Dartmouth College’ (here we go again, in the USA) but than they realized she wasn’t a fellow at all, but a person of the female persuasion. Isn’t it time that we fixed up that little flaw in the English language? Come on, guys and gals, let’s put on our thinking caps.

            Two days ago someone in government, and I’m not going to mention New Brunswick’s Minister of Something-or-other Roger Melanson, referred to something as being ‘a new innovation’. In all my 69 years on this planet, I have never heard of an old innovation.

            I may have asked this question – like after every rain – but why do earthworms try to cross the roads and streets after a rain? When I go out walking on or near our estate after a multi-hour downpour, I find hundreds of the little worms on the road, and the odd thing is, some are going to the left and some to the right. One day I picked up a few dozen and put them in a nearby field, only to find them returning ‘en masse’ back where they came from. You can’t help earthworms who won’t help themselves, as my mother, looking right at me, used to say.

            What is a tinderbox anyway?

            A phrase that has been making the rounds for the past decade or more is ‘unintended consequences’. This is a code phrase for: “Wow! Did I ever screw up!”

               Another phrase we hear a lot, especially from government (non) communication staff members is that something has ‘grown exponentially’. I can tell you now, that person would not have been talking about my patience with bafflegab.
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At 69, my mind wanders (May 17)

DIARY

Keep (or start) that cash coming in

                        by Robert LaFrance

            It has come to my attention that I have forgotten to inform my readers in advance of my birthday.

            Any other year I would have mentioned in early May that my birthday was coming up, and that would have given folks a chance to go out and get me a nice gift, preferably cash. Preferably a lot of cash.

            Alas, this year I neglected to do so and will have to be satisfied with your best wishes, such as they are. This column appears (as they say) in the Victoria Star on May 17, but my 69^th birthday – actually anniversary of my birthday since we can only have one birthday – was May 11.

            On that day in 1948, I was born in a log cabin – well, it could have been a log cabin – at what is now 210 Churchland Road (north) Tilley. No hospitals back then and even if there had been it would have cost $100 or close to it. No medicare in 1948, but my mother was a retired RN and was her own obstetrician.

            One more note on financial gifts you want to send my way: ‘cash’ has the same number of letters as ‘best’.

                                                ***********************

            People in the rest of Canada think that we Maritimers are always going out on our fishing boats and saying things like “three points abaft the starboard beam, matey!” but we here in Victoria County, New Brunswick, are not exactly Jacques Cartier (who I believe sold diamonds on the side when he wasn’t ‘discovering’ new countries. Hint: Somebody was already here when he arrived).

            I was in my teens before I saw salt water, and it looked a lot like fresh water. A sailor I am not, but I do have a certain resemblance to Popeye the Sailor Man except I don’t like cooked spinach.

            Where was I going with this? At age 69 my ‘mind’ tends to wander.

            Now I remember. I recently went out sailing on the lake created by Mactaquac hydro dam. I was the guest of a certain radio personality, now retired, and was accompanied by my friend Flug, who had said he was a good sailor and therefore didn’t have to take any mal-de-mer pills before going to sea on the St. John River. I didn’t think to ask him where he had gotten his sailing experience. He said that it had occurred in 1981 when he rode the Barney Baker ferry in Medford.

            I should have been suspicious when he told me this; the last time that ferry was in operation was in the 1950s. People could go from Medford to Morrell Siding in minutes.

            Back to the present, the sailboat’s owner – we will call him Buford Johnston so he doesn’t get legions of fans storming his boat – cast off the line and called to the experienced sailor Flug to ‘weigh anchor’. Flug looked bewildered at first, and then went to work, pulling the heavy anchor up on deck, and then letting it fall back into the water.

            In the best seafaring tradition, Flug shouted: “Aye, captain, I would estimate the anchor to weigh about two hundred pounds.”

            The lights were on, but nobody was home.

                                                ***********************

            Johnny de Forte is in trouble again with his wife Zelda, who is a bagpiper.

            He is on a mental par with Flug, in other words as smart as the rest of us, but one neglected part of his education was any sweeping knowledge of that Scottish wind (and how!) instrument that Zelda had only recently begun to practise.

            How shall I put this? Johnny tends to sip away on lemonade – terrible habit! – when he watches TV so sometimes he doesn’t grasp all the facts and nuances being presented. So when a firefighter in full uniform came on the screen and suggested that May was a great time to “clean your pipes” before the summer, Johnny leapt into action.

            In a bit of a fog which is not that unusual, he decided he would do Zelda a favour while she was away at a ‘joy through tofu’ conference and take apart her pipes for a good cleaning. As Queen Victoria said the day someone made a joke in her presence, Zelda “was not amused” even if I, a bagpipe widower from way back, was.

                                                **************************

            A final note, this one on spring generally. Yesterday I was walking across the grocery store parking lot up uptown when a gent in a Gremlin hailed me. “Enjoying your column, Bob,” he said. Please remember that this man drives a Gremlin. Indicating the rain that continued to fall although we’d endured a week of it already, he said: “You know, I would rather see it snow.” My murder trial is set for July.
                                              -end-