Personal talk about family

 Cousin Les.

Images flash through my mind thinking about him.

He was a barrel on legs, strong stumpy legs.  Legs too short to take him anywhere really fast, but ones that never failed to carry him really far.

Arms strong enough to carry a 200 pound man a full mile.

A warm smile  you could feel across the room.

He had a full mental break down in his twenties and learned to deal with it.

Paranoid schizophrenic.

He hated the drugs that made him close to normal, but he hated what he did to those around him when not medicated more.

The meds worked for a long time.

Then they stopped, and his doctors went through a number of alternatives for over a year.

Nothing worked.

There was an option on an experimental drug, and he signed onto the trial.

It made his mental condition better for a very brief period of time, followed by triggering irreversible violent Parkinson's.

I was two provinces away, and the next time I was visiting family, I went to visit him with my mom.  He was strapped to a chair, wearing a hockey helmet and I could barely understand him.  His whole torso would twitch, and slam his head in random directions.  I mostly held it together during the visit, but somewhere inside I was glad I was heading back home before a second visit would happen.

Both his condition and my reaction to it hit me hard.  I looked into myself and shook my mental reaction loose.  The next time I was back, I would do better in facing him, even if only to just be there, to let him know he was not alone.  I do not know if I would have followed through on that because four months later he was dead.

There is no hard and fast metric for the lessons in this.

At what point is it for you and your mental health to accept restriction imposed by medication to make you better for others?  At what point do you take a chance to make your life better and roll the dice on whether it will work or not?  And if your cousin is willing to take that chance and rolls snake eyes, how do you support him?  And look at him with warmth and compassion as his life grows so much worse?

Did I pass this test of character?  I like to think I did, but one visit is not a passing grade, in my mind.  My mom sat with him many times.  I did not ask how many, but I would be surprised if she visited with him less than once a week, driving the 2 hours from her home to his home and back.  She did not so much pass that test, as fail to notice there could be one.

Memories From Pisac Peru.

 My first trip to Pisac, I remember a few things.

Wandering through the local market, having one of the local vendors mad at me that I insisted on giving the avacados a squeeze before buying.

The variety of cafes, some cheap, some not.  Some good food, some not.

But among the places I ate at, one of the things I will always remember is a young lady who sang at one of the places.

Usually I kick in at least a dollar or two, but this time, her voice captured me.  There was only a song or two I knew, the rest were in Spanish, but her voice held me in place.  I cannot recall what I ate.

I was stupid and never got her name.

I paid for her meal, and left a tip for her on top of that, perhaps 30CAD total.

The place has changed hands since, but I think of her every time I go past the place and wonder where she is, and what music she is making.

Santiago

I have been lazy lately.  The city is busy, full of young people and yet....

The area that I am in is an entertainment district full of theaters, as in drama, not cinema, and restaurants.  Sushi, Shwarma and Korean BBQ are all very popular along with burgers and pizza.

The following pictures were taken in a small part of the district on a Friday just as the dinner seemed to be fairly busy.  The heat of the day was mostly past, coming down from a high of 31c.

Chile

First impressions of Santiago.

It was in the late evening when I got here, and near midnight when I got to the hostel.  Warm and humid.  The traffic was light and the streets were smooth, with very few speed bumps to slow the taxi down.

Public transit is very nice, but as it was late, and the subway closes down at mid night-ish I took the taxi.

The prices were a bit higher than what I expected, but only a little.  I do not know why I was not expecting there to be any sushi places here, but I have walked past three, one of them was a vegetarian sushi joint. (The area was one with a lot of veggie/vegan places, so fair enough.)

The park that parallels the Mapocho River is very nice.  Well kept and popular.  Miles long, but broken up by a lot of palces for cars to cross.  The river is not very big, and while there is a lot of traffic that runs along the park, the noise never seems to intrude too much into the park.

The park had more than a few statues and a small kidz play area along with this great fountain,

It also featured the National Art Gallery.  I am sure you can track down images from the Gallery online, but a thing that stood out to me was the amount of statuary that was there, a much higher ratio of statues to paintings than in most other art galleries I have gone to.

I really liked this one, and I have mixed feelings about how the pieces are displayed in that they were not roped or partitioned off.  It allowed you to get up close and personal with the pieces, and you can see how people have touched the right arm of the statue.  At times I feel this is a negative thing, a slight damage to the piece with every caress.  On the other hand those interactions also bring the observer closer to the artist and their work.

The gallery is not a massive building, but it does present itself quite well, and is obviously a place of quiet national pride, a place where the whole nation can look in and say, we Chileans, we have done this.

Uyuni part 1

 Sorry for the long delay in posting this.

Part 1 is the pictures I took of the steam locomotive graveyard at Uyuni.  The graveyard started as a scrap yard, and simply grew.  It took a while, and if you look, you can see the sand trapping the wheels, and the interesting way the climate has both worn down and sanded smooth the surfaces of the metal here.

The pictures say a lot, but it is still hard to capture the cool indifference of the dry wind and strong sun.

Faces From Cochabamba

 A few pictures of the friends I have met over the (Canadian) winters I have spent in Cochabamba Bolivia.

  

Many faces are missing, But this gives you a nice sample from this year.

Civic Planning Choices

 Some things in city planning can make you wonder.

Why do some roads twist and turn at random, some times it is east to work out why, avoiding swampy areas, staying away from creeks or crossing the river at the easiest point.

But when a city is laid out in a grid pattern, I have to wonder just who it was that decided that cutting down a tree that is in the middle of the road is NOT part of the plan.

Was it too pretty?

Too large?

A favourite type?

Any way, here it is.