Reverie on a mouse attack

When Peter and I were taking care of his father during the last year of his life, a mouse appeared in his bedroom.   His father had come to maturity during the depression and the war in a coal-mining area of Yorkshire, and had learned not to waste his money on extravagant fripperies.  Mouse traps were included in this luxury category, and never demoted.

Bedridden and at the age of ninety, therefore, his strategy for catching mice remained unchanged.  He caught them in his bare hands and killed them either by wringing their necks or throwing them down with sufficient force to cause death.  He saw no reason why I should spend money on a mouse trap, and was quite prepared to teach me how to apply this effective strategy.  In fact, he actively resisted my installing a contraption as cumbersome as a mouse trap beneath his dresser where the mouse had last been seen.

He won a lot of our squirmishes in those last days of his life, but teaching me the technique of bare-handed mouse capture was not one of them.  Peter and I bought a trap at the local hardware store, equipped it with a deceitful piece of cheese and installed it under the dresser.  When the mouse was finally trapped,  I tried to figure out a long-distance way of getting rid of mouse & trap without coming into actual physical contact with it.  My preference was to maintain a minimum distance of at least two yards between it and me.  In the end I threw the whole thing away - uneaten cheese and all - after sweeping it up with a long-handled broom.

This attitude toward mice doesn’t match my philosophy of wild life at all.  In theory, I believe mice and rats and spiders and snakes are merely trying to eke out a life as best they can - not terribly different from what we humans are trying to do.  In practice, I have an irrational fear that is not entirely absent even when a bee gets into our conservatory or I find a spider in my bathtub.   These days I make an effort to get the insect safely back outside where it has at least a fighting chance of survival, but my initial fear is often so great that several times I’ve managed to kill it instead.  I’ve have conquered the impulse to use the nuclear option in relation to snails in our garden, but even there I sometimes shutter with a frission of fear.  I don’t actually scream out loud - probably because a neighbour will come running and I will look a fool.  But the temptation is not entirely absent.

I sometimes think that reason is a thin veneer that glosses over my profoundly irrational self.

Dr. Who at 68

It’s not Dr. Who who is 68, but me.  Dr. Who looks like an ordinary human but isn’t.  He has been travelling around time and space fighting on the BBC since 1963, and is the longest-lasting science-fantasy show ever written.  He has died 8 or 9 times, but when he does he has regenerated and appeared looking like someone else.  At which point he is played by a different actor.

Peter told me about Dr. Who whom he had watched as a young man 45 years ago.  The story line impressed me as so fantastical that I was never tempted even to introduce myself to this icon of longevity.  About a month ago, however, nothing viewable seemed scheduled.  Under these circumstances we inevitably turn the TV off and read or go to our computers.  For some inexplicable reason, we started to watch Dr. Who instead.

I was hooked.  The production is magnificent, the story - while wholly unbelievable - expands on some of the ideas of cosmic science and quantum mechanics with teletransportation, time warps, alternative universes, and of course extra-terrestrial beings, some very smart and very friendly toward humans, some very smart and very evil.

Historically, at the end of each season, Dr. Who gets killed, and regenerates as a new Dr. Who.  The internet has been buzzing for weeks about Dr. Who was going to become.  Tonight was the final episode, and new-born addict that I am, I readjusted our eating schedule to make sure we did not miss it.  Half way through it looked as if the Dr. Who was going to break with tradition and become a woman.  But instead, equally surprising, Dr. Who came back as the same person he was. 

So next season Dr. Who will apparently still be played by David Tennet.  Life is so surprising.

No one can say I don’t have my priorities straight.

The U.S. Declaration of Independence

“We hold these truths to be self-evident,   that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator  with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and  the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are  instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the  governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of  these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and  to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles  and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most  likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Sometimes I just need to read it again.  It reminds me of the potential for the best in the country I love above all others.

Independence Day

Three neighbours came over to wish me a happy Independence Day today.  So I guess all is forgiven after the war of 1776.  One well-wisher, I admit, thought we should be celebrating with turkey and pumpkin pie - a vegetable which he thought was a total waste of time.  But to be celebrating July 4th at all in Cambridge, England in a quintisessential English village with thatched roofs and rose gardes is a surprise.

But I miss Richard Eves, an iconoclastic Yorkshireman who’d become a very good friend when we were living in the Lake District.  He died several months ago, so there is no one to phone and egg me on to hang an American flag outside our window. 

You know, I would have done it if I’d only had a flag.

Kristin Lavransdatter, 2nd reading

I gave - no, I leant- my copy of Sigred Undsett’s Kristin Lavransdatter that had belonged to my mother - to my youngest sister Dorothy.  I told her when I died I was giving it to her permanently, but if I lived another ten years I wanted to read it for a third time to see if it is as different on the third reading as it was on the second.  My values have changed so much - I hope that means they have matured - that reading the story of Kristin’s life made it seem like a completely different novel.

Dorothy asked me what had changed between my reading at the age of 17 and the age of 67.  It was an interesting question to try to pin down. 

I felt a great deal of compassion for Kristin’s original suitor to whom she had been engaged and who remained in love with her until his death.  Kristin fell passionately in love with someone else and never noticed that Simon still loved her even as she nursed him on his death bed.  On the first reading, I, like Kristin, felt little sympathy for Simon, or for the honourable control he maintained toward her for all his life.  I have some suspicion now of what eternally unrequited love must feel like.

On my original reading, I had little interest or sympathy for the relationship between Kristin’s parents.  Her mother was a passionate woman originally attracted to someone else but betrothed by her father to the man who was her husband.  Her husband was successful and held in high standing in the community.  He was very (one might say in modern times, neurotically), religiously observant, fasting through Lent and sleeping in separate quarters from his wife.  At seventeen, I thought it was Kristin’s mother who did not understand her husband, probably because I thought the same thing about my own mother and her understanding of my father.  Today, I think Lavrans must have been a very difficult man to live with.  I also appreciate the closeness that developed between them as they aged.  They learned to compromise, to appreciate the strengths of the other, to forgive the failings.  Today I know that is the way a successful marriage works if it lasts long enough.

On my second reading, I am less uncritical of Kristin’s passionate determination to have the man she loves at whatever the cost.  I see the price they both paid throughout their lives, and the price they exacted from others in their determination to have their way.  I thought when I was young that no price was too high to pay for what one believed was true love.  I don’t anymore.

Now I do wonder what I will think in ten years.

The English really are different

It’s been at least thirty-five years since I first realized that whenever I said something complimentary to my husband, he batted it away like a cobweb interfering with the clarity of his vision.  Somehow he always seemed to manage to explain his achievement in such a way that it did not reflect directly on him.  The meal he cooked was delicious because it was a good recipe, the garden he’d planned was stunning because the plants were of such good stock, his grasp of the sociology of law was due to a fantastic professor he’d had at university.  Etc. 

Over the years, it became a game between us.  I would try to trick him into accepting a compliment unawares, while he honed his skills at dodging my bullets and finding some other explanation than anything meaningful he himself might have contributed.  Over the years, I have probably increased my success at getting behind his cover to about 1%.  He is either very good at dodging, or I am very bad at aiming.

At first I thought his dismissive strategy was an individual quirk, probably exacerbated by his natural tendency toward depression and pessimism.  My first hint that it might have a cultural component came from his mother.  An English team had just won a big soccer cup, and were celebrating with exuberance.  “They should be careful,” my mother-in-law said to me;  “They might not win the cup next year.”   The English find it uncomfortable to be unambiguously acknowledged as the best at anything.  It’s not that they don’t think they are very good very often.  It’s just that one shouldn’t say so.   They prefer understatement and find the bald statement of fact vulgar.

So I suppose I should not have been surprised when I commented to our neighbour, a retired Air Force officer, who has been developing his garden since he moved in last summer, on his beautiful plantings and marvellous display of colour.  “Oh, I haven’t any skill as a gardener,” he said.  “It’s just a lot of hard work.”  I said I hoped the Air Force used a slightly higher standard in selecting its pilots than how hard he flapped his arms. 

I thought I’d won that round, but several hours later he came up to our shared property fence I was repainting on our side and asked if the paint was intoxicating.  “Oh no,” I said, unaware of the consequences of this naked truthfulness,  ”not at all.”  “What a shame,” he said, “what a shame,” as he went over to check on the progress of the tomatoes.  Being an American, I laughed out loud, which is okay because as an American I am forgiven certain ostentatious displays. 

But if I were English, the appropriate response would have been to show my appreciation for his humour with a deadpan expression, preferably accompanied by an equally clever remark, which even now evades me.  Good thing I can get away with laughing.

 

Switching off cancer genes

The research I referred to in my post yesterday finding that a healthy lifestyle can switch off cancer genes was reported by Dr. Dean Ornish.  He’s the same doctor who presented convincing scientific support for the view that a low-fat vegetarian diet, a half hour daily exercise and no smoking can reverse coronary heart disease.  It’s also basically the same diet that both reverses heart disease and seems to stop the growth of cancer.  http://www.annieappleseedproject.org/deanornutpro.html.

Ornish studied 30 men who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and who decided to try the Ornish approach instead of chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery for a year.  At the end of the year they were compared to a control group who had a similar diagnosis who had decided simply to delay treatment without changing their eating or exercise patterns.  Before the end of the year, xix of the control group had dropped out and opted for immediate treatment because the tumours had grown to sufficiently to make any further delay seem dangerous.  The cancer markers in the group who had changed their life styles had decreased.

Prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women often respond to the same variables.  So there is every reason to hope that research will now show that a low-fat mainly vegetarian diet and regular exercise will also reverse breast cancer.

It’s too late for my sister Mary who died from breast cancer twelve years ago.  But not too late for my other sisters.  Or me.  Or all the sisters in the world.

I’ve just found a recipe for kale, sultanas, and crushed almonds.  Sounds like a recipe for a multiple attack on cancer, osteoporosis, and heart disease.  Hope I like it.  Just as important in real life, I hope my husband likes it.  I haven’t reached the point yet where I’m prepared to cook different meals for the two of us. 

Good news about cancer

Even if one’s family tree is not, like mine, riddled with cancer deaths, heart attacks, strokes, and cancer are major killers in the developed world.  Several pieces of good news on this front feel particularly cheering. 

First, researchers have discovered that women whose breast cancer is discovered and treated at an early stage have the same life expectancy as women who have never had the disease at all.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7447935.stm  I grew up believing that cancer was terminal 99.9% of the time.  The question was just how much time one had left to get one’s affairs in order.  But cancer isn’t always terminal anymore.

The second blast of good news is even more hopeful.  It looks as if a healthy lifestyle - nutrition and exercise - actually helps to turn off cancer genes in those carrying them.  So even if one has actually inherited a cancer gene, genetics is not destiny.  We ourselves can still have an impact on what happens to us.

I cannot find the article where I read this precious information but it was sometime in the last week.   I will chase it down and so anyone who wants to rknow more on this finding knows where to go.

“Elizabeth”

There was a mega-concert in Hyde Park, London, last night to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday.  It is impossible, I think, to exaggerate the respect and honour given to him for his statemanlike magnanimity and the scope of his forgiveness after being held in prison for more than twenty years for refusing to give up his fight against aparteid in South Africa.  He is the only person in the world known to address the present Queen of England as “Elizabeth.”

Although when Queen Elizabeth was visiting the States several years ago, there was a marvellous photo of a Black woman welcoming “Elizabeth” into her home in Baltimore with a huge hug.  If I recall correctly, she said “welcome to my house, Queen.”  This may not sound like a big deal, but I think the correct protocol is to address the Queen as “madam,” and certainly forbids even shaking hands with her unless she offers her hand first.  Most women practice learning to curtsy if they know they are going to meet the Queen, and nobody ever presumes to hug her.  The prime minister of Australia once called a diplomatic furore for putting his hand on her back to guide her in the right direction.  So the privilege of foregoing these pretty rigidly enforced rules of etiquette is no small thing.

Meanwhile, the knighthood awarded to Mugabe some years ago has been withdrawn, and Mandela himself spoke out against the outrage that is occurring today in Zimbabwe.  I’m not sure the situation in Zimbabwe is getting a lot of coverage in the US press, but it is the leading story in the news here day after day.  It is a terrible, terribly heartbreaking story of torture and murder of anyone not supporting Mugabe.  The irony is that he was the original freedom fighter who finally threw out white rule in what was then called Rhodesia.  And now it is he who is the dictator. 

The economics of clerical celibacy

After I expressed my surprise at the number of hits received by my post on clerical celibacy, a friend wrote suggesting I read Garry Wills’ Papal Sins.  (http://www.amazon.com/Papal-Sin-Structures-Garry-Wills/dp/0385494114).  Wills argues that clerical celibacy was strictly imposed in order to protect Church property which was rapidly being disseminated among children of the clergy.  This distribution was not only impoversishing the Church, but also diluted her political and economic power.

I would like to see the Catholic Church permit married priests, but do not want to distort the argument with erroneous historical arguments.  Garry Wills is a greatly respected Catholic writer, however, so I have made an effort to fill in my scant knowledge of the history of Catholic celibacy before jumping on his band wagon.

I’ve reached the conclusion that Wills makes a valid point, and that the plethora of benefices going to children of the clergy along with widespread clerical corruption stiffened the resolve of the hierarchy toward imposing and enforcing the consequences of celibacy on the clergy.  However, a special regard for priestly celibacy goes as far back as St. Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians.  Over the centuries, the imposition of clerical celibacy has varied both in terms of law and of observance, but it was not a new idea thought up during the Middle Ages when the Catholic Church was the richest landowner in Europe.  For anyone interested, what seems to me a refreshingly balanced view on the history of celibacy in the Church is presented in the Catholic Encyclopaedia on line (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03481a.htm ).

As I said before, I myself do not think clerical celibacy is serving the Church and the community well today.  But I have little doubt that there have been thousands of dedicated men who have entered the priesthood over the centuries and who remained celibate at great personal sacrifice motivated by love of God.  For them it was not a cynical economic or political ploy.

That doesn’t change my view, though, that for many priests today, celibacy allows them to remain coddled in a cocoon of immaturity.