Story Teller Bill

Another Escapade in the life of The Jack S...Our Lake's Authentic "Red Green"

2012-01-05T18:28:00.000-08:00

Jack S is the kind of guy that you’ve probably noticed around your office. Not content with being successful in his own right, he always figures the “political angle” into most things he does. On this one occasion, he figured it wouldn’t hurt his career to invite his “big” boss up to his cottage for the week to get in some fishing and quiet time, a little drinking, and some story telling.

Probably to Jack S’s amazement, the boss accepted. Just the two of them, Jack figured, and no one to run interference between he and the boss. Jack S would have the whole week to impart some of his wit and wisdom and create that great impression that could have a mercuric impact on his career.

Now to really appreciate this story, you’d have to meet Jack S’s boss. Since that is impossible for most of you, the description following may give you a sense of what he was like, and God forbid, remind you of someone in your own work world.

Tony O Lawless was a no-nonsense sort of guy, a sergeant-major type whose precise and proper manner had everything under control, including the minutest details of everything his subordinates did. His clipped British accent fired out rapid machine gun orders that were to be followed to a “T,” including business meetings that started at 6:37 am without regard to where you lived or how long your commute was. And God forbid if you were late. Protests about these early morning meetings always brought the same "no-nonsense" response---"The meeting will start at 6:37 old chap...I don’t care if you live in Timbuktu!"

Anyway, Jack S and the boss arrived at the public dock, Tony O opting to drive both up in the comfort of his Jaguar limo. Jack S started his boat to warm it up for the 8-mile trek across the lake to his water-access cottage. While he and Tony O were loading the boat, the motor conked out. No problem, thought Jack, as he once again hopped into the boat and proceeded to fire it up. No luck! His repeated attempts ran down the battery. What a start to the impressive time I`m showing the boss, Jack thought!

"The motor`s dead," Jack S reported apologetically to Tony O. "I guess we’ll just have to sit in your Jag until a cottager comes along who can help us out. Maybe we can borrow a set of booster cables and some tools and we’ll take the battery out of your car and boost the boat."

Jack S and the boss sat in the comfy confines of the Jaguar for what seemed like hours waiting for assistance to arrive. Jack S had not considered that this was a week in June when most sane cottagers forego the pleasures of the cottage leaving the place for the hordes of black flies that inhabit the North at this time of year.

No doubt, Tony O was impressed with Jack S’s wit and wisdom during the wait. Not used to waiting on anything, he probably wished he was back in the familiar surroundings of his Caledon Hills Horse farm.

Finally, at about 11 pm a motorist came down the cottage road, a young lady all alone, hardly the kind of help Jack S was looking for. Without a blink, however, Jack S hopped out of the Jag asking, "Skuse me miss, you don’t have a set of booster cables with you do you? My pal and I are stranded and can’t get to the cottage. Our battery’s dead!"

"Sorry! I don’t have any booster cables! Wish I could help!"

"You can," Jack S replied, "My pal and I would really appreciate a lift to my cottage."

"Well okay," responded the trusting lass reluctantly, realizing that cottagers always helped others in distress. "Where’s your cottage?"

"It’s about eight miles down the east arm," said Jack S. "Where’s yours?"

"I’m down the west arm and don’t know your part of the lake especially in the dark," answered the trusting lady. "Why don’t I take you down to my cottage?"

At this comment, Jack S’s imagination swung beyond his wildest dreams both at once forgetting about his battery and about his boss.

"Once I get to my cottage," she continued, "You can borrow my boat and return it in the morning."

"Really appreciate your help," Jack S responded slightly embarrassed at his mis-interpretation of the earlier remark.

Jack S and Tony O piled all of their stuff into the aluminum boat that was already burdened and climbed in for the long trek. Reaching the Good Samaritan’s cottage and helping her unload, Jack S and Tony O continued their journey to Jack’s cottage reaching it shortly after 1:00 am.

Getting up early the next morning, Jack S and Tony O travelled back to the public dock with some tools to fetch Jack S’s boat.

Jumping into the boat, Tony O said, "Let me have a look Jack?" Within seconds, he had diagnosed the problem as he held up Jack S’s fuel line which was disconnected from his motor exclaiming, "You know I hate wasting time Jack! And to think we wasted hours over this!"

Needless to say, Jack S did make a big impression with his boss. It wasn’t, however, the kind that he wanted to make. No doubt, Tony O went home thinking of Jack S as Jackass. And Jack is still waiting for that mercurial “break” in his career.

And, of course, any resemblance to individuals dead or alive is purely co-incidental. Oh yeah!

In Flander's Fields---A Recitation

2011-11-11T11:00:00.000-08:00

This is a famous war memorial poem written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae (November 30, 1872 – January 28, 1918),a Canadian poet, physician, author, artist and soldier during World War I and a surgeon during the Second Battle of Ypres.

The poppies mentioned in the poem are now a familiar emblem of remembrance day (Canada) and Armistice Day (USA) that is celebrated annually in ceremonies remembering the war dead at 11 am every November 11 signalling the signing of the armistice to end WWI at 11 on that day in 1918.

The red remembrance poppy has become a familiar emblem of Remembrance Day due to the poem "In Flanders Fields".

These poppies bloomed across some of the worst battlefields of Flanders in World War I, their brilliant red colour an appropriate symbol for the blood spilled in the war.

I enjoy reciting this sombre poem to myself every November 11 as my personal act of remembrance.

You Couldn’t Dream Up A Comedy Like This ©

2011-11-02T23:37:00.000-07:00

Bill Longworth
November 2, 2011

Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, the three stooges, Curly, Larry, and Moe, and even Laurel and Hardy were never this good!

It was an impromptu slapstick comedy act. Bicyclists peddling down the street knee deep in water with tons of floating garbage catching their spokes, seizing their wheels, and tumbling countless riders into the rushing water.

Too bad there weren’t judges around to hold up cards judging the dives...5.6, 6.0, 5.8, to make a real competition out of the pratfalls....and audiences to cheer the level of their approval. Instead there were only howls of laughter and derision at those unfortunate victims of the situation.

The speed of some of the bigger and heavier chunks of garbage rushing down the road collided with the bicycles crashing their riders into the flood.

In the face of colliding with the bigger debris, some nimble riders jumped off their bikes and took off as best they could into the drink to escape the bombardment.

You couldn’t plan such a comedy routine as rider after rider fell victim to the garbage strewn water.

Slapstick was never as good as this!

If I didn’t think I was in such a desperate predicament, I would have joined all of the other onlookers laughing their heads off at the ridiculous and bizarre buffoonery we were witnessing in the rapidly rising water.

With a few spare hours to kill, I had ventured out into a sunny China afternoon for a bike ride to a nearby rural neighbourhood when an unexpected rainstorm suddenly arose. Rapidly drenched, I quickly pulled my bike up under a canopy to avoid getting more soaked than I already was.

Without storm water control systems, the water rushed overland and was soon a torrential river roaring down the road that only a few minutes earlier had been a dusty broken road between the open-fronted shops lining the road.

The rain water flooded the street as I watched helplessly from higher ground wondering if I could get back to Kunming’s Yunnan Finance and Trade Institute in SW China to deliver my 7 o’clock lecture.

I shivered in my wet clothes as the river flooded higher and higher as I perched precariously atop the biggest boulder I could find. If I lost my footing or the water rose much higher, its strong current surely would have floated me downstream in the torrent, along with the many other comedic river rats and garbage.

Such a spectacle would probably have been the highlight of the show as most ordinary Chinese saw all white North American big noses like me as wealthy, coming as we did, from a place where all the streets were paved in gold. So being swept away in the current and garbage would be a just comeuppance for me.

While this flooding was a surprise and a fright to me as the water continued to rise, the native inhabitants of the place had obviously seen this before and saw humour where I saw danger, and they saw a cleansing of their neighbourhood where I saw pollution.

The eighteen inch water became a flushing system for all of the garbage and dirt of the community. To add to the mayhem, shopkeepers threw all of their garbage into the rushing water so that the flood become a sea of flotsam rushing downhill to Lord knows where. While the garbage was sure to end up as someone’s problem down the line, it was a welcome saviour for those on higher ground to get rid of litter that had probably been piling up since the last storm. Eco concerns were the last thing on anyone’s mind.

While this demonstration of a natural flushing system was probably a godsend to the upstream people, it brought considerable anguish to me with my concern with world pollution problems...such a contrast to this culture where garbage is simply strewn about.

This event, though, did provide reinforcement of lessons I have learned numerous times in my international work experience. And that is to not judge customs in foreign lands by my North American standards, which may be equally perplexing to them.

But my experience with this flash flood has given me greater appreciation of the power of nature and the catastrophe’s that can erupt so quickly catching all by surprise who are in its wake....and often with disastrous results.

And by the way, I never did get to that lecture.

My Foray Into The World of Crime ©

2011-10-19T09:00:00.000-07:00

By Bill Longworth
October 19, 2011

We pulled up to the five star Fairmont Towers Hotel near the Cairo Airport and I slipped out of my chauffeur driven car with my backpack of money and ventured into the front passenger seat of an impeccably polished black Mercedes.

I didn’t know where I was going or who I was with, but the Mercedes driver had given my chauffeur a promise to convert my bag of Egyptian cash into real money in the form of American greenbacks.

I was returning to Canada after finishing my job assignment as Director of a “start up” International High School that paid me about as much as fifty Egyptian teachers and, despite living high off the hog, I had accumulated a healthy sum.

I had no idea how much Egyptian money I had in my bag...but it might well have been the equivalent of $15,000-$20,000US, and I knew that, if unconverted, it only had the value of last week’s newspaper once outside the country.

In retrospect, It’s frightening to contemplate the risks you’ll take when there’s money on the line.

Egypt has tightly regulated foreign exchange controls as the government attempts to lock up all internationally recognized currencies for its own use and for the use of its privileged insiders. Thus my money conversion was illegal and had to be done on the black market.

And neither my driver, nor the Mercedes driver, spoke much English so I had no idea of the specifics of the agreements or discussions they had.

I did know that my safety and security, and that of my bag of money, was in the hands of those I didn’t know and couldn’t communicate with. I was proceeding on blind faith....and a hope and a prayer.

Before hopping into the Mercedes, I had my driver write down the car’s license number, get the driver’s identification, and instructed him to wait until I returned. As if any of this would provide me security!

The Mercedes driver, a heavy-set guy with an olive Arabic complexion, was neatly dressed. His slick-backed hair and “hustler” manner distinguished him as not of the executive set. It appeared to me that his Mercedes was probably the result of criminal activity in this country where the best middle class salaries averaged $240US monthly---certainly not enough to afford these wheels.

As part of the criminal element, I wondered whether the guy was holstering a revolver under his jacket. I knew weapons were common to the Egyptian population. I once witnessed a guy sitting in broad daylight on the curb outside his residence cleaning his revolver.

And everywhere you look in Egypt, bus loads of heavily armed soldiers and police were waiting for immediate dispatch to trouble spots. Unfortunately none of these trouble-shooters were nearby. The only sense of security I got was from the hotel security guards, and who knows, they may have been in cahoots with the Mercedes driver hanging around the hotel parking lot. So it was not just my wild imagination wondering whether this stranger helping me break the law was packing some heat that might be used to do me in and steal my cash.

And I’d often heard rumours in Egypt about the proclivity of police and others to shoot first and ask questions later....a belief reinforced daily as my driver drove through heavily armed police check-points on my return from work, although we didn’t have to stop, perhaps because my car was somehow identified as “safe.”

It’s frightening how the need for practical action often causes you to throw caution to the wind...and this risky, foolhardy, and maybe even dumb-headed money exchange adventure seemed eerily similar to a perilous game of Russian roulette.

But to me, the amount of cash I had was no chicken feed, and I needed to convert it into something of value. Previous unsuccessful attempts to get the cash changed to American currency, had me shopping for Rolex watches as a last resort, but there was no guarantee even these would be real.

Anyway, despite my trepidations, I was in the Mercedes and it sped off through the streets to some unknown destination. After forty minutes or so through a section of Cairo that looked a little seedy to me, the car pulled up in a run-down high-rise apartment complex.

The driver handed me the keys to his Mercedes and gestured for my bag of money and we made the exchange.

He got out of the car and made his way to some unknown “out of sight” destination.

After what seemed like an eternity, he returned and gave me a sheaf of brand new American hundreds and I returned his keys.

Now that I had the real money and he had his keys, was he now going to drive me to some remote location to do me in and reclaim the money?

That question dominated my thinking until I saw the hotel and my chauffeur still there waiting for me. It was only then that I felt relief knowing that the transaction was complete, and I was safe.

I never even bothered counting the cash I got and didn’t care about the huge premium I probably paid, but I did applaud my alchemy at being able to convert my trash to gold.

And, oh yes, I did slip my chauffeur a few hundred for his collusion in this caper knowing that, if he was caught, it may well have resulted in jail time for him.

Now I feel better! This confession has cleansed my soul and absolved my sin! Hey! That’s so easy! Now, what other mischief can I get myself into?

It Helps to Have...a Beautiful Woman On Your Arm ©

2011-10-05T15:16:00.001-07:00

By Bill Longworth
October 5, 2011

As I sat in London’s Lyceum theatre with the beautiful young oriental woman I was with that Saturday night, minding my own business as usual, a stodgy old man sitting alone next to me started up a “small talk” conversation.

“Where you from?” he inquired.

Unimpressed, I looked at the guy not really interested in conversing with him. He was a little overweight and had just a smidgeon of white hair haloing his head. He was dressed in an unpressed brown suit, looked every day his age of at least 80, and, as if for some kind of security, he incessantly fondled a tattered well-worn “leather bound” novel. The little bit of hair he had was pulled back eccentrically into a three inch ponytail at the back of his head.

“Toronto,” I responded in a civil, if not so respectful tone, “And you?”

“Chicago,” he said, “But I spend about half the year here staying at the Reform Club.”

If I’d known then what I know now about the Reform Club, I’d suspect he was trying to impress me, or more probably, the Lady I was with that evening.

“I’m Professor Emeritus of Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago. Name's E. Blythe Statton Jr.,* he said, “But you can call me Blythe.”

“I’m Bill,” I said rather apologetically, realizing my “handle” was not nearly as impressive as his, but I suppose I could have jazzed it up a bit by identifying myself as William Longworth, the third.

“And the lady....what’s her name?” he continued, rather aggressively I thought, showing considerable interest in my companion so early in the conversation.

“She’s Helen and she came with me from Canada,” I responded, hoping this answer would give him the message that she was not only with me tonight but that she was also my travel mate.

At this the lecherous old man, after clearly establishing his credentials with both of us, leaned over me and started conversing more directly with Helen.

“I spend a lot of time in London,” he said, “And perhaps I could show you and Bill around the town. Dinner perhaps at the Reform Club Monday evening, as there’s a James Bond film shoot there tomorrow.”

Amazing a total stranger should offer us a dinner in what sounded like such an exclusive place...or perhaps he was arranging a date with Helen and I was merely the “third wheel” tag-along guest.

Anyway, after the theatre, we walked Blythe westward along the Strand towards Pall Mall where the Reform Club was located. We had to part company though at the Charing Cross Tube Station and head south across the Thames on the Hungerford Footbridge to the Waterloo Train station for the 40 minute train ride west to Staines, the London suburb where we lived.

Before splitting, though, we made sure to confirm our plans for the Reform Club dinner. As part of the details, Blythe cautioned me to wear a suit and tie and leather shoes, which also informed Helen of the standard of dinner dress expected of women guests.

The twenty minute walk with Blythe was interesting. He said he had a Rolls Royce in England and another in Chicago. “Women loved riding in them,” he stated, again I guessed for Helen’s enticement.

I was starting to think that Blythe, (despite his appearance, but being impressed with his two Rolls Royces), might be a quite a wealthy guy. I also became impressed with his intelligence when he said he was a Harvard Law Graduate. I wasn’t nearly as impressed when he said his great grandfather invented the elevator brake, which he demonstrated in the Crystal Palace Exposition Hall at the 1854 New York World’s Fair.

I made sure though, before the dinner, to research the Reform Club and the inventor of the elevator brake.

The Reform Club is one of five or six super exclusive by-invitation-only “Gentlemen’s Clubs” on Pall Mall, whose guests are mostly Lords and Ladies, and his great grandfather, the inventor of the elevator brake, was Elisha Graves Otis whose two sons, one Blythe’s grandfather, founded Otis Elevators and installed the world’s first public elevator in a five story Manhattan Department store. The rest, of course, is world class industrial and commercial history.

And the best part, Blythe still writes me from all over the world on his travels and when he visited me in Oshawa two years ago, he commented on how he enjoyed discussing things with me as he said there was so much to learn.

And this from a guy I considered the smartest guy I’d ever met.

I‘ll have to visit him in Chicago to see his whole collection of Rolls Royces and Bentleys going back to the early 1900s, some he said would cost millions of dollars to restore.

And, oh yes, I do credit Blythe’s interest in Helen for being the magnet for my continuing association with Blythe.

And I’ve learned beyond a doubt, It never hurts to have beautiful woman on your arm.

*Blythe’s surname, whose mother was one of the daughters of the founder of Otis Elevator Company, has been changed to protect his identity

The Frightful Tomb ©

2011-09-28T14:12:00.000-07:00

Bill Longworth
September 28, 2011

I clambered up the steep and irregular boulder steps to the entrance high above the desert floor, for 40 centuries, the tallest structure on Earth.

I entered through the Robber’s Tunnel, a hole poked into the side of the massive structure by Persian Invaders around AD820. At that time, the main entrance was located higher up and off centre to dissuade looters, and was concealed behind slabs of polished stone covering the entire edifice.

Expending such a huge effort to rob the place, those early plunderers were sure to have left few treasures for me.

Entering this structure was not for the faint of heart. The limit of 300 daring souls admitted daily was seldom threatened, as most people refused to enter this foreboding place.

Posted signs warned of steep climbs, dark, damp, and narrow passageways, and low ceilings often requiring crawling on hands and knees. It was not at all the place for the claustrophobic, the faint of heart, or the out of shape.

But I saw entry as an opportunity of a lifetime as I enthusiastically made my way to the entrance. The reluctance of most to enter made me even more eager to explore this mysterious place.

The place? The Great Pyramid of Egypt. At 4000 years old, it is the only remaining structure of the original Seven Wonders of the World, and I was about to probe into the bowels of this place where so few humans over those 4000 years had ever been.

The inside is a honeycomb of dark mysterious stone passageways punctuated by steep climbs on inclined ramps and steep staircases and ladders. Some of the narrow passageways have been blocked by massive boulders designed to keep out intruders, or indeed, to keep those lost from escape. If lost, what a fate to be entombed and rot in this sweltering place.

Inside, every word and footstep echoes eerily, ghostlike off the solid stone walls, almost as if those from millenniums past are stalking your every step. Every whisper is amplified a thousand times by the massive stone walls comprised of millions of precision “hand cut” locomotive sized stone blocks pieced together so finely as to defy those who would want to slip an onionskin in the joints.

When you stop to listen, you are deafened by the menacing silence of the place. It seems the spirit of the ancient pharaoh entombed here, and his servants, and the workers sacrificed during construction, remain vigilant custodians tracking every movement of those who would enter this sacred place. When you stop to listen, they also silence their sounds so as to remain hidden from your view.

The trapped perspiration off every sweating visitor and the moisture exhaled through their breathing, and often exhumed as a result of their anxiety, adds to the 85% humidity to bathe each subsequent visitor with the vaporous discards of visitors past.

This build-up of humidity, in addition to being a severe discomfort for those brave enough to enter this tomb, is a giant concern to curators and conservators charged with protecting the treasure. Hence the daily limitation on visitors and recent closures for the installation of modern dehumidifier systems.

And to think this marvel of human ingenuity, unmatched even today, was built 4000 years ago with hand labour, primitive engineering, planning and complex design communicated orally or in ancient hieroglyphics written on papyri or clay tablets in the beginning stages of written language, complicated math and astronomical computations without the use of modern computing tools....a structure virtually impossible to duplicate today even in our advanced computerized and mechanized society.

It’s doubtful that any wonders of modern-day engineering will be around 4000 years into the future.

Who says we’ve come a long way in the last 4000 years in what humans have been able to accomplish.

We think of those ancient civilizations as primitive, but no person living today would be able to duplicate the mental and physical skills of the pyramid builders of that pre-biblical Egyptian society.

The Torment of the Educated Cabbie ©

2011-09-21T14:43:00.000-07:00

Bill Longworth
Sept 21, 2011

“Good afternoon sir. Please get in,” said the well mannered and well dressed cabbie in impeccable English. This greeting was extraordinary for taxi drivers in Cairo where I was employed. Most were illiterate. Very few could read or write Arabic, never mind speak English.

This guy smelled of pleasant cologne which was characteristic of higher class Egyptian men who always kept a bottle of spray nearby to combat the effects of the blistering temperatures, and he was clean cut and freshly shaven---not at all your typical Cairo cabbie.

Amazingly, I had no problem at all communicating with this guy.

Usually communication was dependent upon simple gestures or the names of a few key locations I had learned to pronounce. For safety’s sake, my business card had an Arabic labeled map with my residence identified on the back. At the outset, I would hand this to the driver and most would hop out of the cab to get it read by an educated bystander.

As time passed, and I learned the way to my favourite Cairo destinations, I was able to direct drivers by gesture.

While I welcomed the invitation to get into this cab and out of the blistering 100 degree heat on this hot September day, I ‘d never get into a cab before negotiating a price for a ride to my destination.

Throughout the Middle East, there are few fixed prices and everything is open to negotiation. To an outsider, the bargaining looks and sounds like an agitated quarrel soon to get violent.

So waving a banknote in the air, “I’m going to the Khan el Khalili market,” I said to the English speaking cabbie, “and I’ll give you ten Egyptian pounds for the ride.” This was the standard price I’d pay, about a dollar and a half Canadian, to anywhere in downtown Cairo from my residence in Heliopolis, a well-to-do suburb characterized by distinctive Turkish architecture.

“Okay, it’s a deal,” said the cabbie as he reached over to open the cab door.

The cab took off and we shortly swung past Hosni Mubarak’s Presidential Compound, a Heliopolis landmark not far from my residence that I was chauffeured past on my way to work every day of the week.

Some cabbies were reluctant to accept a ten pound offer from a foreigner and would drive off in a huff making gestures that I took to mean that they thought I was crazy. Such gestures are used frequently in negotiating prices and were tools I quickly picked up in perfecting my own bargaining skills for use in Egypt. Of course, unless you were nuts, you wouldn’t think of using such tactics in Canada.

One may think fare negotiations disrespectful and impolite, but it is a way of life in the Middle East. There are no firm prices. Every seller argues for more and every buyer argues for less. Buying anything is a game of wits and you’d lose your shirt in an instant if you failed to follow this custom. What most people lack in education, they more than make up in street smarts, guile, and cunning. From an early age, mostly spent as street kids, they all learn how to close the deal!

This Cabbie’s enthusiasm in accepting my ten pound offer without the usual bickering raised questions in my mind. Why did he want me in the cab so much? Why not the usual negotiations? Why is he so different from the typical cabbie? Is there something strange going on here? Should I be concerned about my security and safety? You never know about these things in a strange country where you don’t know the lay of the land.

Price negotiation was common for everyone getting a cab in Cairo as was a cabbie’s common refusal to provide the service. While negotiations with one cab driver were ensuing, it was common for two or three cabs to join the cab lineup hoping for the job. This lineup of cabs I thought was part of the negotiation game as each cab was hoping that my frustration with a refused offer would boost up my price for the next driver. All cabbies, it seemed, were in collusion to steal foreigners blind.

Anyway, once the cab set off, it wasn’t long before conversation ensued. “Where are you from?...and…What do you do?” inquired the cabbie.

"I’m from Canada and I’m Director of a Private High School preparing students to write the SAT examinations for entrance to Professional Schools in American Universities," I responded.

He would have known immediately that the students in the school were from extremely privileged families…and destined for the highest imaginable riches.

At that, the reason for the cab driver’s lack of bargaining in getting me into his cab became obvious.

"I’m trained as a lawyer," he said. "And I wonder if you’d have any influence in getting me a good job here in Egypt."

"Amazing," I thought! "He’s wondering whether a foreigner has influence in getting him a good job in his own country!"

This brought into sharp focus judgments I’d already made in observation of the students graduating from the school I administered. At the convocation ceremony, the majority of graduates were off to medical school.

Family influence and privilege are the birthrights for wealth and success in Egypt. Hard work, education, and intelligence are not the keys. Your life journey is determined at birth.

The rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer and nothing is able to break the cycle.

And that, in a nutshell folks, is the stark reason for the recent Egyptian revolution and the strife now flooding the Middle East.

And that revolution would be strongly supported by the tormented cabdriver and resisted strongly by the families of every student in my school.

Frighteningly, as in Egypt, growing income disparity in North America could lead to the same kind of strife.

More Reading on this topic as it relates to Canada and the USA

Growth of income inequality in Canada

Why Occupy? It's the Inequality

Kevin O'Leary gets a smackdown over corporate greed from Journalist Chris Hedges

Occupy Bay Street---Maclean's Mag

Occupy Toronto...the G20 and now Bay Street

New York Minute: Observations and Aims in Occupy Wall Street

Mic Check....Despatches from the Occupy Wall Street

An Activist's Guide to Occupy Toronto

Objectives of the Occupy Toronto Movement

Chris Hedges smacks down CBC/s Kevin O'Leary attacking protest movement

Why should Canadians care about the "Occupy" movement?

NYTIMES--opinion piece---Why the "Occupy Movement" frightens the rich

A Little Tension in the Air ©

2009-05-09T20:23:00.000-07:00

By Bill Longworth
February 18, 2008

“I think we need a GPS for the boat,” I said to my wife as we pulled up to the government dock to unload the car and pack the boat for the eight-mile boat ride to our secluded cottage.

“Just another expensive toy,” she responded. “There are lots of better ways to spend our money.”

“It’d be great to help us across the lake tonight,” I stated, as I surveyed the dark fall sky and the brisk wind which churned up unusually heavy waves. “Usually the light from the moon and stars is enough for me to see the sillouette of the tree line to navigate the way, but tonight it’s impossible to see anything.”

This was a night-time trip I had made hundreds of times. My strategy was always the same. Turn off all the boat lights for better night vision, and drive standing up with my head through the roof hatch to catch my bearings. I always felt, though, that traversing the lake at night was like going through the vast expanses of outer space, as the lake is large and boat traffic is minimal even in daylight hours. In any case, I always figured I would hear the noise of any boats in the vicinity and would simply turn on the navigation lights so our boat could be seen.

“That's a cold wind,” observed my wife as she helped to load the boat. “The sky is black as coal. The only colour I see are the whitecaps of those breaking waves. Perhaps we should stay in town and go over in the morning.”

Despite our second thoughts, we decided to embark on the trip across the lake, figuring we’d be there in a short time and could settle in comfortably for the night.

I always keep enough gas in the tank to get me safely across the lake as you’d never want to run out of gas, especially at night. The large, heavy boat is impossible to move anywhere with the safety paddles I always stowed in the boat. Moving the boat was difficult in still water, but nigh on impossible with any kind of wind, and this night the wind and waves were both quite angry. Perhaps they were angry at me for venturing out when mother-nature was so venomous.

While my gas tank was a little lower than normal on this night, I was confident I had plenty of gas for the trip.

Land is usually quite close for most of the trip but there is a large expanse of open water a mile or so across that has to be crossed. The north wind in this section of the lake has a sweep of about twelve miles to kick up the waves. And this night, the waves were peaking wildly. About a quarter of the way across this open water, I figured I had better slow down a bit for safety’s sake and the emotional comfort of my family, who were huddled under the roof not having any idea where we were in the trip, but, of course, having the usual confidence in my ability to get us to the cottage safely.

I ducked my head under the roof to reach for the control to slow us down a bit and for that brief moment took my eyes off my bearings. As soon as I ducked under the roof, a giant wave struck the boat portside, knocking the bow to the right and changing our direction. I searched the horizon as best I could for the right direction and confidently headed off again.

I eventually found the narrow channel that I had to navigate and headed straight for it. As I entered the channel, it funnelled narrower and narrower, and didn’t at all look like the wide channel I should be in. As I gingerly turned the boat around, hoping that I was not going to run aground or hit submerged logs or rocks, I noticed that my gas gauge was reading dangerously low…and I didn’t know where I was.

Scanning the horizon, I did see a light in the distance, and so I headed for it, figuring that someone there could identify my location. As I approached the light, I recognized that it was the marina and knew then exactly where I was…and where I had been. Good thing I turned around, I thought. We would have bottomed out had we gone much further. The wrong course, though, did burn some precious fuel and the marina was closed. Despite the precarious fuel situation, I still figured that we had enough gas barring any further mishap.

Knowing our location, I once again took my bearings and headed out into the black again, making sure that I didn’t duck down again to lose sight of where I wanted to go. Much to my relief, we finally did get to the cottage, and even to this moment, I am the only one to know of our limited gas supply that night. I saved the stress of this problem all to myself, but Lord knows what would have happened had we run out of gas.

On our arrival at the cottage, my wife, sensing the difficult situation we had been in, suggested we needed that GPS.

“But they are a lot of money,” I replied, silently thinking, “All’s well that ends well,” but strongly censuring myself for our gas shortage while making a mental note to ensure it never happened again.

And, oh yes, I did buy that GPS!

The Saga of the Flippin' Flue ©

2009-04-29T16:42:00.000-07:00

By Bill Longworth
April 29, 2009

Over 10 ½ inches of snow had fallen on January 3, 1943, one of the worst snowstorms in Toronto’s history, and most of this was still blocking the roads on that blustery Sunday night of Jan. 17, when a determined 21 year old woman in her nightclothes crawled groggily on hands and knees through the deep snow up the drifted dark laneway beside 1568 Kingston Road in Scarborough. The frigid night air and the cold deep snow undoubtedly helped to partially clear the fog out her head, but obviously still in severe distress. On reaching the front of the lane, she struggled to stand, but fell unconscious against the front door of the house, attracting the attention of those inside.

The door opened, and the startled woman was confronted by the collapsed bare-footed female body in nightclothes with her face mostly buried in the deep snow. Turning her over, she recognized the unconscious woman as her neighbor Dorothy, who lived in the rented quarters down the lane at the rear of the house.

“Dorothy! Dorothy!” she screamed. “What’s the matter?” Over and over, the woman called, “Dorothy! Dorothy! Dorothy! Wake up!”

Dorothy seemed completely oblivious to her surroundings and only groaned inaudible utterances in response. The woman pulled Dorothy inside and began shaking and slapping her to try to restore her consciousness.

After what seemed an eternity, she heard Dorothy mumble, “It’s my children. My three children. They’re all inside the house.”

Not fully comprehending the problem, but sensing the seriousness of it anyway, the women’s husband rushed down the lane and forced his way into the smoke-filled rooms. He felt his way around and found the children sleeping soundly, indeed too soundly, completely unaware of the emergency around them. He quickly carried each of them outside, laying them gently on the snowy mattress of the lane. Once he had accounted for all three, he carried them, two-year-old twin boys and a one-year-old baby girl, to the warm comfort of his quarters, where his wife had already alerted the police and fire department.

It wasn’t long before the emergency help arrived and oxygen resuscitators revived Dorothy and her children. Meanwhile, firemen went back to clear the smoke out of Dorothy’s house and investigate the cause of the problem, which was quickly found. The chimney flue of the kitchen cook stove was tightly closed, imprisoning all of the smoke and deadly gases inside the house.

The firemen scolded Dorothy for closing the flue. “Lady”, they exclaimed, “don’t you know that the flue has to be opened to let the coal gas escape? Your flue was tightly closed, trapping all of the deadly coal gas inside. Why was the flue closed? Were you trying to kill yourself and murder your babies?”

“I didn’t close the flue,” Dorothy countered sharply. “We’ve lived here for almost two years now and we’ve never had this problem before. Tonight, my husband was going out and he closed the flue just before he left. He said it was bitterly cold outside and that closing the flue would keep the heat in the house.”

Surely the husband knew better. The mystery of the saga is why the husband closed the flue before he left and what was he doing on that Sunday night? He did have a reputation as a “ladies man.” Was it possible that he was out gallivanting that night? Was it possible that his wife and three children were becoming a burden on his social life and he wanted to “clear the track” for another woman he was seeing that night? Who knows?

Fortunate in all of this, is that while the marriage didn’t survive, the victims of the closed flue did, and as of last count, sixteen living and breathing human beings, direct descendents of Dorothy, all owe their worldly existence to her spunky vigilance that night.

You might wonder how I know all this. Dorothy was my mother and I was one of her three babies trapped inside that gas-filled house.

Our survival, at least from my point of view, is surely a gratifying conclusion. Maybe it is to you too, dear reader. With any other outcome, it is clear, I would not have written this story…and you would never have known anything about, “The Saga of the Flippin’ Flue.”

But what is truly amazing to contemplate, everyone who exists in the world today, owes their very existence to an infinite set of equally fortuitous untold circumstances going back to the very beginnings of time.

PICTURES

1568 Kingston Road...We lived down the lane at the back of this house. The "rescuers" lived in the apartment behind the 2nd floor bow window.

The narrow lane has now been "closed off" and "roofed" and is part of the storage between the house and the former garage to the east. Both buildings and the lane between now house one business. Tow trucks used to go through this lane and one flattened my brand new tricycle parked in the lane. I never got another one since my maternal grandparents who bought the first said I should have known better than to leave it there!

Links

News story in Toronto Star, Jan 18, 1943, Pg. 8

Richard Dawkins, quote from TV appearance on CBC, "The Hour", Sept. 29/09, discussing evolution said, "The odds of me being here are infitesimally small" referring to the infinite accidents of nature going back to the beginning of time that caused his unique being to exist...a prior observation made independently as the "basic truth" in this story.

What If? ©

2009-04-13T11:44:00.000-07:00

By Bill Longworth
April 15, 2009

The roar of the mighty Yangtze River was deafening as it funneled into the narrow gorge formed by neighbouring mountains in a remote part of Yunnan Province in South West China, where few foreigners had ever been. For that matter, only a few locals accompanying their pack donkeys would ever venture along the narrow mule track blasted out of the mountainside, high above the unruly river. But here I was!

There are those times in your life when unforeseen situations and circumstances, in retrospect, keep raising the question…What if? What if? What if? And this was one of those defining times. A time when twenty seconds was the microscopic juncture between the “here” and the “hereafter”; the great divide between Heaven and Earth—a gulf measured in seconds; an escape too close for comfort. Like the nine lives of a cat, this incident, I believe, subtracted from my lifetime quota of “close calls!”

I was taken to this desolate place by the dean of my university department at the Yunnan Finance and Trade Institute where I was employed as a “visiting professor.” The dean had grabbed some government grants to do some tourism research in some out-of-the-way places in Yunnan that had not yet been promoted for tourism. I was the guinea-pig foreigner whose opinion would factor into potential development decisions of the region, which had previously been declared a UN World Heritage Site.

The place was known as Tiger Leaping Gorge, billed from the top of its mountain peaks to the depth of its river bed, as the deepest gorge in the world. I thought it might be equally billed as the loudest place in the world from the wild water fighting its way through the narrow gorge, or the scariest place in the world in our aerie perch from which we observed the battle far below. This perch hung from rock venturing straight up to the mountain peak on one side and straight down to the howling river on the other, with no safety barriers inhibiting those who might venture too close to the edge.

Along the way, there was periodic evidence of rock slides, both on our ledge and on the river edge far below. I wondered what the fate had been of those caught in rock slides as well as those who'd been there when the road bed gave way.

You can imagine my trepidation about being transported along this mule track in a van whose mechanical condition, and whose driver’s skills, both were questionable. I also had some serious concerns about the strength of the mule track, winding its way along the mountain slope, hoping it would not give way to the load of our van and driver, myself, and the five Chinese professors on board. But saving face is a big thing with the Chinese, and I couldn’t possibly show the fear I undeniably felt.

Periodically, we did get out of the van to converse with the native Naxi people, driving their mules along the ledge, to take pictures, or, when we were able, to climb down to the Yangtze at its most impressive places, like the rock wedged gingerly in the middle of the raging river that gave the place its name, Tiger Leaping Gorge. Apparently, as legend has it, a tiger leaped across the river at this point to escape hunters.

I had no idea how far along this ledge we were going to drive, or indeed where the ledge led to, if it led anywhere beyond a “dead end.” I was beginning to feel, however, that it wasn’t much of a “Sunday” drive, and I had had just about enough.

The answer to my first question, though, appeared in an impervious cloud of dust I saw just ahead. A rockslide threw tons of rubble onto the ledge not 100 metres in front of us, a spot we would have passed in twenty seconds or so. We were close enough to catch the dust! The track became impassible. What were we now going to do? Back up the ten miles or so we had traversed along the narrow ledge?

No! The driver found a wider section of the mule track, to attempt a three-point turn-around. He inched the van forward and backward numerous times, each time with the rear end of the long-body van extending far out over the edge of the ledge. The view straight down from my seat was deadly. It was absolutely terrifying! If ever there was a time to atone for one’s sins, this was it!

Once the driver manipulated the “turn-around,” we thanked our lucky stars and turned to questioning. What if this rock slide had occurred behind us, blocking our return? Would the ledge ahead have led us anywhere? Even worse, what if the rock slide had hit the van? Would we have gotten out of the mess? I don’t know. I’m still shaking from the thoughts of the experience!

Needless to say, though, that twenty seconds proved our sense of timing impeccable that day!

That’s why I’m here to tell you all about it!

Pictures of "The Ledge" at Tiger Leaping Gorge

LINKS

Tiger Leaping Gorge video 1
Tiger Leaping Rock where the tiger crossed…I was here!...mentions frequent rock slides..this film is from 2005-2007 and I was there in 1998---there was no bus service then…the “road” was very precarious
Hike on high road at Tiger Leaping Gorge…I was on low road
Yangtze River
Yunnan
Legend of Cat's 9 Lives
Yunnan Finance and Trade Institute
UN World Heritage Site
Saving Face--Chinese social concept
Naxi People
Three point turn
Atonement for sins

Déjà vu ©

2009-03-11T11:28:00.000-07:00

Bill Longworth, March 11, 2009

In disembarking the plane in London Heathrow, the customs officer on checking my passport asked who I was. “Longworth”, I said, “Bill Longworth”. With that and my passport in order, I entered the country.

With my worldly, sauve, debonair, adventuresome, intelligent, quick-witted, and smooth persona, I had charmed and impressed the beautiful woman interviewer and landed a job in Cairo. As you can tell, modesty would probably not be listed among my strong suits.

On heading to the new job, I decided to do a little sightseeing on the stopovers enroute.

As I didn’t have much time in London, I went immediately to a landmark I’d heard about, Kensington Market. While there, I saw the unusual Trellick Tower and went inside. As I entered, I had the strange sensation of being familiar with the building and of having been in it before. It was a building designed by well-known architect Emo Goldfinger and gained its fame because some thought it avant-garde in design, while others considered it beastly. Some brought ridicule to the building and to its architect by calling those they despised, “Goldfinger!”

While in London, I was invited to dinner in London’s exclusive Reform Club. I once again had the strange sensation of being very familiar with the place and of being there before. As before, I found it a little stuffy eating among the prim and proper members of British nobility and felt I’d rather die another day and probably another way. I did put on my rich and cultured face though as I asked the butler for a martini, shaken not stirred. I’d feel a lot more comfortable, I thought, swashbuckling through the place with a sword in my hand, similar to the guys who’d been filming here the day before.

This strange pattern of familiarity continued to play its hand as I landed in Athens and started touring some Greek sites. While touring, I did feel a strange familiarity with Greece’s Great Meteora Monastery located on top of a rock pinnacle 300 meters above the Thessalian Plain in Central Greece. “I’ve been here before”, I said to myself, not daring to suggest this to my wife who would have thought I’d gone crazy. I had to restrain myself from swinging hand-over-hand 150 meters or so on the rope suspended high over the plain to the neighbouring Monastery of All Saints St Varlaam as I was sure I’d done in the past. Wanting to keep my foolish desires private, though, I did tease her by suggesting that I had something for her eyes only.

Following my Greek stopover, I boarded the plane for Cairo. It wasn’t long before I ventured into Cairo’s Gayer-Anderson Museum, a preserved traditional Egyptian house from the 15th century. Strange how I felt that I had also been here before. Romantic visions filled my head with the knowledge that my lover would have crouched silently in the secret overhead balcony observing everything that happened as I congregated with the men below. The Spy that loved me, I thought, as I envisioned her there.

As I left the museum and headed for the pyramids just outside Cairo and then Luxor’s Karnak Temple in the South of Egypt, I had visions of also being in these places in the past. Strange though, I had no sensation of ever being in King Tut's tomb in the Valley of the Kings before now, nor of sunbathing on Christmas Day on a Nile Cruise boat just north of the Sudan Border until now.

I couldn’t understand why all these places were so familiar to me. Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower and the Reform Club in London, the Great Meteora in Greece, and the Gayer-Anderson Museum and the Pyramids in Cairo. Was it possible that I was the re-incarnation of someone who went before. Certainly, my science background taught me that energy could neither be created nor destroyed, and I was certainly a bundle of human energy. It struck me that I may have perhaps been revisiting places from a past life.

I started to analyze my Déjà vu experiences with scientific analysis worthy of a James Bond character.

I started to think of my personal characteristics….sauve, debonair, adventuresome, handsome, fastidious, calm, in control, quick witted, and the interests and pleasures that I loved…women, adventure, the world of espionage…a James Bond character if there ever was one.

As I thought of the places I’d been and the clues that had sprung to mind in each of the places, the whole thing started to become clear to me.

Camp X, key allied spy school was located in Oshawa, and Ian Fleming had been posted here to learn the craft. His experiences at Camp X and around Oshawa had laid the foundation for the James Bond Character in his writing. I lived in Oshawa for many years and shared many of the talents, interests, and characteristic Bond had.

“Eureka”, I exclaimed. “ I have been to all of these places before as they were all film locations for the James Bond movies. I am James Bond reincarnated. Ian Fleming fashioned his character after an earlier Oshawa version of me.

Links

Trellick Tower
Emu Goldfinger
Reform Club
Martini shaken not stirred
Great Meteora Monastery Ref.#1
Great Meteora Ref.#2
Gayer-Anderson Museum
Luxor
Reincarnation
Déjà vu
James Bond
Camp X
Ian Fleming
The Spy That Loved Me
Goldfinger Novel
Die Another Day
For Your Eyes Only

A Sense of Place ©

2009-03-09T18:54:00.000-07:00

By
Bill Longworth,
February 11, 2009

The sun was sinking behind the hills on the far side of the lake, which had stilled to silence after a day’s rhythmic slapping of the rocky shore. The garden lilly perfumes were filling the air before closing their petals for the night. The aromas of the sizzling steak were rising heavenly from the barbeque to tweak the joy of all around. The sounds of Chopin were wafting through the still air. My cottage is heaven, I was thinking, as I nosed the fruity elegance of my 2004 Château de Fonsalette.

The idea of heaven seemed to resonate in my mind as it raced backward in time to the days of my youth as I thought of the contrasts between my present life and that of my childhood.

I well remember, as an eleven-year-old, coming home from downtown Toronto’s first inner city school, The Duke of York, on Pembroke Street just north of Shuter.

It wasn’t much of a walk down Pembroke, a block along Shuter, and three or four houses down Sherbourne past the one with the window sign, "beds 75¢", to number 172. The five-minute walk took us past rundown and overcrowded rooming houses with wild patches of grass littered with garbage that posed as lawns. The garbage cans never seemed to leave the sidewalk and never seemed to be used.

On reaching our house, the creaky stairs groaned as I pushed open the unlocked front door in the shadow of the pungent odors of the Canada Dry factory just across the street. Like every other day, I had to push past shabby old Joe, an unshaven and unkempt drunk who seemed to spend every second of the daylight hours sitting on the steps with his customary half-emptied bottle of cheap wine grasped in his hands. His only activity, besides raising the bottle, was to watch the busy traffic zoom by not two or three meters from his feet. He always seemed to be guarding his rusty old bicycle locked to the railing and his prized possession seemed to be his bicycle air pump always holstered in his belt.

His gruff and rasping voice always mumbled a slurred, “Hello son,” to me as I brushed past. I never responded to his unwanted greeting. “You never know where conversation with him might lead,” cautioned my mother.

On entering the old brick house, smells of various sorts flooded the air. I might have described the “smells” as fragrances or even odours, but that would be too kind. They were wicked, unyielding and unbearable stenches that stained the air and sickened the soul, particularly the stink of stale beer, vomit, urine and the stuffiness of overcrowding. That was to be expected, though, in a house owned by a slum landlord who seldom visited the place, except to collect rent on Fridays, and who certainly never stayed around long enough to do any cleaning.

The house, as best as I can remember, had about eight rooms on its three floors and one small washroom up the stairs on the second floor. Each room in the house was rented. Most of the rooms were rented to guys like Joe. All doors off the halls were secured with padlocks.

The old house had two “prime apartments” on the main floor. The dining room and its adjoining kitchen at the rear of the main floor served as a self-contained apartment for one lucky family who actually had their own sink and tap for dish washing and personal hygiene, a stove, and a clunky old refrigerator. The other “prime” apartment was fashioned out of the living room with its big bow window at the front of the house. It was close enough to Joe to hear his blathering and his belching. This would have been the room in which the original owners lavishly entertained their visitors, probably in the 1850s when the house was new. This room was now “our home."

This large room housed our family of five--my mother, my two brothers, my sister and myself. Our father had not been heard from in years. In this single room, we slept, ate, and prepared meals. Its cramped quarters held two double beds plus a roll-away cot, a table, a few hard chairs, a hot plate, a portable washbowl for hygiene and an open orange crate slung outside the front window as our “food cooler,” a system completely ineffective on hot summer days, but the best we had. We slept with the lights on as that was said to keep the bedbugs at bay. Our toilet, if we discount the bucket that was always close at hand in our room for emergency purposes, was the one on the second floor used by everyone in the house. It was never cleaned. No wonder we “went” at school before we came home and hurried into the school washroom before class to freshen up a little.

Our entertainment was a little radio tuned to pop country that provided our link to the world beyond our slum surroundings. I still remember Hank Williams wailing out “Jambalaya” and “Cold, Cold Heart,” Rosemary Clooney crooning “Come on-a My House” and “Half As Much,” and Doris Day purring “When I Fall in Love.” I suppose this music provided my mother an escape as she sang along.

As I look back at my childhood in this environment and the many others like it that I called home, I never once recall any sense of sadness, of being disadvantaged, or of being any different from others I knew. I experienced all the normal joys and excitement of childhood, not feeling the least deprived of any of the pleasures of life. Of course, you never miss what you never had.

One would think that such impoverished living conditions would have lasting effects on my siblings and me. I certainly would agree. This part of our life did have a profound impact. The experience led me, and all of my siblings, to have quite successful careers and stable lives. It may have been a blessing in disguise as I look at others who have had far more, and yet been blessed with far less.

I took another sip of my Château de Fonsalette as the philosopher in me contemplated that there must be more to a successful and fulfilling life than “place.” The secret must reside in the mind and it depends on a positive outlook and a “can do” attitude to put it there.

REFERENCE
Sherbourne Street...The city in one street: Toronto Star, Nov. 29, 2009
Canada Dry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_dry
Ginger ale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginger_ale
Home made ginger ale http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Fankhauser/Cheese/Ginger_Ale_Ag0.htm
Get Google link to neighbourhood

You Forgot...WHAT? ©

2009-03-07T09:58:00.000-08:00

By Bill Longworth
March 4, 2009

Have you ever packed a weekend so full of phenomenal once-in-a-lifetime experiences that even the most fabulous experience is rendered somewhat ordinary by the other? This happened to me when one unbelievable venue overshadowed all other events on a British weekend when I was employed there as a secondary school math teacher at the Magna Carta Technological Institute.

Staines, the town where I lived, was located very near Runnymede where the Magna Carta was affixed with the King’s Seal as it was only about a convenient ten-minute carriage ride from Windsor Castle, the King’s Palace of the day.

The town was also a quick 45 minute commuter train ride to Waterloo Station in Central London, a place I habited most every Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday when I wasn’t travelling elsewhere in England. Because I see, do, and experience so much on my international “working holidays”, I always keep a daily journal.

While in London one Sunday at the end of June, I visited the British Library. I don’t know exactly what took me there because a library is not usually a place I’d visit while abroad. I think I found the place while walking toward Camden Markets, a popular tourist place in London and one of the centers of “Goth” fashion, which has been a prime export from England to the rest of the world.

One of the advantages of working abroad is that you get lots of time to “explore”, something that is at a premium for tourists. Having all the time in the world, I think I simply went into the British Library because it looked like an interesting building. I later learned that it had many similarities to America’s Library of Congress being a repository for all books, maps, and music registered in the U.K. and is one of the world’s greatest research libraries. None of this, though, struck me as exceptional.

What did capture my attention was that the Library houses and displays a priceless treasure trove of original materials from Beatles lyrics for songs such as “Michelle”, “A Hard Days Night”, and “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” all drafted out on scrap paper, an original copy of the Magna Carta, the Gutenburg Bible, the original handwritten manuscripts of “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte, “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen, and “Finegan’s Wake” by James Joyce. Had I been one of Joyce’s teachers, I would have complained bitterly about the unintelligible random scribbles all over his drafts which he intentioned as revisions. I was struck by the original neatly handwritten and personally illustrated copy of Alice in Wonderland which Lewis Carroll originally penned for his grandaughter. Little would he know that this book would be enjoyed by virtually every child in the world. Handwritten notes by Charles Darwin, Sir Isaac Newton, Leonardo da Vinci, and Captain Robert Scott’s diary containing his last famous words before he died on his epic return from the South Pole all captivated my attention. Original musical scores by Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Gilbert and Sullivan, and Chopin were there for the viewing. The wealth on display kept me mesmerized until closing hour.

While writing my diary on Monday, I remembered all of this…but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what I’d done on the Saturday.

I guess I was completely overwhelmed by what I had seen at the British Library.

I thought and thought and thought….Whatever did I do on Saturday. I know it was another once-in-a-lifetime experience…but what was it. I struggled at length over the answer to this question. And then it struck me.

I had gone to Wimbleton and saw the world’s top male tennis star, Australian Lleyton Hewitt, playing in Centre Court, something few Britishers would see as tickets are drawn in a National Lottery. I also saw legend Martina Navratilova playing in #1 court, and the famous Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, playing a doubles match. I saw Russian beauty, Anna Kournikova, playing in one of the outer courts. It was surprising that all of these stars walked among the people in getting to their games.

It may amaze you that the priceless artifacts I saw Sunday in the British Library overshadowed my visit to Wimbleton, the most famous tennis venue in the world and something that few tennis buffs would ever get to see, but then you didn’t see the wondrous stuff I saw in the library.

When I told some of the teachers at the school what I’d seen at Wimbleton, one gym teacher said, “I’ve never been there before!” while a fellow maths teacher asked, “How’d you get those tickets, Bill?”

And I don’t even like tennis! For heaven’s sake, I don’t even know the rules!

Links
Staines
Windsor Castle
Camden Markets
Goth Fashion
Magna Carta
British Library
Gutenberg Bible
Charlotte Bronte
Jane Austen
James Joyce
Lewis Carroll
Charles Darwin
Isaac Newton
Leonardo da Vinci
Sir Robert Scott
Handel
Mozart
Beethoven
Gilbert and Sullivan
Chopin
Wimbleton
Lleyton Hewitt
Martina Navaratilova
Serena Williams
Venus Williams
Anna Kournikova

Favourite Places ©

2008-10-15T22:33:00.000-07:00

By Bill Longworth
October 15, 2008

Everyone has a favorite place in the world…a place where they really feel at home…a place that seems to meld with their most basic self: their thoughts, their interests, their values, and their beliefs.

That favourite place is often a quiet and meditative place that absorbs the mind. It is a peaceful place that dissipates the problems and concerns of life. It’s a place where you can collect your thoughts. It is an escape. It is a reward. It is a place that blocks out all distractions no matter the humdrum and clamour around. It’s a place that we often enter through unthinking habits and routines. It is a lodestone that entices us in. Above all else, it is a place of comfort.

The place may be something simple: the bar stool where the sights and sounds are ever so familiar; the park bench where the bountiful landscape is alive with the colours and sounds of nature; the cliff overlooking the sea where the blasts of water against the rocky shore are accented by birds waffling in the breeze; a sailing yacht where the rhythmic jostling of the boat in the wind and waves gives primal comfort to the bones and to the spirit.

It may be a museum or an art gallery where one can savor in the genius of man. It may be a lecture hall where you can soak up knowledge or a workplace where you are doing your part for the betterment of mankind or simply helping to churn the wheels of commerce. It may be in stimulating young minds in the classroom. Whatever and wherever it is, everyone has that favorite place that is central to their being.

For many, the favourite place may be the hockey rink, the sports field, or the golf course which defines a significant part of their identity and gives rise to fantasizing about their wondrous plays and visualizing competition with Gretzky, Michael Jordan, or Tiger Woods.

That favorite place may be a real place or, for many, a fanciful imaginary place. But wherever it is, for them, it is real.

Your favourite place may be the setting and plot of a story you are reading or a movie you are watching or even the action in a computer game. All have the power to launch you into a fanciful fictional world populated by exciting characters which become your enemies or friends and trigger your emotions all the while they are taking you along on a journey of exciting events and situations beyond your real world experience. By so doing, they free you for too brief a time from the confines of the prison of the real world you’re in.

Often times this place becomes so habitual occupying most of your time and your thoughts and your dreams, the bulk of your efforts, and often an unhealthy proportion of your financial resources. Time spent in your favourite place can drastically limit your global perspective in plugging into the larger world. Time spent in your favourite place may give rise to the incessant questioning of those around who cannot understand the comfort you derive from that place.

For me, I indulge myself in my remote five bedroom cottage on a large lake bordering Ontario’s Algonquin Park. It’s a structure I designed and built myself. It houses collections of things that I’ve gathered locally but also from my work assignments around the world. My cottage defines who I am, and the skills and interests that I have. My cottage is the “real” me…alone, unshaven, self-reliant, resourceful, independent, creative and creating, thinking, busy in my solitude--devoid of the dress suits and ties I wore every working day.

BILL AT HIS REMOTE
COTTAGE BORDERING ONTARIO'S ALGONQUIN PARK

Whatever that favorite place in the world, it transforms your state of mind and its worldly location is any place or activity that is conducive to helping you reach that sublime mental state. Reality starts with the mind and you can have anything in there you want…no matter the size. Your mind is really your limitless “wide open spaces.”

Your world is in your head. “Close your eyes,” I’d often say to my children. “Do you see the elephant in your head? What is your elephant doing?” I’d ask. “You can have anything in there that you want! And you can do anything if you get it into your head that you can!”

No matter the place, that favourite place is the one place that creates a satisfying state of self actualization in the spirit, in the bones, and in the mind. It defines you as you define it. It is truly a place for you that has no limits on what you can think and do.

“Won’t you come in?” ...said the Spider to the Fly ©

2008-09-30T20:45:00.000-07:00

Illustration©, Story© and Video© By
Bill Longworth
September 31, 2008

It all started innocently enough on that blustery January night.

As an introductory get-together, I arranged to catch a little music and a drink at a pub with a person I’d met casually a few days before. I thought that we might enjoy some light conversation between the music sets and get to know a little about each other.

With the fierce snowstorm and the dangerous driving conditions, I began to question the wisdom of driving anywhere that night and as she lived nearby and figuring I could walk home if the weather further deteriorated, I phoned and suggested that I’d bring over a movie to watch to save us the trek outdoors. She readily agreed…perhaps in retrospect, too readily!

I put her acceptance of our change in plans down to a good natured flexibility. How wrong could I be? She was way ahead of me on this one!

Drinks were dispensed shortly after my arrival at her apartment. The atmosphere was welcoming and relaxing. Aromatic candles were glistening everywhere. The lights were low. Soft romantic music was playing. Easy casual conversation helped us to get a cursory knowledge of each other.

Presently, she brought up the subject of watching the movie I had brought and explained that her television and DVD player were in the other room where we could watch the movie.

At that, she bounced gleefully into the TV room as I soldiered dutifully behind. As I entered, I noted that the TV room was also the bedroom….and there was no place to sit.

“Just make yourself comfortable on the bed,” she whispered suggestively. This should have immediately set off piercing alarm bells screaming in my head. This is strike two, I admonished myself. The first strike might have been coming here in the first place. I’d better brace myself for strike three!

Seeing no escape alternative, if at this point the devil within me really wanted one, I arranged the pillows as a back rest so I could sit comfortably to watch the movie. Once they were suitably arranged, I settled myself down ready to enjoy the video.

While I was arranging myself on the bed, she fed the DVD into the player. Despite numerous “apparent” attempts at getting the movie to play, she exclaimed, “I can’t get the damn thing to play!”

You could almost see the scheming wheels accelerating in her head. “I know I do have something that will play,” she announced, and as if by magic she produced another disk. The machine engorged this one which immediately started to play. It was a fireplace video along with its quiet audio of crackling logs combined with romantic music which, as you can imagine, immediately heated up the surroundings.

“Aren’t you warm?” she chirped teasingly as she started to remove her sweater. “I don’t want my clothing to get wrinkled. I have to wear it to work tomorrow!” This concern seemed to give her excuse to disrobe more as she slipped under the blankets and started nestling closer to me, obviously to keep warm.

“Won’t you come under the covers?” she tempted.

I should have seen all this coming. I could sense strike three rapidly approaching.

In the jungle, hungry carnivores know the habits of those they’re stalking and use this knowledge to skillfully move in for the kill. Was I the victim tonight?

Now, I’ve got to pinch myself to wake up and try to figure out whether this whole tale is fact or fiction—whether it has a figment of truth or is completely a figment of my dreamy imagination. You decide—because it shall remain a secret with me!

Whether fact or fiction, however, the time-worn moral of the tale is true. Be wary of hungry cougars prowling in life’s jungles as it’s near impossible to outfox a scheming and cunning cougar which has you lined up in its sites.

The Mayor of Tangshan ©

2008-06-03T13:41:00.000-07:00

By Bill Longworth, May 21, 2008

“Won’t you please come in,” an old gentleman inquired as he opened the door through which I peered inquisitively. I wondered whether I had discovered a new eating establishment from the ones I regularly frequented in a very traditional street market in Shijiazhuang , China, where I worked. “I have the Mayor coming and I’d be honoured to have you in my house when he comes.”

All of this communication, of course, was translated by my Chinese helper as I didn’t speak a word of Chinese, and the old gentleman didn’t speak a word of English.

One of the joys of international work is getting close to the people--visiting them in their houses, socializing with them, getting to know their thoughts, and experiencing as much of their lives as possible. All this is impossible as a tourist.

Through my translator, I told the old gentleman that I would be honoured with his company and conversation, and entered his house. I was seated on one side of a giant “partner’s desk” and served tea.

It wasn’t long before a very handsome young man, dressed to the nines, entered the front door of the house with all of the poise and accoutrements of someone quite important. He was followed by a chauffeur who carried his briefcase, cell phone, and all of the other trappings of wealth and power.

In a country where old age constitutes wisdom and respect, he certainly couldn’t be the Mayor. He looked as though he was in his twenties. He did, though, carry himself very impressively for someone so young. He sat opposite me on the other side of the partner’s desk, and we started to exchange pleasantries with the assistance of my Chinese helper.

The Chinese language and culture is beautiful as words, phrases, and ideas are often associated with nature, illustrious and notable characteristics of humanity, or some profound philosophic thought. Chinese children are usually named after family dreams, ambitions, and aspirations for the child, or the parent’s emotional or philosophic thoughts when the child was born.

My helper’s three character name, for example, was Hu Hui Juan. Hu, the surname, always comes first. This is followed by the given names. Hui means “smart” and Juan means “beautiful”, so my helper was named Smart and Beautiful Hu by her parents, distinguishing her, of course, from all the other Hu’s in the country. Amazingly, Chinese names often materialize as “self fulfilling prophecies” as they did for Huijuan who is now a beautiful practicing biochemical engineer in Canada working on an MBA in international finance. How could it be otherwise, when you are constantly reminded that you are smart and beautiful every time someone calls your name.

As is often the custom, I was also given a Chinese name, Long Bin. Long means “dragon”, the most powerful symbol of Chinese Emperors and Bin means “very polite”. This is significant as well since politeness is a most important characteristic of Chinese people. Interestingly, I was also born in the year of the golden dragon; strong-willed, inflexible, unbending, combative and refusing to accept failure if you believe the charts.

As it turned out, the guy opposite me turned out to be 32. His name was Zhang Xue Tong. Xue means “dawn” and Tong means “red” so his name was translated by my helper as Red Sun Rising. The red dominating in the Chinese flag also symbolizes all of the blood shed in the revolution which brought a “new day” or “new beginning” to the Chinese people, so either interpretation of his name would be celebrating the rise of Mao’s Communism in the country, and the benefits it would bring to the people.

With such an auspicious and respectful name, it is little wonder that he was Deputy Mayor of Feng Nan City at 28.

As the conversation continued, he stated that his term as Deputy Mayor had ended, and he had come to Shijiazhuang, the capital city of Hebei Province, to get his new “appointment.” He was being reassigned to Tangshan, site of the catastrophic 1976 earthquake that killed upwards of 240,000 people.

His appointment as Mayor by the Provincial Government certainly contrasted with everything I knew about Canadian Politics. Hearing these things first hand, however, really helps to drive home an understanding of the differences.

As the night wore on, I told the Mayor that I had to leave to bike back to my university, as the gates would be chained, and I would not be able to get in without waking the guard. At that, the Mayor dispatched his chauffeur to get a taxi. Our bikes were stuffed in the trunk, and the chauffeur jumped into the cab.

The Mayor opened the back door of his limo and motioned for my translator and me to hop in. We did. The Mayor jumped in the driver’s seat and chauffeured us home.

I invited him into my apartment, showed him pictures of Canada, gave him one of my cards, and invited him to look me up if ever he was in Canada.

Working abroad has made me a great Canadian Nationalist who would love to have Red Sun Rising share the Windsong at my Algonquin area cottage. Despite his success in China, I’m confident he would feel as I do that all Canadians won the citizenship lottery at birth. It’s just too bad that we all don’t realize it.

Other places are interesting, but we live in the best place in the world.

An Invitation Home ©

2008-06-02T18:45:00.000-07:00

I was attending a student social shortly after starting my first teaching job in China and was amazed at how all of the university-aged students seemed to gravitate easily to the instructors, myself included.

All of the foreign staff was kept very busy by the students accepting their invitations to chat and to dance.

This seemed like “over-the-top” attention that none of us were use to. Nevertheless, it seemed marvelous to seem to be the center of the universe.

The students seemed naively innocent and were quite forward in asking questions like, “How old are you?” “How much money do you make?” “Can I visit you in your apartment?” and so on.

One of the students, Gloria, whom I’d never met, approached and asked right up, “Would you like to come to my house in Beijing and stay with my family?”

“Great”, I said, figuring it would be wonderful to meet some people and have a place to stay when I visited Beijing.

It was arranged that we should catch the train for the four hour ride north on the upcoming Saturday, about two days hence.

Gloria seemed very excited about this arrangement, a joy that was probably unmatched by mine.

Early Saturday morning, she knocked on my door and we left to catch the early morning train. Communication was a little difficult because of her limited English, my complete lack of Chinese, and her imperfect placement of em-pha’-sis on the correct syllables in addition to her heavily accented Chinglish.

These barriers did not stop our attempts at communication which seemed to improve steadily on the adventure.

When we reached Beijing, we caught a bus and ended up in her very traditional Chinese neighborhood. We walked along roadways that seemed to narrow with every subsequent turn in the maze of brick walled roads that we followed.

She finally exclaimed, “We are here,” as she opened a large wooden door in the brick wall lining the road which by this time had become not much more than a mud floored wagon path.

Inside the door, she led me further as we meandered along and around a whole series of what seemed like little brick sheds until we got to her parent’s “house.” We pushed aside a beaded door-curtain and entered her one room brick living space filled with two bunk beds, a sewing machine between the beds, a table holding a black and white shimmering TV with rabbit ears, and a light bulb hanging overhead from an electric wire…and no washroom.

Gloria lived in a traditional Beijing hutong …and wasn’t it nice to finally arrive at her home?

Reference
hutongs
siheyuan
hutong tour
hutongs in China Daily
Pictures of Life in China
Beijing's hutongs
Description of hutongs from book, "Behind the wall"
China Daily history of hutongs

My Trip to Heaven ©

2008-05-29T18:39:00.000-07:00

Travels to Sharm El Sheikh,
October 3-5, 2003

For a guy that doesn’t like to get wet, I couldn’t keep out of the water. But then, this was heaven, and I wanted to enjoy it as much as I could. I may not get another chance.

I was working in Cairo and this was a fabulous weekend trip to Sharm El-Sheikh on the Red Sea, one of the hottest holiday destinations for Europeans, so Egyptians were outnumbered by Brits, Swedes, Germans, Russians, and Italians plus a few Americans.

Initially developed by the Israelis during their occupation of the Sinai Peninsula from 1967-1982, my travel book introduces “Sharm” by saying that “it features some of the world’s most brilliant and amazing underwater scenery.” It goes on, “The crystal clear water, the rare and lovely reefs, and the incredible variety of exotic fish darting in and out of the colorful coral have made this a snorkeling and scuba-diving paradise attracting people from all over the world.”

I’m not sure that these “book-words” do justice to this amazing place. The swimming has to be the best in the world and I have never experienced anything that came close. The water buoyancy of the Red Sea is such that you can lay back, stretch your arms and legs, and without any effort whatsoever, float for hours. You must be alert enough so that you don’t fall asleep while floating, a problem I discovered when I lost my snorkel gear to the bottom of the sea while inadvertently dozing off.

In snorkeling, no artist’s palette could have as many colors; Iridescents, fluorescents, pastels, brights, etc., and no creative person could design the myriad of shapes and colorations of fish that were seen. Fish that were flat, fat, dish shaped, snake shaped of all different sizes up to 18’’ long with patterns of horizontal, vertical, dotted, spotted, circles, outlined--every shape and pattern of coloration and more than you could possibly imagine.

The water was so clear that you could see horizontally for probably 100 feet and easily to the bottom.

The corals came in every imaginable shape and color from blues to reds to greens to whites to yellows to orange, and looked very much like a flower garden.

The fish were so plentiful that you couldn’t look anywhere without seeing hundreds. One time, I swam through a school of tetras that had to number in the billions. The water was opaque with them. Little wonder that the United Nations has named this place one of the world’s natural treasures to be preserved.

As for the swimmers, they were as varied as the fish with European girls in mini-thongs and a few topless on the beach, although this is supposed to be illegal in Egypt, to religious Egyptians or other Middle Eastern Islamic women in long black flowing burkhas. The only thing they didn’t wear was their face covering although I have seen some of that, complete with shoes, in the pools.

The hotel was a 5 star place and must have been very expensive, although I only paid E£300 (about $71 Canadian) which included bus transportation, hotel room, and breakfast. The hotel breakfasts were fabulous never-ending buffets. The food I bought in Sharm happened to be quite expensive, each meal costing me approximately E£70 (about $18), while the snorkel gear rentals cost me E£50 on each of the two days.

My only souvenirs? A fierce sunburn, a towel with Sharm El Sheikh sewn into it, and memories that will last forever.

For sure, this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

I Remember When....©

2008-05-09T10:54:00.000-07:00

Bill Longworth, April 30, 2008

I remember when the world was a simpler place. Then, the regular rhythms of life were the early morning clickety clack of the horse drawn milk and bread wagons and ice carts delivering their goods with dependable and predictable alarm clock precision; an early iteration of modern industry’s “just in time” delivery systems.

It was a time when the police constables on their bicycles knew everyone and took time for neighbourly chats along their rounds, a time when law and order was everyone’s responsibility.

It was a time when you knew everyone--when you could count on their help and assistance when needed.

It was a time, even in war, that you knew who the enemy was, and could count on respect and a bond of honour even over the fighting lines. That bond, on occasion, called forth an informal truce for mutual celebrations of fellowship, drinking, and carol singing together at times like Christmas. Such was war in simpler times.

It was a time when the constraints of travel and information flow allowed the distinctive cultures of the world to flourish so that travel really meant visiting a different world.

It was a time when large crowds gathered outside store windows at night, even in the rain, to marvel at technological breakthroughs like television.

It was a time when most workers could walk to work, such was the proximity of their homes and their workplaces. It was a time when the wheels of production depended upon worker skill and workmanship. The man himself was more important than the machine.

All that was before the digital age.

Like an earthquake, the digital revolution engorged the simplicity of the old ways. Like a tsunami roaring over the human landscape, in a moment, everything was changed.

It revolutionized everything; jobs, manufacturing, communication, banking, office routines, travel, Information flow—everything, including the human condition! It brought forth new kinds of jobs often substituting the physical efforts of simpler times to mental work freeing many from any kind of physical exertion. This, of course, brought its own problems.

It instantly made the world a smaller place. It made it possible to propel anything, anywhere, anytime. It worked 24/7 often wiping out the eight hour day and holidays and weekends that workers had fought to earn. Technology became controlling, expanding, unrelenting, manipulating. It held everyone at its beck and call every second of the day.

In our new world, we're on an Indianapolis 500 treadmill of rapidly accelerating change, and despite being breathless, we must keep up for fear of falling behind.

And the gulf between the two worlds continues to grow. The torrential downpour of new ideas and new technology is drowning us in a sea of frustration…while the world is being buoyed by a sea of possibilities.

That gulf between the simple world and our new world is the digital divide…a very clear delineation between the old and the new, and easily the equal of the invention of Watt’s steam engine which mechanized hand labour to bring forth the industrial revolution.

Just like the industrial revolution which brought profound change to all aspects of life and unlimited wealth to the nations that embraced it, the digital age holds even greater promise for all aspects of humanity.

Just think of its potential…

Hell! You think about it. I’ve got to leave this story now in its completely unfinished state to plow through the 142 page manual that came with my new blackberry to try to figure out how the damn thing works. Hopefully I won’t have a technology tantrum in the process.

Maybe...just maybe, that simpler time was better after all!

INTERESTING READING ON THIS SUBJECT
VW bans after-hours work related use of employee blackberry's
Did you know?
10 greatest inventions
Landmark inventions of the millennium
Industrial Revolution Inventors
The Great Idea finder
Encyclopedia Britannica Greatest Inventions of All time
Wikipedia Industrial Revolution
Wikipedia Digital Divide
BlackBerry: the new hot-button labour issue
Blackberry Etiquette
German and Allied Forces Fraternizing at Christmas
1914 Christmas Truce
First War Christmas Truce
Wikipedia Christmas Truce
First Person Accounts of Christmas Truce

SONGS ABOUT THE CHRISTMAS TRUCE
1) Christmas 1914, Mike Harding
2) Christmas in the Trenches, John McDermott
3) Belleau Woods, Garth Brooks

The Kitchen Table ©

2008-04-23T12:30:00.000-07:00

Bill Longworth, April 23, 2008

It was an evening sometime in the spring of 1971 when we all gathered at my invitation for a fancy dinner at Ed’s Warehouse in Downtown Toronto’s Theatre District.

Maybe it’s stretching the truth a bit to make this claim of a family dinner.

It’s hard remembering all those who attended. Sometimes the mind distorts the truth. It plays tricks causing the recall of events as you wanted them to happen rather than how they happened.

But one thing is sure. My maternal grandparents were there. This was the first and only time that I recall that anyone from my immediate family ever hosted them for dinner. They were patriarchs of the family, and if they were there, that was the only thing that mattered.

As I recall, many others on my mother’s side attended although there was no one from my father’s side, nor were they invited.

Let me explain!

The values and lifestyle of the families of each of my parents was a study in contrasts. Any gathering of them together would have been like having a dinner of caviar and carp, champagne and beer, cultured blessings and blasting expletives. Their worlds were so different, it’s doubtful that they ever set eyes on each other, or said, “hello,” never mind engaging in friendly pleasantries at the same table.

This difference in the background of my parents led to early family breakdown in the 40’s and made one brother and my sister and I wards of the Children’s Aid. This was not helpful to us in developing a sense of family. After we were retrieved from custodial care, we did gravitate a bit to my mother’s family rather than my father’s, losing complete touch with all of them.

Compounding the difficulties, were our living conditions which resulted in us feeling a little disconnected from our extended families. We were the “poor” cousins, a single-mother family of five who lived in a single room in downtown Toronto in houses where each room hosted a different family. This did make the single washroom in the houses a little busy…and worse. This living condition certainly separated us from our more prosperous relatives on both sides and undoubtedly contributed to our growing divide.

In our single room, conversation at the kitchen table was a little difficult as there was no kitchen…and no kitchen table.

Despite our childhood poverty and hardships, it's unbelievable that my brother and myself and our children are the only members of our parent’s extended families even to this day to acquire university educations.

By the time of that 1971 dinner, I was a school vice principal and well on my way to a successful career. I could well afford to host my extended family at the fancy dinner.

That dinner finally gave me a chance for a significant event around a dinner table. I announced my impending marriage and introduced my future wife and her mother to my mother’s family. It wasn’t our kitchen table, but it was a dinner table gathering for a memorable event…and my grandparents were there!

Joan and I were married months later on August 10, 1971, in a simple ceremony at Toronto City Hall in the presence of our mothers. This led to a wonderful, stable and lasting relationship resulting in the birth of three daughters, the first on August 29, 1972.

I finally got the family kitchen and the kitchen table and the family to enjoy conversations around our kitchen table.

All the Worlds A Stage ©

2008-04-17T17:58:00.000-07:00

Bill Longworth, April 17, 2008

Vast crowds of well-wishers entered the church to the formal strains of violins, violas and organ performing Chopin’s 3rd Movement Piano Sonato #2 in B flat minor, Opus 35.

Their gaze immediately caught the rich closed casket at the front of the church upon which had been placed pictures of myself and my family as well as things emblematic of my life: My retirement school bell as a long time School Principal; My Rotary Club Paul Harris Medal awarded for contributions to the club as Past President and Past District Governor’s Representative for all clubs East of the city; My Gold Masonic Apron representative of membership in one of the oldest lodges in Canada; My Macdonald-Cartier Award presented by the Prime Minister for contributions to the Progressive Conservative Party and for carrying the party banner into the 1990 Federal By-election; A sampling of my oil paintings; Pictures of my work in China, England, and Egypt, and so on.

Many of the crowd gathered around the casket to pay homage or to feign a little interest in my life.

At the anointed hour, the distinguished and aristocratic preacher, standing divinely behind the pulpit, began the service in his soothing and melodious voice.

“Dearly Beloved! We are gathered here today to celebrate the life of Bill Longworth whose oft quoted statement, ‘The Purpose of Life is a Life of Purpose’ characterized everything he did.”

“Bill was dearly beloved by everyone he touched,” the Minister pronounced. “He contributed time and effort to make the world a better place. He was a man of many talents. He was a man of many successes. He was a man truly admired by all. The world is better because of the life he led. We are all sad to see him leave our world but we are comforted knowing he is now in a better place.”

“All that’s a bunch of hogwash,” whispered a staunch gentleman in the fourth row to a woman sitting beside him with a wicked smile of pleasure plastered all over her face. “I think he had this coming to him. Only trouble is he seemed to go so peacefully.”

“Don’t chin so loud Horace,” murmured the women with difficulty disguising her obvious joy. “His family is sitting just in front of us. As his business partner, you’re sure to get a good portion of his loot. We’ll be sole owners of the business. We’ll be rich!”

Some in the crowd found it difficult to maintain their composure at the thought of a world without me. Some burst into tears of hysteria. Most of those gathered were in a profound state of mourning. A few, of course, like that stoutly gentleman in the fourth row were quite indifferent to my death and were there to simply relish in the event.

Those in my immediate family in the front rows were of the first ilk; they were in sincere and tearful despair about my demise.

Others in the crowd, particularly Oshawa City Politicians, were in a more celebratory and jubilant spirit rather than the sombre and solemn mood one usually expects at funerals.

The Minister carried on, “Bill worked hard to make Oshawa politicians a more honest and accountable bunch.”

Hearing this, some Oshawa Council politicos squirmed uncomfortably in their seats while others in the crowd happily paraphrased Richard Nixon’s famous assertion by exclaiming, “We’re glad he won’t be here to kick us around any more.“

These politicians, like my business partner, relished in my demise rather than mourning it.

One politician was heard to whisper, “With Longworth gone, we’ll have no more of his blog, oshawaspeaks.ca. We’ll be able to rest comfortably knowing that he won’t be around to expose our self-serving manipulation of voters to implement the general vote. We’ll now be assured of our council seats until our death or resignation. It’s comforting that we can rely on getting that half million dollar windfall over each four year term as long as we want it.”

In the contrasts of the growing whisperings and tears from various quarters as the service went on, the minister called for the eulogist to come forward.

And then to the amazement of all, I entered the room from a side entrance and walked to the lectern to address the crowd.

“This has been a test for you all,” I announced, now very much alive in front of the astonished crowd. “This whole thing was theatrical. I was the director and the whole thing was set up as a movie shoot with hired actors to play the parts.”

It’s amazing that no one checked any of the details of this service…false obituaries in the paper, forged death certificates, our rentals of the casket and hearse, the actors checking into the legitimacy of their parts, the church rentals for a movie shoot…Everything was fake. But all of the procedures of a real death were followed to get a true response from all who attended.

“I have tried my best to live the good life meting out rewards and punishments as best I could according to basic Christian values. Everything said and done here today has been videotaped with directional mikes to catch everyone’s sentiments toward me as accurately as could be done.

The economic and financial proceeds of my life work will ultimately be decided and distributed following analysis of the footage filmed today.

The admissions by politicians as to their real motivation for introducing the general vote will be played on my website to expose their self-serving actions for the people of Oshawa.

Those of you who have been true to me will prosper. Those of you who have debased, defaced, debauched, degraded, and abused our democratic principles in Oshawa will be exposed.

All the world’s a stage…and all the people in it merely players…don’t they say? And all of you here today have been true to your feelings and attitudes and motivations, all of which will have real consequences to your lives…something I can assure while I am still in this life!”

My Trip To Hell ©

2008-04-13T01:53:00.000-07:00

Bill Longworth, April 16, 2008

For some God forsaken reason I decided to go to Ba Da He which translates as “Eight Big Rivers.”

I arose early from my “fancy digs” in Kunming’s Yunnan Finance and Trade Institute where I was employed. Along with my Chinese helper/translator, I biked to the train station at the south end of the city arriving at about 6:50 am. At this ungodly hour, even the young girl supervising the bike parking lot was just awakening from her little cubicle at the entrance of the lot.

Ba Da He was a remote town at the junctions of Yunnan, Guangxi and Guizhou Provinces, a region in South West China populated by the Bouyei Minority People.

These people work as farmers and loggers and worship many “natural gods” like gods of mountains, rivers, moon, animals, and any other aspect of nature that they want to promote to that sublime state. In arts, they are famous for African-like batiks, mask carving, and brocade work. They are also versatile musicians, singers, and dancers all of which are traditional and integral parts of their culture.

The first stage of the journey was an eight-hour train ride to Luo Ping. The journey was over the mountains where we could overlook many wonderful terraced rice fields cascading down the slopes. Upon reaching Luo Ping in mid afternoon, we caught a motorcycle tricycle into town where we could catch a minibus for the 2½ hour ride over the mountains to Ba Da He.

The minibus was packed with people sitting on each other’s laps and hanging out over the side of the bus. Three women on the bus were dressed in the distinctive and colourful Bouyei National Dress.

The road, if you could call it that, was dirt, strewn with boulders of various gut wrenching dimensions—raw, narrow, treacherous, and gutted, with sheer drop-offs over the jungle covered mountains. Giant Bamboo clinging to the roadsides seemed a friend to impede us from going over the precarious edge, and the huge leaves of wild Banana trees overhanging the road provided comfort by blocking the view of our potential fate.

Finally, after a number of flat tires and potential nervous breakdowns, despite the gaiety and never ending chatter of the “regulars” on the bus, we arrived at our destination.

The town was a small place with one single muddy main road bordering a river. Everything seemed to be in a state of destruction.

As it was now approaching dusk and we hadn’t eaten for some time, I asked my Chinese helper to find us a place to eat. She asked, and was told there was no place to eat. I asked her to find us a place to stay, and was told there was no place. I was getting a little worried. Knowing that the Police would do their utmost to protect a foreigner in distress, I asked her to find us a police station. There weren’t any. Well then, How about a government office?

We were directed across the bridge to the adjoining province where we were told there were some “officials” stationed to oversee lumber being driven down the river to insure that the drivers had legitimate right to do so.

Feeling hopeful, we approached these officials, who confirmed there was no place to stay or eat. We asked about any way out of the town that night. We were told there was nothing leaving until 6:30 the next morning.

We were getting a little despondent!

After a period of gut wrenching stress, we were invited for dinner by these officials and invited into their yard, a precipitous lookout over the river far below.

As darkness approached, we noted that there were no electric lights within view. The only light was the full moon and the campfire, around which we ate a wonderful meal consisting of many courses, while the products of the next meal cackled about our feet looking for any discards to be recycled for future meals.

As the night wore on, the beer came out, and the stories and fellowship and laughter flourished. My translator helper was overwhelmed keeping up with all of the conversation.

Even some young doctors dropped by hearing there was a “big nose” foreigner in the village, probably the first and only non-local to visit the place.

Ba Da He…the trip to Hell? Hell no! Probably the best night of my life.

References

Bouyei People
Link 1
Link 2
Link 3

Map of location

Writer’s Note
This trip took place on Friday and Saturday June 12 and 13, 1998
Ba Da He was being destroyed as a new dam was shortly going to flood the location under 300 feet of water. I was probably in a place I was not supposed to go! Our overnight and party hosts refused any compensation for taking us in despite the fact that two workers gave up their beds and their rooms for the night.

2008-03-06T12:51:00.000-08:00

Bill Longworth,
March 6, 2008

“Hi Melanie,” I said, a little surprised to see my daughter at the door. “Thanks for dropping in. It’s great that you brought over Finegan. I haven’t seen him for a while and he’s getting enormous…growing like a weed. Excuse my mess with the paint and all everywhere. I’m so excited. I’ve just been finishing up a landscape to submit to my first juried art show. It’s tough trying to choose the three to enter. Glad you’re here to help me choose.

“Well Dad,” Melanie responded, “We can’t stay long. Finegan gets a little rambunctious as you know.”

“We’ll let everything drop for a moment then,” I said, “We’ll just push the paint and sandwiches aside and spread the landscapes out on the table and put on the kettle. Surely you have time for a coffee. Maybe you can help me make my choices while the water boils.”

“Yeah! Sounds great Dad…but we really don’t have much time.”

“This one, I’ve just been painting is one of my best, I think, and I’m sure I want to enter it after a few more touch ups. I’ve got all of those paint jars open just trying to visualize the colours I want. So what do you think about the others?”

“That one with the canoes,” Melanie exclaimed, “Don’t think I’d consider that. I don’t like the colours. Besides, I like people in paintings. I think people give you someone to relate to. You’re always wondering what’s going through their mind and it has a way of drawing you into the picture.”

“Oh, too bad! I’ve always loved that picture. It doesn’t have people, but the empty canoes certainly draw me right into the picture. The area looks remote and the empty canoes indicate there must be people nearby. It’s like I’m invited right into their camp to enjoy the spot with them. I guess when it comes right down to it, I’m going to have to decide for myself. Let’s go to the other room and have the coffee.”

“Yeah Dad,” Melanie said as we moved to the kitchen, “But it will have to be quick.“

While chatting, we heard a large crash in the back room. Rushing in, we were shocked at the sight.

Finegan, Melanie’s huge dog, had jumped up on the table to grab the lunchtime sandwich I’d left. In his excitement to grab the sandwich, he had dumped most of the paint bottles, run through the paint, and over all the paintings. They were completely ruined. I was aghast. I had nothing left for the show.

My beautiful landscapes had huge random blobs of paint, the colours of which had been mixed by the stirring of the dog’s paws. It looked as if Mr. Rorschach partnered with me by highlighting my work with his colourful paint blobs. What was I going to do?

The interesting and randomly shaped blobs did seem to provide a distinctive air to the pieces and the colours I’d left open on the table provided an interesting contrast to the original colours in my paintings. I didn’t think I'd ever seen paintings like this so as a last resort, I chose three of the best of the “new” pieces and took them over to the show.

The pieces attracted a lot of attention as I was seen as a very creative visionary doing something that no one had ever seen.

The result?

“Congratulations Bill,” said the adjudicator, “Your paintings are the best in the show. You seem to have developed a new painting frontier, a blend of landscape realism with abstract surrealism something we’ve never seen. It’s like opening up a new school of art, like Picasso’s Cubism or French Impressionism. Many around the world will now be trying to emulate your work. Congratulations!”

His remarks presented me with a moral dilemma. Should I fess up to the story behind the paintings?

“No,” I rationalized to myself. “The beauty of a painting often results from happy and unforeseen accidents rather than detailed planning, and the act of being creative is seeing the value of what you, and circumstances, have done.”

2008-03-02T18:52:00.000-08:00

By Bill Longworth,
March 5, 2008

The sights and sounds of nature--the singing brook gently trickling over the undulations of the creek bed; the wind whispering softly as it makes its way through the lazily swaying grasses; the birds chirping their melody at the happiness of the abundance in their lives. Such visions attest to the Hand of God.

Such visions attract the many that leave the noise, the clutter, the concrete, and the traffic of the big cities to seek the peace, the solitude, the tranquility of country life.

Somehow such peacefulness does something to the human psyche. It soothes the soul. It rearranges human priorities. It slows the pace of life. It transforms your thoughts of all that is important. It takes you back to a better time of the carefree days of youth when the present consumed all your thoughts; a time when you were never concerned about yesterday or tomorrow.

There are many ways that we seek this solace in yesteryear. We cottage. We camp. We travel to quiet and beautiful places. All of this to escape the present and relish in the bountifulness of our world which transports us emotionally to a carefree place where all our worries are forgotten.

One has to slow down, as they say, to smell the roses; to relish in the details of our place; to see the beauty in each blade of grass; to feel the luxuriousness of the forest; to wonder away your time marveling at the antics of the butterfly, the cricket, or the squirrel scampering to put away its winter food supplies.

Somehow, all of this seems a requirement for a fulfilled and happy life. It slows us down so we can seek pleasure in the lazy and non-productive activities that spelled disaster in the world we knew.

This is a cycle of life that we start to appreciate as our ambitions of the work world dissipate, and we become increasingly aware of what we think is truly important.

There is a counterbalance to this cycle of life, however, that jeopardizes the harmony of mind and body bringing it into conflict with the present as one becomes too comfortable. The conflict starts to agitate for the excitement and the pace and the convenience of the city life we once knew.

Perhaps life is such that we can never be satisfied. We always yearn for that which we don’t have.

The natural world soothing the harmony of mind and body gives way to another mind and body symmetry arising out of a need for mental and physical stimulus the noise, the excitement, and the possibilities that only the city can provide.

Alas! Just as the human spirit seeks constant change, the world itself is changing. It’s a place some would even call progressing. And so change comes to those tranquil places that once we sought. It arrives with the bullying of huge equipment--bulldozers, steam shovels, and construction crews to bring change to the world we once thought we wanted…and perhaps we need.

What is it about man that makes us want to put our own mark on everything we touch? What is it about us that make us transform our God-given world?

Is it that only continual anticipated change can bring happiness and contentment to humanity? Is true satisfaction and joy simply the contemplation of possessing those things we don’t at present have?

Perhaps! Perhaps! If so, happiness and joy is forever fleeting in our human existence. And the world we once had will be forever lost.

OTHER "TAKES" ON THIS THEME

Letter to My Mother" excerpted from SMALL WONDER. Copyright 2002 by Barbara Kingsolver. HarperCollins Publishers

Knowing Our Place From Mother Earth News

Nature's Inspiration from www.simpletruths.com

2008-02-28T14:05:00.000-08:00

By Bill Longworth
First Public Reading, January 30, 2008

I remember clearly when I first derived pleasure from the act of writing. It’s as clear as if it was yesterday. In fact it was close to fifty years ago when the teacher in my one-room country school assigned everyone, including this grade two youngster, the task of writing a story.

It was probably a lazy Friday afternoon too wet outside for baseball, which from the numbers of times we played, seemed to be a passion for the teacher, or to avoid the massive cleanup associated with art class, the other Friday afternoon favorite.

Anyway, for whatever reason we were given a writing assignment for the first and only time that I can recall. The memory of it has remained all these years so obviously, it had to have had some significance in my life.

I can’t remember the topic, nor can I remember much motivation the teacher provided in the way of creative stimulus. All I can remember is the activity itself and my satisfaction at the result.

The words poured onto my paper as if a dyke had broken and they consumed page after page after page. Had the teacher not called “time”, I would probably still be writing.

Looking back, I undoubtedly had a case of verbal diarrhea confusing the weight of the tome with its quality, a confusion many around me say I still have.

Throughout my working life, writing became an important communication tool, often growing in complexity to mystify the readers including myself at times. Perhaps I had some hidden agenda to impress rather than to inform…a malady I’m working hard to correct as my computer records 284 words out of the 500 allocated for this exercise.

So now, you must be wondering what the significance of that early writing was in my life. It was the first time that I can ever recall doing something that led to positive feelings about self, a sense of accomplishment, and a sense of being able to do something worthwhile. I think the teacher even found something good to say about my piece and for a kid that didn’t hear much praise in those early years, her words were magic.

I think this one writing assignment set the stage for all that I was to become. In an instant I was transformed from a lost child with many self doubts in Children’s Aid foster care as a result of marriage breakdown when that was not the norm it is today to a confident, self assured, and independent person determined to conquer the world and with the feeling that I had the skills to do it.

So thank you teacher for your lazy Friday afternoon “busy work” assignment for leading me to discover that I was okay; that I could do something worthwhile. Your unplanned and unmotivated activity gave me the initial stimulus to lead to what many would define as a worthwhile and successful life.

So why do I write? I believe that writing is the root of everything positive in my life…a fact that I have accidentally discovered by writing this story.

It was that single writing exercise that led me to think profoundly and passionately and have pride and confidence in what I could say and do and the courage to express it to the world.

2008-02-24T14:06:00.000-08:00

An original story by Bill Longworth,
First public reading, Thursday, February 28, 2008

His lean wiry body was outfitted in razor-pressed light tan trousers, a pastel yellow suit jacket, tan shirt with chocolate brown tie, brown fedora, brown shoes polished to a mirror finish, and his outfit was punctuated with cream spats. He carried a huge ruby ring on the small finger of his right hand.

His neatly trimmed red moustache, ruddy complexion, and dark hair parted in the middle and slicked straight back completed the picture of a man unduly concerned with his impeccable image.

He was the “flash,” the first person you noticed in a crowd. He seemed to draw people to him like a magnet.

Either you have “it” or you don’t…whatever “it” was…but “it” was magic in making him the center of whatever universe he seemed to frequent….although it was usually one of three universes…the tavern, the factory, or the Saturday Night dances he organized at a local hall. It never crossed his mind that one of the universes he should frequent would be at home with his wife and family.

In the factory, although uneducated and unskilled, he always had a minor supervisory position like shift foreman, quality control inspector, or machine mechanic to keep the gears of the factory running smoothly.

In the tavern, he was the “rounder” who spent most of his salary buying rounds for all in the house.

At the dance, he was the “light” that attracted the attention of the most beautiful women. If the night was dull, he’d steal someone’s beer to excite the place with a rumble, and was always effective in keeping the place hopping.

He knew everyone…and everyone knew him, criminals and police alike. He was always at the centre of whatever mischief was around. If he wasn’t directly involved, he knew who was. No wonder the police usually checked with him first to get to the bottom of misdemeanors as well as more serious crimes. These days you’re nobody if your name doesn’t google well. Had the world had such tools in the forties, he would have been a superstar.

His popularity with the ladies, of course, not to mention his lack of discipline, his salary spending abuses, his drinking, and his many adulterous relationships, made it very difficult for him to lead a conventional family life.

He lived hard, played hard, and abused his body with alcohol and paid the price with death at forty seven…alone, as a boarder in a simple room. Alone in a world where no one seemed to care.

He was the black sheep, even in his own family, growing up in a “party-central” house where all visitors grabbed a beer from the fridge before they said hello, and his mother had to quickly hide the bottles on the odd occasion when the minister dropped by.

How do I know all this?

Well, he was my father. And I inherited many of his qualities. Fortunately, I’ve been able to channel them in more positive ways. Without the intellectual and personal gifts I got from him, and the lessons I’ve learned first-hand from his shortcomings and failings, I wouldn’t have had my successes.

So thank you Dad! I really didn’t get to know you, but I do know that I owe you a debt of gratitude.

2008-02-18T10:58:00.000-08:00

An Original Tale by Bill Longworth
First public reading, Valentines Day, Thursday, February 14, 2008

Looking up from my newspaper and breakfast coffee, I questioned “Who was that on the phone Cuddle-muffin?” as I thought of the pair of red thong frillies I’d recently found at the bottom of her drawer…quite a change from the cottons she normally wore as I mentally recalled my recent suggestions that she get in the groove with some modern lingerie styles.

“Just a friend from my last job dear. She wanted to catch me up on all of the changes with the plant…you know, downsizing and all.”

“Well you certainly didn’t say much. She must be quite a talker,” as I thought of the new hair style and perfume she’d recently acquired.

“We seem to be getting quite a few of these strange calls recently. Quite often when I answer the phone, I’m told it must be the wrong number…or the caller just hangs up. Something seems to be going on. You seem to be rather secretive lately,” a rising and uncontrollable tenseness growing in my voice. “All those strange telephone calls you make when nothing important seems to be said. When there’s no purpose for your call…you seem to be hiding something from me!”

“Going on?” she screamed indignantly, uncustomarily raising her voice. “I think there is something going on! What are you doing with the red thong underwear I found in your toolbox?”

“Well today’s Valentines Day, Zelda, and I was going to give them to you at bedtime tonight…you know to sort of celebrate the special occasion like we used to many years ago.”

“Oh, Pussycat! Today’s also your birthday and I bought this wonderful pair of red thongs just to wear for you tonight.”

“Oh my wonderful Cuddle-muffin, and I was just beginning to think that with all those strange phone calls, there might be a problem creeping into our marriage.”

“The phone calls? Those are from all our friends discussing details of your surprise birthday party that we’re having Saturday night. Now you’ve spoiled the fun!”

“Spoiled the fun, my dear….it’s just beginning. Let’s go upstairs and try on the new stuff. “

The moral of the story? The transition from panties to scanties is problematic! Like your favourite dessert, the pleasure should be consumed immediately.

2008-02-16T11:16:00.000-08:00

Professor Karpov Lecture on the Fallacies of Studying History
On Planet Zudar in the Year 10608 AE (After E-Arth)

An Original Tale by Bill Longworth, Oshawa, Canada
First Public Reading February 20, 2008

“Hey Minsky…came across this story of the primitive E-Arth culture in the Milky Way Galaxy 8600 years ago. Apparently many humans there were keen scholars in looking backwards in time through the study of what they called History. Can you imagine?”

“History, Professor Karpov, Was that the story of man? And was there a parallel story about woman…like Herstory?”

“Well no, I think they were just interested in his story. But it all had to do with spending a lot of time and energy in looking backwards in time and writing stories about it. Many of the stories even went back before their written language and so the stories were told over and over and over from generation to generation. Of course they got changed every time they were told. And then schools would test their students on their knowledge of the latest accounts of his story.”

“No wonder they were a backward civilization, Professor Karpov. Any society that keeps looking over its shoulder at the past is sure to run into a brick wall in moving forward. They would always be looking backwards to find answers to new problems that had never arisen before. I guess they were not visionaries like our civilization. Why would they place such importance on the past, Professor?”

“Well they said, Minsky, that if they knew the past, they would learn from it and not repeat past mistakes. If they studied wars, genocides, ruthless leaders, social injustices and so on, the lessons learned would insure that the same mistakes did not happen again. They insisted that the lessons were important to make their planet a better place. They believed that the study of wars, for example, would lead to a better system of conflict resolution. That they would learn to allocate all of their war budgets on things like medical research, providing universal education and health care, equal opportunity and reasonable living standards for people throughout E-Arth. They said the study of History would help them to eliminate war and famine.”

“Well did it do any of these things, Professor?”

“No, it didn’t do any of these things. Maybe even made things worse!”

“So you’re postulating, Professor Karpov, that History often turns out like harboring the irritation of a toothache that often festers into never-ending aggression, disagreements, attempts to extract revenge, rebuttals, violence, genocide and war. It is not in remembering the sweetness of the smell of the rose…or the kind and thoughtful act. History by its very nature cannot foster unity and understanding.”

“A good observation, Minsky. History is merely fictionalized accounts of world events told from one point of view…that may or may not have happened…that may or may not be accurate. To their credit, though, they did preserve the wisdom of man in great books like the Christian’s Bible, the Moslem’s Koran, the Jew’s Tanakh, the Chinese’s Five Classics of Confucianism, the Hindu’s Śruti and many others. Unfortunately, unquestioning belief in the content of these great books often divided E-Arth peoples into warring factions. Amazingly, these books, which all contained the same basic wisdom of humans, also became a leading foundation of strife.”

“Well then, Professor Karpov, doesn’t the study of History imprison people to what they know as a civilization and then retard them from discovering new knowledge? “

“Well E-Arth did have a famous philosopher by the name of Andy Warhol** who said everyone will have 15 minutes of fame, which implied the fleeting nature of the importance of anyone and anything. In that statement, Minsky, this great thinker was pointing out the paramount importance of the immediate past, the present, and the focus of this most recent state of knowledge and experience on incremental improvements to the near future, which is what we believe on our Planet Zudar, the most advanced civilization ever in the universe.”

“I guess that explains why, Professor Karpov, we do not study the History of our peoples--only scientific investigations and knowledge about the natural world and about those things that can be proven about the development of our world and of our species. Rather than focusing hatred on the past through studying it ad nauseum, we focus all of our intellect on solving problems for our future.”

“For sure, Minsky. The only unlimited resource in the world is the potential of the mind. Change accelerates as increased knowledge exposes more frontiers to the genius of man. The only limit to the future is the number of beings willing to adventure forward, compared to those who revel in the past, preserving the status quo through their study of History. Our world is rapidly changing and a strong focus on History is a force for retention of the past. If we focused on the past, we wouldn’t be the advanced and idyllic civilization we are today.”

“You’ve convinced me, Professor Karpov. Historians are Luddites, retarding progress to a better place.”

“Yes, my son, the only value of History is as a source of inspiration for creative fictional writing. History has as much truth and reliability as science fiction--but science fiction at least focuses vision on the world ahead.”

AUTHOR'S COMMENT

** The reference to artist Andy Warhol as a famous philosopher of the time is a tongue-in-cheek comment about historical references...not the author's naivety about his work.

INTERESTING READING ON THIS TOPIC

Theory vs. philosophy in history
The Whig Interpretation of History
Thinking Historically and Teaching History
The New Historicism
Logical Fallacies in History
Why Study History?
A Sense of History---Some Components!
Mike Wallace 1958 Interview---Are there extraterrestrial beings?
Canada: Innovate or Stagnate...David Crane, Toronto Star, May 1, 2009
YOUR TURN---SUBMIT YOUR REASONS PRO OR CON IN RESPECT OF STUDYING HISTORY

2008-02-13T14:35:00.000-08:00

A True Story Embellished with a Lie or Three
By Bill Longworth
Feb. 13, 2008

Love can creep into your life at the most unexpected of times. You never know when it will happen, but when it happens, you'll know.

I was the “good luck” charm, and so I was asked to accompany my favorite Chinese student to write one of her National Exams, which is a pastime for most Chinese students who exhibit an extraordinary ambition to acquire more and more academic credentials.

As I had hours to kill, I brought a book and arranged to sit surrounded by huge rugged man-made rock structures in a secluded section of a nature park close to the examination center.

The book got the better of me, and so it wasn’t long before I dozed off under my scrubby ball hat hiding most of my unshaven face from the blasting sun. With the sweaty bike ride to get there, my dusty jeans and “T” shirt, I must have been quite a sight.

Had Canadian Embassy officials seen me that morning, I’m sure that they would have wanted me to turn the flag crested shirt inside out so that I couldn’t be recognized as a Canadian who was probably bringing disrepute to the entire nation.

I don’t know how long I was asleep before I felt a tap on my shoulder. Looking up I saw the most beautiful Chinese woman I had ever seen standing over me. I wondered if I had not yet woken up and was still in the dream.

The guy with her, obviously a photographer because of the huge professional-looking camera he was lugging, gestured for permission to get a picture of me. Of course I acquiesced, always wanting to be a model of co-operation in this society that seemed to be marked by overt politeness everywhere.

At that, the girl disappeared into a nearby washroom and came back with a fancy and colourful dress, huge hat, high heel shoes, and without hesitation plopped herself on my knee.

I felt for sure that I must be having some heavenly dream as the photographer proceeded to snap dozens of shots as the girl kept rearranging herself on my knee. I kept pinching myself to check that this was not a dream. It wasn’t!

The girl periodically left for a few minutes each time to return with another colourful outfit. Each time she threw her arms around me and continued to dance her bottom across my knee.

It eventually became apparent that she was a model and my unshaven Anglo Saxon features gave a desirable dimension of rugged North American individualism to the shots.

I hoped that the “shoot” would never end, an impossible wish. But even today, I regularly sit in parks with a book hoping to fall asleep, once again to be awakened by a princess wanting to dance across my knee.

So what do you think is the lie?

The whole story is true…but it’s so unbelievable that I cannot believe that I was there and it all happened to me.

I’ve always wondered how the experience might have changed had I been presentable that day. Would she still have stopped? More importantly, would she have left after the shoot was over?

Was I the good luck charm? If I was indeed awake, I must have been the good luck charm for myself, and hopefully, I was just as lucky for the Chinese test writer who was counting on me that day.

They say love is fleeting...but this was a love whose memories will remain with me always.

2008-02-10T13:24:00.000-08:00

Story synopsis---A character sketch. A nostalgic look at "grandpa" whose life was lived in 3 centuries. Born in 1897 at the time of horses and buggies, gramophones, vaudeville, Morse code and the telegraph and before the automobile, airplanes, the talkies, radio, typewriters and household appliances, and died in 2003 after television, computers, the internet, space travel, international travel, wireless telephones, mp3 players, and everything else we take for granted. So much change in the way things were done...and so difficult to keep up!

Fran wasn’t really my children’s grandfather, but he was the closest they ever came to having one. He was my mother’s husband, a retired gentleman when he met my mother when she was in her late forties and he was in his late sixties.

Fran, or Frank, as I always called him from day one, subconsciously putting the “k” on the end of his name, either having not heard it properly when he was first introduced, or simply figured that not having the “k” stood him rather naked and exposed with a woman’s name. I never did think that his name might have been Francis which I later came to know over time. I never did change his name though in my own mind and continued to call him Frank up until the time he died as one of Canada’s remaining half dozen or so First War Veterans just months short of his 106th birthday.

Frank was a living human antique whose stories of the pre-history of his youth captivated everyone and led to many an interesting discussion. He never was able to understand the present however and such things as computers, electronic cameras, cell phones, and mp3 players mystified him. As a person who lived before all of these electronic gadgets, his handwriting was still a model of excellence, and he could not quite understand how all of that wonderful and powerful symphonic music came out of the miniature mp3 player I put on his head when he was 104 or so.

Frank had never been married before he met my mother and so he lived as a bachelor all those many years. Obviously over that time, Frank developed his own way of doing things and was living proof that “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

Despite some shortcomings, Frank was very interesting and talkative, and an active, fit, and energetic person which were some of his good qualities. He was kindly to my children getting on the floor to play marbles with them even into his eighties and nineties. He was always inventing games for them to play.

Frank was always dressed up in clothing that looked as if it had been inherited from his father, a Toronto Anglican Church Canon, University Philosophy Professor, the Founder of Toronto’s St. Clement’s Private School, and ultimately a University President who died sometime in the early 1900’s. Frank’s clothing characterized his extraordinary care with money. He found things so expensive when he compared them to the prices of things in the early part of the century and seemed unable to escape a time warp that had imprisoned him there.

Physically, Frank was useless at anything that involved mechanics, fixing or building things, using tools, or driving a car, despite the fact that he perpetually gave advice about all of those things. Around any work site, he always found himself in the way and his involvement there was both a danger to himself and all others around.

I have no idea how he survived skating into his nineties and skiing, tobogganing, and such things which I always assumed would have been Hari Kari to him.

I remember wanting to fell a large white birch at my cottage one summer when Frank was in his nineties. As the tree was close to the cottage deck, I devised a roping system to insure the tree fell away from the cottage rather than on it. I strung a rope high on the tree, wrapped it around the trunk of a tree in the direction I wanted it to fall, and then brought the rope back to the cottage deck so that everyone there could pull on it, which in turn would guide the falling tree forward away from the cottage. I told everyone to let go when the tree starting falling.

On final inspection before the work, I noticed that Frank had wrapped the rope around his hand to anchor it firmly. I cautioned him not to do this as he wouldn’t be able to let go when the tree started falling and would be whisked off the deck and propelled through the air like Mary Poppins to land indignantly beside the fallen tree.

After these cautionary words, I proceeded to fell the tree with a chain saw. As the tree started to fall, I stopped to watch the marvel of my genius. At the same time out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mary Poppins flying across the deck.

Despite my instructions not to do so, I bet you can’t figure out who had wrapped the rope around their hand.

Was it one of my kids? No! It was Grandpa Frank.

2008-02-10T12:55:00.000-08:00