Posted on August 10, 2020 under Monday Morning Musings with one comment

The tundra bathed in golden light

 

Going through round 2 of self-isolation gives a person a lot of time to think. Too much apparently as lately I have been pondering a number of serious questions: Who am I? What is the meaning of life? What is love? Is there life after death? And throw in a bonus head shaker… how do they get the caramel into a Caramilk chocolate bar?

Whoa. Back up the bus, Len. You’re losing it.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who has spent more time with themselves recently than they have ever done before because of the pandemic. We’re a culture that’s not steeped in solitude. We have social media, books, movies and our cats and dogs to keep us amused and distracted but there are times when things fall silent and he have time to ponder our place in the universe.

Please, Len. Covid-19 is tough enough without you going all philosophical on us.

You will be relieved to know that I’m not going to give you my take on these weighty questions, but I will admit that I have been particularly reflective lately. It doesn’t hurt, as scary as it might seem, to look in the mirror every once in a while, to take stock. I try not to look in the mirror for too long. Even mirrors have feelings!

Before I left for the north, I had lunch with a woman that I have greatly admired for years. She’s in her 80s and has lived a rich, interesting life. She has made a significant contribution in many ways. Like many of her generation in our part of the world, she grew in a large Catholic family and her faith has been her bedrock. After lunch, I asked her what her feelings were about the afterlife. It is safe to say that her faith comforts her that there is something to look forward to when “I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, and danced the skies on laughter silver wings.” (John Magee – High Flight). I must confess that I don’t have the same degree of conviction as my friend. I continue to feel that heaven is all around us. And so is hell. The world is in a mess these days.

I remember clearly the first time I was asked as a child about the meaning of love. It was in elementary school. I don’t know why the teacher posed this question to a bunch of 9 year-olds when many of us north of 60 still can’t articulate the notion of love in any meaningful way. I can hear you all shouting, “Speak for yourself, Len.” If you have it figured out, congratulations. I explored this topic recently with a friend and she sent me two video links. A pair of rabbis give some interesting insights into love. Thanks to my friend for these links.

Back in the 70s (I now clarify that I’m talking about the 1970s and not the 1870s!), Roger Whittaker, the Kenyan born, British raised singer, sang the song “What Love Is”. I like his description as much as any that I’ve heard:

“Love is a morning sunrise, love is the rain that falls;

Love is an evening sunset, a stranger that calls.

Love is an April shower, the warmth of a summer day,

Love is the hidden sunshine, that chases tears away.

Green as the grass that’s growing, blue as the sky above,

Soft as the wind that’s blowing, all these things are love.

Love is a bolt of lightning, slashing across the sky,

Love is the tender warmth, I see within your eye.”

This was a popular wedding song decades ago. Over the years, I sang at quite a few weddings. I don’t want to tell you the percentage of these marriages that survived. Maybe my singing was the first sour note!

I’m into my second week of self-isolation and mercifully I am allowed to go for walks on “the land”. The tundra is conveniently located a few footsteps from my front door. The landscape is quite different than the winter. At first, it appears rather drab and uninteresting, but every time I walk, I notice something different and beautiful. The light changes often. The picture at the top of the page is a great illustration. As the sun started its slow descent, it bathed the tundra in a blanket of gold. Minutes later, it changed and looked completely different.

The Inuit have a strong attachment to the land. In my short time here, I am starting to understand why.

I try to walk daily to the large inukshuk on the outskirts of town. It is a popular place to meet and watch the northern lights. I go there because it is peaceful. I often touch the massive stones hoping for some inspiration and insights into life’s most haunting questions.

How they get the caramel inside a Caramilk bar is still one of life’s great mysteries!

Have a great week.

 

P.S. HBTM

Posted on August 6, 2020 under Thursday Tidbits with no comments yet

 

Free! Free at last.

 

Self-isolation: Round 2

Have you ever had dreams about becoming really good at something, maybe even an expert? Gardening, sewing, music, sports, an artist? The list is endless. We’re not talking about perfection here but merely striving for excellence. Perfectionists are not much fun to be around in my experience.

For the second time in 4 months, I am doing the self-isolation thing, having left the comfortable confines of my pandemic pound inducing apartment to my other home away from home in Northern Quebec. I arrived here last weekend and have settled into another routine in order to fulfill my 14-day isolation obligation.

So far, I have managed quite nicely. I’m doing a lot of reading. I am completing a 1000-piece puzzle that I started last March but had to abandon in mid -stream when Covid forced us to leave the community rather abruptly. I have done a bit of baking but am trying to scale back on my sugar consumption. I plan to start doing the P90X workouts soon. I had my cable and internet reconnected. Unfortunately, my internet signal is not strong enough to stream Netflix and Crave so I’ll probably cancel these services. I am taking part in daily online orientation sessions with my school board. I feel like a grizzled veteran after my 5- month stint this past winter. I have also taken this opportunity to start writing my 7^th book which will chronicle events of my life in the north. Similar to my previous confinement (it wasn’t a pregnancy!), I plan to write 1,000 words a day for the month of August.

This where the similarities end.

Back home, I live at the end of a dead-end street. It is uncommonly quiet most of the time. Many university students live in the neighborhood and a handful of times each year, things can get a wee bit crazy. Stands of very large trees encircle our buildings providing a natural sound barrier. You get the picture. It’s very peaceful.

Pretty well everyone in our village up north gets around on 4 wheelers in the summer and skidoos in the winter. When you’re buried under snow and ice and it’s -50, most people go outside only when necessary. I have discovered that summer has a much different vibe. New York is known as the city that never sleeps. Move aside, Big Apple – I have a worthy opponent for this title. In the land of the midnight sun, people are out and about seemingly around the clock. Because of my location, only a handful of yards from the tundra, on a road that might be considered a circumferential highway, I see and hear a lot of traffic. Without the buffer of winter’s deep silence, the 4-wheelers are quite loud. I’m being polite. One other observation (not a criticism) but there doesn’t appear to be any speed limits as far as I can tell. When you’re in isolation 24 hours a day, you notice these types of things. At my age, everything seems to go too fast… especially time.

Like many school jurisdictions, summer is a time for renovations and construction. Our board has embarked on several ambitious projects this summer. Some of it is Covid related, some due to an increase in student population (portable classrooms) and regularly scheduled maintenance to Board owned properties, including my apartment building, an aging four-plex. This has resulted in an influx of construction workers. It is a perfect time of the year to get this work done with endless hours of sunlight. Unless of course, these workers are doing a major renovation to YOUR building while you are self-isolating.

The work crew arrived bright and early on Monday (7:00 a.m.). I’m an early riser so that wasn’t an issue. Scaffolding was erected outside my bedroom window and the work commenced. At first, I was charmed by the incessant pounding of hammers and the whir of saws… for the first few hours. When you can’t leave your apartment, the noise has a way of compounding. Actually, it’s exponential. These guys mean business and other than a few short breaks for meals, they work 14 hours a day… 14.5 last evening but who’s counting! For some reason, probably my imagination, the hammering and sawing seem to be getting louder by the day. Having wielded a jackhammer during a summer job in my youth, I am familiar with the sound and the vibration it causes. I swear to god that they were jackhammering the exterior wall of my building, as ridiculous as this may sound. One summer, I worked in a sawmill in Victoria. The sound of massive saws ripping into large Douglas fir trees is a sound I’ve never forgotten. Working close to these saws, I had to wear high grade ear protection. I don’t know if they were trying to cut my building in half yesterday, but the howl of the saws brought back pleasant memories! I wanted badly to go to bed at 9:30 p.m. but one keen worker was still pounding away inches from my bed as the staging was right outside my window. He was close enough to hear me breathe if he had stopped hammering.

I don’t want to be a pessimist, but something tells me that this may not be my last self-isolation. The question of Christmas was brought up at one of our orientation sessions. Will we be allowed to leave the community while the pandemic persists? A definitive answer was not forthcoming which was hardly surprising.

So, I’ve been mulling this over. Self-isolation gives you ample opportunity to think about imponderables. If I fly home for Christmas, I may have to spend the holidays in quarantine. Ho! Ho! Ho!. Upon my return to the north, I would have to self-isolate again. Ditto for spring break and the end of the school year.

I have tried to achieve excellence in everything I do.

I don’t seek to become an expert in self-isolation… unless it’s on a quiet island somewhere in the South Pacific.

Have a great weekend.

P.S. As you read this, I will be walking out on the tundra (pictured above). We have the blessings of the community to go for solitary walks on the land. I might pack a lunch and walk for 14 hours!

Posted on August 3, 2020 under Monday Morning Musings with 3 comments

 

 

 

“See you, in September?

 

Have you ever woken up in the morning and wondered what the hell just happened?

To be honest, the last twelve months of my life have felt like this. The past 365 days have provided a dizzying array of experiences. There have been highs and lows. There has been joy and sorrow, laughter and tears and an array of other emotions that I have yet to be able to define. There have been events in my home province and around the world that have left me shaken and shaking my head.

I know one thing for certain. I am alive and well. Changed and a bit scarred but aren’t we all?

I am paddling my canoe solo as I embark on the next chapter of my life.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think a year ago that I would resume my teaching career after a brief (!) 40- year hiatus. Nor did I think that the return to the classroom would happen in a northern Inuit community. Such is the complete unpredictable nature of life. And isn’t that grand?

Yesterday, after countless hours and six flights, I arrived back in Kangiqsujuaq, Quebec. I’ll give you a few minutes to Google this, but the village is located near the northern tip of the province on the Ungava Bay. When I stepped off the plane, I felt like I was returning home. “And that, is a good thing” as Martha Stewart often opines.

After spending four days in Montreal completing (and passing!) my Covid-19 test, I now must self-isolate for 14 days. I know the drill having done this in late March when we were sent home once the pandemic got a foothold in every corner of the world. One piece of very good news is that we will be allowed to go out and walk on the tundra after day 4. This is a huge gift especially for one who enjoys walking.

When I arrived at my apartment, I was greeted with a bag of groceries on my doorstep from a friend and colleague, Marion. After a very long day with no meals other than breakfast at 4:30 a.m., I nearly ate the frozen lasgana without heating it up. In my freezer, I discovered some frozen cookies that I had made prior to leaving. Lasagna plus cookies and milk. Folks, it doesn’t get any better than this! My sincere thanks to Marion for her kindness and generosity.

After unpacking and eating supper, I curled up on the couch to finish an excellent book that I had been reading on the plane. If you’re a cycling enthusiast or even if you’re not, Road to Valour by Aili and Andres McConnon is the true story of a famous Italian cyclist set in World War 2. I only had 10 pages left in the book and I wanted to finish it before going to bed.

Do you know what it means to bonk? Get your mind out of the gutter! I don’t mean that kind of bonking! In endurance sports such as cycling and running, hitting the wall or the bonk is a condition of sudden fatigue and loss of energy which is caused by the depletion of glycogen stores in the liver and muscles. As some of you know, I ran a few marathons including Boston twice. I never officially bonked because if I had, I would not have been able to finish these races. When you bonk, you’re done, and no amount of mental fortitude will do you a damn bit of good. You may want to go on, but your body will not allow you to continue.

I read page 247 and then I read it again. You get the picture. I think it took me an hour to read the last 10 pages of the book. I had bonked. I could scarcely drag my pandemic pound- laden hulk to the bedroom. I knew that going to bed this early would cost me a very early wakening. I was pleasantly surprised when I rolled over and saw that it was morning as daylight flooded my room with light. I turned on my phone to discover that it was 4:00 a.m. Unlike the middle of winter up here when you go to bed in the dark and get up in the dark, in the summer it’s just the opposite. I still felt quite fatigued and decided to roll over. Three hours later, I woke for the second time. I don’t ever recall sleeping 11 hours.

Before I end yet another vacuous piece of writing, I have to say a word about masks. I wore one yesterday for 11 hours. A few times, I felt overheated and mildly claustrophobic. My thought immediately turned to health care professionals. Any of us mere mortals who complain about wearing a mask need a good swift kick in the arse. Every day, health care professionals have to don masks for 12- hour shifts and more. In addition to the discomfort they must feel, they are also putting themselves at risk. Putting on a mask while you shop for groceries is not a hardship or inconvenience. It’s just the right thing to do.

As I write this, I can hear the mournful wail of a pack of sled dogs out on the tundra. I know that I am home.

Have a great week.

P.S. It is unlikely that I will be able to do “Pillow Talk North” any time soon. My internet connection is quite weak especially for video. When I have access to the school, I might try it from there.

P.P.S. School is supposed to start on August 10^th but that will not happen. The last wave of teachers won’t arrive here until late August and it won’t be September before they finish their isolation. There’s also construction going on in our school.