Two of My Doctors Who Died by the Gun
Two Doctors attended my premature birth in the mid 1950s In Port Arthur Ontario Canada (now part of Thunder Bay): Dr. Stephen Morton and Dr.…
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Two Doctors attended my premature birth in the mid 1950s In Port Arthur Ontario Canada (now part of Thunder Bay): Dr. Stephen Morton and Dr.…
“Are you ready for Easter”? the grocery store greeter asked, assuming we celebrated Easter. “No”, came my reply, which was true because I am never…
March 8, 2021 Nature Rules “Rules”, he muttered to himself. His eyes squinted and shuttered the glare as he gazed out his East facing window…
March 8, 2021
Nature Rules
“Rules”, he muttered to himself.
His eyes squinted and shuttered the glare as he gazed out his East facing window at the ice fishing huts clustered together on the snow-capped frozen bay, as if they were part of a nomadic village.
Grey patches of water like grease stains on a white table cloth had already spattered on the surface of Lake Simcoe, signalling an early spring.
He knew the ice fishers only had a few weeks left before their huts had to be removed in the middle of March or face a fine or worse.
But some would wait too long and break through the ice.
Lose their gear, shelter and maybe their lives.
Compared to breaking some human rules, Nature’s penalty box could literally be hell.
Except the goalposts are changing since the lake freezes later and thaws earlier.
Following the rules seemed more fluid nowadays, he thought.
He looked down and shook his head as he pictured certain politicians who let the rules slide for themselves such as going on trips this past Christmas while they expected others to follow stay-at-home orders during the pandemic outbreak.
Suddenly, the sound of the whistling wings of a mourning dove flying from his windowsill caught his attention.
He knew the sound of the wings was a warning of possible danger similar to a beaver slapping its tail on the water.
Natural alarms against harm.
He followed the dove’s flight path and then focused on the recently refurbished empty train station near the right bank of the bay about a mile away.
Bones had been found under the Allandale GO Station which halted further development of the site.
His fears of loved ones finding his own buried skeletons from the past silently taunted him.
He was jolted back to the present when he heard,
“Mister Bender, your lunch is here” trilled a lilting voice trying to make the best of a bad situation.
It was Rose, a staff member of the long-term care home where he was now residing.
“You don’t have to call me Mister Bender, Rosa.
“Ok William, “ Rosa chirped.
“Bill will do”, he replied, but Rosa had already left to attend to other residents, no time for chitchat especially since the Home was so understaffed.
Bill appreciated that Rosa treated him with respect. He hated being patronized by some caregivers calling him “dear” or “bud”.
His lunch was resting on a cart just outside his door. He precariously balanced the styrofoam container and its mysterious contents on the seat of his walker. The lid of the container creaked and squeaked as he opened the lid.
He stared at two triangular pieces of stale white bread which bookended what appeared to be mummified meat.
Bill instinctively noticed the small pyramid-shaped sandwiches were equal in size and height.
He smiled.
Beside them, was a small plastic container labelled yellow pea soup. After a brief struggle to remove the lid, he thought perhaps the kitchen staff had misspelled the word pea on the lid’s label.
Bill knew that the government allotted more money for prison inmate food than for long-term care residents.
“There oughta be a rule against that”, he muttered to himself.
He stopped his train of thought lifted his head and sniffed the air.
Above the institutional aroma of disinfectant with undertones of decay and death, he also thought he could smell freshly brewed coffee, but that was probably just wishful thinking.
Bill ruminated about the three thousand a month cost of his single room accommodation and the COVID-19 forced lack of activities.
More like a prison room than a home to roam since the pandemic had restricted residents to spend most of their time in their rooms. He also that knew being in a long-term care home in Canada now could almost or even be more dangerous than being in prison. In Canada, 69% of COVID-19 deaths were long-term care residents compared to 41% internationally.
Bill shook his head responding to his internal conversation.
His mind rewound to the song, “One is the Loneliest Number” by Three Dog Night.
Numbers were always important to Bill.
Numbers provided the combination to his safe place.
His default reaction in dealing with most of life’s problems was to frame them in terms of numbers.
Numb-ers helped numb most of his emotions.
However, he also learned in life that a fixation on numbers can do a number on you.
As he ate, Bill also reflected on how he ended up here.
Three months and three days ago, while getting up for a late-night snack in his apartment building, he tripped over his cat “Panther”, fell down and broke his hip.
His cries for help were heard by a neighbour in the hallway returning from a night shift.
Bill broke his hip while breaking his own rule of not getting up for snacks late at night.
Now he paid the price by losing most of his freedom.
Of course, the pandemic made the situation even worse by further restricting his mobility within the long-term care home and the outside world. At least the home was a newer building built over what had been the old Central Collegiate School.
Bill hoped that he could return to his apartment once his hip healed and the pandemic ended. If not, maybe he could eventually move to a seniors’ residence that was less restrictive than where he was now. Living like a caged animal was starting to get to him.
Despite Bill’s dreams of freedom, his family had started to clear out his things from his old place.
He was fairly sure he had thrown out items from his storage area in the apartment building’s basement that may be dangerous- like old chemistry sets and an antique crossbow among other strange souvenirs.
Introducing: Bill, Hailey & a Comet
With lunch over, it was time to do some hip exercises and then an activity he looked forward to doing the most.
His FaceTime chats with his granddaughter Hailey.
Hailey and her family lived in Toronto about ninety minutes away but rarely came up to visit him. He usually took the Go Train down to see them, but over time that was happening less often and not at all since COVID-19 started curtailing activities a year ago.
Since they started having weekly FaceTime chats, they discovered a shared interest in science and mathematics- among other things.
She was a periodic arc of light illuminating his dull, dark universe.
An image of Halley’s Comet streaked across his mind’s eye.
He knew the comet is expected to reappear forty years from this year in 2061.
He would not live to see it again, but maybe his granddaughter Hailey would.
Bill went for a nap and dreamed of the song “In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus)
by Zager and Evans.
At 3:30 PM his phone alerted him of his FaceTime call with Hailey.
Bill was greeted on his phone screen with Hailey’s now-familiar smiling oval face, turned up pierced nose, reddish blond hair with a purple streak pulled back into a bob.
Her granite grey eyes flecked with gold, peered through large squarish black framed glasses she called “Geek Sheik.”
Even magnified by the large glasses, Bill thought her pin pointed pupils were as hard to read as ancient hieroglyphs chiselled in stone.
Staring back at her was Bill’s long lined face, a mane of shoulder ‘COVID” length white hair he usually kept cropped in a brush cut but had let grow because hairdressers were currently under lockdown. Hailey thought his eyes were the sharp bright blue of a northern mid-winter sky but slightly shrouded by the watery mists of age. His pupils stood out like sunspots and the left one was larger than the right except when he suffered his spring and fall headaches which occurred with migratory precision.
Bill wondered what Hailey really thought of him. He recently read that musician Peter Frampton’s grandchildren called him Frampa. Maybe she thought of him as Grumpa.
Their conversation commenced:
BILL: How are you, Hailey? It’s nice to see your smiling face again.
HAILEY: I’m all right Grandpa. I’m happy that I’m
back in school again with my friends. Some of my friends are not doing very well during the pandemic though.
Hailey looked down.
The conversation froze as if they mutually pressed the mute button while watching a video.
Bill looked worried. He had recently read that admissions of young people to many hospitals for mental health problems had spiked during the pandemic.
Hailey slowly looked up. Then smiled.
HAILEY: I hope you’re OK, Grandpa.
BILL: Thanks for asking Hailey. I’m getting better every day. Maybe I’ll be able to leave this place and move somewhere else where I have more freedom. Maybe even closer to you down in Toronto.
Hailey’s face lit up.
HAILEY: That would be great!
Bill smiled.
Bill: I’m glad you approve.
Hailey put two thumbs up.
They both smiled.
Another prolonged pause ensued.
Bill resumed their sputtering chat.
BILL: Did you learn anything interesting in school today?
Hailey nodded
HAILEY: Ya, we had a cool science class where we studied the NASA Science MARS 2020 MISSION PERSEVERANCE ROVER website.
I also signed up for the Zoom seminar tonight: Taking Flight: How Girls Can Grow Up to be Engineers featuring women who work on the Mars rovers like Roxana Gonzales Burgos who is a Mars 2020 Rover Software Engineer!
BILL: Wow! Very appropriate on International Women’s Day!
(Bill only knew this because the event was pre-printed on his wall calendar)
HAILEY: Ya, I think there should be more women in science and I want to be one of them!
BILL: Good for you Hailey! With your intelligence and the perseverance of a Mars rover you have an excellent chance of succeeding
HAILEY: Thanks, Grandpa!
Tell me more about science back in the day Grandpa
BILL: More like ancient history.
HAILEY: I like history too.
Bill laughed, Hailey smiled.
BILL: In high school, I remember trying to burn the notes of a friend with a Bunsen burner and an incident when a white coated science teacher accidentally dropped some mercury on the floor.
The teacher ran around like a white lab rat in a maze as he and some of us chased the silver ball of the toxic metal around the classroom until the teacher scooped it up and put it back into the container. There were no toxic spill/containment rules back then.
It was science without seat belts.
Hailey threw her head back and laughed.
BILL: I still like watching the “Nature of Things” CBC TV science show which started in 1960.
HAILEY: I also like watching “The Nature of Things” on my tablet.
BILL: Who knew we would like the same TV show?
Bill thought in this case, the medium was different, but the message was the same.
BILL: Anything else scientific that you like?
HAILEY: I have a science magazine I like reading online.
It’s simply called, “Science.”
BILL: Is there any particular article you liked in ‘Science” Magazine?
HAILEY: I liked a recent article on generation of random numbers by lasers through tiny fluctuations in space and time.
This reminded Bill of another instrument he had found that he thought at one time possessed ultra-numeric properties, but he remained silent on the subject.
BILL: Wow, You are light years ahead of where I was at your age Hailey.
Through his phone, Bill heard his son calling Hailey.
HAILEY: Gotta go now Grandpa, talk to you next week.
BILL: OK Hailey dear.
HAILEY: Bye Grandpa, love you.
March 14, 2021
Pi Time
On Their next FaceTime session, Bill initiated the call. He almost forgot that daylight savings time started today. The first few days of daylight savings time scared the daylights out of him, especially when he had been driving.
He knew that changing to daylight savings time caused a six percent increase in fatal car accidents and was also bad for your health. Science had advised that it was better to stay on Standard Time.
Bill noted that today, time was marching on in March, slowed by pandemic restrictions but seemingly sped up by moving time ahead by one hour.
Hailey’s smiling face appeared on Bill’s screen.
BILL: Happy Birthday Hailey!
HAILEY: Thanks Grandpa and thanks for the Gift Card!
BILL: I’m glad you got the card, I didn’t know what else to buy you.
HAILEY: Maybe I’ll buy a chemistry set or a new turntable to play some of your old vinyl records we found in your apartment storage area.
Hailey paused. Bill looked worried.
He opened his mouth to speak, but Hailey beat him.
HAILEY: And by the way, Happy Pi Day Grandpa!
Of course, both Hailey and Bill already knew that pi is the ratio of the circumference of any circle to the diameter of that circle.
BILL: Yes, Your birthday is also Pi Day, a special day for math lovers everywhere. A few years ago, Pi Day was even designated by UNESCO as The International Day of Mathematics.
HAILEY: Ya, We took in school that Pi has been calculated to at least 31 trillion numbers!
BILL: Yes, it’s like Pi has got a life of its own and it really does affect our everyday life. Many things like engineering, GPS, TV & radio & telephone have been made possible because of the discovery of Pi.
HAILEY: Pi is G.O.A.T.!
BILL: Pardon!
HAIEY: It means Greatest of All Time, Grandpa.
BILL: So that’s why they are showing goats on so many car commercials these days.
Hailey smiled.
Bill laughed.
Hailey gently guided the arc of the conversation. She tilted her head.
HAILEY: Grandpa, last week we agreed that there should be more women in practicing science.
Bill: That’s right.
Hailey: Were there any famous women in science or mathematics that you know of?
Bill pondered looking upward and stroked the white goatee at the apex of his triangular face.
Bill: Well, One I can think of is Hypatia who lived in ancient Alexandria in Egypt.
HAILEY: Just one name?
BILL: Yes, Like Madonna.
HAILEY: Or Drake
They both smiled.
BILL : Anyway: She, Hypatia was a philosopher, teacher, astronomer and mathematician.
HAILEY: What happened to her?
Bill winced. He should have known there would be a supplementary question.
Bill bowed his head, looked down and slowly whispered.
BILL: She was brutally murdered by an angry mob in March 415.
Apparently, an official had been spreading conspiracy theories about her.
Hailey’s eyes grew wide.
HAILEY: That’s awful.
BILL: Yes it is.
Bill recalled a video of the angry mob who had stormed the U.S. Capitol in January. It brought to mind the quote from the American humorist Mark Twain, “History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, but it often rhymes”.
Bill saw that Hailey looked upset. He tried to pilot the conversation in a more positive direction.
BILL: Well, we also can’t forget Marie Currie and her brilliant scientific discoveries including radiation.
HAILEY: Ya, we studied her. She won two Nobel prizes and is the only person to win the Nobel prize in two different scientific categories, physics and chemistry.
Bill suspected Hailey knew more than she let on.
Just then Bill heard Rosa call that dinner was being served.
Saved by the Old Goat’s Home dinner Bell, Bill thought.
BILL: Gotta go now Hailey dear.
HAILEY: Bye Grandpa, love you.
March 15, 2021
Beware the Ides of March
The next morning, Bill read his Shakespeare quote for the day., “Beware the Ides of March”.
Bill knew on this day of the year: Julius Caesar was murdered, Czar Nicholas II abdicated the throne and CBS announced it was cancelling The Ed Sullivan Show, which personally bothered Bill the most.
Bill turned to local news.
“There’s always one”, Bill said to himself as he shook his head and read about an ice fisherman who didn’t take his ice hut off the lake in time. His ice hut and truck sank and he had to pay $10,000 to have his truck retrieved as well as a fine.
He broke through the ice because he broke the rules.
At least he lived and didn’t have to pay the ultimate price for his stupidity, Bill thought.
Bill’s smartphone rang with the ringtone of an old rotary dial phone.
It was Hailey.
BILL: Hi Hailey, Is something wrong? You only usually call about once a week.
Hailey sounded excited.
HAILEY: I just had to call and tell you what I found!
Bill’s heart skipped a beat. He felt a headache coming on.
He tried to sound calm but his voice quaked and his hands shook like the leaves on Trembling aspen.
He dreaded what he was about to hear.
HAILEY: Are you OK Grandpa?
Bill coughed
BILL: Ya, go on Hailey.
HAILEY: I found a reddish wooden box like a jewellery box at the bottom of your old storage locker. It was in a bigger cardboard box wrapped in tissue paper with the words “Throw Out” written on it.
The wooden box has what looks like a Celtic Cross carved on the lid and maybe a Pentagram? on the bottom and weird symbols on the side like an X and the word sin.
BILL: You didn’t open it did you?
HAILEY: Ya, but it was weird.
Bill’s heart sank.
HAILEY: Inside, something I’d never seen before was laying on top of folded purple velvet.
It looked like three old-school wooden rulers with engraved numbers and symbols. The middle ruler moved back and forth. What is it, Grandpa?
BILL: it’s an ancient slide rule.
Hailey cocked her head and listened. Bill cleared his throat.
Bill: The slide rule was apparently invented by English Anglican Clergyman and mathematician William Oughtred , who was born on March 5, 1574.
Bill did not mention that Oughtred also had an interest in the occult, alchemy and astrology.
BILL: He invented the slide rule in 1622.
HAILEY: Wow, that would be four hundred years ago next year!
BILL: Correct.
HAILEY: What were slide rules used for?
BILL: Slide Rules ruled as pre computers. They were used to make mathematical calculations until pocket calculators became common In the mid-nineteen seventies. Small metal slide rules were even taken into space by the Apollo astronauts.
HAILEY:: That’s Lit!
BILL: We already talked about the slide rule box’s lighting.
HAILEY: No Grandpa it means exciting or excellent.
BILL: Oh, OK.
HAILEY: How about those symbols on the slide rule box?
BILL: Some may have originated from Oughtred. He liked symbols. He introduced the X symbol for multiplication as well as other symbols like “sin” which he used as an abbreviation for the mathematical function sine.
Other symbols on the box look like Runes, letters from an ancient type of writing, possibly Anglo-Saxon or Scandinavian.
Hailey nodded her head.
HAILEY: Did you use slide rules in school?
BILL: Yes, we used them.
However, I had a friend who could calculate math in his head faster than using a slide rule. He once challenged one of our math teachers to a math question duel. The teacher used a slide rule to calculate. My friend solved the problem first- without using a slide rule.
Bill thought Hailey could also probably beat a slide rule in a calculation contest.
HAILEY: Cool!
BILL: The slide rule you found is not an ordinary slide rule though.
HAILEY: Why? How?
BILL: Well it’s like Marie Curie’s research we talked about on radioactivity which leads to, among other things the treatment of cancer tumours with radiation.
However, She and her husband Pierre were apparently often ill from radiation exposure from their research and it likely contributed to her death at age 66. Some of her notebooks are so radioactive they are kept in lead containers.
In life and science, triumph and tragedy are often intertwined, Bill thought.
Hailey’s eyes widened.
HAILEY: So are you saying this slide rule is radioactive?
BILL: No, I thought that at first too, but I had a friend I knew at Lakehead University test it.
It was not radioactive.
However, at the time, I also thought it possessed some other kind of undefinable energy.
Maybe it was just my imagination, but when I used the slide rule, it seemed to move and calculate of its own volition without me moving it, seeming to sense what I was trying to calculate.
It felt like a current was running through it.
Like the vibration, you feel while holding a hose while water runs through it.
It also got warmer the longer I used it, but that was probably my own body heat.
Bill didn’t mention the slide rule also felt like a well-balanced hunting knife.
Hailey raised her eyebrows tilted her head and then flashed a curious, knowing smile.
HAILEY: How did you find the slide rule anyway?
BILL: I was working up North in what was known as “The Lakehead” as a by-laws officer in the nineteen-eighties. Our office was in an old building which used to be the Central Elementary School. It is one of the oldest buildings in the City.
The main entrance was below a large round window on its second story that faced east toward an old train station and Lake Superior beyond.
HAILEY: You were a by-laws officer? You must be pretty upset at all the people breaking the COVID rules?
Bill’s face turned red. His eyes narrowed and looked like a black boulder in the middle of a blue lagoon.
BILL: A personal rule of mine is not to get me started talking about rules Bill whispered with a Clint Eastwood- esque. Inflection.
Hailey frowned.
HAILEY: OK, but you still haven’t told me how you found the slide rule.
BILL: Oh, I remember that clearly.
One late spring, we were sent a memo on paper- as they did back then- that there would be an archeological dig in the basement of our building and we were not to disturb those workers.
Of course, one day after hours- I preferred working late than early- I went downstairs to have a look.
When I got to the bottom of the stairs, the basement looked like it rose right out of the bedrock. The walls were rough-hewn granite.
There was a roped-off area where an archeological dig had been taking place but
no one else was there at the time.
Ancient bones were apparently found at the dig site.
On the far side of the large room, there were washrooms carved right out of the rock and a bank of lockers likely left over from when the building was a school.
I opened a locker where the door was creaking as it slowly swung on its hinges.
I found a wooden box on the top shelf and opened it to reveal the slide rule.
It didn’t look like any slide rule I had ever seen, so I brought it to a place on Bay St. to find out how old it was and what it was worth.
HAILEY: Bay Street- like in Toronto?
BILL: No. It was a street in The Lakehead where a lot of Finnish Canadian stores were located including one that specialized in Finnish mythology.
HAILEY: Finnish Mythology?
BILL: Yes, The North part of The Lakehead had a large Finnish-speaking population back then.
I took the box to a Finnish magic store that specialized in selling copies of the Finnish epic poem “Kalevala” as well as carvings of Finnish mythical creatures.
When I showed her the slide rule, the lady behind the counter yelled “ole varuillasi!”
Which apparently means BEWARE, and I was told in no uncertain terms to vacate the premises.
HAILEY: Finnish Mythical creatures?
BILL: Yes, like Hiisi & Haltija. You can look them up later. As a matter of fact, the author Tolkien was inspired by Finnish mythology.
HAILEY: Ya, I knew that. Also that March 25 is “Reading Tolkien Day” The day the “Ring” was supposedly destroyed.
Anyway, did you actually did use the slide rule after getting kicked out of the magic store?
Bill shook his head.
BILL: Yes, I took a chance and used it to calculate the odds of winning poker games at the local casino. The attraction of winning was greater than my fear of using the slide rule.
HAILEY: Why did you stop?
BILL: Well, as time played on, the more money I won, the more I would lose in life. First, it was my dog, then my job and I also lost lots of time I will never get back.
HAILEY: So you mean there was an inverse relationship between what you won and what you lost.
BILL: Not exactly, but back then I believed there was a correlation.
HAILEY: Ok, So how do think the slide rule worked?
BILL: I think it likely channelled my subconscious- like an Ouija Board does.
HAIEY: Or Not?
Bill smiled.
BILL: I still would advise not using it
HAILEY: Too late.
Over the next few weeks, Hailey explained to Bill that she had used the slide rule- or maybe it had used her- to calculate angles and velocities of curling rocks. She said she believed her formula helped the Canadian Women’s Curling Team win a berth in the Winter Olympics. Nothing negative had happened to her.
Bill said with a wink that maybe it was because she used the slide rule to help others and not herself. Hailey did not rule out this theory.
Bill advised her to be careful with the slide rule. He told her knowledge can be used positively or negatively. For example, radioactivity can be harnessed for medical purposes or to make nuclear bombs he reminded her.
March 31, 2021
March Maelstrom
The wind roared like a lion on the last day of March.
The rumble rattled Bill’s brain enough for him to recall that Sir Isaac Newton had died on March 31, 1727.
By noon, snow squalls obliterated the view from Bill’s window like the old-fashioned “White Out” correction fluid wiped out letters from a page.
Consequently, he did not see the last of the ice fishers on the lake plunge to their deaths, pulled by gravity through the expanding black hole in the ice as they tried to reach the shore during the storm.
Not only was it white outside, but white smoke also billowed into his room. The fire alarms went off but the sprinkler system did not work. As Bill passed into oblivion, he remembered a numerical factoid- only five percent of the universe is made up of normal matter, twenty-five percent is dark matter and seventy percent is dark energy.
At the inquest, it was determined the Facility where Bill and all the residents perished had been previously cited for faulty sprinkler systems. They had not been fined or penalized and so the problem was not corrected. The fire had been started by an unauthorized coffee maker in someone’s room that had overheated. Everyone paid the ultimate price for someone breaking the rules.
Epilogue:
In the year 2061, Hailey watched Halley’s comet from her pod on Mars, a noble prize in her left hand and the slide rule in her robotic right appendage.
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