I wish I could draw an elegant line. Put charcoal to paper and trace an arc that that has grace and beauty. I wish I could sing with a voice that found notes with ease and brought smiles of appreciation to the faces of those who heard. I wish I could dance with with style and precision, instead of getting tangled in my own feet.

I can do none of those things, but I can appreciate the skill of those who can. I can admire their artistry, even if how it's done is a mystery that eludes me.

Bohemian has asked to see a few more examples of my wife's art. And I am happy to oblige.



She drew "Frank's Boot" after a visit to a distant cousin of mine. It is a very moving painting. The boot belonged to my cousin's son who had committed suicide two years before our visit and sits at the entry of his beautiful cottage. The boot is the last of his son's belongings that the man owns and supports the life of its flowers, while the shoe lace hangs like a tear down its side.

Linda sent the painting to my cousin where it now sits on a brass easel in this livingroom. The original boot has now deteriorated to the point where it can no longer act as a planter but the painting preserves its memory.



Linda followed the success of Canada's women's hockey team at the last Winter Olympics with great pride. As a sport for women, hockey has not caught on with the general public the way figure skating has, especially outside Canada. The Canadian team was by far the most talented, crushing the opposition. What caught Linda's eye at the celebration following the final game was the individuality of the women's skates in contrast to the sameness of their uniforms. The painting was part of an exhibition and has been sold to a private collector.



My personal favourite is her painting of the small chickadee sitting on the branch of a tree in a cold spring rain. The bird is so tiny and alone and wet, but is perfectly at home in nature in a way that is forever lost to us. The painting hangs in my daughter's home in Guelph.

Those who are nit picky may notice that this isn't Wednesday. Well alright, I was busy that day.

They may also notice this isn't a lecture from TED. No it isn't. I picked something different this week. So there!

You may recall my doctor recommend I loose a pound or twenty? That has led me to do some reading about food. And in the course of that I uncovered this video which I found interesting.

Nitpickers may notice it has nothing to do with loosing weight. Well, picky, picky, picky. This is my blog, I found it interesting, so here it is.

What you're about to see is a short conversation with author, Ann Vileisis about Kitchen Literacy, what we know about our food, and how we came to know it. For Ann, her book Kitchen Literacy came about because she was struck by how much she didn't know about the common foods she encountered in the supermarket. In the research for her book, she was surprised to learn how much people expected to know about their food in pre-industrial times. For example, meats, they would find out the sex and age of the animal, the farm it came from, and even the animal's background. Certainly a far cry from our expectations today!



On a more serious, but still food related note, you have probably seen the figures by now: the price of rice has risen by three-quarters in the past year, that of wheat by 130%. There are food crises in 37 countries. One hundred million people, according to the World Bank, could be pushed into deeper poverty by the high prices. But I bet you have missed the most telling statistic. At 2.1 billion tons, last year’s global grain harvest broke all records. It beat the previous year’s by almost 5%. The crisis, in other words, has begun before world food supplies are hit by climate change. If hunger can strike now, what will happen if harvests decline?

According to Scripps News: Canada's near free-ride on food inflation is coming to an end and consumers better brace for some steep increases in their grocery bills. Food prices have been largely flat for months, mainly because of the surging Canadian dollar, which has reduced the cost of importing products from the United States such as fruits and vegetables.

But with the Canadian dollar stabilizing near parity with the U.S. greenback and oil hitting record levels, "Canada's good luck on food prices is likely to run out in 2009," said Avery Shenfeld, a senior economist at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. Shenfeld estimates food inflation will jump from zero to 3.5 percent next year, outpacing the overall inflation rate for the first time in years.

Another CIBC report forecast that oil prices will almost double by 2012. "If you take (rising food costs) and energy inflation, we're going to go from a country that had no inflation problem at all to a country where the Bank of Canada might be raising interest rates next year to calm inflation," he said.

Prices for bread, pasta and flour have already climbed more than 8 percent in some stores. "There have already been noticeable price increases at the shelf level," said Dave Wilkes, vice-president of the Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors, which represents major grocery-store chains.

All of which is enough to make a nervous blogger loose his appetite.

I was overwhelmed.

I still can't believe so many of you took the time to visit and leave your best wishes for our Anniversary. On behalf of both Linda and I, Thank You.

I've been reading a lot of criticism about the 'stream, but I have to say the people here have treated me with astounding generosity!

If you are interested in how our day went, the best I can say is, not as planned.

Because there had been a plan. The plan was to go downtown to our favourite Italian Restaurant for dinner and then attend the grand opening an exhibit at Harbour Front, where Linda had some pieces on fish species in Lake Ontario on display.

However, you may also know that we have been on a wait list for Linda's 89 year old mother to go into an extended care unit. The way the system works, you get a phone call and have 2 hours to accept or reject before they move on to the next person on the list and your name goes to the bottom. If you accept the offer of a room, then you have only 24 hours to get your senior moved into the facility.

Needless to say, it is a draconian system created by our great and beautiful Province of Ontario.

Well the phone call came on Thursday and Linda's mother had to be moved in on Friday, our anniversary. Or get bumped back to the bottom of the list. Linda was able to get the day off work, but, on such short notice, I was only able to free up the morning.

So our revised plan was to move her mother in the morning with only the clothing she needed for a day or two. We could move the rest of the stuff over on the weekend. Extended Care provides all their own furniture. However when we got to my mother-in-laws retirement home, they had had a call from Extended Care to say the move had been delayed until noon. Since my crisis with a major customer at work could not be put off, Linda was forced to move her mother on her own.

As it turned out the move went fairly smoothly although it was exhausting and took the entire afternoon. Linda called me at work to say she was just too tired to go out that evening but she was happy the move had gone so well.

However, I arrived home that night, with a massive bouquet of flowers, to find Linda in tears. She had just gotten off the phone after listening to her mother scream at her for twenty minutes, blaming her for the move and telling her she hated it at Extended Care, she felt like a prisoner and that as far as she was concerned, she had no family any more!

It was emotional on many levels. Linda has two brothers and a sister who could have helped, but never would. It was also emotional seeing the level to which this woman who was once such a powerful influence on Linda's life, had deteriorated. It was emotional knowing this was likely the last move her mother would ever make. And it was just emotional to hear those words and know the fear that was behind them.

Not to forget, it was also heartbreaking for me to see Linda in such pain on our Anniversary.

The nurse had come on the phone to say Linda's mother was refusing to eat and asking if Linda could come over.

So we went.

By the time we got there, Linda's mother's mood had changed. The nurse told us, her mother's anger just melted away immediately after venting to Linda on the phone. The nurse went and heated up some dinner for my mother-in-law, and two of the nurses came down to the room to visit, talk and joke for about fifteen minutes while they gave my mother-in-law her night time medication and helped get her ready for bed.

We left her tucked in for the night and she gave Linda kiss and a hug and thanked her for all her help.

"This is an anniversary we won't soon forget," Linda said as we left the building.

And I came home, exhausted myself, to find an astonishing number of well wishes on blogstream.

Like I said, I was overwhelmed.

And tonight, Linda and I are going out for that nice meal.

The next day Linda did something I never expected. She phoned as if the night before had been a perfectly normal evening, instead of something out of the Three Stooges, and asked me to go out with her.

Given the previous day's disastrous date, I guess she was afraid I might have been too embarrassed to call her.

Although if something is important enough to me, I'm not all that easily discouraged.

Correctly guessing at my financial situation, she invited me for a walk on the boardwalk along Toronto's Beaches. The previous day's freak October snow had melted away and we sat for a while on an old park bench in the warmth of the autumn sun and watched the passing parade. Linda loves to people watch and the boardwalk brings out some amazing characters.

I used my left over two dollars to buy us each a hot chocolate.

We talked and walked and teased and laughed and mended the cracks my ineptness had introduced on Saturday night. We admired the chocolate foam mustache on each other's upper lip.

Over the next weeks and months we went for more walks, and pub dances, and friend's parties, and and wrote term papers together, and went to family functions. We phoned each other and talked for hours.

A year and a half later we were married and today, May 2, is our 38th Wedding Anniversary.

So here's to my beautiful Linda who knew when and how to call and who has given me the 38 happiest years of my life.

You are my life's treasure and I love you.

Anexplorer had romance on his mind but had made a classic male college student error. A tactical error.

If the definition of stupidity is repeating actions that have always produced one result expecting this time they will lead to a different outcome, then Anexplorer had been stupid. Not that Anexplorer's stupidity had ever been in any doubt.

Anexplorer had met a beautiful girl and with the help of a full moon, a hay wagon, a chilled evening and the example of other romantic couples all around him, had been inspired to take her hand and bring her close.

Now he had asked her out on a Saturday night date and was going to be working without the full moon, or the hay ride, or the romance of other couples for inspiration. But that was not Anexplorer's tactical error.

His error was going out with the guys for a drink on the Friday night expecting he could stop at two when he would still have enough money left to pay for a Saturday night date with Linda.

He did not stop at two. Or four. And by the end of the evening, he was left with only ten dollars for the most important Saturday Night date of his life. For Anexplorer had felt strange stirrings about this particular girl and wanted desperately to show her a wonderful time.

Linda had been left with the impression they were going out to a fancy restaurant for dinner. Even in 1970, ten dollars would be laughably inadequate for that.

So Anexplorer was inspired to rethink the plans for the evening. They would go to a movie instead. Yes, that's what they would do. Linda would love it.



He showed up for the date on time, meeting her at the door of her apartment, heart pounding and terror coursing through his veins. The terror ratcheted up a notch when she appeared in a beautiful new dress, ready for the romantic dinner he had implied would be the date for the evening. She had picked up the implication from his saying, "Would you like to go out to a fancy restaurant for dinner on Saturday."

She was so beautiful his heart almost stopped, but fear kick started it back into action.

"It was thinking," he said, as they drove to the theatre, "Maybe we could go to a movie instead?"

Being a good sport, Linda's face lit up with delight, "What a wonderful idea, what are we going to see?"

"Well, I thought we'd go to the Golden Mile theatre."

"That would be nice, I used to go there when I was a little girl. What's playing?"

"The Golden Mile has lots of free parking."

"Yes it does. What movie's playing there?"

"Its a new movie. A comedy."

"I love comedies. What's it called."

Anexplorer's wriggle room had run out. "Twenty-three Skidoo."

Linda looked doubtful. "Twenty-three Skidoo?"

"I think its about those new snow mobiles. It stars Jackie Gleason. And, whoops, here we are at the theatre!"

Now back in 1968 ten dollars was still a tight stretch for two people at a movie theatre. Tickets cost $2.00 each, at a minimum popcorn and a drink cost a dollar and if they went to a restaurant for a coffee after the show, there wouldn't be much left out of a ten.

While Linda saved their seats, Anexplorer picked up the food.

Linda looked at his purchase, strangely. "I didn't know drink sizes came this small," she said. "And this bag of popcorn is really....cute."

"My pleasure," said Anexplorer.

Strangely enough, Twenty-three Skidoo proved not to be very funny. Or Romantic. Despite Jackie Gleason. And when they came out of the theatre they discovered it had snowed. And Linda was wearing open toed shoes, in expectation of a nice meal, in a fancy restaurant.

And when Anexplorer went to fetch the car, it was stuck in the snow. And, although he rocked the car back and forth to free it, nothing was working. It needed just that little extra push to get free.

He had taken so long, Linda came trudging through the snow, in her open toed shoes, to see what was keeping him. He asked if she would drive the car while he pushed; but she had never learned to drive, especially a stick shift. So...

Fueled by a rising anger at a romantic evening gone wrong if every way possible, Linda grabbed the rear bumper of the car and gave a mighty shove, the car broke free, the slippery soles of her expensive open toed shoes shot backwards and she plunged face first into the snow. In her expensive new dress.

Later, she was in no mood to go to a restaurant for a coffee. At the door of her apartment, she shook Anexplorer's hand and left the impression she was not totally pissed off by the evening.

Even Anexplorer was able to see through that.

And Anexplorer arrived back at his home without a good night kiss and with the sad lack of any expectation of a future opportunity.

But, on the bright side, he had $2.00 in change still in his pocket.