Berry Foraging, My Pemmican Project, and Ugly Fish

I have no shame in saying that the constant daily influx of being mindful of the presence of lockdowns, the masking up, the event postponements, the extra measures for social distancing, the death tolls on the news, concern for family and friends, the ineptitude of some leaders and governments, and some of the willful ignorance of the public in general, to deal with this matter responsibly and seriously, are all making it harder for me to avoid a depressed state. Today is Day 2 of a 4-Day weekend for me. There’s offerings and opportunities for overtime abound coming to me, but I am not tempted at all to take any right now. I poked into work to take OT during my last 4-day weekend, and it did me no good at all in retrospect. A four day weekend happening every six weeks is the only positive trade-off I have after my schedule had been jumbled around as it has since the Covid-19 measures took effect. It’s (allegedly) summer, and I should be using these days off wisely.

However, yesterday was a day that I felt I didn’t play out so well in being wise, at least in the beginning of it. I had absolutely no energy or motivation to do anything constructive for much of it, but I did force myself to move. I thought of going fishing, but the prospect of facing a stampede of ticks charging at me through the rushes and grass along the river shore near my favoured spots wasn’t anything I wanted to contend with right then. Mid-July is the beginning of canning season for me typically. I did brew up some Watermelon Rind Pickles, but there was no heart in that task: it felt more like a job of being stringent to stop household wastage rather than an act of pride of creating a homemade culinary pleasure. Something reduced to a menial cleaning duty, like mopping a floor, or scouring a toilet.

Mid-July here is also Saskatoon berry season, and, even though again my energies and instincts didn’t feel right, I forced myself to try a bit foraging around some spots where I correctly guessed that there would be an abundance of bushes - to at least feel a little more useful and productive. However, it wasn’t very fruitful - literally. I also correctly guessed that they would have also had been picked over already by other foragers, since shutdowns have made it more likely that some of those without work were more resourceful in using the extra time to snoop around for free seasonal food. Surprisingly, I managed not to invoke furious swarms of mosquitoes as I rustled through the bushes, being so close to the river, but an hour or so in the oppressive humidity was enough, and I tapped out. The few odd good berries that were left were sparse, some were already becoming desiccated, and amidst puny immature ones that only birds would take interest in. I combed the area, working along for at least a kilometre southward, to only get a yield of about 400 grams of berries of mediocre quality.

I tried not to allow all this effort to become another senseless waste of time. These saskatoons were not of any size or quality to be usable for dessert fare like pies; too miniscule of quantity to use for jam. I found the thought of working an hour to make what would amount to a couple of fruit smoothies ridiculous.

The thought of another possible use for them struck me as ridiculous: making pemmican. The ridiculous part being that I lived all my life here in this province, and I have never once sampled any sort of pemmican. It’s now considered to be an archaic foodstuff, heading down the road of dietary obsolescence, like many other food traditions that have become obscured and extinguished since the advent of modern refrigeration, and food preservation science. I can forgive myself, and I won’t be too self-critical about that kind of ignorance on my part. Very few people here, in fact, even amongst those who are of native ancestry or Métis, from which it originated, have ever sampled pemmican in this modern age. When I shared this idea with my girlfriend, she looked at me with the expression like she saw the needle on my weird-o-meter flip over into the red zone, that mirrored a conclusion that the Covid situation is turning her poor boyfriend into some sort of crazy, paranoid, doomsday prepper*. That seems to be the only isolated subculture remaining that is taking a serious interest in making pemmican; if not eating it, then storing it in some bunker somewhere, where it awaits them for Armageddon. That is really kind of a shame, because it’s something that would be an honestly true local Canadian/Saskatchewan food: a meat preservation technique that has been used to sustain the indigenous people here for centuries, if not millennia, but not readily adopted for our modern culture here in Western Canada. I’d like to see it be given some more due respect as a food with some historical significance and cultural identity for this province. I’m not saying that it has to be made popular again, but the technique for making it should be at least given some honour, and be preserved for posterity, like the rest of those so-called pioneer recipes that were collected for the sake of the history of the communities of our province. 

So, out of my own scientific and anthropological curiosity, I decided to commit to this project. It comes as a disappointment to my girlfriend, who I’m sure would have rather preferred that I try make her some scones with those few saskatoons I found.

Making pemmican merges techniques of preservation that intersect the making of sausage and jerky. It’s simply made of lean, dried meat; mixed with mashed, dried berries, maybe with salt if it was available; blended and coated with melted tallow. After that, it is then pressed, formed, wrapped, and when packed in an air-tight container, it’s one of these foods that can last nearly forever (if kept dry) without further need of resources to preserve it (hence why preppers really dig this stuff). It is a food that’s energy-dense (without any carbs/added sugar) and protein-rich, and also readily portable and easy to cache without refrigeration, or other sophisticated method of storage. That was the appeal of it to the indigenous peoples, and later to the traders, trappers, and frontiersmen in the early days of settling in this territory. It’s as perfect a food that can be made for the practical purpose of enduring the rigours of outdoor living and/or a hunter-gatherer nomadic lifestyle: be it grunting along portaging canoes, chasing down your next meal in the bush or on the plain, or just for plainly and simply surviving in an uninsulated, flimsy walled, collapsible, portable shelter during the worst of weather inclemency. As a diet food, you can’t get more Paleo than something that was actually crafted since the Stone Age.

I have actually tried to make pemmican once before in my lifetime. It was back when I was in the sixth grade in school. Making “pemmican” was part of our social studies class project when we were learning a bit of the aboriginal culture and history of our province. We used hamburger and saskatoon berries mashed together the “traditional way”, by using rocks, but the drying process failed completely. I remember afterward, as a result, we had containers full of horrible, maggot-festered, slimy, rotting mush; with a gag reflex-triggering stench. It was definitely a moment where that could have dissuaded me forever from ever being curious about it again.

Traditional forms of pemmican aren’t just restricted to bison and other wild meat - but can also made of something that required more of an acquired taste. I was made aware more recently of a sort of fish pemmican made by the northern Dene people of this province. The substance in question, if I remember right, is something called “losh”. When first told about this, I was uncertain if it referred to the fish used, or the recipe for its preparation. The Dene method of making this stuff involves taking the big, fatty liver from fish we call a mariah (pronounced the same as the first name of the singer Mariah Carrey). It’s also known by the other names, varying regionally, of burbot, or ling)**. I’ve always known it being called by the first name I mentioned. For those unfamiliar with it, it’s a freshwater relative to cod, with a fat, flat, frog-like looking head with a lower barbel on it, and an eel-like tail. As far as native species of fish in this province go, this one isn’t likely ever going win any beauty contests. It’s an icky dull brownish colour, and it’s about as ugly looking as a pail full of smashed assholes. Anyway, this creature’s liver is mixed and mashed together with dried cranberries, and perhaps some parts of its pulverized flesh. The rest of the process and details of preparing it is of no interest or consequence to me because I’m quite sure that I would never fucking ever eat such a thing anyway. I won’t knock its possible nutritional benefits though. It’s probably a very potent and practical nutritional powerhouse, loaded with all the same vitamins that cod-liver oil supplements have. Sensible to eat in a Northern area where plant-based vitamins are lacking most of the year. The point is that its preparation/composition has the common elements as that of pemmican: basically some sort of mix of flesh, dried berries, and animal fat. Apart from that, I imagine and assume that the traditional way of adding some seasoning and flavouring to food in the pre-colonial times for the aboriginal people was pretty much limited to just using salt or wood smoke.

Getting back on track. I decided to start this project today. There was no set method amid any of the recipes and techniques I reviewed online, so I’m jury-rigging my own from the bits and pieces found that accord to the materials I have in my kitchen.

Meat, salt, and saskatoons

I originally thought I was going to make my first pemmican trial as authentic as possible and use bison meat. However, even a modest quantity of bison meat costs a mint, and it would be a shame to have a possible failure result with such a great expense. So, I opted for the leanest beef I could find: some trimmed eye of round, using about two kilograms worth, accounting for the fact that the weight will shrink to about half or more once I dry it. The melted tallow component is actually beef suet. If you are already feeling repulsed, and going “Ewww!”, and are of British ancestry, I remind you that there is such a thing as suet pudding in the English gastronomical circle. The butcher I visited told me that there is little difference between the two, and process of rendering it would probably be easier. I got myself a kilogram of that to render down (using my slow-cooker). That, plus my 400 grams of berries, mashed and muddled with about 2 tablespoons of salt were my total ingredients. I sliced the beef pieces to about a 5 millimetre thickness. I coated them with the mashed and salted saskatoon berries. I placed some on an even single layer on a mesh drying rack in the oven at 225 degrees F (107 degrees C) for several hours. The rest of the slices that would not fit on that rack were put in my food dehydrator. 

I dried the pieces until they were about half their original volume, and quite rigid and no longer sticking to the rack surface. Using my hand meat grinder, I then ground down that stuff and got a yield of about 750 grams of berry/meat component. I rendered off enough suet for about an equal weight of it to make a 1:1 mixture. I blended it together while the liquified suet was still warm. I got a consistency in the mixture that looked like a thick lumpy pudding. I lined rectangular containers with wax paper, poured it in these molds, and allowed the mix to set and cool. I used a paper towel to blot off some excess grease from the surface of my cooling pemmican bricks.

Suet added to the mix.
The bowl on the right is the
remaining cracklings from the
rendered suet. They won't be
wasted. I'll add them as filler for
my next sausage-making project.

Rectangular containers lined with
wax paper to form my "bricks".
It makes this operation look
somewhat illicit!

The finished product all set and wrapped up.
One innovation I used for forming (not exactly
traditional) was a homemade wooden press used
for making sushi.

If you are as crazy or adventurous to copy what I’ve been doing, know this. Beef fat hardens quickly and is more waxy than it is oily/greasy. Never dispose of hot beef fat down your sink! Unless you want a visit from your plumber. I haven’t done this myself, but I felt compelled to warn people who might be silly enough to try to do that. Wipe and scrape off as much of the splatters and excess residues from your surfaces, bowls, and utensils and dispose in the garbage before you wash them.

My Verdict: The process was a lot more labour intensive than just making straight up jerky or even making sausage. I found it to be a bit messier than those processes. The texture after it finished setting was kind of waxy, as could be expected. I have not actually tasted it yet; I’m waiting for a bit of biochemical magic to happen first. I stored most of the bars in my freezer except for one. That one is the smallest of them which I kept out in room temperature that will be used as sort of a sacrificial scientific assay, to see and monitor if, or when, any decomposition does occur. If so, how long will it take place? I’m also curious, given that there are sugars in the berries trapped in an anaerobic environment, if any sort of secondary fermentation process will happen, as like when dextrose is added to salamis that are hung to air dry and be preserved that way by sort of being pickled in the residual alcohol internally, which also gives them a signature flavour.

If I dare myself to make this stuff again, I think my next berry ingredient will be some further reduction of a blueberry jam that I made that did not set and was thence rebranded “blueberry syrup” to recover from my failure. I also have dried juniper berries which could be interesting. I saw a version with honey added, another forever food, which may help with its conservation.

I’m now curious as to how to use it culinarily, apart from just whittling away at a bar of it and eating it off the knife while camping in the bush somewhere, or while ice fishing, or keeping a bar of it packed in a winter roadside emergency kit in your car’s trunk. I imagine it could be used the same way as being set on a charcuterie platter, or the same way Ukrainians (from the old country) traditionally eat salo (smoked/salted raw pork lard), i.e. with bread, pickles, and vodka. Who knows? Avenues of further innovations could start from here.

*- Not so, I just need to pull myself out of my blue funk with something novel to do.

**-Taxonomical Name: Lota lota. That seems fitting for a fish that’s a whole lota ugly. Whatever you chose to call it, it is one of the more disgusting living things you could ever pull out of a lake in Saskatchewan aside from leeches. My problem with this fish isn’t really with some prejudice against its appearance, but rather after having caught a few these from several winters of ice fishing, I’ve too often seen many come up through the ice riddled with little gray-white parasitic worms that are clinging to their bodies. A consequence of its habit of occasionally burrowing in the silt and muck of a lake or river bottom. It certainly thus doesn’t make the thought of willingly eating one of these things any more appealing, although some who are bold enough to eat these things swear and claim that there is a bit of a lobster-like flavour to them.

Travelogue: Cuba (Varadero and Havana)

Last year’s winter, by the time around late February, was so brutal; it was like having three winters’ worth of misery packed into one. With both of us at the time coming to our wits’ end after six weeks of temperatures not rising above -20 Celsius, my girlfriend did something that was both a prudent and lovely gesture. On our designated 1st anniversary date, she gifted me (us) a piggybank for which to start scraping up savings together, to fly away to someplace for a reprieve from another potentially freezing, blizzardy hell for this year of 2020, to some warmer holiday destination. By the end of November, our savings, spare change, loonies, toonies, and bills amounted to a fair enough sum to start the next step of booking something. We were still both clueless though as where to go at this time, but we eventually then settled on Cuba, as we both have never been there before, it would then prove be a mutually novel experience for both of us that we could both share together as a getaway. We just opted for a safer trip for just staying warm on a beach with a drink and relaxing to satisfy our introverted selves. The adventure and intrigue part of it for me is that Cuba wouldn’t be just yet another Latin American country. Given of course its communist system in place, it would certainly be culturally different and unique in ways compared to all the other neighbouring countries in the region. It was something worth exploring anthropologically, given that I have some more special privilege and freedom to do so as a Canadian traveler than some other foreign nationals. It’s now five days since I’ve returned from there. I posted a few of our pictures already on social media. I’m now taking the time to verbally capture and express my impressions of those experiences during that trip.


I must admit that I had some expectations of Cuba, which thankfully have been erased from my

One revolutionary monumental art piece, a notable one

dedicated to Ernesto "Che" Guevara, on the side of a
building facing the Revolutionary Square in Havana.

mental blackboard as groundless imaginings. When I think of communist cultures, my brain automatically leads me to imagine an imposing military regime that’s omnipresent, all Stalin-esque, with uniformed soldiers parading everywhere, with everything around reflective a super-inflated totalitarian esprit de corps, and nothing around indicative of any sort of art/culture scene, or joie de vivre. This would be reflective of a place like North Korea today as an example. If all that same said stuff was indeed there in Cuba, it was all very well hidden. Cuba had little around that depicted anything so overpoweringly Orwellian, in fact the spectrum slid on both scales of esprit de corps and joie de vivre towards the opposite directions. Sure, there were political billboards and monuments with the images, proclamations, and quotes from Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and others who were their so-called revolutionary heroes all around, but not to the degree at which I initially anticipated. Cuba is honestly quite peaceful compared to some other places around that same latitude. I only saw one person during our Havana excursion, and nowhere else, who was recognizable as a uniformed soldier; he was completely unarmed. Quite unlike the way the super-militant and heavily armed municipal and state police are in Mexico, ever ready for a clash with the drug cartels. I saw less civil police presence in a four-block radius in Havana than I would see in my own city. The only military hardware I saw were purely commemorative museum pieces and were non-functional: like one Russian T-34 tank I saw used this way in Havana. I remind myself that I’ve also seen an old Sherman Tank set up and displayed the same way in downtown Vancouver near their City Hall. Does that mean Canada is a super-militant society? So then, we are neither better, nor worse, nor any different than the Cubans in this respect. The need for them to mark and commemorate various historical conflicts is kind of significant for them. They would have more right to so than most other nations, because ever since this place was discovered more than five centuries ago it has always been marked as a token island to be seized, colonized, and controlled by several competing imperial powers with colonial expeditions with motives for expansion. It was a massive base for which to control the rest of the West Indies and other territories within and ashore of the Caribbean Sea. It was a Mecca for piracy. The British Empire was even in control of it briefly for 11 months during the age of colonialism. It just about became territory/state of The United States were it not the fact that after the Spanish- American War, the prize of Cuba was swapped for Florida with Spain in some diplomatic chess game in ceasing hostilities.


I honestly didn’t get a chance to engage with the Cubans on a deeper social level. I sure shocked a few: me being a person who is the same shade as any of the whitest Northern Europeans, and yet one who readily made some effort to converse with them in Castilian Spanish. As a general observation though, the Cuban people almost looked too relaxed and comfortably socially gregarious to give me any outward hint that they were somehow, or in some way, being oppressed. I would guess, at least for those who have no beef with communism, that they have resigned themselves to the attitude of taking life as it comes, or else they have it engrained in themselves to keeping what is good about their communities and relationships good, even with being taxed and challenged with some limited means to do so. The Latin American predilection of greeting each other with hugs and cheek kisses still holds strong there. Their culture is so lively with music, and there is a great art scene there; at least they have a great respect for the arts given by the large number of museums, parks, and monuments there dedicated to different artists, writers, and musicians from all corners of the world, not just strictly in Cuba. Certainly, there were signs of what we would term as poverty, and sure, many of them have some side hustles going on to help make ends meet. However, at the same time, along with that there seemed to be less people seated in the trappings and stresses of propagating and maintaining materialism, elitism, and classism. I really found myself wondering about what the consensus is in Cuba about thoughts, ideas or perceptions related to meritocracy, given that their doctors make close to the same salary as their bus drivers. Yes, there were people pitching and hocking wares in the street, magnetically attracting themselves to groups of tourists, but at least they were offering goods and services in some form. I only met one person who was actively begging/panhandling for money. In that instant, it was a young man who was afflicted with cerebral palsy, to a degree at which he was just barely ambulatory; not there struggling to nurse some sort of continual addiction. If this system was failing him somehow, or if there is some less enlightened treatment or acceptance of the disabled there, he certainly could have used the spare change.

If these people are poor in material wealth, they more than make up for it in being rich in personal character. I witnessed them being genuinely kind and helpful to each other, as well as to us as visiting foreigners. As I said, I took some initiative to speak Spanish with them (often to their surprise) as often as I could, despite risking some embarrassing errors, in trying to break the ice. I was hoping the effort would at the very least stave off any undue or unhelpful animosity, if there was any was directed at us, although that never seemed to be the case. This may have helped in a small way to smooth things over and open doors in creating some positive first impressions. However, I would like to think that they are just naturally hospitable to begin with, no matter what the state of our fluency was with their language. We never had any unpleasant interactions with any of them, except maybe with one shady-looking character trying to hustle us to buy some counterfeit cigars. After a three-minute engagement, and us repeatedly refusing, he wised up enough to know to stop persisting, and he moved on his way. It was rather benign compared to some other cases I’ve seen elsewhere. The Cubans we met, for the most part, were very down to earth people who did their best to resolve things. Being offered and given hugs by staff who have served you, as like what happened with us, is not a norm in any other country I’m aware of. The common people, the politics aside, are the ones who give this place it’s heart and the better vibe to it, which sadly is being ignored, unrecognized, and under-represented to most of the rest of the globe. It’s kind of the same thing that’s happening to those of the less ignorant, and more thoughtful and socially conscientious ilk of the American population now, who are unfortunately dealing with Trump being at the helm there.


The questions of feelings of personal safety will be put before me. Let me put it this way . . . I felt a lot safer in Cuba than I did in Venezuela, especially in western Venezuela, where the threat of me becoming kidnapped and made a hostage for ransom was an ever-present and very real danger. I would probably feel safer in Cuba than I would ever feel in the streets outside of the resorts in Mexico or other places in Central America, or in any town in the increasingly trigger-happy U.S.A. where the lines seem to be becoming blurred about where the bad-side-of-town actually is. Statistically, even walking by one of their high schools increases your odds sharply in becoming collateral damage from a mass shooting nowadays down there.* Hell, I would probably feel safer in Cuba than in some of the neighbourhoods in my own city at night.

The rest of what made the holiday notable is condensed to the list topics below:


Best Feature about Our Hotel (Varadero): I would say that it was its location relative to the rest of the rooms in the resort. We were assigned a room that was conveniently close to the beach, and far away from the noisier grandstand pavilion where the evening entertainment could have been too loud for us introverted sorts. I do have to recommend though that when searching for a hotel in Cuba, research the power outlet set up in the rooms of the place. You may need to bring an adapter to convert to 110V power if you are a Canadian traveler. We were initially assured that it we would have 110 voltage for our electronics but since the hotel we booked was part of a company from Spain, their power outlet format was actually 220V.  I neglected to be prudent enough to bring a voltage converter, but fortunately, we were accommodated and allowed to charge power supplies and cellphone batteries at the front desk, which luckily was equipped with a 110 V outlet.


Best Thing about Havana: The colonial Baroque architecture in the places surrounding the Capitol building was amazing to me, it all definitely exuded lots of charm and reflected the rich history of the city. The old part of the city of Havana is most definitely a UNESCO site; it probably was the first of the cities of the Americas to be designated as one. The more panoramic view of the city from the fortress of Tres Reyes was a bit occluded by grey skies on the day we toured, but still quite spectacular. If you dig the classic cars before the year 1959, you’ll love checking out the machines putting or roaring around Havana. Our only disappointment was not really getting enough time to stray away from the tour group and to explore the city a little more independently.

A stately looking capitol building . . .

Some old beaters that are chock full of vibrant colours.

Best Cuban Food: I’m a big fan of sausages, and I’m one of those freaky people who finds something like morcilla delightful. That’s the Spanish version of black pudding, or blood sausage. I also enjoyed the grilled chorizo they served as well. The fresh grilled fish they had available was also great. Some basic stuff was also very good, like the local cheese, and if you are lucky enough to get fresh Cuban bread before it rapidly goes stale in the humidity, that was a real treat as well. I will admit and warn others though that Cuban food doesn’t typically have that zesty piquancy and punch that Mexican food has. Cuba isn’t what I would call a culinary paradise if your tastes veer towards the spicy and exotic. It in fact leans a lot toward the bland side. We can say that it was at least safe to eat at the hotel we stayed at. I’ll be forgiving, and reason and speculate that years of shortages for staples and other basics, never mind spices, haven’t done any favours in letting the food scene grow, evolve, and flourish in this nation.


Best Cuban Drinks: The Cristal beer never disappointed. My sweetheart delighted herself with the piña coladas. We were taken on a horse-drawn carriage trip around the streets of Varadero, which pulled along side an outside bar in a park. The gentleman proprietor, obviously in cahoots with the tourist-drawing carriage guy, offered me the “best Mojito in Cuba”. He brought the drink, and I pulled out my money to pay him. “No, no”, he abruptly told me, “You don’t pay me unless you do really think that is the best Mojito in Cuba!” A sampled it, and breathed in its fresh minty aroma . . . I even could not lie for a free drink. It was indeed not just the best mojito in Cuba; it was the best mojito I ever had in my life, and I humbly forked over my money in gratitude.

Similar to the carriage we used; thankfully not an actual

car rental like the sign in the background denotes.

There were also “worst of” moments too about our trip that can’t be ignored; thankfully those were few, circumstantial, not really stemming from Cuba or its people, and can be summarized in singular topics. They go as such:

The Cold Front: Halfway through our stay there was a downturn in weather conditions. Do realize that the resort hotels of Varadero are situated on a peninsula that is jutting out directly into the Atlantic, where the sea water is a few degrees colder than that along the Southern Caribbean shore of Cuba. When the cold front arrived, it became rather cloudy at times, and the wind picked up in speed something nasty, and the surf was far too strong and choppy to swim in. We would have otherwise considered a snorkeling expedition or catamaran tour had that not happened.
  
Some Fellow Canadian Tourists: We are introverted people; we came for a peaceful reprieve from life. When we witness scenes of others of our own nationality becoming way too drunkenly boisterous and rudely loud, and too disinhibited with being disrespectful and obnoxious, always seemingly in a place where the sound carries too well, we absolutely hate it, as the mission for the peace we’ve been seeking vanishes. Not too many examples of this fortunately, but the instances of this happening that did occur were so pathetically outlandish on a singular level that it became something that made us feel ashamed to be from the same country as them. When I travel someplace, I want to tune into what life is like for the typical locals who dwell there: that is at least novel and potentially educational and interesting. I don’t want to know how much of a drunken, gluttonous asshole one of my fellow countrymen can devolve into in an all-inclusive resort.

The nice things that I can say about this lizard we found there: 

it was quiet and considerate enough to stay out of our happy

 place and has nice skin. Some qualities it had over the drunk
 old beeyatch from Toronto who sang loudly in the 
buffet hall on the first night we arrived.

The Russians: These guys are a special topic all on their own. I have met, and do know some Russians, but from only encountering ones who have moved here to Canada though to escape that place. Those ones have kind of settled and adapted to the vibe of our land, and after having had a long spell of living here, some of them have indeed learned to accommodate for a sense of humour and some cheerfulness. However, I have never met any Russians who have come straight fresh from the old motherland, after more than 14 hours of flying. Two or three lingering around together may have been intense enough, judging by the group ahead of us, but we sure as hell weren’t prepared for an onslaught of an entire jet liner full of them arriving at the same time as we did: all crowded and crammed up with us in the arrival terminal at Varadero Airport, waiting to get through passport inspection, which was already very chaotic and disorderly as it was. I don’t like to stereotype, but I couldn’t help but to think that I truly discovered just who the rudest people in the world are regarding queuing etiquette and behaviour. If their butting in line, not quieting down and paying attention to PA announcements (even ones in their own language), and not keeping pace with the flow of the line wasn’t bothersome and irritating enough, just for extra entertainment, a couple of Russian men, one being super-drunk, started actually brawling each other with fisticuffs in that very tightly packed space, totally oblivious to the crowded surroundings. Cuba is probably one of the few places left on the planet where Russians have some freedom to travel as vacationers**, and I got the sense that they don’t even seem to know how to do this very well.  The Russians around our hotel, despite having the wonderful weather to enjoy and the amazing ocean vista, seemed to all have their faces still frozen in some default stony expression of joyless stoic harshness. It was so prevalent that I could instantly identify them as Russians by their look on their faces before they even spoke. I don’t know whether it’s strangely comical, or pathetically sad: to see someone dressed up in a loud Hawaiian shirt and shorts on a tour bus with a look on his face with all the thrill and exuberance of someone next in line waiting for a colonoscopy exam. I gathered no real positive vibe coming from any of them at all; few, if any, made any effort at all to smile. To see a Russian smile. . .  I was convinced that the only way I was going to see a Russian’s smile was totally by accident: and in that case it would be like some instant when his back was turned to me, and his water-logged swimming trunks fell off as he was wading out of the surf. Not exactly jovial people those Russians. We met Germans there, who greeted us genially enough when I spoke to them. I could hear a group of Swedes on the beach, discussing in an almost organized, business-like manner their plans for the rest of the day, being somewhat anal about arranging times and scheduled events for some group consensus as I listened to them discuss all that stuff in Swedish, but at least they still looked relatively content, relaxed and joyful. No one could mistake or accuse the Quebecois folks there that they weren’t having a great time. The Russians though didn’t give me any hint that they were actually there to enjoy the place at all. In fact, they looked like they were quite unwilling to exchange greetings or engage with even their own countrymen/countrywomen. The families and couples there just seemed to stay isolated to themselves. I tried even to use some polite Russian words/phrases I know for greeting and passing around them (good morning, excuse me, please, thank you). All of them just seemed to react with either being taken aback and then becoming as instantly dismissive, or else they trudged right by me with no similar attempt at politeness, like I wasn’t to be acknowledged at all.  We luckily had a great mixture of other company, speaking as two people who weren’t really geared to engage with a lot of people to begin with. However, if we ended up being the only two Canadians planted amidst a resort totally full of nobody but Russians***, it would have been the most depressing tropical vacation I think anyone could possibly ever have.    

I veer back into dwelling on the positives again . . . 


Best Moment of Self-Discovery: One shouldn’t bother traveling unless one is willing to let it change oneself in some way for the better. I was grateful that I was still able to navigate around using Spanish with some competence, and relieved that I did not completely let it rust away in my head. I suppose also that knowing the inconveniences the average Cuban goes through daily, and yet still find it in themselves to have the fortitude be helpful to others gives them an admirable resilience. In knowing that, I’ll have this example to reflect on before I ever go on some tirade of complaints about social injustice and political things in this country, or else be more thankful that I have the freedom to do so if I ever do. It would be embarrassing, after that experience, to complain about any other minor inconvenience I have here and now in this land of freedom and abundance, that are really rather trivial in comparison to some of the things I’m sure which an average Cuban has to cope with frequently. Despite seeing all the snow from a recent blizzard that occurred and passed just before we arrived home, I came back feeling refreshed and thankful to call this place home. I’m very happy I got to spend our 2^nd anniversary together there during this time. 

I had to add this point latently. We should feel especially lucky that we managed to get away and return from this trip before any more inconveniences had arisen due to the Corvid-19 threat, which may hinder and restrict international travel from this point onward.


*None of the cities of Cuba appear on one list I found of the 50 Most Dangerous Cities in the World, most of which are situated in Latin America, in so-called democratic countries. The U.S.A. and its territories have 5 cities with this infamous distinction ranked on this list.


** ”Freedom to travel” doesn’t necessarily mean “being welcomed with open arms”. I was chatting with a guy who originally came from Poland, who was raised there during the Warsaw Pact Years, but now lives in Canada, who frequently holidays in Cuba and keeps his ear to the ground since he understands some Russian and has a good rapport with the Cubans. He has a good idea about how the Cubans and Russians interact. “The Cubans kind of hate and resent the Russians!”, he told me. “They [Russians] come to Cuba with some attitude of superiority and constantly treat the Cubans like some sort of underlings”. I didn’t see any of the Cuban staff actively hugging the Russians; that’s the only truthful input I have about my experience of watching these two peoples interact.

*** Maybe the Russians appeared so strangely dour to me in demeanor because we seem to be a world apart in actually feeling happy. According to the 2019 World Happiness Report, Canada ranks on this index as the 9th happiest nation on Earth, whereas Russia ranks in the much gloomier number 68 spot. The nations with lower rankings than that were usually extremely impoverished, or conflict zones, or both. This same report had neither any ranking, nor any data, for Cuba.   

Winter Solstice/Yuletide 2018: The Inaugural Yule Bookfest

I’ve been writing this in a piecemeal fashion, starting around the winter solstice, Dec 21^st.

It has been a long while since I’ve posted an entry; for all good reasons. For the last while, with being in a new relationship, I’ve been more attuned into living intentionally and sharing my life privately with someone instead of being a passive commentator about life and sharing random observations about it with a general audience in written form. With the approach of our first yuletide season together, there also comes this excited eagerness and willingness in both of us to adopt some special thing to make as our own unique holiday tradition as a couple. So, we agreed to include a new observance for ourselves during this season. I feel like it is one worth sharing. Personally, I would hope it catches on with others as well if anyone so chooses to copy it.

The new custom we decided to observe isn’t really a specific local one, or even a Canadian one, but it serves our introverted selves very well. It’s one that we kind of appropriated from Icelandic tradition. By virtue of having relatives in Wynyard SK, a community that was largely founded by Icelandic settlers, I’ve already had some exposure to some traditional Icelandic Christmas (Jól) feast fare (like Rullapylse and Vinarterta) from my past holiday visits there. And now, strangely enough, we’re setting out to sample another custom similar to the one from that island, as a Canadianized form of it to suit us.

Temperature-wise, winters for that island nation seem relatively mild and less miserably frigid when compared to those here in Saskatoon, but given their proximity to the Arctic Circle, their winter nights are a lot longer during the approach to solstice*. The long cold darker nights around either side of winter solstice naturally stage an environment for which to retreat into coziness and stimulating one’s brain with a good story. Despite inhabiting one of the most expensive places to live on Earth, and being quite good at exercising frugality, folks in Iceland seem to spare no expense when it comes to buying and reading books. The result is that they have become one of the most culturally literate societies on Earth. Thus, books of all kinds are the most frequently gifted items around the Christmas season there: so much so that there is a word in their language defining this tradition of exchanging reading material as presents during the winter holidays. This annual tradition of buying and gifting books is called Jólabókaflóð, or “Christmas time book flood” roughly translated into English. It sparked some appeal in both of us when we heard about this custom because we do both like to read and would find this exchange quite endearing. We thought it best to anglicize the name to Yule Bookfest*, (see further below as to why). She suggested having this exchange on the last Advent Sunday before Christmas Day, and I thought that plan was perfect: a day of rest, dedicated to fully relishing the blessing of being able to read in peace with a fresh new story. As much as we love our families and friends; and having a chance to gather with them for feasting, gaming, and drinking, for introverted people this extra onslaught of social activity during the holidays, even with it being awesomely joyful and fun, can be a bit overwhelming and draining at times for our mental lives. Yule Bookfest is thus a way to have a day to simmer down the nerves; to take a breather from excessive social overload from the holidays, and to gain a sort of calmer private celebration; balancing the yuletide joy with some peace.

Most people around here refer to the “Christmas season” as the general period covering the latter half of December; I think this term is too vague, and a little thoughtless and sloppy for my liking. I’m a little more demanding of accuracy. I grew up in a family that, at least for a while during my childhood, observed both the Gregorian and Julian Christmases (December 25^th and January 7^th, respectively), as some other kids did in mixed Anglo-Ukrainian families in the community where I was raised, where these holiday traditions mixed and merged. In my formative childhood years, I remember that I was sometimes insistent in having others specify which Christmas they were referring to when they were trying to talk to me about the holidays. When I refer to Christmas, I mean specifically Christmas day (Dec 25^th) or I get even more specific in defining it in mentioning Julian/Ukrainian/Orthodox Christmas on Jan 7^th, and don’t usually use it so vaguely to refer to any other time within the period of December and early January. For that, I‘ve been reverting to the word “yuletide”, for referring to the greater span of days of celebrating between and during Advent and mid-January. Yuletide may sound a little more pretentious and a bit archaic, but it is a word I’m noticing that I’m becoming fond of and favoring (at least in my writing) of its use instead of using “Christmas” all the time ubiquitously over the whole season. Partially because it is a better term that can extend to generally include all days from the first Advent Sunday to Orthodox New Year’s Day (Jan 14^th) and all days in between, and covering all holidays during that time from many other cultures, including newer bizarrely contrived ones (as perhaps ours is), with the celestial event of winter solstice roughly being the tethering post in the middle of it all. As for our new celebration, I’d like to start off doing this special day right, at the very least linguistically*. I see calling it “Yule Bookfest” instead of the original “Jólabókaflóð”, or “Christmas Bookflood”, as necessarily suitable because:

·         As I said, it leaves the word Yule to indicate an extended period of winter days; not just the singular day, of Christmas. After all, one usually needs more than just one day to completely finish and enjoy a book

·         Yule is a shorter word to type than Christmas. I get lazy at typing sometimes, and brevity is sweet and efficient for modernistic purposes. Plus, there are no accented characters, or funny letters (like eth -“Đ,ð”) to mess around with while typing, unlike the original Icelandic word.  This form does respect at least some part of the cognate** from which it was translated.

·         It better denotes that it’s not a serious religious observance; it’s open for anyone to enjoy, no matter what creed/faith, or lack thereof. One has only to appreciate the gift of a book, so we can just leave the term Christmas alone.

·         Rather than a flood, it’s just a single book to gift each other, for indulging in deeply. So, the word fest is best.

·         From the Wikipedia definition below,*** yule is a word originally derived from something rooted in a concept of playing, feasting, merrymaking, and joking around; not being seriously contemplative or solemnly meditative. There’s plenty of time left to do that latter stuff for the goddamned miserable other part, from January onward, of a Saskatchewan winter.

What else does this special day perhaps entail besides exchanging books? I think being costumed in ultra-comfortable loungewear (e.g. housecoat, sweatpants, and/or pyjamas), finger snacks (preferably drier ones to avoid smudging your pages: perhaps cheese, crackers and various other chacuterie), a warm(ing) beverage, perhaps by a crackling fireplace, and not moving too far beyond one’s armchair, or chesterfield. Snuggling and napping between chapters is permissible and encouraged.

My girlfriend picked out a perfect book for me: both in terms as theme material for this day, and the reflection of the kind of person I am, and the strange characters I’m interested in relating to. The book I was gifted for this inaugural celebration of pages was a piece of fiction written by Robin Sloan titled Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. A cool story that involves a bright, but somewhat hapless young fellow who falls into unfolding some strange secrets centered around this bookstore and its gentleman proprietor, Mr. Penumbra. It's kind of book that will inspire you to recommit to being a more avid reader, and to perhaps try to write in more than just some unidimensional prose. It has re-affirmed ambitions that I should follow up on in the coming new year.

This is a bit of a digression . . . but the nerdy part of me usually likes to reflect on the anthropological stuff as to how and why certain traditions have originated over the holidays. This year, it’s kind of nice to be an active force in it all. Speaking of new and modern Canadian yuletide traditions, it leads me to wonder what will be unveiled in this special inaugural year of the legalization of cannabis in this country. I’m going to guess (perhaps correctly) that several folks around the country are probably going to embellish the theme having a “green Christmas” to the max. Perhaps this is the year where there will be started some grand tradition of some kind of Yuletide Bongfest which will become adopted by the potheads of this country: exchanging weed and the means for which to smoke and consume it. I presume it could be on December 20^th (to correspond with the “20” in 4/20). Who knows.

If there was one thing I wish people would tune into more of as an addiction, I wish it was the substance of reading and literature. Long winters here in Canada would set us up for making a few more scholars if Yule Bookfest was taken seriously as a celebration.

*- Sunrise on Dec 21^st in Reykjavik, 11:21 am; sunset, 3:29 pm. In Saskatoon, Sunrise, 9:12 am; sunset 4:56 pm.

**- Given that this is a bilingual nation, I would suppose that we could possibly call this “Fête d’Hiver des Livres” for the Francophones, but I’ll leave that to be properly translated by someone with a better command of French than I have.

***- Yule (from Middle English yole, from Old English ġeōl, ġeōla (“Christmastide, midwinter”), either cognate from Old Norse jól (“midwinter season, yule”),^[2] from Proto-Germanic *jehwlą (“celebration, festivity; yule”), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *yekə- (“joke, play”)) +‎ -tide (“period around a holiday”) (from Old English tīd (“period, season, time; feast-day, festal-tide”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dī-(“time”)).

Winter-ruption

Some people have the habit of immersing themselves into their Sunday morning with their coffee, and leisurely reading the weekend paper. I’m noticing that since the year began that I seem to be immersing myself into my Sunday morning with my coffee in hand, and pretending as if I were writing for a newspaper.

There were unwelcome strange things going on throughout the week since last entry, mostly confined to my personal life for me to deal with beginning the moments I came home after work on more than one occasion, but thankfully these tricky things didn’t mushroom into anything more wild or intensely serious. They included: my building almost catching on fire, another threat of infestation, and my poor little pooch getting injured. Of all those, my dog’s health was/is my greatest concern. She is healing: slower than I want, of course, but at least she’s not deteriorating for the worse. I’m happy that the week ended better with new interesting experiences, and overall soothing transitions. It has been a good weekend to shake off some of the mid-winter blues, which included crawling out of my hermit hovel for a change, and being a little more social. I got myself a ticket for sporting event, which I deemed to be a kosher purchase despite some new project ambitions, which I’ll cover more about sometime in my next entry.

I checked out my first lacrosse game on Friday evening. The Sasktel Centre arena was packed. The Saskatchewan Rush played the Buffalo Bandits. Unfortunately, the Bandits earned their team name too well, first stealing away what was an initially impressive and massive lead by the Rush, coming hard and overtaking them to come to a tie, and then stealing the game away in overtime, 16-15. An epic comeback for them (uncelebrated here, of course), and an embarrassing downturn for us. It was only the Rush’s first loss of the season though - small potatoes. It was still worth the effort to go, and I’d check out at least one more game for the season. Again, I write this next part for the benefit of my non-Canadian audience. The game originated in this nation (actually long before we became a nation) centuries ago by the Iroquois tribal first nations out east. Anthropologically speaking, it was evidence that the development of such a game was an indication of less reliance on nomadic hunting and gathering, and the preference to adopt permanent settlement and the deployment of agriculture. Leisure time appears more with the fixation of working around seasons in one place, and acting out non-lethal ways to practice martial tactics through team sports also evolves*. However, despite it being our official national sport, it fell into obscurity in our cultural scene for a long while. It lost out somehow to hockey and to curling, in terms of popularity as a spectator team sport in these modern times, or at least there has never been a Lacrosse Night in Canada televised on CBC during our nation's formative sports media years. The more novel and esoteric team sport of broomball** (another rink sport invented here, because we have way too much fucking winter to deal with) even became a more popular community sport around here during my early years than Canada’s official national sport, lacrosse. Lacrosse still has been around, but it just hasn’t really been popular as a big-time league field sport until it had been recently re-hyped somehow, and has been making a grand resurgence, thankfully avoiding a sort of extinction from our identity.

I don’t know, or couldn’t guess, as to how or why lacrosse became so diminished in popularity, and a lesser meme of the field/arena/rink team sports played in this nation to begin with. Perhaps it lacked the display of brute strength of football, or the more extreme speed and sometimes pugilistic action that ice hockey has, or perhaps it wasn’t as cerebral, or loaded with enough focused and refined, single-pointed calculated target finesse that curling has in satisfying the other end of the spectrum of stimulation through spectatorship. Sadly, I believe that it wasn’t more strongly popularized throughout our history really because white guys originally from Britain or France didn’t come up with the idea first. It looks like something that Dr. Seuss may have invented. It sometimes gets tricky to follow the plays, as the ball isn’t out as much in the open as a hockey puck is, hidden in racket netting as players are trying to deek each other out, so it can be definitely harder to track. Maybe that's why it got harder to promote and sell through radio and then television, when these media forms were in their infancy: the technical issue of reporting and recording where this elusive ball was throughout a game. The extra dimensional axis along the field of play makes it as interesting, if not more so, than ice hockey. More hand-eye coordination is involved with it perhaps than hockey in that respect. Even if I were younger, I know that I’d have a real challenge playing it. I wish success not only for our team, but also to the league as a whole.

Another newly hyped outdoor game/sport for this winter-ruption season in the city that I’m checking out this weekend is Crokicurl. You can’t get much more Canadian in a game than this: taking a table game that originated in this country, something I’ve played a few times in some dingy, up-in-the-sticks barrooms (Crokinole); a game, as with darts, where one’s prowess is tested and tempered by making it even more challenging yet for one’s fine motor skills with heavy alcohol consumption, and then making an augmented version of it to play on a post-studded ice surface using curling stones for counters. What a concept! No doubt, some form of inebriation or intoxication had to be in progress as the heads came together to create this fusion of these two games. It’s so simple, and perfect! I also can’t really believe that we’ve been so stupid as to not come up with this idea a lot sooner for around these parts. Oh well, better late than never for this heroic flash of innovation. Sponsorship for this bar game come outdoor spectacle, especially from the local brewers and distilleries, i.e., those who could have some sway in allowing drinking in public, could really help it to take off in popularity during this most wretched of the yearly seasons. Hey, and why not just loosen up a bit more about drinking outside in public in the middle of bloody winter as well for special events like this? Especially considering that things are getting lax enough around here where weed is going to become legal by next summer. Hell, I bet the newly forming cannabis corporations here may also want a piece of this sponsorship action. It might be even more entertaining watching these “athletes” trying to play this while they are completely high***. It could potentially be the new stoner outdoor winter sport (not unlike snowboarding, which already holds such a distinction), that can get more involvement and appeal from the lesser-than athletic types. It will be interesting to see how this thing evolves as another one of our national wintertime leisure activities.

It's all hype folks: a sport doesn't become a sport nowadays without it. Pulling a new one out of obscurity and making it fly off the ground with popularity seems now to be impossible to do without commercial sponsorship. 

*- Non-lethal is not always the case. The Aztecs had fully adopted agriculture and civilization too, and consequently developed their own basketball-like team sport called ullamaliztli, a game that died out right along with them. Maybe it’s popularity didn’t take off so well because the losers of the game were offered as human sacrifices to their pantheon of gods. Hard to the develop teams if they are constantly being physically eliminated by getting their hearts torn out. Let's just say that their PR folks kind of didn't give this a serious think through for promotional purposes.

**- Broomball: an ice rink sport believed to have been invented right here in Saskatchewan (first official recording of it being played is in the community of Perdue). Played sort of like hockey, except with using an implement resembling a broom to whack a ball around (hence the name, like, duh!). Comparing it to hockey is like comparing (American/Canadian) football to rugby. There’s no special padding like hockey, and specially soled shoes are worn instead of skates. You need some sure footing as you run along the ice, but you may get the advantage of some added extra traction by occasionally trotting over someone's missing teeth. It can be even more pugilistic than hockey, as I’ve seen in some goonfest matches of it in the past. Maybe it's because there’s less a lot padding to punch around, and there is a decided advantage in being able to base and balance a striking posture more easily to scrap, drift, and coldcock a guy on ice while wearing shoes rather than skates. It's what makes one who is being a broomball goon even distinctively more of a lowdown dirty psycho bastard than as such in hockey in comparison. It would be great, if not miraculous, if this actually got recognized as a sport fit for the Winter Olympics, other than seen as the lowbrow hybrid spawn of hockey/rugby that it could be. 

***- I’m sure at this point of reading this composition of crazy ramblings, that some may think that I do marijuana myself. I honestly do not. My limited alcohol consumption (because of medical reasons) is enough of a vice as it is; I don’t need anything else beyond that. Personally, my life wouldn’t change when cannabis becomes legal here, except probably dealing with issues as a steward about the grey areas when it comes to interfering with work performance in others on the job. I would treat it as a medicine (one that I probably can’t take anyway due to contraindications with my other treatments), and nothing more than that. I am, however, pro-legalization; more so for the reasons that I believe a strengthened hemp-production economy and industry makes for an inroad toward more sustainable ways of environmental and ecological preservation, and will ultimately lead to less taxed and stressed healthcare, law-enforcement, and corrections systems.

Winter Solstice 2016

It's the day with the longest night of the remaining year, which has only 10 days left in it now. I still haven't made any significant effort to do any gift shopping yet for Christmas . . . shame on me. I thought I'd procrastinate yet some more with making another entry. I thought the previous one would be the final one for the year, but instead I'll make it the penultimate one. I sheepishly admit that I woke up right at sunrise (9:15 AM here) on what is already the shortest day of the year. Judging on that, I guess I'm already not too ambitious to do much with the rest of this day. After a copious volume of coffee just to open my eyes, I then finally finished the last stages of piecemeal piddling around with catching up on correspondence, and re-integrating the rest of my digital music library to cloud storage to play with all my Bluetooth devices (whoopy-doo). While doing that, I found some celebratory music for the day. The perfect sort of musical selection I picked out to make a uniquely sort of pagan-esque Canadian celebration of the coming of this solstice day is the progressive rock album 2112 by Rush  (21/12, today's date, get it?). The word "solar" is uttered a few times (in a voice that isn't in Geddy Lee's regular constricted-genitals sounding timbre) within the opening 20 minute overture. It seemed appropriate given that today marks a solar phenomenon.

It makes me wonder, how we (we, as in people like me who are of Northern/Central European heritage) would celebrate this time of year if Christianity, or any of the other two Abrahamic religions, didn't dominate or influence the ethno-cultures of this part of the hemisphere, and we remained true to more pagan beliefs*. The Celtic, or Germanic tribal holidays, like that of Yule (Jul) probably would take over. We've already incorporated so many of those pagan traditions into the Christian Christmas ethos. Like the author Jared Diamond**, I'm a believer in the theory that we are like any other animal: our biology and geography is our destiny. I believe that it would be just an automatically instinctual thing to build on traditions to make things look greener and brighter to counter the dullness, cold, and darkness of the year, to decorate such that it makes things look more alive and life-giving. We'd do what we could to get extra calories and fatten up for the colder season; we'd feast a lot. We'd drink more, play games, and do whatever it took to make more social merriment and fellowship, just like we tend to do now to stave off and slake away boredom and depression through the cold and darkness. I speculate that there would be very little difference in the appearance of the solstice holiday from what Christmas is now throughout these colder, darker latitudes of the Earth. If Christmas, or its precursors, never existed at all, given the environment we are in, we'd be doing a lot to make up some sort of winter festivities in lieu of it.

It also makes me wonder: if attempted European colonization was destined to occur on this continent in this alternate historical timeline, where Christianity wasn't an affixed part of Occidental culture,
would there have been other or better attempts to integrate solstice traditions with the Aboriginal cultures here, with the spirit of that we all live under the same sun, or would those native traditions be swept away like so many others with the rise of colonialism? It makes me wonder what that would look like. The Vikings*** who settled at L'Anse Aux Meadows in Newfoundland around a millennium ago, probably were the closest historical precedent for this paradigm (in this country, if we indeed became a country) in which they were the primary holders of such traditions. However, that didn't go over so well, and no (accurate) written records exist about the process of the settlement. Their colony collapsed: either by famine, disease, or from conflict and hostilities with the indigenous people, who may have eradicated the entire Nordic settlement, or other maladaptive factors, before it could have a chance to thrive and evolve. This sounds like a theoretical element of the PC game Civilization VI to test, play out, and observe.

I explain it this way to my readers who aren't Canadians. Making this land we call Canada a more tolerable and habitable place to endure throughout the winter with festivities has been a natural and necessary thing to do to as a cultural meme for European colonization to have a foothold here throughout this nation's history: from the times when the Voyageurs and Coureurs du Bois established L'Ordre de Bon Temps (the order of good cheer), that is to make provisions for the means for social recreations a mandatory thing by the fur trading companies, to quell the rigours of winter. to hockey leagues and curling clubs, right up to general making a prolonged Christmas season compared to most other nations.

I didn't realize just how deeply Canadian I was, a true product of my environment, until I spent my first Christmas in a tropical country. It was just too weird and unnatural for me to process for that season. It made me feel quite homesick back then. I was getting strange looks and responses from people, who never experienced a day colder than 25 degrees Celsius, as I explained them how much I was missing my sub-zero temperatures, and the snow and frost covered vistas, as I sat on some beach or drank at some outdoor café. I couldn't find a way for it make sense to them, or to myself either for that matter. I really do need my cold and snow for the yuletide season. Winter, as much as I can hate it at times, is just engrained in me that much. It makes me think of the new immigrants, who are coming from mostly the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, from desert, tropical, or more equatorial latitudes who are having the same degree of challenge of adapting to this climate and holiday season.

So, for those who celebrate whatever cultural event or religious holiday amidst or surrounding the solstice season, like Christmas, Hanukah, Aboriginal/Wiccan Solstice Day, the release of another Star Wars movie****, etc., take care, have a blast with it, but also be responsible.

*- I should add that thoughts like these have been prompted by entertaining myself with more than one alternative history scenario with a.) playing the Wolfenstein: The New Order video game, with a storyline where the Nazis end up taking over the world, and b.) re-reading 1984, by George Orwell; though fictional, it's a sobering book everyone should read and to note the parallels that are occurring now with the manipulation of the truth in the media, the end of privacy, and the assertion of a military-industrial complex moving toward totalitarianism keeping us in a state of perpetual war and conflict. 
**- His book, Guns, Germs and Steel, is the best book ever written for a concise overview of cultural anthropology, and global human sociological development and evolution of civilizations: from our rise as homo sapiens, to our continental migrations and colonisations.
***- Watching tonight's episode of Vikings and the debate between King Egbert and Ragnar about Heaven and Valhalla was also a prompt for me to write these thought experiments with alternative histories that model/result in a non-Christian medieval Europe.
****- It's valid to include that. There are a lot out there who (sadly) are going to find a more spiritual experience for themselves watching this modern folklore than appreciating the other traditional holidays.

The "Before I Die I Want to . . ." Wall

Despite having half-shot hips and knees, I kept to my commitment of making the distance mandated by my running programme yesterday morning (I’m aching terribly from it today). It was a lovely day, and getting hot. I started out a little bit later than I really should have. More people than usual were circulating and amassing along the trails and the banks of the river to watch the Dragon Boat races that were taking place that day.

For my longer runs, I often pick a route that passes along the trail cutting through River Landing, but yesterday was the first time I noticed a special feature put on the vertical face of the north bank pylon of the Sid Buckwold Bridge as I ran under it. I don’t know when it appeared but it must have been recent, and out of all of Saskatoon’s bridges this is the only one I saw it on. If it was up there for very long, I’m embarrassed to admit how oblivious I've been to it for all this time. It would be due to me usually having eyes front focused or tunnel vision when I’m exerting myself. However, this time I was stopped in my tracks because the message of it was very bold, striking, and profound. It was sort of a public message board that we as citizens could contribute to, with a very distinctive theme. It was simply a ruled blackboard with an open ended, fill-in-the-blank statement . . .

 

Curiosity led me to stop and linger around there for a while to see what was listed there. It’s interesting what people will dare to put there when they can do it in anonymity. There was no chalk around to make my contribution though. I wondered if this is a feature unique to our city, or if this is part of some grander movement around the country, or globally. If it is national or global, I’d be quite interested to see what differences and similarities there are in the types of wishes people write out.

In a sociological perspective, if this is a genuinely accurate sample of what goes on in the heads of people in this city, from what I could judge from the collective wish statements made on there, I must say that generally the people of Saskatoon are:

·         Not too materialistic, which is nice to see. There weren’t many, if any, wishes for wealth, cars and mansions, or owning other such finery. I saw one statement about winning a lottery but that was about all that struck me. The luxuries our citizens mostly listed was about freedoms and experiences that they wanted to have, like traveling abroad, “to retire”. There were lots of intangible things up there too, like “to fall in love”, “find my soulmate”,

·         There weren’t as many vulgar, low-brow scribblings up there as I expected. In such a public place with a node of contact with a high property crime/economically disadvantaged area, I thought there would be a lot more content on there that would be there more the sake of defacing it rather than serving to expound good intent. One example of the low-brow stuff was “get stoned with Snoop Dog”, but for every one stupid statement like that, it was countered by a lot more noble stuff, like “learn another language”, “get my Ph.D.”, “starting a business”, “to see my great grandchildren”, etc.

·         I was expecting more levity and humour like, “see the Toronto Maple Leafs win a Stanley Cup”, but that wasn’t the mood of this monument of our city’s residents. It was more serious, but a positive sort of seriousness. There were very few messages of desperation (maybe the Leafs comment counts as one though). The only one that stuck out for me was “to stop living in Hell!”

·         Lots of wishes and pleas for grander designs of positive social/environmental change, like “to be free from fossil fuels”, “see the end of global poverty”

I don’t know if this wall of wishes gets periodically washed down, recovering and renewing space for other people to add more things. There is a comfort in knowing that there is a lot there already that I have in common with some other souls out there. With facing my own mortality some while ago, its big message gives me pause for thought about it. There is a lot that is left that’s undone. I am left to wonder what I have that is not on there, and is unique for me.

I do know that I will be running by there more often to read it and to see if there are any more additions and changes. Perhaps I’ll make it a point to run over there with my own piece of chalk next time.