My Father

My Father died in a single vehicle roll-over 10 years ago on the 27th of June; 5 1/2 months after my mother's fatal heart attack.  High gravel ridge down the centre of the highway which was being resurfaced.  It blended into the highway too well and in spite of signs, he didn't see it.  Skid marks were less than 6 feet in length. He was 80 years old, had planted his 60th crop but didn't get to harvest it.

I learned a lot from my dad.  Some things he taught me he knew about.  Straight fence lines were important to him.  I learned to like cattle and how to work with them.  Our handling facilities were atrocious so one had to "think like a cow" to patiently anticipate and counter each move until she went into the barn or the corral or wherever.  He taught me to play checkers by never giving me a break until I mastered the game.  I lost hundreds and hundreds of games over a three or four year period until I finally won.  Eventually I stopped losing entirely.  Then it was no more fun for either of us.

Other things I learned he didn't know he was teaching me.  Like to put away your tools and tidy up after working on a project.  I don't always but he never did.  Like avoiding auction sales and accumulating junk "that we are going to do something with someday".  I accumulated books and papers instead. I also learned to be pro anything that gave women more rights, more recognition as human beings and equals and learned to hate the words submit and submissive, the religious males who spew them and women who endure abuse of any kind rather than fight back because they have been brainwashed into believing "God" wants them to submit.

I spent one year trying to farm with my father after university.  I left before one of us killed the other.

I set out just now determined to write a great deal more but my conscience has invoked the Thumper's Mother's Rule.  They are my own demons to wrestle.  But at least I wrote something on the 10th anniversary of his death.

No Shaggy Dog Story

Yesterday the dogs got a haircut.  I had been combing them out all spring to get the soft winter insulation hair but it was still pretty thick.  Tanya felt sorry for them being so hot.  She had clipped them once before a couple of years ago and thought she would try it again. 

Scissors in hand, with  me helping hold the dogs when necessary, she started in; Bobik first.  He is easiest because his hair is all one colour.  It took too long and he got bored with the process but didn't mind it otherwise.

Volk was next.  When we laid him down to clip his belly and legs, he promptly closed his eyes and went to sleep so I guess it didn't bother him too much. 

The cutting was a little ragged (in the goat-chewed category) but as Tanya said, they are village dogs.  And it didn't cost $120 like it used to in Canada for my two little dogs.

Masha is here this evening so I got pictures of her and the dogs.  And a few of the front flower garden as well for good measure.  To take your mind off the haircuts.

Bobik

Volk

Masha

 

 

Front flower garden

Front end of side flower garden

Why the War on Drugs Will Continue and Never be Won

AlterNet today posted an article from TruthOut which links to the previous articles in the series.  For those interested in how the world really works, about 3% of drug money stays in the countries of origin, while the rest enriches people in developed countries.

How Can We Stop the Mexican Drug Insanity When Banks and Much of the Establishment Profit Big Time from Illegal Drugs?

How the Mind Wanders

Some days my three brain cells just rattle around inside my skull and other days they are like pinballs on speed.

Today a friend wrote on FB that "they won't go down with the ship, won't put up their hands and surrender".  Pinball triggered.

First I had to reread Tennyson's "The Revenge, a Ballad of the Fleet" for the umpteenth time.  There was a time I could quote a fair bit of it, alas no longer.  Then I decided for my own satisfaction to finally look up the pronunciation of pinnace (if you care, it is like pin-ass).  Then I ended up in Wiki, reading about pinnaces, then Sir Richard Grenville, then the Revenge, then the Mary Rose.  From there to  naval batteries and on to naval tactics under sail (hence ship of the line, ship of the battle line and battle ship).  Jump to Dreadnaught followed by the Battle of Jutland or vice versa, I forget which.

Two hours gone before you know it.

Napoleon Invades Russia June 24, 1812

Two hundred years ago today Napoleon's Army crossed the Nieman River (at Kovno) which was the western boundary of Alexander's Russia.  His intent was to defeat Alexander I, force him to stay within the Continental blockage of Great Britain and extract a few other concessions from him while he was at it.

http://etc.usf.edu/maps/pages/7500/7522/7522z.htm

European invasion of Russia had been tried before, 105 years earlier and would be tried again 129 years later (in fact, the 71st anniversary of the latter invasion was June 22).  The results were the same for all three though Napoleon set a record for in and out in under 6 months.

The Wikipedia link above has a pretty good outline of the Russian Campaign, including Joseph Minard's famous graph showing the decreasing size of Napoleon's army on its way to and from Moscow.  For more detailed reading, Richard K Riehn's 1812: Napoleon's Russian Campaign is excellent.  If you want an eye witness account, Clausewitz' The Campaign of 1812 in Russia is classic, though I have not read it and of course, Tolstoy's War and Peace is a must read.

As we drove through the Bohemian and Moravian countryside in April it was easy to imagine it filled with the colourful armies of the Napoleonic era: French, Italian, Austrian, Russian, Prussian...  On our way from Prague to Vienna we passed not far from the site of the 1805 Battle of Austerlitz where Napoleon had decisively defeated Tsar Alexander I and Francis II of Austria.

Remembering Aunt Betty and Tyotya Vera

One year ago yesterday, my mother's sister Betty passed away at age 87.  She'd had a full life and the last few years had found it increasingly difficult to get around. She started out as a school teacher but gave it up for motherhood and community service, serving on various boards such as Coop or the local museum.  She and Uncle Vince were two of our best friends when we lived in Kindersley

Uncle Vince, who passed away 6 years ago, was a grain buyer for Saskatchewan Wheat Pool and the family spent several years at Fiske (close to Rosetown) and finally Kindersley, neither place too far from our farm.  When we were kids, our families loved to get together as their three girls were the ages of us three oldest.  The oldest daughter Joyce was the same age as me. (Well, three weeks and three days older, a source of misery to me when we were young and infinite joy when we were older).

My last visit with Aunt Betty in 2009

When we were pre-teen, we sometimes got to spend a week in summer at their place.  aunt Betty was always full of fun but you knew where the fences were, too.

When I was a kid, my world revolved around us 15 cousins.  My four grandparents, my dad's three sisters and their spouses and my mom's two sisters and their spouses all lived within a two hour drive at worst and both sides of the family knew each other well.  Aunt Betty was the last of the "adults".  Makes a person feel mortal.

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Yesterday was the funeral in Beli Yar, near Abakan, for Tanya's Tyotya (Aunt) Vera.  She was 74, had lost a leg to diabetes two years ago which did not slow her down but she had a stroke a few weeks back and didn't recover from it. Vera was the youngest of Tanya's five Aunts, her mother's sisters.  Vera and Anatoli, who passed away three years ago, worked in the Taiga, away north of Krasnoyarsk for several years, then moved to Murmansk where Natalie and Andrei were born.  When they retired about 20 years ago, they moved back to Beli Yar, driving their Mosckvich the entire distance home.

Vera got to babysit her great-grandson Tolik (Anatoli) for the past three years as she lived with her daughter Natasha and granddaughter Katya. Tolic brought her a great deal of pleasure as he is a happy mischievous little guy, though when he loosened the wheels on her chair and they fell off leaving her sitting in a heap on the floor, I am not sure how amused she was.

Vera, Tanya, Natasha and Tolia (Tolik, Anatoli) 2011

Tanya's family was always very close, too.  Even when they lived far apart, they would always come home to Kalegina  or Beli Yar in summer and Tanya keeps in close touch with her cousins and second-cousins by Skype, including her cousin Nadia in Chelyabinsk where Tanya's remaining Aunt, Tyotya Natasha lives with her. The older you get the more you realize how important it is to have family.

It's the Oil, Stupid

Tomgram: Michael Klare, The Cheney Effect (in the Obama Administration) | TomDispatch

Straight talk on the American Empire's  continuation of Cheney's energy strategy under Obama.  Well worth the read.  No BS about liberty, freedom and all that crap.