DIARY
A
miracle happened right in your home town
by
Robert LaFrance
Every year at this time I say
goodnight to the folks of Alert, Nunavut, as they say goodnight to the sun that
they will not see again until March 4th.
I was stationed there, 450 nautical
miles from the North Pole, from May 1974 to May 1975 as one of Canada’s
Fighting Men Not in Uniform. There were over a hundred Canadian Armed Forces
personnel there, and just down the hill from the base was the weather station
where I worked for 54 straight weeks.
It was actually 53 straight weeks;
my last week there was in a haze and a daze because I was scheduled to fly to
Trenton, Ontario, on a Hercules C-130 but when I went to the runway the pilot
told me I wasn’t on the passenger list of six. While I waited for the next
Thursday’s flight I practised drinking.
Thinking about seasons this morning,
I walked outside in the summer weather – although it was late September – and
looked up to see two Canada Geese winging their way south. Rats deserting a
sinking ship. You’d think that with a name like Canada Geese they should be
forced to stay here year-around.
***********************
Taking a big turn from Alert and
geese, I am wondering why people send viruses to the Internet, to email and to
Facebook. People hack all kinds of accounts and in that case I can see that
they’re trying to steal money; they are modern day bank robbers, but why send
viruses to individuals?
One day about ten years ago I was in
Caribou, Maine, where I stopped in to see a friend who ran a computer shop. He
was saying that he was having fun avoiding a computer meltdown that one of his
‘customers’ was trying to give him.
Ron, as we’ll call the store owner
because that was his name, said that at least once a week a certain guy would
come in and sit at one of Ron’s computers that he let the public use, and he
would try to wipe out the hard drive by going into an internal file to change
it.
It was a battle of wits, but finally
this guy succeeded in damaging the software of that computer so that it took
Ron half an hour to repair it. Fed up with the foolishness, he sent the guy an
email that, when opened, showed a photo of this vandal at Ron’s computer and
contained this message: “Don’t come back!” He didn’t.
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Thinking about the phrase
‘collective nouns’ means. Not to get too technical, it means a group of
something alive, like a herd of cows. The word ‘herd’ is a collective noun.
Imagine my surprise when, listening
to a CBC Radio program about Canadian wildlife, I heard an ‘expert’ say that
the proper term for a group of beavers is a ‘malocclusion’ because their teeth
don’t meet. This chap was very convincing too and I didn’t know at the time
that he was full of male cow manure. Unfortunately I didn’t get his name or I
would have sent him an email, complete with virus.
As I mentioned, little did I know,
as I was admiring this man’s fountain of knowledge, that he was somewhat off
the mark. Whether he just didn’t know, or was sending the listeners a verbal
virus, I don’t know.
Here are some other collective nouns
and phrases: a COLONY of beavers, a murder of crows, a congregation of
alligators, a bellowing of bullfinches, a gulp of cormorants, a confusion of
Guinea fowl, a mischief of mice, a murmuration of starlings, an exultation of
larks, a descent of woodpeckers and a gulp of swallows.
***********************
As one who often eats in restaurants
(my wife won’t show me where the cookstove is) I continue to be amazed at those
napkin dispensers that won’t dispense a napkin and those little teapots from
which it is impossible to pour tea without spreading it all over the table.
I fondly remember the day in 1997
when I got out ONE napkin, and only one. The waitress and three of the diners
applauded me. Usually if one can get out as few as five serviettes he, she or
it is doing well. Why do restaurants have those things?
Then there are those little silver
teapots designed by South American death squad alumni. (They have to do
SOMETHING when they retire, right?) The chances of filling one’s cup with tea
and not pouring the hot liquid on the table or one’s hands are about the same
as one’s chances of winning a $40 million lottery.
However, two weeks ago, at a
restaurant in a certain mountain village, I did just that – pour the cup of tea
I mean, not win that lottery. A short while later I received a phone call from
the Vatican wanting details of the Miracle.-end-
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