Month: August 2025

Avoiding Arguments with Family: Strategies for Difficult Conversations

August 29, 2025

I was quietly reading my book when I heard an escalating argument with both sides raising their voices. Curious about what was happening, I stepped in and discovered it was a family dispute centered around MAGA-related issues. My wife questioned why we have soldiers stationed in Washington, DC, while her brother claimed that crime in DC is a significant problem and that Trump would be the one to fix it. My wife cited reputable sources showing that the crime rate in DC is at its lowest point in thirty years, but her brother dismissed these facts as incorrect. We have all lived in DC, and while crime has been an issue in some parts of the city in the past, the overall rates have improved.

So, where do we go from here? Arguments like this are becoming increasingly common in our conversations. Discussions with family members often revolve around news, especially topics related to politics and current events.

Having different opinions is perfectly normal. The problem arises when individuals repeatedly make the same points without considering opposing viewpoints. Additionally, people’s beliefs tend to remain relatively stable; some are inherently opinionated and stick to their views even when presented with contradictory facts. Some individuals are misinformed rather than ignorant, often consuming news media that aligns with their beliefs. As a result, their echo chamber reinforces their existing perspectives.

As a middle child, I often find myself playing the role of mediator. Sometimes, I avoid discussing controversial subjects altogether. Other times, I share my own views, and when others disagree, I emphasize that I respect differing opinions. However, I find it frustrating when others fail to see things from my perspective or consider my viewpoint.

The key concern is how to prepare for Thanksgiving dinner with family, especially when some members may support the MAGA movement—or we believe they do. It’s essential to acknowledge that some individuals enjoy arguing, but we aim to avoid conflicts during dinner and steer clear of topics that could lead to disagreements.

One way to prevent arguments with MAGA supporters might be to avoid inviting them to family gatherings. However, this feels too extreme because we value our connection with family. If we can’t discuss current issues among ourselves, to whom can we turn for peaceful conversations? Siblings should be able to sit down together and discuss controversial topics without resorting to loud and heated exchanges.

With Thanksgiving and Christmas approaching, we’re considering whether to invite the entire family while also trying to avoid verbal conflicts. Should we include all family members and risk a confrontation, or should we exclude those likely to bring up controversial subjects? How do you handle similar situations with your family?

Notes on Canadian Healthcare

August 23, 2025

While sitting on the porch facing the lake with my laptop open on the table, healthcare unexpectedly came to mind. It was a perfect summer morning, and with a coffee in hand, I thought about how true it is for a healthy life to live with and enjoy nature.

 Canadian healthcare has a good reputation, particularly outside the country. Although it is a universal system, accessibility remains an issue, especially for those without a family doctor. Twenty percent of Ontario families have no family doctor. These individuals end up seeking medical assistance in emergency departments, where there is a shortage of emergency physicians and nursing staff. Because of that, many emergency departments have been forced to close for a day or even a week.

A tragic example highlights this issue: a sixteen-year-old boy arrived at an emergency unit and was triaged as a “second” priority patient. This designation means that a doctor should ideally see him within fifteen minutes. The boy received attention only several hours later. He ultimately passed away due to the delay.

Not in the same horrid category as the above example, I had experience with our healthcare system recently that raised some questions in my mind. I twisted my leg, which made walking quite painful. After a few days with no improvements, I visited my family doctor, who provided requisitions for an X-ray and an ultrasound to determine what was wrong with my knee. However, I expressed my concerns about the long wait times for an ultrasound— the imaging center near us has openings in six months. She heard from other patients about the long wait times and suggested an imaging place on the east end of Ottawa, where one of her patients had the treatment in a month. I wondered if I really had to wait that long to find out what was wrong with my leg before any treatment could begin.

In the meantime, the doctor gave me Voltaren to help alleviate the pain, but it didn’t work for me. As a result, I scheduled an appointment with a physiotherapist, who used needling and massage techniques on the painful area and prescribed some exercises. I noticed significant improvement within just a few days.

I went to the doctor with the expectation that she would diagnose the issue and recommend a treatment plan. Instead, she provided me with requisitions for further investigations. Since the pain has been subsiding with exercise the physiotherapist suggested, I have not followed up with the requisitions. The doctor did not mention physiotherapy as a treatment.

While speaking with my family doctor, I requested a prescription for an EpiPen. I had one previously, but it had expired. She informed me that my records did not indicate a need for an EpiPen, so she was unable to prescribe one. I do not know what policies exist for prescribing EpiPen. I reminded her that I had used an EpiPen for ten years. However, she reviewed my records with this medical group that goes back six years, and there was no documentation of my previous EpiPen use. (We joined this medical group when our previous family doctor retired, and the practitioner we initially started with did not request my medical records although I offered to get it). I also mentioned to her that I had a wasp sting incident after stepping on a wasp nest. Following that, an allergist gave me shots for a few years to build my resistance to wasp stings and prescribed an EpiPan for ten years.

Following my explanation, the doctor gave me a prescription for an EpiPen. Still, this experience made me realize that a lifetime healthcare data system would be highly beneficial. Everyone should have their complete health history in one place.

I have access to my health history that is on multiple data systems. Two of the three hospitals that I visited in Ottawa use a system called “MyChart” that includes all my testing and hospitalization data. The third hospital in Ottawa uses another system called “ConnectedCare” and has my history with this hospital. Then I use a lab for blood work and other tests, and I subscribe to their data system to access their results. And, of course, my family doctor receives data from all of these systems. What is missing is the history from my retired family doctor, when most of the data was handwritten.

But beyond medical results, we use other health-related experts. We visit dentists, optometrists, physiotherapists, personal trainers, and other health care professionals. Wouldn’t it be beneficial to have all of this information together in one system?

Comments on Book “Enemy Contact” by Tom Clancy

August 17, 2025

I read many of Clancy’s books, such as The Hunt for Red October, and enjoyed them. This book, Enemy Contact, entertained but frustrated me. Published in 2019 and written by Mike Maden under Clancy’s name, this book leads the reader through numerous locations around the world and has multiple plots. But it does not hang together and leaves many questions to the reader’s imagination.

The best thing about the book is that it has a lot of action, and it’s a page-turner. Many of the chapters contain complete short stories but with further reading in the book, one understands how these fit into the overall theme. For example, in chapter one, the action takes place in Argentina and is a complete story. The context of how it fits into the overall narrative becomes clear later on. This happens many times in the book. I found this truncated structure frustrating, but it may be a popular trick to draw the reader further into the book.

The story unfolds in numerous locations, including Luanda, Angola, Gdansk, Poland, Washington, DC and Berlin, Germany. I have no problem with different parts of the world described, except that each location includes description of its architecture and streetscape. I understand the author needs to provide background and context, but the amount of information seems overkill.

And it is not only the description of all the locations, but the politics of the region is also covered. If you are a news hawk, then you are aware of many of the situations described, such as those in Angola, where the Chinese are building their “road and infrastructure” program using Chinese labor that creates friction with available local labor in the country.

The major theme connecting all the local stories revolves around an international crime syndicate involved in the production and distribution of drugs. Another theme involves a super sleuth, who is utilizing data mining techniques on secret U.S. cloud storage sites to gather and sell this information. The connection between these two themes is tenuous and artificial but I read the book for its entertaining value and did not spend time on trying to follow the logic of the stories.

The characters in the book are all unique. They include brothers who served in the French Foreign Legion; a visionary who developed a world-leading security system used by the U.S. government, and his attractive wife, who oversees technical development for the company and recruits the best programmers in the world. Among these programmers is a Chinese individual who was raised in the U.S. and whose friend in Thailand is undergoing gender transition. I wondered why eeverybody in the book has to be a unique character, the best programmer, a good-looking woman techie, and ex-French Foreign Legionnaires. Couldn’t. there be average people accomplishing challenging tasks?

There are several loose ends in the story that feel unfinished to me. For instance, Jack Ryan, the main character in the book, and his his attrctive female assistant in Poland develop a close friendship. He visits her home for dinner and bonds with her toddler. This friendship hints at a potential future relationship between Jack and the assistant. However, when she is drowning, she asks Jack to care for her young son, but nothing further develops. I found this aspect of the story incomplete.

And then there are some situations that are hard to believe; that are not realistic. When Jack arrives in the high mountains of Peru to honor a commitment he made to a friend who died in action, he gets drunk in a local pub, still nursing his guilt, feeling responsible for the death of his Polish assistant. A group associated with the international crime syndicate beat him up in his sleep and rob him of everything. Still, when he wakes up, he scrounges some clothing and climbs another few thousand feet to the top of the mountain without food, water and proper shoes and clothing. I hiked Machu Pichu and let me tell you, the air is thin, and it is cold and it is hard to believe that Jack, beaten up and without supplies, could accomplish the feat described. But reading the story is good entertainment.

The ending of the narrative felt brief and disappointing. As expected, the criminals are killed or imprisoned. There are no excting chases, or long-drawn-out tracking of the bad guys. The ending is just twenty pages long and comes quickly of a four-hundred-sixty-page book. An example is the end of Jack’s archenemy, a former French Foreign Legionnaire. Once located in Benghazi, Jack travels to Libya and shoots the Legionnaire, and that’s it. This resolution unfolds over just a couple of pages, which to me was a quick and decisive action but did not include a leadup with Jack’s feeling towards this gangster and the satisfaction that he undoubtedly drew from fionishing him off.

Overall, I thought the book was entertaining. It contains numerous plots, an abundance of colorful characters, and happens over a wide range of global locations. Additionally, it addresses an excessive number of current topics—political, moral, and technical—that could each have been developed into a story of their own.

While reading the book provided instant excitement, it was ultimately forgettable. It does not hold up to Clancy’s earlier works, which were much more focused in terms of geography and subject matter.

Building Friendships at the Cottage: A New Perspective

August 1, 2025

We know our neighbors better on the island where our cottage is, than those where we live. I found that curious and made me think why.

Many people go to their summer homes to relax, to leave the city behind, and to be alone to regenerate their physical and mental health. I thought that cottagers prefer to be left alone. But I found the opposite to be the truth.

Before I go any further, I should explain how we arrived purchasing a cottage that may have relevance to my argument. We camped and tented for our vacations in the beginning until our one-year-old child woke up in an inch of water from a downpour one night. This prompted us to purchase a tent trailer, ensuring we would be above ground in case of a storm.

The tent trailer took us to Florida, the west coast (Vancouver), the east coast (Charlottetown) and many camp grounds in Ontario and New York State. The whole family enjoyed traveling and sightseeing with a tent trailer.

However, as the children grew up, summer camps, sports activities, and jobs made it inconvenient to travel with them, and we sold the tent trailer.

At the time I sold the tent trailer, a friend invited us to visit their cottage, and we canoed to their place on an islad. We had so much fun on the lake that day that we stayed overnight, and I decided I must have a cottage on this island. When I found a cottage for sale, I made a stink bid in the fall, a poor time to sell it. Since the couple owning the property was going through a divorce and the wife wanted her share of the money at once, they agreed to sell it. That property had good “bones”, or structure, but was unfinished and needed a lot of work.

The first task with our newly acquired property was to finish the ceiling with the tiles already stacked in the cottage. When mice dropped from the ceiling onto Kathy while she was sleeping in the bedroom, finishing the ceiling became the number one task. Other projects followed, like building steps going up the hill to the cottage, where there was a dirt path that was slippery when wet.

We also joined the local cottagers’ association, a common group in such communities. The primary function of these groups is to have an annual meeting with a BBQ event, providing the opportunity to meet others. At these AGMs, there are also talks about subjects of interest to all, like water filter systems, and how to avoid mosquitoes and ticks. Once the ice is broken, friendships form. A few years ago, there was an even bridge club on the island.

This weekend’s visit with a few neighbors shaped my views on our cottage community. The next-door neighbor from New Jersey invited us for dinner, and the discussion flowed easily despite our diverse backgrounds and lifestyles. We learned more about the neighbors’ families than we ever knew about our neighbors in town.  

Our neighbors from Michigan invited us to their spacious deck that same weekend. During a discussion about where they met, we learned that the man’s Vietnam experience ended with an injury, resulting from a grenade blowing up next to him, with long-term consequences. This neighbor has done a lot of work on his cottage and has accumulated a wide range of construction equipment. I found one of his tools helpful, a heavy-duty jack that I borrowed to lift up my sinking dock.

We paid a visit to another old friend from Pennsylvania. His grandson was there keeping them company. During our visit, another neighbor dropped in and brought a bag of fresh samosas from Toronto. We all had one and admired the new ceiling completed in their large entertainment room.

Never to miss our Canadian friends from Ottawa, we walked over to their immense deck the next day, where they always relax with a book and a glass of wine in the afternoon.

Although socializing is fun, the weekend was also work; Kathy power washed the outside decks, which are substantial, about one thousand square feet, with a wraparound deck extending into steps leading to the waterfront. I used a weed-eater to clear the front and back yards. I shaved the grass to the ground to make sure no ticks would enjoy my yard, ticks thrive in tall grass, and I had some bad experiences with them just a few weeks ago.

Despite seeing these people only during the summer months, I found that we know more about them than we know about our city neighbors. It could be because in town, most people work. In cottage land, people take their time to hang out, relax, and enjoy seeing others doing the same. Vacationing is a good time to make friends, and cottaging offers such an opportunity.