The Fecal Transplant Movement

News today of an innovation in the treatment of C. difficile. It’s called a “fecal transplant” and involves inserting a healthy person’s stool inside a sick person’s gut. Health Canada has just issued guidelines in the hope of dissuading do-it-yourselfers.
     Ew.
     That’s directed at the DIY-ers (please, don’t linger over matters of technique) not the procedure itself, for C. difficile is a killer, and any advance is worthy. Solutions arise from unexpected sources: think penicillin from fungus, the crappy glue behind Post-its, or the failed drug that became Viagra.
     So embrace this movement, and amend your transplant donor card today.


Image: Clostridium difficile colonies, Centers for Disease Control

The Sands of Alberta

Back then, we were all more worried about Nuclear Winter than Global Warming, but the biggest issue by far was Acid Rain. To their credit, the folks at Syncrude actually took the time to scrub those particular emissions and had pallets of bright yellow sulphur to show for it.
    On our trip to Fort McMurray, they actually took us through the process of turning tar sand to fuel, beginning to end. Today, of course, this is regarded as one of the dirtiest ways of addressing our energy needs, but let me tell you, the sand it produces is impeccably clean.

Figure 1
My very own personal carbon sink . . . 180 grams of
never-to-be-processed tar sand. Vintage 1978.

Science fiction?

August 16, 2130

HALIFAX — The opening session of the 105th International Summit on Climate Change was interrupted today by Cyclone Mary, which stormed past Security and crashed the conference hall, sweeping dozens of the world’s top climatologists out to the Atlantic.
     “Great way to cover up the truth and silence scientists,” said surviving Summit delegate Dr. Will U. Listen. “It’s a Government plot.”
     “Nonsense!” said Prime Minister Dee Nial, from her office in Fort McMurray. “It’s just a tragic accident. But it does speak to the necessity of reframing the discussion from that of climate change to better weather forecasting.”

The Vinyl Mine

Another day in the vinyl mine, and we’re still following that vein of prog we discovered last month—nothing special really, just layer after layer of second- and third-rate songs packed tightly together around those increasingly rare gems.
     Is it any wonder they all died out? Though thank goodness they did, or there’d be no job for me, no fuel for the ships, and certainly no joy for the scouts who first traced these sounds back to their source, nor the agents who still fight for a chance just to gaze upon the remains of the creatures that produced them.

Detail from The Genealogy of Pop/Rock Music by Reebee Garofalo.

K-Tel Super Gold and other Delights

Although it’s never been rigorously tested, I claim an encyclopaedic knowledge of pop and country music from my salad days, circa 1972-1990. Yet my own vinyl collection was negligible. Even at the discerning age of 13 my albums were so few and nerdy that they nestled comfortably by the parental hi-fi with Marty Robbins, Perry Como and Mantovani. And I knew it. As my Cowsill’s Hair album looked cooler than Gary Lewis and the Playboys it always stayed at the head of the stack. Until I found Pete Townshend and imperial milk crates, then my world changed for the better.

Image from scandinavianconnection on eBay.

Post Apocalypse Bathing

If you turn when taking a shower at my mother’s house, you’ll knock a half-dozen plastic bottles off the shelves that line the lime green tub. Some of these, with congealed goo around their rims, I swear she’s had for over a decade. The seasons of her life are traced through these remedies: No-Frizz banana and egg-enriched conditioner, Relaxing Lavender foam bath, Moisturizing aloe vera body wash, Strawberry and kiwi rinse with colour-fast formula, Body Bounce medicated shampoo for thinning hair. She won’t throw them out; No doubt, goo will be in short supply post apocalypse.

Steamers and Buses in the First World

For her, the most memorable metaphor of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness was Marlow’s futile search for rivets, a frustrating task because they were everywhere, except where he wanted them. She thought of this often, like when she faced an empty coin purse in front of a parking meter, all the while knowing there was a bowl of change back home. Or when the toilet paper ran out in the downstairs loo but a surfeit of rolls were stacked upstairs. Or waiting for the 47 South Lansdowne bus. It’s not like she’d be eaten by cannibals but it still resonated.

The Saratoga Shuffle

I’ve been through Saratoga Springs maybe a half-dozen times, but I’ve heard it’s quite beautiful.
     They say Cornelius Vanderbilt would vacation here often, to take the waters and perhaps even dine at Cary Moon’s exclusive Lake House where, legend tells, the potato chip was invented just for him.
    But none of that for my mother, my sister, and me, back when Saratoga was the halfway point from New York to Montreal, and Greyhound would shunt us all off to the rest stop nearest the interchange, through the lone restaurant there, like so many cattle down the chute.
     “Thirty minutes, people!”

Photo by Bob Coolidge. December 1970.

Appaloosa Queen

I was a young 19 and it was my first overnight bus trip from the Soo to university. My seatmate was in her forties, with a sunhammered face and raw blonde curls. She told me a long story about how she’d been the first runner-up in the National Appaloosa Queen contest in 1970 something. I’d never met anyone like her, I felt sad and weirdly uncomfortable. She got out to smoke in Sudbury. When I woke up in Toronto, my head was on her shoulder.
     I’ve always liked purses with fringes. Guess I kind of wish I was a cowboy.

Getting the Hell Out

I stole the money from that bastard. Took the first bus west. She sat next to me. In Calgary we got off together to get breakfast — and suddenly she’s calling me ma. It hit me hard, you know? No one ever called me ma before. I was flattered. Tickled pink. I paid for her food. She said I was her spiritual mother and that her real ma beat her. She said a lot of things. We got on the bus. The driver shook me awake in Vancouver. She was gone and so was the money I stole from that bastard.

The Park Estate Hustle

Getting the hell out of the trailer park would’ve been accomplished much sooner had I realized my initial goal of becoming a pirate. But instead, I became a door-to-door salesman. Mrs. Stanton, a dodgy local crone who liked a little child labour with her pyramid scheming hooked me up with a variety pack of candles and a 10% profit margin. Even though this was a time when being a helicopter parent meant watching M*A*S*H with your child, my folks were curiously sanguine about me tramping the neighbourhood with a pocket full of two-dollar bills and a ten-pound box of paraffin.

Clip from page 2 of The Sarnia Observer, April 18, 1884.

Where there’s smoke . . .

Our last New Year’s together, she had an idea: “Let’s both write down our wishes—then at midnight, throw them into the fire so they’ll all come true.”
     “That’s pretty dumb,” I said. “Who wants to see their dreams go up in smoke?”
     “But it’s the smoke that’ll spread our hope around the world.”
     “No, babe, it makes way more sense just to write down our problems, then watch them all vanish.”
     “Fine,” she said, “we’ll do it your way;” grabbed my pen, wrote one small single word, and threw it into the flames.
     “There you go, Roy. Problem solved.”

Photo by Pat Pilon.

Lost Causes

In the first church Brother Andre built, we look through Plexiglas at his humble 1920s bedroom. Visitors have pushed notes through the barrier. Multicoloured papers are strewn on the floor. They are in every language and by different hands, both childish and the elegant penmanship of people born before the computer age. Pray for me, Holy Brother . . . Je vous en prie, Mon Seigneur . . . I’m sick, my mother’s dying, my child’s crippled, my dog’s lost, my father’s gone, my wife is leaving me. Help me. We crouch to read the notes through the glass. They are like museum pieces  – Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Wholesale Euthanasia

Good news: The Supreme Court says it's no crime if I want to off myself.
     Bad news: The National Post gripes that, “The law the government crafts in the next 12 months must allow patients to seek help in ending suffering without opening the door to wholesale euthanasia."
     Huh. Wholesale euthanasia. What a pall that casts on the cheerful practicality of “wholesale”, a word coined in 1417 to refer to selling “any girdeles by retaile or holesale.” So is the National Post proposing euthanasia be retail? Eww. I don’t want to get euthanized at Yorkdale. Or, like, the Eaton Centre.

Once upon a Grifter

Years ago, a man claiming to live “just ’round the corner” would ask you for money to fix a plumbing emergency. With just the right blend of pathos and urgency, he took Macdonell Avenue for a ride. But my favourite shyster by far was a marginal little sponge-monster who visited twice yearly, collecting for a charity that taught street-proofing to kids. Over the years we got to be quite friendly; he’d ask about my son, I’d inquire about his impending court case. Once he asked me to make a cheque out to “Cash.” His organization was called Otter Know Better.

Image from Damn Good Doormats.

Chamæleon

“You’re probably not going to know anyone,” said Nick, as they walked up the drive. “So, maybe just relax and be yourself.”
     “Are you kidding?” said Cam. “If nobody knows me, I can be whoever I want.”
     “You’re telling me you’ll just walk into a party full of strangers and lie?”
     “Just enough to blend in.”
     “And if you meet somebody else you like?”
     “Jeez, Nick, maybe tonight I just want to be somebody else. Maybe tonight I just want to get drunk on somebody else’s beer. Maybe tonight I just want to get it on with somebody else’s girlfriend.”

Photo by Israel Orlandi.

She took her rage

My mother’s true teenagehood came when she was 45 and learned about my father’s mistress. She took her rage and dragged me, a bespectacled 17-year-old, to a St. Janvier cowboy bar. Was I supposed to enjoy watching her pick up all those Jean Pierres? Was I to study her technique as she necked with a trucker named Denis? How did she do it? I never could. Sure guys asked me to dance, switching from French before I said anything, as if “Anglais” was written on my forehead. But nothing else happened. I was too busy being the adult.

Do you have anything in a black, down-filled puffer jacket?

She had a dog that looked like mine.
     “Where did your dog come from?” It sprang from my mouth before I sussed that she was a nutter.
     “Turtle Island, like us all,” she replied. And fixing a crazy gimlet on me for a once-over added, “I've always admired the wisdom of your people . . .”
     I was confused. My people? My people came from a trailer park. And then it dawned on me . . . Big green parka . . . two huskies . . . long black braid. I was her idea of Tantoo Cardinal. It was time to cracker-up my winter look before my real ’Nish friends got wind of this.

Photo of Grey Owl, 1931. Copyright © Parks Canada.

Duck!

This whole mating-for-life thing is for the birds—literally.
     Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty happy with the actual mating part, it’s those long months in between when I’m still all lovey-dovey, and the missus keeps putting me off.
     Not tonight, dear. I’m brooding.
So, one more season I’ve resigned myself to stick around through all that nesting, migrating, and moulting. But here’s the thing that really puts a crimp in my cloaca: If us mallards are forced to be just as monogamous as anyone else, why is it the so-called Love Birds get all the adulation?
     Lucky ducks.

Photo by mikeyskatie on Flickr.

Love birds no more

We met during the great snowy owl irruption of ’08. It was the length of his spotting scope that first attracted me. He said I had a great pair of binoculars. Heart aflutter, I blushed like a roseate spoonbill. His sexy loon call, soft pishing and ability to tell a pewee from a flycatcher drove me wild. I dreamed he asked me to merge our life lists. He drove me to the dump to count the vultures. I leaned forward expectantly. Our Tilley hats touched. Then that yellow-bellied sapsucker said: “It’s been fun, Chickadee, but I fly south tomorrow.”