The New Recute

 It started innocently enough. I had one nutcracker that looked like Santa. Then I saw others and well the die was cast. As of Wednesday that number has grown to 22. I am sure the collection really expanded once we began buying ornaments for our tree from Pier One Imports. They tended to put their Christmas merchandise on sale before Christmas and the temptation was too much. While I purchased a few elsewhere most of them came from Pier One as well as many of the nicest ornaments on our tree. 

“Marley was dead, to begin with ... This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.” 

Pier One was a store we enjoyed, it was close and did not require a trip to a big shopping mall. We bought everything from bedroom furniture to candles but is was an especially important part of our life at Christmas. We could also get lovely Unicef cards there. 

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.” 

When they closed earlier this year we dropped by and picked up a few candles. But we also realized it was one less place we would go simply to browse. Online shopping is convenient but rarely a shared experience. The last time I purchased a nutcracker at Pier One I was retired and had been to lunch with a group of friends from work. I was walking by with Manuela a lovely lady who had been telling us about a vacation home she was building in Mexico. The two of us wandered in and well the nutcrackers were on sale.  I realized when Pier One closed this was one yearly ritual that was no more and I decided the collection was complete. But recently we were watching a program on the Nutcracker and I knew there was one character missing. Yes I bought it online and yes I am now content with the collection as it is. 

“It is required of every man," the ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death.” 

            

 

“No space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused” 

Why a pickle? As a student, 40 plus years ago I spent several summers working at the H.J. Heinz Co. in Leamington, Ont. It has been an ongoing joke in the family ever since. This was long before the capitalists bought the plant to grab the brand, degrade the product, and break the union. May they wear the chains they forged in life, mankind was their business. Not as charity after the fact, when they have no further use for wealth, but as an ongoing part of a life richly lived.

One thing the hand of Time shall spare, For the grim Idiot at the gate Is deathless and eternal there.

"cattle and horses browsed around

derricks and pumps.

I braked the car when a mare and colt

wandered onto the road.

They stared at me, and I thought,

here is the past, looking at the present.

Then I remembered that grass will come up

when the wells are stuttering straws

in an empty bottle."

from Meeting on Asphalt

by Bert Alnon

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alta-oilsands-monitoring-1.5673433

The deal says no fieldwork is to be done on the main branch of the Athabasca River. That means the program won't fund monitoring downstream of the oilsands even as the province considers proposals to allow the water from oilsands tailings ponds to be released into the river.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/alberta-nwt-chiefs-losing-faith-environment-monitoring-1.5674446

Subject line is from Archibald Lampman's "The City at the End of Things"

Now is this Winter of our Discontent (some prophetic words from Howard)

"I do not recall distinctly when it began, but it was months ago. The general tension was horrible. To a season of political and social upheaval was added a strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a danger widespread and all-embracing, such a danger as may be imagined only in the most terrible phantasms of the night. I recall that the people went about with pale and worried faces, and whispered warnings and prophecies which no one dared consciously repeat or acknowledge to himself that he had heard. A sense of monstrous guilt was upon the land, and out of the abysses between the stars swept chill currents that made men shiver in dark and lonely places. There was a daemoniac alteration in the sequence of the seasons — the autumn heat lingered fearsomely, and everyone felt that the world and perhaps the universe had passed from the control of known gods or forces to that of gods or forces which were unknown." 

from Nyarlathotep" by H.P. Lovecraft

Cataract Surgery has gone well.

Calgary, March 2, 2029 7:44 a.m. temp. -32C/-25.6F - WC -40C/-40F