mardi 19 mai 2009

Happinesss

I just got back from a trip, with a small group of M.I.L.R. people, to le Musée ferroviaire canadien in Delson, about 35 minutes from Lomgueuil. We had lunch, visited the old streetcars and locomotives and shared fond memories. All very friendly and hearth warming.
As I opened my computer, I surveyed the blogs I follow and had an added pleasure. I saw that a blogger friend who recently got the news that her husband came up with type 2 diabetes and she could be next, had seemingly come out of the gloom and was back to her former warm and charming self.
Sickness is not the enemy, our attitude towards it is. François Rabelais, a 15th century french doctor, treated his patients through laughter, he even wrote books to make them laugh because he felt morale was the main remedy and laughing helped it.
So keep smiling and your health will not deteriorate...so fast.

18 commentaires:

  1. I better sign up for the Comedy Channel. We now go out for grilled halibut and stop at the farmer's market for fresh berries. We are clearing up an area by the lake that will be the home of our new berry patch. Mixed Berry milk-shakes can be made ahead, frozen and eaten all year long. I will look up Rabelais. Thanks for your concerns.

    Arrivederci

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  2. Rabelais, among other things, wrote «pantagruel» and «Gargantua». US standards would probably classify them as ribald and needing parental advisory...but they are real fun to read.

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  3. Ha ha, Paul, you made me laugh - and now the pain on my back is a bit better. Happy you now have a blog too. Ciao.

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  4. Glad I did MoR. Welcome to my humble blog. I am still testing the tool and may come up with something, eventually, worth reading.

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  5. Your blog is not humble, it's a blog like everybody else's. Mine is like yours, plus it is a painful one. You got no idea Paul how hard it is to me writing in this language. And it's not getting better, it's getting worse. I rewrite things ten times, and I feel all so artificial :-(

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  6. Come on man! You have an international following and you debate questions in such a way that you get us all searching and discussing and learning. What could a former professor want on top of that. English is my second language and I'm sure some of our fellow bloggers would correct my writing but they are polite and refrain from doing so.

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  7. Paul, being a failed artist (I wanted to be a musician), being so steeped in aestheticism, the fact that this language doesn't come from my entrails, that I don't master its style and richness of expression, all this, Paul, sometimes hits me as a tragedy. Only sometimes though.

    Paul, yours is the English I prefer. I cannot tell you why now. Sketching in my language, it has una patina (film) del tempo di una volta, di quando le cose erano più calme e profonde - c'è un legame tra la velocità, ansia e superficialità - e forse anche una musicalità francese, chi lo sa. I have to think about it.

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  8. What you said about the former professor etc. makes me happy. If people were really doing this, it would be much more important than any minuscule, tiny, autistic, moronic artist's tragedy. Only, it seems too good to be true now.
    My state of mind probably being: I've just retired, or sort of. At 61, what now?

    (quoting Rosaria, of course)

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  9. "Una patina del tempo", è vero. Canadian english and le français québécois, have kept some of the old colours of the mother countries at the time of our establishment. We do not speak like modern day British or French nor like USAers, although the language varies much from States to States.
    As for what next after 61, well there is 62 and so on and endless possibilities of new enterprises and ventures.
    La beauté de la retraite: nous pouvons choisir nos misères sans y être obligés par quoi ou qui que ce soit. Il suffit de s'ouvrir à la vie et de voir les occasions qui s'offrent.
    E basta, que sera sera.

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  10. Sì, va bene, que sera sera.

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  11. Mais votre Anglais et ce du Commentator sont différents. Est-ce qu'il s'agit seulement d'un problème de differents generations? Ou de differents régions. Ou touts les deux?

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  12. Commentator et moi n'avons pas appris l'anglais de la même manière ni à la même époque. Je crois qu'il est environ 15 ans plus jeune que moi. Il a sans doute grandi dans un milieu plus anglophone et moi dans un milieu, à compter de 10 ans, entièrement francophone. Notre apprentissage et, sans doute, nos lectures ont été très différents d'où les variations que vous constatez.

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  13. I see Paul. Plus maybe since he likes the USAers a lot, this might influence him in his language.

    15 years younger than you? No, Paul, I think he is in his thirties. I sort of remember he told me at his blog. D'ailleurs, his daughter is a little girl.

    I saw you at Café Philos. Nice blog.

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  14. So then make over 40 years, almost two generation apart. Big, big cleavage. He is then one of the last Baby boomers and I am a Great Depression kid. Not even the same planet.
    As for Café Philos, yes nice content.

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  15. Paul, I'm a baby boomer (born soon after wwII), not him. He's too young to be.

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  16. OK, so he is from what we here call the "ME" generation. They are, many of them, neo-conservatives bent on privatizing everything and very jealous of their individual liberties even if detrimental to society as a whole. Hence the nickname.
    I now understand his ideological positions and why we, at times, strongly disagree, with respect of course. My three kids are in the same age bracket and also have conservative leanings...so has my wife, but she is from a bourgeois milieu. I am the only left leaning idiot in the family. I helped to build our generous social system and I am not ready to give it up just because the younger generation does not like to pay income tax.

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  17. Ah ah, the "Me" generation. I like that. I am also a left leaning idiot, Paul. But I like to discuss with the Commentator, even if our ideas may differ. Although I don't know now whether he likes to discuss with me. I'll comment to your new post tomorrow. Ciao

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  18. Commentator likes to discuss, period. He enjoys the exercise, I guess it keeps his little "grey cells" as Poirot would have said, active.
    Looking forward to your comments on my new post.

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