Dreaming of a Weird Christmas

 Practically everything this year was different from previous Christmases.

There were no family gatherings, no huge feast, no visits from friends sharing Christmas cheer. 

But weird or not, we still managed to keep Christmas.

On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, we set up a Google Meet to open presents with Audrey's sister Betty and the family. It was great seeing their faces and having a visit with them, but the inability to break into smaller groups for a chat or a game of cribbage or whatever made the latter half of the affair feel a bit stilted. I mean, I still wouldn't trade it, but the limitations fo the video chat were pretty apparent.

That evening we had charcuterie for supper and watched a YouTube of the Christmas Eve service from St. Albert United Church. We have gotten used to singing hymns in our basement, but taking communion at home with torn bread and shot glasses of wine felt a bit surreal, as did lighting our own candles instead of "passing the light" as we normally do.

Christmas Day was pretty laid back but spirited after a fashion - from spiked coffee and a breakfast beer in the morning through fortified egg nogs and such throughout the day. As strange as it was to have only the four of us present for opening gifts for the first time in, well. a lot of years, we were grateful that both girls were able to be at home, especially after a busy semester for Fenya and Glory being in Churchill from July to November.

In the afternoon, we got Tara and Jerry in Houston up on the Portal they got us for Christmas and opened gifts with them. It was wonderful to see them and share a laugh, even though Tara was extremely tired - she had contracted COVID through work and couldn't have joined us even if they had a teleporter. Again though, there was cause to be grateful - her symptoms were more cold-like than flu-like and her pulse oximeter reassured us that her lungs were still working efficiently. It was hard to see her so listless on one of her favourite holidays though, especially with both our girls sugared up as much as they were.

After that we got Auntie Vera on the phone in Ontario. She is preparing to move back to Alberta in the New Year, but was currently at an acreage by herself following an extended bout of caregiving for a friend who is dying of cancer. While we wanted the contact and familiarity, it felt more like a need in her case, and I was happy we were able to set up a game of Drawful with her by setting up another video chat and pointing my phone at the television. By following the prompts on her laptop and doodling on her cell phone's screen, she joined us in a hilarious game that felt like she was in the room with us from two time zones away.

After that, our Christmas Dinner arrived - Chinese take out from Happy Palace. We had joked about doing it for years, absolutely no one felt like cooking, and hey, it was a wonderful homage to a classic movie.

We cooked a ham (with a brown sugar, bourbon and black pepper glaze!) the next night, but that Christmas dinner a la Chinoise was one of the best I can recall - even if we did forget the Christmas crackers, something I am realizing only today as I write this blog.

It is important to note that as weird as this Christmas was, it wasn't all bad - no terrifying mid-winter road trips or fretting about visitors delayed by weather, no one getting uptight from cabin fever or overcrowding - but on the whole, I will be more than ready for a less distanced, more sociable Christmas next year.

Reading "Cajun Night Before Christmas"

Years ago, Audrey found a book called Cajun Night Before Christmas at the library's used book sale. We had never heard of it but found the book, written to affect the rural Louisiana dialect, was almost as much fun to read as "Fox in Socks" by Dr. Seuss. Last year the family even got me to read it to Fenya's boyfriend, Bobby, and I don't think our relationship was really at the "read me a story" stage at that point.

I don't have as much cause to read it anymore, and despite having some younger people in our lives again, like our grandson Robin, there probably won't be any opportunity to read it aloud in person this year. Thanks 2020...

But Audrey thought committing a reading to posterity might be a good idea, and Glory was willing to help light and shoot it, so I eventually relented and we recorded it tonight.

(If there is no embedded video above, here is the YouTube link.)

\Cajun Night Before Christmas was originally presented as an ad for a New Orleans car dealership, and won a CLIO award in 1967 to boot. An adaptation of this ad ended up being the first children's book for Pelican Publishing, which has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. It was joined eventually by Alaska Night Before Christmas, Texas Night Before Christmas and Artist's Night Before Christmas. 

Maybe someday I will have the opportunity to read you this story in person - my willingness to do so will depend on many variables including time, mood, and the quality and strength of your egg nog. But in the meantime, I hope you enjoy a cheesy reading of a regional interpretation of a yuletide classic.

Merry Christmas, y'all.

Brutal But Sweet - Wayne Season 1 Reviewed

 A couple of years ago I saw a trailer for a show that looked interesting, and which seemed to focus on a teenaged boy beating the hell out of bullies. The show was Wayne and the notion was certainly appealing (comeuppance is my milieu, for certain) but since it was premiering on a service I had no intention of getting (YouTube Premium), it slipped from memory.

It recently showed up on Amazon Prime, a service I don't really need but quite enjoy, and one I have used a fair bit this year to avoid perusing multiple shops in search of harder-to-find items (I still try to shop local for most things, but the Bezos has his teeth sunk in me pretty deep, I'm afraid). Anyhow, we are still trying to get caught up on The Expanse and after finishing The Great (another wonderful but racy show featuring Dakota Fanning as Catherine the Great and Nicholas Hoult as Peter the II or III, depending on what's needed) I stumbled upon Wayne in the "you might like" listings, and Glory and I thought it was worth taking a gamble on.

Ten episodes later, we are hooked and are re-watching it now with Audrey and Fenya (when study breaks permit) and we are desperately longing for a second season. Hence my writing this post in the futile hope that my ten of readers might check it out and hopefully spread the Gospel of Wayne throughout the land, so that the new ownership can greenlight at least one more season.

Be warned - this is not a show for the faint of heart! Two episodes in, you will have witnessed a number of fairly brutal but non-lethal beatings (many of which the titular hero is on the wrong end of), arson, a shotgun blast to the face, a game of stabscotch that goes horribly awry and a chainsaw maiming. Two teenage runaways, Wayne and his would-be girlfriend Del, are at the center of almost all of these misadventures, but this is by no means a love story - it is the tale of two young people with no hope looking to escape two tragic but distinct situations, with no assurances they will find love along the way.

Looking back at the comedies I grew up on, it is astonishing to me how little attention modern television - network, streaming or otherwise - pays to lower-class characters. Shows like All In the Family, Good Times, Sanford & Son and others depicted a greyed-out and occasionally hardscrabble lifestyle that protagonists had to sometimes game around or work a little harder in order to find happiness (and often did!) and which we see very little of nowadays. In fact, with the exception of Roseanne from almost a quarter-century ago, comedies or tv series in general about working-class families have not exactly lit up the scoreboard - unless, of course, they are animated, like The Simpsons, Bob's Burgers, or King of the Hill.

The backgrounds that Wayne and Del come from in Brockton, Mass. are, frankly, ugly and depressing and very real. The cost of arts and crafts supplies can be the trigger for a fierce argument or the opportunity for surprising tenderness. Having a car is a big deal, not just a middle-class incidental. In fact, the premise of the show is Wayne leaving home to find the car of his father that his mother and her boyfriend took off with when he was five. When his bedbound, cancer-ridden father shows him a picture of his beloved auto, Wayne smiles in wonderment and says (in his Bahstan accent), "You had a cah?"

The two protagonists are not driven by cuteness or romance, but desperation, and do not act like miniature adults nor hormone-driven children. At 16 and 15 respectively, Wayne and Del's backgrounds have given them a maturity not seen in the teens of John Hughes' Shermer, Illinois, but they maintain an adolescent focus on short-term solutions that is at once terrifying and occasionally...enviable?

But for all that grimness and brutality, Wayne has a lot of bright moments, even if a lot of the laughs are vengeful and cathartic and often hard-won. Wayne is an individual who simply cannot abide to see people get away with things at the expense of others, which, as you can imagine, makes it easy to gin up moments that are both dramatic and occasionally hilarious. The dialogue is sometimes reminiscent of a Coen brothers movie, with attention paid to regional accents and dialects as the two teens carve their way down the eastern seaboard from Brockton to Florida. There are absurdities galore but the plot is never advanced by stupid people and only requires a minimum of contrivance or coincidence to bring the various characters together.

And such characters! A fatalistic and cynical high-school principal accompanied by Wayne's sophomore huckster confidant, a square police sergeant convinced Wayne may need a second chance and his soup-blogging subordinate, and Del's troubled, bullying father and her two idiot brothers, all need a reason to intersect as Wayne and Del gradually converge on Ocala, Fla., and Wayne's dad's gold 1979 Trans Am, as well as his mom. But what then?

The showrunners also deserve full props for their great musical cues and offbeat selections, including a pitch-perfect if unprecedented usage of Rush's "Working Man."

Wayne is strange and sweet, brutal but compassionate, a bizarre but not surreal blend of Ferris Bueller's Day Off by way of Pulp Fiction. A lot of the laughs are derived from the brutal and direct manner in which Wayne interacts with his challenges, and his struggles to right perceived wrongs he encounters, but practically every character gets an opportunity to showcase their pain and the way they are dealing with it, which was not really something the trailer prepared me for:

Yes, the language can be foul, the violence occasionally shocking and brutal, but Wayne is a rough show with a good heart, very much like its main character. Unlike a lot of similar shows with youthful characters, I have a hard time imagining what the future holds for Wayne and Del, but it is made extraordinarily clear that a happy ending is by no means assured, and perhaps even unlikely. I'm compelled to see how the story unfolds and would very much like to see a second season, so by all means, check out the trailer, watch the show, and please, tell your friends.

Away Goes a Manger

I hold a significant amount of fondness for Audrey's nativity set, which is a bit surprising to me. It's a highly traditional, old-fashioned, Euro-centric depiction of the birth of Christ that doesn't have an ounce of verve to it, and yet, I love to see it come out at Christmas. 

With my Mum passing a year ago this Wednesday, we had pretty limited decorations last December and so the nativity set never made it out. This year, it is within sight of my computer desk, nestled beneath a tree decorated by nothing but stars and angels.

Thinking about it, there are three reasons that this particular set appeals to me so much.

Gratitude - the set itself was a gift from Audrey's parents, but Opa went a step further and built a stable for it out of scrap wood. He even added a light so the interior is more visible. He's busy building another stable for a different set of Fenya's right now as well.

Attitude - my wife and I have a real problem with so many characters from the Bible being depicted as white people in art. In particular, the idea of Jesus, a man native to first-century Palestine, looking like a community college student from Nebraska in 1953 is just galling to us. Audrey's mother was understanding about this, despite coming from a generation where this was obviously no big deal, and was willing to repaint all the skin tones and make them just a bit earthier and more appropriate to the setting.

Fortitude - You wouldn't know it to look at it, but this little nativity set has seen some stuff, man. It was sitting in a box on Audrey's Mum's work desk in the basement in their lovely home on an acreage in High River.

In 2013.

The year of the High River flood, that is.

On June 21, a wet slurry of river mud and water built pressure up against the double doors leading out of the basement until they finally gave way, flooding the basement to the four-foot mark before receding by about a foot and a half. The force of its entry threw a full-size treadmill all the way across the basement and turned it upside down.

Oma assumed the nativity set had been washed away, but when they returned home, it turned out the floodwaters had somehow lifted the cardboard box off the desk, carried it outdoors and set it on the picnic table on the basement patio. The cardboard box was a write-off, but there was not a scratch on the figures inside.

My belief system doesn't contain a God so vain that he couldn't bear to have images of his relatives desecrated by a flood, so I am not going to say this was a miracle or the result of divine interaction or anything like that.

But despite all that, it doesn't seem too out of place to call it miraculous either, and it makes me smile to recall it almost every time I look at the Nativity set.

Empty Spaces and Fireplaces

Since before we moved in, the corner of our basement's family room, the largest room in our bungalow, has been dominated by an enormous wood-burning stove that doubled as a fireplace.

I'm not going to lie, when I first laid eyes on it, it was the element of the empty house that most made me want to live there, and factored heavily into our purchase of the home back in 2006. 

The company that made it, Selkirk Metalbestos (wow, what a name) through a lot of design at this and made something very cool out of nothing but cast iron and brick. We didn't use it a lot, but there is nothing like a wood-burning fire in your basement when the Alberta winter hits -30 degrees Celsius outside without the wind chill to really redefine "cozy."

So I was gutted when two years later we had a chimney cleaner in who also inspected it and told us we could no longer use it safely. It was too close to the walls and there were some other issues as well, so the fireplace has sat dormant ever since. We expected it would be an expensive fix, so never really explored how feasible it might be to get it safely working again.

There is a tiny bit more slack in the budget nowadays, with money being saved on fuel and outings, so we thought it might be a good time to take another look. Besides, the last fellow just gave us a small piece of paper with his hand-written notes on it, maybe he got it wrong? Or perhaps technology or materials have changed in our favour in the ensuing 12 years?

Not so much, it turns out.

A technician came out and did a thorough inspection back in October. Long story short, in order to keep the fireplace, we would need to extend the non-combustible area in the corner by another 18 inches. At that point it would occupy almost a quarter of the room, nevermind the expense (which would not be insignificant). I was bitterly disappointed, and told the very sympathetic technician how the first time I saw the stove, it seemed to tell me "you're home." He understood completely.

And so, sadly, we began looking at getting the beloved wood stove out of our basement.

I took some photos of the stove and its accessories and put together a Kijiji ad, netting 13 responses within five days of posting it. Some of these were undoubtedly tire-kickers, one of whom offered me half of the $500 I was asking for it, but most of whom seemed sincerely interested.

The first people who came over were two nuns who were hoping to use it for heating and cooking in an older building with no electricity. Unfortunately, the cooking area is very limited and the Voyageur is also pretty low for that sort of use, so they had to say no. They were very sweet, Polish-speaking ladies and did offer us their blessings on the way out. 

The second visitor, a lady named Arlene, was very interested but was finding it difficult to arrange a time to visit. When she did so later in the week, she loved the stove immediately and produced $500 in cash on the spot. 

Her intent was to have it moved to an off-the-grid solar-powered house being built in Saskatchewan where she hopes to hold workshops and healing lodges for indigenous youth. She appreciated both the practicality and styling of the Voyageur, and said buying something comparable now would cost easily over $2000. It was gratifying to know the stove would be going someplace where it would get utilized and appreciated so much!

The next step: how to get an ungainly 450-pound chunk of cast iron out of the basement and up a narrow set of stairs.

Being a lazy person with little upper-body strength and a bad back, I had made removal part of the conditions of sale for the stove, but assured Arlene I would do what I could to facilitate things. Even removing the stovepipe once it had been sold changed the look of the corner in a significant and frankly offputting way.

Arlene's primary concern was safety for both people and property, and she was hoping to figure out some way to get a winch or come-along bar into play, and perhaps pull the stove out up an improvised ramp. The idea of having the stove being attached to something solid should someone slip or lose their grip had a lot of appeal to me - I didn't see any way such an accident could not end up involving a horrific injury or fatality. 450 lbs of cast iron tumbling down a stairway that you are lying at the bottom of is undiluted 100% high-octane nightmare fuel as far as I am concerned.

After a number of false starts, Arlene was able to get the combination of experience, strong backs and equipment in place, including her son with his trailer as well as a quad with a winch. Unfortunately, it would be the day when Audrey and I were coming back from Hudson Bay, SK with Glory, but I let them know Fenya would be on hand to let them in. Her boyfriend Bobby agreed to be on hand that day as well, which was a comfort to me with that many strangers in the house with my firstborn.

Fenya let us know they arrived a little before noon as we were approaching the Alberta border. It turns out the winch was unnecessary, as once her burly lads looked at it, said it made more sense to simply carry it out.

Now, I wasn't here and Fenya was studying most of the time, so I don't know if they removed the doors or removed the brick refractory from inside, which would have decreased the weight significantly (I bet the doors alone are 25 pounds apiece), but still - the Voyageur remains an ungainly and unforgiving mass of cast iron.

Arlene's one son, however, was undaunted, saying "Man, I have been working out for like, six months - I have been preparing for this!"

His wife shrugged and said, "Who needs a quad and a winch when you have this much testosterone on hand, I guess?"

Sure enough, they had it up and out the stairs with no incidents or accidents whatsoever - Arlene and her moving crew were in the house for less than 90 minutes. By the time Audrey and I got home, it was like the stove had never been there at all - except for the decade-and-a-half worth of dust bunnies now exposed in the corner.

We took the vacuum to it the next day, discovering a rust monster miniature for D&D, two petrified marshmallows and a Yaqua blowgun dart as well as a sheet of the colour comics from an April 1981 issue of the Montreal gazette featuring Tarzan, Buck Rogers and Asterix et Obelix. Fenya and Bobby, bless their hearts, dealt with the desiccated bird that was left behind immediately following the stove's removal.

I won't lie - I don't like that corner being empty, and we aren't sure what will eventually go there, although we have some ideas. One of the girls suggested setting up the mic stand and a couple of the guitars from our Rock Band set, and it could be a good place for someone to YouTube a simulated appearance on Evening at the Improv provided you keep the focus tight enough.

Luckily enough, it is Christmas, and the corner is an opportune place to set up the downstairs tree. The upstairs is almost fully deployed, Xmas-wise, and Glory and Audrey decorated the tree Wednesday night.

Tonight Audrey finished setting it up and added the Nativity set and magnetic Advent calendar, as well as some appropriate tchotchkes from her comprehensive collection of Christmas gear. 

It's not the same kind of cozy that a crackling wood fire provided, but it is beautiful nonetheless.

Another Hard Drive

You might wonder, hey, how exactly do you retrieve your youngest daughter from her summer job on the shore of Hudson's Bay in a community with no outbound roads during a global pandemic?

It turns out the answer is not complex, but it is long, and it involves a fair amount of driving.

With air travel out of Churchill being almost exclusively charter and thus prohibitively expensive, using rail is the best way to get "down south." Thanks to a tip from my Uncle Wendell, we knew that the Churchill to Winnipeg train (Via 692) strays across the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border to a town called Hudson Bay, which is about five hours closer to Edmonton by car than Winnipeg is. Heck, at that point we might as well just drive to Thompson, but heading that far north in the wintertime makes me more than a little apprehensive.

Hudson Bay is still about nine hours' drive once you factor in meals (taken on the road) and rest stops (not taken on the road) so it still requires a day off and a 10:30 departure time.

With lunch in Lloydminster (Popeye's) and supper in Melfort (A&W), we got to the Treeline Motel in Hudson Bay around 8:30 local time. An older, rusticated place that seems to cater almost exclusively to hunters and snowmobilers, the room was small and spartan (tiny bathroom, no phone and not even a token painting on the wall) but clean. 

We needed to open the window in order to cool the room enough for sleeping, but managed to doze off before 11:00, only to be awakened by my phone's alarm at 4:45. Glory's train was scheduled to arrive at 0527, but their live update webpage showed her arriving closer to 0540.

Hudson Bay is a pretty small community, but the Treeline Motel is ideally situated for accessing the rail pick-up area and is only three minutes away. Unlike The Pas, which has an actual factual train station with doors and a platform and all the accoutrements one normally associates with rail travel, passengers here disembark at an unlit level crossing where the only local structure is a nearby shelter just large enough to hold a picnic table.

The train arrived late, but it did arrive, coming to a stop with the open passenger precisely between the two RR Crossing signs. Glory clambered down a little stiff after being on the train for 30 hours, and helpful staff passed her luggage down to her since the outer door to the baggage car had actually frozen shut on the ride down.

We got our first hugs with our youngest since July and then quickly jumped into the Flex to escape the chill. I blew on my hands and mentioned that it was -18 Celsius, prompting a snort from Glory. "Ooh, minus eighteen - big whoop." (Later on she told us how a co-worker told her on a morning in November it was -37 with the wind chill...and it doesn't really get cold there until January.)

The roads were clear, and traffic minimal right up until approaching Lloydminster. We grabbed breakfast at McDonald's in Melfort (Glory's first pancakes in almost half a year!) and lunch at KFC in Lloydminster (another G choice).

We all chatted and caught up and speculated and talked music, Glory alternating between the front seat and back while drove, and Audrey taking the wheel after Lloyd. We took turns for quick naps, but spent most of the time just being grateful to be back in one another's presence again.

18 hours in the car for us was nothing compared to the 9 + 30 train hours for Glory, but we still managed to make a good time of it. 

But I have been to Hudson Bay SK twice now, and still have no idea whatsoever of what it looks like in the daylight...

Tanks for Date Night - T-34, Reviewed

 Audrey laughed when I suggested the Russian tank movie T-34 (2018) for a stay-at-home date night film, but it made a perverse kind of sense. I love tanks, she loves Russian history and we both love history and adventure movies. It turns out that this film, called by some "'The Fast and the Furious,' only with tanks," was just the thing for mid-week viewing together.

("Together" in this case meaning in the same room, socially distanced, with separate popcorn bowls, as Audrey is on self-isolation due to an outbreak at her school - she has subsequently tested negative for COVID.)

The film, produced in Russia, by Russians, and with sponsorship by the Russian government (which loves callbacks to the Great Patriotic War) has been accused by some of jingoism, but if T-34 is guilty of anything, it is just melodrama.

In T-34's opening, a lone Russian tank (with some infantry support) commanded by freshly-minted junior lieutenant Nikolay Ivushkin helps blunt an armoured assault just outside Moscow. By the end of the battle, a standoff between the heroic crew and SS Commander Klaus Jager leaves everyone presumed dead, but lo and behold: Ivushkin, bearded and refusing to give his name or rank, appears in a P.O.W. labour camp. Jager discovers him there and offers the Russian the 'opportunity' to repair and crew a salvaged T-34 tank as a moving target against his class of cadets. Can he and his demoralized crew escape from under the very noses of their Nazi captors?

Well, at the very least, it should be fun finding out, and we certainly thought it was.

Here's the thing - if the bad guys in your movie are literal Nazis, then as far as I am concerned, your heroes don't need a ton of motivation, and they don't even need to be that heroic. Ivushkin and his crew are, though, and also very good at their jobs, pushing some of the fight scenes into the territory of 'competence porn,' but again - Nazis. So I don't care. 

What is important to me in a film like this is that if your heroes are going to be paragons, then your villains can't be stupid, and they aren't. With exception of the camp commander, even the cruelty and sadism are kept on a low boil for the majority of the film. Sure, torture and execution are applied willy-nilly in case the viewer forgets that, you know, Nazis are evil, but the bad guys aren't portrayed as baby-eating zealots devoted to National Socialism either.

Likewise, Ivushkin and his crew aren't waving the flag all the time either - they just want to live and return to their homeland. It is about as simple a story as you can have, really. 

In a film like this, it would also be easy for the vehicles to start to supercede the characters riding in them, and while the Nazi crews are largely ciphers, Ivushkin and his crew are given at least a few chances to appeal to us as humans as well.

But make no mistake, it is the tanks that are the stars of the action sequences.

Despite being largely digital, the T-34 and its panzer opponents are astonishingly realistic, bringing a real sense of weight, noise and threat to the scenes they are in. The extensive use of CG allows the battles to be depicted clearly and dramatically, interspersed with interior shots of crews loading heavy shells into the breech of their main guns, or furiously spinning cranks in order to manually traverse the turret. 

Slow-motion sequences depict red-hot anti-armour rounds glancing off the sloped sides of the titular tank, or opposing shells crossing within inches of each other (or even closer). Instead of simply slugging it out with each other, or remaining in place so some Sgt. Rock equivalent can run up and drop grenades down conveniently open hatches, the viewer learns very quickly how mobility can be superior to firepower in most instances. Does some impossible stuff happen? You bet it does, but again, this is a story, not a reenactment.

(And as a quick sidenote for the two other readers who care about this sort of thing: it is good to be reminded that the T-34 itself is considered by many to have been one of the best and probably the most influential tank design of the Second World War. Blitzkrieg originator Heinz Guderian even pronounced it as being superior to the German panzers of the early war. And did some of the early scenes remind me of my old Warhammer 40K Valhallan army? You know it did!)

There are not a lot of surprises to be had in the story, but there are moments of poignancy, insight and even a handful of laughs. We were never sure just how bittersweet this escape story might end up being, or how many Russians might survive until the end credits. 

In the end, Audrey and I both had a great time, and although T-34 is far more of an adventure movie set within a war than a war movie itself, fans of both genres could do worse than to check it out on Amazon Prime.

Fear and Voting: U.S. Election 2020

Honestly, the last thing I want to do right now is blog about politics, but the situation in the U.S. weighs on my mind.

As I write this, it has been five days since the U.S. election, three days since Joe Biden edged out a lead over Donald Trump, and one day since Associated Press and most of the networks called the election in Biden's favour. Pressure has been mounting on Trump to concede, which he is not obligated to do, and that's good, since he shows absolutely no signs of doing so.

Instead, Trump continues to proclaim himself victorious despite losing both the electoral colleges and popular vote. Worse than this, he continually beats the drum about mailed ballots being illegal or ineligible to be counted if they arrive after election day, even though 20 states have specific legislation permitting this. 

I understand why Trump is doing this - he is desperate to avoid being a loser.

And not just a loser, but one of only four sitting presidents to lose an incumbency in the last hundred years or so. And not only that, but he faces a very real risk of prosecution in both criminal and civil court once he loses the immunity of his office.

No, given what we know of Trump's mindset, and his binary worldview of winners and losers, his actions are tragically consistent.  

There are two things I don't understand, though. The first is why so many people are enabling Trump, and willing to baldly lie in vain hopes of somehow hanging on to the presidency. Surely their attachment to this rancid gravy train cannot be so compelling as to make them think that courts will listen to their baseless conspiracy theories or tales of a stolen election without a single shred of meaning full evidence?

The second thing I don't understand is this: what happens next?

There is already talk of Republican legislatures not being bound to the results of a "suspect" election, so that their faithless electors (that is the actual term) should be allowed to nominate whichever candidate they like.

Thanks to Trump's lies, many Americans are losing faith in their own brand of democracy, and his most loyal supporters are saying they will never accept Biden as their president.

To say nothing of the tragedy that nearly half the population is all right with their leader being a proven liar as well as a corrupt, racist, sex offender, or that his popularity with his base remains high enough that he will probably pepper the remainder of his lame-duck presidency with so-called "Recount Rallies."

To be honest, the whole situation reminds me a little of the story of The Judgement of Solomon. This is the one where he stops two women arguing which of them is a baby's mother, and suggests cutting it in two so they can each have half. One woman quickly relents, unwilling to see the baby slain, allowing Solomon to declare that she is clearly the baby's mother, in a magnificent display of the type of wisdom associated with him.

Being a fan of such parables, I have always appreciated the tale, but did not know there was another, more political, layer to it until reading Larry Gonick's brilliant "Cartoon History of the Universe." He explains it thusly:

It's not just me, right? The parallels here are not solely my imagination? Trump, like Solomon, cares not a whit for restoring any sense of unity to his country. He and his enablers are happy to see truck convoys of rabid MAGA cultists interfering with the campaign busses of his opponent, and actively encourage his followers to "carefully watch" the polls and to surround ballot counting centres with protestors.

I'm not necessarily saying he could spark off a new civil war - oh, hell, I suppose I am at that, and there are a lot of people itching to make it happen too (like the Boogaloo Bois). But even if it doesn't get to that extreme, with so many people encouraged to reject the results of the election, President-elect Joe Biden faces an even more divided (and threatened) country than Roosevelt did when he took office in '33. 

It has been a long wait for this election, now a long wait for final results, then probably a long wait to for the outcomes of umpteen court challenges. Even if the election itself isn't somehow completely undermined, this will undoubtedly be followed by a long wait to see what Trump actually does to either aid or inhibit an orderly and peaceful transfer of power.

And if he leaves, will it finally be over?

Not on your life, chum.

Trump's 88 million Twitter followers will still follow his guidance, and their monolithic presence will continue to influence the Republican party for years to come. No doubt they will continue to attend his rallies and stoke his ego even though he is not in office.

And there is no reason to believe he won't run again in 2024.

Normally my curiosity compels me to stay connected and see what happens next. With this election, I am fast reaching the point where I just want to hit the snooze alarm until inauguration day.

"Virgin" No More

Sorry for the potentially click-baity title, but this post is just about watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time ever this weekend.

I know, I know - I should have seen it much, much earlier, and in a theatre. Audrey and I had plans to see it at The Princess shortly before moving to Toronto in the mid-1990s but that never came to be for some reason, and neither of us can recall why.

Even after the advent of home video, there was a long while (ar at least it felt long at the time) where you could only see Rocky Horror on a big-screen, and there were many advocates who believed this was the only way to see it - at a midnight showing full of over-engaged fans in full costume, interacting with the film's outrageously hokey dialogue and throwing toast and rice at the screen. Watching it in the comfort of my own home, bereft of participatory guidance and with no one pointing at us and shouting "Virgin! Virgin!" as first-timers felt a little bit like cheating, honestly.

But I feel like the ship has sailed for a plump, middle-aged suburbanite joining in on what the film's star Tim Curry calls "a rite of passage for teenagers," and besides, there is a global pandemic on. Thus a Friday night immediately before Hallowe'en seemed like a good opportunity for Audrey, Fenya, Bobby and I to watch one of cult cinema's most infamous movies.

Overall, we quite liked it. Audrey's sole descriptor of the piece was "Weird!" but even she had to admit how catchy the show's tunes are. Tim Curry is absolutely astonishing, bold and captivating as the corsetted and androgynous Dr., Frank N. Furter, while Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick are compelling and earnest as two midwestern "straights" drawn into a crazed world of mad-science and free love.

The film is largely the brainchild of Richard O'Brien who, in addition to playing skulleted handyman Riff Raff, also wrote the script and the music for the original stage play to keep himself one busy while looking for work as an actor. His love for 1950s sci-fi and B-movies is homaged throughout the lyrics, dialogue and even props of the film. 

But beyond the tribute and nostalgia and farce, there is a deeper message about being open-minded to new experiences and true to one's self, to give"yourself over to absolute pleasure." Beyond mere hedonism, it is no surprise that the mantra "don't dream it, be it" (lifted by O'Brien from a magazine's bodybuilding ad) resonated so powerfully with so many people in what would become an early community for LBGTQ+ people.

Despite a general slackening of uptightedness in many quarters over the 45 years since the film was released, there are still some surprisingly louche moments, such as when Frank separately seduces both the heroine and hero in turn. Beyond the opportunity for great dialogue i.e. Janet: "What have you done to Brad?" Frank: "Nothing. Why, do you think I should?", the mind positively reels at the idea of mainstream audiences watching this in the mid-1970s. June Thomas, in her article "How The Rocky Horror Picture Show Smashed Open America's Closets," asserts that this movie "may have helped more people come out of the closet than any other work of art." A bold statement for a bold movie!

But as interesting as RHPS may be in terms of its role in loosening sexual mores, it can stand on its own merits as well as any cult classic can. From the decidedly lo-fi sets and effects, through the director's willingness to reject a larger budget in favour of hiring more performers from the stage show (as opposed to Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithful and other rock stars of the day), this film leans into its campiness with an earnestness that is strangely charming and charmingly strange.

Pulpitations: "A Taste of Oppression"

 My church became what's called an Affirming Ministry back in 2014, meaning we had completed a course of education and dialogue together and then voted on our commitment to joining a national body (Affirm United) in working for the inclusion of people of all gender identities and sexual orientations in the United Church of Canada and in society. We had a party that fall to commemorate the occasion, and every year at that time, on our Affirmiversary, our Affirm Team volunteers to lead the service.

It is a privilege to be able to do the sermon for such an occasion, even if it is a bit daunting to do so with both of our ministers in the audience (gulp!). As a team we talked about themes and ideas we wanted to address, and we ended up settling on oppression, as well as ways to overcome it.

I had only the barest outlines for this when we learned Nitti would need to be put down, and it was very hard to get back to it after that. It didn't come together quite as cohesively as I had hoped, but I think the message came through strongly regardless. I put the readings at the end of this post for those who are curious.

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Happy Affirmiversary! A lot has happened since last year, hasn’t it? I mean, obviously I am concerned about the possibility of our neighbour to the south becoming a failed state in the next few weeks, but really, the big news has been COVID. Man, what a shake-up!

I mean, my household got off kind of easy in most ways. I’m still working, only from home, Audrey is still needed to help in her school, for however long that lasts, Fenya is taking her university classes online, and Glory is working in Churchill, where they are just starting to put measures in place that we’ve had "down south here" for a while now, like public masking.

But it has been bad, right? Here in Alberta, there have been nearly 20,000 cases and over 250 deaths. People have their household incomes diminish or even vanish, and nearly everyone is feeling the strain of restrictions on our lives that we hadn’t even imagined a year ago. We can’t do what we like, see who we want, eat in most restaurants or enter many spaces outside our homes without a mask. I mean, I do it, and I do so without hesitancy so others can be safe, but I still hate it.

You could almost describe it as oppressive, couldn’t you?

Is it possible that this horrible, destructive and pervasive virus has given many of us our first, small taste of oppression? To have our livelihoods impacted or removed entirely, as if by a whim? To have our movements, gatherings and other actions restricted? Do we perhaps have a marginally better understanding of the coercive loneliness of the abandoned senior? Or of the dominance that many minorities, both racial and sexual, live under everyday?

If nothing else, has COVID-19 been an effective reminder of the privilege many of us enjoy in our everyday lives? And perhaps a bit of empathy for those who don’t?

Oppression is still a real thing in our world, sadly, and it certainly applies to our siblings in the LGBTQ+ community. In the six years since we have become an Affirming Ministry, we have done a lot of education and I think a lot of us have come a long way in understanding how it feels to walk in those shoes, but bet there are still some who will hear this, or read it, and think “well, come on now - that is hardly a community that is oppressed.”

Just because no one is making queer people wear armbands with pink triangles on them or because there are finally legislative protections in place for many of them doesn’t mean they are not oppressed. Consider:

• Bi-sexual and trans people are over-represented among low-income Canadians
• There are higher rates of depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive and phobic disorders, suicidality, self-harm and substance abuse among LGBTQ+ people
• They are at double the risk for post-traumatic stress disorder than heterosexual people
• LGBTQ+ youth face approximately 14 times the risk of suicde and substance abuse than heterosexual peers.
• 7% of trans respondents in an Ontario-based survey had seriously considered suicide and 45% had attempted suicide

Closer to home, my nephew, who identifies as queer, showed up unexpectedly on my doorstep at 9 am on a Sunday morning earlier this month. I had slept through his text from 3 hrs before telling me he was driving up from Rocky Mountain House.

He was really upset. Up early and unable to get back to sleep, he was checking Facebook on his phone and had come across a post about his former church appointing a lesbian woman to a position of some authority. But there was a reply from a former pastor he knew personally, and who he thought was someone trustworthy and understanding, listing his opposition to it and saying the scriptures are clear on this [they aren’t], and that he “fears for the future.”

With no place he felt he could go to in town and unable to stay put, Mark came to my house, hoping I could put him in touch with someone from an affirming ministry. Rev. Deborah was able to call him for a chat that afternoon, and I am so, so grateful she could address some of his concerns. The root problem remains, though: there are forces in the world that want to make the different among us feel like they are somehow lesser folk.

So let’s agree on a couple of foundational points: oppression is bad, sexual minorities (among others) are subject to it, and maybe some of us have a marginally clearer idea of what oppression feels like now than we did perhaps last year at this time. Where do we go from here?

Kamand Kojouri’s poem paints a powerful picture of silence overcoming noise, not a quiet and acquiescing silence - this is important - but a loud one, appealing for acknowledgement, demanding to be heard. It is a silence louder than the jeering shouts or fearful chants of the oppressors and their ilk. But it’s tough! Intuitively, when we hear hate, when we hear lies, we want to shout back, drown out the deception, the distortion, the deceit with the truth, and I think there is still a place for that, but there is also value in establishing silence first, to create a space in which the truth can be heard.

And what do we do with that silence?

The reading from Ephesians about the “Armour of God” is often co-opted by readers wanting to focus on spiritual warfare against otherworldly creatures and their influence, even going so far as to call them out as “spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” But here in the temporal realm that we live in day-to-day, it lists the tools needed to triumph over the rulers and authorities, those who would maintain the status quo and those who fight to preserve a state of injustice.

“The belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.”

I am not even close to being a biblical scholar or theologian, but as a person trying to follow the example that Jesus set and someone hoping to make God’s world a better place, truth, righteousness, readiness and faith sure look to me like a recipe for the end of oppression.

And then, in our reading from Matthew, Jesus again underscores the behaviours that we need to display in order to be numbered among the righteous: to give food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothing to the naked, visits to the imprisoned and welcome to the stranger.

I changed the order a bit, because I think that last one is really crucial to remember today, on our Affirmiversary. To be actively, affirmingly welcoming, to a community that has not always been treated well by Christianity in general, and at times, by our own denomination.

But the words of Jesus also remind us of the allure of the status quo,the inherent human resistance to disruption and the fact that if no one changes their mind, nothing really changes. As is perhaps typical for the New Testament, the way forward is not necessarily to defeat or destroy the oppressors, but to change their minds - to shift them from being oppressors to being supporters.

Frankly, a straight-up fight might be easier, and it would almost certainly be more cathartic… but we understand in our hearts, it would never end.

Kamand’s poem ends this way: “My silence speaks.” It is not an encouragement to remain silent in the face of oppression, but to use silence to call it out, quietly affirming what is right. Letting people know that transphobic language is hurtful, that homophobic slurs are not to be tolerated, that laws impinging upon the rights of LGBTQ+ people are not fair and must be changed.

And it won’t be easy, because some people benefit from injustice, some people draw a false sense of safety from oppression, and others simply have little to no empathy and just don’t care.

But we won’t stop. We will keep pushing an agenda of fairness and inclusion for everybody until we get to a point where we can’t imagine it another way, where injustices immediately prompt a wider silence - followed by action.

The South African anti-apartheid activist Steven Biko once said “The revolutionary sees his task as liberation not only of the oppressed but also of the oppressor. Happiness can never truly exist in a state of tension.”

And happiness should be the goal of all ministries, not just affirming ones, and I don’t mean to be a bummer on this, our sixth Affirmiversary.

Let’s be grateful for the headway we have made!

Let’s be grateful for the leaders and educators we have who are helping us to get there, like Rev. Mervin and Rev. Deborah, and our friend Shylo from Robertson-Wesley!

Let’s be grateful for our Affirming Team, who puts this service together every year and gets us amped up for Pride!

And most of all, let us be grateful to each other, the people of St,. Albert United Church, proud to be a welcoming, loving and Affirming community of faith for six years now!

The fight against oppression may never truly be won, but God has given us the tools - truth, righteousness, readiness and faith - and Jesus has shown us the way. The best is yet to come!

Amen

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Our Affirmiversary should always have a certain degree of focus on the LGBTQ+ community, but I do wish I had taken some time to call out the Black Lives Matter movement and other similar initiatives around the world focusing on freedom from oppression. On the whole, though, I felt pretty good about it, and it seemed to be well received. One fellow, an RCAF vet I chum around with a fair bit at church, told me he appreciates my messages because he can tell they come from the heart, so I guess if I stick with that, I will continue to make out all right.

(A video for the entire service can be found here, and you can jump to my reflection at 29:32 here.)

READINGS

Ephesians 6:10-17 (NRSV)

The Armor of God

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 

Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 

In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Matthew 25:41-46 (NRSV)

Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 

Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ 

Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

A Poem by Kamand Kojouri

“Let my silence grow with noise
as pregnant mothers grow with life.
Let my silence permeate these walls
as sunlight permeates a home.

Let the silence rise from unwatered graves
and craters left by bombs.
Let the silence rise from empty bellies
and surge from broken hearts.

The silence of the hidden and forgotten.
The silence of the abused and tortured.
The silence of the persecuted and imprisoned.
The silence of the hanged and massacred.

Loud as all the sounds can be,
let my silence be loud
so the hungry may eat my words
and the poor may wear my words.

Loud as all the sounds can be,
let my silence be loud
so I may resurrect the dead
and give voice to the oppressed.

My silence speaks.”

A Tattoo Tale of Two Tails

As mentioned previously, Glory has been working in Churchill, Manitoba, at the restaurant run by my cousin's wife, Belinda, since early July. She is having a grand old time and has only been homesick on a handful of occasions. The rest of the time she has been paddleboarding with beluga whales on multiple occasions, spotting a polar bear mother and cub while on a Zodiac on the Churchill River, and having mad, occasionally concerning adventures with Belinda. (Her boss, in case that wasn't clear.)

On our video chat 2-3 weeks ago, we noticed something on Glory's arm and inquired about it. Sure enough, it was a tattoo, her first, that she had gotten done just a few days earlier.

She told us how the whole thing had come about, and it was a cute yarn so I asked if I could blog about it. When she agreed, I asked her to send me her pictures and a timeline, but her write-up was so good and so evocative of her voice (which I miss even though we have protracted video chats about once a week), that I thought I would just apply a few gentle edits and let her tell it in her own words.

Saturday September 20
Belinda invited me to a small bonfire at the beach with her friends. While at the fire, the topic of me wanting to get a Churchill tattoo came up. I told her I was thinking a whale tail would be nice because I’ve been whale watching on both coasts and have always loved all whales and loved all of my experiences with them - crazy zodiac drivers, singing with a famous Newfie, paddleboarding with Belugas, and so on. 

Belinda was immediately like "YES." Then somehow we decided that we should get matching ones (I’m not entirely sure how this came to be but it did). She told me about this guy Dan who is an aspiring tattoo artist in town and said she would contact him to get them done! 

That night after the fire I looked on Google for simple whale tail line drawings and screenshotted three different ones and sent them to her. She said she didn’t like the second one and I needed to choose between the first and the third. I chose the third but still wasn't sure when or even if this would be happening.

Sunday September 21
I went berry picking with Belinda and her friend Erin, and while we were together Belinda just casually says “oh yeah, we’re getting tattooed on Tuesday.” 

I was like, "This Tuesday? I’m not ready!" (Spoiler alert: I was fine.) I had drawn the tail on my wrist with a pen to see if I would like it there and I became a little obsessed with it.

Wednesday September 23
Belinda had some meetings so we had to change our tattoo date to Wednesday night. I arrived at her house and there was music playing and Dan was setting up all his gear on her coffee table in the living room. Belinda gave me a shot and a cocktail and then we sat down and decided for me to go first. I was pretty nervous mostly because I had no idea what to expect for pain/sensation but as soon as he started I was like, okay this isn’t bad at all. I didn't even really need the wooden spoon she had given me to bite down on!

Certain spots definitely made me cringe at times but I can see how people get sort of addicted to the feeling. Before I knew it I had my first tattoo! 

Then Belinda got hers and we hung out for a bit and then I went home. It felt kind of anti-climactic really because it was all so casual. But I love it so, so, so much! And I am so happy I went through with it and got it done, and that I got it done with her here in Churchill.

Farewell, Nitti: 2005-2020

It was the toughest of weeks, putting down our beloved dog Nitti after 14 years. We had hoped that we could wait until Glory returned from Churchill in November but his decline was just too rapid and we could no longer keep him comfortable, so the hard decision was reached to let him go on Thursday, October 8.

Nitti came to our house rather quickly as well, actually. We had only been living in our house for about six months when a chance conversation between Audrey and one of our neighbours revealed that she liked to peruse the adoptable animals on the local Humane Society website - an animal companion matchmaker, of sorts. When Audrey said we were interested in a friendly, sturdy (due to the dayhome children with us at the time) and hypoallergenic dog, Patricia said she would see what she could do.

Less than a week later, there was a handwritten note from Patricia in our mailbox, referencing an entry on the website. I had to go to work, but Audrey checked it out, noting the dog in question was a Bichon Frise cross and under a year old. It was promising enough that she loaded all the dayhome kids plus Fenya and Glory into the car for an impromptu field trip to the Humane Society.

When she found Nitti's cage (although he was currently known as Snoopy), he was a shaggy mess in a cone, having just undergone surgery, skulking at the back of his cage. A couple knelt in front of the cage trying to entice him forward so they could pet and inspect him, but he sat unmoving. Audrey casually reached above their heads and took the clipboard with the dog's information on it, brought it to the front and told the person there, "I want this one." They called me to verify that all the adults in the household were on-board with adopting a dog, and for about $240 we added a pet to our family. Even with the ensuing costs for food, medication, vaccinations and licensing, it is hard to imagine a better bargain.

Because Audrey got to choose the dog, it was agreed that I would get to choose the name. I have always loved the juxtaposition of names contradictory to a dog's nature or appearance, like the massive Neapolitan Mastiff named "Pansy" from Andrew Vachss' Burke novels, and the Bichon's all-white coat reminded me a little of Billy Drago's white suit and hat in the movie The Untouchables. I suggested his character's last name, Nitti, and Audrey saw the humour in it, so it stuck.

He was so shaggy when we got him that he was actually wearing three collars simultaneously, as staff and volunteers assumed he had none when in fact the others had simply been subsumed and overwhelmed by his white curls. After his first haircut, he truly looked like a different dog.

We were told Nitti's original owner had to give him up when she moved in with her grandmother. Presumably he was an apartment dog, as he was very apprehensive around stairs the first few weeks in our house, eventually getting comfortable enough with them that he would follow us down to the basement and later come down and explore on his own, or to cool off in the summer.

Nitti was preternaturally quiet the first couple of weeks with us as well, giving only the occasional whimper or whine. There was a period where we wondered if he even could bark. But one day another dog walked past our window, and he let loose with a bark that was not only surprising but shocking in its volume and resonance. For a split second, I thought a second dog had somehow gotten into the house, but apparently that big chest of his amplified and deepened what we had thought would be a more yappy vocalization. Thus came one of Nitti's many nicknames - the Subwoofer.

Bichons are known as easy-going dogs, bred foremost for companionship, and not requiring a lot of exercise. They are largely content to be around their people or simply lounge around. Periodically though, they can be seized by a surge of energy, followed by a frenzied burst of activity known as "the Bichon Blitz." We called it "puppy rodeo" and one of my great regrets was never thinking to catch it on video. Watching this stumpy-legged canine race around whatever room he was in, sometimes barrelling up or down the stairs, full tilt, or leaping over cushions placed in his path like a steeplechase horse never failed to make everyone present laugh.

He loved romping in the snow as well, especially with the girls, and didn't even mind serving as an impromptu and ersatz sled dog the first time we took him with us to the toboggan hill at Government House Park. 

Nitti was also a wonderful travelling companion, accompanying us on camping trips to the mountains, visits to Audrey's family down south and even road-tripping with us to Vancouver Island one time. 

Back when we had the Taurus station wagon, he would sometimes clamber over the back seat and into the cargo area, where he would lie down on the top of the cooler or whatever other flat surface he could find.

But mostly, he wanted to do whatever we were doing, or at least be nearby when we did it, whether that was playing boardgames, watching movies on television (which meant popcorn "dropped" fairly regularly), or just sitting with one of us while we were reading. It's no wonder that most of the pictures we have of Nitti are of him laying down with us or close at hand, just looking adorable.

Nitti also had a level of patience for children that put many adults to shame. He would tolerate exuberant ear-pulls, excited tail tugs and hugs that looked like wrestling moves, and never snap or even growl. He would simply walk away when he reached his capacity. He was the guest of honour for many sleepovers and Christmas parties.

And then there was all the dressing up he endured so well...

Nitti was a comforting presence to us as well, staying close at hand when I was off work last year and jumping up on the recliner next to me almost every day when I started working from home in March. He had also asked to be placed on Fenya's tall bed while she has been taking her university classes online this year. And once, when she sat at the kitchen table, tearfully telling us about a traumatizing experience, Nitti leaned up against her leg the entire time, as if to let her know that he was there. 

Love without condition, ears without judgment, friendship without measure, and all without words. 

Nitti's hearing began to peter out a year or two ago, leaving him only able to hear high whistles or loud claps. This meant we could no longer let him wander the back yard and alleyway without a leash, for fear he wouldn't hear an approaching car. His cataracts, though visible, didn't stop him from seeing other dogs almost a block away, but prevented him from coming downstairs on his own unless the light at the top of the landing was on.

Even last week, he could still jump onto chairs or couches without assistance, if somewhat hesitantly. But his daytime naps became longer and longer, often prompting us to do a double-take as he lay sleeping so still, breathing so shallowly. His breathing and movements became more laboured in the past week or two, or he would groan quietly while lying down, and he would be terribly restless at night, keeping Audrey awake as he pawed relentlessly at his bed next to ours, fruitlessly trying to make himself comfortable.

Nitti's first veterinarian visit on Saturday sounded promising, especially since we had steeled ourselves for the worst (and the inevitable), but he did not react well at all to the pain meds prescribed to him. He went off his food nearly completely, and when I took him back on Wednesday, we were given the option of x-rays and further diagnostics, but the vet surmised this was a dog with only a few days to live. 

I called Audrey at her school and told her the news, and we agreed that if we loved this faithful friend, the best thing we could do was let him go - but not without saying goodbye. I checked Nitti out and accepted a different pain medication, made the appointment for him the next day after work and brought him home for the last time. I lingered outside in the alleyway with Nitti on the leash, letting him explore the smells in the flowerbed and along the fences, but even this did not hold his interest for long. 

When we entered the house, Fenya asked how things had gone, and I stared at her speechlessly until her expression changed, and then said "Not good, sweetie. I'm sorry."

I video-called Glory in Churchill and tearfully explained the situation. I apologized that she would not get a chance to say goodbye in person, and because she is a champ, she understood.  I spend much of the rest of the afternoon simply sitting with him between my legs in the recliner by the window, probably his favourite spot in the house. 

That evening, Glory's best friend and her mother came over to say goodbye, and the next day Fenya's boyfriend Bobby came to do the same. The two of them were even able to get Nitti to take a few nibbles of KFC from their lunch, the most food he had eaten in days. I put in a day's work because frankly, I needed the distraction. Watching the clock make its way towards our appointment at 5:15 would have driven me mad. I did visit him in Fenya's room while Glory was on a video-call with me, so she could take a last look at him and say goodbye.

We arrived at our veterinary clinic in Spruce Grove at 5:15. I sat down in the waiting room, holding Nitti in my arms while Audrey sorted out our payment and in the examination room while we waited for the vet. We had already agreed that Audrey would be the one to hold him for most of the procedure. Our vet was excellent, explaining to us exactly what she would be doing and why, as well as what we could expect, and a few things that might or might not happen. 

She and the animal health technician were exceedingly gentle and respectful with Nitti, and with us, giving us all the information as well as all the space we needed in order to say goodbye. Who can tell what is in a dog's thoughts? I just hope he felt safe and loved and comfortable as he left this world.

I won't say it was easy, because it wasn't, but all three of us were there for Nitti and each other. Half-an-hour after we had come to that fateful room, the vet checked with her stethoscope and told us our friend was indeed gone. Ten minutes after that, we were finally able to lay his little body down on the towels they had kindly laid out on the steel examination table, and leave him behind.

That was four days ago, and we aren't done being sad yet. I suppose we will never stop, really, but if my past lessons with grief have taught me anything, it is to have faith that eventually we will be able to remember with more joy and less pain. Eventually.

Fellow humans in our lives have been exceptionally kind, recognizing the impact that losing Nitti is having on our household, and many of them mourning his loss themselves as well. When they ask how we are doing, I say, "For a 26-pound mutt, you would have thought Nitti was a whale for the size of the hole he's left here." And it's true. Audrey slept in the basement the first three nights after Thursday, as she couldn't bear to be so close to where he had slept. We all catch ourselves looking for him and listening for him, and when I came downstairs Saturday morning to do some work on the computer, I slapped my thigh to invite him to join me.

We have taken both of his beds out and donated them, and stowed his food and water bowl in hopes that someday we will find another pooch to live with us. We have also gotten rid of the cream-coloured throw that Nitti was practically invisible when he lay on it, and which we would sometimes mistake for him even when he was in another room.

But we don't do this because we want to forget him because we can't. We just need fewer reminders while the pain of his loss is so fresh.

"Every puppy is a countdown to tragedy" as the saying goes, and we have been preparing for this moment, or trying to, anyway, since Nitti's hearing started to go. This was the first real sign of ageing in a dog that seemed old when he was a puppy but remained puppy-like long into his adulthood, and a reminder that all good things must come to an end. Knowing this, Fenya cast his paw print in plaster last year, and earlier this year the girls made a colourful painting with his paws. When Glory returns, there are plans to put his tags, the casting, some pictures and a lock of his hair into a shadowbox.

For myself, I am grateful for such a reminder, but I know that I will be forever looking for Nitti out of the corner of my eye, and wishing to see him with his head out the window whenever I drive. Every morsel of food dropped on the floor is a reminder that he is not there to snatch it up, and the view out the living room window is diminished knowing his silhouette will no longer be there.

But we have had cause to smile as well, collecting all the pictures of him into a folder, and watching the few movies of him actually in motion. Recalling so many wonderful moments over the 14 years we were lucky enough to have him in our lives. 

On this saddest of Thanksgiving weekends, we are actually grateful in some ways that Nitti's decline was as rapid as it was - that it was not prolonged and that he didn't suffer unnecessarily. But mostly we are thankful to have had so many good years with such a great little friend, who we will all miss dearly; a perfect fit for our household that we were lucky to find.

Godspeed faithful hound. Be at peace. We love you.