“Carl’s Corner” on Radio Tropicale , New York . www.radiotropicale.com from 11 a.m. to 11.30 a.m every Sunday.
“Carl’s Corner” on RADIO OCCIDENTALE, 99.3 FM ,SCA,www.radiooccidentale.com.Alors Fort Myers, Florida every Sunday at 9.00 a.m. For additionnal information please call URBAIN JOSEPH 239 810 6549.Email urbainjoseph2000@yahoo.fr
Jean H Charles MSW, JD is Executive Director of AINDOH Inc a non
profit organization dedicated to build a kinder and gentle
Caribbean zone for all. He can be reached at:
Dear Carl
I would like to join the chorus of well wishers of and contributors to your wonderful BLOG to bid you and your family a new Year filled with Health, Joy, and Peacefulness. You have shown to the Haitian elite the merit of stepping out to help their brethren live a life of collegiality, conviviality, and hospitality towards each and all. May those who have received more follow that path! In the end, it might be all that Haiti needs to regain its leadership role in the Caribbean .
With affections.
Jean H Charles
EDITORIAL
RECEIVED FROM A SAILOR FRIEND OF
CARL’S CORNER
IN
SOLOMONSISLAND
MARYLAND
Dear Carl,
This is the season… 2006-2007 was a very busy time for us. My wife and I, along with a couple of friends, put up approximately 4000 feet of horse fence with a bunch of gates. We built a couple of horse sheds, a tack house, and had a well drilled and two automatic horse watering equipment were installed. We brought Bridgit (the horse – spring 2007) to the farm where she was greeted by three other horses already living there. In her previous stable she was the alpha mare. But here she had to work her way back up the pecking order.
In the meantime, my spouse went to her 50th High school reunion at an all girl school in Methuen , Mass. She had a nice vacation but she did not recognize many of her old (with the emphasis on old) classmates. For most of them, my dear wife looked more like their daughter than their peer.
As if we don’t have enough on our plates already, and like normal people with a lack of good sense, we bought a second smaller boat, a 33 foot British built sloop. We have essentially refurbished and rebuilt this vessel to our specifications and intend to sail the boat to Florida and/or the Islands where we will leave her for winter excursions or for whatever and whenever the spirit moves us.
This past year, approaching my 72nd birthday, I decided it was time for a long overdue physical exam. I discovered that the principle of having a physical is somewhat akin to celestial navigation. In celestial navigation, you assume a position or a point on the earth’s surface and then set about to prove you’re actually somewhere else. In a physical exam, they assume that you walked in with the grim reaper on your arm and set about to prove it was an illusion.
I was poked, probed, punctured, penetrated X-rayed and inspected, much of it nude. No. Nude is not the appropriate word – naked is the word. This is true nakedness where no shred of dignity of self respect is left and sometimes you’re discussed as if you were somewhere else or an inanimate object. You start out with a GP (general practitioner) who acts as the routing agent to send you to various specialists. There are the questionnaires and the inevitable statement: “You did not list the medications you take.” Answer: “I don’t take any.” Question: “None?” Answer: “None.” And then they use the phrase “at your age” somewhere in the next sentence. I was never aware of the implications of “at your age” until they kept using it. It never made much of an impression on me since there is not much I can do about it anyway! However, not taking medication may be indicative of a character flaw, by not supporting the medical community and the poor and benevolent pharmaceutical companies that have to eke out a living.
Next in line was the lab test for some dread disease that your blood may indicate. These have to be sent out for evaluation. “We’ll let you know in a few weeks.” Then comes the ominous caller with a Boris Karloff voice: “The doctor would like to see you in his office next Thursday.” When you arrive in his office, of course you have to wait, and finally, with your nerves steeled for the news, he says: “Oh, you are fine. It was just a minor bacterial infection.” My first reaction was: “Why in hell could not you tell me that over the phone?” Then it occurred to me that there is no fee for a phone call! The final result of the physical was that I probably did not need one!
Our farm is in an era that is being overrun by deer. My wife has a garden and I have fruit trees that seem to be preferred food for the deer – they even ate her roses! There are no natural predators but us homo sapiens and, while we are the most efficient and ruthless predator ever to walk the earth, the deer population keeps rising. Deers are tasty, Carl, the fare of kings with skin that makes superb leather, and they are a nuisance to the community. I am well armed and an excellent marksman with a good deer rifle. Sounds like a final solution to the deer problem.
Last spring, I happened to be sitting on our front porch one early spring morning, waiting for the sunrise. It was a warm, soft morning in a world being reborn, when very young twin fawns came out to explore directly in front of me. They had apparently been born in the woods beside our house. They jumped, gamboled, and played only a few yards away before they realized I was there. They stopped, stared at me with those big, moist, warm brown eyes and then continued their play. We watched them grow and develop over the course of the summer, unafraid and comfortable with our presence, almost becoming family pets. But we did what we had to do about the deer problem! We posted “No Hunting” signs around our property and planted more roses.
In early 2007 we took the decision to build another house on the farm and to be our own contractor. This has occupied our time from the first week in May to the present, eliminating such things as vacations, free time, trips on the boat and just time to kick back and have fun. Our time was taken up getting bids on excavations, framing, siding, roofing, flooring, electric, plumbing and septic systems. We also had to select and buy material and items such as siding and roofing materials, windows, doors, kitchen appliances, light fixtures, sinks and bathroom items. The list goes on. We are only days away from the final inspection and occupancy permit. This is the first time where the boat and its environs are not the main subject. We went back to “the farm” and built another house on the advice of a financial advisor – “Invest in your wown property.” That may be sound advice but it’s not satisfying to the soul. We have spent more than a quarter of a century living on or near salt water and several years on a Caribbean island. We have boated most of our adult life and, in my case since childhood, when I rented boats from Pepper Langley on Solomons Island , Maryland .
The remote farm where I spent my growing up years is now essentially a suburb of Washington , DC. , with subdivisions being built within walking distance. The farm itself was subdivided into larger building and farming parcels and parts of it were sold to people fleeing the city, but bringing the mentality of the city with them. There is an old saying that goes: “You can take the boy out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the boy”. Carl, you can substitute “city boy” for “country boy” and have the same truism.
I have found that another old axiom: “You can’t go home again” is also mainly true. I grew up somewhat akin to Tom Sawyer or the Waltons with miles to walk, much of it on our own property, without our nearest neighbor about a mile away. You knew everyone’s name and they knew yours (as well as your business). There were no gun laws, or no trespassing
signs. You did not lock your car or your house. In fact, we did not have locks on some of the doors. A neighbor was a neighbor with mutual concern for your well being. This was the old Virginia . Now, it no longer feels like home as much as the salt water boating community of the east coast where there is still some freedom of choice without as many constraints.
Robert Herrick said in the opening line of a poem, “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may”, and I am confident that this is an inherently valid opinion. Since we started these farming and building projects around two years ago, we have not only refused to gather the roses, we have not even stopped to smell them! We have not sailed south for three years or visited
