12:10 a.m. - 2003-12-08
Sunday Solitude
Good day today. My youngest's birthday plans were rescued by his brothers and Dad. I had suggested yesterday that he call them and see if they would help out in the short term until I can get my banking woes straightened out. They all chipped in to help in one way or another. His Dad came by and took him out to pick up his toy this afternoon. Who knows he might even come up for air by January. The x-box system came with two games - one a Star Wars - "choose your own path" and another role play option. Still a lot of violence but also alot of creative thinking required, oxymoron though that might seem.
A note in the newspaper today about the Queen and the Canadian government planning to apologize to the Acadian community for past behaviour. In 1755, when the French and British were still fighting over parts of Canada, the British expelled the Acadians - who were long time French settlers from the Atlantic provinces, especially Nova Scotia. Some fled to Quebec and further west while others joined some of their confreres - the Cajuns (Canadians?) -who had established New Orleans when the original French colonies in Canada became too large. The poem "Evangeline" by Longfellow is the story of one Acadian woman's quest to find her lover and tells of her travels through North America to find him. One very good novel by Thomas Costain "High Towers" captures the story of the original settlers from Canada and the dynamics that led some of them to relocate to Louisiana.
Another story of the lies the pharmaceutical companies are employing to sell their products to unsuspecting patients. They now pay MDs a fee if they will consent to have their name used as the scholarly researcher who tested and reviewed the product, even though it is the drug company that wrote the supposedly scientificly objective document. It has reached the point where reputable medical journals are requiring that all doctors/researchers submitting articles, sign a declaration that it is their own researched material and not a promotional ghost-written piece by the legalized drug lords.
On the other side of the coin the Canadian and provincial governments are now trying to regulate the herbal and traditional Chinese medicine community. The problem is that the governments don't have the knowledge or skill to determine what is effective or not, nor has there been any indication that they intend to find reputable herbalists or instructors from Chinese universities - for example - to provide the expertise necessary. Maybe they should clean up the pharmaceutical companies fraudulent activities first, rather than eliminating their "competition" which seems to be the thrust of this exercise. There is a reason that Canadians are turning away in droves from current western chemical medications and are trusting the practices that have been proven over thousands of years.
Anyway, I've done all my reports for work and exhausted my need for a cleaning frenzy because of the banking problems I found yesterday. Another room was torn apart and reconfigured today much to the cats dismay and loads of laundry for two days straight have them wondering what the next upheaval is going to be, I think. Keeps them guessing.
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