One of Cadogan’s laws is that there are only two things going on in the universe. One of them is sex. The other is foreplay.

            It is gratifying to be able to report that science has confirmed the validity of this observation.

            An article about a book by two evolutionary psychologists, Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics, and the late Alan S. Miller, dominates a page of the Saturday, Sept. 1, edition of “The Globe and Mail.”

            Called “Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters,” the book says that everything we do is guided by a simple biological imperative: The will to survive as a species.

            To be fair, I think science has known all about this for a long time. I think Satoshi and Miller are just the latest to add evidence and be published.

            As a junior space cadet (advertising sales rep) 45 years ago, I learned that owner benefits and good qualities are the chief ingredients of a sale.

            The owner benefit is what answers the question, “What’s in it for me?”

            The good qualities are the features of the product that produce the benefit.

            For example, when a customer is considering the purchase of a power drill, he doesn’t really want a drill. He wants holes.

            The veteran sales manager who taught me at Southam said that the ultimate owner benefit in every sale is a happier sex life.

            Mr. Restaurateur, if you buy these glasses I’m selling, you will have a happier sex life.

            The break-resistant materials mean they will last longer, your customers will like this style, and the shape means you can fit more of them into one load in the dishwasher and the smooth shape means they come out cleaner.

            That means your costs will be lower which means you will have more profit, which means you will have more money, which means you will have better clothes, a better car, more time to exercise, and more and better vacations, which means you, will have a better sex life.

            Getting back to science, other research has shown that, even in a bar, it is the women who choose the men, not the men who pick up the women.

            A woman is more likely to get pregnant having sex with a lover than a husband. The more different genes her children have, the more likely hers will survive.

            Because a man can plant a seed several times per week but a woman can only produce a baby once a year, the motivations of their genes are different. The man tends to want to plant seeds in many locations. The woman tends to want someone who will stick around to help her raise her children.

            That doesn’t mean the woman is less likely to fool around. She tends to want to carry the seed of the brave, powerful, bold, athletic, stallion while having a steady, reliable, safe guy to help her raise the kids when the stallion has moved on.

            Stallions tend to do that. Henry Kissinger said, quite accurately, that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. Now we know why Kennedy, Clinton, and Trudeau wanted to be president or prime minister. Ladies, don’t kid yourself that Trudeau got all the sex he wanted without being prime minister. The organism is never satisfied that there is enough.

            As the comedian, Ron White of the “Blue Collar Tour,” with Jeff Foxworthy said, “When you’ve seen one woman nekid, . . . . . . . , you want to see all of ‘em nekid.”

            There are dozens of proofs, not all of them pretty, but all of them mathematically support the shameless, relentless, determined, desperate, drive of the organism to survive.

            Your genes care nary a whit about you or even your survival. They know you’re doomed to a very short life anyway. They’ll make you risk your life for sex with no concern at all for your survival. The male Black Widow spider and Praying Mantis are often eaten by their partners during sex.

            Yep, it is all very clinical, mathematical and scientific.

            Some folks find that depressing.

            Some folks find it disgusting. Some women self-righteously deprecate all men for noticing their breasts, or worse yet another woman’s breasts. Men find it very irritating that women say they want a sensitive, loyal, helpful man although they tend to bed the whistling gypsy.

            Men think they are the hunters, thrilling to the chase, and tend to accept the idea that they are more inclined to favour sex for the sake of sex.

            They know that women like more time spent on the wine and candles, compliments and caresses. What most of them don’t realize is that all that romantic stuff doesn’t necessarily involve the same man every night.

            A bull dyke cowgirl in Tom Robbin’s “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues,” emphasized every significant statement she made with a crack of her whip.

            One of her most memorable lines was “The only true aphrodisiac in the world is . . . CRACK! . . .  strange stuff!”

            Except for the fact that she was fictitious, she and Kissinger might have targetted some of the same conquests.

            So, what do we do? Do we simply accept that we’re helpless slaves to our genes and resign ourselves to betraying and betrayal?

            I don’t think so.

            We are sentient beings, capable of understanding the difference between the interests of our chromosomes and ourselves.

            Our genes don’t care about us or anyone else but we do. Our genes struggle to be immortal by reproducing themselves.

            Our only immortality as people will be in how we are remembered. While that will be very brief and the ripples we spread very faint, our physical lives are even shorter.

            We must do what we can to make our own sex lives happier and our happy lives as long as possible.

            To that end, I recommend we take the romance game that is a small part of our genes’ survival technique and play it for all it is worth.

            Understanding that it is difficult to remain monogamous, we have to work at it. The first part of that is to find your soul mate. That is a matter for an entire book, not this essay. Suffice to say that is especially difficult to do the first time. The love chemicals that bathe our brains in the presence of a suitable creature for mating don’t care if we share life interests. They are especially treacherous to teenagers. The love of your life may not be your first and you may wind up married with children before you realize that.

            That, in turn,  means that, when you do find the love of your life, you well may wind up raising someone else’s children and that your happiness well may depend on it. The genes don’t like that but we sentient creatures can.

            To be clear, though, those of you who get it right the first time, have won one of the major lotteries of life. It’s right up there with health.

            Part of being a sentient being is realizing it is a lot easier to be happy when everyone is happy. We don’t want to hurt anyone and we will live more happily, and quite possibly, longer if we play nice which includes being faithful.

            Now for the fun part – romance. Play the game. Cards, music, notes, flowers, poetry, dinners, regular honeymoons of the one-evening to however-many-weeks-possible variety. Whatever works for the two of you.

            An odd little gift won pleasant points for me. Whenever we go to a beach, and we often do, Michelle gathers shells and stones. She always winds up juggling her harvest. Just at that point, on one beach vacation, I handed her an onion bag I’d put aside months earlier. It is the perfect beach comber’s swag carrier. At the end of the hunt, she can swish it in the ocean to clean her treasure. The bag created exactly the reaction I had imagined and anticipated all winter.

            A kiss on a sunny beach is especially nice.

            It’s never difficult to come up with an idea for a gift for a man. Purr in his ear and rub up against his leg. That should do it. Or, as one advisory circulating on the web put it, “Show up naked. Bring beer.”

           If you don’t want to go quite that far, showing up wearing a coat and nothing else will get his attention. Remind me to tell you the story sometime of the guy who showed up late for dinner when his paramour had wrapped herself in polyethylene.

            The romance game is a great game. It’s lots of fun. It’s good for your health. You can play at any age. You can play anywhere. Played properly, there are only winners.

            There are great prizes.                                        DAC

Recognizing a stroke

Remember the “3” steps, S..T..R

Read and Learn! Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke. Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:

• S – Ask the individual to SMILE.
• T – Ask the person to TALK to SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently) (i.e. . . It is sunny out today)
• R – Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.
  NOTE: Another ‘sign’ of a stroke is this: Ask the person to ‘stick’ out their tongue. If the tongue is ‘crooked’, if it goes to one side or the other that is also an indication of a stroke. (Snopes says this is questionable because it calls for too much judgment.)

If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call 911 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

    There is a fourth test which is to ask the person to stick out his or her tongue. If it goes crookedly to one side or the other, that is another sign. Information on Snopes recommends discarding this test in favour of saving the time and getting the individual to the hospital. Information there also emphasizes that lost time is lost brain and that moving a stroke patient does no harm. The harm is already done. One might put the patient in the car and head for the hospital while calling 911.

                                                                                                                                            From left: Havre Aubert; High Tide at villa; Moonrise at villa; Reynard de La Madeleines. To enlarge, click on pic and click again.    

          “He’s leaving
          on that midnight train to Georgia.
          Said he’s going back to find
          a simpler place and time.
          And when he takes that ride,
          guess who’s gonna be right by his side.
          I’ll be with him
          on that midnight train to Georgia.
          I’d rather live in his world,
          than live without him in mine.”

          Is there anyone likely to read this who doesn’t know the Gladys Knight and the Pips rock classic “Midnight Train to Georgia”? Is there anyone who doesn’t think it is one of the most poignant songs of the era?

          Many a woman has left a comfortable environment to be with the man she loves.  We can only imagine the shock WW II war brides must have felt coming to the wilds of rural Canada.

          At the same time, many of us have fond memories of some simpler place and time.

          There can be no midnight train to Quebec’s Magdelan Islands, but the islands certainly bring the song to mind.

          If you consider beaches wealth, and surely you do, the Magdelan Islands are the Microsoft of Canada. I can’t imagine anywhere in the industrial world having more beach per person than the Magdelans.

          It also looks a bit like Newfoundland where the idea of private property, surveys and deeds didn’t catch on in the outports. A person building a home picked out a likely place outside a neighbour’s immediate sphere of influence and built.

          Development in the Magdelans looks a bit like that. Houses appear, alone or in clusters, here and there in a somewhat random pattern. One gets the impression that view, convenience, proximity to family and various other personal preferences took precedence over the dictates of any planning commission or developer.

          It looks like coastal Maritimes 40 or 50 years ago in terms of space and speed.

          What it looks like and what it is are two very different things. In our cliff top villa overlooking the Gulf, we had satellite television and ultra modern appliances, including a dishwasher, washer and dryer, and fixtures for a bit less than we usually pay on PEI. We got a better price than listed, perhaps because of the end of the season.

          http://www3.sympatico.ca/monique009/

          One could argue there are more truly excellent restaurants on the Magdelans than there are in all of New Brunswick.

          One rustic waterfront shack of a place, Bistro du Bout du Monde, in Havre Aubert served osso bucco with venison. From now on, we will consider osso bucco that isn’t venison, (or better yet moose!) a poor copy.

          http://www.bistroduboutdumonde.com/ — (nothing but a home page.)

          Domaine du Vieux Couvent, originally a school for nun student teachers, served the best seafood linguine we have ever had.

          http://www.domaineduvieuxcouvent.com/en/historique.htm

          At Chez Denis à François, Michelle had a cod fish stew that she claimed was the best cod dish she’d ever had. I started with a rich seal appetizer.

          http://www.aubergechezdenis.ca/en/index.htm

          Each of the upper scale restaurants we tried had wine lists running from $25 table wines to well beyond my palate and budget.

          Beware of the bakeries! The Madelon, in particular, is the Moriarity (Sherlock Holmes’ archenemy) to the Atkins low-carb and Dr. Gott no-sugar-no-flour ascetics of the world. It’s French. Like Forest Gump, that’s all I have to say about that.

          A fish market sells fresh cod burger patties seasoned with parsley and fine herbs. They are so light and delicious a restaurant could use them as the foundation for a lunch business. We fried or barbecued them and put them on toasted ciabatta bread with lettuce and tartar sauce or Dijon and mayonnaise, and a couple of dots of Tabasco

          The islands are a Mecca for devotees of wind sports.  Sailboards spraying rooster tails slice through the waves. Parasail boarders race across the waves and soar into the air doing figure eights and almost vertical loops before swooping back down to skim along the water again. Even Charlie Brown could fly an elaborate kite here.

          It seems almost every Quebec vehicle on the island carries at least one kayak or board. Cyclists camp in pup tents on the beaches. Tour buses and motor homes are present but not in overwhelming numbers. Accommodations range from basic to luxurious with not as many chalets as we would like to see offered. One gets the impression that summer residents equal short-term tourist visitors in number.

           One restauranteur told us the population declines from about 35,000 to about 8,500 in winter. Even many of the permanent residents go away for winter.

          “When it snows, it doesn’t come down, it comes sideways!” she said. We noticed snow fencing along all the sandbar connector roads between the islands.

          There are no theme parks with water slides. There is one 9-hole golf course.

          I almost expected to see Burma Shave signs along the quiet highways as you did in the US before turnpikes.

          The Magdelans are also known as the “Second Cemetery” of the Atlantic. The local museum sells a map with the names and dates of over 400 wrecks. Islands history, like Miramichi history is full of tales of heroism, seamanship, and disaster. The museum is also full of models of the types of vessels that fished the waters and supplied the islands over the centuries.

          It is a 95 kilometre, five-hour ferry ride from Souris in Eastern PEI to Cap Au Meules.  It is more than twice that far to the Gaspé. Can you believe that Mi’kmaq used to paddle there to hunt seal and walrus?

          Relics from their camps are on display in the museum though there is no evidence that they stayed year round. Efforts by Europeans to introduce deer to the islands failed. The climate is more moderate than on the mainland because of ocean currents. There is not, however, enough food and shelter to maintain a deer population. There is very little local agriculture. There is one farm market per year at garden harvest time.

          Oddly enough, the Acadian expulsion made the Magdelans a Francophone settlement. A Scot put Acadian refugees to work in his walrus business. By the end of the 1700’s, incidentally, American, English and French walrus hunters had killed the last of hundreds of thousands of walrus. The huge creatures were prized for their ivory tusks.

          When England controlled what is now Atlantic Canada, it attached them first to Newfoundland. Later, when it created the separate colonies of Canada, England put them into Lower Canada, Quebec.

          To get there, you take the ferry (five hours) from Souris, PEI.

          http://www.ctma.ca/traversier-madeleine/index_ang.cfm

          It’s about $253 each way for a car and four people. There is a senior discount from $43.25 to $35 for seniors.

           If you need a bit of a break in a simpler place and time, I highly recommend the beautiful and charming Magdelan Islands.    

“We have met the enemy and it is us.” – The cartoon character Pogo in the comic strip of the same name by the late Walt Kelly

• 16 When you can get a driver’s license. J
• ? When you first get into a bar without being asked for ID. J
• 18 When you can vote. J L
• 19 When you can first get into a bar legally and can produce ID. J
• 3? When you are last asked for an ID. Highest compliment to women in their 30’s. J
• 5? When you are first asked if you get the seniors’ discount. L
• 55 When you qualify for first seniors’ discount. J L
• 5? When cash register clerk says you don’t look old enough to qualify for seniors’ discount. J
• 60 When you qualify for most seniors’ discounts. J
• When you qualify to collect Canada Pension Plan benefits. J
• 6? The last time a cash register clerk says you don’t look old enough to qualify for a seniors’ discount. L
• 65 When you qualify for Old Age Security pension. J

October 13, 2006

Royalist & Playfair

Station Wharf, July 30, 2007

(fills a four litre plastic container and keeps for at least a couple of weeks)In a large steel mixing bowl put:

• 2 19 oz. tin of yellow wax beans (with liquid)
• 2 19 oz. tins of green wax beans (with liquid from one)
• 1 19 oz. tin red kidney beans (well rinsed)
• 1 large onion chopped
• 1 green bell pepper chopped
• 1 red bell pepper chopped
• 1 large stalk of celery finely sliced on the bias
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup white vinegar
• 1/2 cup white sugar (same as for the half-size original recipe)
• 2 tspns salt
• 1 tspn pepper

Gently mix all ingredients with two large wooden spoons