This has been some week. Every day has tossed out another topic deserving of comment, until I’m at a loss which one to pick, so let me touch on two, irrespective of occurrence or importance.
At a Biggar, Sask. community meeting led by local RCMP in response to multiple break, enters, and shootings on prairie farms, this advice was offered for protecting family and property without resorting to firearms:
“Ways to deter crime include locking vehicles and storage facilities, cameras (especially trail cameras), alarm/security systems, signs for such services, and buying big dog houses.”
Some audience members said such measures place the responsibility onto victims, and security systems can be expensive.
One woman said, “the fear is if you lock your vehicle, they come into your house and get the keys.”
Another comment said such measures could deter trespassers from one property, but they might go next door. So as a neighbourly gesture, if possible confine thieves to your own property while you watch from window to window for half an hour or longer waiting for police to respond to your 911 call.
How would a big dog house scare off some marauder carrying a loaded rifle and bent on stealing? Most dog houses are situated behind the house so as not to ruin the look of the front of the property. And unless the dog house has a resident dog, its surroundings would lack the mauled grass appearance with a scattering of bare bones, decapitated chew toys or other debris. Not that a 5 a.m. thief might first reconnoitre for those telltale signs.
In addition, big doghouses are expensive, in the $125 range unless built by the phantom dog’s owner out of scrap materials.
I can’t picture this bit of advice creating a sales run on big dog houses.
Then yesterday I received an invitation to attend Our Last Hurrah for former employees of the North Battleford Saskatchewan Hospital. This mental hospital built in 1939 is due to be replaced by a new building some time this summer. Completion of construction was delayed by bankruptcy of the P3 builder, a large entity responsible also for building a hospital in Yellowknife. That hospital, too, is behind schedule.
A job as a medical transcription typist was my first contract employment, in the summer after I graduated grade twelve. I was a first rate typist, with good English and spelling skills, but absolutely zero knowledge of medical terminology, particularly of the psychiatric field. My mentor was an older woman named Mary with whom I shared office space. She generously helped me with words I didn’t know even how to begin searching for in a thick medical dictionary . That’s when I learned the irrelevance of the letter “p” before “s” in psychiatry.
Reminds me of the telephone operator in the Mike Nichols/Elaine May radio skit where Nichols asked May to look up the phone number for George Kaplan. To be accurate she began spelling, “That is K as in knife, A as in aardvark, P as in pneumonia, L as in luscious, A as in aardvark again, and N as in newel post.”
I have only one indelible memory from that summer job — being sent up to the top floor to unearth an outdated patient file. Sunshine heated the space to an exhausting temperature; rays of dust danced with every disturbed chart. But I hung in until I came down with the chart.
If I lived nearer, this invitation might send me scurrying for attire suited to this wingding.
