The Oppenheimer Report 6/29/20

A short while back, Hunters Bay Radio welcomed a new volunteer host into the fold. Laura Thomas from Kilworthy now hosts an interesting show that airs monthly, entitled “In The Dirt”. She talks about landscaping and ecological issues and is a well-educated expert on the subject.  A graduate of the University of Waterloo’s Environment and Resource program, Laura runs a landscaping company called Hidden Habitat which focuses on developing landscapes that are ecologically sound, while promoting sustainable land management. In other words, she creates landscapes which are healthy and natural for the environment. Largely from listening to her show, Shauna and I decided to hire Laura and her husband Tyler to do some of the landscaping work on our property. Tyler, a Lieutenant in the Gravenhurst Fire Department, has for the past 10 years operated a company called Muskoka Cottage Services, and his skills compliment Laura’s well. Tyler builds everything from decks and docks to kitchens, and he too is knowledgeable about growing things.

For a long time, Shauna has wanted to add raised garden beds at our home to grow vegetables and flowers. As well, we never really finished landscaping our property after our log home was built. We needed a few trees planted and several trouble spots addressed. We required someone to come in and provide us with guidance as to what types of vegetation would look good, grow well, and at the same time require little maintenance. About a month ago, Laura came up for a consultation, and we immediately found her to be informative and personable. Within an hour or so we had mapped out a plan according to Shauna’s rough drawings. Laura assessed our property and decided what would grow well given our soil conditions, locale, and personal preferences. She listened carefully to our directives, and then provided us with several attractive options which would not only beautify the property, but also provide plants native to the area. Again, we were hoping was looking for vegetation that would grow well and require an excessive amount of maintenance. Within a day or two of our meeting she provided us with estimates for the various options, and we quickly agreed on the work to be done.

We can’t say enough for the work ethic and professionalism of both Laura and Tyler Thomas. They did exactly what they were hired to do, they were accommodating, easy to work with, and they completed their work in a timely fashion. As promised, shortly thereafter, they were on site to plant four trees and began working on the raised garden beds. Tyler assisted in the planting of the trees, handled the construction of the raised garden beds (see photo), and levelled off some of the low spots on our property. He and his crew were professional. We could not be more pleased with the results. This was not a small project and, despite bad weather, within two weeks we had an aesthetically pleasing, large raised bed vegetable garden (complete with vegetables), four new trees, and two attractively landscaped areas which had previously been eyesores.  Without any hesitation we would hire Laura and Tyler Thomas again to do other landscaping or carpentry work at our home. These days, it’s always refreshing to find hard workers who are professional and exceed our expectations.  Hidden Habitat and Muskoka Cottage services did a great job for us. Laura’s show, “In The Dirt” airs once a month on Hunters Bay Radio.  

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer ©2020 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 6/22/20

Last week, I wrote an Oppenheimer Report but did not post it on the Hunters Bay Radio page, because I felt it was a little too depressing. I’ve struggled with depression through much of my life, and while this report has over the past 28 years historically reflected my state of mind, I am a little more mindful about what I “put out there”, now that more people may be reading it. I did post the report on my blog site.

Yesterday was Father’s Day, and I’ve been thinking a lot about my dad lately. I wonder what he would make of the current state of the world. He was a smart man, and I relied so on his guidance. Dad was 98 years old when he passed. He died May 18^th 2009, and while I don’t usually keep track of these morbid anniversaries, it was one of the entries on a voice recorder I keep in my car. I have several voice recorders, because I have a lousy memory, and I make notes all the time. Especially when a lyric idea comes to mind, I need to record it before it disappears. When I turned the recorder on the other day, and scrolled back to a random entry, it happened to be a record of the date of Dad’s passing. That took me by surprise. First, it didn’t seem as if more than ten years had passed since Dad had died, and second, I found it strange that I ended up listening to that particular entry, less than a week before Father’s Day. Was it my dad sending me a message from beyond?

About 5 years ago, I wrote the first draft of an as-yet unfinished song entitled “Bassett’s Farm”. The song is about the first time I was reminded that my dad was vulnerable like the rest of us. I was perhaps 7 years old, and we were on a farm in Crystal Beach, near our summer home in Ft. Erie. My parents kept and rode their horses there during the summer months. I was alone with my dad in a barn and I was helping him by “muck out” a horse stall. Suddenly, I heard him calling for me from the other side of the barn, and the call sounded urgent. He had been operating a mechanical manure spreader hanging from a ceiling track, and something happened which caused his thumb to get caught in the gears. While he wasn’t badly injured, he might have lost his thumb had I not been there to release the pressure that allowed him to free his hand. It was a very strange and frightening experience, and I never forgot it.

My dad and I had a complicated relationship when I was younger. He was my mom’s second husband, and he was in his mid-forties when I was born. I was his only child. He was a good dad, and he spent a lot of time with me when I was young, but by the time I was a young teenager, we fought a lot. I resented him at the time for not understanding me better. In hindsight, I feel bad about that.  I think he did the best he could. Now that I have the benefit of perspective, I better understand some of the things that made him who he was. Thankfully, we worked out our differences and became good friends after working together in family business for 20 years.    

Like Joni Mitchell sings in “Big Yellow Taxi”, “Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone”.  When I was younger, I didn’t appreciate my mom and dad half as much as I do now that they are gone. Things could have gone terribly wrong with me, and both my parents guided me through some troubled times. I am thankful to have had my dad for a father. He was a good, kind man, and his mentoring helped better prepare me for future tribulations. I love him and I know he loved me. Someday maybe I’ll finish that song.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer ©2020 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 6/15/20

As the first day of summer fast approaches, more than ever I feel as if the weeks are flying by. I was in the kitchen last Saturday morning, thinking about what songs I would request for Dale Antcliff’s weekend radio show on Hunters Bay Radio. That was my feeble attempt to distract myself from all the toxic thoughts swirling around in my head these days. Suddenly, it occurred to me that I felt as if I had done the same thing less than a day ago. I never had such a palpable feeling that a week’s time had simply evaporated into thin air. Poof! Gone. I spoke last week about my anxiousness. Do any of you feel that way as well? The other day, my usually stoic nephew from the States texted me and asked (and I paraphrase) “Is it just me or does it seem as if the whole world has gone nuts?” I am reminded of the commonality of our problems.

I was listening to Ben Harrison’s TECH 5 show today on Hunters Bay Radio, and he spoke about the history of pandemics. There have been hundreds over the centuries. He recited a staggering statistic: the bubonic plague, or The Black Death as it was called at the time, wiped out 200 million lives, or about 26% per cent of the world’s population in the 14^th Century. I wonder what it was like to be around then. Draconian quarantines and social distancing eventually ended that plague. By some accounts The Spanish Flu at the end of WWI killed 50 Million people worldwide and infected as many as 500 Million. This latest COVID 19 pandemic has so far killed about a half million people worldwide. .  We live in such a different world today, or at least I thought we did. I lived with delusion that we North Americans are somehow immune to pandemics. After all, we have science and technology on our side.   

While Shauna’s chronic illness has somewhat isolated us, and we have lived in relative seclusion for much of our marriage, I’m not handling this latest isolation well. I was in Huntsville the other day and there was a long line outside the liquor store, so I suspect some are turning to self-medication to “handle” their isolation. No judgment here. Been there, done that.

In some ways I am reminded of the way I felt after our friend James Carroll died. Shauna and I were in contact with him a lot in his last few months, and we put on a brave front at the time. When James died, the grief crept in slowly, and insidiously. All the feelings I’d suppressed while I was helping to care for him finally came bubbling to the surface, and it was a sucker punch. James and I were the same age, and when he died, I did not handle it well. Eventually, I sought a grief counselor to work through my feelings. I think that in some way, that was similar to how I’m feeling now.

Shortly before James died, I did a personal concert for him in his apartment. The other day I found and listened to the recording I made of that performance. Music has always been my go-to therapy when I am lost. It re-connects me to others. Around the end of March, I began to post short live performances of my original songs on Facebook. I’ve done so weekly ever since; my way of connecting with anyone who is out there listening. I’ve been playing a lot of my old songs, ones that most people have never heard. I wrote so many songs when I was in my 20s and 30s, and I wanted to get them out there in cyberspace for posterity. My songs are the stories from my life, and I want to share that. I guess every songwriter wants that.  Some of the performances are rough, and they are always unrehearsed. It’s me saying, “here I am, warts and all.” They are my honest attempt to connect with friends and strangers alike. I think we’re all looking for that connection right now. Music and the love of my family works for me. I hope you have something that works for you.

Written by Jamie Oppenheime+r ©2020 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 6/8/20

A few random thoughts …

I have been very confused and distracted this past week. I’m not sleeping well, partly because my conscience troubles me. What is going on in the world today is disturbing to say the least, and I am not processing the uncertainty very well. I wrote to one of my few black friends the other day. I told him I feel complicit in my complacency, and I vowed to better understand the systemic racism that has obviously affected him and his race. I needed to say that, even though my words don’t mean much. I needed to acknowledge my part in all of this. For my own peace of mind, I need to start this dialogue, especially coming from a country which (at least used to) claims to value freedom. My African Canadian friend wrote back and said perhaps we’ll discuss the issues some day, and he can share his reality with me. I don’t know where I fall on the racially tolerant vs. intolerant scale, but I know I have implicit biases. I am, after all, a white man, born and raised in The City of Buffalo, where more than 50% of residents are black. I have never known racial profiling. I have never feared that someone might kill me because of the colour of my skin. I cannot imagine that. The one thing that has become apparent by all that is happening right now, is that I can no longer look the other way. The issues have never been more obvious. The videos and news reports are hard to ignore.

The other day, I wrote to a friend in our community who is a retired policeman, and I asked him for his take on the recent George Floyd murder. I’d just read and re-posted the opinion of a Massachusetts policeman who is considered to be an expert in the use of force by policemen. His reaction, not surprisingly, was outrage at the brutality of that Minneapolis murder. It is his job to instruct young police officers on the proper use of force, and in his opin

ion, the Minneapolis police officers exhibited an horrific abuse of power. My local friend felt much the same way. I ask myself how did it get this bad? I’m sure a lot of people are asking the same question. While this is not a popular opinion right now, I think it is simplistic to blame racist cops for all of this. This evil goes much deeper than just law enforcement. This is our societal problem. We demand accountability, we blame our leaders, but who is it who elects those leaders? When do each of us look in the mirror and ask what WE did to propagate this evil? I don’t pretend to know how to change any of this, but I am going to start with ME. I feel that if we don’t start talking about and dealing with this problem soon, we’re doomed.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer ©2020 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 6/1/20

To see this week's Oppenheimer Report, please click on the below link:

https://muskokaradio.com/news/article/the-oppenheimer-report-may-25-2020?fbclid=IwAR00yya3ckvKiKhIsMkwT1amGnE3QGXwNxCEKZDczDBW15Yr6O41W-KSiec