The voice in the grapevine

I was having a genuinely down moment saying goodbye at the end of a physical distancing visit to my son’s home in Hamilton.

We don’t get to see our children and grandchildren often now because of the pandemic. And when we do we can’t hug them, shake hands or even get close to them.

It’s depressing, not just for us but for millions of others.

I was already feeling down when I arrived for the visit. I had fought the miserable Toronto area traffic to get to my dentist’s office. After some less-than-joyful poking, drilling and grinding I was back cursing the Highway 403 traffic en route to Hamilton.

The visit was outside and brief and as we were saying goodbye, my son pointed to an alluring grapevine canopy at the rear of his house. He told me raccoons were driving him crazy, sneaking into the vines late at night and making off with the fruit.

As I listened, I put out my hand and leaned against the grapevine’s trunk. My down mood lifted as the vine’s energy pulsed beneath my fingertips.

“That’s from Compare Frank,” my son said. “He gave me a slip from one of his vines when we moved here many years ago.”

I clutched tightly the trunk, now the thickness of a large man’s wrist, and felt a surge of optimism and love of life. I was feeling the positive energy of my good friend Compare Frank. Although he passed away five years ago, I could feel his spirit flowing in that vine.

Compare Frank was Francesco Covella, my pal and the kid brother I never had. We called each other Compare, the Italian reference for comrade, or godfather.

The energy in the vine got me thinking about the Covid crisis and Compare Frank. How would he handle the pandemic, which has become one of the saddest periods of many people’s lives?

Sad not just because of the separation from family and friends. Not just because we can’t shake someone’s hand, or place a hand on their shoulder, or any of those other signs of goodwill and appreciation.

Sad because of all the hard-working, expectant folks who put their dreams and their money into small businesses that are suffering horribly. Sad because of the folks who are having trouble meeting the rent or the mortgage payment because their jobs have been suspended for months.

In a way I am glad Compare Frank is not here to witness the sadness, suffering and the nastiness that this pandemic has brought. They are the antithesis of his style of living, which was to be happy and work through difficulties with perseverance and patience.

I’ll never forget the scene when Compare Frank decided my old house in Ottawa needed a bigger basement. The project would require breaking concrete and digging out a nine by 12 space with hand shovels.

  

“It can’t be done,” I cried with unrestrained disgust.

Compare Frank turned his calloused palms upward and shrugged his shoulders.

“Compare,” he said, calling me by the special name bestowed when he had become my son’s godfather, “this is not difficult if you don’t want it to be. Let me teach you.”

The basement room got dug out, as I later recalled in a Readers’ Digest story, and in this column.

Compare Frank taught me not just how to shovel properly, but how to work through life’s difficult times.

This pandemic is more difficult than shovelling out a basement, no matter how deep or how hard the earth. There is the stress of having to remember to wear masks, avoid crowds, keep two metres space between everyone, including friends and family, and give up many things that are important parts of our normal lives.

A contrarian attitude about masks and physical distancing, and complaining about the inconveniences, distracts us from the critical work of overcoming the Covid-19 virus. We need to focus exclusively on getting the job done.

A week has passed since my visit and I still hear Compare Frank’s voice pulsing through the grapevine that he gave to his godson:

“Don’t think about how difficult the work is, or how much more remains to be done. Think positive and persevere. Focus on the task to overcome it, one shovelful at a time.”

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Mushrooms and dirty diapers

When I walk the woods these days I realize that I am seeing only a fraction what is here.

The trees, the low-growing bushes and the animals all are obvious. I see the white birches, the maples, magnificent oaks and pines, as well as the ferns and blueberry bushes.

Sometimes a deer or a bear slips quickly and quietly in and out of my view. The insects are not nearly as shy and cautious. They are seen, heard, and felt.

It’s easy to think of these abundant species of the plant and animal kingdoms as our entire world. They are only a part of it.

Unseen – actually hidden from us – are many thousands of species that are an important part of the forest. In fact, this forest would not exist without them.

These are the 144,000 of known species of organisms that make up nature’s third kingdom – the kingdom of fungi. Some experts believe there may be as many as two to almost four million species of fungi.

Despite those huge numbers, fungi have not been given the same prominence and amount of study as plants and animals. Only now are we starting to understand the importance of fungi, and their possible help in solving the problems of our future.

My interest in fungi was limited to mushrooms, so prominent this month on the forest floor after the recent rains, or the brown fungus that sometimes forms on a toenail. Other commonly-known fungi are yeast, rust, mildew and mould.

That has changed since a friend gave me a fascinating new book titled Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our World, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures. The author is British biologist-writer Merlin Sheldrake, a magical moniker for a magical subject.

It is a complex book, but fascinating and readable, with page after page packed with information about the importance of fungi. I finished reading it with a sense that study of the fungi kingdom has been neglected in favour of plants and animals research.

Yet it was fungi that helped plants to begin living on land millions of years ago.

Some biologists believe that 90 per cent of living plants have a life-giving relationship with fungal networks entangled in their roots.

It’s a really cool relationship – tentacled fungi networks living deep in the dark soil help the tree to absorb moisture and minerals. In return, the tree collects sunlight, carbon dioxide and moisture from the open air to produce nutrients that it shares with fungi.

But most fascinating is the idea that fungi are not just the dumb and dirty little organisms that cannot communicate the way animals and some plants do. Entangled Life notes that some experts believe that fungal networks monitor large streams of data as part of their everyday existence.

Sheldrake speculates that if we were somehow able to tap into those fungal data streams we could learn more about the ecosystem, including soil quality, water purity and pollution.

We humans believe that a brain or mind is needed to have intelligence and cognition. Fungi do not have brains or minds but maybe they have other ways of gaining intelligence and knowledge and understanding – ways that we cannot see or understand.

Naturalist Charles Darwin, best known for his theory of evolution, wrote 150 years ago:

“Intelligence is based on how efficient a species becomes at doing the things they need to survive.”

Fungi certainly have found some way of staying alive and helping plants and animals – we humans included – to do likewise.

Fungi are important to humans. They help to provide us food such as mushrooms, bread, cheese and, of course, beer. They are important in making life-saving medicines such as penicillin, and chemicals.

Some fungi have powerful appetites for pollutants. Entangled Lives notes they can consume cigarette butts, some herbicides, crude oil, some plastics and even baby diapers.

One research project showed that a certain fungus consumed 85 per cent of a mass of soiled diapers over two years. During the process, the fungus produced edible oyster mushrooms that had no trace of human disease.

Anything that can turn dirty diapers into delicious oyster mushrooms surely offers some good possibilities for cleaning up our increasingly polluted world.

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A little dab’ll do ya!

From Shaman’s Rock

By Jim Poling Sr.

I am hopelessly out of touch with the world of 2020.

My hair has led me to that realization. I haven’t had it cut for five and half months and people have started to call me Doc, after Dr. Emmett Brown, the absent-minded professor in the movie Back to Future. Doc, with his wild grey curls, often looked like he had just stuck his finger in an electric light bulb socket. 

So, I needed something to tame my wild and crazy mane. My mind quickly drifted back decades to the days when my dad introduced me to Brylcreem, a favourite men’s hair cream in those days.

That memory set off a famous jingle dancing in my head,

“Brylcreem, a little dab’ll do ya!

“Brylcreem, you look so debonair.

“Brylcreem, the gals will pursue ya,

Simply rub a little in your hair!”

Brylcreem, a dab the size of a dime would style, strengthen and condition your hair. I wondered if it was still being made so I asked Google.

Google told me that Brylcreem was invented in Britain in 1928 by a company called County Chemicals in Birmingham. It was an emulsion of water and mineral oil stabilized by beeswax. It rapidly became popular, notably among Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots during the Second World War. These guys became known as the Brylcreem Boys.

My dad did not serve in the RAF but he was a Brylcreem Boy. He always had a tube of it on his dresser. And, as part of my growing up ritual he made sure I had a tube of my own.

I used it faithfully, trying to slick back my curls in hopes of developing the duck-cut style of the rock ‘n roll generation. But I never recall the gals pursuing me.

Then came the brush cut era and Brylcreem and I parted company.

Google tipped me that Brylcreem was still alive and reasonably well despite its advanced age. Unilever, that British-Dutch giant that sells more than 400 brands of food, products, drinks, and personal care products in almost 200 countries, was selling it in stores across the U.S. and Canada.

So out shopping I went, breaking the pandemic isolation that had me looking like Doc Brown. I really needed a tube of Brylcreem to get my head slickly under control.

My first stop was a popular large department store with a personal care products section the size of Yankee stadium. There was row upon row upon row of shelving loaded with enough shampoos, conditioners, and hair goos to grease 100 rock bands for a lifetime.

The last time I had gone looking at hair products, a few bottles or tubes of shampoo and hair conditioners occupied a tiny corner of one shelf. Now there were hundreds of all shapes, sizes and labelling screaming, “Pick Me!”

There was a shea butter conditioner with your choice of bentonite clay or charcoal. And, a ‘strong roots’ coconut oil with a label showing sliced coconut, plus an extra virgin oil conditioner with a photo of some tasty-looking Frantoio olives.

Back in the old days, mom scolded us to eat our fruits, vegetables and nuts, not rub them into our hair.

Most appetizing of all was an egg protein hair product whose label featured a golden waffle being smeared with egg yolk and maple syrup. I couldn’t imagine someone plastering their hair with such a scrumptious meal in a bottle.

I wondered if the 2020 version of Brylcreem would be that yummy. I never tasted it when I was a boy, but knew of someone who did. In Season 2 of The Sopranos, Junior Soprano said to a colleague:

"The Federal Marshals are so far up my . . . I can taste Brylcreem."

He didn’t describe the taste.

Despite the hundreds of hair goos and other hair stuff on the endless rows of shelves, there was no Brylcreem.

I did find it online, however, and when I need more I won’t have to go to a store and become confused about whether I’m in the hair products or grocery aisle.

Better still, maybe the Covid pandemic will end someday, I’ll get a haircut and Brylcreem can return to the past.

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