Please avoid amputating your digits

Not that this has anything to do with anything, but I found myself rather disturbed on a recent trip to the local grocery store - Loblaw Great Food, if we're being precise, but it'll always be Loblaws, with an s, to me.

What's so upsetting at the grocery store, you ask? Well, this: A self-serve bread-cutting machine.

Now, I completely understand the modern-day need, nay, mania, to shave costs and identify efficiencies everywhere and anywhere possible. A slight reduction in non-value-added headcount can mean eight cents less on fresh asparagus. I get it.

But the question we face isn't whether we expect stores to watch their pennies - we do - but what they and we are willing to give up in the process. I'm going to vote against giving up fingers or thumbs just so the store can go without an employee trained in the fine art of retaining his or hers. Call me squeamish. I can deal with it.

For generations, we've handed loaves of bread over to these fine, indeed brave individuals, then watched with a curious mixture of fascination and horror at their ability to carve it all up with speed and safety. To the best of my recollection, no one was ever injured in the process, and the bread always tasted especially good when we got it home.

Now? I'm almost afraid to ask what's in store. I imagine hordes of the great unwashed, throwing their loaves willy nilly onto the machine, brazenly ignoring the well intentioned and laid out instructions. I also imagine particularly adventurous, if not entirely intelligent, shoppers experimenting with the machine, seeing what other non-yeast-based confections will survive the trip through the blades.

It's a recipe for disaster. And I have no interest in being around when it plays out. I think it may be time to find an alternative to bread. Or a store that still employs bread-slicers. I'll take the eight-cent hit on asparagus for now.

Your turn: Is this a cut too far?

One fish, two fish

Addiction is a funny beast. If it involves alcohol, drugs, gambling, or some noxious combination of same, it's generally perceived as a bad thing. But get hooked on Glee, orange juice or the grandaddy of them all, phonics, and you'd be forgiven for not making it past the third of the 12 steps.

Which is my way of admitting I'm addicted to the arcane subset of photography that involves walking into a grocery store and taking pictures of whatever's on sale. I have no idea how this little vice of mine took root or why it's evolved as it has. I do know that it's almost gotten me escorted out of the Wal-Mart once, and it's resulted in my being left alone by my annoyed wife on more than one occasion. Yet I still persist.

It's not as if the resulting photos are especially unique. They're pictures of everyday foods, after all, shot hastily under bad lighting, often with my BlackBerry's camera because to haul out the DSLR might actually result in my being forcibly ejected or, gasp, hauled in for questioning by mall cop wannabes. I won't be blowing these up to poster size or submitting them for gallery displays.

Then why?

Because I view grocery shopping as one of those necessities of modern life that, depending on our attitude can either be a chore or an opportunity for enjoyment. I choose enjoyment. When I tag along with my wife, it's a date. It isn't champagne and candles at some swanky restaurant, but that's precisely the point. It doesn't have to be. It's simply a time for us to be together, and I've never believed in limiting those opportunities to nights out or special occasions.

Indeed, special occasions can happen anytime if we let them. Even in the fish section.

Your turn: How do you make the ordinary seem special?

One more thing: These fish are far from home, though I strongly suspect they're patently unaware of that fact. Our own Thematic far-from-home journey continues...here.

Thumbs up

Forgive the picture. It's the best my BlackBerry could do with the available fluorescent light, and after the day that Noah had just had, I wasn't about to get hung up on the finer points of photography.

Long story short, little man jammed his thumb while playing basketball at school. I fetched him and, after a false start at a closed-early-by-budget-cuts urgent care centre, we ended up across town at the ER.

Noah was his usual stoic, balanced little self, taking in the sights - a deathly ill-looking, wheelchair-bound woman smoking in a deepening snowdrift, a little girl around his age using a walker to get around - with the eye and demeanor of someone much older. He answered every question from the doctors and nurses with the kind of politeness that reminded me of my wife.

As we waited and waited, he hung out on the examining room bed, listening to kids who whined too much and parents who should have needed a license to procreate, smiling quietly at the circus but refusing to let it bother him. At one point, his lip quivered and tears began to fall: he was hungry. In the rush to get here, he hadn't had a chance to eat anything and it was now past suppertime. A promise to pick something up afterward stemmed the tears.

Eventually, the doc with a kind heart I wish we could both bottle and clone appeared and quickly diagnosed strained ligaments. Nothing broken, thank goodness. A splint for 5 days and pain reliever and ice. Back into the snowy night we went, picking our way to the open house at his school that he so very much didn't want to miss.

And his empty tummy? A Mars bar from the vending machine was all he wanted. And he got to eat it in my car, the one I always said would be a meal-free zone. It was a very special day, I said with a wink, so we could easily make an exception for him.

About halfway there, he sighed happily from the back seat and said this had been a great adventure for us. Despite the pain he still felt and the tough day he'd just experienced, our wise little guy somehow managed to see the big picture from inside our darkened car. I blinked back the tears and continued driving through the blinding snow.

Your turn: How do you find the good in something that isn't?

Camelmania

We all have our favorite animal species. Mine? Depends on the day. Or my mood at any given moment. Or the current contents of my uber-cool Windows Phone 7-powered smartphone. Whichever way I'm leaning on any given day, I guess I've got a soft spot for anything that isn't human. Maybe I've got animal DNA mixed in with mine.

Wherever it comes from, it means I find scenes like this to be strangely amusing. And I don't necessarily need to know the full backstory to appreciate the moment.

Your turn: What should this little guy's name be?

Bakerv or Bakery?

I see weird things all the time, like this descender-less sign at the local grocery store. And unlike the automatons around me who were mindlessly tossing apple crumb pie they seriously didn't need into their overstuffed megacarts, I looked up and pondered its significance for a moment before I, too, joined them in a quiet, shared celebration of all things apple crumb.

I don't know why the folks who designed and built this sign couldn't figure out a way to turn the bakerv into a bakery. But a small voice in my head - what, you don't hear voices? - said a silent thank you for this unexpected little surprise. And a silent thank you to the Research In Motion engineers just up the road who so kindly baked a camera into my BlackBerry. And a silent thank you to my wife who, even though she walked away as I composed and shot, didn't outright ban me from having this tiny moment of photographic joy.

Life's short. We've got to find joy wherever we can. I'm surrounded by it wherever I go, and whomever I'm with.

Your turn: Where do YOU find joy?

About this photo: We're savouring this week. What the heck am I talking about? Click here and all things heck - and Thematic - shall be explained.

Before the red light goes on

You can experience a so-called "still life" moment even when you're in the middle of a very busy sequence of events. I'd like to share this scene from a studio as Exhibit A.

I was a bit early for my interview earlier this week, so I had a couple of minutes to spend in this very special place. It's special because it's been around since long before I came on the scene, and if its muted, hanging-equipment-to-the-rafters walls could talk, they'd tell stories of a community's broadcast history, and of shows and personalities who imprinted themselves on generations of viewers. It's the kind of behind-the-scenes scene that few of them were ever privileged to see, but that doesn't even come close to eroding its impact.

So whenever I get the chance to drink in the peacefulness of this shrine to broadcast history, I grab it. I know it's a small thing, but I'm learning, slowly, that life is well lived when you take the time to appreciate the small things.

Your turn: Ever take time to smell the proverbial roses? Care to share?

Lesson from a four-legged friend

I've decided I rather like having a dog to come home to. Although my wife and kids are usually pretty consistent about hellos and goodbyes - my wife believes in making these moments special - there are times when the only greeter at the door has four legs and a soggy Schnauzer beard. When everyone in the house is too busy to get to the door, I can always count on our silver-furred hellion to attack the door until I can get it open. In the truest guard dog tradition, he'll bark and howl until he realizes it's me. Then he'll bore in, nubbin-of-a-tail wagging madly as he buries his head in my chest and snorts repeatedly.

I'm not quite sure what he hopes to accomplish in the process. I can hear all manner of sniffing going on, and all I can come up with is he's following his instinctive hunting dog's DNA as he tries to figure out where I've been, what I've done and who I've done it with.

Before long, I'll have to get on the floor because that just seems to make it so much easier to enjoy this wiggling ball of fur. It's always the same, and it never gets old. I think it's the unconditional nature of it all that makes moments like this worth holding on to. He'll be there, drooling and happy, no matter what kind of day he or I had. He doesn't temper his excitement for anything - the world revolves around the two of us for those few first moments on reconnectedness. He's happy simply because we're together.

I keep thinking there's a lesson here, and all I need to do is listen to him a little more closely. I think I need to be a little more like him - unconditional, in the moment, simply happy to be together, and to simply be - whoever I'm with.

Good dog, isn't he?

A bottled memory

Our two youngest munchkins take gymnastics at a club near the house. For an hour every Tuesday night, I get to watch them bounce, tumble, balance, flip, and run themselves ragged. It's a highlight not only of their week, but of mine as well, because there's nothing quite as rewarding as watching your kids be active and vital.

I'm sitting here right now, in fact, and as much as I'd like to share flash-frozen pictures of them in flight, the BlackBerry's camera is decidedly too dim-bulbed to do the fast action thing. So a still life of Dahlia's water bottle will have to do.

Yeah, it's as mundane as mundane gets. But someday I hope they look back at this gritty picture taken on a cold, wintry evening and remember it as happily as I will. Childhood memories, after all, shouldn't be forgotten.

Fonzie stole my twenty

I learned many things while we were away, and I'll share some of 'em in an upcoming blog entry (because it's a momentous occasion when I learn something new, I suppose.) But for now, I'd like to share on admittedly fun piece learning, courtesy of my wife.

Namely, she noticed that Henry Winkler is on the American $20 bill. Twenty bucks...the Fonz...not a bad way to engage in free enterprise, eh?

Your turn: Celebrity lookalikes showing up in interesting places. Please discuss.

Epiphany on a brilliant morning

The scene: a quiet suburban street. I'm riding back home after morning services at the synagogue. Quick religious primer: For a year after an immediate relative passes away, you go to synagogue for services and you say "kaddish" as a way of honoring his/her memory. It's still new to me and more than a little raw, so I admit having to sometimes pause in the middle of the near-rhythmic, monotonous process to gather my bearings and work through whatever spurious thoughts have weaseled their way into my head. I don't suppose it'll ever feel "normal" to me to be among the mourners who must say this prayer. And perhaps that's part of what I must take away from this.

Often, on the way home from shul, I continue to let my mind churn because this is my first ever experience dealing with direct loss and I guess there's no other way to deal with it except with a lot of quiet thought and reflection. Which a bike ride home from shul in the early morning makes oh so convenient.

So on this morning, as I cruised the leafy subdivision, lost in my thoughts, I noticed this one tree with a particularly golden glow and felt the need to stop. I knew the basic little camera baked into my BlackBerry wouldn't do it justice, but it was all I had at that moment, and I really didn't want to lose what I was feeling at That Particular Moment to the shifting sands of forgotten time. So I stopped the bike and got to work.

The picture didn't give me any more answers to the endlessly confusing torrent of thoughts that occupied my mind both then and since. But it gave me a fleeting opportunity to feel a little closer to normal as I composed a take-it-or-lose-it shot on the side of the road on a chilly morning. This was a very Carmi thing to do, and the fact that I was even doing it at all was a very small sign that I was still me. Changed significantly, mind you, but still capable of the same inexplicable kind of creative insanity that had always defined me. That realization was all I needed to get on with the rest of my day.

Too bad every day doesn't get to start with such clarity. I'll need to work on that next.

A haunted man's lesson

There's something to be said for the sliver of time before the day begins, when the sky is still dark, the house is still quiet, and you've woken up before you wanted to and are consequently stuck with only your thoughts as company.

It's where I find myself now, solving the little problems of the day - timelines for getting everyone up and on their way to school, planning the day, trying not to drop anything from the must-do list - as well as the not-so-little ones, like what I want to be when I grow up and how I'm going to get there so I can make it happen for my wife and kids.

It's not always easy, this life thing, and I admit to the occasional moment (okay, maybe two) of feeling overwhelmed to the point that I just don't seem to have the answers or the solutions, and I can't see forward as clearly as I'd like. But yesterday, I was served up a stark reminder of why I shouldn't worry as much as I do, and why despite my own concerns about the future, I really should trust - both in myself and in the world around me - that I lead a charmed life compared to so many others.

The scene: I was cycling home from a television studio, where I had just taped a guest segment for a show that airs next week. Evening had descended, and I rode carefully, deliberately through the new darkness. As I silently cruised up downtown's main drag, I caught a sad scene out of the corner of my eye: a man stood on the sidewalk wearing no shirt, garbage bags scattered around his feet, doubtless containing whatever he owned in the world. Greasy long hair spilled out of both sides of a tattered ball cap. His face spoke volumes about his life: empty, addicted, hopeless. People walked by him as if he wasn't even there, averting their eyes and picking up the pace to put him behind them that much more quickly.

He faded out of my own view just as soon as he appeared, but I couldn't stop thinking about him. It was a cool night - maybe 10 degrees C (50-ish F) - and I had pulled my jacket in a bit tighter to ward off the chill as I rode. And here was a man, shirtless and alone.

I had no answers then, nor do I now. But as I wake up to a slowly brightening sky in a quiet house surrounded by all that matters to me, I find myself still haunted by the sight. I realize my worries pale next to his. I have a home, a family, a life, a future. I have a day to plan, and the tools I need to productively make it through the day. Like anyone else, I'll face roadblocks and loss. But at least I have. This stranger, whose ghostlike image refuses to leave me, did not.

Life. No manual. Not always easy. But so damn precious all the same. I hope this lonely soul realizes it, too.

Take the long way home

Blackfriars, shadowed
London, ON, October 2009

I took this photo tonight, as I slowly cycled my way home from an appearance on Rogers Television's Newsmakers Live. I was part of a panel of unbelievably cool people - a London Police Sergeant, a noted driving instructor, a Rogers product expert and, of course, host Bob Smith - discussing the new handsfree law (aka Bill 118) that went into effect in Ontario yesterday and essentially bans the use of conventional cell phone handsets while driving. It was an hour of live television that mattered, and I know it left viewers with something to ponder - which is why I love media as much as I do.

As I often do following a TV hit, I decompressed the experience in my mind, trying to learn and file away said learnings for next time. And for reasons that still make little sense so me, I felt a compelling need to stop my bike and take grainy, lousy pictures with my BlackBerry as I cycled through some of the dodgier streets in our burg. And because misery loves company, I felt similarly compelled to upload the results to Facebook (find me here) as I slowly moved across the map toward home.

It had been a particularly trying day - two of our kids were home sick, and Debbie ended up taking Zach to the hospital for a closer look at what may or may not have been pneumonia* - and I was feeling more than a bit pensive. So a bit of quiet time on a silent bike on a dark night was probably just what I needed.

Or so I convinced myself. My final picture was of a disturbing scene on a street barely five minutes from my house. An ambulance had stopped, lights flashing, in front of a 15-year-old Ford Crown Victoria. A black late-model Nissan Sentra was parked, hazards on, behind the stricken vehicle. As I passed this surreal scene, ambulance attendants were carefully removing the driver, an elderly man, from the driver's seat.

In the darkness, I heard a sob that will haunt me. It was guttural, almost animal-like in its tone and intensity. His wife, perhaps? I'll likely never know. I stood a respectful distance away, on the other side of the relatively busy four-lane road, and still that sound carried. I shuddered to think about what I was witnessing, whether another family was now going through what we had just experienced, whether the wave of loss would affect them as profoundly as it had affected us.

Suddenly my difficult day seemed so very trivial relative to what was unfolding in front of me. I felt I had no right to whine given whatever it was that had just befallen these complete strangers who I had randomly encountered on this night. My rather lame little pity party was over. I got back on the bike and finished the last two kilometres as quickly as my legs could manage. Prayers for this man and his family seemed so inadequate as I silently sliced through the night, but it was all I could manage.

Your turn: Cherishing what we have and not what we don't. Please discuss.

*He's home. On meds to clean up what the docs thought may have been a suspect streak on his lungs. Still his sweet self, thank G-d. The adventure continues...

The circle of life

I'm at the hospital today. I was here yesterday, too. I was here less than a couple of weeks ago, and I fear I'll be back again soon.

My mother-in-law has been here for three weeks. Surgery #3 is scheduled for Tuesday, but you'd be forgiven for writing it on your calendar in pencil, as these things tend to be delayed about as often as Iranian presidents claim their nuclear programs are for peaceful purposes.

We've been spending time with my mom this weekend, our first visit without my dad. It isn't only weird: It's surreal. And running back and forth to the hospital adds another unreal dimension to the proceedings. Not fun, and it won't change anytime soon.

I know that this strange juxtaposition of death, illness and ongoing life holds a number of life-continuity lessons for me. Problem is, I suspect I'm not in the right frame of mind to appreciate them. Not yet, anyway. Perhaps soon.

Which, in the end, is the most important lesson of all: Take the time. I'm slowly starting to get it.

Big bridge to nowhere

I was on my way home and didn't have a particular deadline. And since bicycles don't burn the eons-old remnants of dinosaurs and other fossilized life forms, I felt no guilt taking a few detours through our burg's bike path network.

I had been to this particular spot a few months back. The path was clearly still under construction then, with large unpaved stretches broken up only by a bridge with no apparent connection to anything. I figured things would be all finished after a few months. I figured wrong.

This big, lovely, paid-for-by-London-taxpayers bridge is still disconnected from anything remotely approaching asphalt. It sits behind a fence, and leads to nothing more than a strip of gravel that stops for good at the edge of an impenetrable forest. From the looks of things, not a stitch of work has been done here all summer.

Still, this big piece of engineering with a big price tag seemed worthy of a picture.

Your turn: When the road suddenly ends. Please discuss.

One more thing: To participate in this week's Thematic Photographic theme, perspective, just click here. Thanks!

Big scoop (x2)

Lick this
Komoka, ON, August 2009

Is there any memory that looms larger in a child's mind than that of an ice cream cone? Maybe I'm odd (wait, I AM odd, but that's a story for another day) but some of my most vivid recollections of childhood revolve in some way around this most inconvenient, not-always-healthy confection.

Messiness aside, if this ostensibly small, perceptively huge snack creates a smile along the way, it can't be a bad thing, right?

Your turn: What's the appeal of ice cream?

[Thematic Photographic goes big this week. The fun begins here.]

Vignette - they take to the road

The scene: the cul-de-sac in front of our house. Now that the snow's pretty much melted, the kids have been clamoring to get back on their bikes. So after hauling their dusty wheels out of the dusty garage and pumping up the tires, I've set them loose on an unsuspecting neighborhood.

Either the bikes got smaller or they grew over the winter, because their legs seem a little more bunched up than I remember from last year. It means we'll soon have to initiate a new round of bike-themed hand-me-downing, but for today, they seem content to take their smallish machines for a spin.

Their excited voices echo off the silent houses as they cruise longish circles up and down the empty street. The pavement is chaotically streaked with salt stains, crusty mud and patches of gravel and grit, signs of a hard winter that they know could come back any day and turn it all back into pure white.

But for now, they're happy to have been sprung from the house, happy to taste a little bit of the outdoors as spring tantalizingly beckons. This is, I suppose, what freedom looks like when you've been watching the world through a frosty living room window for four months.

Before long, the late afternoon shadows push the sun away and paint the street with increasingly blue-tinged light. They shiver in their sweaters and blow warm air onto their hands before deciding they've had enough for now. They make their way inside and pat the puppy who's been watching them patiently from the front door.

Tomorrow's another day, another opportunity to continue to expand their view of the world. I won't always be so lucky to stand beside the road and watch them as I have today.

Toothopolis is under attack

Too much choice
London, ON, July 2007

The grocery store of my childhood was a homey place where I recognized the names and faces of most of the folks who worked there. It was small enough that I could see each corner when we walked in. Product choices were pretty simple: pick from the one or two options, then move on.

Today? Not so much. I'm in the toothpaste aisle of the local Loblaws, our version of an oversized temple of conspicuous consumption. It took us well over five minutes to decipher the eight different kinds of Crest toothpaste. I was about to use my Moto Q to research these offerings online when my wife figured it out and made her choice.

Every item in our cart requires a similar process: stand in front of the overloaded shelves as you make a purchase decision only marginally less complex than that required to grant launch authority to a space shuttle.

This plethora of choice drives the need for airport-sized superstores whose dairy sections come with their own zip code. On a day when the Live Earth concerts decry global warming and prompt us to act, I wonder about the role that supersized commercialism and mega-choice in places like this grocery store play in our current environmental pickle.

I miss the human-sized stores of my childhood, and wonder if I'm the only one who feels that way.

Your turn: Am I? What message do today's superstores send to you?

Air show kids

I'm making good on my somewhat benign threat to moblog from the air show. I managed to convince all three kids to tag along after overcoming their concerns over noise. We're on the shuttle bus back to the parking area...I hope this mobile geek blogging stuff works.

This is what they look like after climbing over, into and through every last military vehicle on static display, after eating their way through the knapsack that I had stuffed with snacks, after endearing themselves to every event volunteer they encountered. Oh, and they managed to see some neat planes, too.

After all that, I'm sure they'll sleep well tonight. And when they wake up tomorrow, I hope today's adventure becomes a happy forever memory for them.

Your turn: Please share a happy forever memory (I really like that term, can you tell?)

Young faithful

Puppy awaits his masters
London, ON, right now

It's 8:05 p.m. The kids are riding their bikes in front of the house. Frasier sits on his leash by the curb, waiting for everyone to return.

This isn't a huge moment in anyone's life. It's merely a moment. But as I sit on the lawn and watch our brood enjoy a warm evening under a clear blue sky, I decide that even suppposedly "mere" moments deserve to be remembered and recorded.

Your turn: If all the bits and bytes work as they should, this entry will float from my Motorola Q and onto my blog, thus making this my official moblogging (mobile blogging) debut. What other vignettes from afar should I capture next?