Monthly Archives: October 2010

The term ‘miracle’ is not to be bandied about loosely so that its impact is weakened, so whether you accord miracle status to the scene that has been unfolding at the San José mine in Chile is entirely up to you. It might be seen as a triumph of technology over adversity, a victory for courage and determination, or any one of a number of options, none of them invalid.

I choose to opt for miracle primarily because, as I have watched the events unfold, that is what it has felt like. That I have been rapt as I watched the men emerge, the tears of loved ones and the fond embraces as one by one the miners have surfaced, goes without saying. I am happy I am not the cynical bastard I sometimes think I am. And I rejoice in the fact that I am still able to feel ‘hope’ in this messed up world.

The story is, of course, a monumental one. For me, and for many, it sits with those other epochal moments of epiphany of our recall, like the assassination of JFK, the Moon Walk, the horrific images of 9/11. We will remember this tale for the rest of our respective lives. If we are young enough we will tell our children and grandchildren.

I once had a brother-in-law who worked in the mines not so far from here. He told me of how in the winter months he would ride many miles to work on the company bus – in the dark. He would spend his shift below ground, in the dark. He would emerge for the ride home, also in the murkiness of a late winter afternoon. He did it because he had a family and the pay was very good.

I must be honest about myself, I couldn’t do it. I could never have done it. To me it is a calling that takes a special breed of human being. I am not especially claustrophobic, though I have no desire to be a spelunker, and I have ridden through the Simplon Tunnel and the Chunnel in relative comfort. But, to go underground in a highly dangerous calling that is far from fresh air and lightness would be intolerable to me.

Therefore, it’s well to remember that despite the technology, the team-effort that ran so smoothly, the above-ground support of everybody from El Presidente (who remained at the scene throughout) through the families and mine employees, it was the faith and hope and guts and sheer determination of the miners themselves, and their refusal to give up hope that made this thing happen.

So, as was pointed out last evening, as simple an act for us as turning on a light switch has meant that somebody, somewhere, under adverse conditions has made that possible. So, maybe the rest of us should just be a little humble about it all.

That works for me at this moment when Miner #17 has just been extricated from the bowels of the earth beneath the Atacama Desert.

Yet another expurgated excerpt from my recently rediscovered manuscript. I hope you enjoy.

While some hold that there are only two types of men in the world: those
who wear their pants over the gut, and those who sling them under the
paunch — and never shall the twain meet; I subscribe to the theory
that the two classes of men are those who are decent human beings, and
those who are pigs.
In truth, most men are pigs some of the time (just like otherwise decent women can sometimes – it’s one of God’s little blessings – act like harlots), and some men are pigs most of the time.
Don’t believe for a moment that females hate us for our porcine traits,
because actually they cherish our sleaziness. For one thing, masculine
vileness makes women feel superior because they would never do what we do – they say.
Why do women believe we are pigs? Mainly, they say, it’s because we act
like pigs. Males suggest, on the other hand, that our behavior in all areas
is not only biologically natural, it is logical, and it is healthy. Male
behavior is natural because we accept the corporeal aspects of our being.
We are organisms. We are living and breathing entities that not only eat
and sleep, we also excrete — just like all the other creatures of the planet. Certain women, on the other hand, would attempt to deny those functions especially. They will hold onto a need to urinate until they either have a humiliating accident, or do untold damage to their bladders and kidneys, rather than admit in mixed company that peeing must be carried out. If a Miss Priss finally does give into her desperate need to ‘spend-a-penny’ at a social gathering, she will turn on the faucet so that nobody can hear her carrying out her unspeakable act. As for the (ahem) other ‘function’, some women just avoid dealing with the ‘number two’ reality anywhere that might come under the scrutiny of any other living human being. This may explain why constipation is virtually unknown in the male gender, but is rampant amongst females. It’s true, that.

Women as a species are very often, in effect, Don Quixotes, invariably dreaming “the impossible dream” and seeking a path to salvation by denying their intrinsic natures. Men, following the la Mancha metaphor, are Sancho Panzas, basic and earthy and not only accepting their ‘humanness’, but reveling in it. Men tend to say: “We are who we are.” And as follows are some of the elements of who we are:

•  Functioning:  Sorry, and I hope you’re not offended, but we must
  revisit this basic biological area. As has been suggested, some delicate women find it disagreeable that the males in their lives are not only accepting of a gamut of behaviors that accompany the premise that ‘what goes in, must come out’, but also that they revel in the frolicsome fun their bodies give them in that regard. OK, it’s real immature, and most men know that. But, it’s also primal and keeps them connected to their inner child. And that is something deemed psychologically healthy, after all. So, we all know who have been parents that tiny boys will collapse into gales of laughter at their own burps and farts, and it is surely a mark of accomplishment by the young male when he masters the art of belching on command. Wow! That’s a learned skill nearly on a par with getting one’s driver’s license.

  Many males, in fact, do not lose the impulse to find pleasure in
  gastric rumblings and voluble emissions, though some will, out of deference to the females in their lives, restrict such crepitationary activities to a private realm, or to when they are in the company of other males. Should an inadvertent expulsion occur within female company, many men find it desirable to acquire a dog, just so they will have something present on which to blame the misfortune.

  These behaviors are not only endemic, they are well-documented,
  ancient, and have indeed been the subjects of significant works of
  literature, such as the writings of Rabelais, Boccaccio and Mark Twain’s Letters from the Earth.

While on the topic of functioning, I would be remiss to not mention the matter of urination (his). Otherwise decent and kindly females will virtually froth with indignation over the fact that the males of the household are inclined to be cavalier in the aim department. Chastisement for misbehavior in this area normally comes in the morning and involves a miscalculation that may have transpired during the night. 

I do, howver, hold one area of empathy with women in this regard. I ask my confreres who use public restrooms, “why, if you’ve used a urinal, don’t you flush the fucking thing after use? Stop revolting me with your urinary leavings. 

Communication:  A constant source of consternation for women is that
men do not communicate in an acceptably sensitive (in a woman’s eyes) manner. Truly, the majority of females are convinced that men do not communicate at all, either with one another, or with them. This is a further example of piggish behavior, they believe, because polite interchanges call for verbalization and at the very least nodded acknowledgment, not mere grunts. What women do not realize is that there is a meaning behind those grunts and that men do not waste verbiage where it is not needed.

A woman can and will, for example, speak to a friend on the telephone for what seems like days and days. The conversation can be with somebody with whom she’s already spoken to that day at work. It’s even true that the person on the other end of the line doesn’t need to be a good friend. It can be a casual acquaintance, or sometimes even a telemarketer. “The woman from Montreal calling from the Consolidated Mortgage Company has a colicky baby, so I was telling her what we used to do with Angela when she had colic.” 

Men do not understand this behavior. They don’t understand it
because they hate the telephone and only use it when they must convey a message, which is what men believe Alexander Graham Bell (another male) had in mind for his invention. Someone has died? Fair enough. Give me a call.
Women also berate male communication proclivities because men “don’t
ask anything.” To a woman, this is an example of insensitivity, which is a
representation of piggishness. In fact, men don’t ask questions of people
because they think it’s rude to intrude. In general, male conversations go
a bit like this:
“So, good to see you, Horace. Howzit going?”
“Not bad. You?”
“Bout the same. Howza job?”
“No complaints. Anyway, if I do complain, who the hell’s gonna listen?”
“You got that right.”
“Anyway, gotta go.”
“Me too. Good to see you.”
“Likewise.”

To the onlooker this may seem like a superficial conversation, but
truthfully a great deal of information has been exchanged. The main
information, and the only bit of importance is that Horace is doing OK, or so he says. Who could ask for more than that? If Horace is not OK, he either might or might not tell his friend; this again is due to consideration. He either doesn’t want to burden his friend with ‘his’ problems, or he just doesn’t want to ‘get into it.’ He wants to sort matters out for himself and find his own solutions. But, to many women, life’s little horror tales must always be shared. And that’s good because it serves both sexes well. If a man really wants to get into something personal or troubling he will likely tell a female rather than another male. I know I completely rely on my women friends in times of crisis. Men suck at expressed compassion, I know that.

So, a bit later, our subject’s wife is talking to Horace’s wife on the
phone — for the better part of an evening, I might add. Eventually she
gets off the phone and immediately laces into her husband:
“You didn’t tell me that Horace had a major fungal infection of the
scrotum and was on antibiotics!”
“Yuck! I didn’t know that.”
“You were just talking to him today — How didn’t you know?”
“He didn’t tell me.”
“Didn’t you ask him how he was?”
“Well — sort of.”
“What do you mean, sort of.”
“Well, you know, like how’s it going? kinda sort of.”
“Didn’t you ask about his health?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because if he’d wanted me to know, he would have told me.”

“Oh, don’t be such an old poop ” was an expression used by a favorite aunt of mine, directed towards anybody who wanted to rain on another’s parade. Usually the admonition was sent in the direction of her otherwise beloved older brother, who was also happened to be (and maybe was a bit less beloved in that role) my father.

What I have realized is that I too can be an old poop. Yes, I do have a flaw (well, maybe even two or three), and my flaw can be construed as one of self-righteously raining on the parade of another. I’m not proud of it, and it is something I attempt to address. It’s just an aspect of me that gets too tempting at times.

How it manifests is like this: If somebody says they like something I am driven periodically to find a dozen reasons why they shouldn’t like it, and to argue my belief – even to the point of tedium at times. 

There are two reasons for this. One is, I love a good argument. I don’t mean a vituperative argument, just a logical one in which I will endeavor to bring another to my point-of-view. Nothing weird about that. It’s a process that goes back to the ancient Greeks, and is the basis of our system of jurisprudence and parliaments. Keeps folks on their toes and demands that they back up their beliefs.

The other reason I can blame on my journalistic background. For years I was charged with writing editorials. That is so cool. You can mount an argument, state your reasons, and not have to worry about anybody coming back at you. It’s powerful medicine, I tell you. I just loved it.

But, it is when the tendency overlaps into real life that it becomes problematic.

For example, the other day I wrote a blog that seemingly disparaged Canadian Thanksgiving. It wasn’t intended to do so; it was merely designed to poke a little fun. But I came to realize that Thanksgiving is a bigger deal for some people than it apparently has been for me in the past, and therefore I had no real right to mock a tradition that has more virtues than I considered in my little screed.

And that is my next point in this. I am, and I must be, prepared to qualify what I stated, and my qualification runs this way. The true meaning of Thanksgiving lies in its name. In other words, it’s all about gratitude, no matter how you celebrate it. I am a huge believer in gratitude, and there are many, many things for which I am grateful, so I am very happy to give thanks. And the idea of a day in which we can all give thanks is a good thing.

So, I shall say thank you and assume an attitude of gratitude, as they say. And thank you for all of you. I value you all more than I could express.

Have a Happy Canadian Thanksgiving, all, and next month I’ll have a happy American Thanksgiving.

On the British Columbia mainland coast north of greater Vancouver there isn’t very much, civilization-wise. There exist a few small towns south of the mill town of Powell River, and after that, the forest primeval right through to Prince Rupert and southern Alaska.

It’s all beautiful and wild country in that realm. Some are given to poetically calling it the Great Bear Rainforest, others not in tune with the tourism trade or sweetness-and-light environmental obsessions merely refer to it prosaically as the central coast. 

But, bears are there; black ones and grizzlies and that odd ursine known as the Kermode bear, which is essentially a mutated black bear. There are also cougars and wolves and possibly even dragons be there. It is pretty remote, after all. 

A few years ago when Wendy was working as a private consultant she was contracted to do a job for the aboriginal band at Kingcome Inlet, which is situated in the realm to which I refer. Directly across the water from such northern Vancouver Island fun spots as Port McNeill and Port Hardy, Kingcome is truly remote with the only access being via seaplane or boat. Wendy took the seaplane from Campbell River and stayed in for a week each time.

It was an ‘interesting’ experience for her, since she had been commissioned by the native band, the Dzawada’enuxw First Nation. Please don’t ask me to pronounce it, and I’ll wager few of them can either. Anyway, she spent a few weeks dealing with them and grew very fond of them as they did of her, despite the fact she had to immerse herself in band politics, a challenging task at the best of times.

But, none of that is the point here. Kingcome Village is tiny and sparsely populated, with only 97 people in fulltime residence on a spit of land at the base of the mountains and situated beside a river. A river that can rage with a passion. And 12 days ago it raged with a virtually unheralded passion as a vicious winter storm whipped through the central coast and northern Vancouver Island.

Kingcome was devastated as the river flowed through the village and forced the entire population out. They were all shipped out to Alert Bay, directly across the water. Many Kingcome people have family in that fascinating and hugely historic Aboriginal town. 

So, in effect, the Kingcome people suffered through a mini-New Orleans experience in which they lost their homes, with no word yet received as to how badly those homes were damaged or even if they are salvageable. They leff behind literally all their possessions, including all sorts of sacred and extremely valuable historic regalia of the people such as masks, blankets and the like. No word yet as to how that stuff has fared, and little word as to the state of the picturesque and tiny church or the beautiful big house.

And now the Kingcome people are being told it may be six months before they can go home to what has been decaled a disaster zone, and have been informed they will be arrested if they try. Meanwhile, the federal government and provincial authorities are busily pissing at each other to decide who has jurisdiction over the place and the people are, quite naturally, demanding a commitment from the feds to rebuild their homes. They shouldn’t hold their collective breath.

I find it odd that when the hurricane hit Newfoundland recently, the feds sent in the army. They have done that in other jurisdictions east of here, as well. Somehow the people of Kingcome have not yet been deemed worthy of much Ottawa concern. 

So, they sit and wait, wanting nothing more than to go home to habitable dwellings. The local band council chair has met with the Indian Affairs feds and has exhorted them “to respond to this extraordinary event with extraordinary measures.” 

“Extraordinary measures” indeed, and maybe pigs too will fly, and kermode bears will, too.

It is Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend. Now, there’s a lame-ass holiday if ever. A little more fun than Groundhog Day, but still not quite up to the caliber of the ‘big holidays’ of the year.

For one thing, what with being more reserved and all, we only get one extra day off rather than two like you all south-of-the-border lot. And, we just don’t do it up right. 

Thanksgiving in the US is stuck in there right at the end of November, relatively near to the neighborhood of Christmas. Ours is the second weekend of October. I don’t know why we have it then. Mind you, I don’t know why Americans have theirs in November, either. Actually, I don’t even know for sure why any of us have it. I am sure there are reasons, but I don’t feel like looking them up.

What Canadian Thanksgiving is, just to enlighten those that don’t live here, is a kind of US Thanksgiving Lite. You know, just a little less festive. I know in the US the T/giving weekend is given over to the economy by-and-large in the sense that consumers hit those sales and buy tons of items to bolster the marketplace. Our big sale day, on the other hand is Boxing Day (which Americans don’t have) and it falls on Dec. 26.

I remember reading something somewhere that Canadian Thanksgiving is ‘not’ an imitation of the US one, but was a uniquely Canadian invention that just happened to use the same name, but otherwise bears no resemblance to the one used by crass Americans.

The only problem with that is nobody thought to set down on paper exactly what it was and exactly how it was different. Ostensibly it’s supposed to be a kind of harvest festival. OK. And then what? Well, uh. 

The people who got most confused about Thanksgiving – I don’t know if they still do, but they did in my childhood – were elementary school teachers. So, we did Thanksgiving stuff in school. What did we do? We did pictures of turkeys – appropriate, since that overrated bird is also utilized with Thanksgiving Lite – and pictures of Indians – we have those, too, though they have recently morphed into Native Canadians, Aboriginal Persons or First Nations – and we did Pilgrim Fathers! Huh?? Why did we do that? We didn’t even have fucking Pilgrim Fathers in Canada. I mean, truly, I remember a teacher going as far as to tell us all about the Plymouth Rock stuff, and the first Thanksgiving and happy, happy white guys and Indians sitting around scarfing down turkey and pumpkin pie. As Al Borland was wont to say: “I don’t think so, Tim.”

So, forgive us of a certain generation for being a tad confused, and maybe forgive merchants and newspaper editors for offering lots of graphics of cornucopias and those ubiquitous Pilgrims up here in the frozen north. 

As for us, we don’t do much for Thanksgiving. Neither of us much cares for turkey, but we’ll probably have a pumpkin pie, mainly because we like it OK. And we’ll cherish the day off, and mainly set our energies in reserve for Groundhog Day, which cannot come too soon.

Are you happy? If you are, then good for you.

So, are you happy in a contented sense, you know that life isn’t so bad and you’re getting by? You know, you have your good days and your bad days, but generally everything is jake.

Or are you deliriously, roll-around-on-the-floor peeing your underpants and cackling insanely kind of happy? 

Hopefully you’re somewhere in the middle. If you are the latter kind of happy they send you off for therapy or ask you where they can get some of that good shit, too.

If you are basically happy, are you happy all the time or just part of the time? If you answer ‘all the time’ you are probably delusionary. Seems to be that ‘part of the time’ is the human norm.

Yet, for some reason, and perhaps it’s due to the stresses (or self-indulgence) of our time, we think we should be much happier. Indeed, if we’re not we feel guilty. And if we don’t feel guilty within ourselves somebody will gladly point out for us that we should.

In an obsessive-compulsive society such as ours we have obligations, it seems, and being happy is one of them. You are not allowed to lie around being a grouchy shit, you have to embrace jubilation.

Indeed, according to Globe and Mail journalist, Sarah Hampson, “we live amid a tyranny of happiness. It’s the new sex. We’re given tips for it: how to get it; boost it; protect it; make it last. We’re meant to be in orgasmic emotional throes 24/7 …”

Indeed, in the US you are almost bound to be linked with happiness and stand in jeopardy of being unpatriotic if you do not follow the muse of Thomas Jefferson, who stated: We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Well, at the very least you are exhorted to ‘pursue’ happiness as a kind of inner quest. Canadians, I think, are allowed to be a bit down-in-the-dumps and resemble the bleaker elements of a Bergman film (Ingmar, not Ingrid) and that is likely due to the crappy weather for far-far too much of the year.

Yet, what is this elusive element of the human condition and why do we want to be there? According to both Plato and Aristotle, ‘happiness’ was the philosophical goal of the human animal. Indeed, it was what set us apart from the lower beasts.

By ‘happiness’ the Greeks didn’t necessarily mean jubilation but more of an inner contentment. Plato believed it was attained by service and dedication to one’s society, and sometimes eschewing material rewards. “Bullshit,” said Aristotle (in classical Greek, of course), those things were good in themselves, but it also took a few things like fine silks and the perfumes of Cathay to really make a boy or girl feel contented, so there is nothing wrong with a bit of stuff. Good Buddhists, and even service-minded Christians opt for the Platonic view. 

The point is, we are ‘meant’ to be happy and if we are not then we and those around us are disquieted. I am not, by the way, being flippant about depression. It is a serious mental condition that drives its sufferers to a life of misery, and holds the ominous threat of substance abuse and possibly suicide. Not to be trivialized ever. Any of you who have ever had a clinical depression know it bites the big one.

No, I am thinking more of the blues, the blahs, feeling out of synch with the world and just plain cruddy. We all hate that, and we don’t even know where it comes from in a lot of cases. My ex used to refer to that state as “the blue meanies”, as in the Beatles Yellow Submarine. It was an apt choice of expression.

Anyway, if we are feeling that way we are exhorted to lift ourselves up and get out of the funk. In fact, according to Hampson’s articles we are made to feel guilty, as if we are doing something wrong. “Be happy, damn it. It’s your job!” is virtually the message society conveys. And if you’re not happy go out and get yourself a new TV, IPad, BMW or possibly spouse, because just maybe you deserve better and that just might be your problem. At least that’s what commercials tell us.

What makes me happy? I dunno. It comes and it goes. I think feeling I’ve done a job well, having a good encounter with a friend, having had an even better encounter between the sheets, walking with Max, sitting on Kealia Beach on Kauai, snuggling before a fire, etc. etc. etc. But, you know, if I’m really feeling in a funk, none of those things work.

Sometimes you just have to live with the blues for a while. They’re telling you something, so listen carefully.

What follows is an excerpt from my recently (and to my delight) unearthed manuscript of my ‘guide to life for the middle age’. I cannot remember if I ran this years ago, but here you have it again.

What happened to ‘toughness’? What happened to people making decisions — either good or bad — and then being responsible for the results of those decisions, even if the results were less than desirable? How did we of our generation get caught up in a syndrome of ‘pansification’ with our offspring in which they are on the one hand protected from the realities of life and, on the other are told that whatever they do — regardless of how lame, uninspiring, or repulsive to the community-at-large it might be – is A-OK?

In the brutal days of bad teeth and madrigals, if one child didn’t make it
through the rigors of disease and deprivation, then a couple could always
have another. It was a simple process to sire progeny, albeit the ‘bearing’
part had its risks for the mother. But, as in the case of children, there
were always other women available for that capacity, too. Grown men were what counted. It wasn’t that anybody wished their offspring (or their
wives) ill, it was just that the odds against attaining adulthood in bygone
times were huge by modern standards. Read some Victorian literature, and you’ll find that kids were forever wasting away from consumption, whooping cough, diphtheria, typhoid, or some other hideous affliction. That was when they weren’t being beaten, sent up chimney flues, only to get stuck and perish in the most miserable manner, or being transported to the Antipodes for stealing a sticky-bun at the Covent Garden Market.

A similar mortality rate for children persists today in much of the so-called Third World, and it renders us in the spoiled and affluent ‘West’ aghast, guilt-racked, and definitely wanting to change the channel when one of those starving kids ads comes on. How can a body enjoy the antics of the bratty and rude youngsters on an inane sitcom when faced with a hollow-eyed urchin whose skeletal structure is so starkly delineated he could be used for an anatomy lesson in a medical school? Better to just not watch, and resolve to send ten bucks to Save the Children at the end of the tax year.

In North America, it wasn’t really until the end of World War Two that we truly began, at all social levels, to embrace childhood as something that must be cherished, cosseted and protected. Prior to that, while early Twentieth century kids weren’t as overtly abused and neglected as they had been in Victorian times, they still fell victim to epidemics, were too often physically and sexually abused, and were generally seen, once they reached a certain age, as cogs in the bread-winning machinery of the family. “Times are tough, son, once you’ve finished eighth grade this year, get your ass down to the factory or the mine. If you can’t get a job there, then hit the road and keep going until you find one.”

If you think television’s The Waltons painted a realistic portrait of West Virginia rural life in the Dirty Thirties, then you’re incurably naive and romantic. Read Rick Bragg’s Ava’s Man., if you want to get closer to the truth. The Walton clan of the 1930s lived better in their bucolic paradise than many rural West Virginians today.

While Depression-era reality still exists in a few deprived enclaves of current society, such abject poverty and its consequent toll on children is alien to most of us. Kids we now believe must be protected and indulged, educated and prepared to take respectable and honorable roles in the new millennium. Nothing wrong with that per se. But, we seem also to have come to believe that in the name of protecting our kids, they must be perpetually interfered with. They cannot ever be left to their own-devices. I, in my middle-age, know it wasn’t thus when I, and my contemporaries were young, and I think we’re the better for having been left to our own devices to a greater extent than kids today.

Here’s an example of what I mean:

A few years ago my wife and I took a trip to the Cook Islands in the Polynesian South Pacific. While there we spent many hours of each day snorkeling in Muri Lagoon, a bit of liquid azure paradise that surrounds the island of Rarotonga. For hours of each day we’d be down among the wrasses, butterfly fish, surgeonfish, big voracious jacks, coral and anemones. Died and gone to heaven time, no doubt.

 While snorkeling one day, a thought struck me that of all of God’s creatures, those in the sea are probably the least interfered with by humans. While its so that we pollute the waters, and we have caught some species in suffienceient numbers that we’ve virtually, and sometimes even literally, wiped them out, what I’m suggesting is, the environment remains alien and hostile to us, except for periodic visits when we don diving or snorkeling equipment. Most of the time, however, the creatures of the coral reef are on their own. Not only are they on their own, they manage just fine without ‘our’ input. If between this day and doomsday no human were to ever again venture under the water, it would make no difference whatsoever to the reef creatures. We are irrelevant to them. They do what they do, and we do what we do, and rarely does the twain meet.

I saw an analogous situation between the Rarotongan fish and the Rarotongan children. With the kids of the island, ‘non-interference’ seemed to prevail in the raising of a group of what we saw as very happy kids. It was a common sight for us, as we traveled the one road that encircles the island, to be stuck behind a small motorbike, and on the motorbike would be Mom, and with Mom would be one or two kids of little more than toddler age perilously hanging on while holding bags of groceries during the weaving journey. All were helmet-less, I might add.

In front of our condo there was a long wharf that thrust out into the waters of the lagoon. Regularly, after school was a handful of kids, some as young as five or six, would come to dive from the jetty into the enticing waters of the lagoon. All very idyllic, except that at tide change, there was a fearsome rip current that ran through the canal and out through a narrow channel that flushed water into an open and tempestuous Pacific. The kids, unwatched by adults, were undaunted as they swam and dove — as they had done for generations. We mentioned once to the Maori caretaker of the condo how treacherous the current seemed to be.

“Yes,” she said pleasantly, but showing utter lack of concern, “You have to be careful.” That was it. No warning about not swimming at such times, or how
lifejackets should be worn when plying the lagoon in the little kayaks that were available to guests. Indeed, I never saw a lifejacket there. All one needed to do to keep oneself safe was to “be careful.” It made a great deal of sense. It says, the call is yours, buddy, and if you’re not careful, you’ll drown. I liked it. It was reminiscent of when I was growing up when on a summer day a bunch of us would head down to swim in a nearby lake. No parent bothered to come along and supervise. They were too busy.  It was assumed we wouldn’t be stupid enough to get ourselves drowned. The assumption was valid.  None of us drowned.