It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words.

I’m looking at a picture that tells me everything I need to know with one seven-letter word – madness.

It’s a wire service photo of a Buckingham Palace Queen’s Guard soldier standing rigid and alert in the 40C plus heat that has been killing hundreds in Britain and Europe. The guard is wearing the traditional bearskin hat and red tunic.

Well, as Rudyard Kipling once said, and what Noel Coward put into song: “Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun.”

There is only one reason the Queen’s Guard is standing in killer heat, and that is tradition.

British tradition is a form of insanity. Despite many efforts, no one has been able to cure it. The British simply do not want change.

Nothing represents the insanity more than the Queen’s Guard. Their bearskin hats are 45.7 centimetres (18 inches) tall and weigh 1.5 pounds. Their red tunics are made of wool.

Those guards regularly faint in hot weather. So often in fact, that they are trained to faint properly – never losing a grip on their rifles (which are not loaded). Never swaying or putting a hand out to break the fall. They are told they must faint at attention, falling face first even though that likely means a broken nose and smashed teeth.

The British Army has spent money researching how to prevent fainting. And, considerably more on repairing noses and replacing teeth.

I’m not a medical researcher, but I can advise them how to prevent all that fainting: Ditch the heavy bearskin hats and the wool tunics.

There is no chance of that. Animal rights groups have protested the use of bearskins for the hats, but the army has said no way.

“The bearskins worn by the Guards are part of our proud military history and identity,” says a British army spokesman. “There are no suitable alternatives.”

End of discussion. Period.

The British royalty itself is no stranger to accusations of ignoring animal rights and of actual animal cruelty. The most recent are investigations into reports of shooting and poisoning of legally protected birds of prey at Sandringham, the Queen’s rural retreat.

Also, Prince Edward has been accused of beating dogs during a hunt. Prince Phillip once was assailed for standing by and watching as an injured fox was clubbed to death.

And, the Queen was photographed eight years ago breaking with her bare hands the neck of a pheasant injured during a Royal shoot.

Meanwhile, those hot and heavy bearskin hats being worn in the killer heat come from Canadian bears.

They are not the only thing we Canadians are giving up to support British madness.

We pay roughly $60 million a year to support the British monarchy, which is the epicentre of nonsensical British traditions. Most of that money goes to support the Queen’s representatives in Canada, the governor-general and the provincial lieutenant governors.

That’s a lot of money for Canadian taxpayers to be coughing up considering more than half of them favour abolishing the monarchy in Canada.

A poll this past spring showed 63 per cent of Canadians personally favour the 96-year-old Queen. However, 67 per cent oppose her son becoming King Charles of Canada when she dies.

We would have to change our constitution to abolish the monarchy. That would cost money, create many headaches and much angry debate. It’s probably better just to ignore the monarchy and let our connections to it simply fade away. Spend the money saved on ending some of the inequalities damaging our society.

Canada is a beautiful culturally diverse place where we share the languages, culture and traditions of a wide variety of ancestors. British culture and traditions are a part of us but we don’t need to be paying millions of dollars a year for them.

Besides, we have our own crazy Canadian traditions, like buying milk in plastic bags, eating ketchup potato chips and mixing vodka with Clamato juice.

And, of course there is our famous New Year’s Day tradition of donning swimsuits and jumping into ice cold waters for an annual polar bear swim.

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It’s the time of summer craft sales and I find myself in a sunlit park helping a daughter display and sell some of her artwork. I’ve tossed some of my own work on the display table - books that folks might find interesting summer reading.

A guy approaches, picks up a book, looks it over closely and says it is something he would like to read.  Then he puts the book down and says he would love to read it but just doesn’t have time.

“I’m can’t seem to find time to read these days,” he says.

I agree. Finding time to sit with a paper book or a tablet copy is a struggle. 

“Is it available as an audiobook?” he asks. “I find that’s the easiest way to do my reading these days. I can listen to the book while doing other things.”

I’ve never considered publishing any of my work as audiobooks. In fact, I have never listened to an audiobook because I don’t understand how anyone can focus on two things at once.

It appears, however, that I am out of touch.

The latest sales survey for the Audio Publishers Association (APA) says that nearly 74,000 audiobooks were published in the U.S. last year. That’s an increase of six percent over 2020, when 71,000 were published, a stunning increase of 39 per cent over 2019. Audiobook revenue increased 25 percent to $1.6 billion last year.

Twelve years ago, in 2010, only 6,200 audiobooks were published in the U.S.

Canadian data is sketchy but in 2018 audiobooks made up only 3.6 percent of book purchases in Canada. That figure rose to five percent in 2019 and corresponded with a slight drop in hardcover sales. 

All said, audiobooks are becoming very popular, quite rapidly. The majority of users are younger people, mostly under 45. Almost one-third of audiobook listeners are ages 18 to 29.

I’m still skeptical about how you can focus on a book while driving or washing the dishes. I’m not alone in my skepticism. Studies over the years have found that people are slower and less accurate when they do two tasks at once

These studies have shown that when you switch your attention from one thing to another, a bit of your mind is still focussed on the previous thing. When you switch back, you have to remind yourself where you were.

People who don’t like audiobooks have two main criticisms: 

You can’t easily skip sections or underline or highlight good quotes or thoughts you might want to look at later,

Secondly, you have one voice doing all the characters. Also, voices vary and the narrator of your audiobook might have one you find irritating.

Audiobook listeners who have been surveyed say they prefer professional narrators over author-read books.  

On the plus side, audiobooks are a blessing for the visually impaired. Paper books can be difficult in low light conditions or when smaller type leaves the reader straining. They also are good for people who have difficulty holding a book.

I’m going to join the trend and try an audiobook. I suspect I’ll find I like listening to novels but will not do well with a non-fiction book from which I want to get information.

But the problem of finding time for books likely will not be completely cured by audiobooks. Finding time is a problem for most activities these days.

Successful people say the real answer lies in how we allocate our time.  Allocating time is how successful people increase productivity.

Allocating time comes down to making choices. The time is there, it’s just a matter of using it for the things you decide are most important.

It is said that the average person spends 28 hours a week watching television. That is 1,680 minutes a week. 

A person who reads a page a minute could read 1,600 pages or roughly three pocketbooks in that time.

That’s not to suggest that we give up watching TV. There are many little ways to change how we use our time and allocate more to things – like reading – which are important but don’t get enough of our time.

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A friend is ill and not doing well. I’m watching her closely and, if the illness looks incurable, I will end her life.

The friend is not a human, of course. She is a tree – a tall, proud Eastern Hemlock. Also known as the Canadian Hemlock. I have known her for almost 40 years. She is much older than that. Probably 100 plus.

I don’t know what sickened her. Needles have dropped from her lowest limbs, leaving dry, dead looking branches halfway up her height. Yet, her top portion is full and healthy looking.

Dying branches can be a sign of Hemlock Woolly Adelgid, an invasive insect native to Asia. It is a nasty bug that sucks fluids from the tree and can kill a hemlock in as few as three years.

It is a serious threat to hemlocks in the eastern U.S. and now parts of Canada.

There are, however, no other symptoms or signs of the insect on my tree, such as small clumps of dirty cotton at the needle bases. At any rate, it has me concerned, and I’m watching it for any new symptoms.

It could be one of the many other pests, blights or rusts that torment trees. Or, nothing except the natural needle loss that most conifers undergo.

The hemlock is not the prettiest tree in the forest. It has a dark, sinister look intensified by the perceived malevolence of its name.

Poison hemlock is a highly toxic plant found throughout Canada but the Eastern Hemlock tree is not related and is not poisonous. The tree got its name because early settlers from Europe found that crushed needles from the tree had an odour similar to the poisonous plant they knew from back home.

It may not be the prettiest tree, but it is one of the kindest and most patient. It provides many birds and animals food and shelter.

The hemlock was widely respected and much used by Indigenous peoples. To some it was a sacred tree because it provided medicines.

Tea was made from the inner bark to soothe colds, fevers and stomach ailments. Bark also was used to make poultices that slowed bleeding. The bark is rich in tannins, used extensively in tanning animal hides for leather.

The hemlock has given humans and wildlife much more than food, shelter, medicines and materials for tanning and building. Hemlocks teach us about patience, sharing and how to accept the changes of aging gracefully.

They are slow growing and long-lived. They typically grow 18 to 30 metres (60 to 100 feet) tall and live for 400 years or more.

It’s hard to stand beneath one without feeling you are in the presence of a wise elder who can give valuable lessons to someone willing to watch and listen.

For instance, roots of one hemlock sometimes merge with the roots of others to share water and nutrients. One tree might be rooted in shallow soil and not getting proper nourishment, so neighbouring hemlocks share what their roots are gathering.

I’ve been told by some people that my hemlock is sickly and obtrusive and should be cut down. Just another tree taking up space.

I refuse to cut any living tree without compelling evidence that its life should be ended. Our society is quick to kill trees for convenience, then soothe its guilt by replacing it with a seedling.

In some ways, trees are a higher form of life than humans. They live longer, grow taller and stronger, listen more than they speak (through fungal networks in their roots), and are among the most tolerant species on the planet.

Human bodies take oxygen from the air and convert it to poisonous carbon dioxide (CO2). We add more poisonous CO2 with our cars and other machinery.

Trees absorb CO2, convert it into sugars and release life-giving oxygen back into the air. Without that oxygen there would be no life on earth.

Some will argue that trees are nowhere near a higher form of life because they do not possess intelligence. However, as anyone who follows politics knows, intelligence is not an indicator of a higher form of life.

Whether or not they are a higher form of life, one thing is clear: Trees deserve our respect. 

 Dark winds are blowing. Some real. Some fictional. 

The real ones are clearly seen. The wild ice storms, droughts and floods of climate change. Ukrainians dying in rainstorms of Russian mortars. Economies shrinking and collapsing under runaway inflation and money markets gone mad.

Bobblehead political leaders nodding and babbling about actions aimed more at re-election than solutions.

The fictional dark winds are in a new television series based on Tony Hillerman’s Navajo Tribal Police mystery novels. It premiered in June and another six episodes are scheduled for next year.

Hillerman, who died in 2008, is one of my favourite authors. So, when I heard about the Dark Winds TV series I pulled one of his novels from my bookshelf, just to refresh my memory.

The novel was The Dark Wind, published in 1982. It opens with the discovery of a body near a desert area trail. The bottoms of the hands and feet had been scalped. Jim Chee, a Navajo Tribal Police sergeant, is called in to investigate.

The body was found by a Hopi elder called the Messenger, who was gathering spruce branches for an important tribal religious ceremony. He tells two companions that they must not report the body to the police because that would take people’s attention away from preparations for the ceremony.

“Everybody will be thinking about the wrong things,” he warns. “They will be thinking of death and anger when they would be thinking only holy thoughts.”

And, that’s where the fiction blends into reality. 

The Messenger says the ceremony must be done properly and without interruption or Sotuknang, the God of creation, will be displeased and punish them. Three times Sotuknang destroyed the world with floods, ice or drought because people ignored his warnings and disobeyed him.

“They [the people] kept going after money, and quarrelling, and gossiping, and forgetting the way of the Road of Life.”

Sound familiar? Quarrelling, violence, frenzies over money, are prominent features of life today. 

If the Messenger was a real person living today he would say the dark winds we are witnessing are Sotuknang’s punishment. 

Some might agree; some wouldn’t. Many would agree, however, that we are straying from the Road of Life. It might not be the Hopi Road of Life but most of us follow a road or path or way of life dictated by our religions, or cultures.

I believe many of the world’s problems are the result of not following what I consider the Way of Nature. 

We have forgotten Nature’s greatest lesson: all things on this planet – every person, every bird, animal and insect, every river, every tree and every blade of grass – are connected. 

When we humans ignore that and do things for ourselves only, we damage other things that are part of the whole.

This is obvious in the documented loss of earth’s diversity.

The World Wildlife Federation’s 2020 Living Planet Report says the world has seen a 68 per cent drop in mammal, bird, fish, reptile and amphibian populations since 1970. 

The International Union for Conservation of Nature now has 41,415 different animals and plants on its Red List of threatened species – 16,306 endangered and facing possible extinction. 

Among recent extinctions are the ivory-billed woodpecker (Woody Woodpecker), the western black rhino, the Asian cheetah and the splendid poison frog.

Habitat degradation and destruction are main reasons we are losing so many species. Deforestation for development and lumber, burning fossil fuels, overhunting and overfishing, mining and agriculture are taking away habitat these species must have to survive.

We obviously can’t stop living ourselves, but we can begin to start living differently and doing whatever we can to stop impacting other life. That was the message of the Messenger in Hillerman’s The Dark Wind.

Indigenous cultures have much to offer about living differently, but we refuse to listen. 

Tony Hillerman and his novels tell us that we need to listen.

“It’s always troubled me that the American people are so ignorant of these rich Indian cultures,” he once was quoted in Publishers Weekly. “I think it’s important to show that aspects of ancient Indian ways are still very much alive and are highly germane even to our ways.”

A’he’hee, Tony.

 July 17 is National Tattoo Day and I’ve been thinking about getting one.

Some years back I wanted to get a screaming eagle tattoo on my chest, but was advised not to by a friend.

“It might look cool now, but what about when you are older,” she said. “If you get a screaming eagle tattooed on your chest now, then when you get old and flabby it will droop and fall from its perch and land on your belly button.”

I took her advice and passed on getting inked.

Now that I’ve become old and flabby, I’m reconsidering. I mean any tattoo I get today will do little drooping and falling. That’s already happened.

So, I decided that National Tattoo Day would be a great time to show off a freshly-inked screaming eagle on my sunken chest. Display it proudly when I go to the dock for a morning swim.

I’ve been researching tattoos and where to get one. And wow, I have discovered there are more tattoo statistics than there are mosquitoes in July.

Think professional baseball statistics are overwhelming? Tattoo statistics are far more mind-numbing.

Support Tattoos And Piercings At Work (STPAW), an advocacy group, reports that as of 2018 nearly 40 per cent of Canadians and 42 per cent of Americans had tattoos. Almost one-half of the Italian population (48 per cent) is tattooed.

Other surveys show that 17 per cent of people who get tattoos regret them. The regrettable ones usually are those with the name of a boyfriend or girlfriend who dumped them.

The website Tattoo Pro says that it costs 10 times more to remove a tattoo than to put one on.

Another reports that people get a tattoo because it makes them sexy (31 per cent), or shows them as rebellious (29 per cent), or shows them to be intelligent (five per cent).

For whatever reasons, tattooing has surged in recent years. One statistic says that Americans alone spend $1.6 billion a year on tattoos.

That seems like an exaggeration, but it is believable because there are more than 20,000 tattoo parlours in the U.S.

The tattooing trend is not something new. Humans around the world have been using tattoos for centuries to make certain statements.

The 5th century Greeks used tattoos as a means of communication between spies. The Romans marked criminals and slaves with tattoos. Maya, Inca and Aztec peoples used tattoos in rituals and the Norse and Saxons proudly tattooed family crests on their bodies.

During the Crusades, soldiers tattooed crosses on their hands to indicate that if they were killed, they needed a Christian burial. Here in Canada, Inuit people sometimes created tattoos by pulling carbon-infused thread through their skins or rubbing ashes or ink into cuts in their bodies.

Recent tattoo information that really caught my attention was the news that the European Union has banned some pigments used in tattooing, deeming them a health hazard. Green and blue pigments, which ink manufacturers and tattoo artists say may be impossible to replace, will be forbidden as of next year.

North American regulatory agencies are considering similar bans on some inks. There is concern among tattoo artists that not having certain inks will make it difficult to do some tattoos, notably the increasingly popular portrait tattoos. Those are the ones where someone decides to get a full-size, blue-eyed hula girl in green skirt inked on their back instead of a plain black and white screaming eagle on their chest.

Some ink manufacturers now put heavy metals such as copper and barium into their pigments to improve colour variations. Also, some have used neurotoxic agents like cadmium, lead and arsenic that can do odd things to the central nervous system.

Concerns over those ingredients appear to be the reason for the ink bans in Europe. However, despite the increasing number of people with tattoos there have been few documented health problems attributed to tattoos. The most common complications are allergic reactions and bacterial infections.

After gathering all of this information I have decided, once again, not to get a tattoo.

My apologies to the ladies at the lake, who had been anxiously awaiting my July 17 appearance on the dock.

 The COVID-19 pandemic is over. That seems to be a consensus in a world that has succumbed to COVID fatigue.

Most people have tossed their masks. Government mandates and restrictions are mostly gone.

But the killer virus is still with us. Two to three thousand Canadians are catching it every day. Hundreds are ending up in hospital every day and several dozen are dying of it every day. In the U.S., the daily average death rate from the virus is 314.

It is a virus that keeps bringing us surprises. The latest is research showing how quickly vaccine protection against the virus wanes.

A British study has found that two doses of the highly-rated Pfizer vaccine provide only 34 percent protection after six months. Two doses of Astro-Zeneca provide zero protection after six months.

Another British study found that booster shots start losing their effectiveness after 10 weeks. 

So, more people vaccinated and boosted are catching it, although most of those cases are not severe. Many are older people whose immune systems don’t respond to vaccines as well as younger people.

“There’s still exceptionally high risk among older adults, even those with primary vaccine series,” Andrew Stokes, a Boston University assistant professor who studies COVID death age, was quoted as saying recently.

What worries me most about the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is how little we seem to know about it, and the surprises it brings us.

For instance, since the onset of COVID-19 there has been an increase in autoimmune disorders in people and pets. I know of three people who have contracted such disorders, which can range from recurring pneumonia to arthritis, lupus and psoriasis. 

Also, I have two granddogs who have developed autoimmune disorders since the pandemic began and have heard of other cases in dogs and cats.

Now there are reports of other viruses acting in odd ways. The medical community has reported surges in common viruses that cause colds and influenza, which are seen usually in the winter months.

Researchers are trying to figure out whether these common viruses are showing up now because of the lessening of masking and social distancing, or whether the powerful coronavirus is causing changes.

This coronavirus has too many variations, too many unanswered questions and too many surprises for us to become too relaxed.

Masking is unquestionably one of the most effective ways of reducing the spread of the virus. 

That’s not to say that government orders on mask wearing are the way to go. It is impossible for governments to enforce mask wearing for tens of millions of people.

And, government mandates for wearing masks have not proven very effective, as have other political decisions made during the pandemic.

Mask wearing at this point should be an individual decision. I intend to continue to wear mine in higher risk situations such as crowds.

The coronavirus is not going away anytime soon. Even if it does, there are other viruses out there preparing to take its place.

A worrisome one is the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which already has struck 100 species of wild birds. (If you have been wondering why you are seeing fewer birds around your place, the spreading bird flu might be the reason).

The experts say there is little risk that this bird flu will affect humans, however several human cases have been reported. There always is a risk of spillover into human populations as a virus evolves. Virus spillover from animals certainly has occurred many times in the past.

We live in a world of viruses. Shrugging and forgetting just how deadly and devastating they can be is a danger to us all.

For anyone who might have forgotten, here are a few facts to keep in mind:

In the United States, one of the world’s most medically advanced societies, coronavirus now is the third leading cause of death.

COVID-19 has reduced life expectancy in 31 of 37 high-income countries.

The virus has killed 6.3 million people worldwide.

Studies show that almost one-half of people who contract COVID-19 and survive suffer health impacts four months or more after the initial diagnosis.

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Working in the news industry can be depressing. It is work that draws much criticism and little praise.

The men and women who gather and report news get blamed for all kinds of stuff.

Politicians blame them for ills that they themselves create. The general public criticizes them for publishing stories and photos that show terrible things.

Take for instance the 1972 news photo of a nude nine-year-old girl running screaming down a road in Vietnam during a napalm attack. Her clothes were on fire and she tore them off, screaming. Nóng quá, nóng quá (“too hot, too hot”).

A frontal photo of a nude young girl burned and screaming is not something any person should want to see. It was an indecent photo that caused controversy and criticism.

Many have viewed it over the years and many more are seeing it now because June 8 was the 50th anniversary of its taking by Nick Ut, a 21-year-old photographer working for The Associated Press.

Pope Francis has seen it. Ut presented him an enlarged copy of the photo during an audience last month.

Yes, the Napalm Girl is a repulsive photo, but it is one of the most important news photos ever published. It captures the senseless cruelty of war, and the suffering it brings to innocent people, especially children.

That photo, plus other photos and news reports of the horrors of Vietnam, helped to change American public opinion about the war, which led to decisions to end it.

The story of the Napalm Girl did not end with the war. Kim Phuc, the little girl, suffered many operations and years of therapy and later defected to Canada. She now lives in the Toronto area.

As an adult she helped establish the Kim Foundation International, a non-profit organization dedicated to help heal innocent child victims of war.

Today she says showing photos of violent carnage, including the children and teachers slaughtered at Uvalde, Texas, seems unbearable. However, she wrote in the New York Times last week:

“ . . . but I think that showing the world what the aftermath of a gun rampage truly looks like can deliver the awful reality. We must face this violence head-on, and the first step is to look at it.”

Fifty years after the Napalm Girl photo was published, other gruesome photos are appearing in newspapers and on television screens. One of the most gruesome shows a mother and her two children lying bloody and face-up dead in a Ukraine street.

That photo was taken by American freelance photojournalist Lynsey Addario. She was photographing people fleeing Russian attacks when a mortar exploded, killing the mother, her teenage daughter, eight-year-old son and a friend.

“I’m thinking as horrific as this is, I have to document this because I just watched a mother and her two children get hit intentionally,” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in an interview.

Some might say it is obscene to show a mother and two children lying dead in a street.

Or, a screaming nude girl fleeing a napalm attack. Or, a two-year-old Syrian boy washed up on a Mediterranean beach, one of thousands of refugees drowned while fleeing a life of repression in the Middle East.

The news media has a social responsibility to tell important stories that some people might not like to hear or see. It is not its job to shield readers or viewers from humanity’s ugliness.

“We all do this work in order to have an impact, in order to affect policy, in order to educate people – to show the reality on the ground,” says Addario.

News and information give life to democracy. They are like air – not always totally clean, but necessary for life.

Horst Faas, the Associated Press photo editor who approved publication of the Napalm Girl photo, once said it is necessary to publish photos of graphic violence because “pain keeps you conscious.”

There is much pain in pictures of people, especially children, suffering and dying. But they are necessary pictures that should never be put to rest.

Hopefully, the gruesome photos coming out of Ukraine continue to live in our heads, causing us enough pain to do whatever is needed to stop that inhumane war.

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