My thanks to all who sent emails and left comments about Granddad and his diary entries.
I hope you enjoyed reading them as much as I did, and if it inspires
some of you to write your own personal decalogues and purpose-in-life
statements, even better.
To the nice young lady who yelled “My Canada includes Accordion Guy!” from a streetcar as it passed by: thanks! That made my weekend.
We held Granddad’s funeral on Saturday, a sunny, cloudless day. Following his written instructions, he was cremated in the Philippines and his ashes were flown here to Accordion City to be interred beside the ashes of my grandmother. Although neither of them ever resided in Canada, this is their children’s chosen home, and it is the home — and in some cases, the birthplace — of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Their final resting place may be far from where they lived, practically on the other side of the world, but it’s close to family.
Since I am the family’s designated public speaker — I’m always called upon for readings at church, MCing events, saying free-form Grace before big dinners and improvising toasts — I was assigned the first reading and responsorial psalm (ask a Catholic friend if these terms are unfamiliar). However, I thought that I’d do a little something extra that I’d never tried before.
“Uh, Mom,” I asked, “would you like it if I played Amazing Grace?”
“You have your accordion?”
“In the car.”
“That’s very nice, son. We’ll start with that.”
The other surprise came from Granddad himself. While sorting out his belongings and getting his affairs in order, we found his diaries. Written in English and in clear, beautiful longhand (as opposed to the chicken-scratch one expects from a doctor), they show his talent for writing as well as his thoughts, plans and hopes.
At the funeral, Mom read a couple of entries. One is a personal decalogue written in 1935. The other is a letter to himself, a personal manifesto written in 1938, near the start of his medical career. With her blessing, I’ve published the entries below.
I like to think that Granddad has transcended time, space and even the grave and made his first blog entry. Welcome to the blogosphere, Granddad.
Dear Myself,
You are a physician whose thoughts are constantly focused on reaching the pinnacle of success. Never for a moment have you discarded this ideal. All your thoughts are concentrated on one thing: to attain success in your profession and be of the most benefit to mankind.
I am writing this to you as a sort of a counselor. My intentions are only for the realization of you goal. Your task is a hard one and needs a lot of hard work, patience and sacrifices. The pointers you will soon know are infallible guides in the attainment of success.
First of all, you have to consider humanity itself which is a mass of frailties, weaknesses, gratitude and ingratitude, virtues and sins — in fact every imaginable quality, both bad and good.
Your mission as a physician is to alleviate human suffering. It is your primary mission. The anguish and anxiety of families over the life of their loved ones is more than sufficient calling which should be attended to. Irrespective of any considerations, you should respond to their call. Give the unfortunate ones food and consolation for their languishing souls. Never for just one time aggravate their suffering by not so responding.
You as a human being are apt to be calloused to the frantic calls of unfortunate souls who could not materially reward you. They are in the first place, the unfortunate sons of Destiny. Denying them you most valued help embitters their already embittered life. You who could assist them with no trouble at all on your part, could do something to ameliorate their lot. Such aid as you might extend will merit undoubtedly Divine blessings. Real service is altruistic and unselfish.
Pecuniary demands from you as a physician will tempt you to consider your calling as a business. Never be so — your calling is not a business — yours is one of service to humanity — rendering service to suffering humanity will give you what you need. It will reward you much more than making of your calling a business concern.
You will encounter difficulties, obstacles, disappointments; pay no heed to them. Go to your calling, undaunted and unafraid. Every obstacle will surely melt away your firm determination — every stubborn resistance will give way to your courage. You can only reach your goal by actually working towards it. Scoff at everything that hinders your journey. Go forward, onward until you reach your goal.
At times you will feel exhausted and tired under the stress and strain of your calling. Go take a rest for a while, and resume your work after you feel refreshed and strengthened. Every little upset you may encounter may you now and then. You only have to remember that they will all pass by themselves.
As you grow older and make a little name for yourself, there will come to you a feeling self importance. You should forget your own self and feel the false vastness of your greatness. If you fall to this temptation you find your own light put out by the folly of your mistake. Your only importance, if you think you are, lies only in your own unselfish service to humanity. You only become important and great when you, as a physician could bring hope and alleviation to a suffering soul. You may not be able to bring a restoration to a physical ill — but you
could at least allay a suffering spirit by ministering to it. If at all, you should feel important — do feel so when you give service to ailing humanity.
Consider always yourself in the patient’s place. If you were suffering great pains which keep you restless — and yet you have no money with which to pay a doctor and then you had a doctor called to minister to you — just imagine the great contrast between the selfish and unselfish ministration that he may extend to you. In case of any doubt, just place yourself in the patient’s place.
Thanks to everyone who posted a “My Canada Includes Accordion Guy” banner, linked to the article or made a comment. With the notable exception of my esteemed blog sparring partner Kathy (whose post pointed me to the Enter Stage Right article and whose comments you will find here), the reaction has been nothing but glowing praise.
random person me needs to know where in niagara falls you got that
tie!!!! I very much need a tie just like that, and am having trouble
finding it.. please mail me at michellejvecchio@yahoo.com if you can
help me, or remember where in niagara you got it
I can’t remember the exact address of the store, but I can give you a
general idea of where it is…and better yet, in picture form! Here’s a
picture of Clifton Hill, Niagara Falls’ cheesy tourist trap street:
The approximate location of the place where I purchased the tie. Click the picture to see it at full size.
Hope this helps.
Where can I get Parliamentary attendance records?
Check out this entry in the blog I get paid to write, The Farm, for this photo of a “Python” brand firework (which got a high rating in this National Post review of fireworks). Be sure to read the entry and the comments to read the “if programming language X was a firework” jokes too.
There’s some spill-over debate going on in David Janes’ blog, Ranting and Roaring, in this article where he responds to my article about the election and others respond to that really popular article I wrote yesterday.
One feature that puts Blogware far ahead of other blogging tools is its statistics package. If you have a Blogware-powered weblog, you can see more than just how many people are reading your weblog: you can also see how they’re reading it, in all kinds of ways.
The Stats area of Blogware is located in the Dashboard. To get to its main page, click on the Dashboard tab of the Navigation Bar, then click on the Web Stats item in the Dashboard tab’s menu:
Click the image to see it at full size.
You’ll be taken to the Web Stats main page, which provides you with a quick overview of the number of pageviews your site has received.
Note the calendar on the left side of the page — all stats pages have this calendar, which lets you select the day for which you want statistics. It’s very handy for answering questions like “Hey, what caused that spike in my readership last Thursday?”
The Stats main page gives you not only the total number of pageviews, you also get pageviews broken down into two categories:
You can see these statistics for the currently selected day and month.
Click the image to see it at full size.
The Hourly Stats provide an hour-by-hour breakdown of pageviews for your weblog. This breakdown is further broken down into HTML and XML requests. Using these stats, you can find our what time of day most of your readers read your weblog:
Click the image to see it at full size.
The Most Popular Articles page lists your entries, from most to least popular. For each entry, it lists:
Click the image to see it at full size.
The Most Commented Articles page lists which articles got comments, from the most- to least-commented. For each entry, it lists:
Click the image to see it at full size.
You can see which of your weblog’s categories is most popular using the Most Popular Categories page, which lists your weblog’s categories from most- to least-read. For each category, it lists:
Click the image to see it at full size.
Ever wondered which browsers your readers are using to view your weblog? The Browser Summary page can show you:
Click the image to see it at full size.
How did people get to your weblog? You can find out using the Referer Stats page, which lists sites that have pointed at least one reader to your weblog, in order of most to least referrals (clicking on a referrer name takes you to its page):
Click the image to see it at full size.
Whether you use the statistics to further refine your content to reach a target audience or to simply satisfy your own curiosity about your readership, you’ll find Blogware’s statistics pages to be very handy tools.
Feel free to ask any questions in the comments…
Yesterday’s now-famous article was inspired by the now-infamous Enter Stage Right article, which in turn was inspired by the Victoria Day holiday.
I spent the evening of that holiday with Paul, Deenster, Chris, Josh and Lisa at Trinity Bellwoods Park,
a large common situated a short jaunt west of the downtown core. Paul,
who loves fireworks, had brought along a Manhattan Project’s worth of
them, but what we had couldn’t possibly hope to rival what the Hardcore
Dudes brought.
The Hardcore Dudes had whole filing boxes’ worth of Roman candles,
bombes, barrages, screamers, pinwheels, cherry bombs and all sorts of
other stuff designed to explode with satisfying puro-flourishes and
exhilarating ka-booms. They also preferred to plant their fireworks
ridiculously close to each other and often couldn’t wait for one
firework to finish discharging before lighting the next one, which was
usually the one beside it.
The Hardcore Dudes were crazy and giggling like mad scientists, but
hey, they put on a killer show that everyone in the park loved.
Here’s a video that I shot featuring the Hardcore Dudes at the height
of their show [3 MB QuickTime]. I shot it from about four or five large paces
away, close enough to feel the ashes from the discharge falling on me.
It’s got fantastic explosions, including a couple where one of
the Hardcore Dudes gets slightly singed thanks to his overeagerness to
keep the explosions going.
I expect to read about the Hardcore Dudes someday. I suspect it will be
in an article covering speaking engagements at high schools: “Back when
I had eyebrows and all ten of my fingers, I used to be careless with
fireworks…”
