POSTING #144

Potluck Posting from Virgil

I saw a poster this week for a church dinner, and it reminded me of the potluck dinners that churches in Arthur used to hold. In honour of those dinners, here is a motley collection of stories. As with the dishes at the church dinners---casseroles, potato salads, green Jell-O salads with marshmallows, cakes, pies, butter tarts and so on--- you will probably find that some are tastier than others.

I hope you will find something you can enjoy!

A New Niagara Winery 

Last week we visited the Megalomaniac Winery, which is carved out of the rock at the crest of the Niagara Escarpment, above the town of Vineland.

Before we go on, we better deal with the name.

The highly successful but not not-at-all-bashful entrepreneur, John Howard, who made a bundle of money from the sale of Vineland Estates Winery, decided to create a new winery on the Escarpment. Here is how he explains the name:

“I originally wanted to christen these wines in my name, John Howard…and then my friends accused me of being yet another '[profanity withheld] megalomaniac'. Regrettably, the name stuck.

And so, I now produce wines called Megalomaniac. Meant to be shared with friends of equivalent or even greater egos. Pairs extremely well with delusional fantasies of wealth, power, and occasionally, omnipotence.

Enjoy.”

The entrance to the winery is through high, totally splendid oak doors.

On the left is a tiny office for placing orders, while straight ahead is the working part of the winery, with shiny stainless steel tanks, black hoses winding along the wet floor, and in the rear stacks of wooden barrels going back into the ‘cave’.

Along one wall is a tasting bar.

The man at the tasting bar had obviously picked up Howard’s penchant for extravagant overstatement. As he offered us a taste of a reserve Merlot, he intoned, “When you taste this, you will think you are an angel on the doorstep of paradise.”

The wine was actually pretty good, if not heavenly, but, at $40 a bottle, a little out of our price range.

We bought a couple of quite acceptable, and more reasonably priced, Rieslings.

As we paid for the wines, we admired a Megalomaniac Tee shirt, black with a message in large white letters, “Intimidate, don’t imitate”.

The bottle labels convey the aristocratic, wealthy image  the Megalomaniac  Winery wants to project with  the elegant gentleman, bowler hat and all.

We will go back often to sample the wines and John Howard’s ebullient---and definitely un-Canadian---hutzpah.

And the view over Lake Ontario from the winery is not too shabby either.

The Revitalized Fort George

I’ve been embarrassed in the past to recommend that friends and relatives visit ‘our’ fort, Fort George.  At first it was because it had a dilapidated air, and then it was because it was always under construction, as the Federal Government spent huge amounts of money to restore it.

No more!

The restoration process is complete and the result is outstanding. And---as planned---just in time for the Bicentennial of the War of 1812.

We took our family and a friend (13 of us---but who’s superstitious) to the Fort last weekend.

Our guide/interpreter, Sonya, seemed to draw energy and enthusiasm from the changes that have been made to the Fort. She bounded around the displays as she skillfully and objectively outlined the history of the Fort and of the War of 1812. We were convinced that her presentational skills must have come from a background with the Shaw, but, no, she had been a teacher. She is priceless!

The artifacts are authentic and not to be missed.

The tour was followed with a musket demonstration. Our two year old grandson, with his hands over his ears, grinned and jumped as the guns boomed.

We were then free to explore the Fort. The younger and more nimble members of the family, including the two year old, raced to the powder magazine, and then through a tunnel to a lookout tower. Later on, the two year old kept repeating ‘cave’ as he tried, with his eyes dancing and his hands flying, to describe the tunnel and the tower.

The Fort is now ‘two thumbs up---away up’.

It is not to be missed.

And the gift shop, just outside the Fort, is also worth a visit. It is run by a volunteer group, Friends of Fort George, and is full of high quality souvenirs (schlock not permitted), books on Canadian history, patterns for 1812 costumes, and on and on.

We will be back often.

Niagara-on-the-Lake Has a Potter’s Field

A recent article in the St. Catharines Standard shocked and angered citizens of Niagara-on-the-Lake (that includes those of us who live in Virgil---our village was incorporated into the municipality of NOTL in 1970).

We discovered that a field owned by the provincial Ministry of Transportation in the southern part of our municipality, just off the QEW, is being used as a disposal site for ‘road kill’---for animals killed on the QEW and nearby roads. Apparently, a company has a contract to collect the dead animals, take them to the field, and cover them with gravel.

Two aspects of the story troubled us. First, it seemed that some of the animals were not being properly covered. Coyotes had discovered the field and found it easy to dig through the thin layer of gravel, and feast on the dead deer, raccoons, cats and so on.

And then, a pet dog, Jeremiah (part lab), who had been missing for several months was discovered by a woman who recognized him from photos she had seen in the newspaper. Apparently, the ‘road kill’ contractors hadn’t made any effort to notify the family of the death of their pet even though the dog was wearing a tag.

We are told that the Ministry of Transportation is preparing a new protocol that will make it clear to the contractor that dead animals are to be properly covered, and that efforts must be made to notify owners of dead pets.

I am sure that it is the first time that the words ‘Niagara-on-the-Lake’ and ‘road kill’ have been used in the same story.

And we don’t like it.

It is not good for our brand!

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As a digression, after I used ‘Potter’s Field’ in the title, I decided to look up the origin of the expression. It seems to have Biblical roots.

In Matthew 27:7, the disciples discussed what to do with the thirty pieces of silver that Judas had left behind after he hung himself, out of remorse for having betrayed Jesus. The 2007 New Living Translation of the verse is:

“After some discussion they finally decided to buy the potter's field, and they made it into a cemetery for foreigners.”

The ‘potter’s field’ was a place where a potter would have collected the clay needed for pots, bowls, and so on. Because of the clay, the field would not have been suitable for agriculture, but would have been perfectly suitable for the burial of people.

In North American, and perhaps elsewhere, the term has, of course, been used for the places in which the indigent (and the executed) were buried.

‘The Tragically Hip’ Are Coming to Niagara-on-the-Lake!

The Kingston, Ontario band, ‘The Tragically Hip’ (or just ‘The Hip’ to aficionados) is performing on June 30 in a large park in The Old Town, near the Butler’s Barracks. Some 20,000-30,000 people are expected to listen to the band, which at last count has won 14 Juno awards.

A concert with so many people has required some compromises from our small and staid community. The organizers of the tour held a well-attended public meeting, which from all reports proceeded in a very civilized manner. As a result of the meeting and subsequent discussions in the Town Council some changes were agreed upon.

First, the Town’s noise bylaw has had to be amended so that for June 30th (and for June 30th only) it comes into effect at 11PM, instead of10 PM. One senior resident of the area said that while she really didn’t appreciate the ‘so-called music of rock groups’, she supposed she could put up with the noise for one additional hour.

Secondly, a number of streets will have to be blocked off, with most of the music lovers being bused in from parking lots outside the town. The Shaw Festival has shown commendable community spirit by cancelling one evening performance and by shifting another to an afternoon matinee.

Our War of 1812 Bicentennial Committee will have a booth at the concert, in order to give out information on the events we are planning. I can report that many of our younger volunteers have bravely offered to ‘man’ the booth, despite the ‘noise’.

A ‘Shout Out’ for a Mystery Novel

I picked up a mystery the other day at our library, ‘The Wild Beasts of Wuhan’. I saw that it was by a Canadian author, Ian Hamilton, and decided to borrow it.

The name seemed familiar, and then it came to me. He had been in Canadian Immigration when I was with the service and our paths had crossed on one or two occasions.

Now retired from the public service, Ian has been using his experience with Canadian Immigration in the Far East and elsewhere in the world to write mystery novels. He introduced his heroine, Torontonian Ava Lee, in ‘The Water Rat of Wanchai’. This novel was followed by another in the series, ‘The Disciple of Las Vegas’. ‘The Wild Beasts of Wuhan’ followed and I understand Ian has a new book about to appear.

I found ‘The Wild Beasts of Wuhan’ a really good read. Clever plot, well developed characters, and fascinating (but not excessive) descriptions of life in China today.

I am now going to read the earlier novels, starting with ‘The Water Rat of Wanchai’.

I enjoy mysteries but I have been getting a little bored lately with some popular authors who seem increasingly to be writing to a formula.

Ian Hamilton doesn’t.

If you like mysteries, you may want to give him a try.

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I hope you enjoyed this potluck posting, and that you found something as tasty as a piece of Mrs. Workman’s never-to-be-forgotten peach pie!

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See you on May 6, 2012 for Posting #145 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:
There is a new Posting (# 8) in The Icewine Guru blog. In it the Guru gives his prediction on the Supreme Court decision on the health care mandate. He and the Professor and their wives then discuss religion and politics. If you would like to read the Posting, please click on:
http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

POSTING #143

Scents and Nonsense

I am afraid this Posting is going to be a bit of a rant!

Perhaps you would prefer to spend the next few minutes doing something else---something useful like clipping your toe nails, sorting out tatty underwear, or polishing some silver.

I assure you, I'll understand.

To those who are still with me, I want to make it clear that I am not one of those who decries the role of chemistry in our lives.

The white-coated boffins with their test tubes have created some wonderful, life-enhancing products. Where would we be without plastics (he says as he types on a plastic keyboard, checks the words on a plastic screen, saves everything on a plastic disk etc. etc.)

 But artificial scents are something else!

In olden times, people used a mortar and pestle to mash the petals of roses, lily of the valley, lavender and other flowers, then added a little alcohol and some aromatic oils to produce perfumes.

The result was a wholesome fragrance that lifted one's spirits.

And then the chemists decided they could produce fragrances cheaper and better by using jugs of crude coil or lumps of coal. They would bombard atoms, split compounds, excite molecules---that kind of alchemist's stuff.

Society ended up with heavy, artificial perfumes and aftershave that caused people with less than perfect lungs (like yours truly) to cough and wheeze.

Then came fragrance-free zones and we could breathe again. Just another example that people are basically decent---when they saw that wearing perfume or aftershave was on a par with breaking wind in a crowd they stopped applying them.

But the chemists, having lost that battle, have shifted ground.

Now they are trying to convince us that our homes smell awful, what with cooking odours, sweaty hockey socks, and odoriferous dogs and cats. The answer, according to the chemists, is to plug in a fragrance dispenser, or go from room to room with a spray bomb.

And the chemists have also moved on to clothes. It is no longer enough that clothes should be clean. They have to smell 'right'.

Which brings me to the subject of my rant. (And not a minute too soon, I can hear someone saying.)

My wife, Pat, had just finished an elaborate, king-bed-sized quilt after several hundred hours of work. over 9 months. Now she needed to wash it and since it was too heavy for our washer and drier, she took it to a careful and responsible laundry that we have been using since our B&B days.

Some of the fabrics and threads used in the quilt are delicate so Pat gave the owner a new container of the cold water detergent that she has been using for 50 years to wash cashmere sweaters and other delicate things.

A few days later Pat picked up the quilt. It looked perfect---the colours hadn't run, the fabrics hadn't shrunk and no threads had pulled loose.

Except...

Except that the quilt smelled. It is hard to describe the odour but I suppose it was a chemist's attempt to imitate a floral fragrance that just hadn't worked. One of our friends said it was a stale smell as though the quilt had been locked away in a damp cupboard for years.

In truth, it was a thoroughly disagreeable smell, a smell, furthermore, that threatened to close my air channels whenever I got a whiff of it.

To make matters worse, the quilt had a greasy feel.

Looking for the culprit, Pat sniffed the detergent container. The scent-free detergent she had been using for decades now had a scent. The same scent as in the quilt!

The laundry re-washed the quilt, using a scent-free detergent in cold water. The odour was less but it was still too strong to have on a bed or even on a chair in the bedroom over night---we tested.

Checking on the Internet, I found that the original company had been taken over by a new firm. I suspect the new owners decided  to give the product some pizzazz by adding that horrible scent. (I wonder if Bain Capital had a role in the takeover!)

A further search led me to a support forum for athletes in which joggers, cyclists and runners complained about the new, awful scent in the detergent they had used for years to wash their spandex outfits. It was the same detergent we had used.

Pat was understandably distraught and angry, and I offered to call the manufacturer's 1-800 number to see if the company had any suggestions on how to remove THEIR scent.

I explained our problem to the 1-800 man. He said that the company no longer made a non-scent detergent. When I expressed surprise, his tone---although courteous---suggested that he thought that the next thing I would be asking for would be a car without a front seat.

Scents were a good thing. And that was that!

I asked if he could check with the company's chemists to see if they had any suggestions about how to remove the scent from our quilt.

He put me on hold for 5 minutes during which, I am sure, he was regaling the chemists in the lab with stories about this 'real one' he had on the phone.

Finally, he came back with two bits of advice. First, wash the quilt again in just cold water, with no detergent.

If that didn't work, we should send it to a dry-cleaner!

Of course, he added, we should make sure the dry-cleaning firm didn't use a scent in its chemicals.

During the whole of our conversation, he didn't apologize once. And he didn't offer to cover the dry-cleaning costs.

Pat has just taken it to a family-owned dry-cleaner and laundry that has been in business since the 1970s. The store advertises that it can safely clean delicate fabrics such as wedding dresses and heritage clothing.

After Pat explained the problem to the owner, the woman suggested that instead of dry-cleaning the quilt, she should wash it with a special, scent-free detergent that they used to remove stubborn odours.

Pat agreed, and now we wait.

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Pat has just come home with the quilt, and it is once again perfect! No scent, no greasy feel. Just a lovely quilt. What's more---it's on the bed!

This quilt is based on an old pattern called 'Grandmother's Garden', which is composed of interlocking hexagons of every colour.  Like a jazz musician, Pat has improvised on the theme, with some of the hexagons connecting while others are floating. She calls it, "This Grandmother's Quilt".

Note the hexagons.

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What is the point of this rant?

Well, it has been cathartic---I feel better.

And perhaps it will save one of our readers from the problem we fell into. Our advice is that you should be wary about using the cold water detergent that you have trusted for years. Only use a cold water detergent that says in big letters: "Scent-Free".

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See you on April 29, 2012 for Posting #144 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting,  or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:
In Posting # 8 in The Icewine Guru blog, the Guru gives his prediction on the Supreme Court decision on the health care mandate. He and the Professor and their wives then discuss religion and politics. If you would like to read the Posting, please click on  http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

Posting #142

Pogo and Polio

The other day I was reading a collection of Walt Kelly's Pogo comic strips, when I saw that in the strip for January 16, 1950 there was a note in one of the panels: "Join the March of Dimes---Fight Infantile Paralysis".

I shuddered, and stopped reading. I thought about one of my school mates from the Arthur District High School who contracted Infantile Paralysis, later known simply as Polio. We had played hockey, marched in the school band and hung out together when suddenly, in I think 1953, he was rushed to the Hamilton General Hospital. We heard that he was in an iron lung to help him breathe but it wasn't clear whether he would survive.

Then while we waited for news on his condition, another of our high school students became ill with symptoms resembling those of polio. He was also taken to Hamilton General but his spinal tests were clear. He didn't have polio.

Everyone was grateful for that news but still worried about the first boy. Finally the news came that our friend would survive but that he would be in an iron lung for months.

My friends and I took up a collection to buy him a gift. Our first thought was a super pair of hockey pants with lots of padding. We all wore hand-me-down hockey gear in our village and we thought he would appreciate having a brand new pair of pants. We also thought, naively, that the gift might somehow motivate him to get back on his feet again.

Our parents pointed out, gently, that he would never play hockey again.

We bought, instead, a fancy five-year diary in red, tooled leather, not thinking that he might consider this as an indication that we believed he was going to be an invalid for a long time.

It was tough trying to find a suitable gift!

I remember going to see him at the Hamilton General a few times. He was lying on his back with his head and neck resting outside the iron lung but with the rest of his body inside the machine.

There was a rushing sound as air was pumped into and out of the machine, allowing him to breathe. I remember thinking about how carefully the nurses had combed his hair. Through the windows on the iron lung we could see his body and his arms and legs. He had lost considerable weight.

This is a Tank respirator ("iron lung") used at Union Hospital, Terre Haute, Indiana, from 1953 - c. 1973. Indiana State Museum, 650 West Washington Street, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. By the time I was able to visit my friend, the medical staff had been able to remove the plastic bubble so that his head and neck were outside the iron lung.

The visits were relatively brief because he tired quickly and because, frankly, I found it hard to think of things to talk about. I remember censoring myself, not wanting to say anything about school, hockey games and other activities that he could no longer take part in, things that would just depress him.

He was finally released from hospital, in a wheelchair, and began rehabilitation.

Although he has spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair, he managed to attend law school at the University of Western Ontario. He was called to the bar in 1965 and has practiced law in Arthur every since.

Thanks to excellent medical care, the support of his family and friends, and an awesome inner toughness he has managed to live an almost normal life.

The 1950s were a terrible time for parents with a constant worry about polio. The ways in which the disease spread were not known, and about all the medical authorities could advise was that parents should keep their children from swimming pools, and fairs---such as the Canadian National Exhibition---especially during the hottest months of the years.

Here is a quote from the Wikipedia article on Dr. Salk that captures very well, I think, the terror that parents felt at that time.

"According to American historian William O'Neill, 'Paralytic poliomyelitis (its formal name) was, if not the most serious, easily the most frightening public health problem of the postwar era.' He noted that the epidemics kept getting worse and its victims were usually children. By 1952 it was killing more of them than any other communicable disease. In the twenty states that reported the disease back in 1916, there were 27,363 cases. New York alone had 9,023 cases of which 2,448 (28%) resulted in death, and a larger number in paralysis. However, polio did not gain national attention until 1921, when Franklin D. Roosevelt, former vice presidential candidate and soon to be governor of New York, came down with a paralytic illness, at the time diagnosed as polio. At the age of 39, Roosevelt was left with severe paralysis and spent most of his presidency in a wheelchair.
"Subsequently, as more states began recording instances of the disease, the numbers of victims grew larger. Nearly 58,000 cases of polio were reported in 1952, with 3,145 people dying and 21,269 left with mild to disabling paralysis. In some parts of the country, concern assumed almost the dimensions of panic. According to Olson, 'parents kept children home from school, avoided parks and swimming pools, and played only in small groups with the closest of friends.' Cases usually increased during the summer when children were home from school. 'The public reaction was to a plague', noted O'Neill. 'Citizens of urban areas were to be terrified every summer when this frightful visitor returned.' As a result, Olson points out, 'scientists were in a frantic race to find a cure.'

And then in 1955, just a couple of years after my friend contracted polio, Dr. Jonas Salk announced that field tests on a polio vaccine he had developed were successful. The vaccine was effective and safe.

Government grants, gifts from private donors and the contributions to the March of Dimes (of the kind Pogo had recommended) had worked.

Polio had been beaten.

By 1962, polio had been virtually eliminated in the US, Canada and Europe, and polio cases are becoming increasingly rare in the rest of the world.

The struggle for a vaccine had not been easy. Salk had worked for years in his lab, seven days a week, 17 or 18 hours a day to perfect the vaccine.

When someone asked whether he was going to patent his discovery, he shook his head and said, "Can you patent the sun?"

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As you know, this blog is dedicated to the view that the universe is made of stories, not atoms.

Here are a few stories about  Dr. Salk.

When he was a medical student and courting, the father of his future wife---a wealthy Manhattan dentist, very conscious of his elevated place in society--- refused to let the young couple get married until two conditions had been met. First, Salk had to get his MD so that the wedding invitation could show his title. Second, he had to give himself a middle name. Apparently, his parents had given him just the one name, Jonas. The future father-in-law thought that a single name was 'lower class'. Jonas chose 'Edward'.

He had little interest in money. " That (money) belongs in the category of mink coats and Cadillacs—unnecessary", he said.

He was troubled by the 'celebrity' that followed his discovery. (When he was flying,  pilots liked to announce that, "Dr. Salk is on board", and this was always followed by cheering and applause from the passengers.) He was forced into public events that kept him from his lab where he was working on a possible vaccine for cancer.

The Salks had three children: Peter, Darrell, and Jonathan Salk. In 1968, they divorced, and in 1970 Salk married Françoise Gilot, the French painter, who had lived with Pablo Picasso for nine years and had two children with him.

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Dr. Salk received many tributes during his life. Here is one that I find especially appropriate and moving. In 1977, Dr. Salk was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Jimmy Carter, with the following statement accompanying the medal:

"Because of Doctor Jonas E. Salk, our country is free from the cruel epidemics of poliomyelitis that once struck almost yearly. Because of his tireless work, untold hundreds of thousands who might have been crippled are sound in body today. These are Doctor Salk's true honors, and there is no way to add to them. This Medal of Freedom can only express our gratitude, and our deepest thanks."

Dr. Salk died in 1995, of heart failure, at the age of 80.


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See you on April 22, 2012 for Posting #143 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting,  or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:
There is a new Posting (# 8) in The Icewine Guru blog. In it the Guru gives his prediction on the Supreme Court's decision on the health care mandate issue. He and the Professor and their wives then discuss religion and politics. If you would like to read the Posting, please click on  http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/