General

Stormin’ Out There OR I’ll Nap When I Want To!

~ Roger JG Albert

Wed. Jan. 18, 2023 -8:50 AM

Sky is blue this morning and it’s calm with no wind, but last night I swore the sky was falling. Sure felt that way. We sleep on the south-east side of the house, that’s the direction of the prevailing wind. 

If there’s going to be a tree fall on the house during a storm, it will be from that direction, from the south-east. We seldom get strong winds at our home in Cumberland, but when they happen, they aren’t shy. 

Last night the weather had no shame, no sense of propriety. It came banging on the side of the house, undeterred by the fact that we might be sleeping (or trying to sleep) inside. The rain aimed to engrave the windows with incessant beatings. There would be no sleep, at least not until the weather lost its angry edge. 

One thing about sleeplessness is that my brain has plenty of time to speculate on things transpiring in the midlin’ parts of my body. Normally my brain is in denial, but storms put a wrench into that. The storms seem to amplify the ‘discomfort’ I feel in my back. Most of the time I don’t think about it. It may be that atmospheric pressure has something to do with the pain in my midsection, but that’s only speculation on my brain’s part. The pain is real, though. 

I was supposed to get a visit today from my palliative care doctor, but she was called away to an emergency so we’re putting that off until next week. 

Thursday, January 19, 2023 – 8:00 AM

0.0˚C. Jeez. That’s cold in my books. Looks like winter is carrying on. It’s going to hang around for some time yet, whether we like it or not. There’s no denying that. It may be that we escape more serious dumps of snow, but there’s no guarantee of that either. Ski patrollers would like to see lots of snow fall and we do need as big a snowpack as we can get, but I don’t welcome snow. I’m decidedly not a cold weather person. I like to sit by our politically incorrect woodstove, especially when I just get up in the morning and Carolyn has got a fire going in our new, very efficient Pacific Energy woodstove (rated at 1.8 parts per million). Ah, a nice wood fire, warm and welcoming, along with a nice cup of coffee. Life is good, isn’t it? Well, there is that other thing. 

My back has been a challenge lately with constant ‘stitches’. The pain isn’t horrible, but it is a pain in the butt (a little higher, actually) and pushes me to take more hydromorphone. If I take 4 mgs of breakthrough hydromorphone on top of the 18 mgs of the slow-release flavour, I can usually fall asleep and stay that way for a while. Lately, I’ve taken to sleeping in my recliner. It’s much more restrictive than my usual bed because it’s so much narrower, but also much more flexible in terms of position. Actually, I find my recliner quite comfortable to sleep in. Come to think of it, I may want to use it tonight.

Now, enter the game-changer. The Home Care team has arranged to have a hospital bed delivered to the house next week for my pleasure and sleeping enjoyment. This bed is kindly provided by the Canadian Red Cross and is available to me for as long as I need it. That has me a little unnerved, but I need to accept it in the same spirit it was offered. Thank you, Red Cross. 

The problem is that all the people I’ve ever known to get a hospital bed delivered to their homes have not come out alive. I guess that’s to be expected, but I don’t feel as though I’m that close to the final frontier. So, I’m of two minds about the hospital bed. On the one hand, yes, I want it because I think it would increase my level of sleepy time comfort and probably reduce my dependence on opioids. On the other hand, anything that reminds me of hospitals leaves me a little cold. 

I suppose the best thing for me to do is relax. Not sure I can do that. I’ll work on it. 

Friday, January 20, 2023 ~7:30 AM

The menagerie awakens to growling tummies. The cats, Princess and Sunshine, are prancing around wary of each other, but impatient for breakfast. Sunshine is a guest, Arianne’s cat who is here waiting for the renovations to their house in Vancouver to be finished allowing him to finally go home and relax on his favourite perch on the back porch. 

Tilly is impatient. She has that big tummy to fill up and she’s quite convinced that she will starve to death given that Carolyn hasn’t fed her yet and it’s getting late. Cooper, the neighbour’s dog sits at the deck doors waiting for something. He’s not sure what, but he’s convinced that it’s in here whatever it is. Food, maybe? A spot in front of the woodstove, maybe? Making decisions is tough. Every once in a while he lets out a bark, not one with great conviction, and just loud enough to ensure that the residents of this place know that he’s out there and needs something. What? Who knows?

Tilly is on guard making sure Cooper doesn’t exceed his privilege. She charges him from this side of the door. 

I had a good sleep last night. It was one of those rare ones. The pain in my back wasn’t present enough to wake me up and I didn’t have to pee. I slept a solid seven hours straight. Miraculous! 

My back is still twitching but that should attenuate shortly because I just took my meds, and they will take care of the twitching. After that, I’ll take a nap. I probably don’t need a nap, but it’s my right as an old man to nap whenever I feel like it. 

ActualIy, I nap out of a sense of duty. If I don’t nap, the government might feel justified in removing that privilege from me. Governments are like that, you know, according to the CPC. Liberals and Trudeau are always waiting to pounce to revoke our privileges. Bad government! Be scared of bad government! Be scared of everything! LOL! Ha Ha! He! He!

Memory Works With A Little Effort

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 9 Comments

I’m not sure if you’ll be able to access this Atlantic article or not, so I’ll just summarize it a bit for you. It’s about memory or remembering and whether you remember events in the past from the first or third person perspective. I would expand the argument to include imagined events in the future.

When you remember a past event, say one that was particularly notable, do you remember it as you initially experienced it, or do you see yourself in it as a character, almost as an actor, in a play?

I’ll die soon. Soon is an indeterminate word, mind you. I’ve already commented in previous posts about the fact that I’ve not done all that well with chemotherapy. It seems that I’m probably a high-risk cancer patient in any case. I’ve been subjected to a number of different chemotherapy protocols. Now, according to the oncologist at the BC Cancer Centre in Victoria in charge of my case, I’m running out of options. At the moment I’m on a two-month trial with a drug called carfilzomib (trade name Kyprolis). So far, I’m entirely underwhelmed by its effectiveness. The next month will tell the tale. I’m not very hopeful given my recent bloodwork and my reactions to the chemo drugs. But, I haven’t completely abandoned hope. I may still get to live a few more months.

Recently I had a bit of a discussion with the family about MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying). It’s not something I need to consider immediately but eventually it will become an option, particularly when the levels of pain and immobility outweigh quality of life issues for me. I see no need to lie in bed in pain awaiting more or less imminent and sure death when there is the option of assisted suicide. I’ve tried to imagine my dying moments. I can do that from the third person perspective, but definitely not from the first person perspective although I know what it feels like to go under general anaesthetic. I imagine MAID as like going under general anaesthesia but never waking up again. I see myself lying on a gurney with a doctor setting up the meds and then injecting me first with morphine or something like that before administering the killer drug. I can imagine that. I can remember in the first person going into the Hospital to have my kidney removed in 2002. Now that I try, I can also see those events in the third person. Strange.

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It’s amazing how many incidents and events I can recall if I put a little effort into it. I have seventy-five years of them to capture. Lots of fodder for remembering. I could write a book, although there is a lot that I would not share with you or anybody, private things.

This post is about me as I age from 1949 or so until now. My life isn’t over yet, but I’m getting close to a complete lifetime. I can track my parents’ lives, at least as far as major events go. My father was born in New Brunswick (1911), my mother in Alberta in 1924. They both died at the Dufferin Lodge in Coquitlam, my father in April, 2007 and my mother in January, 2018. Noting their dates of birth and death means nothing, of course. They are merely life’s parentheses. It’s what transpired between those dates that makes a life. The same goes for me, and you. Photographs tell a bit of the story, but in a static kind of way.

In the first picture, I’m standing there with my sister Denise. She was born in 1943, four years before me, to a mother who subsequently died in 1945 giving birth to what would have been her first son. Denise died on December 13th, 2004 of cancer. I’m not sure where this picture was taken. It looks like it could be in Sapperton, not far from the Royal Columbian Hospital. I would welcome correction on this from anyone in the family. By the time this picture was taken the family lived at 634 Alderson Avenue in Maillardille (Coquitlam).

In this picture I look to be maybe two years old. Denise would have been six. I am endowed with a natural Mohawk hair do. I still have it. I don’t remember anything of what was happening when this picture was taken. I was way too young. The photograph does nothing to jog my memory.

Denise and I always had an interesting relationship. She was pretty tough and I was mouthy. She threw a knife at me at the dinner table when I was probably a pre-teen. She missed, but it was close. That was memorable and I see it in the third person. But during my late, listless, teenage years, after returning from College St-Jean and not knowing up from down, I lived with her and her then husband, Roy, for six months or so, and often looked after the kids (which they had adopted). They had a fairly large home in Vancouver, off of 41st. The basement was made out to look like a TiKi lounge. Strange now, but not so for the times.

I worked with my father at a couple of re-manufacturing plants in Surrey and Langley. But I also worked at a planer mill in Fort Langley. I got drunk on occasion with some of the guys from work. It’s amazing we didn’t kill ourselves on the way home from work. One of the guys drove a convertible and that’s what we came home in most of the time. Mom and Dad had to know but they never said anything.

From the time I left College St-Jean until I enrolled in courses at Douglas College in New Westminster in 1970 or so, I worked at a number of odd jobs, mostly in the lumber or related industries. For a few months I worked at a plywood plant on Braid Street in New Westminster. I remember the smells and sounds of that place the most, but I also remember (in the first person) the work I did, piling pieces of veneer in bins in preparation for pressing them into plywood. The last job I had before going to Douglas College was at a sawmill in Marpole. I worked there for maybe six hours total. I recall being required to ‘clean up the chain’ of massive timbers. I did that for a bit but then I slipped and had one of the timbers fall on me as I fell off the platform. I could barely walk after that so I dragged myself to the first aid shack. Nobody there. So I struggled to my car (an Austin Healey Sprite) and drove myself to the hospital. I had back surgery then. Dr. Hill (I recall his name to this day) removed a disc in my lower back. Worker’s Compensation (now Worksafe BC) paid for everything including my first year of studies at Douglas College. There was never an inquiry as to what happened at the mill and as to why there was nobody in the first aid shack when I went there for help. Workers Compensation just paid for everything, no questions asked.

I find the series of photographs here helpful in some way in jogging my memory. The early ones don’t help at all but the later ones do. The one I posted of me doing my Knowledge Network tele course is still available to me as a video so I can go back and see myself over and over again if I so choose. I have many more photos too, but I’m not going to post all of them here.

All I wanted to do here is give the flavour of my life as I grew up, then grew down. We all have individual experiences of life. I often think of the many thousands of people who have died in conflict over the centuries, their lives often cut short by machetes, as in Rwanda in 1994. I suppose if a long life is a good thing, then I’ve had a good life.

Look at the forehead on that kid!
Me, maybe two years old
Me, five or six

Me in 1959 setting off for College St. Jean
Me at sixteen or so
Me doing television – late 1980s, early 90s.
Me not long ago

Carfilzomib and Buttle Lake

~ Roger JG Albert

Wednesday, August 17th, 2022 – 2:30 PM

Just got back from the hospital for the first infusion of carfilzomib for the second cycle of this protocol. It went well, but as usual, I’m dexed out. Given this was my second cycle I didn’t have to stay after my infusion for an hour of observation. I had to go to the lab yesterday for bloodwork and the results were available today for us via MyHealth. Things seem to be going moderately well from the looks of my bloodwork. I have some reduction in my paraproteins (not that you should know what that means) which is good news but my kappa free light chains are going up. That’s not good.

However, we did a fair bit of reading about carfilzomib and one of the nasty side effects of that drug is renal toxicity. Given that I have only one kidney, that’s not great news. We just have to hope for the best.

As I said, I had to go to the lab yesterday for tests. What I didn’t say is that we spent the last three days at Buttle Lake in Strathcona Park for a bit of camping with the family. Yesterday, we had to race back to Courtenay to get on the lab waitlist. Around noon I started out at 29th on the list as we came into Campbell River but when we got to the hospital in Comox an hour later, I was down to 10th place which is quite acceptable. I didn’t have to wait too long to get my blood extracted.

Sunday, August 14th, 2022 –

We packed up yesterday and this morning. We were in four vehicles. I rode shotgun in the truck. It hauled most of the food, the banana boats and me. I won’t identify individual family members here. Suffice to say that there were enough of us to pilot four vehicles along with some passengers. We’ve been camping at Ralph River campground on Buttle Lake for upwards of thirty years. We’ve had some wonderful times on that lake, and particularly at that campground. It was such a pleasure getting back there. Frankly, I doubted that would ever happen.

From 2019 a few months before my diagnosis

I already posted this photo on this site, but I decided to post it again because it tells a story of how we had such great fun improvising and adapting the canoe with outriggers, a sail and electric motor. We’ve had the canoe for over forty years. We’ve had such great times with this canoe for decades! This boat didn’t come with us on this trip. I’m not ruling out the possibility that it will again feel the waters of this lake on its keel. Chances aren’t great, but we’ll see.

When the picture above was taken, so was the picture below.

Buttle Lake at Ralph River

You can see that these stumps are a predominant feature in the landscape. Who knows why the loggers left them (probably no need or profit in removing them) but they did and I took the opportunity to draw and paint them*. I can’t remember exactly when I drew them, maybe it was 2014, but that doesn’t matter.

You can see the water surrounding the stumps. They are maybe a half a kilometre from the campground and there are connecting pathways. Below is a photo of one of those pathways, the one they built for the movie See with Jason Momoa. That pathway and surrounding terrain used to be clear from the campground down to the stumps with a gravel base and not a lot of vegetation as you get closer to the lake. Now, as you can see, it’s flooded and there’s lots of vegetation, but the rocks that define it are still clearly visible.

The lake must be at least three metres above what it was when I took the above picture in 2019. The stumps are nowhere to be seen. They are all underwater. What a dramatic change! What a metaphor for life! Things can change so quickly and dramatically.

Main pathway from lake to campground.

Monday, August 15th, 2022 – 6:55 AM

I was awake for some time before 6:55, but that’s when I got up. The sky was pure blue. The previous evening it was overcast and spit a little rain. This morning was beautiful. Our campsite was open to the lake but the path to the lake was impassably muddy and crawling with Western toadlets to boot. We really had to go around to Jason’s pathway to get to the lake. I set up a chair in our campsite (called a gravity chair)facing the lake. For some time I watched the sun hit Mount Philips across the lake. Eventually, the shadow cast by the mountains behind us on Mount Philips reached the lake, but by then I was busy doing other things and I got distracted by this as I pushed myself vertical in my chair:

Cedar Boughs.

I actually took this picture later in the day after the sky had clouded over. I stared at this sight for a long time. There is an odd quasi-symmetry to the branches and needles. I contemplated drawing this, but I just couldn’t garner enough energy to do it. Instead, I took pictures and stared. I found looking at these boughs soothing. My pain dissolved. I relaxed completely. Such a great feeling…at least for a time!

I can’t thank my family enough for making it possible for me to get back to this lake and this campground. I’m an old man now. Many of the things we did for years like camping and messing around in boats are just not possible for me anymore. Maybe if it were only a question of age, but it’s not. Myeloma and chemo complicate matters immeasurably. Still, when I was at the lake I could much more easily recall so many pleasant experiences we had there. I love that place. It’s so much better to feel love for this place and for my family than to dwell on my health or lack of it.

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*See my art blog for images of the Buttle Lake stumps in ink and pencil: https://rogeralbert.blogspot.com/p/drawings.html

Freedom: Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose?

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 2 Comments

I’ve been relatively quiet about the ‘freedom’ movement in Canada. The ‘freedom’ convoy in Ottawa earlier this year set off a fairly entrenched opposition to vaccine mandates and other freedoms purportedly lost according to the leaders of this movement, at least one of which is still in jail for an inability to respect bail conditions. It’s impossible to know how many adherents the ‘movement’ has, but it is definitely a small minority of Canadians at this time. Who knows, however, what the future holds. 

Hyperbole is rampant in recent pronouncements from the leaders of this movement, one even suggesting, according to an article by Sarah Richie in The Canadian Press, reporting on statements by a ‘leader’ of the movement, Canada is facing a civil war. If it were true that Canada is facing a civil war, I’m not sure what the fighting sides would look like. Maybe anti-vaccine types on one side and everybody else on the other? I don’t know. I can’t seem to wrap my head around the notion of a civil war over vaccine mandates. 

Now, if the ‘freedom convoy inspired protestors’ represented a real political movement that, for instance, rejected the overriding influence of public corporations (global ones, primarily) in politics, I might sit up and take notice. However, I don’t see anywhere in the press or on alt-right websites that anything like a coherent platform for revolution or civil war is extant. Right now, it just seems that the only policy they have is flailing arms, shouts of ‘freedom’, flag waving, and rank ignorance of history, politics, and common sense. 

The whole notion of freedom and the purported loss of such is singularly misguided. Where does the idea of freedom originate? The idea of personal liberty and ‘freedom’ (although I hesitate to even use the term) can be traced back to the beginnings of a capitalist mode of production in Europe as far back as the thirteenth century, but really taking off in the sixteenth century. By the nineteenth century, the transformation of the peasant class into the urbanized working class was solidified. Along with the real transformation of people’s lives from rural to urban came the idea that people were now free to move around, change employers if they so desired, giving the impression that individuals were now in charge of their destiny. Veblen’s book The Instinct of Workmanship (1918), although makes for ponderous readings to some extent, is probably the best analysis of the creation of the urbanized working class that I have read. It’s not possible to summarize Veblen’s argument here. It’s a complex analysis of the rise of the business class and the idea that although we, as humans, long to do things, to work, we are not particularly suited to employment. The distinction between work and employment is basic to his argument. 

It’s always been true that individual human beings have agency. We are not like billiard balls subject to movement only at the invitation of the cue, although strangely there is some truth to this view. In fact, as Thorstein Veblen points out in the early twentieth century, that idea is the foundation of modern classical economics.

At this point I invite you to read a blog post I wrote in early 2019. It’s about the hedonistic calculus and what Veblen does with it in his dissection of neoclassical economic theory. It’s not a post wherein I write about my experience with myeloma because I hadn’t been diagnosed yet. I would also invite you to read my blog page on critical thinking which is based on an earlier article I wrote for teachers. It addresses the fact that we generally lack awareness of our place in the world because the school system systematically, via its prescribed curriculum and in spite of the efforts of individual teachers, fails to systematically address our social responsibilities. 

This brings me back to our ‘convoy’ protestors. The ignorance expressed by the ‘leaders’ of this ‘movement is astounding. They insist that they want freedom without ever telling us what they mean by that except to suggest that they don’t want vaccine mandates. They feel that vaccine mandates infringe on their ‘rights’. They should consider that they live in societies that require some individual compromise to ensure the safety and security of its citizens. 

Don’t get me wrong. I have no love for the Federal government’s unfailing support of often dangerous and completely self-interested business corporations, sometimes not even Canadian ones. But, like I said before, if the convoy goofies had an even basic understanding of Canadian political economy I might be inclined to hear their arguments. But they have no analysis, just empty opposition to perceived grievances. 

Their anti-mandate grievance and calls for ‘freedom’ have no place in a social world. We drive cars, but we need licences to do so. We can’t simply get out on the road  without a licence or insurance and expect to be left alone to do that. A world without rules and regulations would be an impossible world. There are countries where ‘rules of the road’ are mostly non-existent, but there are unstated agreements among motorists and others sharing the road as to how to conduct themselves on the road. Those unstated agreements are social contracts nonetheless. We rely on social contracts every day of our lives and in everything that we do. We depend on other people always to provide us with services for our comfort and security. Yes, we are individuals, but we always act socially and, in fact, we couldn’t exist as individuals. 

To think about how dependent we are on others, just think about how often you interact with others every time you buy groceries or fill your car with gas. What of the roads we drive on? We don’t build those as individuals. We build them collectively through our taxes (although not always without complaining about it). We, most of us, have water piped to our homes, electricity to power our heating systems, to refrigerate our food, and sewage lines to take away our effluent. Without millions of people all over the world ensuring that we have what we need to live comfortable lives, we would be living cold, brutish lives in caves. Imagine if you were only allowed to wear clothes you made yourself from material you yourself gathered. That’s not possible in this day and age. 

There are people who want to live off the grid. That’s fine, but even that means buying arrays of solar panels, having vehicles to transport goods, seeds, livestock, and the means to access health services if necessary. We may try to live as socially distanced as possible but we still need to acknowledge how dependent we are on others and why we should have some consideration for their health and security because in the end our health and security depends on theirs. 

It seems to me that the ‘freedom convoy’ folks don’t have a coherent platform, nor do they have even a basic plan. What they seem to have is a diffuse and incoherent opposition, maybe a sense that their lives are meaningless, but that they would be filled with meaning if only the government would be removed or there were fewer rules and regulations. The fact is that rules and regulations arise often out of a need to live in society with others and to resolve conflicts between them. To be moderately safe we all need to drive on the right side of the road. If even a small minority of people refused to accept this rule and started driving wherever they wanted to we would all be in serious trouble. If someone does drive on the left in Canada, and insisting they have a right to do that, they could have their license revoked, just as anti-vaxxers can lose their jobs if they refuse to be vaccinated. Nobody says you must be vaccinated unless there is, like in the military or in health care, a need for absolute safety (or as close as we can get to it). So, get over it. Play by the rules or play another game somewhere else.

Social Media Have Us Just Where They Want Us.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 12 Comments

April 29th, 2022

It’s still hovering around freezing in the mornings, but temperatures rise by early afternoon to hover around the 10 to 15˚C range. I usually get up around 7:30. By then the birds are well into their daily routine. The robins are pulling up moss to get at juicy grubs and worms. It’s great to see so many golden crowned sparrows and hummingbirds in the yard competing for access to the feeders. My recliner is in a position in the living room where I have a great view of bird activity in the front yard. 

Years ago, Carolyn and I would get up, get ready for work, have breakfast and listen to the CBC morning program. Now we open our computers or other devices and immerse ourselves in the problems of the day as expressed by MSNBC, CBC News, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, et cetera. Do this every morning and the only result will be a profound depression. I’m not suggesting that we should not check out internet news sources, but it’s imperative to keep their offerings in the right perspective. After all, they are all in the business of making money and that one characteristic of their existence should give up plenty of pause. Same goes for Facebook and its offspring Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. 

This morning in my Pocket email (check it out) I got notice of an article in The Atlantic, a liberal magazine I’ve been reading on and off for many years. The article is called WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID: It’s not just a phase.* The author is Jonathan Haidt.The (very long) article does a great job of dissecting the way social media have driven us into a number of hard social positions that make it increasingly difficult to engage with people we would not normally have anything to do with. I posted this paragraph from the article on Facebook: 

“Mark Zuckerberg may not have wished for any of that. But by rewiring everything in a headlong rush for growth—with a naive conception of human psychology, little understanding of the intricacy of institutions, and no concern for external costs imposed on society—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a few other large platforms unwittingly dissolved the mortar of trust, belief in institutions, and shared stories that had held a large and diverse secular democracy together.”

Then I wrote: 

“Yes, indeed. But I’m not sure I would hang out with a lot of people in any case, ones who still have Canadian flags on their pickups and shout ‘Freedom’ at us at every turn.”

I was being slightly provocative, wondering if the article was going to be right. It was, in spades. On my computer, there was no further comment from Facebook, but on my phone I get several follow up suggestions: Totally agree!!! You got that right!!! I know right!! And Most definitely. 

These ‘suggestions’ for follow up comments make it easy to agree with me with very little effort. This, according to the article fosters a sense of us versus them, hardening social positions and creating even more division than already exists in our lives. Facebook could easily have provided comment suggestions like: Are you sure?!!! Is this what you really think?!! Maybe we should do a bit more investigating!!! Or something along those lines. 

It’s obvious that Facebook’s design is conducive to producing, over the past ten years, a decline in social consensus and civility. It seems we are having a more difficult time than every just being civil to each other…on the roads, in the grocery stores, and online. I’m picking on Facebook, but other platforms are just as guilty as Facebook of undermining our sense of democracy and encouraging an increasing acceptance of autocracy and oligarchy. 

Haidt argues that there is no malice in what social media are doing except that they are following the drive for profit. The article argues that: “ Shortly after its “Like” button began to produce data about what best ‘engaged’ its users, Facebook developed algorithms to bring each user the content most likely to generate a ‘like’ or some other interaction, eventually including the ‘share’ as well. Later research showed that posts that trigger emotions––especially anger at out-groups––are the most likely to be shared.” And the more shares, the more money for Facebook. 

I think it’s time we got a lot more savvy about how easily we can be manipulated into producing exactly the kinds of inputs on Facebook that make people increasingly impatient, angry and intolerant, precisely those kinds of emotions that create an environment where money can be most easily accumulated for Facebook itself. 

I strongly recommend the Haidt article. You can read it on The Atlantic website. I think you can read up to five articles before having to pay…but don’t quote me on that. If Haidt is right we’re in for a rough ride over the next few years. 

Before wrapping up this post, I do want to tell you that in the proper spirit of sociological research I’ve been watching several YouTube channels of people doing things like boat building, auto repair and restoration, industrial mechanics, woodworking, and that sort of thing. I suspect given the many clues they give me that they are most likely Trump supporters or the equivalent. Yet none of them talk politics, at least not directly, and they all offer interesting content that is unrelated to politics. My point is that people are multidimensional. We need to remind ourselves all the time that there is always a point of potential contact between people if we look for it. Still, I worry about Haidt’s findings. I reckon that he’s probably correct and that saddens me no end. 

* (Illustrations by Nicolás Ortega.)

Freedom

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 3 Comments

The word freedom is much bandied about these days particularly by people engaged in or supporting the “freedom convoy” now occupying downtown Ottawa. I thought I’d give a shot at defining it, because I don’t think most people have a clue as to what it means or implies. I invite you to think about what you mean by it, if in fact you use the term at all when it comes to your life. 

The online dictionary (the one living on my computer) defines freedom as:

The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint: we do have some freedom of choice | he talks of revoking some of the freedoms. 

  • • absence of subjection to foreign domination or despotic government: he was a champion of Irish freedom. 
  • • the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved: the shark thrashed its way to freedom. 
  • • the state of being physically unrestricted and able to move easily: the shorts have a side split for freedom of movement. 

• (freedom from) the state of not being subject to or affected by (a particular undesirable thing): government policies to achieve freedom from want. 

• the power of self-determination attributed to the will; the quality of being independent of fate or necessity. 

• unrestricted use of something: the dog is happy having the freedom of the house when we are out.

I also looked up liberty in the dictionary. Here’s what I found:

1 the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behavior, or political views: compulsory retirement would interfere with individual liberty.* 

• the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved: people who have lost property or liberty without due process. 

• (usually liberties) a right or privilege, especially a statutory one: the Bill of Rights was intended to secure basic civil liberties. 

• (Liberty) the personification of liberty as a female figure: the Statue of Liberty. 

2 the power or scope to act as one pleases: individuals should enjoy the liberty to pursue their own interests and preferences. 

  • • Philosophy a person’s freedom from control by fate or necessity. 
  • • Nautical shore leave granted to a sailor.

I don’t see a lot of difference in these definitions, at least not in substance. So, to distill these definitions some, it looks like that at the individual level, if you were free or completely at liberty, you would be able to do whatever you wanted to, whenever you wanted to do it.

 Let’s see if that works. Well, if you live in a society, as most of us do, this is a highly improbable and unacceptable idea. I mean, it’s possible, I suppose, for you to do whatever you want, whenever you want to, but you might end up in jail pretty quickly if you try it, or you might end up dead. Try lying in the middle of the freeway at rush hour. That’s something you might want to do, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Or you might want to ignore those pesky red lights at intersections all over the place. Again, you might get away with that a few times, but you may soon end up with a wrecked car or a traffic ticket. Do it again and you may have your license suspended. Driving in this province is a privilege, not a right, and that ‘freedom’ can soon be taken away from you. That would be a good thing for the rest of us who follow the rules because otherwise we would have anarchy. Then again, you might want to have sex with that gorgeous young barista at your local coffee shop, but you might want to ask her before you attempt it. She may not be as into it as you are. 

At another level, you might want to skip paying your mortgage or your rent for a few months because you want to spend the money on a new video game. You can do that if you want, but the consequences may be that you end up living in a cardboard box under an overpass somewhere. You may not want to do that, but we are not always happy with the consequences of our actions. You may be sick and tired of your job and don’t want to do it anymore. Yes, I can relate to that, but I don’t suppose you want to starve to death either, so you have to find some way of paying for groceries. I could go on, but I hope you get the idea. 

No matter who you are, where you live, or how much money you have, there will always be restrictions on your freedom. During the 1980s when Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and their ilk were the heads of government, they advocated the removal of regulation on business arguing that business wouldn’t do anything to hurt their bottom line so they would always do what their customers wanted. They argued (following the shill economist Milton Friedman) that corporations needed to be released from regulation and when that happened, we’d get the trickle-down effect because they would invest in ‘the economy’ and we’d all end up rich. In truth, give corporations the freedom to regulate themselves and you end up with the MAX 737 catastrophe, the mining disasters that keep showing up in the news (think Mount Polley for a recent example), buildings collapsing in Bangladesh killing hundreds of textile workers, plastic pollution, global warming, the depletion of global fish stocks, etcetera. I could go on. We know what happens now too when corporate tax rates are cut to almost nothing and they are freed from regulation. We get more social income inequality than ever.  Corporations need to have curbs on their freedom. They cannot be allowed to do as they please whenever they please. 

So, what does freedom actually mean when we live in a society with thousands if not millions of other people all wanting to do what they want, whenever they want to? Without rules and regulations limiting freedom you get a shitshow. It doesn’t make sense to allow people absolute freedom. We need a system to maintain order at least to some degree. You may not be happy about having to curb your desires and wants because of other people, but that just has to happen. You learned that as a child, or maybe you didn’t and that’s what’s making you unhappy now. Living in society means having to compromise and negotiate, and to temper our urge to always do as we please. 

So far I’ve considered freedom in the context of the individual and the potential for freedom in a social context. There are other contexts to think about freedom. 

Years ago, the convenience store chain 7-Eleven introduced a marketing slogan: Get your freedom at 7-Eleven! I was incensed! Not sure why except that I was quite convinced that there was no freedom for sale at the 7-Eleven in my town, just mostly fast food and other crap. So, is freedom these days just part of a marketing strategy? It seems so if we consider the evidence. The “freedom convoy” is not about freedom. Taking spokespeople for the ‘movement’ at their word it seems that they want no government interference in their lives. Or they want to become government so they can get rid of all the pesky rules and regulations governments impose on us. Good luck with that. 

It strikes me that we need to think of freedom and liberty on a continuum. Nobody is perfectly free nor is anybody completely unfree. When I taught the odd course at the Matsqui Medium Security ‘Correctional’ facility, I heard one kid saying he wanted to go into solitary confinement so he could have the freedom to work on his college assignments and study for his mid-term exams. This was a month before Christmas. He got his wish. I’m not sure how he did it, but he did. Freedom in captivity. Weird, eh? 

I concluded decades ago that I cannot be free unless we’re all free. If I enslave you, I’m captivated by the need to watch over you, by the need to punish you, by the need to keep you in your place. So the only way to maximize freedom is to do so for everyone. Perfect, absolute freedom is impossible. If someone tries to sell you on that idea, call bullshit on them. They are obviously deluded or disingenuous. Don’t stand for it. 

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*…and don’t try to convince me that Canada is an oppressive regime. Try living in North Korea.

75 UP

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 4 Comments

So, this post is about what’s up with me now. I’ve reconciled myself with the fact of my frailty, which I share with all living things. It stands to reason that my body is not as it was twenty or even ten years ago. All individuals of all species, plant and animal have a life course. We’re all born. Even trees, but some of those individuals die young (like the trees that are being cut in the hills above Cumberland), some trees live out what must be considered the outer limit of life’s potential, in the Carmanah Valley, for instance, no thanks to BC’s forest industry. Some of us humans die young. Some die hacked to death in a stupid race war in Rwanda in 1994. Others die horrible deaths in the ovens of Auschwitz. Still others, of all species, die of inborn problems, with their DNA or or whatever. In the end we are all frail, even the biggest and toughest among us, and vulnerable. For most plants and animals eventually, the soft, squishy material that we’re made of becomes increasingly brittle and inelastic as we age and approach our inevitable ends. My squishy material is definitely becoming worn out. It still has some bounciness in it, but nothing like it had years ago, and there’s no turning back. But on with the story.

Being one who kind of likes living (even given what I write above) I dutifully injected B12 into my legs (alternating left and right) once a day for a week mid-January and since then I’ve injected once a week.*That should replenish my B12 levels and keep me going. It may take some time for increased amounts of B12 in my blood to make a difference to my energy levels, but I can be patient as I know that results will come. Of course, I’m fighting a losing battle. We all are. Death will catch up with me regardless of how much B12 I inject or how many chemo drugs I take. I find it almost funny that we talk about medicine, police, firefighters, paramedics, etcetera as saving lives. The best they can do, in reality, is allow life to go on a bit longer, to postpone death. In any case, I have my B12 situation under control.

In terms of myeloma, I’m off chemo drugs for at least a month. Myeloma protein is barely detectable in my blood so this is a good time to lay off for a while and see how things go. It would be grand to get some relief from side effects for a time. Next month sometime they’ll check my blood again to see what the status of my paraproteins(myeloma proteins) are. I can easily go back on chemo if the bloodwork shows a rise in paraproteins. During our last phone call my local GP/oncologist uttered the word remission. I hope he’s right but only time will tell.

Another thing has come to plague me. It looks like it’s true that nastiness comes in threes. I’m getting a CT scan on Monday of my left jaw. I saw an endodontist a while ago because of excruciating pain in one of my left upper molars. He figures I need a root canal. Well, that’s probably true, but because I had a lesion in my left lower jaw that required radiation treatment earlier this year, I wanted some assurance that this issue with my upper jaw wasn’t also due to myeloma. It may be that I should be more trusting, but the symptoms caused by a myeloma lesion and a rotten tooth are similar so I just wanted a little reassurance. I got that when I spoke with an oncologist at the BC Cancer Agency in Victoria last month. She ordered the CT scan the results of which will determine whether I get a root canal or more radiation. My, my. Life can be complicated.

In the meantime, I’m back to doing some drawing. I got a very cheap but good set of coloured pencils for my birthday last month, so I did a couple of drawings. Here they are:

Christmas cactus head on view.
Christmas cactus side view.

I have one more I want to do with the coloured pencils using a different profile. Then I want to do a couple more in watercolour on proper paper, and maybe in acrylic on a large canvas. I’ll have to assess my level of energy before I undertake a large(ish) canvas, but I seem to be getting stronger every day now.

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*If you haven’t read my post from January 13, 2022, you might want to do so now. It outlines my experience with B12 deficiency and pernicious anemia.

Remembrances

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 2 Comments

I was going to write ‘remembrances of times past’ as the title of this post. Then, I realized, of course, that would have been redundant. As far as I know, we can only remember events in the past. So, remembrances, yes. Of times past, of course, always. No need to state the obvious. 

That reminds me that many years ago when I was still at university and having a difficult financial time of it when I got a job on a salmon troller for the summer. I don’t want to talk about that experience in detail although it was loosely tied to graduate work I wanted to do at UBC. It was rather painful in several ways, one of the main ones being that I had to leave Carolyn and the kids. The boat that I was on was called the Morning Sunrise.  Now, I may be a little thick, but I don’t recall the sun rising at any other time of day. It always rises in the morning. I think the skipper, who was not particularly erudite, nor was English his first language, just got impatient when he went to get his commercial fishing licence and blurted out, when asked by the snotty clerk: “Well, what IS the name of your boat?” “It’s the Sunrise…” “No, you can’t have that name. It’s already taken.” “Okay, then, the Morning, ah, Sunrise, I guess.” “Okay, then. The Morning Sunrise it is.” Well, shit. He fished with a few other guys in a loose compact of maybe a half dozen boats, mostly of Scandinavian extraction (including my now deceased former brother-in-law on the April Fool), but I never heard him being made fun of for the name of his boat. I certainly never made fun of him. It turned out he was a fine gentleman even when he realized that I was not fit to be on his boat because I was so lonely, I was fit to be tied. So, he took the boat into Skidegate on Haida Gwaii and put me on a plane to Vancouver. 

I just stated above that I didn’t want to discuss that summer on the Morning Sunrise. (How quickly I can change my mind!) But that whole trip in 1981 (or 1982) was memorable in a number of ways, so maybe I will write about it a bit. I, and a kid from Winnipeg, were the deckhands. Neither of us had any fishing experience, really. We arrived in Prince Rupert by plane and took a taxi to the docks. The cab was rear-ended on that short trip, and I got whiplash, which meant that I was plagued with headaches the moment I stepped on to the boat. I had been hoping for a good summer, making a few dollars to tide the family over a rough spot, but that wasn’t to be. I went home empty handed. Still, standing in the cockpit of a fifty-foot troller in rising seas of the Hecate Strait with waves crashing over the wheelhouse into the cockpit was unforgettable. Without getting into too much detail about how a fishing troller goes about its business*, learning how to set the lines, especially the pig lines, distracted me momentarily from my raging headache and my loneliness. We set out three downriggers each with multiple lines attached at intervals of varying depth on each side of the boat. I had the port side, Winnipeg buddy had the starboard side. The pig line consisted of a piece of foam about forty centimetres square that had to be attached up the line to keep it on the outside of the rest of the fishing gear. I never really figured out how that worked. I didn’t have a sense of it like the kid from Winnipeg did. He was very good at getting his lines out and getting them back in too. I was always slower than him. I learned that not long after I left, he left the boat too. No doubt a better offer came along, I imagine. Summer on the fishing grounds could be a case of musical boats. The better skippers, the highliners always found it easy to get the best, experienced deckhands. The skipper on the Morning Sunrise was known as a hard ass, so getting deckhands was more of a problem for him. One other skipper I knew chose his deckhands carefully. He was gay and wanted a like-minded deckhand aboard. Fair enough. I may have stayed out there longer if I had had a more congenial skipper. Who knows?

I’ve always thought that I had a terrible memory. Then I realized that if I worked at it a bit, I could recall many events in my life, some I might be proud of, others not so much. I may just explore some of my more memorable moments over the next few blog posts. One thing is for certain, I’ll not make this an exercise in self-flagellation. That would be unfair to me and to my family. There were good times and there were less than good times. Studying at Simon Fraser University was a good time for the most part. I was there from 1973 until 1980. The two years I spent at Douglas College before that as a student were good too. It was a brand-new college, one of many being established in BC following the California model. Our classrooms were portables at McBride and Eighth street in New Westminster. They leaked like a sieve, but we didn’t care. This was the early 70s and we were excited to learn. I started on a Master’s degree at SFU in 1976, worked as a teaching assistant too as well as getting a contract to teach a course at Douglas. I eventually taught at Kwantlen College too for a time. Then I got a job at North Island College (in 1983) and stayed there until 2012. But that’s only a slice of my professional life. In the meantime Carolyn and I were starting a family and other things were happening that would be interesting to share.

So many stories to tell. 

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*For a sense of how a troller works check out this YouTube video: https://www.bcsalmon.ca/faces-of-bc-salmon-fishing/salmon-trolling-on-the-north-coast-of-british-columbia

Lassitude

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 13 Comments

Yes, lassitude, which the dictionary that Apple so kindly provides for us as part of the operating system on my computer defines as: “a state of physical or mental weariness; lack of energy.” That about sums it up. 

I know my expectations for myself are way out of whack. I keep forgetting the basic realities of my life: I’m almost seventy-five years old, I have a slow acting, but debilitating cancer and chemotherapy designed to fight said cancer that has side effects I’ve already discussed on this blog at nauseum. No need to flog a dead horse (as they say). I also have some neck issues that most people of my age get but that don’t afflict all of us in this demographic with pain. We won’t talk about arthritis now, shall we? 

So, I’m tired and generally not feeling that great. What should I expect? Duh! 

The past month has been especially unpleasant. My computer tells me that I’ve spent about nine hours a day of screen time. That seems about right. I’ve watched a lot of YouTube videos on everything from sailing to boat building, to prospecting, art, art history, lumber manufacturing, bushcraft, the La Palma volcano, people living alone in off-grid cabins, American Congressional politics, and more. Nine hours a day. It’s true that I also read quite a few articles from The Guardian, The Tyee, NPR, the CBC, and lots of internet-based news sources. And I’ve written a bit too. Still, I do a lot of sitting in my recliner, staring at my computer screen. I often think about things I could be doing like drawing, painting, woodwork, etcetera. Sometimes I do these things, generally followed by increased pain in my back and legs. That doesn’t encourage me to do more things. In fact, it actively discourages me from doing things. So, I go back to my recliner for another few hours. This pattern seems to be my fate now. I’m not sure I can do anything about it either.

Today is Sunday and this week is my chemo week. This is the fourth week in my monthly cycle and for the fourth week I don’t take lenalidomide, a drug I would normally take daily. On Thursday I take dexamethasone, valacyclovir, montelukast, and get one and a half hour of a Daratumumab infusion. That’s all no big deal. However, the effects of these meds will leave me feeling like I’ve got the flu for at least a week after. 

Tomorrow, I have to go to the lab for blood tests. So, VIHA has now closed all satellite labs in the Valley leaving only the lab at the hospital. There used to be three satellite labs, one in Cumberland, one in Courtenay, and one at St-Joseph’s hospital. All gone now. Apparently, VIHA can’t find enough staff. There are no appointments to be had either for tomorrow, and I need lab results tomorrow to be able to get my infusion on Thursday. I may spend the better part of the day tomorrow at the hospital waiting to get my blood tested. That will not put a smile on my face. But, we’ll see. I’ll report back on my next post.

Do I sound like I’m complaining and whining? Well, I am.

Moments in my life: Princess Pretty Paws

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 8 Comments

The cat, Princess Pretty Paws*, has been sleeping with me quite regularly lately.

She hasn’t always done so. At times I never saw her at night because she tended to hang out in the crawl space upstairs and only come out in the morning for breakfast. So, a few nights ago she and I had a talk and she told me that she was taking over half of the bed, the lower half. Well, I’m not averse to sharing my sleeping space with a cat but it would have been better, I think, if she had chosen to sleep on the right or left side of the bed. I like the left side so I would have gladly given over the right side. But, no, she was adamant that she would take the lower half of the bed. Fine. It’s a big bed, so why not? She wasn’t asking for exclusive use of the lower half, but predominant use. 

The first night of this new arrangement was okay. We got along quite nicely. I could stretch my legs all the way to the bottom of the bed, and she didn’t complain about that. She did sidle up to my legs though and slept pushed right up against them. This was fine because I still had lots of room to move my legs into a better position. 

The second night, a couple of nights ago now, she was determined to lay claim to the lower half of the bed. If I stretched my legs down to the bottom of the bed, she immediately and aggressively pushed up against them. If I moved, she moved. Soon, I found myself on the outer edge of the left side of the bed, she in possession of the whole queen size bed except for a small sliver of it on the left edge. 

Look at this picture of her. She doesn’t look particularly nasty, does she? She’s quite sweet sometimes. She’s not a cuddler at all but she doesn’t mind being carried around if she’s in a good mood. However, she is prone to biting and clawing if she doesn’t feel things are going her way, or just to assert her dominance. 

She doesn’t get along with the dog (Tilly), but they haven’t really tried very hard. Tilly tends to want to chase Princess and that doesn’t go over very well with the Princess nor with me. I don’t know what Tilly would do if she caught Princess and I don’t want to find out either. It’s obvious that Tilly is afraid of Princess. 

Cats are generally weird and she’s a good representative of her species on this count. 
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*Given this name by my granddaughter, Ailey Vines.