All righty then. Lots to get to, so let's dive right in. A few weeks back I experienced something equally alarming and miraculous. I turned 65. Alarming, of course, because this is the symbolic freeway exit number, the curve onto life's descending off-ramp, the grade barely noticeable at first but then, depending on contagions and genetics, suddenly steepening and your brakes are laughably useless as you plummet ever faster toward the abyss, arteries narrowed, prostate widened, memory melting faster than a 21st century polar ice sheet.
Miraculous, on the other hand, because here I still am, against the odds, ambulatory, with a reasonable number of functioning brain cells and limbs—and thankful for it. I say against the odds because while Covid was a terrible threat (and killed a close family member before vaccines were available), it wasn't the first deadly pandemic that we trailing-edge Boomers encountered. I left home at 17 for San Francisco, a city where I did much of my real growing up, and certainly where I became an adult. In late 1970s California it didn't matter who was doing what to whom—anyone having sex with another human was at risk of contracting AIDS.
At first we didn't know how it was transmitted. Even worse was that the virus had actually been around for years—later research found that HIV was circulating in the US since at least the early 1970s, with the first known case in 1968. So even if you practiced the world's safest sex starting in 1980, it became clear that you could have been infected earlier, before anyone knew what was or wasn't "safe." And unlike Covid, for many years AIDS mortality was essentially 100 percent.
The dumbass level of denial, and initial reluctance among men of all sexual persuasions to use condoms no matter what, compounded infection rates. (No doubt many of these idiots went on to become anti-vaxxers—well, the ones who survived, anyway.)
So making it through the worst epoch of HIV transmission in one of the virus's epicentres as a dumb horny teenager/early-20-something does seem now, as it has seemed for decades, miraculous. Still, 65. Jesus H.
A number of readers over the last couple of months have noted the recent infrequency of these columns, and I appreciate your inquiries and concern. Earlier in the year I mentioned an issue I was having with iron levels, that I'd finally gone in for a transfusion, and that within a few days I was feeling pretty darned good, thank-you-very-much.
I will not be doing that again. (Crowing about improved health, I mean. I've actually had a second iron infusion, with no doubt more to come.)
Karma likes to remind us who's boss, you see. Start getting too cheeky about your good fortune and expect to have those cheeks slapped with some fresh setback.
Sure enough, along came an odd ECG reading in early summer, and suddenly I was immersed in a new and not fun world of all-things-cardiac. (Here's something I didn't know, but should have suspected. Want to see a cardiologist as a new patient? That's a six-month wait in Niagara. Plan on lengthy drives to the GTA if you want it sooner.)
Three Holter monitors and a bunch of ultrasound and radiation images later, here we are, with more to come. One cardiologist cheerfully told me that anyone who lives long enough will eventually develop and be killed by AFib (which I don't have...yet), though this somewhat contradicts what my urologist said, which is that anyone who lives long enough will eventually be killed by prostate cancer—assuming he is still in possession of that Devil's gland. (Who knew there was such Grim Reaper competition among specialists. I half expect my dentist to say that if I live long enough my molars will devour me from the inside.)
A couple of sobering visits to estate sales in Fonthill this summer didn't help my mood. Wandering through a dead person's house, seeing their possessions laid out on folding tables, neon price stickers attached, the decades-old carpets worn bare, shelves of encyclopedia sets and Readers Digest Condensed Books headed straight for the landfill, a sour fug of decline in every room—yeah, hard not to picture your own belongings being similarly sold off, your own home assessed by bargain-hunters moving from kitchen to garage, knowing exactly nothing about you but maybe taking your waffle iron for $5.
(Are we in a cheerful Christmas mood yet? Stick around, we're eventually headed for sunnier sentiments!)
So this time I'm keeping my trap shut. Karma, nothing to see here. No further health commentary. No need to prove who's boss, Big K.
Instead, let's segue to another healthcare topic: Specifically the recent killing of the CEO of one the largest health insurance companies in the US. It's early days and the fallout is just starting, but what has struck me most is the clueless tut-tutting by news media talking heads about how they are shocked—just shocked—by how supportive of the killer a vocal segment of the American public has been. Talk about being out of touch. Want to understand how Trump won? Here's a prime example. As many smarter observers than I have argued since the election, US (and increasingly Canadian) politics is no longer defined by party identification, but by insider vs. outsider, establishment vs. anti-establishment identification. If you're part of the establishment, you're part of the problem goes this line of thinking, and left/right doesn't matter. So left-wingers like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez find common ground with right-wingers calling for the dismantling of one government institution or another. Trump's FBI director nominee has said he wants to shut down FBI headquarters and turn it into a "museum of the Deep State," while Ocasio-Cortez has advocated for "defunding the police." Both sentiments are nuts, but they both spring from the same frustration with the status quo and perceived steamrolling of ordinary people by callous elites.
So for many of us who are not in the comparatively wealthy, professional pontificator bubble that is the US (and Canadian) big corporate media, left or right, the real shock is not that the CEO of a greedy health insurance company was murdered, but that it took this long. The entire system is built on greed. I had the misfortune of working in the US when the HMO model of health insurance was introduced. "Parasitical" is right. Canadian politicians would do well to take heed as they seem ever more hellbent on privatizing healthcare by deliberately starving our public systems. The public is not amused.
And to be clear, I do not condone this murder. I'm just not pretending to be shocked that it happened, or unable to comprehend that the killer was an Ivy League grad from a wealthy family, or that to a desperately abused populace he's well on his way to becoming a folk hero, deserved or not.
Speaking of the news media: Have you taken our survey yet, to tell us how we're doing? If not, have at it. For sure I can anticipate something that I hear often from readers, and with which I'm in total agreement: there are way, way too many ads. Background ads, in-story ads, video ads, pop-up ads. It's like Times Square and the Vegas Strip had a baby and named it Online Irritation. But let me clarify: Esthetically I'm with you. Financially is another matter. Ads are what pay the way. In the absence of what would otherwise be an expensive subscription, ads are how you get the news for free. They are an absolute annoyance, but they are an absolutely required annoyance if we are to survive. And at least the local ads are informative.
Got your Christmas cards mailed yet? Oh, the hilarity. If it weren't for organized labour's efforts in the 20th century, you and I would be leading far less happy and healthy lives (see suicidal Chinese workers here, and here, and here) but there are exceptions to every rule and my longstanding pro-union stance has pretty much evaporated when it comes to the Canada Post strike. I'm 100 percent behind the workers and reasonable demands for fair treatment, but their union leaders have bolloxed it up terribly, a tactical catastrophe. You really want to piss off the public and lose whatever support you may have had early on? Cancel Christmas cards and small business holiday shipping.
Fundamentally on the brink of obsolescence, the postal service is bleeding cash and rapidly heading toward redundancy. It's like carriage builders striking in 1930, after decades of those new automobiles running horses off the roads and into the history books. That's where we are with email and texting. Nerds and geeks in 1984, the entire population including grandma and grandpa in 2024. Sure, it's nice to mail a physical greeting card, but the world continues turning without it, and that's about the only reason many of us set foot in post offices any more except to drop off Amazon returns. For years I've resisted receiving our bills via email, preferring the tangible paper copies that come by post. No more. In the last couple of weeks we've shifted all of our credit card, utility, and Town utility statements to email. And now you can drop off Amazon returns at Staples and Circle-K—and you don't even need a shipping box. Good job, union tacticians, you've lowered postal demand even more.
Okay, some good news, tasty and useful: First the useful. I happened across a review of powdered vs. liquid dishwasher detergents awhile back. For years we've used a liquid detergent for cost effectiveness. (Particularly useless are those bloody pods, the latest industry cash grab, which might be tolerable if they worked half decently, but they don't. The average wash temperature isn't hot enough to completely dissolve the plastic, and the pods end up clogging drain pumps.) It turns out powdered soap contains certain enzymes that liquids don't—and after phosphates were sensibly outlawed, enzymes are all we have. (FYI: unless there's a little food left on the dishes, the enzymes barely work.) The answer is to combine the two: liquid plus powder. Not only that, since the first dishwasher cycle is a pre-wash rinse, there's no reason you can't add a little soap for that as well. Just drop a teaspoon or so of powder (or liquid) at the bottom of the door before you close it. Finally—and this will particularly hit home for those of us with hard water—to keep the washer's spray arms, pumps, and seals free of scale accumulation and greatly extend the machine's longevity, toss in some powered citric acid with each wash. This is easily ordered online in larger, economical quantities. For the last couple of months we've been using equal parts liquid soap, powdered soap, and citric acid, with a dash of powder in the door before closing, and the results have been 1960s-television-ad-worthy. Sparkly, shiny, angels singing, and best of all tea and coffee stain accumulation is history. No more periodic CLR soaks for the mugs.
Now the tasty: It's the season for diet-busting treats, and we discovered a very reasonably priced Christmas cookie candidate in, of all places, Sobeys, and not only that but it's the Sobeys house brand, "Panache." The key is that the cookies are baked not in Barrie but in Belgium. Look for the large, square, gold tin with the baby blue (removable) product sticker, 650 grams, 12 varieties of light and dark chocolate-covered and plain cookies in two trays, all delicious, especially at $12, which was the sale price late last week at South Pelham Sobeys—which is, of course, by far the better of our local Sobeys choices. The display is right in front as you enter the store, but stock was getting low!
And another tasty bonus, saving the best for last: Yes, there's a new restaurant in town, Bourbon and Baco, whose official ribbon-cutting was on Saturday, presided over by their lordships Mayor Marv Junkin and Councillor Wayne Olson (I kid, of course, My Lieges), with friends, family, and staff in attendance. Located in what was formerly Peter Piper's (and the Regal Beagle, and Bailey's), on Highway 20 opposite the LCBO plaza, owners Preston and Melissa Jeaurond have been tweaking the joint for a few weeks now, getting systems and employees sorted. We'll aim to do a proper intro story soon, but for now I'll say that the interior is a bit brighter than in the Piper days, with the long west wall repainted white and strings of lights crisscrossing the ceiling. There's still live music—maybe even more often—and of course the bar is still in action. Plus slot machines downstairs. (Say what now?) Check it out. And remember that the current Federal government voter bribe/straw that broke Chrystia Freeland's back—sorry, I mean the HST holiday!—includes restaurant meals.
Darn, ran out of space before we could get to Trump's Canada-as-the-"51st state" crack: See you next time. I'll be the one crunching bargain Belgian cookies like popcorn while watching the unfortunate, continued implosion of the federal Liberal Party...
