TubaOrNotTuba

I recently heard a joke the ask is there a correlation between playing the lottery and being afraid of being struck by lightning. Probably. I mean, we all do things that put us in harm’s way because we believe that we have the odds on our side. But if you’re willing to contribute money to the government over and over again because you believe that you were lucky I have to wonder did you skip a year in math class? Do you understand what those numbers marked as odds indicate? No I do not put money on the lottery. A long time ago I read a book about the odds in various forms of gambling and it was clear from the first chapter on that the player never wins. Here, do a simple math question. I am not going to feed you the data points but try to figure out how many individual lottery tickets you would have to buy to tip the odds in your favour. If you answered 1 ticket you are just as correct as someone who wrote 150 million tickets. You cannot game the system the system is there to game you. The only reason governments put so much time and effort into setting up these voluntary taxation schemes is because they win. There it is. People fail to understand the simple things. Like when I see someone posting on Facebook that by placing this disclaimer Facebook cannot use your data. I’m not sure that’s how it works. For the record, if I place a photo on social media I do it with full recognition that it is out there as the saying goes do with it what you will which is why my photos seemed to be limited to showing the current snow cover on the line. By the time you see the photo things will already have changed.

Last evening, The lights went out. Just after supper had been served which is not a big problem because I know how to use a fork but I was very worried about missing the weather forecast. Of course, the Genny kicked in within seconds and life went back to normal. But I remembered when just after we had moved into the house something similar happened. This was before the generator had been installed and we had visitors over from the other side. From the shower the announcement that we had run out of water. Now that is not how it actually works but in the absence of electricity our pump does not bring water up from the bottom of the well to the house so we need it. Just one more reaffirmation that a generator would probably be a good idea going forward. We are now heading into a second decade of ultimate comfort. You know that I like to revisit the time of my grandparents when they would have gone out to the well and brought up more cold water. And then heat that water on the wood stove. I think we have a better solution now. For those of you who live in large areas where the electricity almost never runs out you cannot know the pain of having everything in the house stop. With the minor exception of the doors and windows. I did get my evening weather and it told me that it would be wet overnight and that it would freeze which it did but I look at the choices we’ve made in this house and I pat myself on the back. We planned ahead. We knew that things would not always be available. Case in point the lights and the water. And although the generator seemed at the time like a major expense it has proved in hindsight to have been worthwhile. Like that time when the wind blew for far too long and knocked everything out for over a week. Except for the lights in the water. I suppose that I could always go back to living in a tent. Closing my eyes at sunset rising with the new sun and kicking the campfire back into form. I don’t want to, so I won’t.

According to the news, one of our national leaders has died. Not of old age but rather from a fall. Nothing to do with the autumn. I do not know what happened, exactly. Was he balancing on the kitchen chair? Did he come around the corner too fast and do a slip slide on a loose carpet? I have been told that these are risks. So far in my life I have done remarkably little damage to my body. There was that thing with my nose a very long time ago but it was not a break. More of a slipped out of the notch and had the head put back in. I still have all my original pieces and no scars on my wrists or ankles or knees or shoulders or any of the usual places. That could change as I get older but I do have a solution. Find a good couch and get comfortable and stay there. Out of harm’s way. Forget trying to get to the top of that tree. As for running outside in an ice storm, that just sounds like foolishness. I gave up ice skating a long time ago. I’m going to try and make it through the next few decades without a need to meet a bone doctor. I know, they have better names for themselves but I’m going to go with the bone doctor thing. Has a bit of an old time tone to it. I bring this up because we’re in the middle of a minor ice storm. Just enough to put a glisten on the trees and close the schools. A minor thing. But if I was to become careless I could turn it into something much more important. Dramatic, even. I do not want to phone the family and say that I now have a cast or a sling or harness. Remember falls kill. Not waterfalls. I do not think this is something that affects only politicians. In any case I’m not going to take up a career of any sort that will leave me apt to get hurt. That’s part of the wisdom that comes with age.

An artist is supposed to leave his mark. Perhaps not musical artists but there are other mediums. So I spent some time considering what I had available to me in the short term. Near the top of the pile was the idea of being a sculptor. There was a lovely block of cheddar in the fridge but I quickly realized that my art might fall victim to a passing rodent or dog or someone on a midnight raid in that same refrigerator. So I looked outside. Right now we have some snow although the rain is doing its best effort true move any traces. I considered going down to the beach where there are literally tons of sand available I have worked with sand before. I built a couple of castles in my youth but the problem with sand is that wind and waves tend to destroy what man has put into place. Up the road, in a field, there were blocks of stone. On closer inspection I notice that people had already engraved their names into the surface. A way of showing ownership I imagine. I could gather rocks along the beach to make, I don’t know, a hammer or an axe. Like I saw in a museum. Or I could go online in order a large piece of again I don’t know marble or granite but that invites hours and hours and hours of physical effort to create whatever. Yes, I know some artists will tell you the object is hidden inside the stone but I do not have the patience to search for anything. I will probably go back to the refrigerator, cheese did look good. I mean all the parts I don’t use in my sculpture can serve as supper. I just need to read a bit more about the imagined permanence of cheese. The life of an artist. Especially one with virtually no experience.

I have been recalling moments in music education. My education. Depending highly upon my peers. I admit it. The majority of what I learned, I learned from others. All instruments and technologies confused. Yes, it was. Confused, I mean. I can remember my first introduction to recording. From a lad two streets over who wanted to sell me his reel to reel tape recorder. He made it sound absolutely wonderful. With a razor blade and a lot of time I could make a recording from the sounds around me. Forget the fact that I was not old enough to shave and the razor blades were in some ways dangerous. The deal fell through because I did not have enough money on hand. And then we moved and in my new neighbourhood I learned that others collected music. For the main part in LP format. Someone next door who loaned me my first Led Zeppelin album. Someone else, three doors down, who introduced me to traditional blues. I doubt that he knew that, because we could only access his record collection when he was not at home. Others in my class had different artists’ LPs. We lived in a world of musical anthologies. There were bargain basement LPs that contained 20 or 30 songs from the hit parade. When we met people in our class that actually could afford to buy real records from one band at a time, it was an eye opener. Or ear opener if you will. By the time I made it to college I had people in my residence that not only had good budgets but eclectic musical tastes. I was able to profit from the open door policy. You know, where they would leave their door open in the evening while they played what they wanted to listen to and the rest of us soaked it up. For all you modern people that depend on playlists from the Internet I doubt that you ever will have the kind of variety that we had on a daily basis. I know that it gave me a broad taste in music. Something that I managed to play into a personal collection of recorded cassettes. I was a mellow man with a very limited budget. I have, as life continued, managed to get rid of most of the media, but not the memories. It often takes only one or two notes to bring back memories of moments from so long ago. Going forward I will continue to discover but I doubt that I will ever have as broad a range of content as I did back in the days of high school and college.

It was pointed out, in one of those seen in passing moments that the advertising for my neighbours company is still online. My neighbour passed away several years ago and I do not know the status of the company but it is interesting to see what he actually used to sell. In this case systems for people that are living off grid. Things like solar panels and pumps and the other sort of material you would use to bring comfort to a small home. I gave myself a pat on the back because I know an awful lot more about such things then I did a decade ago. I know some of the better questions to ask. What is the strength of a submersible pump. What is the required current for such a system. Are the materials still available? Back when I lived in the city I knew nothing of such things. My water came out of convenient taps in various rooms in the house. My electricity arrived at a pole outside the house. I had never considered, back then, what may be required if I was living in country that was away from services. I know now such things also serve farmers. Getting water to the livestock as an example. I also know more about what happens when you live on top of a big rock. Or, in our case a big sand dune. Changes the strategy. And for what it is worth the systems installed by our neighbour are still, as far as I know, still functioning fully decades after his work. In other words, he knew what he was doing and he did it the right way. Am I going to disconnect from the grid and put in my own pumps? I hope not. I also have working systems. But I know that if push came to shove I could get water into my kitchen with little effort on my part. Money does not equate with effort other than in loose terms. All that from an advertisement. After all, analysis of a situation, is the first step in getting a solution to a problem. Or at least recognizing that you have a problem.

In the world of transportation, we have one major divide; it comes down to the side of the road that you are supposed to travel on. We learn about this early on. Some nations have different ways of doing things. Simply put, they drive on the wrong side of the road, no pointing fingers at anyone. Anyhow we have been following the travels of a couple in a camper van. We picked up on their trip when they hit the East Coast of Canada then followed them across the United States up and down and up and down again from South to Central America. There’s been a sense of wonder about how they would get across what is known as the gap and it turns out that there is a way to do it by ship so far so good. However today the narrators threw a different situation at us; it turns out that in two or three small nations in Central America you are not allowed to travel with a right hand drive vehicle nothing to do with being on the right hand side of the road; these nations have decided for whatever reason that you cannot come into the country with a vehicle set up for travel in the United Kingdom or Australia or parts of Asia, forbidden of course. I wonder, do they allow vehicles that must have a right-hand drive like a garbage truck or certain utility vehicles. Now the narrators are not going to fight with anyone over this. They have simply booked passage further South into South America. They will avoid the problem but this vehicle has already been all over Europe at all over North America and I’m left to wonder how many other enclaves of stubborn bureaucracy exist. No plan to move there with their van, this was just passage through the country. Anyhow, I will pick up with their trip in a week or so when they’ve had a chance to get from where they are to where they want to go so they can continue heading South to Argentina. Not a trip I am likely to ever make but I have a certain curiosity about the whole thing. Right now they are in the country where I get my coffee, sort of, and we will not be visiting any coffee plantations. But in a spiritual sense, I can say to myself that I have been there.

There are things that we take for granted. I had jumped to a conclusion years ago. I believe that something which the world calls a service dog was considered to be a given. A right if you will. And now I know that I am wrong. At least in this area. The province is considering writing into law that a service animal is allowed in various places. Now before you jump to a conclusion I do not have a service animal. It has been discussed but so far I’m just on the outside looking in if you will hence my conclusion that if you have a dog by your side that was properly trained you could go into other places. Both legally and morally. I had made the assumption that certain places were not designed with an animal being welcome no matter how well trained. Case in point a butcher shop. But for the other places that you might expect to find someone accompanied I had just assumed that it was status normal. I have been on public transit and in schools and in shopping centres. All of those seemed at least open to the idea. To find that the province is still not finished preparing their legislation came as a surprise. Knowing how long governments take to implement change this could be years down the road. I also had assumed that such things were uniform across the nation. Not so. That means that for someone traveling with a service animal they have to go through the research before hand for each major jurisdiction. A lot of unnecessary research given that this is something that should be accepted as a consequence of society. Yes I know that in my own home a dog is welcome. I do not expect all of my acquaintances to make this their lifestyle. But in the public spaces that we accept as normal I would have considered that a service animal was just part of the game. I will now be more attentive. I will look at proposed legislations. I will ask legislators if the opportunity should present itself. Is all of this really necessary? Our business is so short sighted that this is considered an option that is open for discussion? I am not going to rant until I know more but keep an eye on me.

Right now there is a campaign underway to rename our most important landmark. Our only landmark actually. I’m not going to get into the why or who the winners and losers might be but I wonder if anyone has considered the consequences. Tourism is important to us and if you cannot find your way here you cannot come. Down at sea level the waves all look the same and we do not have any really high points of land. Remember what I said about landmarks. I wonder if you were to change the name how people would ever get here. Now I know you’re thinking that everyone has a GPS and that all knowledge lies within. Not so. For those who wish to come here the two main options are as the question goes the bridge or the ferry. And yes the theory came first over and over and over again the bridge in sharp contrast is unique and so this is why I offer as a Plan B to simply rename the structure to the bridge. Forget your nod to history because the tourist does not care all that matters is getting here to spend your money and visit the beach. In fact you could rename the structure «Bridge to the beach» but that seems redundant. It is true trying to balance history and reality can be hard but it’s not all about the history. I want to find a way to set things up so that you only need to replace your maps one time and your GPS one time. That way the money flow can continue. To deal with the history portion simply place a very large brass plaque near the footway and make sure there are other large signs to point out where the plaque can be found. All the rest of it is just window dressing I want in future to have «The Bridge» be the name because we will not be getting a second one. Unlike big cities where new links seem to be the game we have a very small population no need for another bridge or another ferry for that matter we should keep it simple so that we can concentrate on more important things. Like the weather. Like, will the weather be nice next weekend. Will we have beach temperatures? Anyhow that’s just a thought, they will not be asking my opinion although they should.