06 December 2015
Island Life: 6 December 2015
06/12/15 08:11
In life there are moments when you do something that changes everything thereafter. OK, some would say that EVERY moment effects those that follow. They would say that your path along the timeline is impacted by each and every choice and decision. Whether to turn right or left, or take this job or that. Even whether to take this cookie or the one next to it, will is some way, like the flap of a butterflies wing change all that comes after. Those people are Philosophy majors and to them I say “Yes, I would like fries with that.”
But, there are times when you do something and you just know that nothing will ever be the same. This moment will be a landmark. From then on something will come to mind and you’ll think “was that before or after we…”. Or start reminiscing and say “Yup, it was in the summer of twenty-ought-six that we…” People that talk like that of course are generally known as old people, but that aside, this sort of a moment, whether it is graduation, or getting married, or having a child is your own personal Crossing the Rubicon event.
Crossing the Rubicon is actually an interesting historical term. For those that haven’t studied history, or don’t have a memory for useless bits of trivia as I do, here is the history of the term. Crossing the Rubicon, refers to an incident in 1972 when a young Steven Spielberg was at a Comic Convention in Rubic Pennsylvania. As he was crossing the show floor at RubiCon, he saw a piece of chewed gum stuck to the carpet. This gave him the idea for the character design of E.T. The Extraterrestrial, and the rest is history. (Yeah, right, marsh)
I took the time to add this little fact because apparently I’m the only one that remembers these little bits of useless trivia. I was talking to a friend of mine, who’s about my age and mentioned The Marx Brothers. We both love their material so I said how bad it was that if you mention something like the Stateroom Scene from Night at the Opera, kids these days will give you a blank look. They have no idea what you’re talking about. He then gave me a blank look and admitted that he had no idea what I was talking about. OK maybe I do remember odd little bits from here and there. I forget people’s name, or Marsha’s birthday, but obscure bits of trivia I have down pat. But anyway, for anyone that doesn’t know about it, here is a link to the Stateroom Scene from Night at the Opera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZvugebaT6Q
Apparently I also have a head for weird little song fragments. They often crop up in my comedy, which is probably why many of my jokes don’t work. For example we went shopping on Saturday morning. We got some groceries and picked up a small wheeled cart we’ll use as an island in the kitchen. We arrived home and as we got out of the car Marsha said “I’ll get the bags if you get the cart, honey”. To which I instantly replied in song “And we’ll all go fishin' in the crawdad hole, honey, baby-mine”. She had no idea what I meant. I mean it’s a classic song from The Weavers. How could someone not know the Crawdad Song? So, for your listening pleasure and information, here is The Crawdad Song performed by The Weavers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqTRpH-7bOM
But back to Crossing the Rubicon, as it were. This week we finally took the oath as full Canadian Citizens. It’s been a long time coming, but we finally are actual Canadians in word, deed and thought. Legally and spiritually we are Canucks. From here on we will travel on Canadian passports. (EDIT: Not so fast there Sport. We still have to GET our Canadian Passports. Marsha) We went down to Beban Park for the event (which I’ve been informed is pronounced Beh-ban and not Bee-ban),. A number of our friends were there to watch us and afterwards we all went out for brunch, conversation, laughs, stories, and camaraderie. It was a wonderful morning we will remember for the rest of our lives.
The oath itself was fairly straight forward
I swear (or affirm)
That I will be faithful
And bear true allegiance
To Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second
Queen of Canada
Her Heirs and Successors
And that I will faithfully observe
The laws of Canada
And fulfil my duties
As a Canadian citizen.
Queen of Canada? To be honest I have no problem with swearing allegiance to Queen Elizabeth, II. In fact, as she’s been the Queen since before I was born, it is a nice bit of continuity to have her as the head of state. It did sound a bit odd to refer to her as “The Queen of Canada” but that’s OK too.
The part that DID surprise us, though was that after we did the oath in English, we did it again in French. One problem with that, we don’t speak French, I mean like at all. Fortunately, the person presiding over the ceremony recited it in small bits and we repeated it phonetically by ear. I wouldn’t swear that we didn’t actually say “I promise to be a total git at a Queen concert if Elizabeth brings the drugs at II,” because I really have no idea what the French version said.
But WE DID IT!. We are Canadian now.
I thought it would be a nice ceremony and we’d get on with things. But I was surprised at how emotional I got. A bit choked up even. As the person presiding was doing her opening comments, I kept thinking about all the things we experienced since we arrived almost nine years ago. The first few years of short money working bad jobs. The bout with cancer and Marsha’s heart problems. The travel up and down the island and on the mainland. The various jobs we’ve each had. Flying in the Beaver on floats. The parties, the fun, the new friends. Beautiful sunny days, gloomy foggy nights. Rain, snow, rain, and rain. Our last big eclipse cruise to China and Japan. Getting into acting. Teaching second graders to read (Marsha) and about rocks and fossils (me). It’s been a hell of a ride.
And there’s a lot more to come.
Doug & Marsha
PIX: Something special this week. We asked a friend to take pictures of the ceremony. Somehow early on the camera got switched to Video. The thing with this camera is that it remembers the settings. Every time it was switched on it would start recording. Rather than being a disaster we ended up with a perfect record of the event. Little bits of video with the stills mixed in. I don’t think we ever could have come up with something this perfect. So Thank You to Hannah for taking the pictures, and Thank You to the stranger who agreed to take a couple of shots of our whole group and accidentally switched the camera to Video.
Here’s a link to the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl-UFk9bwX4
But, there are times when you do something and you just know that nothing will ever be the same. This moment will be a landmark. From then on something will come to mind and you’ll think “was that before or after we…”. Or start reminiscing and say “Yup, it was in the summer of twenty-ought-six that we…” People that talk like that of course are generally known as old people, but that aside, this sort of a moment, whether it is graduation, or getting married, or having a child is your own personal Crossing the Rubicon event.
Crossing the Rubicon is actually an interesting historical term. For those that haven’t studied history, or don’t have a memory for useless bits of trivia as I do, here is the history of the term. Crossing the Rubicon, refers to an incident in 1972 when a young Steven Spielberg was at a Comic Convention in Rubic Pennsylvania. As he was crossing the show floor at RubiCon, he saw a piece of chewed gum stuck to the carpet. This gave him the idea for the character design of E.T. The Extraterrestrial, and the rest is history. (Yeah, right, marsh)
I took the time to add this little fact because apparently I’m the only one that remembers these little bits of useless trivia. I was talking to a friend of mine, who’s about my age and mentioned The Marx Brothers. We both love their material so I said how bad it was that if you mention something like the Stateroom Scene from Night at the Opera, kids these days will give you a blank look. They have no idea what you’re talking about. He then gave me a blank look and admitted that he had no idea what I was talking about. OK maybe I do remember odd little bits from here and there. I forget people’s name, or Marsha’s birthday, but obscure bits of trivia I have down pat. But anyway, for anyone that doesn’t know about it, here is a link to the Stateroom Scene from Night at the Opera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZvugebaT6Q
Apparently I also have a head for weird little song fragments. They often crop up in my comedy, which is probably why many of my jokes don’t work. For example we went shopping on Saturday morning. We got some groceries and picked up a small wheeled cart we’ll use as an island in the kitchen. We arrived home and as we got out of the car Marsha said “I’ll get the bags if you get the cart, honey”. To which I instantly replied in song “And we’ll all go fishin' in the crawdad hole, honey, baby-mine”. She had no idea what I meant. I mean it’s a classic song from The Weavers. How could someone not know the Crawdad Song? So, for your listening pleasure and information, here is The Crawdad Song performed by The Weavers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqTRpH-7bOM
But back to Crossing the Rubicon, as it were. This week we finally took the oath as full Canadian Citizens. It’s been a long time coming, but we finally are actual Canadians in word, deed and thought. Legally and spiritually we are Canucks. From here on we will travel on Canadian passports. (EDIT: Not so fast there Sport. We still have to GET our Canadian Passports. Marsha) We went down to Beban Park for the event (which I’ve been informed is pronounced Beh-ban and not Bee-ban),. A number of our friends were there to watch us and afterwards we all went out for brunch, conversation, laughs, stories, and camaraderie. It was a wonderful morning we will remember for the rest of our lives.
The oath itself was fairly straight forward
I swear (or affirm)
That I will be faithful
And bear true allegiance
To Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second
Queen of Canada
Her Heirs and Successors
And that I will faithfully observe
The laws of Canada
And fulfil my duties
As a Canadian citizen.
Queen of Canada? To be honest I have no problem with swearing allegiance to Queen Elizabeth, II. In fact, as she’s been the Queen since before I was born, it is a nice bit of continuity to have her as the head of state. It did sound a bit odd to refer to her as “The Queen of Canada” but that’s OK too.
The part that DID surprise us, though was that after we did the oath in English, we did it again in French. One problem with that, we don’t speak French, I mean like at all. Fortunately, the person presiding over the ceremony recited it in small bits and we repeated it phonetically by ear. I wouldn’t swear that we didn’t actually say “I promise to be a total git at a Queen concert if Elizabeth brings the drugs at II,” because I really have no idea what the French version said.
But WE DID IT!. We are Canadian now.
I thought it would be a nice ceremony and we’d get on with things. But I was surprised at how emotional I got. A bit choked up even. As the person presiding was doing her opening comments, I kept thinking about all the things we experienced since we arrived almost nine years ago. The first few years of short money working bad jobs. The bout with cancer and Marsha’s heart problems. The travel up and down the island and on the mainland. The various jobs we’ve each had. Flying in the Beaver on floats. The parties, the fun, the new friends. Beautiful sunny days, gloomy foggy nights. Rain, snow, rain, and rain. Our last big eclipse cruise to China and Japan. Getting into acting. Teaching second graders to read (Marsha) and about rocks and fossils (me). It’s been a hell of a ride.
And there’s a lot more to come.
Doug & Marsha
PIX: Something special this week. We asked a friend to take pictures of the ceremony. Somehow early on the camera got switched to Video. The thing with this camera is that it remembers the settings. Every time it was switched on it would start recording. Rather than being a disaster we ended up with a perfect record of the event. Little bits of video with the stills mixed in. I don’t think we ever could have come up with something this perfect. So Thank You to Hannah for taking the pictures, and Thank You to the stranger who agreed to take a couple of shots of our whole group and accidentally switched the camera to Video.
Here’s a link to the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl-UFk9bwX4