daddy's whiskers

they're always in the way,
the cow eats them for hay
momma eats them in her sleep,
she thinks she's eating shredded wheat
they're always in the way.

(author unknown)

just thought i'd share that with all my avid readers. janelle sang it to me tonight as we were on our way home. do you know any silly songs?

fall on your knees

i finished reading fall on your knees by ann marie macdonald today. i have to say, it was very enjoyable to read. the writing style was excellent and the story and characters were engaging.

the novel is set on cape breton island during the early part of the 20th century and revolves around the piper family, particularly the four piper sisters, kathleen, mercedes, frances, and lily. the subject matter is often disturbing--like when three or four year old frances tries to baptize baby ambrose in the creek behind the house for example... but it gets worse. there are also moments of hilarity and joy, though. so it kind of balances out a little. the scales still tip a little too much to the disturbing side for me.

the first thing i noticed about the novel was it's descriptions of cape breton island. both times i've been to cape breton, i've found the place very charming and its people wonderful and colourful. but i've also found it very barren. as in, empty or sparsely populated. in fall on your knees cape breton is thriving. there are people everywhere. sydney is a small city that easily matches halifax (no one goes to halifax--especially not after 1917). busy little mining towns pop up all over the island almost overnight. the people are poor and live on a low income, but there are lots of them and some of them do quite well, like the jewish family that owns a delicatessen, or the lebanese family that owns a general store kind of thing that, towards the end of the novel, has grown into a chain of stores with offices and warehouses all over the province. james makes a very decent living as a bootlegger and a boot maker (funny, eh?). jameel mahmoud makes a decent, though desperate living operating a speakeasy during the prohibition era. almost everyone else works in the coal mines. i liked that the novel was well populated. it paints a rich landscape of the culture and economy of cape breton in the first half of the twentieth century.

i'll paraphrase one of my favourite thoughts in the novel: the cape bretonners are discussing the economic situation of the 1930s, saying that the great depression hasn't hit cape Breton quite so hard. someone else remarks that it's because for cape breton the great depression began in 1867, with confederation. and, at least in the novel, it's true.

it's not a novel i would freely recommend. it gets creepy and it gets horrifyingly disturbing ... like when you find out who lily's parents really are and what mercedes really saw the day before her mother's death.

favourite comfort food

my answer to mother's question regarding my favourite comfort food:

my comfort foods. i'm not sure if i have "comfort" foods per se. foods that seem most comforting to me are hot creamy soups or hot chunky, meaty stews. but i also like hot smashed potatoes, squash (especially that brown sugar and squash thing). pretty much anything that's hot and you can eat with little or no effort with a spoon.

my favourite meals.... another tough one because i like almost everything. everything, that is, except north american-chinese food. blech. i think it depends on how i feel or how hungry i am. because some days i'd like a simple smashed potatoes and chicken meal just fine ... other days i like steak and salad and, well, you know, all the courses that go with that. hmm. i would have to say though, that one meal i can have anytime, day, or place is soup and sandwiches or salad and sandwiches. also, german pancakes or finnish pancakes (like from the hoito) and belgian waffles i could eat those any time.

favourite dessert. well, here's the list not necessarily in any order, but just as i think of them: pumpkin pie; the brown sugar and squash thing (yes, i would eat it for dessert, breakfast, lunch, supper, or midnight snack); apple crisp (with vanilla ice cream); ice cream on a waffle sugar cone; sponge cake with some kind of tasteful icing (or none at all would be okay too). that's pretty much all i can think of right now :)

happiest childhood memories

my answer to mother's latest question: what are my happiest and saddest childhood memories

okay... my happiest childhood memories. this is a tough question because i don't really remember how i felt about stuff, i only remember what happened, so i can't really tell you when i was happiest, but i can tell you which memories make me happiest now.

the first one i can think of is the day dad, uncle louis, chad, and i went fishing at adam's creek. you and sophie may have been there, but i don't remember. we fished all day and didn't catch a single thing (as far as i can remember) and we went home soaking wet and exhausted but we had an awesome great time.

the other one isn't really one contiguous memory but rather just clumps of memory or vague nostalgic feelings. like exploring the rock "desert" (that's what we called it) next to our house with chad. or exploring the woods and fields on our property with chad. once, i think it was a snow day, chad and i were home alone and we packed a lunch and some supplies--chad's rifle, an axe, matches--and strapped on some snowshoes and then we went for a long hike through the woods in a blizzard. we were out all day, came back in time for supper. another happy memory is on a sunday afternoon, again we had a giant snow storm, mathieu was over for the afternoon and he, chad and i rode the old bomb (the black snow machine) all afternoon and into the evening--until we had to come back in to get ready for gospel meeting. i also remember chad and i shoveling the drive way late at night in dead still ice cold weather or blinding snowstorms and then coming inside to sit by the woodstove until our faces thawed. also the summers we spent at tower lake with cousin mitch.

my saddest childhood memories... hm. another tough one.

probably the times i was mean to chad or the couple times i yelled at dad. like once when chad bonked his head and started crying and i called him a wimp. :(

or the time when dad and chad and i went hunting and i kept lagging behind and whining about it and my mittens came off and i got snow down my sleeves and i felt like dad wouldn't wait for me (that part doesn't really make me sad, the next part does:) dad kept bringing it up, almost every year when we went hunting after that and he would tell me how bad he felt and how he wished he would have come back and picked me up and carried. that makes me sad. i bet that if i came home today and got dad to take me hunting he'd bring it up again ...

also, when dad used to sing "cat's in the cradle" i always cried when he sang that ... and then he'd sing it just to make me cry and i'd get angry at him. i think i was fifteen or sixteen (old enough to be at the dentist by myself, but before the dentist office moved into the mall) i was in the dentist's chair and the hygienist was working in my head and the song came on the radio and i was so embarrassed and worried that i was going to start crying. fortunately, i didn't.

one time in early spring (early enough that there was still about five or six feet of snow on the ground but late enough that it was really warm and the snow was mostly slushy) chad, jeremy, and i went for a hike ... we were in snowshoes and for some reason chad and jeremy did okay but mine kept sinking and i couldn't keep them straight so they'd tip me over and then i'd trip and fall into the slush. so i took off my snowshoes when we were about halfway to our destination and tried ploughing through the slush but the layers of crust kept breaking under me and the snow was too deep for me to walk on the ground and keep my head above it, so i kind of had to swim/crawl through the snow and i kept getting wetter and wetter ... i was SO angry and upset. finally i just turned around and headed for home. chad and jeremy got to their destination, made a fire, had lunch and headed back before i even made it back to my snowshoes. by this time i was soaked right through my snowsuit to my underwear. jeremy made it to my snowshoes before i did and picked them up, chad caught up with me, picked me up and put me on his back and carried me the whole way home. that makes me sad because i regret being so angry and feeling sorry for myself for being wet and cold.

also, when dad had his gall bladder taken out. it was a saturday and he had to go to work, but there was a family breakfast thing at uncle louis' house. i drove dad to work and i think he wanted me to go straight to uncle louis' from there but i was really tired because i'd stayed up late the night before so i went home and went back to bed. at around nine or so, dad came home and woke me up because he wanted me to drive him to the hospital because his stomach hurt really badly. i got up, had a long hot shower while dad waited for me and then drove him to the hospital, just dropped him off, and then went to uncle louis' and waited until after breakfast when almost everyone else had left to tell uncle louis that dad was at the hospital!!!!! then, uncle louis got his jacket and keys and got right in the van and we drove to the hospital together and went to the emergency entrance where jesse was working in the reception area with the triage nurse. jesse told us that dad had been admitted... so we found him in a gowny thing on a hospital bed hooked up to an iv thing... and i felt so ashamed of myself.

i guess that's not really a childhood memory anymore though ... it's more like a young-adult memory so i'm gonna stop there.

earliest childhood memories

an avid reader asked me what my earliest childhood memories are, so after spending the morning delving into my brain, this is the result:

my childhood memories are very cloudy. i don't really remember one continuous stream of memories, just clumps.

my earliest ones involve playing in the sandbox with my brother chad behind our little yellow house on government road in kapuskasing. and we also played on the front deck. chad and i would slide through the bars and then back in... or that might have been at my grandmother's house on byng street, but in my memory it was at the yellow house. i also remember dad putting chad and i to bed, sleeping feet to feet at opposite ends and i had my braces on.

i remember cutting my finger on something in the basement of the rodger's house in val-rita (the one we moved into later) and it bled and bled (well, it seemed like it was bleeding a lot, but i couldn't have been more than four years old so it probably just seemed like a lot) and my mother said something about me going to school soon.

and then i remember moving to val-rita. for some reason, i remember my father and someone else knocking down a wall in the old yellow house and pulling a step-stool out from behind it. (i doubt that actually happened--it just seems so bizarre that we'd store a step-stool in the wall or that we'd even have room for one there considering that the house was so small, but that's how i remember it.) and i remember sitting on the tailgate of a pick up truck in grandma's driveway/parking lot and crying because i didn't want to move and mr. larocque telling me that i was gonna be living in a nicer, bigger house and that everything was gonna be ok. or something--i don't really remember what he said, just that he was teasing me or something.

i remember my first day of school. well, actually, i just remember mom getting me a blanket (for nap time) and a back pack and telling me that i was going to school. i started going to school in the afternoons. i remember standing at the end of our driveway in val-rita (where perras road splits
into our driveway) waiting for the bus. i remember being at school, and being surprised that i could speak english. i remember brian; he was a bully and every day he'd pick someone different to be his "friend" and one day i was all happy because he picked me.

i remember pooping my pants in kindergarten ... or was that grade one? and mom and grandma came to get me at school. wow, that still embarrasses me (not that mom and grandma came to get me, but that i pooped my pants.)

so... yeah, those are my earliest memories, i think. i hope they make for some nice funny reading.

Gideon's Spies -- the secret history of the mossad

so i just finished reading this book by gordon thomas, loaned to me by my brother in law, steve. it's a quite fascinating and remarkably (even surprisingly) well researched account of the history of mossad from its inception in the 1950s.

the book begins with an examination of the death of princess diana from mossad's perspective. it gives details about the conspiracy theories surrounding her death and the death of her lover dodi al fayed, and driver henri paul--who was an informant, not only for local french intelligence agencies, but also for mossad and other foreign intelligence services and the press.

the book is full of anecdotes. it tells the story of rafael eitan's kidnapping of adolf eichman in argentina, it tells stories about assassination attempts (both successful and unsuccessful) against terrorist leaders who could not be brought to justice. it also tells about mossad's involvement in the death of britain's media tycoon robert maxwell. the most annoying thing about these anecdotes is that they are often inconclusive. they tell a small part of a story, or are used as an example and then the author trails off to discuss something entirely different. for example, it tells the story of dr. ri che-woo, a north korean microbiologist who escaped from north korea along the new exodus route, revived by douglas shin--a korean-american pastor at a suburban los angeles church--, and norbert vollersten--a german doctor who completed a work term in north korea. the story is quite touching but ends abruptly when dr. ri che-woo is captured by chinese public security officers. nothing more is told about new exodus or any of its other participants, though they were painstakingly introduced.

the book made me think, though: it's hard to justify the existence of secret intelligence or security agencies in a democratic country. the very secrecy surrounding the actions of these agencies makes them inaccessible to the democratic process. the only way they can be controlled by the people is through the democratically elected head of state. but, these are often untrustworthy. furthermore, how can we even know that we can trust our democratically elected heads of state if some of the actions that they approve are forever cut off from public knowledge?

it is our fear of the 'other' that necessitates secret agencies: fear of terrorism, fear of enemy nations, fear of friendly nations... it was fear of the soviet union that brought on the need for secret agencies in canada and the usa, and much of the western world.

gideon's spies does not vilify mossad but neither does it lionize it. it simply "tells it like it ... is" (in the words of meir amit, former director general of mossad 1963-1968).

i think the main lesson from the book is that human intelligence (called "humint" in the book) is better than electronic intelligence, gathered by satellites and computers. mossad relies almost exclusively on human intelligence through its katsas (field agents) and sayanim (sleeper agents or informers). they have a relatively small number of katsas, but many thousands of sayanim in almost every country. mossad's model is contrasted with american intelligence agencies such as the nsa and the cia who rely heavily on satellites and space age computer technology.

the book should be required reading for anyone who wants to study modern history and the role of secret intelligence and security agencies around the world in the cold war era and the post cold war era.

Dan and Katie Come to Halifax for the Weekend

We had Dan and Katie for the weekend. They arrived shortly after midnight on Friday. (Thankfully, Janelle and I had the weekend off.) So after I got off work I did five loads of laundry and tidied up the apartment a little. By the time Janelle got home after seven, we were both exhausted. And Janelle had been so busy at Little Caesar's that she hadn't had supper yet. (It was halloween, they made their greatest sales ever.)

Saturday morning Dan and Katie, Heidi, Janelle and I went to the market. While Katie, Janelle, and Heidi shopped, I accompanied Dan to the part of the market where they sell peanut butter balls. Dan bought a couple and an apple and then we walked along the waterfront for a while.

Then Mary Ann (my big boss) called and I had to reclean an apartment that I had cleaned Friday... So we all went back home and Dan helped Janelle and I clean while Katie and Heidi went to the blackmarket. (Probably to buy drugs and guns--thereby ensuring Kenny's job security.) Anyways, it took a little more than an hour to clean the apartment, Janelle was fantastic because she knew just what to do and how to do it. It was a bit of a consolation to me that Mary Ann made the carpet cleaners redo their job in that apartment too.

After lunch we went to Peggy's cove (see Janelle's facebook for photos) and had a wonderful, great time. And when we got back we had Nathan and Andrew and Emma Joy and Heidi for supper. We decided that, instead of having a guestbook, we would make our guests draw pictures for us with the tablet. That's how we discovered that Nathan is an artistic genius.

Nathan painted this with watercolour

and drew this with crayons

this is heidi's contribution.

Dan drew this guy. He also drew the first one.

After supper Janelle, Katie, and Emma Joy went to the mall while Nathan, Andrew, Dan and I stayed at the apartment. We jammed for a bit, and drew pictures, and Andrew and Dan had plenty of Cape Bretonese conversations (yikes).

Sunday we had Heidi and her dad (who flew in from Fort McMurray on Saturday night--Janelle and Katie made a "welcome home" poster for him). for lunch. After lunch Dan and Katie had to head back for Sydney. And it was freezing cold outside. Janelle and I spent the rest of the evening recouperating from the weekend. We napped, snuggled, watched a movie...

On Monday, after work, Juaniece came over and we worked on her website. Ok, it's still not up yet, but I'm hoping to get something up SOON. This time she wanted it totally revamped... so we completely changed the look of it.