By the time you read this column I will have ended my travels and be home in Vernon. There is a lot to be said about travelling and broadening our minds but there are volumes that could be written, and should be, about the joys of coming home.
Toronto, my last stop before boarding my plane west, is a zoo. The mayor accused of smoking crack seen on an underground video by two reporters of a national newspaper one week and his brother, a city councillor, accused of selling hash as a youth the next week. Accusations keep arising about the mayor’s exploits but denials are hot and heavy and no way is he resigning. I think if some of his behaviors were to happen here in the North Okanagan we would be marching on city hall. At least I hope we would.
Before I moved here many years ago I lived in Toronto as did my family for many generations. And while I moved on to my chosen home at the age of 60, I was still proud of Toronto, I just had different needs and values. Today there seems very little to be proud of and indeed Toronto, or at least Toronto’s mayor, has become the laughing stock of news stories around the world. The barbarians are not only at the gates they seem to be running the city. A shame? You bet your life.
The weather here is about as vacillating and confusing as the politics. From heat as high as 30 degrees C and full of moisture on a holiday Monday with a huge thunderstorm blowing down trees to frost by Wednesday night and cold ever since although it is sunny most days with a high wind. I am a victim of this hot/cold situation although it is not the primary cause of my developing pneumonia. I think my immune system was vulnerable from travelling and unfamiliar bugs and the constant change in conditions encouraged the pneumonia bugs to flourish. Thank goodness for modern drugs and how effectively they combat diseases. I am on puffers that are really working well and a super duper antibiotic, so things look good. I hope so, as I fly home in six days and I need to be there to feel the sun and smell that wonderful air. I have seldom doubted that the Okanagan was my true home and this trip confirms it more than ever. Kissing the ground has always seemed a little extreme to me but I sure appreciate where that feeling may come from.
Recently the Mayo Clinic Newsletter had an interesting article about penicillin allergies, saying it recently became known that a history of penicillin doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t tolerate it now. Sensitivity to penicillin can go away over the course of five to 10 years. A penicillin allergy skin test is essentially the only way to know if you’re still allergic. For those who are allergic, a desensitization process that takes just a few hours at a hospital may allow them to safely take the antibiotic.
And what about that Senate? We seem to be involved in a level of political pollution never seen before. Some of the so-called “Honourable Members” of the Senate have become cheats, liars and domestic abusers and don’t seem to think this behaviour is unacceptable. They give seniors a bad name and if we cannot abolish the Senate perhaps we can insist that only non-seniors be made senators. I don’t know if the moral integrity of politicians has changed or if we just are better informed. We can’t blame a younger generation, as we sometimes do, as the senators on stage are certainly old and should know better.
If you have any comments or questions, e-mail blackmail1@telus.net
Pat Black writes about issues of concern to seniors in the North Okanagan, appearing every other Sunday.
