POSTING # 8

Pruning the Vines; Big Question by a Jordanian Official; Walking to Port Stanley at Night; Can You Be in Moscow by Friday?; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


Pruning the Vines

Last December, on a drive through the vineyard country around Virgil, we noticed a car pulled off the road, as far as a snow bank would allow. It was there the next day and the following day. Pat and I debated about calling the police and reporting what seemed to be an abandoned car.

The fourth day, the car was still there but this time we looked down the row of vines and saw a person, bundled up in a skidoo outfit, pruning the vines, in the wind and snow.

As spring approaches, the pace of pruning is picking up and sometimes there are three or four people working in the cold.

It reminded me of the time when I was in a doctor’s office in Ottawa and met a colleague from my Immigration days. Both of us had retired and we chatted about what we were doing. His last overseas posting had been at the Canadian Embassy in Washington and having fallen in love with the Virginia countryside, he had bought a farm. He was now planting a vineyard.

“That’s why I’m here,” he said, flexing his arms with a grimace “Tendonitis in both elbows. Planting vines is tougher than it looks!”

You have to admire the people who work so hard that we may have wine.


Big Question by a Jordanian Official

During this week’s Obama visit to Canada, I was thinking about what a different image the new president projects of the U.S than that projected by George W. Bush.

Three years ago, I was standing on Table Rock above Niagara Falls with a group of 8 employment officials from the Kingdom of Jordan. I had organized and was leading the visitors on a two week tour to study employment programs in Ontario and Quebec. The tour was drawing to an end.

One of the Jordanians, a particularly thoughtful person, came over to me and, pointing across the River to the people clustered on the American Falls observation deck, asked, “What are the Americans like? Are they like you Canadians?”

My first thought was how sad it was that we couldn’t just nip across the border and give the visitors some first hand experience of Americans in America. We could let them gather some impressions that they could put against the stereotypes that all media---in the Middle East and here---perpetuate. In a world of visa restrictions, that was just not possible.

I thought I knew what was in his mind. This was their first visit to North America, and they had told us they wondered how they would be received---eight Arabs, including two women in head scarves--- especially after 9/11.

The tour had gone well. The visitors were eager to learn and they followed the various presentations carefully, asking challenging questions. The Canadian experts, stimulated by this show of interest, responded wonderfully, discussing policies and programs that had worked and those that hadn’t. The experts loaded the visitors down with documents, software, and computer links. Usually I had to cut off discussion so we could get to our next appointment.

I was proud of the kindness and generosity of the Canadian experts. They never preached about the greatness of their work, they just shared. The visitors told me again and again how impressed they were with the Canadians they were meeting.

Scattered through the tour were visits to some tourist sites, a chance to relax and take some pictures. After visits to employment experts in Montreal, we took time out to visit St. Joseph’s Oratory on Mount-Royal. The group took pictures of the Oratory and of the magnificent view across the St. Lawrence.

Then, one of the group asked if they could go into the Oratory, where a mass was underway. I was uneasy---religion is, of course, so sensitive. Might someone back in Jordan object that I had ‘taken’ these Muslims into a Christian church?

I spoke to the leader of the group and told him about the request and my concern that a visit to a mass might be misunderstood. His response was, if they want to go, let them go.

With that, we all, including the leader, trooped quietly into the back of one of the Oratory’s large chapels. One of the chapel officials smiled and nodded a ‘welcome’ to us. After some minutes, watching a priest conduct the mass, one of the group asked if they could sit down. They slid into a pew and watched quietly and intently as the parishioners kneeled, prayed, and responded as the priest led them through the liturgy. Finally, I whispered that we had to move on to our next appointment.

As we got onto the bus, I could see that they were trying to digest what they had just seen---their first visit to a Christian church---and the quiet but warm welcome they had received.

Thinking back over these experiences, as we stood by the Falls, I tried to formulate an answer to the question, “Are Americans like you Canadians?”

Finally, I said that on a national level some of our values were different and these differences were reflected in approaches to social, economic and international policies that were not always the same---for example universal health care, or the Iraq war.

But, on an individual basis, he would have trouble telling us apart.

He thanked me and wandered off, deep in thought.

I wasn’t---and am not---very happy with my reply.

The Koreans have a proverb: “It is better to see once than hear a hundred times”. To tell someone what Americans are like doesn’t have the same impact as seeing them in their own country.

It is terribly sad that tightened non-immigrant visa requirements---as necessary as they may be---make it hard for people from the Middle East to see for themselves what Americans are like.


Walking to Port Stanley at Night

At 2 A.M., in June 1955, I was trudging along the road from St. Thomas to Port Stanley, on Lake Erie.

“At least it’s not raining,” I told myself.

Unless I could hitch a ride---not likely in the middle of the night---I had another 10 miles or so to go.

A few weeks earlier, things seemed to be going well. I had graduated from high school, been accepted by Queen’s University at Kingston and had a conditional offer of a summer job at a brewery in Kitchener-Waterloo---a job that would help finance my first year at Queen’s.

Then I got a letter from the brewery saying that there was a hitch but they would let me know as soon as possible whether I could have a job. I waited for a week and then decided that I could end up waiting all summer. I decided I would hitch-hike to the tobacco-growing area of south-western Ontario. I had been told that work on tobacco farms was plentiful and reasonably well-paid, although hard.

Motorists were ready to pick up hitch-hikers in those days and I was soon in Tillsonburg, the heart of the tobacco country. At the local National Employment Service office, an official interrupted a card game with colleagues to tell me that I was too late for the ‘suckering’ (plucking tobacco blossoms to prevent seeds from forming) and too early for the picking.

The official had me fill out a long employment registration form, then told me there were no jobs available, and went back to playing cards with his colleagues. I was angry at the off-hand way he had treated me. (Years later, I became responsible for the operation of local employment offices and started something called Revitalization of the Employment Service, a program designed to improve the service to job-seekers. But that’s another story.)

I hitched a ride to Port Dover, nearly got a job on a fishing boat and then moved on to Port Stanley and found a job making chips (French fries) at a long-established, family-owned restaurant called Mackies, on the boardwalk by the beach. Mackies was famous for a tasty orange drink. and for its chips, which it served with a delicious home-made sauce that was a cross between ketchup and chili sauce.

The base pay wasn’t great and the hours were long but there was a bonus at the end of the week, if sales had been good (not in the same league as Wall Street bonuses, however!!) and there was a cottage where the staff could stay rent-free. Life was good and I was putting money away for the coming year.

One evening I decided to take the London and Port Stanley electric railway (referred to by the locals as the L. & P.S, which someone told me meant Late & Poor Service, or Lost & Presumed Sunk) to London to see a play at the Grand Theatre.

The play was a French farce with lots of sudden entrances and exits.

It was fun---and also long.

And, I missed the last train to Port Stanley.

I took a city bus to the outskirts of London and then started hitch-hiking. One ride took me to St. Thomas and then another to a few miles south of the city, dropping me off in the middle of the country, with fields on both sides of me.

I waited for a while but no cars came and I decided I had no choice but to walk home. As I walked, I came to a long cast-iron fence on my left with some large buildings behind, all in darkness.

Then I heard a vehicle, and turning around, stuck out my thumb. A pickup truck slowed down, then speeded up and I started walking again. Then the truck stopped and backed up to me.

“Where are you going?”, a man asked.

I told him Port Stanley and explained I had missed the last L&PS train in London.

“Get in. I’m not going into Port Stanley but I’ll drop you on the outskirts.”

As I climbed into the truck, he said, “Don’t ever try to hitch a ride here.”

I looked at him blankly, and he pointed to a sign that his headlights were picking up, “Hospital area. Do Not Pick Up Hitch-Hikers.”

“That’s the St. Thomas Mental Hospital, over there, behind the fence. They have a lot of criminally insane patients in there.”

We had a good chat and he took me right to my cottage.

As I got out of the truck, I thanked him for taking a chance that I wasn’t a criminally insane patient on the run. He just chuckled, and took off.


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I didn’t plan to include jokes in the blog but here is a favourite that seems appropriate:
A man driving past a mental hospital heard a bang and realized that his right front tire had gone flat. Muttering to himself, he got out, jacked up the car, removed the hub cap, unscrewed the lug nuts and put them in the upside-down hub cap.
As he started back to get the spare tire, he noticed that a patient was studying him from the other side of an iron fence. Upset at being watched, the driver accidentally kicked the hub cap and the lug nuts went down a drain.
He cursed and said, “Now what do I do?”
“It’s easy”, said the patient, in a quiet voice, “Take one nut off each of the other wheels and use them to put on the spare tire. That will get you to a garage.
“That’s great”, the driver said with relief, “How did you know that?”
“Look,” the patient replied, “I’m crazy, not stupid.”

Can You Be in Moscow by Friday?

People who are about to retire sometimes want to know how one gets a consulting contract. I tell them about the obvious things one should do, such as sending out CVs, and building a network of friends and contacts.

But then I tell them that sometimes the unpredictable happens, and tell them this story about how I got my contract in Russia.

I had been retired for three years, had done some short-term consulting and was part-way through a book I was trying to write about a trip Pat and I had taken on the Thames River, retracing the route taken by Jerome K. Jerome in his Three Men in a Boat, Not to Mention a Dog.

On a Monday, two weeks before Christmas in 1994, I was talking to an electrician at our home in Ottawa describing some work we wanted him to do. The phone rang and Pat came in to say that Chris (from my old department, Human Resources and Skill Development) wanted to talk to me ‘urgently’. I asked her if she could tell him that I was tied up but would call him soon. She came back and said Chris insisted on talking to me right away.

I picked up the phone and without saying hello, Chris said, “John, can you be in Moscow by Friday?”

“Well, my passport is valid, but can you get me a visa before Friday?’

“The visa’s no problem. Here’s the deal.” He went on to explain that the World Bank had invited Canada to bid on a large, two-year project, which the Bank would be funding, to set up model employment centres across Russia. My old department had been invited to participate in the bid and it had to find a person with employment service operational experience to join a team of three people who would go to Moscow, study the situation and prepare the bid. It would be two or three weeks work, at most.

As Chris had predicted, the visa came through and I left Ottawa on Friday with the team leader and another expert. We spent several days visiting existing local offices around Moscow and talking to Russian officials about the proposal.

The Russians wanted a western employment service to create 20 model employment centres scattered through eight time zones from Moscow, through Siberia, to the Pacific. We agreed that the project made sense, that the time-frame of two years was about right and that Canada and my old department had the resources to do the job, if our bid were accepted (the U.S. and Australian governments were also submitting bids).

But, it was clear that the project would be a difficult one given the lamentable state of the existing employment centres, the huge distances involved, the shaky state of the Russian transportation system and the general economic upheaval as Russia adjusted to a market economy. And then there was, of course, winter in Siberia.

The three of us sat down in our hotel to draft the Canadian proposal, my role being to write the sections on operational details. The World Bank had set out project requirements quite clearly and things went smoothly until I came to a requirement that we had not discussed, that the winning country had to appoint one of its experts to be an on-site project manager, based in Moscow.

Thinking of the problems of travel, weather, and economic dislocation, I turned to the team leader and asked, “Who in the heck are you going to get to be the on-site manager?”

The team leader looked at me, paused, and said, “I was kind of hoping you would take it on.”

“But”, I sputtered, “We are running a Bed and Breakfast, and I’m doing some writing…”

“You don’t have to make a decision now, talk to your wife, think it over and let us know.”

Pat and I talked it over and discussed it with the family. In the end, we all agreed that I should take it on, if Canada won, which it did.

And, that’s how one contract came to be.


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Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


We toured Britain by car when the boys were in their mid-teens and our daughter was about 8. To help them pass the time between castles, cathedrals, restaurants and hotels, we bought them a tape recorder. They used it sometimes to record their impressions of things they had seen. When they got bored, they would do things like sticking it out the car window and saying, “That’s what the wind sounds like in Durham (or Nottingham…).”

At the end of a hectic day, we arrived in Oxford, all of us anxious to get out of the car and stretch. Disregarding signs that encouraged drivers to park on the outskirts and take a bus downtown, we carried on to our hotel, in the centre of the city, where we had booked rooms and a parking spot.

We found the hotel without much trouble but although we could see it, we couldn’t figure out how to drive to it, what with one-way streets, and barriers, designed I suppose to keep cars out of the centre. Round and round we went looking for an alley or side street that would let us drive up to the hotel.

There was a fairly animated discussion between the driver and the navigator about whose fault it was that we couldn’t get to the hotel. You know the kind of marital give and take: “If you would just drive a little slower”, and ‘’’If you would just give a little more warning about turns”, etc. etc.

Finally we stopped a cyclist, an Oxford student, and told her our problem.

“No trouble at all”, she said and went over to a hinged barrier arm that was blocking us, and lifting it up, waved us through.

We decided she would do well in life.

After dinner, the kids brought out the tape recorder and began to play the animated discussion, which they had taped in full.

Embarrassment!

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See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe!

POSTING # 7:

Three Major Issues Facing Niagara-on-the-Lake, Including Virgil; Some Highlights from Hilton Head; Starting a Nuclear Reactor in the United Kingdom; Will They Miss the Boat?; Word Problems; Wish I Had Had a Camera; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


Three Major Issues Facing Niagara-on-the-Lake, Including Virgil


You move to a new area---as we have done---and want to be a good citizen with considered opinions on the key issues concerning the residents of your new community.

That’s the ideal, but it is not always easy to live up to it.

There are three issues dividing the community at the moment and the two weekly newspapers are full of editorials, articles and letters about them. We are having a tough time figuring out which arguments are valid and which are just special pleading.

Here are the issues (they may well remind you of issues you have faced or are facing in your own communities):

1. Whether the Niagara District Secondary School, located in Niagara-on-the-Lake, should be closed and the students bused to St. Catharines. (The School Board favours this but many parents are objecting while other parents are quietly transferring their children to St. Catharines’ high schools where, it is claimed, the standards may be higher.)
2. Whether the new, state-of-the-art, centre-of-excellence Niagara hospital should be built in the western end of St. Catharines or in a more southerly municipality, closer to patients from places such as Fort Erie and Port Colborne.
3. Whether Project Niagara should be allowed to go ahead. The National Arts Centre and the Toronto Symphony Orchestras are proposing to launch in 2012 (the bicentenary of the start of the war of 1812) a 17 week international musical festival outdoors in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Promoters say that this Tanglewood North, on the shore of Lake Ontario with the Toronto skyline as a backdrop will bring in millions of dollars and many new jobs but some people wonder what the increased number of people and cars would do to the character of the town. (I wonder if the first program will include the 1812 Overture---just asking.)


Some Highlights from Hilton Head

The economic crisis has begun to have an impact on even the affluent residents of Hilton Head (HH).

A retired professional who moved to HH from the north 14 years ago and has been going annually to Africa as a volunteer at his own expense told us that he will have to stop doing that. His savings are dwindling away as the stock market tanks.

An article in the local paper told retired couples how to adjust to reduced income by, for example, having pot luck dinners with friends instead of going out to eat, by shopping at thrift stores and by using coupons.

The restaurants are fighting back with more early bird specials and the clothing stores are offering some amazing buys (we went down with 3 suitcases and had to buy a 4th for the trip home. (While we were buying our suitcase---at a thrift store---a man was getting help carrying a huge carpet out to his car. The store clerk asked whether his car would hold the carpet and the man replied that he was sure it would, it was a Cadillac Escalade.)

The County Sheriff had a press briefing on increasing crime, even in ‘gated’ communities. “Criminals are criminals, thugs are thugs but in hard times good people sometimes do bad things.” He encouraged people to lock their cars and homes. (Not far from our condo, a thief entered an unlocked 2008 Range Rover, and took a handbag worth $2000, which contained $400 in cash and a cell phone.)


Starting a Nuclear Reactor in the United Kingdom

Listening to pundits challenging the Obama economists to tell them exactly how and when the stimulus package and bank bail out will work reminds me of a story a friend tells.

As a nuclear physicist working on one of Britain’s first nuclear power stations, he helped load the reactor with uranium rods and whatever else is needed to make a reactor work (I am really out of my depth here). Outsiders kept asking him and the other physicists when the reactor would start to work. The answer was that they couldn’t release that information, implying that the experts knew exactly when the reactor would start but couldn’t tell because of security concerns.

In fact, the experts had no idea when the reactor would begin. It would start when it was ready.

To while away the time, the physicists set up a secret office pool in which they guessed not just the hour and minute, but the day, the reactor would come alive! The reactor eventually did come alive and as far as I know is still functioning.

I feel sorry for Obama’s economists. Even though the laws of physics may not allow one to predict exactly when a reactor will start, they explain much more than the ‘laws’ of economics. How does one predict the impact that human emotions such as greed, fear, distrust, envy, anger or confidence will have on an economy?

Perhaps we should just let the economists get on with their tough and absolutely critical task.

Will They Miss the Boat?

Talking about Britain, Pat and I finished our London posting in 1966 and prepared to return to Canada by sea with our two sons, one three years old and the other 9 months. Friends, another couple from the Canadian High Commission, were travelling on the same ship with two girls about the same age as our boys. (In those days, it was cheaper to travel by sea than air and the government allowed only deputy ministers to fly.)

The four of us and the children were sitting in a waiting room at dockside in Liverpool, having already checked in the baggage that wouldn’t be required during the voyage. We were waiting for officials from British Immigration and the shipping company to arrive to check our passports and tickets. I reached into my briefcase to check, for the umpteenth time, that I had the passports and tickets.

My colleague watched me and then blurted out, “Oh my god!”

He said he had put his family’s passports and tickets in a suitcase that he had checked as not required during the voyage, and which by now was almost certainly in the hold of the ship.

His wife’s face turned white and the four children, sensing a huge problem, started to cry.

In my work at the High Commission, I had developed friendships with people in both British Immigration and the shipping company and I was frantically trying to think whom I could contact to get permission for our friends to board without their documents. In an era before cell phones, I was having trouble figuring out how to reach the right people before boarding started.

Suddenly, my friend said, “I’ve got an idea.”, and took off.

The officials opened the boarding gates but we, of course, waited with our friend’s wife and her children.

Thirty minutes passed and still no sign of my colleague. Most of the passengers had boarded and tension was mounting.

Then, my friend arrived, waving the documents and we went through the various checks.

Later, in a bar on the ship, our friend told us how he had got the documents.

He had gone down to the dock with the idea of somehow getting into the hold. As he studied the situation he saw that workers carrying bags into the hold wore cloth caps with a large metal badge with a number. As they went up the gangway, a Customs inspector wrote down the number of their badge and admitted them to the ship.

Our friend found a worker waiting to carry some bags onto the ship, took him aside and offered him ten pounds (a very good amount at that time) to borrow his hat. The fellow agreed and our friend left his suit coat and tie with the worker, put on the cap, picked up the bags and went up the gangway. The inspector checked his badge and waved him on.

Once in the hold, he discovered that the luggage was being stored in different sections by alphabet. He located his section, found his bag and took out his documents.

We raised our glasses in praise of his quick thinking!

Word Problems

When I was young, Dad once asked me to go into the house and get the kodak. I had no idea what he was talking about but Mom prompted, “The camera”.

As I went to get the camera, I thought it was a shame that older people couldn’t keep up with the language. No one I knew called a camera a kodak (when Dad was young all the cameras were made by Kodak).

Of course, now the shoe is on the other foot, as we say.

I’m the one who is not keeping up with the changing meaning of words.

For example, I was at the car service centre recently and wanted the technician (I know they are no longer called mechanics) to adjust the head lights because people were flipping their high beams at me. I told the service adviser that people were ‘flashing me’, and I thought I saw a hint of a grin on her face.

When I came back for the car, she said, “We’ve fixed the lights, Mr. Hunter. No one is going to flash you now.”

This time, there was a definite grin, and I finally twigged.

Another example, this week Pat and I were eating at Bob Evans in Niagara Falls NY. I decided that I would have just one bun instead of the usual two they provide and would have a piece of their excellent banana bread instead. As soon as I said the word ‘bun’ to the server I knew I was in trouble. As quickly as I could, I uttered ‘roll’ but it wasn’t quick enough to stop her face going rapidly from puzzlement to amusement.

Travelling to different countries can also, of course, create word problems.

When we lived in England, I wanted to get some sour cream for the baked potatoes we were having with dinner. I went to the dairy counter at the largest department store in Leeds.

“Do you have sour cream?”

“What do you want?”, the clerk said and, with some belligerence, added, “All our cream is fresh.”

I explained about baked potatoes, and after a pause, she said, “Oh, you mean SOURED cream.”

A young friend visiting Canada from the U.S. also had a problem with words. She was studying at one of the libraries at the University of Toronto and asked a woman at the Information Desk for a ‘rest room’.

The woman looked very concerned and said. “Oh dear, it’s not ideal but we have a small room with a cot that we use when we feel ill. You are welcome to use it.”

After some discussion, our friend was directed to a ‘washroom’.

Wish I Had Had a Camera

In a mall this week, I saw a couple of men who were preparing to demonstrate one of those ShamWow-type absorbent cloths that you see on TV. They had spilled some water on the floor and one of the men was cleaning it up with PAPER TOWELS. Wouldn’t that have been great on YouTube?

Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Our one and only burglary (touch wood) happened at our home in the Glebe in Ottawa. Pat had been away for an hour in mid-morning picking up a friend. As she came up the porch steps, she saw that the front door was ajar. Alarmed, she pushed open the door and saw coats strewn on the floor.

Without thinking that the burglars might still be in the house, Pat screamed, “Cassidy, what has happened to Cassidy?” and raced for the kitchen.

And there was Cass, crouched on the floor, gnawing on a turkey drumstick thoughtfully provided by the thugs from our fridge.

Pat leaned over to cuddle him and simultaneously tried to pull away the drumstick because, of course, poultry bones can get stuck in a dog’s throat.

Cass growled at her.

Later on, when he had got over the loss of the drumstick, Cass came up to Pat, wagged his tail and sat down, as though he wanted to tell her about the nice people who had come to visit while she was away.

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See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe!

POSTING # 6: The Ice Wine Harvest; Mince Tarts in Hilton Head; Canadians Celebrating the U.S Presidential Inauguration; Arrogant Bankers; Short Stuff

The Ice Wine Harvest

While we were on holiday and enjoying the sun in South Carolina, we did take time--- now and then---to worry about the ice wine harvest back in the Virgil area. (I know this may seem hard to believe but you’re just going to have to trust us.)

Picking ice wine grapes is a tricky business. As you know, they stay on the vines after the normal grapes are picked, waiting until they have frozen and thawed enough times to bring the sugar and acid content up to the desired levels. When the berries become brown they are ready to harvest but the actual picking has to wait until some night when the temperature is -10C or colder.

Some vineyards had picked their grapes during a cold spell in December but other vineyard managers felt the grapes weren’t quite ready and gambled on a cold spell in January.

The gamble paid off. The second week of January was ideal for picking and the 2008 crop is now safely in fermentation vats.

I hear that the yield was large and the winemakers expect that 2008 will prove to be a very good year for ice wine.

I like to think that our worrying helped.



Mince Tarts in Hilton Head

In the Posting #5, I mentioned that we were taking mincemeat with us so I could have my 12 tarts between Christmas and New Years. Our plan, you will recall, was to buy frozen tart shells and fill them with good Canadian mincemeat.

But, there were no tart shells to be had in Hilton Head! And we weren’t about to try to make pastry dough in a skimpily-equipped vacation kitchen.

Happily, Mrs. Smith came to our rescue. One supermarket had two frozen mincemeat pies made by Mrs. Smith. Pat used her skills in geometry and quilting to calculate, with great precision, slices of pie that would be exactly equal to a normal tart.

According to Pat’s calculations, I have had the equivalent of at least 14 tarts.

We feel well prepared for 2009.

Canadians Celebrating the U.S Presidential Inauguration


After cheering, holding our breath, biting our nails etc. for Obama last fall, it didn’t seem right just to sit in our rented condo and watch the inauguration on television. It was a time to be with others. But, how to do that?

Then we saw an advertisement announcing an inauguration lunch at a local restaurant, Dye’s Gullah Fixin’s, that we had visited the week before. (The Gullah are descendants of blacks who settled along the coast of North and South Carolina after the Civil War. Dye offers some wonderful dishes from her Gullah ancestors including light, rich corn bread served with home-made sugar cane syrup, fried oysters, and peach dump---sliced peaches are ‘dumped’ into a baking dish with batter.)

The lunch was sponsored by the Beaufort County Democratic Club South of the Broad (the Broad is a river that divides Beaufort County between the city of Beaufort in the north and Hilton Head in the south). We sent an email to the organizer (to be honest, we were a little economical with the truth and didn’t say we were Canadians just in case…). He replied saying he had reserved tickets for us but warned the restaurant would be crowded.

We got there early and found space at a table with two other couples, from Pittsburgh. We shook hands, “Hi, I’m John and this is my wife Pat.”

One of the women said, “You’re Canadians.”

Pat looked at her, “How did you know? We haven’t said, ‘Out’ ‘About’ or ‘Eh’?”

“It’s your accent.”

Pat explained that we weren’t going to say we were Canadians for fear they would think we were crashing their party.

“Oh, you’re very welcome.” (And, indeed, we couldn’t have been treated more warmly.)

We learned later that the woman who ‘outed’ us attends the Shaw Festival with her husband every May and October. She certainly knows her Canadian accents!

The restaurant filled quickly and the organizer kept wandering around, wringing his hands, and saying, “I hope the Fire Marshall doesn’t drop in.”

We noticed there was a reporter with a notebook interviewing three women at a table behind us. Here is part of her article as it appeared in the Island Packet on the day after the inauguration. The reporter captured very well the mood and emotions of the party.


Julie Cordray of Sun City Hilton Head is black and grew up in South Carolina during the civil rights era.
Ina Takashima of Hilton Head Island is a Japanese-American who was incarcerated with her parents in an internment camp during World War II.
Lena Epps Brooker is a Native American who grew up in a part of North Carolina that had three-way segregation separating whites, blacks and "Indians."
“For the three women who sat among a larger group of friends, Obama's swearing-in was the culmination of lifelong hopes -- hopes their parents told them to hold onto from the time they were girls -- that one day a racial minority would win the White House.
"My parents told me that change would come, that barriers would come down," Brooker said. "Today, it did."
"Minorities are in board rooms and running businesses," she continued. "This is the last barrier. It's been reached. What my parents told me about -- it's here."
Cordray said she felt a "sense of completeness" as Obama took the oath. "It empowered all of us," the Georgetown native said.
Takashima still had tears running down her face 10 minutes after the new president finished his inaugural speech.
"This means the world to me," she said. "After suffering prejudice and hatred in my life, this day has finally come."
The three women weren't the only ones moved by the historic inauguration.
Obama supporters at Tuesday's gathering watched the event on two televisions placed on opposite sides of the small Gullah restaurant. One was propped up on a yellow ladder, a microphone perched next to it to amplify the sound. Beneath the television hung a poster with an image of Obama's face and the word "hope."
People stood and wept and cheered during the swearing in and after the inaugural speech. They sang the national anthem along with the United States Navy Band Sea Chanters as though the Hilton Head gathering was actually taking place at the Capitol.

It seemed to me that the whites, although pleased with the election of the first African-American, were rejoicing primarily because the Bush years were over and because the Obama victory promised more responsible national and international policies.

For the non-whites, the inauguration meant all of that but something else. They were celebrating the beginning of a new era, an era that promised greater fairness in the pursuit of the happiness promised nearly 250 years ago in the Declaration of Independence.

A remarkable day.

A remarkable nation!

Arrogant Bankers

The media are full these days of stories about Wall Street Bankers, their greed, conceit and, often, plain stupidity.
It remind me of a story that a friend tells of a run-in she had a few years ago with her banker. She lives in a small U.S. town and was having a contractor replace her sidewalk, steps and patio. When he had finished he gave her a bill for the price they had agreed upon---$7000---and asked if she could give it to him in cash (I hope neither she nor he is ever offered a job in Washington that requires them to reveal all their tax histories!).
Our friend went to her bank, was greeted by name by the teller and gave her a withdrawal slip for the $7000.
The teller started when she saw the amount, “I’m sorry but I can’t give you that much cash”.
“Why not? There’s enough money to cover it.”
“I just can’t.”
“But it’s my money.”
“I better let you see the manager.”
Our friend, keeping her cool remarkably well, sat down in front of the manager’s desk. He engaged in some small talk about her family and then said, “Now tell me dear, what are you going to do with this money?”
Our friend told us that she considered and rejected several options in the second or two after the banker’s question. Should she tell him the truth? Should she tell him it was none of his business? Should she tell him that his question was insulting and demeaning?
In the end, she leaned forward and whispered in a confidential tone, “Well, you know what young lovers are like.”
The banker had the decency to turn red. He quickly initialed the withdrawal slip and passed our friend back to the teller.

Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Last month, coming back from a stroll by the ocean, Pat and I were crossing the narrow wooden ramp over the dunes and met a couple with two Prince Charles Spaniels. The man was about 20 feet ahead of his wife, being pulled along by a lovely dog, with a tennis ball in its mouth. The dog paused to sniff Pat, keeping the ball in its mouth. Pat leaned over, let the dog smell her hand, and then ruffled his fur and told him what a fine dog he was.

Suddenly, the dog with the woman began to bark furiously. The woman tried to shush it but finally had to pick it up. We left the man and walked to the woman and the still-barking dog.

The woman frowned at us and said accusingly, “You touched her sister.”

We didn’t know what to say.

Then the dog stopped barking and leaned over to sniff us. After the hand-sniffing ritual, we told her what a beautiful dog she was and played with her ears. If she had been a cat, she would have been purring.

The women, a little friendlier now, told us that her dog couldn’t stand anyone paying attention to her sister.

Apparently, sibling rivalry is not just a human condition.

We asked if her dog also liked to play fetch on the beach.

“No, she can’t be bothered. She just chases the birds.”

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Years ago when the children were young, we went for a swim at an ocean beach that was new to us. The waves were fairly high and I wasn’t sure whether there might be an undertow. The two boys knew about swimming in the ocean but they were getting quite far out. I thought it would be a good idea to give them a warning.

“Watch for an undertow”, I shouted.

Our daughter (who was younger than the boys, didn’t have any ocean experience and had no idea what an undertow was) stopped what she was doing. She decided that it would be a good idea to repeat the warning (she had a fine set of lungs and as is normal with youngest children she loved a chance to tell her older siblings what to do). She let out two good shouts, repeating what she thought she had heard.

Then she turned to me, with a growing look of horror, “What’s an undertoad, Dad?’

(I still wonder what kind of ugly, threatening reptile her imagination had conjured up.)

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See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe!