Released Back Into The Wild

Fake cherry blossoms; real Kim. Toronto Eaton Centre, April 22 2017

The former ruler of a small but pleasant land made her way along the Yessir Yessir Highway, flanked left, right and at the rear by three stern-faced, silent men. Their sombre demeanour belied the gentle nature of the day, which was sunny and pleasantly warm.

The ruler struggled to make some small talk.

"I'm glad to be walking with you on this pleasant day, gentlemen," she began, "...um..." and she drew a blank. Panicking, she said "....how are the wife and kids?"

There was no response.

Having given it her best shot, the ruler chose to stay silent herself for the rest of the walk to the Troll Bridge, where lay the corpse-strewn lair of the Head Troll, the ruler's boss to the third power.

Her three escorts brought the ruler into the presence of the Head Troll. He cut a terrifying figure. He sat upon a great throne made of human skulls, femur and tibia bones. A soft felt of human hair covered the floor.

The Head Troll, absorbed in his reading, was unaware of their coming into the room.

"Oh Great Troll...." The soft, raspy voice of the Ghost broke the silence. "... we have brought the one you requested."

The Great Troll lifted his huge head. He growled and glowered at the four who had disturbed his concentration.

"What do you want?" he snapped.

"You, er, um, asked us to bring her to you," said the Ghost, giving the ruler a push in the direction of the Head Troll. "Here she is," the Ghost added, unnecessarily.

The Great Troll peered disapprovingly at the ruler.

"Oh," he said, "you."

The Great Troll waved dismissively at the three men. "You may go." The Wizard, the Henchman and the Ghost lost no time in getting out.

The ruler thought she understood the situation and started to take the rings from her hands.

"What're you doing?" asked the Head Troll.

"Taking off any metal," replied the ruler matter of factly, "as instructed by the Directive on Being Eaten By the Head Troll. Metal gives you indigestion."

The Head Troll threw back its giant head and made a series of noises like a combination of a gun being fired and a cannonball hitting a wall. The ruler guessed this was the Head Troll's laughter.

"No," said the Head Troll when he had regained his composure, "I'm not going to eat you, at least not today. We're doing something different today. Come with me."

The Head Troll rose from his horrible throne. Standing upright, the Head Troll was twice the height of the ruler and probably ten times her weight. She was terrified.

"Come on," said the Head Troll, "don't be such a fraidy cat."

The Head Troll headed down a dark corridor, the end of which the ruler could not see. Every step made her more afraid and she worried she would faint from the terror. 

The walk down the corridor was endless. The ruler could not fathom the magic that would make the way so long. After what felt like days of walking without stop, time had lost all meaning and the ruler was convinced she would be nothing but a lost soul trudging in the foetid wake of the Head Troll when, suddenly and without warning, the Head Troll stopped.

"Here we are," he said lightly. The ruler looked over her shoulder back the way they had come. The light from the throne room glimmered at the end of a corridor less than fifty metres in length. 

She heard a latch lift and a door open. She looked ahead again and was instantly blinded by bright daylight. 

"Here's your new digs," said the Head Troll. The ruler stayed in the corridor, momentarily incapacitated by the stunning and unexpected beauty of what she saw.

"C'mon," the Head Troll's tone was impatient. "I wasn't going to make this a time limited offer, but I could change my mind about that."

"Yes," said the ruler, stepping into the lovely day and out of the Head Troll's malodorous lair. "Thanks for this. You have my eternal gratitude."

"Hmph," offered the Head Troll. "You'll have to find a way to make things work without your Wizard. I'm keeping him, but I think you'll like the new place. Just don't call if you're ever in trouble." 

And with that, the Head Troll went back into the dark corridor, shutting the door behind him. The door disappeared. Where it had been was now a path that joined with a road that connected with the Yessir Yessir Highway.

To be continued...

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Of Historical Interest

Big, old, bristly brick pipe, possibly for sewage, peeking through the undermuck of the site of the former "North Market" across Front Street from the St. Lawrence market in Toronto.

My sister Kim's in town today - we're going to help the province balance its budget this year - so here's a rerun, from October 2013, also about family.

***********

My mother made me believe from an early age that there were riches undiscovered in small change. She collected coins - as in they would come her way through everyday commerce and rather than having them move on to the next person, she would put them into piggy banks. This was one of her ways of saving money. 

Mom believed there was always the prospect that a coin both valuable and rare would find its way into pocket change. If all else failed, time would turn those thin disks of copper and silver (before 1968) into wealth untold.

In 1973, just before we moved to Trenton from our home in Edmonton, I helped mom and dad impose order on the chaos of collected coins in the house. They dumped banks full of pennies onto a card table set up in the living room and we counted and rolled, counted and rolled - sorting the pennies by the year they were minted - for what seemed like hours. 

I surprised both my parents and myself by how engrossing I found this task. They beguiled the tedium by discussing politics. And as I turned the messy piles of pennies into tidy, uniform rolls, I absorbed every word, my concentration perfectly split between their conversation and my counting to fifty.

Many years later, after Mom died, my sisters and I found some of those rolls of pennies, about fifteen dollars' worth, in a box. I took possession of the pennies and promised my sisters I would take them to someone who could tell us if there was treasure buried there.

Turns out not. Just 30 rolls of pennies that were worth quite a lot more when they were rolled than when we found them.

Nowadays banks and grocery stores have machines that will sort loose change. But I still roll my own, an idle pass time that masquerades as being productive. When I do roll the loose change that accumulates in a small dish in our home office, the trace of the memory of my parents' long ago conversation bubbles forward and I will find myself musing about present day politics.

It's a small irony that the federal government has discontinued the penny.

Thanks for reading! Have a great week!

Karen

Good Friday in Toronto and an Update from the Yessir Yessir Highway

Still another strange little vehicle. The youngish man to whom these contraptions belong also has many stuffed bears. He brings a different bear each day with him and talks to it softly and kindly as he walks down the street. He always wears a helmet.

Sleeping raccoon high in a bare tree on the Sherbourne Common on the Toronto Waterfront.

Famous troupe l'oeil painting (1980), newly renovated park, Gooderham Flatiron Building.

************************

The Ruler of a small but pleasant realm was seated at her desk behind the locked door of her chambers. She'd just opened an envelope marked with the Great Troll's shaky handwriting.

[Editor's note: the earliest versions of this account had reported that the note inside the envelope said "Congratulations," but, more authoritative texts show that the note said "Open the door."]

There was a knock at her chamber door.

"Who is it?" asked the Ruler, really missing Chappie, her most trusted advisor, long since gone. She also missed the Wizard, who today had sent an intern when she called for assistance. In other times, he would have brought his magic sack himself.

The Ruler began to regret the long time she spent in the wilderness getting rid of the Thing. It seemed as if many things had changed in her absence.

"It's me," said a voice from behind the door. The Ruler recognized the Wizard's voice. This was odd. The Wizard had his own entry into her chamber. So he must not have been alone.

"Greetings Wizard," said the Ruler, making her voice cheerful. "Who accompanies you today?"

"It's me," said the Henchman, the Ruler's boss to the first power.

"And me." The Ruler recognized the softy, raspy voice of the Ghost, her seldom-seen boss to the second power. 

"What a red letter day this is," said the Ruler, keeping her voice cheerful as she walked across the room, unlocked and opened the door. "Three of the greatest, most noble, wisest men in the kingdom all visiting me at the same time. To what do I owe the great honour?"

The men filed in past the Ruler, made their way into the chamber, and turned to face her, in a row, their arms folded. They looked like three big, stern-faced chess pieces. 

"No time for pleasantries," said the Henchman. "We're here to take you to the Troll Bridge." The Troll Bridge was the place of greatest power and peril in the kingdom where lay the corpse-strewn lair of the Great Troll.

The Ruler, perplexed by the means but not entirely surprised by the request, grabbed her cloak and left her chambers, she assumed for the last time, with the three men.  

They made their way down the Yessir Yessir Highway in formation. Bosses One and Two flanked the Ruler on each side and the Wizard walked behind her. No one spoke.

None of the bustling crowds on the busy highway paid much heed to the foursome as they strode along. The day was warm and sunny, with a gentle breeze. The Ruler noted, in passing and without thinking too much about it, the sharp but not unpleasant smell of someone burning herbs.

To be continued....

Thanks for reading!

Have a Happy Easter!

Karen

Let Me Clarify

Photo taken almost exactly one year ago - April 9 2016: Second Floor Stained Glass Window 

A couple of readers wondered aloud - or at least by e-mail - about the import of last week's post. 

If I didn't win the competition for the job I've been doing for the past four years, then what ...? 

Am I fired? Demoted? Shuffled off to some obscure post?

I can't completely answer that question right now. Other people are involved. Announcements need to be drafted and circulated for approval a couple of thousand times. 

But, an old friend has returned from her sojourn in the wilderness. The Ruler and her Advisors got a handful of beans from a grizzled old man in exchange for The Thing. 

As far as she was concerned, that was a good and fair trade.

***********

The Ruler of a small but pleasant realm was tidying up her chambers which had been neglected during her time away.

Chappie, her most trusted Advisor and one-time right-hand-man, was long since gone so there was no one to keep the place in order. Towering, teetering stacks of undone paperwork obscured her desk, her chair and covered the floor. 

The Ruler called for assistance. A young advisor scurried in trailing a great big sack. 

The Ruler did not recognize the advisor but she had seen the sack before.

"Hello," the Ruler said to the young advisor, "did the Wizard send you to help me?"

"Yes'm," said the ridiculously young-looking advisor. "He gave me this and said you knew what to do."

"Indeed I do," said the Ruler. "Bring that over here. I'll show you how the sack works and then you can take it from there."

The Ruler grabbed as much paper as she could lift from the top of an especially burdensome looking pile and dumped it into the sack the young advisor held open.

There was a brief flash. The paper was gone. The young advisor, braced for a great weight of paper, almost fell over.

"Where'd it go?" she asked. 

"Not sure," said the Ruler, "just so long as it's not here. The Wizard likely knows. But the less I know about it the better."

The young advisor, a quick study, did not need to be told twice what to do. She scooped up a pile of paper, dropped it into the sack and moved onto the next pile.

In about a half hour, she was done. There was no paper anywhere, except for one small white envelope on the Ruler's desk that neither of them had noticed before.

"What's that?" asked the advisor. "Was it even there a minute ago?"

Startled because she knew full well that there had not been a white envelope there a minute ago, the Ruler thanked the young advisor for her work and hurried her out the door. 

"Take that sack back to the Wizard right away," the Ruler warned. "No side trips."

The Ruler shut and, on second thought, locked her chamber door.

She went to her desk.

The envelope sat smack dab in the middle of the desktop. Plain white. No embossing or official insignia. Nothing on it but the Ruler's name in the shaky handwriting of the Great Troll, the Ruler's Boss to the Third Power.

The best and worst case scenario for what might be in that envelope was the unicorn the Ruler had always dreamed of.

She figured it would be not be that. There had been no unicorn sightings in the realm for many years.

She sat down. She inhaled and exhaled deeply a time or two.

She opened the envelope.

Inside was a single piece of paper with three words, also written in the Great Troll's shaky script.

"Open the door"

To be continued...

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Your Tax Dollars - One Last Time

Me and John Cooper - 29 March, 2017, Ottawa

This is a picture of me and John Cooper. John's my fellow co-chair of a multi-stakeholder working group that develops new standards to protect the air you breathe. The day after this photo was taken, we brought the group to consensus one more time. 

Your tax dollars ....

John works - at least for the next few months - at Health Canada. And then he will retire. 

John's long been one of my favourite public servants. He's smart, dedicated and fun to work with. He's also courageous, determined and a man of great integrity.

It was a real pleasure to work with him and I will miss him when he's gone.

I'd heard this past week of the imminent retirement of a few other air quality warriors, and I'm a little sad I'm not among them.

You Start to Wonder Why On Earth You Still Work for Government When ...

After three years, eight months and nineteen days at a job, I was told that the hour I spent talking about myself on March 2, 2017 put an end to all that. 

I lost the competition for my own job.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen