Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks

Photo: Oliver Sacks website

A music fan himself, noted neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks has written in this book about the effects that music has on the brain, and vice versa.

As well as being informative, this work has a great bedside manner. Oliver Sacks has a wonderful flair for relating the vicissitudes of human neurological quirks, his own as well as those of his patients.

Sacks catalogues a rich variety of neurological irregularities, both congenital and acquired. Ever had a song stuck in your head? It's very common, and humans share a neurological propensity for this to happen. Che Guevara was rhythm deaf, and danced a mamba while the orchestra played a fandango.

Perfect pitch is an extremely rare gift. Composer Rachel Y was born with it, but after suffering a blow to her head in a car accident, she lost it in an instant and had to learn to live without it. A mentally retarded patient, Martin, had a phonographic memory. He retained all the music he read. By the age of sixty, he knew two thousand operas, the Messiah, all of Bach's Cantatas and more.

Left-hemisphere dominance is usual, but sometimes the left side of the brain may be damaged in utero or in infancy. When a patient suffers from intractable epilepsy, the drastic surgical measure of left hemispherectomy may be carried out, leaving the patient with only one hemisphere. This can cause the brain to shift to right-hemisphere dominance. Such situations may be related to savant conditions, which can emerge not only in childhood, but later in life.

Absolute pitch, shared by many musicians, has a strange connection to blindness. About half of children born blind or blinded in babyhood have absolute pitch. Yet language learning demands the loss of absolute pitch.The exception is with tonal languages: those learning tonal languages retain and heighten their sense of absolute pitch.

The organ of Corti, though it lies deep within the head for protection, is still vulnerable to loud noises, as are the hair cells that form part of this delicate inner "instrument." Musicians, especially as they age, may be afflicted by a variety of kinds of hearing loss which affect them in quite different ways. Older piano tuners tend to tune the highest octaves too sharp, perhaps due to some encroaching "atrophy of the basilar membrane."

While learning about fascinating brain irregularities, the reader senses behind these tales the curiosity, compassion and intelligence of the great neurologist -- music lover and friend as well as doctor. As a companion on a journey of discovery of the astonishing connections between music and brain function, this reader couldn't have asked for a better guide.  

Musicophilia was published in 2007 by Alfred A. Knopf.

Halloween pumpkins and turnips

Photo: Jack o'Lantern turnips, by Paul Stainthorp, Flickr

Probably the original Jack o'Lanterns were made with turnips in Ireland.

It seems the Irish immigrants brought the tradition to North America, where pumpkins were plentiful, and the Jack o'lantern was adapted to the local conditions.

Carving pumpkins is fun, but there are other vegetables that work too. My personal favourite was an extremely large zucchini we grew one year when our daughter was about twelve.

The shape made it a fantastic lizard, and we carved it out easily. Because a zucchini is so much softer than a pumpkin, the teeth turned out better than I had ever been able to do with the stiffer, more brittle flesh of pumpkins.

Happy Halloween, vegetable artists. Those who are also interested in punctuation can watch a slide show called Pumpkins love punctuation, by clicking here.

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle

Book cover photo from The Guardian

Roddy Doyle's memoir of a ten-year-old made my stomach knot. Minor at first, the matter-of-fact violence of the boy's life kept escalating, ratcheting up the tension. Sure something terrible was going to happen in the end, I was relieved when the climax and denouement of the story did not turn out much worse. The author does a brilliant job of putting the reader into the mind and body of the boy, sharing what he sees, hears, smells and fears. Tough on the outside, Paddy is inwardly kind and loving. Feeling helpless and responsible for the suffering of his parents, he bullies his younger brother, as society has deemed necessary. At the same time, he longs to protect 'Sinbad' from the pain of marital discord.

The story is told simply, mostly through the use of dialogue. The bald childish descriptions unerringly evoke the setting of Barrytown, just outside of Dublin, forty years ago. Glimpses of the TV shows and music of the time add a bizarre counterpoint of Hollywood mythology.

This book is a quick read -- for me only a couple of commutes' worth. Roddy Doyle had been on my radar for years, and I'm glad I got round to his work at last. Published in 1993, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha won its author the Booker, an honour richly deserved.

Ladies and Escorts and a solo Gloria Steinem

Photo: The sign in the picture was placed ironically behind the bar in Leo's Pub and Grill in Pincher Creek, Alberta.

This used to be a common sign above small- town hotel doorways. The Men went into the bar through their own door, and the Ladies entered, escorted by men, through a different one. Weirdly, both doors led to the same room.

Not so very long ago, it was unacceptable for women to enter bars without men.

In one of her books, Gloria Steinem describes a moment in her life as a journalist that reflected the attitude of the times. A man she was scheduled to interview was late to arrive at the agreed on meeting place, which happened to be a New York bar. While waiting, she ordered a drink, and the barman asked her what business she had being there alone.

Anyone else might have slunk out, such was the strength of custom. But Steinem not only stood her ground, she told the barman she was a journalist, meeting a contact to do an interview for a prominent New York magazine. He backed down and served her a drink while she waited.

Ladies and Escorts signs were common when I was a child. For the most part, we didn't question them. I do remember my astonishment when I first entered the hotel bar I had seen only from the outside and discovered that both exterior doors led to the same room.

Long-awaited canna blooms in October

Photo: 2012 CT

When I left for Edmonton in the second week of October, the canna in front of our door was finally budding.

Away from the coast and beyond the Rockies, the prairie city was far colder. On the patio of the Macdonald Hotel, the potted cannas had been blackened by a killing frost, though the petunias in the same containers lived on.

Back in Surrey later in the month, I found to my delight that the long awaited canna by our front door was in full bloom.

Below: Frostbitten cannas droop outside the Macdonald in Edmonton, October 10.

Buffalo Jumps in Alberta

Photo: Cairn overlooks the Red Deer River 2012

Dry Island marks the northern boundary of the buffalo jumps. Natural declivities like this were used by Plains people for thousands of years to hunt buffalo by driving them over the cliff to where hunters waited at the bottom. At forty-five metres, Dry Island is the highest jump in Alberta.

Photo: Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump 2012

This UNESCO Heritage Site in southern Alberta is well worth exploring. The photo shows the edge of the horseshoe shaped cliff left by the last ice age. The buffalo were driven to the cliff edge and then harvested by hunters waiting below.

It was important to let none of the herd escape, lest they tell their buffalo brothers to avoid the place. Then people would go hungry.

Plains Cree and Blackfoot people appreciated their reliance on the bison. As well as eating the meat, they used the skins to make warm buffalo robes and to cover their tipi homes.

Before and after the hunt, these nomadic hunters revered the animals on which they depended. They showed gratitude by visiting Ribstone sites, of which there are many around Alberta.

The buffalo hunters did not have the luxury of choosing the jump where they would hunt; they had to follow the herd. Jumps might be inactive for many years while the buffalo grazed elsewhere.

Of course these places contain thick layers of archaeological evidence. Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump was in use when the world's oldest literary work, the Epic of Gilgamesh, was being written halfway round the world. When the pyramids were built in Egypt, buffalo were being hunted here.

This type of Winter Count Robe was inscribed with markings that served as a kind of historic calendar.

Photo: Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump Interpretive Centre, 2012

All photos taken by the author.

North-West Mounted Police march west

Photo: Mountie talks with aborignal people, Library and Archives Canada

The force created by Sir John A. Macdonald's government had 50 whites and 150 Metis. All had to be literate in either English or French. In 1874 the first recruits rode west from Dufferin, Manitoba, heading for the junction of the Bow and Belly Rivers in southern Alberta. One Troop soon turned for the Hudson's Bay post at Fort Edmonton. After months of hard travel, the others reached their destination and established the police post of Fort Macleod.

The NWMP force was charged with the duty of serving the nation and treating all equally, "without fear, favour or affection." Their first  assignment was to find Fort Whoop-up and rout trouble- making American whiskey traders.

Times were bad for the people of the plains. The buffalo herds on which they had long depended were gone, and the Red River Rebellion had been suppressed. The previous year in the Cypress Hills, a grisly massacre of Assiniboine people had taken place, with both Americans and Canadians among the hunters.

It is widely accepted among non-aboriginal historians that the North-West Mounted Police earned the trust of the native peoples, helping them through some very bad times. Later, the government relied on the Mounties to persuade the native leaders to sign Treaties with the government.

William Henry Walden was born in 1857 in England and joined the new police force as a young man. The CBC digital archives have preserved an interview done with him when he was 109 years old. In it, he recalls his life with the North-West Mounted Police.