For Ken (Not Feeding Don)

[3D Peruna]

(A fellow Kanuck)

[Michael Bulatovich]

Bored 3D?

Some errors in that piece, e.g.

[3D Peruna]

No... just thinking of Ken, and my tax return...

Is even better...

[EDS]

Really? My wife is seriously into knitting and fibers. How come a package from Ontario takes a week to get here (6 days to the border) while a package from Australia, UK, or China takes 3 days maximum? This is not just a one time happening, but quite frequent. The Canadian senders also complain about their service. I like Canada but would not brag about the postal service. EDS

[Michael Bulatovich]

>

Same here, but my point wasn't to brag about the postal service. (I used to be one of those striking postal workers before I went to university. Canada Post was a nightmare back then.) It's just that the thought of a Christmas postal strike has a very nostalgic tone to it. It was common in the 70's for sure, but (without researching it) I can't remember more than one in a couple of *decades*. I asked my wife, has she has the same sense of it. That's anecdotal, for sure, but we don't have an 'annual Christmas postal strike'.

[++]

I stayed in Canada for a period. Gotta agree with you on the postal system plus it is rather expensive, comparatively speaking.

By the way, it was very touching your sharing your experience with your daughter. May her memory be eternal and may she commune with the righteous!

One time when I was pregnant, pretty far along, I lived in a condo townhouse across from its mirror image where another woman was pregnant. I lived with my little family and a gerbil and she lived with a drug dealer. One time, with about a month to go, I was looking out the picture window in the kitchen/dining room while munching on an apple. She was standing at the window , too, looking out and eating an apple as well. She patted her immense tummy and I patted mine and we did a funny little pantomime where we would mimic each other's movements, for example, I would raise the apple in my hand as if it were a power salute. She would do the same in reverse. She would hop. I would hop. I would bend at the waist. She would bend at the waist. I would step sideways...an so on. She held out her fingers to let me know she was 8 months pregnant. I nodded and also held out eight the same way, tucking my thumbs in, which was bright of her as seeing the individual fingers might have been difficult across the divide between the windows. The pure joy at such a stupid thing as that pantomime!

I saw her once more after that, doing what she often did, serving dinner to hubby or boyfriend or whoever and showing him some affection, something he never showed her. He more or less soaked it up but did nothing in return. You could see but not hear him yelling at her. You could imagine that nothing she did was ever accounted worthy enough to return her affection from what was seen. One day he slapped her and I saw her cowering. Then he lowered the blinds so no one could see what was going on. Because the phone was on the wall in that room and visible, I went to anotehr room to call the police who I also begged not to show up at my house as I didn't want to be a target myself, and I also called a neighbor who called. When the police got back with me they said that they found her hung on a hook in the closet with the hook into her body. He had shoved her onto the hook somehowand beaten her black and ble besides. He had done other things as well, and she died. There were drugs all over the place, even in the toilet tank, reportedly.

I had intervened but too late. I had not really known how bad it was. Now, if I only suspect something has gone wrong, I call and say exactly that to someone that might effect change. At the least, I offer a safe place or to call or to write or to help articulate or to give a shoulder or a hug. I feel in society, however large you conceive that society to be, that if you do not engage against atrocities, you engender them, whether in a nuclear relationship or a village or some insittution or something larger.

You , too, tried to do what you could for your daughter. Sometimes strong women think they can endure for a while until things get better, or that they can even effect change in their relationship, often counting some way on the amount of time already invested in the relationship. Some women count on what they hope is a natural respect for women in men, or that things will just magically get better if only they do this or that or the other thing. Whatever places a woman in danger (or the rare case of a man abused), that danger can only be defused and that woman helped only by action. I have noticed that bullies quickly stop their bullying once someone is able to actively intervene.

How frightened you must have been for your daughter trying to help her out of her too common situation! I wish for you to remember the bright and lovely and living moments you shared with her and not what she had to endure. But if she had one last thought, it must have been of her loving parents.

.

[Warm Worm]

>

Perhaps it's "terrorism"-related. A disk drive and panoramic head I ordered from the US each took awhile too.

Say hi to your wife for me as a knitting colleague. As a previous novice, I finally began knitting again after an injury, and am in the process of making a simple ribbed (knit one/purl one) chunky knit scarf, using this yarn;

and for the first time in continental: Apparently you can knit not just using bamboo needles, but also with bamboo yarn: amazing what you can do with bamboo.

A few years ago, I vowed to myself to never buy another ready-made retail sweater again until I could knit my own, which I'm hopefully about to do after the scarf... Now that I think about it, if your wife might have a ribbed raglan crew-neck pullover sweater pattern lying around anywhere that she'd like to share I'd be greatfully obliged.

Rich

[++]

Rich,

I had a wonderful trip to Mid Atlantic bamboo yesterday. It is indeed wonderful what you can do with bamboo.

[Michael Bulatovich]

>>

Starting with rectangles, eh? Maybe a toque next? I never got past rectangles (tablecloths, curtains, napkins etc.) when I tried to teach myself to sew a while back, but I now have considerably more respect for people who make clothes. I still idly think abut trying experiments in fashion for my dog, (he's such a cartoon) but the work load's a bit much, and there's all the unfinished renovations around the house to get to first...

[EDS]

Thanks. Yours was a very rough story, but all too common. I have never understood where men like that come from. I hope the guy was permanently put away. Our Hester was a great person, 6 feet tall, slender, with a great smile and gift of the gab, but poor choice of men. She had phoned my wife an hour before it happened, to tell us that she was coming home. She had already sent her 3 dogs, who we still have. She was in a coma for 10 days. When we were told what had happened, I was on a plane within 4 hours and at the hospital about 7 hours later. I rushed to her room where they were giving her an EEG (?) and shouted her name. The flat line jumped, but for the last time. We were at her bedside for the next 9 days until it was determined that she was brain dead. EDS

[EDS]

Don, now you are getting disgustingly abusive. She did not want to be hung in her own closet.

[EDS]

>>

I'll ask.

[++]

I told it because even when you know it is a low life rough situation, people still have to act.

They get reinforced, my opinion. They get away a couple times with being out of control one way, and antisocial behavior escalates. It is hard to know why meanness occurs when being loving is easy, or why some people are so insecure that they feel they have to consistently denigrate others in order to feel good.

He was initially put away, What happened after that, hard to know.

Sometimes the young can feel invincable, that they can solve anything and everything. It sounds like she had been resolved to change her situation, that she knew it was dangerous

According to my religion, she would have been with you most of that time, waiting for passage. It is good you got to be there for her. It is sad there was no justice.

[EDS]

We are not church goers, but the morning she died (and her organs harvested) we went to Wren's St. Pauls church. There was cerimony going on celebrating

300 years of sending out missionarys. We were allowed in to pray. The recessional began, Zulu warriers with spears, Afgans with long rifles, Indians, Aboriginies, a huge Carabian steel band, etc. The organ and choir segued into the steel band. We stood weeping within that magnificent building among thousands of varietys of people with "A Mighty Fortrace is Our God" soaring over our heads. Somebody shouted "look up" and 3 blazing shafts of sunlight flashed through the lantern windows for just a few seconds. Somehow I snapped a picture of it. Hester was there. That is the only religious experiance we ever had, but enough to believe she will be waiting. St. Paul's is a special place for us. EDS

[Michael Bulatovich]

Thing is, I don't think they ever really do 'feel good.' They were likely abused in a variety of ways, and are just passing it on... No one protected them, so they feel no responsibility for others. The fact that there is always a potential fresh start with every moment, *you* might call it 'grace', is lost on most of us most of the time. It's so much harder for them to realize it because they are hurting so badly.

[Warm Worm]

Almost forgot: