Women thrilled with the hair they were granted at birth are lucky. Most of us look in the mirror and see hair that is too something – too curly, straight, thin, thick. Curly hair is my lot in life.

The young hairdresser took a look at my curly grey mop and set to work. We had a thoroughly enjoyable conversation until I started getting nervous. “Leave some,” I pleaded.

Wondering if I should laugh or cry, deciding on the former

“Just a little more here,” he replied, as he whacked at the tufts of hair that refused to obey whatever vision he had for them. Every cowlick half hidden by slightly longer locks leaped into view. No matter how short he cut the hair around them, they would not stop opening into distinct gaps.

I was sure his last act, once I finally conveyed sufficient alarm for him to stop, would be to brush the remaining hairs into some semblance of order.

I was wrong. He squeezed gel onto his fingers, rubbed them through what was left of my hair, and admired the results.  “Now it looks kind of butch,” he said, “much more modern.”

All the way home I alternated between laughing out loud and wishing I’d brought a paper bag to pull over my head. Last time I had such a short haircut was when a friend in Oakland sent me to her hairdresser. The guy was actually a barber, and he knew how to handle the locks of my African American friend. All he could figure out to do with mine was to shave them down to an only slightly feminine version of a crew cut.

Just as short, but I can live with this

When I got home and looked in the mirror, I laughed so hard tears ran down my cheeks. I snapped a couple shots for comic relief on the next bad day. Then I washed out the gel and combed what little hair I had into something I could live with.

Young hairdressers, trying to update us oldies. Gotta love ‘em.

And the good news is? Hair grows.

Procedure preparation by Joao Fandino, via Dreamstime

The familiar quotation is attributed to Bette Davis. The exact wording varies but is along the lines of “Old age is no place for sissies.”

How right she was. As body parts reach their best-before dates, curious and unwelcome failures start occurring. Even though people are healthier and vigorous for more years than ever before, there’s no denying the body is gradually edging toward its last stand.

That’s why we need poets like Sterling Haynes, who are in the middle of it all and know how to describe with clarity and laughter.

Sunday morning sadness was spent
listening to the E.R. Surgeon’s
story of my plight – “first the good
news, it hasn’t ruptured,
now the bad news, sir, your
abdominal aneurysm is big.”

Am I to be hosed?

There was a hush – shushed
silence in the room then a tumbling-
mumbling of words – “no driving,
stay at home, no travelling or sex,
walk a mile a day, if the pain
gets bad, come back to the hospital.”

Come back to be hosed?

“Is that all doctor?”
“Please see a vascular surgeon
tomorrow, my records have
been faxed to him today. The nurse
has your appointment time
and now you are discharged.”

Am I to be hosed, urgently?

“Yes, sir, you will be hosed
gently. A stent of kevlon or gore tex and
stainless steel will be imserted
through your femoral arteries
and hooklet attach onto the lining of your
aorta and patch the big bulge.

A hose to stop a speeding bullet?”

An internal bullet proof hose?
A contrasting CT scan and measurements
tailored to fit my belly’s bulge.
My stent constructed in Mississauga
to fit me like a glove, sent by UPS to
the Kelowna General. To be threaded up
my groin, femorally – eureka!

My hose will be screwed clockwise.

Now my innards are water proof
no leaking into my gut…yeah!
to be hosed good and proper
and yeah, my feet are warmer too.

©2011 Sterling Haynes

He’s back. One of my favourite humorous writers has sent another poem. We’re surrounded by things that beep. The irritating sound is meant to alert us to some problem or other. Here’s what happened to Sterling Haynes.

Beep — Beep — Beep — Beep
I am becoming an alarmist?
On my 83rd – it just snuck up on me,
my gawd, it wasn’t intentional!
My house is wired for sound, that
sometimes goes Beep in the night.
It wakes a deaf octogenarian,
who can’t find his glasses.

Many questions are pondered?
Is the sound inside or out?
a truck backing up? a burglar alarm
on my car? or in-my-house beeper.
My wake up alarm clock or
the smoke alarm, perhaps change the
batteries? The carbon monoxide
detectors scream, my dog howls.
Call the gas company, evacuate
the house and neighbors too.

I have all the alert devices,
on the wall, on my wrist or a necklace
should I fall, stroke out or stop
breathing. I am overprepared for
life’s catastrophes. False alarms give
me panic attacks which promote
“flight or fight,” a call to arms – alarme.
I have never cried wolf, where is the
the danger? I am an alarmist now!
Where is that damn sound coming from?
My computer, furnace or the hot water heater?
B-Be-Bee-Beep-Beep…..

©2011 Sterling Haynes

Note to e-reader fans. Sterling’s Wake-Up Call: Tales from a Frontier Doctor is now available in digital formats.

Starting the new year thinking about blogging, photo of 2003/2004 Sydney fireworks via morgueFile

On December 30 Michael Dahl posed two questions in the title of his blog post on Speak for We: “Does blogging matter? Does it create change?” He was responding to the question David Henderson posed to himself that same day: “Does Blogging Matter in the Social Sector?”

I promised to comment on Michael’s post but have needed a couple days to think about it. I keep circling back to the same spot. Yes, blogging matters – to me. I am no longer in the community development field. When I was, I always wondered what seems at the heart of both Michael’s and David’s questions and thoughtful writing: Does my work matter? Am I merely being self-indulgent? Am I just a middle-class “poverty-geek” (David’s term)?

The question of the worth of our work never goes away completely. I can only respond, blogging matters to me. When web logs/blogs first started popping up like mosquitoes on a steamy day, I thought they were narcissistic outpourings of interest only to voyeurs or those with too much time on their hands. I would never blog and would certainly never put something so personal onto a public space.

Now I have four blogs. Several things happened between my initial skepticism and my current blogging. The first was that I began reading a handful of blogs. Some were so compelling I returned every time I new post appeared. The second was that I began blogging myself, as a means of sharing an eight-month journey with friends back home. I liked the ease of connecting with all of them at the same time. I also liked not clogging every email account with my photographs and writing. Friends could read it or ignore it without feeling guilty.

The third thing that happened was that a planned book project on which I had spent considerable time fell through. Blogging turned what felt like an enormous loss into an open door. Returning by ship from Australia, I attended a workshop on digital publishing with Madisen Harper. She asked us what our real intentions were—to write a best seller (2% chance of success) or to share a message that was important to us (100% chance of success). If it was the latter, we could publish tomorrow.

The stars aligned. A few months after returning home, I met Tom Masters. I was still clinging to The Book, and he had just published Blog to Book and Beyond. I was inspired by what he wrote and by a book I happened across, Life Is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally. The design of Patti Digh’s book was exactly what I had in mind for the one I had been planning. I picked it up because of the design and then found myself saying, “Yes!” to every page I read. When I came to the end, I discovered the book had started as a blog. More stars lined up.

After dozens of posts, I have enough material for more than one book or ebook or app… But I have even more material for non-stop writing until I breathe my last. I do believe our writing can make a difference to others, but for me that difference rests on writing from a place that is deep and personal and honest.

I don’t always do that, but when I do I know that what I have written matters, even if it matters only to me. In Owning It All, William Kittredge writes “about storytelling as the art of constructing road maps, ways home to that ultimate shelter which is the coherent self.” The sentence captures part of what I am trying to do with my blogs, to construct a road map of my life – more spiral than linear.

My other intent in blogging is to share my own hard-earned sense of hope about life and about our world, something Ursula LeGuin described in Dancing At the Edge Of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places as the task “to live as a responsible being among other beings in this sacred world here and now, which is all we have, and all we need, to found our hope upon.”

For me, blogging is sacred space, and into that space I do my best to bring hope. So my answer to both Michael’s and David’s questions is a simple, “Yes.”

Right on, Sterling, and keep the poems coming.

Baby toes photo by sabianmaggy via Flickr Creative Commons

Erupting burps, small volcanoes
early in pregancy, unique
sensations trigger a new era of
feelings and of the growth of
an impossible belly. Smells
change, an awareness of
a unique role and a new life and
of responsilities and emotions.
Developing a Mommy brain?

A wave of new hormones of love,
empathy, and milk making, baths
her brain’s convolutions of concern.
A maternal morphine is at work
from dendritic spines, a razor like
barb wire in the gray matter encircles
and protects her baby and herself.
Electrical connecting neurons fire off when
baby suckles, grabs at fingers and coos.
Yes, the Mommy brain of satisfaction.

A pregnancy brain , a multi-tasking
brain being built to protect, cherish, survive.
Emotions from the heart, endearments
for life- my babies: “the best thing that ever
happened to me.” Hold, rock and change
the diapers that never smell, cuddling infants in
the crook of arms for protection,
swathed in a blanket forever, a softening
afterglow of survival. You know, father
“My Mommy brain.”

Other poems by Sterling Haynes on Catching Courage:

• Down…East Hastings Street—Vancouver, B.C.
• On the Street with Mister Doctor, Ya Know
• Momma Does Milk

Young friends having fun, photo by Melinda Nagy, via Dreamstime.com

In June 2010 Tom Wayman was in Kelowna, doing a reading from his newly published novel, Woodstock Rising. At the end someone asked him what he thought was the legacy of the Woodstock era. His answer was, “hope”. He said young people now know so much more than we did, but they have no hope.

I’m thinking of his observation today, as news comes that the London, Ontario, Occupy camp was disbanded by police in the middle of the night. They had warned the protesters, who probably figured they wouldn’t act on the threat to close down the camp. Still, the midnight raid smacks of a kind of mentality that does nothing to encourage confidence or hope.

The democracy movements of the Arab Spring and the encampments of the Occupy movement make me feel tender toward young people now trying to find a place for themselves. The gap between rich and poor is widening globally. Richard Wilkinson’s surveys of countries where inequality is most pronounced make it clear that along with the gap come poorer health, more social problems and a general downturn in quality of life for everyone.

Still, I’m not sure Wayman is right that young people have no hope. The young people I know seem optimistic about their future in spite of all the storm clouds on their horizon. So I turned to the Web to find out something about the generation being referred to as Millennials, the first generation to come of age in the new century (born between 1981 to 2000).

The Pew Research Center characterizes the American Millennials

• the most ethnically diverse cohort in U.S. history
• the most politically progressive age group
• the first generation to grow up completely immersed in a digital world
• the least religiously observant generation
• more inclined to trust institutions than the Gen Xers or Baby Boomers

Canada’s Reginald Bibby, a sociologist at the University of Lethbridge, and one of the country’s most respected trackers of social trends says his research shows the Millennials:

• have solid values such as concern for others, forgiveness and hard work
• rank relationships and social networking as being of high importance
• enjoy their parents
• are less likely than older generations to smoke, drink or use drugs
• feel safe at home and school
• have positive views of themselves and the future

Both overviews paint a hopeful picture of young people in North America. Maybe one of the gifts they will bring, in a time of lowered economic expectations and increasing environmental concerns, is a shift away from a consumer society. The planet needs us to be more responsible about our use of the resources it so generously provides. Perhaps the Millennials will lead the way.

NB: More reason to pin our hopes on these young people in today’s news: Generations Divided over Paying Extra for Eco-Friendly Food. According to this survey by AB Sustain, it’s the young who are most willing to pay more.

We do have Hope, all of us living with MS.  We hope that there will be fewer really bad days; we hope that pleasures and rewards will keep us going; we hope that break-through MS research could be close at hand.  And we do have Patience (caps intended!), in spades.  For me, I reach deep for patience to hang on through the hours of pain every morning, until the opioids kick in well enough to allow me to move about, even to think. It’s taking extra patience at the moment to wait for an appointment next month with my neurologist, when I hope to persuade him to agree that it’s worth a try for me to begin taking the neuro-steroid “allopregnanolone”, the new shining-star in MS research. When I discovered that I could actually order the steroid on-line, it was tempting to set aside caution and go ahead without anyone’s knowledge.  But I would feel foolish if the result was a trip to Emergency, or worse.

Living without end dates

With MS, there is no end date, photo by DaphneCholet via Flickr Creative Commons

So—what is it that we DON’T have? End-dates. A time when our MS will be gone. My step-daughter Patricia, now underway with radiation and chemotherapy to treat a difficult cancer, worded it beautifully.  ”I’m sure the treatments won’t be easy, but I do have definitive timelines, so that means I can see ends in sight—the one thing you don’t have, I know.”

Bulls-eye, Pat. We hope and pray that in less than two years, your cancer will be cured, and an active and healthy life will go on for a very long time. But there is no end in sight, with MS.  It is one of those conditions where the ground-rule seems to be that we must live in the moment, if we want to survive emotionally.  I realize that I have pushed all thoughts about the end of pain and a dozen other MS problems out of my mind, because to focus on the MS life-sentence would take all of the oxygen out of the room, every day.  Of course, we can’t claim any “exceptionalism”, those of us with lives in disarray because of MS.  There are many illnesses and conditions that also carry a life-sentence, and often, I realize that I am fortunate not to be as ill or as handicapped as are many of those people who have different battles.

Bird life outside the window

Even the House Sparrows are special, photo from Joost J. Bakker via Flickr Creative Commons

I mean—here I am in an adjustable bed with my MacBook laptop, and Thomas my big grey cat curled up close.  The willow tree outside my window is alive with a big flock of American Goldfinch, who with the chickadees and House Finches will spend the winter at feeders almost as close to me as Thomas. With luck, an unusual bird such as a Hoary Redpoll may again fly in, but I have come to realize that every bird is special to me. Without fail, minutes spent closely watching an individual reveal details that are surprising, often delightful.  The House Sparrows that pop their little heads out of the cedar hedge and scan for danger before hopping down to pick up  seeds; the Mallards and the California Quail with their amusing behaviours; and yes, the clever European Starlings whose iridescent colours glow in the sunlight. I can’t imagine harassing any one of them, although sadly, once in a while others in the neighbourhood do not share my love for everything with wings, and only my disability deters me from making an issue out of it.  Still, if you are going to chase ducks, watch out for this upset woman on a medical scooter!

Many of my friends, I know, are off on a Thursday birding adventure this sunny day.  But I was lucky enough to participate in and even be a sometime leader for about twenty years of Thursday birding; owling expeditions; Breeding Bird Surveys; Christmas Bird Counts, and the memories of always having a grab-and-go pack at the door, ready to join a car-load of other “twitchers” to chase down a bird rarity.  Those of you who see the movie “The Big Year” will understand that it’s still a thrill for me to remember the day in 1994 when a two-hour drive took us to a feeder near Tappen BC, where a Siberian Accentor, a once-a-decade visitor to North America, obligingly hopped about for us to admire, and “tick” in our life lists.

A thought:  perhaps I am so drawn to birds and to companion animals because they absolutely live in the moment.  ”End-dates” are irrelevant. Food, sunshine, a cosy place to shelter at night and be safe during the day—my life is better when, like birds and animals, I appreciate what is there for me, and do not overly mourn what I have lost.  (As I type these words, a magpie in the willow is loudly chattering a warning. Such intensity, only metres away.)

Facing up to Facebook

Social media erase some of our privacy, photo by Alan Cleaver via Flickr Creative Commons

My mind skips to something else that feels like “a warning”. Recently, this message appeared on my computer:  ”Hi, Denise.  You haven’t been to Facebook for a few days, and a lot happened while you were away.”  What followed were photographs of seven of my friends who “have posted statuses, photos and more on Facebook. …  You have also missed some popular stories”, the e-mail concludes.  Whoa. Why would the Facebook computers focus on someone totally unimportant such as me, with such laser-like detail, when apparently more than fifty million people go to the site every day?  My reaction to that seemingly personal e-mail is that it was …. creepy.  I remembered a time long ago when my VW Camper Van was definitely being followed by a battered black Ford driven by a bearded stranger.  I got out of that by driving to the police station.  Other than choosing to miss all of the admittedly interesting things I find on Facebook on my occasional visits, is there any way to hide from the glare of that spotlight, to get away from being followed?  In yesterday’s Globe, a columnist wrote about this issue, as if reading my mind.  (He must have received one of those “a lot happened when you were away” e-mails also.)  ”After all,” the column read, “what’s the option?  Not to use Facebook, in this day and age?”  His conclusion:  ”Well, yes.”

Something to think about.  Big Brother is real, and his name is Facebook. Still, if I do decide to opt out, “a lot will happen while I am away”.  The computer more than ever links me to the world beyond my four walls, so I might have to take a deep breath, accept that millions of other people likely received a version of that “creepy” e-mail, and ignore what may be my better judgment.  If I can handle MS, surely I can handle the minions of Facebook!

I hope that the autumn colours are as beautiful in your area as are the red sumac and the yellow larches high in the mountains that surround Kelowna.  Perhaps I should take photos, to send to Facebook ….

Anyone who has walked the grey streets of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside will understand the gritty reality behind this poem.

Photo by Beverly & Pack via Flickr Creative Commons. Click on it to read the moving story about Chris and his dog, Brandy.

My head is wound with hemp,
I walk in the downpour and in the gutters.
My axons – loose seaweed, a wetness hanging down -
smells of dulce, smoke and moose moccasins.
Friends… unwind this ball of twine -
rewind it onto the barrels of syringes.
Thoughts spin into red hallucinations,
unravel with increasing amounts of ecstasy.
Melancholy and paranoia keep the top spinning.
I smell the salt of the sea, clouds clear
Over the mountains, the Two Lions, twin peaks,
appear above the mist, in my synapses, momentarily.

©Sterling Haynes

Other poem by Sterling Haynes on Catching Courage:

• On the Street with Mister Doctor, Ya Know
• Momma Does Milk

Photo by Colin Davis via Flickr Creative Commons

Mark Horvath used to be invisible, back when he was homeless. He knows what it’s like when people pass by without acknowledging his humanity. Now he has a home, work, and the drive to rip away the cloak of invisibility that makes our neighbours disappear to us when they fall on hard times.

He is on a passionate mission with his vlog (video blog), InvisiblePeople.tv. Writing about a homeless man on Hollywood Boulevard, he says,

“Once on the street, people started to walk past him, ignoring him as if he didn’t exist… much like they do a piece of trash on the sidewalk. It’s not that people are bad, but if we make eye contact, or engage in conversation, then we have to admit they exist and that we might have a basic human need to care. But it’s so much easier to simply close our eyes and shield our hearts to their existence.”

Horvath started a road trip around America, to give homeless people a voice. In 2011 he brought his third road trip to Canada and says, “We’re using video and social media to expose the pain, hardship and hopelessness that millions of people face each day.”

On the InvisiblePeople YouTube channel, you’ll meet Brotha BlueStocking in Boston, Terra in Toronto, and even some of the people from two faith-based organizations in my hometown of Kelowna. Or you can go to the InvisiblePeople vlog and click on one of the people whose names swirl under the heading “Homeless Has a Name”.

The respect and love Horvath shows to the people he meets is what sets this initiative apart from many of the well-intended efforts to draw attention to homelessness. Horvath has walked the mean streets. He meets people as equals rather than as problems.

Catherine in Ottawa gave me the title for this post. She wrote her story about homelessness and panhandling and explains what it means when someone stops to chat, showing some small measure of caring. After all, she says, “Panhandlers do not grow up dreaming of panhandling.”  (Her interview is below.)

At the bottom of his “About” page, Horvath writes a message to all of us: “Please always remember, the homeless people you’ll ignore today were much like you not so long ago.”

(You can follow Mark Horvath on Twitter.)

Photo from pyewacket42 via Flickr Creative Commons

We had a cat, my mother, brother and I. She was one of many animals who paraded through my childhood. This one was special, a pure-bred Siamese. I have no memory of how we acquired such a beauty. We would never have had money to buy her.

But there she was, chocolate nose, paws and tail, proud bearing. Where she was not chocolate, her creamy fur was tipped lightly with brown. She was regal. She was exotic. So it seemed important to give her a splendid name.

We chose the name of a woman we adored. Born in Japan, Tsu Tau spoke halting English. She was delicate, porcelain skinned, stunningly beautiful.

Her husband had returned to Japan to marry her. He was from a family ripped from their  coastal American home by a war machine that labeled them a danger. At war’s end, the family remained in Idaho, bought land and became prosperous farmers.

We visited them every summer. They were good friends of a family in Marsing, Idaho, who were among those closest to my mother. If goodness and generosity have a face, Lucille and Giles bore it. They, too, were a farming family so it was natural the two families would become friends and that we would be welcomed into their circle during our annual visits.

Tsu Tau, her sister-in-law and her mother-in-law introduced us to foods that stretched the boundaries of our meat-and-potatoes palates. I will always remember sampling my first rice ball, startled by the acid bite of the pickled plum at its center. Or laughing as the rice-paper cellophane wrapping a sweet square of candy melted on my tongue.

Tsu Tau’s father-in-law talked to his plants. His rubber tree was decades old and the largest I had ever seen. Every week he took a soft brush and gently dusted each leaf. His vegetable patch produced enormous, succulent beets, tomatoes, carrots and daikon radishes.

We loved the family, but we adored Tsu Tau. She was gentle and patient. Her eyes glowed with warmth. We knew our beloved, exotic cat deserved to be named for the quiet, elegant woman we dreamed of between visits.

The next summer we could hardly wait to tell her of the honour we had bestowed on her by giving her name to our Siamese cat. We eased the conversation around to cats. To our dismay, she shuddered.

Tsu Tau, our beloved, exotic friend, could not abide felines. We were mortified but hid our dismay from our beautiful friend. We never did change the name of our cat and loved our pet all the more fiercely because she bore the name of someone we admired.

Learning that Tsu Tau detested cats taught us an important lesson, one I have had to continually relearn in my 65 years on the planet. The people we love are not us. They are their own beautiful selves. We love them, and hope they will love us, in spite of our differences. Love makes us realize how inconsequential those differences are when we love without reservation.