Health Care

Health Care

 

In 1934 the Concordia Hospital, (on the Red River property pretty well next door to the LaSalle Hotel), was opened by the Mennonite Hospital Society Concordia. I was born there about a year later. Old Doc Oelkers was the medical director at the time. I'm not sure he had any idea of what he was in for with wave upon wave of Mennonites showin, up at his door, blabberin' away in their German dialect about every gawl danged ailment imaginable. He lasted until 1962, which was remarkable, all things considered, since it was one of the finest hospitals around. I'm sure exhaustion finally did him in.

People were full of hope with the new hospital too, designed by an award-winning architect. It was state of the art. Well, enter the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, and its reputation went downhill faster'n feces down the drain of a septic system.

That's what I wanted to talk about here. You'd think by now all the bugs would have been worked outa the system, but no, all of the dysfunction is still well entrenched into the hospital operation. I was witness to that the other day when I had occasion to be there. I took my sister there over a blood clot in her leg. That would have been about ten a.m. I went home to wait for a call when she was all done. At about one o'clock she phones and says she's just waiting for results. She's all done, so I go down. I'm smart enough not to park at meter number eleven cause its still outa order (again). By three o'clock they finally drag her to a day bed and I go sit an' wait. I notice a sign on the wall toutin' practitioner nurses bein' used in place o' doctors.

Long story short, at four thirty we go home without my sister havin' been seen by a doctor. Well, the doctor didn't have time 'cause he had to see a fellow who had been waitin' for eight hours already. What about the nurse practitioner she wanted to know. "We don't have one," he said. WHAT? They got a sign on the wall askin' us to support a non existent nurse practitioner? "Well nobody has applied for the job."

It don't take long to find out where the problem is. Seems like the Health Authority has modeled its operation on one o' them automated chicken processin' places where you hang the bird up at one end o' the chain an' it goes through all the operations 'til it comes our plucked an' eviscerated at the other end, ready for the oven. That ain't the way it works folks! The whole business can be summed up by that broken parking meter out front. What's the point of puttin' money into somethin' that don't work anyways? Ol' Doc. Oelkers must be spinnin' in his grave. At least that's how it seems to me from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin'.

Harper Fiddles While Canada Burns

Harper Fiddles While Canada Burns

Well, we don't wanna wish him the same fate as what happened to Nero. He should live long enough to regret his dictatorial mismanagement of Canada. But I think it's a reasonably accurate analogy of our dictator even though I find it hard to believe that people will still care enough to give him a black eye two thousand years from now. Just this mornin' he was blamin' Canada's economic downturn on China. Europe, an' the U.S. of A., but it wasn't enough for him to authorize any stimulus spending.

How about some smarter spendin' Mr. Prime Minister? I keep Harpin' on it (pun intended) but nobody's answerin' the door in yer brain. Well finally, with the whole western half of the country ablaze, the provincial budgets depleted, an' firefighters from as far away as Australia an' New Zealand here fightin' the fires, you send in the army.

Well, it's about time! It's the wrong time for sure, but it's about time ya committed the army to do somethin' for Canada! Apparently it's only a temporary measure though until the fires are under control. That's just another band-aid solution. Just when are you white guys ever gonna smarten up?

Well there's people what know how and when to start forest fires and even where too. At least they used to. How do you think we got the landscape we got? Long before us white guys showed up, the Aboriginal people took care of the forest fires in the late fall and early spring in controlled burns. That certainly lightened the load of summer burning. Mind you, if a lightning strike got things outta control, they had the advantage of being able to load up their homes on travois and take off for cooler places. (Not that it would hurt to burn some of them government homes on reserves to the ground).

I know it sounds unthinkable, but it occurs to me that we should be handing over the management of forest fires to the people who have a track record in properly controlling the burns. We should in fact hand over the care and keepin' of all our physical resources to the Aboriginal community before they forget how to do it too. I know that flies in the face of conventional wisdom, but when one thinks of the tremendous spin off benefits of such a move, eating a little crow over our superior intelligence is a small price to pay. At least that's how it seems to me from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin'.

 

School Homing

School Homing

 

Now there's a term for ya! Instead'a home schooling where the parents keep their kids at home an' teach them the basics of education along with moral an' social values, they've turned it around an' now the teachers teach the students the basics of social graces as well as their school lessons. Hm, that sounds a whole lot like boardin' school or even worse and more accurately, residential school.

What's bothersome about that whole concept is that while children have been goin' to Ivy League boardin' schools for years and years with varying results, and others have been forced into residential schools with a high average of disastrous outcomes, this whole idea aims directly at the middle class.

It kind of looks like a cash grab on the part of the schools, for a ready market of frazzled parents desperate to get away from their (beloved) children, except for holidays - aka respite.

It's one thing to zero in on the middle class for a new way to make a buck, but they could be doin' a much better job of it. I remember jokin' to my son Ron a number of years ago that all the world's children should be centrally housed in government buildin's, with parental visitin' privileges once a week for a couple of hours. That would prompt a mutual appreciation of one another without the stress of actual parentin'. Of course he had the opposite view that perhaps parents could be similarly housed.

Let's face it. Every woman wants to exercise her maternal right to bear children an' I'm NOT gonna talk about what men think their rights are. But once the pain of childbirth kicks in and even more so, when the little critters come home fillin' the house with loud cryin' an' dirty diapers for a week or so, the whole dynamic changes -dramatically. Factor in grandmas an' grandpas spoilin' the kids, the cost of clothin' music lessons, computer crap an' a whole list o' so ons, it all becomes a pretty bleak picture.

If only they can figure out a proper code of conduct an' moral education, the parents can still claim to be parents (while payin' through the nose) an' yet follow their career an' life paths as fulfilled individuals. Jeez, we must be dreamin', or at least that's how it seems to me from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin'.

Cursive Writing

Cursive Writing

 

I don't get it. The question has come up about whether or not our children should learn cursive writing. Can you believe that somebody actually asked that question? I don't know who dunnit, but I suspect it musta been the same people what invented the new way of doin' arithmetic. There's probably a committee somewheres what thinks up ways to make children dumber an' more unskilled than they ever was before. Well it ain't calligraphy, but it's as close as we're gonna get without special trainin'.

I can still remember learnin' to write that way in grade three at school. I even remember the teacher's name. It was Miss Sneddon. Anyways that was the way big people wrote an' it was cool to be able to write like big people. What I don't remember is anybody bellyachin' about it. What did disgruntle us though was that the girls all had beautiful flowing handwriting while only a few o' the boys did.

Well now lets put this into a real context. I'd like to know who's gonna read all the documents and archives that are made in cursive writing if ya don't know how to do it yer own self. I suppose in a few years when all us old timers are on the other side o' the grass, it'll fall into the realm of archaeologists. Right now we got a copy o' the Magna Carta travellin' around Canada. Who's gonna be able to read that? An who's gonna train prospective doctors to write out their gobbledy-gook prescriptions or the pharmacists to read 'em? Or what do we do if there's a power outage an' we can't use our I pads or computers no more? Think about that!

There was a time when letter writing was a nice thing to do. Handwritten letters was nice to give an' even better to receive. You could tell who they was from just by lookin' at writin' on the envelope. Winston Churchill used to write to his wife every day, even if they was in the same house. It was his way of expressing himself that could be done in no other way. So you see, there's a certain romanticism in cursive writing that can't be duplicated.

The trouble is, we keep lowering the expectations we have of our children. It escapes our adult imagination that they have a tremendous capacity for learning. An they have an appetite for it too!  If we continue screwin' down the capacity for book learnin', someday archaeologists will identify the time in our evolution that our human brains began to shrink. At least that's how it seems to me from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin'.

 

Canada Day

Canada Day

 

 

The least we can do is wish Canada a happy birthday. Well, she's startin' to get a little long in the tooth an' with all the turmoil an' troubles she's been havin' lately, I guess she could use a little cheerin' up. The people this country used to belong to was havin' a massive celebration of summer solstice a few days ago. Of course those celebrations have a deeper meaning than just lightin' a bunch o' firecrackers an' playin' loud music. They are held around the world and date back into antiquity, usually having to do with the exact moment the sun "stands still" before descending into shorter days, and the bearing of food and life for another year.

Well we got no such lofty aspirations. We just wanna blow up firecrackers an' play loud music. Half the time we don't even know why. It reminds me a little of the Orangemen in Ireland marchin' through the streets of the downtrodden catholic communities, blowin' their penny whistles, drummin' an' thumbin' their noses at them over their past victories. We of course are a little more subtle than that. We don't focus on comin' over here an' stealin' the land from the Indians, then relegatin' them to remote an' low lyin' areas in the north while we take over the fertile southern lands. Naw, that's ancient history. We just wanna love Canada, the country that WE made an' are part of, so we blow up firecrackers an play loud music. That's deep?

If old John A. had got outta the scotch long enough to use his brain, he'd 'a sent them Mennonites what came from Russia into places like Island Lake, Norway House an' all them other reserves made o' useless marshland. These folks got experience in cleanin' up useless lowland marshes an' turnin' 'em into productive agricultural land. They done it in the Netherlands an' what is now Poland an' in what used to be called south Russia -even Siberia. These buggers know what they're doin' on the land. They could grow sixty bushels o' wheat to the acre on a flat rock. It's just when they get into parliament that they're outta their element an' are totally useless. Come to think of it, we could still do that.  First thing you know, the whole north would become Canada's breadbasket with clean water an' proper shitters an' schools an' everything'd be high an' dry. Then we could be proud of our country. At least that's how it seems to me from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin',